Spiteful Healer

Chapter 203: Duel in the Fortress

“I’m guessing you picked this place because of how dark it is?” Cheryl asked as she tilted her head up and briefly panned around to take in their surroundings.

“I let Yorgi pick the place. I’ve never been here before.” Lina shrugged.

“Figures. Typical passive, obedient Lina…” Cheryl replied mockingly as she tilted her head back down to face her. “I was being serious when I said he’d get bored of you.”

“No, you were doing all that just to divide us. Taunting me, flirting with Aegis. I’m not listening to you anymore.” Lina replied.

“Oh, no, not just for those reasons. Aegis is kinda cute… I think he’d get along better with a girl like me.” Cheryl winked. Lina flicked her hands forward, forming shadow daggers out of the corners of the room that began to bombard Cheryl with damage. She took a few hits from them before waving her scepter and creating a blast of sunlight out of her shield. The spell she had cast was identical to that of Sapphire’s when she tried to arrest Lina, but Cheryl spoke no words while casting it.

The engulfing sunlight expanded out from Cheryl, brightening the room and causing the shadow daggers to dissipate. Following this, Cheryl cast a heal on herself to recover the damage dealt by Lina.

“Honestly, this is really the worst matchup possible for you. I’d say my taunting worked pretty well. It got you stuck in this losing scenario.” Cheryl grinned. “And if you think your friends are going to beat mine, you’re way off the mark. Even if the Rune knight somehow overpowers Joltblade, once Quiver stops being lazy, no one will beat him.”

“He’s just a ranger. Darkshot won’t lose to him.” Lina sneered back.

“Yeah, just a ranger… but he found a way to make that class extremely overpowered.” Cheryl replied.

Quiver glanced between Rakkan and Joltblade, watching as the pair glared at each other with all of their weapons at the ready.

“Taking away our cleric won’t save you. This time you don’t have big boy Aegis to heal you back up.” Joltblade taunted Rakkan.

“You’re the one who’s gonna be missing your healer.” Rakkan snapped back. Following these words, Quiver let out a loud yawn and stretched his arms up over his head.

“Whatever, you boys swing your egos around, I’m going to go figure out where they hid the King.” Quiver said as he turned to walk out of the room.

“I’ll take care of that guy.” Darkshot told Rakkan as they watched Quiver walking back out of the throne room, firing several arrows at him. With extreme ease, and without looking at Darkshot, Quiver began sidestepping and dodging all of his arrows.

“Heh?” Darkshot said in confusion. He fired three more shots before Quiver disappeared around the corner of the doorway, out of his view. All three shots missed, due to Quiver avoiding them still without looking back at Darkshot. It was during this time that Darkshot noticed Quiver’s hawk on his shoulder, still level 50, staring back at him.

“He’s looking through his hawk.” Darkshot concluded. “You got this?” He turned to Rakkan as he eyed Joltblade smirking at him.

“Yeah, I got this.” Rakkan nodded back. Following these words, Darkshot ran after Quiver.

“Don’t think so.” Joltblade began spinning his shurikens around the throne room as sparks of lighting exploded off of them, then sent them shooting across the room towards Darkshot. Rakkan maneuvered his echoes around Darkshot to deflect and knock down the shurikens, preventing any from hitting Darkshot as he left the room, Darkwing giving one final coo from his shoulder towards Rakkan as if to say thanks.

Once Darkshot was out in the corridor, he saw Quiver walking down the hallway away from him, still ignoring him completely. Darkshot fired several more shots, but Quiver continued to easily avoid the shots.

“Alright, that’s getting annoying.” Darkshot grumbled in frustration as he pursued the uninterested Ranger.

Joltblade looked on as Darkshot disappeared out of his line of sight in pursuit of Quiver, then glanced back towards Zekor, and finally Rakkan. Zekor had tucked himself as far back into the corner of the throne room as possible, to avoid getting hit by the shurikens spinning around the room.

“You really wanna do this, Renault?” Joltblade asked him with a devilish grin.

