Mana began flowing back into the crystal all at once, leaving a small energy vacuum where it had just been, and the spell finally activated. The tank had previously been mitigating the damage received by his party rather well—so well, in fact, that everyone was in perfect shape despite both their Healers having been turned to ash—but when the spell hit, he instantly lowered his shield. He turned around and, in a flurry, activated a Chi attack at the Archer positioned directly behind him. The tank’s sword glowed red and then cut through the Archer, completely severing him in two as five rapid attacks dug into the same spot in succession.

Knowing that the spell would wear off any second, Lucas capitalized by blasting the Mage that had been constantly erecting Earthen Walls with three bursts of Chain Lightning. The first burst sent the Mage to the ground, and the second one clearly finished him off, but the third turned his flesh into Alfar barbecue. The assault was excessive, but Lucas didn’t want to take any chances. He also needed to vent a little frustration.

“You traitor!” a second Archer shouted. He redirected his aim and shot at the sword-and-board warrior whom Lucas had mind controlled, but the arrow never landed. The fighter simply spun around and blocked the attack, and only the cling of metal let Lucas know exactly how deadly the shot would have been. Since the Archer was distracted with the immediate threat of the fighter in front of him, Lucas fired off another salvo of Lightning. The second tank intercepted Lucas’s attack before it connected, once again turning it away and redirecting it harmlessly into the ground, but then an arrow struck him right through his gritted teeth.

Lucas jerked around and spied Katie. She had evidently spied the same opportunity that he had and had landed a critical headshot right through the man’s face, splattering bits of spinal cord and vertebra across the tree and ground behind him.

Five down, three to go.

“Ignore the players. It doesn’t matter what we do. We just need to kill that bird-beast monster,” the remaining enemy tank shouted, pointing toward the sky.

“Right!” both of the remaining two Archers called back before returning their fire to Linnaeus.

“Linnaeus,” Lucas began, “I hate asking this, but you’re going to need to use me as a shield.” Lucas saw the Archers preparing for a coordinated volley. They weren’t going to kill the beast with Viola continuously healing him if they didn’t do a ridiculous amount of damage quickly, so they had begun activating one of the skills Lucas knew some Archers had: Multi-Shot. It let an Archer, with the help of his Chi, stack multiple arrows into a single bow, with a maximum of five for newer players and ten for experts. The skill had two downsides, however, that generally meant players avoided using it PVP. First, it took two to three times as long to nock all the arrows. Second, it was unusually hard to land all five shots, much less ten. The one thing they had working in their favor was Linnaeus’s size and slow-moving pace.