With Nathaniel counting down, Jessica decided that she needed one more question answered.
“Do we have confirmation on the Diver’s set?” she asked over the team channel.
“Callout Tank.” Damian answered.
Jessica’s eyes met Nathaniel’s.
Damn it.
Those words referred to a very specific build, with one of the highest skill floors of anything played at the professional level– primarily because it required the player to purchase a shield reshaper to bring it closer to the body, in exchange for weakening it. Not because the purchase of the reshaper specifically was difficult, but because making that decision basically required to player to manually dodge the majority of attacks coming in their way.
She pushed her mind off that as Nathaniel’s count got low.
Two… One…
Jessica fired the water-infused arrow up as the opposing people got a visual on them, and everything burst into chaos.
The ranger extruded what looked like a flat expanse of stone out of his stomach, she felt the mental effect of Challenge set in, and the carry lit a fire halfway between them.
As she fired the second arrow, this time metal-infused at the callout tank– as the source of the Challenge, she’d deal less damage to everyone else until it expired, either by breaking her concentration or waiting out the duration– though that second one was still open to a recast.
The ranger flew at her, close enough that she had to duck to avoid it, and a slam into the bridge destabilized her footing as she shot the second time, teleporting backwards in an attempt to get past whatever had happened behind her.
The diver used Deflect, her arm visibly speeding up to knock the arrow away with the small shield she held, and Jessica noticed that the flat ground she’d been expecting wasn’t, in fact, beneath her feet.
Now falling, she took a partial-draw shot with the next arrow, unfortunately one of her dark-infused ones, towards the ranger, who was below her.
It hit. But the real purpose was more important, teleporting down closer to the ground so that she didn’t take damage from the fall.
The ultimate and penultimate notifications were almost simultaneous.
Earthen Arena, again, this time with no way out and all five people within it.
Challenger’s Callout, targeting her support.
That one almost made her laugh, taking aim at the ranger again, this time with a light arrow. After the dark arrow’s defense-reducing effect, the DoT burn from the light arrow would be boosted enough to make someone worry.
Challenger’s Callout on a support was usually a free win of a small fight like this one, providing massive damage reduction against everyone but the target, moderately increasing damage taken from the target, and providing a high damage teleport strike, refresh and optional retarget so long as the target couldn’t hit them within the fifteen seconds.
Nathaniel teleported forward, hitting her with a small burst of damage on appearing, two more bursts as he teleported a small item from his had to behind her, another one as the grenade exploded, another enormous chunk as she tripped forwards into a Void Wall, then a single Void Strike that killed her.
Challenge gone, Jessica immediately retargeted, taking aim at the enemy carry, this time speed boosted, and began running across the area of the arena, trying to get closer to her support.
The ranger didn’t like that, though, throwing up a Stone Wall between them, so close in front of her that she nearly ran face-first into it, only barely managing to kick off of it instead while transferring her four remaining arrows to her draw hand.
Another shot at the carry, then, this time wood-infused and closer to the ground.
His Flash Step burned from the last, metal, one, it hit his shields and began trying to wrap round his legs.
An ignite hit it nearly instantly, and a Flame wall appeared where she was standing, beginning to tear through her shields much more quickly than she was comfortable with.
Instead of paying more attention to himself, the enemy carry dedicated to offense, throwing two Salamander Bolts into her shield before she managed to infuse the blank arrow she’d been holding with water, using up the last bit of her energy.
It hit her shields more, bringing them down to thirty percent as she shot it at her feet, but also putting out the fire around her and stopping the drain.
Another metal infused shot once she ran out of the burst of steam, plus her support’s pressure, brought the carry’s shields down to match hers for a split second before she got hit again, this time a Vine Shot from the ranger, which immediately started reaching towards her, wrapping around her legs and trying to tangle up her movement.
She fired the last, dark-infused arrow at the ranger, teleporting up to the lip of the arena, and dropped a large red mark in her support’s vision, triggering him to do the same.
The carry caught on quickly, teleporting himself up and out at the same time they did, but the ranger was still in his arena when the wave of water arrows crashed into the arena, visibly filling it up to his waist.
The arena fell apart, but another, large stone wall appeared behind both her and her support, blocking them off from seeing the escape route into the mists.
Another flame wall appeared on top of the stone, pushing them both forward, driving them closer to the low-shield ranger, but given his stone armor, she wouldn’t be able to damage him without infused arrows.
Which she was out of.
But she did have the ability to use her penultimate, and so she did.
It was still strange to see her own hands disappear from in front of her face, but that wasn’t the highest priority.
She grabbed another three arrows out of the quiver, infusing the third as she did– now that her penultimate was active, it didn’t cost energy for the next few seconds, but she wasn’t going to waste the time it took to infuse the first two, instead firing them off as quickly as she could towards the carry, activating Painseeker on the second one to make it chase him as he once again Flash Stepped backwards, avoiding the original aiming point with a smirk that changed to shock when his shield bubble popped.
She didn’t have the time to do anything about that, though, as the Ranger was once again in her face, this time with glowing goggles under his armor and just trying to punch her, though parts of the ground were reaching up to hit her in tandem.
They were too close, actually, and hit her shields, pulling them down to their last legs.
She took another shot aimed up, this time light-infused, but hit with both Painseeker and Reign of Arrows.
“Need help!” she called, knowing what came next.
The picture of the arrow in her mind duplicated, then duplicated again.
Numerically, it only reserved ten concentration, but she was only able to get part of the way away with the on-shot teleport and a few steps before it filled her mind enough that she fell, instead maintaining her attention on the falling arrows and Nathaniel’s vision.
She watched as he threw a Void Wall just above her shield’s bubble, upping their regen and protecting her in the same motion.
Unfortunately, it also meant that he had to take the next few Salamander Bolts and attacks from the ranger on his own shield, severely weakening it while the enemy carry teleported again, this time close to his Flame Wall, popping Consolidating Flamethrower as he appeared.
She was focused on guiding the high-damage light arrows, though, splitting them into two groups now. One group towards the carry, and a larger one towards the ranger.
Another void blast changed his vision enough that she noticed, but then the light arrived.
And it was blinding as all the arrows went off at once.
[Nathaniel] has been slain with [Consolidating Flamethrower]
You have slain an enemy with [Painseeker, Reign of Arrows, light-infused arrow]
You have slain an enemy with [Painseeker, Reign of Arrows, light-infused arrow]
