Chapter 115.2: A Pair of Guards

Chapter 115.2: A Pair of Guards

PART 2/2

Ripley charged at me, unfazed at her partner’s being shot. She seemed purely focused on her fight. I ducked underneath her swing and leapt to her side. Thankfully, since I’d already gotten used to two stacks of Expedite, raising that number to four wasn’t too bad. At least, I was beginning to become used to it. With two Expedites active, my Dexterity would be 86, meaning the new score of 148 was only about double what it had been before. Still an extreme increase, but not as bad as going from zero Expedites to two of them.

I sidestepped a strike and ducked below another, focusing every piece of my mind on just dodging the fast and powerful attacks of such a high-Level Classer.

Index, I thought as I dodged, what can you tell me about her?

“Well, I can tell you the basic way the Berserker Class functions,” it said.

I ducked below another swing of the axe with the help of a pulse of Gravity Well on Ripley to temporarily throw her off.

“It’s actually a bit similar to Minute Mage in a sense,” Index continued, “in that it has a single, signature Talent that it gets at Level 0 and will get more powerful as the Class Levels. That Talent is the appropriately-named ‘Berserk.’”

I shot Ripley with a Ray of Frost to distract her as I backed away some more.

You have struck Level 25 Human Berserker for 59 damage using Ray of Frost.

You have cursed Level 25 Human Berserker with Ray of Frost. For the next 5 seconds, her Dexterity score is lowered by 7.77.

14.2 Mana Cost. Your Mana is 342.

“I can’t tell you the exact numbers, but the Talent is technically free to activate at any time, as often as the user wants. And what it does is increases all of a person’s physical Stats, general fighting abilities, and especially Health regeneration.”

I re-cast two Expedites on myself as the older two stacks of the Spell wore off. 281 Mana left.

“So, basically, you’re up against a super-powered Melee-Type with an insatiable lust for your blood. And until that Talent shuts off, you’re not going to have much luck in killing her. The boosted Health regeneration really is quite ridiculous. In fact... yep, I’m just now getting that I can tell you this, she is literally missing around eighty Health from her maximum right now. Out of hundreds upon hundreds. That’s all the damage you’ve actually managed to deal to her in this fight, with your slower means of dealing damage. And most of it came from the two Rays you just hit her with. That damage will go away pretty shortly.”

I ducked under another swing of her axe.

“But she is at around half Stamina. So you’ve been doing quite well in that department. Let’s see... what do you have available to you... Your Health is 34, Stamina’s 61, and Mana’s down to 270. I guess you could activate Regenerate for a bit more Health, but that’d leave you with so little Stamina I’d be worried about your ability to keep fighting. So let’s not do that.”

I backed away from Ripley, breathing heavily.

“Seems like your best friend in this fight is gonna be your Noxious Grasp Upgrade, Venomous Grasp. It doubles all Stamina loss for five seconds after hitting them with the Spell, and that counts the natural Stamina cost every second from the Berserk Talent. It also counts all Stamina costs of Martial Arts.”

Ripley scowled and charged.

“So Stamina is going to be the bottleneck for her. You need to abuse that as best as you can here. She’s using up a bit more every second she fights, all you have to do is make sure those seconds pass by without you taking damage.”

Just as she swung at me, I re-cast Crippling Chill, which had worn off at some point during the fight. With the sudden loss of Dexterity she was stunned for a fraction of a second, allowing me to escape her swing alive one more time.

“So, uh, yeah. You got all that?”

Yeah, I thought. By some miracle, I managed to listen to everything Index was saying while not dying to Ripley. I’d taken a bit more damage than I’d have liked—and definitely spent more Mana than I’d have wanted—but I also got a bit more Mana back every second, so spending it to keep myself from dying was a pretty good use of it, in my opinion.

Erani and Asmo were still battling in the background, taking long-range shots at each other, with Erani using Angelic Shield to shrug off all of the hits that weren’t direct, and Asmo abusing her teleportation to avoid being hit by the Firebolts.

But between me and Ripley, we were both looking much worse for wear. Even with just the couple grazing hits she’d managed to get on me, the Enchantment on her axe tore through my Health all the same. Just a couple more like that and I’d be dead. But she was also low on Stamina, and all I had to do was rid her of the last bit she was clinging on to.

And that was what I’d do.

It was time for me to finish this fight.