“Yo, did he just say Renault? Why’s he calling that guy Renault?” Seraxus asked Hajax as the two sat beside one another in the empty gladiator arena, up on a bench up in the stands with their livestream viewers open.

“Didn’t Zuon say his sister rerolled with Renault on Kalmoore?”

“No shot, that's OUR Renault? Hah. He’s about to get clapped by a battlemaster AGAIN.” Seraxus laughed mockingly as his audience joined in with the laughter, the chat filled with ‘lmao’ and ‘lol’.

“I believe in my party members. And I believe in myself. I won’t listen to your taunting anymore.” Lina replied to Cheryl, spinning her daggers around in her hands.

“Fair enough. Let’s see what you got, obedient lil' shadow dancer.” Cheryl said while preparing her mithral shield. Lina then suddenly took off her cloak and held it in her left hand, dashing forward towards Cheryl.

Lina feinted a frontal assault with her daggers, halting a meter away to instead throw her cloak out at Cheryl towards her shield, attempting to cover up the light emitting from it. Instead, though, the cloak she threw passed through the shield and fell to the ground - Cheryl had activated her illusionary body and was standing elsewhere - what Lina had thrown the cloak at was her fake form. Cheryl then lunged forward with her real body and swung her scepter down at Lina, forcing her to jump backwards and avoid the attack as Lina barely made out the scepter due to the trail of black mist it left behind as it traveled through the air.

“You can’t use shadows, and you can’t see my real body. And any damage you do manage to deal, I’ll heal through. So many obstacles you need to overcome, and yet all I have to do is grapple you once, and I win.” Cheryl said as she watched Lina jump backwards. “Not to mention, this isn’t a one on one.” She added with a thrust of her scepter arm. Out of it, a black ball of mist fired out and formed into a gigantic ferrawolf. “Aegis killed the babies, but momma’s still here.”

A gigantic, [Mother(Elite) - Level 150] Ferrawolf formed out of the mist, slightly larger than the size of a horse. Once it had finished forming off to the side of the room, it let out a ferocious roar and turned its glowing red eyes onto Lina.

“Rune:Echo.” Lina responded upon seeing it. Three more versions of Lina appeared beside her suddenly, spinning her daggers around in their hands just as Lina did.

“Oh, clever use of shadow steal… I doubt you’ve had much practice controlling them thou-” Lina stopped waiting for Cheryl to talk, and spread her three echoes out around the wolf. Three began slashing out rapidly at the Ferrawolf while the original Lina charged at Cheryl.

“Smoke bomb.” Lina shot it out at Cheryl, attempting to blind her from seeing what was happening to the wolf, but Cheryl waved her sunlight shield out at the smoke and caused it to dissipate quickly. The three echoes of Lina engaged the wolf as it repeatedly tried to snap its razorsharp fangs out at them, but Lina was carefully controlling them to avoid taking damage.

Cheryl was right, Lina’s control of the echoes were nothing like Rakkans and she was barely able to keep them out of harms way, let alone land attacks on the wolf. But they were serving their purpose to distract the wolf, as Lina hard engaged onto Cheryl, going into her melee range with her daggers.

“Eye of the void!” Lina tapped her necklace once she’d gotten close enough to Cheryl, causing the pendant hanging off of her necklace to open up and reveal the eye of the beholder within. The moment it opened, Cheryl’s illusionary form disappeared from Lina vision, and she could see her real form and all of her movements.

“Tch.” Cheryl sucked her teeth as she noticed Lina now aiming her daggers right for her real body, forcing Cheryl to lift her shield up to block an incoming attack.

Lina instead dashed to the side to get behind her shield and strike at her from behind, plunging her daggers into Cheryl’s back and landing the first blow. Lina then attempted to maneuver around Cheryl’s body further as Cheryl turned to react to her new position, but Cheryl promptly projected her shield in front of Lina to cut off her movement using her guard skill.

