Chapter 386: 386 - Bob The Bastion
"Hey, I need to be in front!" Noah yelled, running behind the man.
Before long, Noah started feeling a presence in the distance behind the rocks, and jumped ahead of him. "Careful!" he yelled, activating [Impenetrable Selfless Bastion], and his shield extending into an ethereal wall.
Five arrows struck the shield with a thunk, before falling to the ground, none reaching their target, the mage he was accompanying.
"Wow! That blessing is awesome!" the mage exclaimed, doing nothing, making Noah roll his eyes.
"Thanks, why don"t you try attacking them now?" Noah asked, as he kept the shield up, stopping another volley of arrows. "Come on!" he yelled, as he looked back to see the mage freeze up and do nothing. "G.o.d f.u.c.king d.a.m.nit, this noob!" he thought, blocking yet another voley of arrows and running towards where the archer was. The arrows clanked against his shield, as he blocked them normally. Since they were now targeting him, using the [Bastion] skill was pointless.
Noah ran at full speed towards the archer, occasionally being grazed by an arrow or two. As he inched closer, the archer turned around and ran away from him, keeping their distance. "No, you don"t!" Noah yelled, as he started boiling with anger, the mage behind him already dead from arrows fired in his direction. As blood rose to his head, Noah turned the single-handed sword downwards, gripping it upside down, before raising it at his eye-level. Mana started pouring into the tip of the blade, creating a white glow, as his face became stern. "Gotcha!" he yelled, as he launched his hand forward, propelling the sword as if it were a javelin.
The weapon was not ideal, his aim was also far from perfect, yet, the blade soared through the air, leaving a streak behind as it flew towards its target.
"ACK!" the man groaned in pain, as the sword pierced through its spine out the front of his chest, and he fell to the ground face-first, before turning into particles and disappearing.
"Now we"re even," Noah muttered, slowly walking towards his sword that was now dropped onto the ground. On the HUD, Noah saw that the tutorial battle was already almost over, the score slightly tipped to his favor, and he shrugged, as he caught the sword. "Now that I think of it, for this style of fighting, I need some throw weapons, or to change the sword for a throwing spear..." he muttered, turning the sword on his hand, and seeing how unbalanced it was. After all, he"d aimed for the man"s head, but only hit his chest, despite the distance between them being rather short, only a handful of meters.
"Yep, I need to take care of—" he kept muttering to himself, until a message appeared on the overlay.
[Double-Kill]
[Triple-Kill]
[Quadra-Kill!]
"... Just what in the word is my team doing?" he thought to himself, only for the tutorial level to disappear, leaving a red message on the screen.
[DEFEAT]
"I guess I didn"t carry them enough," he thought, taking a deep breath, and going into the main lobby.
Using a smurf, he found himself in the lobby he"d joined when he first entered the game as Lucifer. Dozens of players bustled around, talking to each other, while he walked towards the shopping area.
"Wait! B—Bob!" someone yelled behind him, Noah continuing to walk, since they were calling someone else.
"Bob!" the voice got closer, and Noah turned around in curiosity to see the utterly useless mage from the tutorial running towards him.
"Bob, let"s play together again! You were awesome," the mage said, reaching Noah, who looked at him not understanding who he was talking to.
"Oh," Noah came to a sudden realization, as he remembered the Nick he chose for this account. BobTheBastion. "... I—" He started thinking of an excuse to get rid of the boy, who looked like a man, but was so inexperienced he froze even in a game. However, he looked at the Elf player"s eyes, reading his name above his head, and deciding to tell him the truth. "Look, umm... Firepower9000, I don"t wanna play with you right now," he said, the boy biting his lip and looking down in embarra.s.sment.
"I"m sorry I froze there... It"s just—" he started speaking, but Noah interrupted him.
"You don"t have to apologize. You just found out you"re a Blessed, and joined the game to try to learn how to better use your blessing to defend yourself," Noah said, the other player looking at him with eyes wide.
"How did you know?!" he asked Noah, surprised, to which Noah smiled.
