Chapter 62
[Cast: Adjust Friction Coefficient]
“Hmph. What are you doing?”
Even as I cast my spell, the knight merely snorted and paid it no mind.
So even magic of this level couldn’t make him fall?
Was it because his balance was good, or because the armor itself had been treated against mana?
It didn’t really matter which.
There was one more place where I had cast it.
“Nyaaaaaaaaaa!”
Adella broke free of the knight’s grasp and rolled across the ground.
If someone grabbed her ankle now, it would feel as though it had been thoroughly greased.
Adella crawled back toward me and caught her breath.
“Huff... huff. These guys are playing dirty, ganging up on me?”
As the knight raised his greatsword from his waist, Adella gulped.
It seemed she had already been hit by that sword strike once.
Adella had twisted her ankle and was useless as a combatant.
In the end, time was wasted, leaving me facing the worst possible situation: taking on all twenty alone.
To make matters worse, Adella had even given the enemies time to regroup.
I quickly racked my brain.
Could I use the terrain?
It wasn’t impossible, but the guards would be more familiar with this area.
There were twenty of them, but a full-surround attack was impossible.
I couldn’t rule out the possibility of scouts.
Unreliable as she was, I would have to leave my back to Adella.
“Even if you surrender, we won’t spare you.”
The knight spoke in a low, menacing voice.
“Wasn’t planning to.”
I quickly thought of any useful weapons nearby.
‘A branch? No, too weak. A rock? If it’s stopped by their armor, I’m finished.’
As I looked around, Adella’s necklace glinted in the moonlight.
“I’ll borrow this.”
“Huh? No! That’s miiiiiine!”
I tore off her necklace and flung all the beads onto the ground.
With the necklace’s thread, I should at least be able to restrain them.
“That woman’s a mage! Don’t give her time to cast!”
The guards weren’t about to surrender the initiative, either.
A stomp that shook the earth.
A cloud of dust flew up.
The knights charged mindlessly at terrifying speed.
Two blades came at my shoulders on a diagonal.
They had taken the opening I had deliberately shown them.
[Cast: Rapid Cooling]
The necklace thread stiffened.
I split the thread in two and hurled each half toward the knights’ helmets.
“Aah! I can’t see!”
A well-trained knight does not change the path of a sword once it has been set.
I bent one knee to lower my stance and nimbly avoided the two strands.
One thread pierced straight into an eye and took that knight out of the fight, but the other merely blocked his vision.
However, even after removing a strand that was nearly 150 degrees below zero in a humid environment like a forest, I couldn’t wipe away all the frost that had formed on the knight’s helmet.
Conveniently, there was a sharp rock behind him.
I wrapped as much aura around my foot as possible, kicked the knight away, and took the sword from the other knight, who was groaning.
I thought he would merely slam his back against the rock, but the guard staggered this way and that before rolling off the cliff.
Are you stupid? This is some really dumb AI.
[Remnant Observatory Guards (1/20)]
“... Good. Now it’s fair.”
Were there any spears? Fortunately, there weren’t.
Even in a virtual-reality game, if real-world concepts applied, it took more than three swordsmen to defeat a single spearman.
It was a fact often overlooked because of games and movies, but reach was that important in combat.
Conversely, a mage wielding a sword was dangerous even at close range, so I could use psychological warfare against them.
I checked the priest’s skills.
[Basic Heal lv.1: Restores 160 Health over 4 seconds.]
[MP Cost: 30, Cooldown: 20 seconds]
[Acceleration lv.1: Grants 20% movement speed and 15% additional attack speed for 5 seconds.]
[MP Cost: 50, Cooldown: 15 seconds]
These skills were far too poor for direct combat.
[Please select a weapon suited to your class.]
[Current Penalty: Attack Power –50%, Defense –50%]
There was even a penalty for holding a sword.
I hadn’t looted a single weapon the priest could use all the way here.
This must have been the effect of Exploration Difficulty 10.
But system loopholes were a matter of how you thought about them.
I used aura to separate the blade from the hilt, then split the blade lengthwise into two pieces.
[Cast: Adjust Thermal Conductivity]
[Cast: Soldering]
I fused the two blades to the backs of my hands.
[The penalty has disappeared.]
As expected, the system no longer registered me as holding a sword.
It even reminded me of some berserker from an old game.
I let aura flow through the attached blades and formed sword energy.
The Health lost as my skin tore was within what the priest’s skills could handle.
“It’s been a while, so I’m not sure my body will move the way I want it to.”
* * *
It was only natural that if there were guides for the main story, there would also be guides exclusive to Nightmare.
For those overflowing with passion but unable to raise their Arena scores, the Nightmare guides written personally by ranked players were always a ray of hope for gamers.
There were tens or hundreds of thousands of guides on the community, but if you asked what class beginners should choose, they would all answer in unison: tank.
The simple advantage of being able to recover even after making a ‘mistake’ was enough.
It was a useful class that could pull off a miraculous comeback even if you slipped up during a run.
Shield Knights, Blood Knights, Dark Knights, and Paladins were so-called reliable workhorse characters, guaranteeing at least Tier 2 in every Arena meta.
But tanks were never as appealing as damage dealers.
Once people became reasonably accustomed to Nightmare, they went looking for damage classes.
Mages and archers guaranteed tremendous firepower in the Arena, but their clear difficulty increased exponentially by the same measure, making them classes available only to a select few.
What about healers?
Healers didn’t need guides.
At least, not until now.
‘Waresoft,’ the company that made WoA, had been racking its brains over healer balance in the Arena, and eventually raised the single-player difficulty for healers.
Since they couldn’t clear it, the actual pick rate of healers fell, and Arena balance once again earned praise as “perfect” and “god-tier.” It was a successful operation—as long as they ignored the opinions of the small number of users who mained healers.