Lina lightly pressed her feet up against the shield projection and used it to launch herself into the air above Cheryl while Cheryl did a 180 spin with her scepter to swing at Lina. Lina managed to launch herself up over the swing thanks to the shield, then backflipped over Cheryl’s head while slashing her daggers down at Cheryl from above, cutting into her pink hair with both daggers and landing on the opposite side of her. From there, she struck Cheryl’s back two more times before Cheryl jumped away to create distance between them.

“I don’t need the shadows to keep up with you.” Lina said as she dashed after her in pursuit. Not interested in giving her reprieve, Lina continued her assault, opening the next series of attacks with a smoke bomb. Cheryl was forced to swing her sunlight spell at the smoke bomb to dispel it, but Lina took advantage of this movement to land a few more strikes on Cheryl’s unguarded spots before Cheryl reacted by swinging her scepter at Lina and creating another guard.

“Those bless enchanted daggers kinda hurt.” Cheryl groaned as she healed back up the damage that Lina had been dealing, but Lina didn’t let up and continued to attack. Cheryl briefly glanced up and saw that Mother was not able to land a single attack on Lina’s echoes. Despite Lina maneuvering so quickly around Cheryl, she was still managing to simultaneously keep control of her echoes and prevent them from being hit.

Seeing this, Cheryl let out a nervous gasp and stopped trying to aimlessly keep up with Lina’s movements by using her eyes. She closed them, taking several more hits from Lina , before predicting Lina’s movements and finally swiping out her right hand at Lina, and managing to grab the collar of her leather armor to stop her from moving around.

“Gotcha.” Cheryl smirked, expecting to see a look of panic on Lina’s face, but she simply glared back at Cheryl and continued to strike out at her with her daggers. “Feisty, but this is over. Ragnarok!” Cheryl aimed her shield out at Lina.

“Shadowsteal: Ragnarok. Smokebomb!” Lina blasted Cheryl with smoke as tendrils of shadows wrapped around her. “Ragnarok!”

“Are you kidding me?” Cheryl replied in disbelief as her shield began to glow with red energy, while simultaneously Lina’s daggers began to glow. At the same time, all three of Lina’s echoes disappeared. The Ragnarok spell took two seconds to charge up for both of them, and in that time Cheryl realized Lina had no intention of dodging, but instead planned on pulling a kamikaze attack to take Cheryl out with her.

“I can’t just die, I’ve got stuff to do still!” Cheryl shouted in frustration. At the last second, Cheryl released Lina’s grapple, allowing Lina free to avoid the attack so that Cheryl could avoid the attack.

Lina jumped to the side as Cheryl’s Ragnarok attack shot a blast of red energy beside her, impacting the wall of the stone chamber and exploding it open, sending chunks of rock and debris into the air.

Lina, on the other hand, revealed that her Ragnarok spell was not cast in Cheryl’s direction at all, but in the direction of the Ferrawolf. Cheryl noticed it late, due to Lina shrouding herself in her smokebomb.

“Mother, watch out!” Cheryl shouted frantically at the wolf. The wolf, however, was still confused by the disappearance of the echoes and was aimlessly looking around for them. It failed to dodge Lina’s red blast of energy, which exploded on the wolf, killing it instantly.

As its body disintegrated, Lina jumped back out of her smoke bomb, glaring at Cheryl.

“You bitch. You’re going to pay for that.” Cheryl roared angrily at Lina before charging forward at her. She still had an illusionary body active to try and throw Lina off, but Lina easily saw through the illusion thanks to the eye being active. Lina took advantage of Cheryl’s reckless behavior by dodging the swings of her scepter, and after each dodged attack, Lina retaliated by slicing Cheryl’s extended arm with her daggers to deal damage repeatedly.

It only took a few failed attacks before Cheryl realized that she needed to get a hold of herself and stop playing recklessly. She stopped attacking Lina and healed herself up through the damage, jumping away to create distance between them.

“That spell drains a lot of mana. Even if you stole it, I doubt you have a large mana pool like mine, or mana recovery on the same level as mine. You’ve got to be close to being tapped now, huh?” Cheryl said as she tried to take control of the situation again. Lina didn’t answer her, though.

