ALL NOVEL 37. Haligrad Gate Massacre (Part 2)
Astaria used her teleportation skill to directly appear amongst the right side of the Iron Fist guild’s formation and cast [Frozen Burst], instantly freezing the 4 players closest to her, allowing her the time to cast her follow-up spells with the closest threats to her temporarily turned into ice statues.
Making the most of the confusion brought about by the inexperience and lack of knowledge of the Iron Fist guild within Caelus as well as the panic her actions had caused, Astaria swiftly cast a [Freeze] onto a player with the assassin class who was loitering behind the formation. He is instantly frozen in place, turning into a statue and temporarily stopping him from flanking her and keeping him out of the fight.
As the Iron Fist guild looked towards the sound of the exploding ice, they now realised that Astaria had appeared amongst the support players at the back of their formation. In immediate response, the experienced close-range players all swarmed towards Astaria who prepared to cast her [Chain Lightning, delaying the spell's release to allow for the oncoming players to move closer together for maximum effect.
The arcs of lightning instantly killed all of the 6 enemies within range of the attack, their bodies falling forward from their momentum and landing on the ground with small wisps of black smoke rising from their corpses. As Astaria snapped her attention to the frozen players around her, taking a brief moment to swiftly manoeuvre amongst the ice statues and decapitate them before they could break free, their encased heads making a loud thud as they hit the ground, their weight increased from the layer of ice encasing them.
As the blood spurted from the frozen player's necks, Astaria’s hooded cloak once again received another baptism of crimson, glistening in the light of the torches. The onlooking players could barely keep up with the action, within the space of 10 short seconds Astaria had beautify dodged a large number of ranged attacks while launching devastating magic into the Iron Fist guild, only to vanish and appear amongst them in a whirlwind of ice, lightning, and blood, instantly killing large numbers of enemy players.
Astaria’s devastating burst of attacks successfully killed off 18 members of the Iron Fist Guild, leaving them with around 30 players from the main formation who were now scattered over the area while their other 20 members were still keeping the crowds back.
With the enemy guild's cohesion completely broken, the scattered players all start wildly moving towards Astaria or launching ranged attacks as their collective anger increases with each death of their guild mates.
Astaria who was waiting for this to happen unconsciously smiled even wider, turning around as she dashed towards the edge of the formation in order to not have enemies attacking from all angles. As she used [Evasion], she had to duck under a couple of spells that flew towards her, hitting one of the two melee players who were at the edge of the right wing of the guild’s formation and had moved to get into Astaria’s way.
The two, a warrior and a paladin, both swung their weapons towards Astaria who deftly dodged to the side before thrusting her sword into the open face helmet of the warrior, killing him without any resistance as his body sways before crumpling to the floor. The paladin, watching his friend get killed next to him, shouted at Astaria while readjusting and swinging his blade sideways in an attempt to bisect her.
“Just fucking die you bitch!”
With a smirk, Astaria slammed her staff into the ground and blocked the paladin's attack with the weapon's shaft, followed by casting a [Eearth Spike] that thrust directly into the paladin’s throat, his sudden demise causing his sword to drop to the floor. The other 3 spikes from Astaria’s spell were sent in an arc behind her, catching the arm of a player who had caught up to her but unfortunately not killed him.
Without looking back at the player whose arm was now hanging limply while he shouted out in surprise from the unexpected wound, Astaria used her [Evasion] again to open the gap again, turning around to cast [Lightning] and [Residual Lightning] at the mob of players who were blindly charging at her.
The first single target lightning bolt took out a smart warrior who was trying to circle around to her left, while the follow up [Residual Lightning] took out an additional 2 of the enemies at the front of the enemy mob while knocking 4 more to the floor, causing the enemies blindly charging with all their might behind them to trip up and fall to the ground as well.
Taking the golden opportunity that the new players had presented to her, Astaria immediately flowed up by casting a [Fireball] and [Blast] onto the pile of Iron Fist members trying to get up, the resulting firey explosion killing the 7 players stuck on the ground.
Upon seeing another 12 of his members be killed in a matter of seconds, Iron Fist who was bewildered at both the speed of the combat as well as Astaria’s ability to send his guild's formation into complete disarray started to shout at his guild members.
“ARE YOU ALL FUCKING STUPID? SPREAD OUT!”
Inwardly laughing at Iron Fist and his newbie blunders with a massive grin on her face, Astaria rushed towards the enemies who were spreading out and creating space between them, flourishing her sword as she deftly dodged a magic swordsman’s telegraphed downwards cleave, thrusting her sword into his unprotected chest before moving onto the next enemy who had moved a distance a few metres away.
With the Iron Fist members now spread out, Astaria could see the other player's movements far more clearly than before while having extra space to move between the enemies who were now coming at her one or two at a time. In addition, she also had the advantage of being able to see the intermittent ranged magic attacks coming at her from in the distance without a mass of players blocking her view.
After killing 6 more melee players who were wildly swinging their weapons at her, Astaria decided that it was becoming quite annoying having to deal with them individually, so she tripped up a nearby paladin with a swing of her staff, forcing the player to the floor as she uses her evasion to take a distance.
One of the warriors near the front, clearly an officer, calls out to his guild around him.
“Don’t let her take distance, close the gap!”
Smirking at this, Astaria channelled her chain lightning as the players tried to keep a few meters distance between each other charge, unfortunately forgetting about the paladin trying to get up from the ground and rush past him.
At the moment they moved close to the paladin, the charged bolt of lightning shot out from the end of Astaria's staff and hit the downed Paladin in the centre of his chest. The 3 players who were now within the 2-meter radius of the spell all immediately found themselves hit by the lightning lashing out at them, immediately greeting the floor as their bodies collapsed, dead.
At this stage of the fight, the Iron Fist guild’s main formation had lost 41 of their players in less than a minute, leaving just 9 players alive including Iron Fist, while their 20 weaker members who were responsible for keeping the crowd at a distance looked on in utter shock, some with their mouths slightly agape.
Amongst the crowd of spectators, there was a wild mix of emotions, many players were in disbelief seeing Astaria’s clear proficiency with her class and her overwhelming strength, while others were cheering and hurling insults at the Iron Fist guild who were getting decimated by one female player.
Some of the NPC guards could also be seen atop the walls watching this all play out, their tensions raised as one guard that bet that the solo Immortal Warrior would win the fight was grinning in triumph, while the other guards all had a look of disbelief and sadness as their hard earnt coin was going to pay for his drinks.
The fight had hit a lull after Astaria’s last attack as the Iron Fist members unconsciously hesitated seeing their numbers had severely diminished while the number of scattered bodies covered in ice, burns, and a lot of blood had multiplied.
Iron Fist, who was still standing where the centre of the guild’s formation once was, glared at Astaria with a look of unbridled rage in his eyes, his free fist tightly clenched and his teeth grinding.
Astaria noticed Iron Fist's sharp glare from between the gaps in the enemy guild’s members and frowned. She could clearly understand the resentment from losing in such a way, but for Iron Fist to give her such a hate filled gaze after he was the one trying to steal from others somewhat baffled her. The expression was nothing new, she had seen many players look this way, but she could just never understand how their minds were so twisted to not see that they were in the wrong.
Astaria knew that she had won this fight since the Iron Fist guild members were clearly too scared to attack her, so she decided to end this fiasco. with a casual flourish of her shortsword, she slowly started walking towards Iron Fist, the enemy players backing off and giving her space as she walked forward.
Hearing the sounds of footsteps and feeling a presence behind her, Astaria spun around, sweeping her staff low which caused the assassin player she froze earlier to appear from thin air as he fell onto his back.
