The 9 of them stood at one end of the arena, Kiyomi at the other. They were scattered in strategic positions, a standard one: tanks making up the vanguard and the ranged classes in the back. The squishy damage-dealers—melee and ranged—stood directly behind the tanks for protection. The tanks had a shield in one hand—their offhand—and a mainhand weapon, like a sword or wand. 

 Backline

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 Frontline

1 tank had a shield and sword, and another had a shield and an oversized lance. The third had a thick, two-handed sword though still seemed tanky in his big armor. They were all in heavy plate armor and helmets. 1 damage-dealer in the middle line had a halberd and another next to him had dual-wielded swords. The other 2 were archers in leather gear. And the 2 in the back were for support, no doubt, holding staves with floating spellbooks while in robes and wizard-like hats. Solid team, but Kiyomi wasn’t impressed. It was so basic and predictable.

Rika was in the back as a support and potentially a sub-DPSer, judging from her aggressive-looking gear she had switched to: it had scattered red skulls along the torso and shoulders. And she had a blood-red glow.

The key to winning was speed: cast speed, cooldown time, reaction speed, and improvising at the last second. Precision too, but speed was king.

A number appeared in the center of the arena.

3.

She wondered how her accuracy would hold up. Her staff wasn’t the best. Point-blank range and avoiding a Glancing Hit debuff should help. At least she wouldn’t get a Glancing Hit by natural means due to her elemental neutrality. Though, the same applied to them.

2.

She would try and make this fight 3 minutes tops.

1.

But how tanky were those tanks? She could use heavy, anti-tank spells? Or be counterintuitive and use those to one-shot the backline.

START!

Kiyomi applied her buffs with a glow that boosted all her stats immensely in half a second with 1 spell: Fanatic. And while they were applying their buffs by saying words and incantations, she emerged behind a support in the backline from his shadow on the ground and swung her black umbrella right through his neck and sliced. His head fell off and hit the ground. Umbrella of Heaven. Good for protection and decapitations, since it was sharp like a blade.

They looked behind them.

“What?!”

“Scatter!” a tank yelled.

They scattered over the arena and made distance.

Kaz, a Dark Knight tank with a large shield charged at her. This should’ve bought time for the rest of them to recompose themselves. That seemed like the plan.

Rika, the surviving support, summoned an army of skeletons that filled the whole arena. At least 200 with a few giants. The giants were Level 600. The skeletons were Level 500.

Kiyomi wouldn’t bother tackling Kaz. It would be time-consuming. She lifted her staff with 1 hand and opened the umbrella above her head with her other. Black Lightning. 

Black lightning rained down on every inch of the field.

The forcefields they put up weren’t enough to counter the sheer number of bolts that fell from the sky. Even Kaz was taking some damage. It chipped away at his HP, but he kept running at her. The DPSers lost about half their HP as they stumbled around, narrowly dodging and parrying some with their blades and, surprisingly, their bows. Rika was desperately trying to negate the damage and out-heal it, but she couldn’t do it alone, not without the second support Kiyomi had killed.

Once the lightning stopped, which had obliterated the army and left black, scorched spots all over the place, she sidestepped Kaz and flew forward to the rest with a burst of speed, though it wasn’t her top speed.

Felix intercepted, blocking her umbrella’s swing with both his long, curved swords. He was a swift DPS in light plate armor. Black and short hair, resolute eyes, a slim build. He gritted his teeth as Kiyomi pushed him back bit by bit. “Is this it?” He smirked.

“Not even close,” Kiyomi replied. 

She turned into a shadow and melted onto the ground, wearing her Cloak of Astius, and emerged behind him from his own shadow and stood still on it.

He froze in place and couldn’t move. “What did you just do?!”

As she stuck her umbrella into the ground on his shadow to hold him in place, she stepped away from a few arrows that came from the 2 archers.

“Hang in there, Felix!” Rika shouted.

Numerous more came down from overhead. Thousands.

Wall of Obscurity. 

A black, floating, thick wall appeared above her and blocked everything then vanished.

A few portals opened up beside her and golden chains came out to restrain her, but she countered with her own black chains that emerged from her shadow on the ground and tied the chains up. Her chains multiped and rushed towards the other tank who had summoned the golden chains.

When the chains wrapped around him and immobilized him, huge spears made of bone flew down from the sky—Rika’s attack. So many that Kiyomi couldn’t count them.

Shadow Eater, do your worst. Kiyomi pointed her palm to the swords. Her shadow from under her moved up her body and sprang from her hand with its mouth open, eyes glowing and larger than everything else combined—even the giants Rika had summoned earlier. It ate all the spears and came back down in an arch, about to land on her opponents.

They used defensives, like shields and counter offensives. Counter offensives weren’t bad if they were done right. The DPSers were sitting ducks. The support was scrambling. Rika was in a panic, unsure of what to do. The tanks yelled and cast their AOE shields with varying levels of damage reduction. The archers, trying to remain calm, readied their arrows in their bows, though seemed reluctant and unsure of where to aim.

Shadow Eater bounced off the shields but was relentlessly bashing its large head against them.

They couldn’t take much more.

“Where do we aim?!” One of the archers shouted.

“At her!” a tank yelled.

Sure, not a bad idea because they sure as hell couldn’t cheese through its 12 million HP bar and heavy Defense.

“Don’t worry! I’m coming!” Rika was on her way over to the corner of the arena where Kiyomi had decapitated her first victim. She started her incantation to resurrect him.

“Death Grasp!” Another Rika from behind Kiyomi lunged her hand forward, which was covered in a black aura. It was smart to use a doppelganger, since it stole Kiyomi’s attention to buy more time for the other Rika to resurrect the dead support.