“I’m a cleric, I’ve got the sunlight spell. You can’t do anything but run around me and attack. You can’t steal ragnarok again, your steal has a cooldown. If I catch you one more time, you’re dead.” Cheryl concluded.

Lina suddenly smirked while dashing forward towards Cheryl, causing Cheryl to look back at her anxiously as the distance between them closed. Cheryl held her shield out in front of herself to prepare for Lina’s next attack. Lina instead ran directly at the shield, and rather than attack it, she swiped her hands down towards the floor of the chamber where her cloak had been thrown from earlier in the fight, and picked it up.

Then, with the cloak in hand, Lina thrust it forward towards Cheryl’s shield to cover up the sunlight spell that was being emitted from it. The moment the cloak covered the shield, darkness returned to the room.

“Shadow dance.” Lina quickly cast, taking advantage of the darkness to begin teleporting rapidly around Cheryl and dealing massive amounts of damage. It was only a few seconds that the shield remained covered by the cloak, but in the time it took Cheryl to desperately shake the cloak off, she took massive amounts of damage, forcing her to heal herself up repeatedly.

When the cloak was removed, the light blasted through the stone chamber once more and canceled Lina’s shadow dance spell, forcing her to back off while Cheryl breathed heavily and recovered from the damage. The two briefly glared at each other as they prepared for their next set of attacks, Cheryl being sure to add the cloak to her inventory so Lina couldn’t repeat the same tactic.

“Oh, I’ve got plenty more of those.” Lina replied mockingly as she pulled another worn down seeker cloak from her inventory. “I think a couple more attacks like that, and you’ll be out of mana.” Lina grinned.

“Hah.” Cheryl sighed back at her. “Cocky lil’ obedient shadow dancer. Fine. You like darkness so much? Let’s play in the dark.” Cheryl canceled the spell on her shield, returning the room to the shadows, much to Lina’s surprise. “Avatar of Loki: Finley.” Cherl cast, and an explosion of green and black mist erupted from Cheryl’s body. Once the mist had faded, rather than Cheryl standing before her, it was Finley.

Lina had to briefly glance down at her necklace to confirm that it was still activated - it was, her truesight could see through illusions and yet Finley was standing in front of her, wielding his greatsword. It wasn't an illusion, the Avatar spell was actually transforming Cheryl.

“Aura of Darkness. Wings of Darkness.” Cheryl cast in quick succession, much to Lina’s surprise. The spells worked - a blast of dark mist erupted out of Cheryl and engulfed the floor of the room, followed by the growth of two black misty wings extending out of Cheryl’s back.

It quickly became difficult for Lina to see Cheryl due to the mist growing, and Cheryl suddenly dashed forward towards Lina and swung her greatsword down on her. Lina easily dodged the greatsword, but was not expecting the wing strikes that followed it up. She avoided one, but got hit by the other, taking a massive amount of shadow damage before shadow stepping to the opposite side of the room to get away.

“That had to hurt, eh?” Cheryl spoke, but from her mouth came Finley’s voice. “I’m not so good at using these skills, but advanced classes are really strong. Especially Finley’s. Come on, let’s dance, Shadow dancer.” Cheryl said in a condescending tone. “Jump around me, let’s see how well you can avoid these wings.”

Lina looked at her health and saw it had dropped below half just from a single strike of the wings. Aegis had enchanted her armor with life recovery, which was slowly bringing it back up, but she knew she needed to be careful about attacking Cheryl now. One wrong move, and it was over. To make matters worse, the wings were blending in with the growing mist, and her necklace wasn’t helping her see through it. She could barely tell where the wings were, let alone Cheryl, as the aura of darkness grew thicker within the closed chamber.

Lina tried her best to think of a solution, a method to deal damage to Finley without getting hit herself by the nearly completely camoflauged wings.

“Advanced class….” Lina mumbled out loud as she came to the realization, but giving away her location. Cheryl charged at Lina’s corner of the room, swinging the greatsword and wings out at her wildly, forcing Lina to shadowstep away once more.

