The magical 'bomb' landed right in the midst of the hamlet. It seemed harmless overall, just a trifling ball of black fire that burned with a passion.
However, once it landed, it became a whole different ballgame. The fire rapidly spread with a fervor, quickly encapsulating the mud houses as well as anything and everything in its path.
Heck, even earth, a totally inflammable material, was torched as fuel for the fire.
Screams resounded in the area.
Bodies covered with black fire scrambled about, seeking any way or means to quench the flame robbing them of their lives.
However, it was futile.
After all, Armageddon, aside from being a rare spell, was a large scale active spell. This differed from your typical fireball or ice spike spell that was meant to target individuals.
A fireball spell would be absolutely useless in a group fight unless it could be made big enough as well as strong enough. But once it reached that point it was no longer a single-target skill, was it?
Large scale active spells were rarer types of magic that allowed one to combat many, but with the caveat as being absolutely useless against a small group.
A perfect example would be the current spell. Its damage only increased based on the number of targets. The part about INT was useless.
After all, Draco's current INT was a measly 10.
20X where X was INT meant that his base damage was 200. That might kill some level 1-3 Private Rank monsters, but against enemies that were all Rank 1, it would do nothing than irritate them a lot.
As such, the key to explosive damage was a higher target count. 20N where N was the number of targets meant that against one guy, it would be less than shit, even with the addition of the INT modifier.
However…
Against a hamlet with over 1,000 residents…
It formed a scary sight. Only when the number of targets was high would the spell deserved to be called Armageddon. This spell was essentially a city killer.
Just throw it in a populated city and watch everyone weaker than it die.
However, there were more than a few limitations for balancing purposes. The first was that Armageddon required an extremely high mastery of the fire element.
For scale, Rina the Mage Queen could only use this spell at Rank 4, level 175 in their old timeline. It was not because of a level restriction, but because mastery in an element was so hard to grind. It took her that long to achieve the minimum requirements for the spell.
Yet Draco, at level 14, could also do same.
Even if you beat the old Rina to death with a cuc.u.mber – her eternal best friend – she would never believe anyone could attain such a feat.
Nonsense, she was the Mage Queen! She had dedicated herself solely to fire magic yet it took until Rank 4 to get this skill. Which dog could get up and claim to be able to cast this spell at Rank 1?
Clearly, this fellow here was the dog in question.
This meant that ideally, the Armageddon spell should do more than 20,000 damage!
However, the second limitation came into play here. Armageddon was a spell that adhered to the logic of power with momentum. In other words, it needed to physically consume a new target for that person to be counted into the damage modifier.
So if it started out with 2 people, it would sting enough to hurt. If it hit 3 people, it would become a lot more painful for the third person as well as the two people still on fire. As it continued on, the damage will increase to both the new targets as well as the old instantly.
Naturally, if you could move faster than its advance, or possess some means to withstand its damage in the early phase, you could survive this spell. It wasn't a sure-kill skill until it hit the truly scary numbers.
Another facet within this limitation which balanced its slow advance was that assuming it reached the 10th target, the first target might be burned to death already. So did the count increase to ten or dropped to nine?
The answer was that past targets still counted.
Otherwise, all people would have to do was distance themselves well and this skill would be useless. This was a skill that was obviously born for wars and large conflicts. If it could be so easily countered, who would bother?
Draco had paid a terrible amount of gold for it, a little more than 3 platinum. That was roughly 300 gold, which equated to $9,000,000. That was no small sum!
Still, its worth paid off. As the two stood there, the fire had reached the outskirts of the hamlet, in which some lucky indigenes had managed to escape to.
However, the final limitation of the spell showed itself.
The fire stopped exactly at the border of the hamlet, spreading no further than that. The Armageddon spell would be unable to spread beyond clearly defined territorial margins. It could jump from house to house, but upon meeting walls of a suitable nature, it would stop.
Even walls were a vague term, it would stop when it was obvious that a clearly defined limit had been reached. After all Boundless was a game after all, so the code could recognize code.
Where the coding defined that there was a prominent boundary, the spell would stop. Otherwise with the speed the black fire spread, forget the hamlet, within the one minute duration, the whole of the Paradise Lands might be fried to oblivion.
"What do we do with the stragglers?" Riveting Night asked with a cold tone. She dexterously flipped a scarily serrated dagger over the tip of her fingers while asking the question.
