Episode 23
Before we knew it, we had arrived at Base 13. In front of the entrance to the dungeon there—the “Fallen Aerial Fortress of the Ancient Lord,” commonly called the farming dungeon—Jeoba players who had gathered to form parties or enter the dungeon were milling about in confusion. Speech bubbles filled with alien characters popped up here and there, and people used emotes with one another, fostering a peaceful, friendly atmosphere.
Unfortunately, that peace was now over.
The Jeoba players who spotted us quickly assumed combat stances and began grouping together. Even a user who had been sitting on the ground, clanking away with repair tools to fix their gear, hurriedly got up and prepared to fight.
As we approached the base, I first counted by eye how many combat classes there were. Two parties, so twelve people. Including the ones who seemed not to have found a party yet, there were fifteen in total.
I charged first at a Jeoba priest who had been sitting near the base entrance and was slow to move because they were putting away their repair tools. I didn’t use my defensive skills in advance and saved them instead. After all, right now they would be backing off and keeping us in check after seeing us suddenly rush in, so there was no need to waste them before the real attacks came. Especially when we had a healer.
The priest realized I was running toward them and used an evasion skill, slipping sharply backward. I didn’t miss that, and the moment the evasion animation ended, I caught them with a capture skill. Then, using the combo skill <Chain Shackles>, I captured four more users standing around the captured character in succession and dragged them over to our side.
We hadn’t made a voice call or left any chat messages, but as expected of rankers, my party members silently poured maximum damage onto the five people I had pulled in. The squishy damage dealers retired not long after being dragged over, and only two tanks survived with half HP or a sliver of HP, struggling desperately to escape.
Of those, the tank with only a sliver of HP was instantly chased down by Ceylon Tea and Slaughter using gap closers, and after they landed critical hits, our only ranged DPS, Jeonbu, finished them off. Thanks to that, the tank turned into a lump of light on the spot.
The fifteen Jeoba players had been reduced to ten in an instant. From our position, with only one party, it was a very good start.
[Party] Ceylon Tea: going for their backline
Ceylon Tea, an assassin, stepped back a little on his own, then used a stealth skill, leaving a shadow behind, and infiltrated behind the Jeoba party that was farther away from us. Seeing that, I began drawing aggro from the front.
In a many-versus-many fight like this, what a tank had to do was surprisingly simple. There was no need to deal a ton of damage. You just had to turn the field into chaos. Of course, that only applied to the enemy team. Chaos for the enemy team, and the best possible field for our team.
While watching the movements of the enemy team’s damage dealers, I activated a survival skill that increased my defense the moment the Jeoba Guardian entered, then used the Shield Slam skill to charge into the middle of the enemy formation. This would temporarily erase the distinction between their frontline and backline. At this timing, I, as the tank, had to push in as far as possible, completely separate the enemy tank, and gain an advantage.
While Nickjung, our sub-tank and secondary damage dealer, marked the opposing tank for me, I quickly scanned the enemy party. And as soon as I found the Assassin Destroyer holding a bow, I placed mark number 1 above them. It was the mark telling everyone to focus fire.
The moment the mark went up, the HP of target number 1 dropped at a frightening speed. Even while taking attacks, I stubbornly put combos into the focus-fire target, used Shield Block from time to time to receive attacks, then charged at other Jeoba players to inflict status effects like stun and interrupt dangerous skills.
As I held out diligently at the front like that, I noticed the focus-fire target’s HP wasn’t dropping below a certain point. It meant the healers were concentrating their heals on them.
I immediately changed the focus-fire target to the priest who was casting a healing skill. As if he himself were mark number 1, Slaughter moved after the target the moment the mark changed. The healer who had become the target had their healing cast canceled by the explosive attacks coming in, and because of the status effects mixed in between attacks, they couldn’t come to their senses.
This time as well, after confirming that the healers from the other party were healing up the focus-fire target, I first placed a number mark again on the Assassin Destroyer we had focused earlier. After that, I prepared to drag over the Jeoba Auxiliary Soldier who was standing far away and focusing on healing.
But just before I put it into action, the HP of the Auxiliary Soldier I had been keeping my eye on dropped rapidly, and soon they collapsed.
[Party] Ceylon Tea: mage1 healer1 cut^^
[Party] Honeybread: good
As expected of the immovable number one assassin ranker, Ceylon Tea was efficiently picking off both a magic attacker and a healer in the middle of that chaos. The flow was good.
[Party] SayFryJeonAndIFryJeon: our healer
[Party] SayFryJeonAndIFryJeon: mool rim
[Party] SayFryJeonAndIFryJeon: amsal2
I stared blankly at the chat, wondering what he was saying, and ended up taking a sniper shot from the enemy Assassin Destroyer. While focusing a little more on defense, I interpreted what Jeonbu had said. Our healer, got jumped, two assassins. Mm. Bad news. It meant Jeoba melee DPS had gotten onto our backline.
Fortunately, as Ceylon Tea returned to our side, he discovered the two assassins who had come to pick off Goso, the one and only healer in our party, and dealt with them together with Nickjung. However, the fact that our healer was being jumped hadn’t changed, so my HP still kept dropping rapidly.
[Party] Honeybread: Jeonbu
[Party] Honeybread: back
[Party] Honeybread: backup
[Party] Honeybread: pls
[Party] SayFryJeonAndIFryJeon: ko
[Party] SayFryJeonAndIFryJeon: ol
[Party] SayFryJeonAndIFryJeon: ok
Since Jeonbu, who had been backing me up, had also pulled away, I thought I should retreat too, and was just stepping backward while minimizing the incoming damage. Suddenly, the damage skills that had been pouring down on me dwindled, then poured straight onto Slaughter instead. It was clear they had designated Slaughter as the focus-fire target in order to at least secure one damage dealer while our healer was being jumped.