“Aw, c’mon, don’t run away. You were attacking me so bravely before…” Cheryl giggled as she began scanning the room, trying to find where Lina had jumped to. The black mist was settling near the floor of the room and building up, and Lina took advantage of this by ducking down low and concealing herself within it, but that didn't seem to help her hide from Cheryl as she quickly began running towards her. "As long as you are in this black mist, I can feel where you are. This aura of darkness is unstoppable." Cheryl roared excitedly. Once she reached Lina again, Lina was forced to shadowstep away once more, and by this time, the black mist had risen up to cover the room at a level that reached Lina's shoulders. As it was, Lina's vision was getting worse, while Cheryl's was improving.

She watched as the head of Cheryl charged through the rising mist towards her, and shadowstepped to the opposite side of the room at the last second to buy her the most amount of time possible to think of a solution. Lina recalled Viella’s words when she was caught infiltrating the prison. Viella was able to detect her shadow stepping through the prison. She told her, she could sense someone else jumping through her shadows. As Lina thought on this, she watched the black mist increase to the point where it covered both Lina and Cheryl completely, rising high above their heads.

“I'm coming for you, lil' dancer.” Cheryl cheered as she charged forward at Lina and slashed down her greatsword at her once more. Lina used the sound of Cheryl's footsteps to get a sense of her position, then shadowstepped away again to the opposite side of the chamber.

“Keep jumping away, obedient lil shadow dancer. You’ll run out of mana eventually. Your only option is to flee, but I assure you this mist will follow you. Unlike your cute little smoke bombs, the aura of darkness is endless.” Cherl spoke as she reached Lina’s new location and swung at her again, forcing Lina to shadowstep once more.

She was right, Lina thought, as she looked at her mana supply and saw it dwindling lower. How did Viella use the shadows to know her location? Lina anxiously thought to herself, but a bit of pondering helped her realize how she did it.

As Cheryl charged at her again, in a room engulfed in shadows and black mist, Lina’s interface conveyed to her all of the available locations that she could shadowstep to. The only locations that were unavailable for her to shadowstep to were the locations filled with light, and the locations filled with solid objects.

She watched as her interface continuously conveyed where she couldn’t shadowstep to, due to Cheryl standing there. Despite Lina not being able to see Cheryl through the thick black mist, she could tell where she was simply by keeping track of where she couldn’t jump.

“The shadows tell me where you are.” Lina replied confidently, as she focused in on the interface and used it to orient herself against the position of Cheryl’s wings. At this time, Cheryl arrived at Lina’s location and swung her greatsword down on her, while simultaneously Lina’s cooldown for shadow dance came back up.

“Shadow dance.” Lina cast, and began jumping around through the black mist, cutting at Cheryl from all directions. Cheryl reacted by wildly swinging her sword and her wings in all directions, knowing all she had to do was hit Lina once or twice and she’d die.

“I’ll hit you eventually. You can’t see me with this mist, can you? No matter how fast you go, you can’t dodge these wings forever!” Cheryl shouted in frustration as Lina continuously jumped around her, slashing her.

“I see every single move you make. You shoulda stuck with the sunlight, cause the shadows are mine.” Lina replied between attacks. Hearing this, Cheryl began to panic, and as her health got dangerously low, she canceled the Avatar of Loki spell.

Her form turned back from Finley to her real body, the mist disappeared instantly, as did the wings and the greatsword. She then desperately began trying to cast a heal on herself by waving her right hand with the scepter up, to try and touch her own shoulder for the spell, but Lina shadowstepped and put her hand between Cheryl’s hand and her shoulder, preventing the heal cast just long enough to land a few final hits, killing Cheryl.

As her body began to disintegrate, Lina shadowstepped to the center of the portal altar and watched Cheryl's final glare before she was forced to log out for 24 hours.

Once she was gone, Lina saw Cheryl’s gloves drop to the ground, and let out a sigh of relief as she grabbed her knees, gasping for air due to her nearly empty stamina and mana bars.

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