"It was pretty obvious when you froze. I already know how to play and what to do, so I"m just training how to use my Blessing," Noah told him, making the player look at him in awe.
"Can I at least add you as a friend?" he asked, making Noah scratch his head, and store the sword away.
"Sure. But I don"t play very often," he said, seeing the boy get very excited for some reason. "Don"t get me wrong, I won"t play with you because I"ll go to ranked matches straight away, and you need to get more confidence in casual and PVE matches. Once you get familiar with your blessing and the game, we can play together," he told the boy, who nodded energetically.
"Thanks, Bob! I"ll message you when I feel I"m ready," the mage said, making Noah breath in heavily, to avoid sighing.
"Sure. Whenever I"m around, feel free to contact me in-game," Noah said, turning away from the player and walking straight towards the store area. He could have just opened the store as a menu screen, but walking around was a lot more immersive, and he"d never done it before.
Despite the store page being just a page with search and all kinds of things, the shopping area of the lobby was divided into stores by category, letting the player have an authentic shopping experience in-game, despite not being the most effective way to do so. But for Noah, who was just wasting time since he couldn"t sleep, this was a G.o.dsend.
He spent some time idly checking the store and all the interesting kinds of weapons he didn"t need. Since the game was balanced, there was no point in checking them, since all were balanced to be equally as powerful, and a player could choose whichever weapon they wanted without difficulty. But it was still fun for him to check blades out. "They look so plain," Noah thought, as he stared at the blade itself, which lacked any sort of markings an authentic blade would in real life, being completely smooth and lacking patterns. After a few minutes idling by, Noah changed his sword for a lance that he felt was also suitable for throwing, and equipped a few throwing knives. Although in order to use them, he would need to let go of the lance, he felt it was still useful to have them handy, even if the extra weight could make him slower.
"Guess it"s time to play again," he thought, walking out into the lobby and entering the Queue, waiting for a Solo ranked match to start.
[Game Found]
It only took him a few seconds to find a match, despite it being almost dawn. After a second, Noah disappeared from the main lobby, being transported into the pre-match lobby. There, four more people joined at once, and Noah looked around to see the composition of his team.
"A couple mages, a swordsman and an archer, huh..." he thought to himself, as they all looked around, studying each other.
"We should start by telling our blessings," the swordsman said first, sitting down on the sofa of the lobby. "Mine is [Quick Slash], I can make a very fast attack that is hard to dodge," he said, making everyone look at him with an expression of contempt. In this game, after all, blade blessings were somewhat our of meta, many blessed even choosing to use the generic blessing instead, since they were easy target to mages and lacked range.
"Mine is an Electric Arrow, it is very powerful, but I can"t use it often," the archer told, the expression on the faces of the others immediately changing. It was clear they had a lot higher hopes for the archer than the swordsman. The two mages were still silent, staring at each other and deciding whether to say something.
"It"s important to know what we can do and decide the formation! Come on people," the swordsman hit the armrest, making Noah roll his eyes.
"I can extend my shield to protect others," Noah said, oversimplifying his blessing to the point it was almost useless for him to have described it at all. This, of course, was intentional, and only to test something out.
"Come f.u.c.king on! What the f.u.c.k is wrong with that blessing?! A shield that extends?" the swordsman said while standing up, hitting the tip of his sword against the ground. "And you idiots keep looking down on me just because I"m a sword blessed? What about him, his Blessing is even s.h.i.ttier than mine," he said, making Noah roll his eyes.
"Look, shut up." But before Noah could say anything, one of the mages stepped in. "You"re just being noisy and annoying. Aren"t you a front fighter? Just go and fight, we"ll get rid of their backline. That"s how it works," the mage said, proudfully. From his voice tone, Noah realized he was fairly experienced outside of the game, and just wouldn"t swallow the swordsman"s bullc.r.a.p.
"What did you say, sparkly punk?" the swordsman took a couple steps towards the mage, staring him in the eye from a foot away.
[10, 9, 8...]
And the countdown for the first ranked match of this account started, the air in the pre-match lobby riled up, and Noah predicted something rather annoying.
"This match is gonna be a s.h.i.tfest."