Draco was feeling a bit exhausted. Casting a spell that was ideally meant for a Rank 4 Emperor as a Rank 1Adventurer took its toll on his mana. Mana, like Stamina, was a stat that wasn't quantified at this stage of the game. Only after a few more updates would such things be revealed to the playerbase.
He had the Source Origin of a high rank Dragon with his armor set on, so he could afford to cast such a spell, coupled with his high mastery in fire. If it were a large scale ice spell, Draco would have to humbly behave himself and suffer like Rina did.
Each field of magic had only one large scale spell. Any more would see too much chaos in future Guild Wars.
"You'll have to deal with them for me… haah…" Draco spoke while panting a little.
Theoretically, he could fight, but since he had Riveting Night with him, there was no need to stress himself out. As it were, she was slightly better than him due to his weakened body and crippled bloodline.
Of course, in Boundless, he was too powerful to be stopped by any player. Riveting Night's only real advantage was her knowledge of his fighting style as well as whatever access she had to her bloodline skills.
She was still a bit overwhelmed with all that had happened in the past hour, so she undeniably wanted to put up a good display for Draco and prove her usefulness to him.
She was standing beside him the next moment but suddenly disappeared from his senses. He had to activate his Void of Perfection in order to vaguely grasp where she was, but it was delayed by a few seconds, sort of like a sonar.
If Draco could easily spot her with his abilities of Control, she could have only been his punching bag in their past life. Riveting Night had used these same cheat like abilities to tail the fellow to this area.
Even though she had her memories of her past life, they had only fully developed in the hours that Draco had spent crafting. Before that, she only remembered a bit of her skills, segments of memories as well as emotions.
A native stood outside the hamlet with an overwhelmed expression, staring at the blaze in his former home with a scared expression. However in the next instant, he felt a surprising lightness. Like a weight that had been tying him down was released.
This very weight was his body, as his head slid off its former host.
He was only the first and certainly not the last. Riveting Night was very surgical in her attacks. She used her Body of Godliness to maximize her strength and speed beyond what her stats provided.
The next target was a female like her, a svelte figure that was average in terms of looks. She was sobbing while thinking of her deceased friends and clan mates one moment, while choking on her blood as she fell to her knees in another.
Riveting Night didn't stop the check. She hardly even cared. She just moved onto the target in almost a flash of movement, ending the fellow's life instantly.
She tore through the survivors like a cutlass through weed, cutting them down faster than they could respond.
Eventually, she reached Kwaku, who was a survivor. His housing should have been nearer to the center of the hamlet, which was where the spell was launched, yet he managed to make it out.
Draco was surprised by this.
Could there be more to the fellow? Or had he been nearer to the exit when the spell had been launched?
However, such a question was now irrelevant, as Riveting Night had set her eyes on him. The blackness under her hood seemed ominous to anyone standing before her.
Her face was totally obscured, leaving a seemingly bottomless abyss of shadow in its place. Her slim body was the only hint to her gender or any detail about her really. One could only imagine what she looked like under that hood.
Heck, even Draco had found her whole getup to be a bit eerie back then, much less Kwaku.
However, despite this sight, Kwaku's reaction wasn't the terrified expression and begging for his life that Draco expected, but rather a fierce roar as well as a pointless charge.
"YOU!! IT WAS YOU WHO DID THIS!!! ARGHHH!! MY FRIENDS!! MY PEOPLE!! I WILL RIP YOU TO SHREDS!!"
His eyes had reddened to the point of madness and it could be seen in his current actions. It was clear to him that whoever launched this whole assault was way out of his league, but Kwaku still attacked Riveting Night without hesitation.
Some of his other 'friends' had long used this distraction by Kwaku to escape, not even looking back. Where Kwaku was throwing his life away to seek vengeance for his 'people', those same 'people' had abandoned him without a second thought.
Such was life.
Riveting Night didn't spare Kwaku because of this however. She was only actually humane to Draco and Sublime Notion. At this point, after inheriting her memories, she had also inherited future Riveting Night's cruelty.
She proved it by adeptly stabbing her dagger into Kwaku's throat while leaping over his thundering body. She watched him fall to the ground after running a bit longer, deader than a door nail.
Riveting Night went over to remove her dagger, wiping the blood on Kwaku's clothes before moving on.