Because healer playthroughs took so long, no one wrote guides for the changing boss patterns.
Even at the highest score brackets, the only guide available was a Shaman (Nightmare 3/3/3) clear guide.
But after ‘DaeSal’ posted a Paladin (Nightmare 8/6/7) guide that sent shockwaves through the community, healers were divided into two classes.
Healers capable of physical attacks, and healers limited entirely to magic attacks.
The former rose beyond Tier 1 into Tier 0, while the latter settled into Tier 5 after repeated patches.
Why had this change occurred?
The answer lay in the infinite use of the Circle 2 spell ‘Tissue Regeneration,’ enabled by a Dimension Descent Scroll.
By spending all MP exclusively on spellcasting to keep the Paladin’s Health at maximum, they could defeat bosses one after another with hundreds of stabbing attacks that consumed no mana.
That was how the 100,000-Combat-Power Paladin “Endgame Character” came to be.
In WoA, anyone with even one Endgame Character that no longer needed further development and could hold its own in Challenger was the envy of everyone.
‘DaeSal’ had once wasted two weeks trying to clear Nightmare 8/7/7 as a Paladin, one step up from 8/6/7.
It had been an impetuous challenge, undertaken because DaeSal wanted to lead the healers from the very front, even if it meant giving up on this Arena score.
If even a Paladin was like this, it was established wisdom that clearing 10/10/10 as a Priest, who had virtually no physical attack options, was impossible.
Besides, since this was NoName’s first time playing WoA, DaeSal had been about to advise NoName to start over with a new character.
But NoName’s performance was unbelievably dazzling and creative.
The moment she subdued the two knights, their eighteen comrades lost all reason and charged.
NoName did not retreat.
Clang.
She did not respond to every sword swing individually.
She dodged the ones coming vertically and twisted the direction of the horizontal ones with sword energy, making them intersect the charging paths of their comrades.
As sword met sword and sword met sword energy, the battlefield descended into chaos with no distinction between friend and foe.
Even when the body of a guard killed by being impaled on his own sword collapsed, the guard behind him charged ferociously.
They had no reason left, only the instinct to tear NoName to pieces and kill her.
It was something no one could have known when there had been two or three guards, or even ten.
But NoName held her ground to the very end.
She knew how to use her small, nimble frame.
She did not use [Acceleration] when evading attacks.
With movements closer to instinct—or even precognition—she struck back against the swords trying to chop her body into pieces.
Her skill activated and accelerated her sword only for the split second when her cruel sword energy pierced a guard.
And that wasn’t all: whenever the skill was on cooldown, she flawlessly cast a magic circle with one hand while swinging the sword with the other.
[Advanced Casting, Circle 1: Assign Polar Coordinate System]
At the moment she seemed about to suffer a devastating blow, NoName reversed the enemy’s sword path by 180 degrees.
It was the perfect moment to finish off the nimble prey, so the knight’s mistake was having infused his sword with explosive aura.
KWA-GA-GA-GANG!
Acrid smoke billowed up with the sound of the explosion.
[Remnant Observatory Guards (20/20)]
[Perfect Clear!]
This was impossible!
Was the Priest originally supposed to be a character like that?
Her gameplay went far beyond something that could be simply described as “creative.”
All DaeSal could think about was that the community had to hear about this immediately.
<World of Arseria Gallery – Healer Class>
[Currently challenging Nightmare 10/10/10 with my little streamer’s Priest]
Author: SaveTheGradStudent
I just broke through the observatory courtyard
(Remnant Observatory guard knights perfect-clear screenshot.jpg)
-With 500 viewers, she’s not exactly a tiny streamer
ㄴWoA’s viewers are basically just me, though? This person used to play LoL (female)
ㄴAh, if she’s a girl, I gotta watchㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-What the hell? It can’t be hacks, so how did she get through with full Health?
ㄴIt was freaking insane. You have to come watch.
ㄴDrop the link.
ㄴipfs://www.twish.ch/noname
-DaeSal, forget watching the stream and just post that Paladin guide
ㄴIf you watch my little streamer, I’ll think about it.
[What the hell is this guy?]
(Video of swords being embedded in her arms.mp4)
Are you a Zealot or something?
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ How the hell did she attach those?
-ㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ The moment her Health drops, she heals it right back up.
-Isn’t this just pure madness? Even if it’s a game, it’s too gruesome for me to imitate.
ㄴShe’s just burning through her skin without hesitation.
-Her character customization is freaking gorgeous. Is it handmade?
[Adella, you’ve done it again today]
0 kills, 0 deaths, 39 assists
Just the GOAT.
-Dark Adella, obviously. I wanna beat her to death, damnㅋㅋㅋㅋㅋ
-Most of them didn’t even get assists, though?
ㄴJust go with it. It’s a recurring post.
-Where did she customize her character? She’s freaking gorgeous.
[I’ve never seen a Priest 10/10/10 before]
Is that observatory perfect clear for real?
-The streamer is freaking amazing at fighting, right?
ㄴWhat did she used to do? She’s a WoA god.
ㄴWhen I checked her out, she was only doing Just Chatting.
ㄴAs a League no-lifer, she’s #1 in Korea. She must’ve played over 50,000 games, right?
-Does anyone else feel like her spellcasting speed is beyond normal?
ㄴThe last one flew by so fast I didn’t even know what it was.
ㄴCasting two spells simultaneously? I can’t not love this.
-The last one was... shiiit... advanced casting, huh... The scroll and rune are identical...
ㄴYou shouldn’t use the word “scroll,” sir.
ㄴRead the room, you pathetic loser.
-No, where did she customize her character? I want to make one too.