I was a tank, so I could endure even that much damage, but damage dealers were different. Damage dealers were the type to end up in tatters after taking even a quarter of what I took.
Since Goso wasn’t in a situation where they could take care of us, I charged back into the enemy formation to save Slaughter and used a taunt skill. Then the enemies caught in the taunt range ended up pouring their skills into me, the tank, instead of the assassin who had only a sliver of HP left, and Slaughter was able to escape from the terrifying flood of skills.
Meanwhile, Slaughter, who had managed to survive, used <Moonlight Hide>, a short-duration stealth that could be used even in combat, and retreated. With Slaughter also joining the backline like that, Goso seemed to have found some leeway, because my HP, which had been precariously dropping to around 10%, began to recover little by little as heals came in.
The healing output of a Field Medic, keeping me barely alive even while roughly an entire party’s worth of people were pouring damage into me, was honestly disgusting. And he fought me while holding something like this? That bastard Retake. Even thinking about it again pisses me off.
[Party] SayFryJeonAndIFryJeon: back clear
[Party] SayFryJeonAndIFryJeon: tank paeneon joong
[Party] Ceylon Tea: mage1 assdes(*Assassin Destroyer)1 cut
As I endured by making full use of Shield Block and skills with stun attached, good news came in one after another. I was glad the backline had been cleaned up to some extent, and during that time, Ceylon Tea must have seized another opportunity to go strike from behind, because he had taken down two damage dealers.
Now, there were four Jeoba players remaining, while we still had six. Unless separate reinforcements came, the outcome was obvious.
.
.
.
[Race] Bia Commander-in-Chief Honeybread has proclaimed <Passive: Domain of the Night That Cannot Be Reaped> at Base 13!
Title: Is Honeybread insane?
Author: [Jeoba] HaveAnAgileDay
I was about to go farming when I saw Honeybread coming to raid Base 13, so I tried my hardest to stop him, but what the hell is up with his shield block timing? Is this the Honey. Bread I’ve only heard about?
Every time I used a burst skill, it got blocked by shield block, so the damage wouldn’t go in properly, fuck. Is he walking around with unlimited stamina all by himself or what? Even when I get behind Honeybread and mark him, if he turns his body and blocks every time I use Back-of-the-Head Smash, what am I supposed to do? And while doing that, he blocks pretty much all the strong attacks our party’s damage dealers use too? His taunt timing is also insane, so even if we get a dealer down to a sliver of HP, we can never kill them. I’m so fucking mad, seriously.
It was already hectic because their assassin kept cutting down our backline, but at the end Honeybread landed a massive capture, and their party priest also hit the jackpot, so we’re all crying as a group right now. Fuck, a full party led by the commander-in-chief coming to grief us is way too much.
(Comments 33)
- 【Best Comment】 The reason Honeybread is an OP character: other tanks melt if they enter, so they engage slowly, but he knows how to use shield block + defensive skills in the right place at the right time, so even if he goes into the middle of the enemy formation, he can endure two or three times longer than other tanks.
└ Two or three times is kind of an exaggeration.
└ If you meet Honeybread, you’ll take that right back.
└ No, seriously lol. I did party PvP with Honeybread as a healer, and it was actual easy mode. I’m telling you, as a healer, you actually get to deal damage???
- Honeybread isn’t rank 1 for nothing... I asked him once when I met him last time, you know? Like, how should I time shield block? He said he just watches the screen and when it feels like, “Now!” he presses it. He’s just a genius. It’s talent.
└ What’s the point of being a genius in a game, tsk.
└ 【Best Comment】 If his reflexes are that good unconsciously, he’ll make a living no matter what he does lol.
- 【Best Comment】 Ah shit lolololololololololololol this mass war setup has me properly hard, so why am I at work?ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ Let me quit, fuck!!!!!!!!
└ Why are you hard, you crazy bastard? Change it to “standing straight” before you get reported.
└ Same difference.
└ Are you serious?
└ If they were going to grief... they should’ve done it... after work hours........!!!!!
└ Retake will probably go there too, so I have to watch this insanely fun hot-place griefing PARTY only through live updates on the free board?
- Other Guardians can’t do this... They absolutely can’t... Even if you look at other Guardian rankers, their critical shield-block success rate in PvP is around 70%, 75%, but he just goes over 90%... He was just born with it.
└ ?Is that possible??
└ Seriously, isn’t that a hack?
└ A 90 percent critical shield-block rate?? lololololololololololololololololol Is he human? lololololololol
└ I’m a newbie, so where do you see things like shield-block success rate?
└ Allow me to lick the newbie for a moment. Slurp.
└ In UI settings, if you look at the damage meter, there’s a button to display defense success rate. You have to check that.
└ Aha, thank you.
└ Is 90% shield block possible in war, not even an instance dungeon?
- Then what the hell is Retake, who goes up against this lunatic?
└ A Field Medic makes shield block, the reason Guardians are so tanky, useless... Class advantage... If Retake weren’t a Field Medic, he would’ve lost way more than he does now.
└ Conversely, Auxiliary Soldiers have overwhelmingly high defense aside from tanks, but against Guardians, who live off penetration, that high defense is meaningless, so I don’t think you can just call it class advantage. They counter each other...
└ Because he has the “brain” to dare oppose a “god” despite being a mere “human.”
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