Kiyomi sidestepped, letting Rika’s momentum push her past her. “Oh, is that supposed to insta-kill me? That’s a good one too.” She summoned a fire extinguisher and slammed it into her head.

Rika grunted as she fell on the ground, face down near Kiyomi’s feet. Critical Hit. She lost 70% of her HP just to that.

She flung the extinguisher with a lot of strength to the other Rika right as she finished the incantation.

With that speed, she had no time to counter. It hit her head and she collapsed. She lost about the same amount of HP.

More colourful arrows unsurprisingly fell onto her from above but bounced off her blue forcefield once she put it up.

“If you have your Weapon Arts, use them now!” Kaz yelled from the far side of the field where he had tried to attack Kiyomi.

Good plan, except they were still busy with Shadow Eater… unless they could still manage.

“WEAPON ART! GOD’S GLORY!” The support that Rika had resurrected shouted as he sat in his corner and pointed his staff skywards as.

A white magic circle spanned across the arena ground. Everyone except Kiyomi glowed.

Those who were unconscious woke up. They all healed back up to full HP with over 20 buffs on each of them, including Invulnerability and Immunity. It was as if the fight had just begun.

What a pain. She wouldn’t even bother reading what buffs they had. They didn’t matter.

Rika got up beside her. “Death Grasp!” She lunged forward with her aura-covered hand at Kiyomi.

Kiyomi stepped out of the way. When Rika moved past her again, Kiyomi grabbed her collar from the back and flung her aside into the wall across the arena. It didn't matter which Rika was the real one. “Have you learned nothing?” She sighed in disappointment. 

“WEAPON ART! UNENDING RAIN!” an archer shouted.

Countless arrows came down from the sky.

She was already in her forcefield, so the arrows bounced off as usual. The damage from each arrow was insignificant, not to mention her shield automatically refreshed every 5 seconds. Oh wow. How original…

And Shadow Eater ignored everything, continuing its bashing against their shields.

Impressive. They were managing to hold their own against it. Just barely though.

“WEAPON ART! IFRIT!” the other archer yelled.

From an orange circle on the ground, the ifrit emerged, twice the size of Shadow Eater with red, glowing markings all over its body.

Ooh. This could be a challenge. But she could just unsummon it. She had the mana… Nope. “Shadow Eater, devour everything!”

Shadow Eater glanced at her then grew even bigger than the ifrit. Its mouth opened wide.

The ifrit shot a beam of blue fire from its mouth.

Shadow Eater swallowed it and began sucking in everything like a vacuum. The ifrit went into its mouth and disappeared down its throat. It sucked in and gulped down everyone’s buffs. Now it had many blue icons above its head, indicating the buffs. It shut its mouth and waited for more orders.

“What? How’s that fair?!” the archer asked.

Kiyomi facepalmed, ignoring him. She had meant the players too. Okay, maybe not yet. I still want to see more. 

Now that Shadow Eater stopped attacking. Those on the defensive dropped their shields to attack it. The 3 DPSers who had been waiting behind the tanks got their chance to attack—the 2 archers and the halberd-wielder. They shot various projectiles, like energy blasts and energy balls, but the shadow’s body absorbed it. The halberd’s blade penetrated the skin, but it was a ball of goop with eyes, so physical attacks didn’t matter, but this guy was too dense to get that. They continued attacking.

Meanwhile…

“WEAPON ART! IMPENETRABLE FORTRESS!” Kaz yelled from his end of the field. His body glowed with a wild, fluctuating aura. His HP increased considerably—about 20 times his original HP.

“WEAPON ART! UNDEAD LEGION!” Rika followed suit from her end. There was only one copy of her now. Many portals across the arena open. Lots of skeletons marched out, equipped with weapons and armor. 

Kiyomi scanned their levels above their heads. They all seemed to be Level 670, which was Rika’s level. So, they scale to her level. Hm…

Kaz, along with the army, rushed at her, full speed.

She formed a fist, which then took on a dark aura, fortified with Dark Energy—an aura like Rika’s Death Grasp, but with a deep tinge of purple. She swung her fist to Kaz.

Kaz lifted his heavy shield and blocked, but the force sent him across the field until he hit the wall hard. His HP dropped to 10%.

“Try again.” Not bad. B for effort, since you survived. “Shadow Eater,” she called it.

Shadow Eater looked at her. It knew what to do. It opened its mouth, inhaled all the skeletons, and swallowed them.

Rika stood there in shock.

Kaz was down.

Felix was still frozen in place with her umbrella stuck into the ground on his shadow. He was the most pathetic one of them all.

Shadow tendrils. Tendrils came up from his shadow, grabbed him by the ankles, and flung him into Rika.

Rika and Felix shrieked when Felix crashed into her. They fell over.

Kiyomi looked around the field. 

They were all panting hard, stamina and MP bars drained.

In a few seconds, her MP and stamina bars went back up to 100%.

“Are you done yet?” Kiyomi asked them. It wasn’t that they were incompetent, and some of their attacks were potentially OP. But Kiyomi simply had better stats, tactics, and lots of wisdom on gameplay in general.

Felix got up. “I’m not done with you!”

Kiyomi was impressed that he had enough stamina to sprint across the arena to her.

But when he lifted his hands to swing his sword, he froze in place.

He struggled to move and grunted. “What kind of weird crap is this now?”

“Psychokinesis,” she replied as she looked to one side of the arena.

The force flung Felix in that direction. He crashed into the wall.

“Alright,” Rika said, lying on the floor and panting like the rest. “We’re done.”

2 minutes and 30 seconds.