She seemed to pause, her eyes scanning the ground as well as the nearby trees. After making some calculations, Riveting Night 'spawned' throwing knives into her hands and began throwing them with a stiff posture.
A normal assassin threw their kunai, shurikens and other throwing weapons by angling their arms towards the lower part of their arm pits before utilizing the force of their retracted arms to maximize throwing force while retaining accuracy.
However, Riveting Night threw them with only her wrist. Realistically, the weapons shouldn't even travel a few feet before falling to the ground helplessly.
Instead, they burst out like bullets from a gun, tearing through the sound barrier like a pen through thin paper. The only response that proved that Riveting Night wasn't embarrassing herself were the cries of pain that climaxed before going silent altogether.
Right at that moment, a form with wings swooped down to attack Riveting Night while she was focused on her other task.
Unfortunately for the surprise attacker, Riveting Night simply side-stepped its speedy ambush, grabbing the form's wings and dragging it to the ground.
With a scream of pain, that form was revealed to be Zaine, who had fully transformed into a succubus. When she had last showed this form to Draco while he beat up Kwaku, she had not exposed the wings.
A trump card, eh?
It seemed as if Zaine wasn't just a half-succubus then. No half breed could own a trait that only the full-breed possessed.
Her eyes were a bright purple and two sleek horns protruded from her forehead. Her nails were sharper than knives and her already voluptuous body became even more perfect, as unrealistic as those in p.o.r.nographic ill.u.s.trations.
Draco was moved slightly, but that was only visually. He did like Zaine's personality, but that wouldn't stop him from killing her. He had killed far more beautiful NPCs and players, as well as people in real life, than her.
However, the same couldn't be said for Riveting Night. Once she saw Zaine's body and aura, her eyes lit up. She instantly pmed Draco.
"I want to capture this one for you to play with later. Is that okay? – Eva"
Draco pondered her message. He didn't really want Zaine around, because she'd definitely harbor vengeance in her heart for the slaughter, but Riveting Night herself suggested it.
And Zaine was physically his type too.
He juggled the pros and cons for a bit before agreeing.
"You can capture her but I won't look after her. – Draco"
Riveting Night's face broke into a smile under that shadowed hood, an expression that no one could see due to the veil of darkness.
"Don't worry, I'll handle her training and upkeep. – Eva"
Training and upkeep.
Strange scenes popped up in Draco's mind from the words Riveting Night just spoke. Honestly, he was a bit uncomfortable with the whole thing due to the recent reconciliation, but her enthusiasm about the whole thing reassured him.
Still though…
"While I don't mind, I'll only play with her once. Whatever you do with her afterwards is your decision. – Draco"
He didn't see the need to keep Zaine around after one session, since she was extremely useless to him. His sights were set too high for a level 17, Rank 1 succubus to make a difference.
Riveting Night acknowledged the caveat and proceeded to disable Zaine by knocking her out. She dragged her limp body over to where Draco was resting, dumping her on the side to observe the raging inferno.
The reason why Draco hadn't left yet was because he was a bit curious.
Originally, his plan had been to use some Goblinwerk or Gnomish war items to kill as many indigenes in the outpost and wreck it before blinking away to avoid the reinforcements from underground.
Those who would come up would be minimum Rank 3. Such a person had enough strength to be a king, although the kingdom would be rather weak. The ones who would come up would barely meet the mark of Rank 3, yet they were still beyond the means of Draco, even if he was a reincarnator with cheat items.
However…
The Dragorugio set, coupled with Riveting Night's existence, had changed things drastically. The Draconic Source Energy as well as the total fire mastery allowed him to cast the Armageddon spell.
This spell would burn over the course of a minute and barely 25 seconds had passed since all this began. The speed of the flames spreading coupled with Riveting Night's abilities of maximizing strength and speed through the Body of Godliness made everything so far play in what seemed to be fast forward.
The longest segment of this all was their private messages to each other.
After claiming almost 1000 lives, the damage output of the spell was currently 18,700 damage per second. At the early bits of Rank 3 the average HP would be barely 100,000.
That meant, surfacing from the underground path would directly lead them into the inferno that burned away nearly 1/5th of their lives per second. If they couldn't get out of the flames in under six seconds, they'd die.
However, one shouldn't compare Rank 3 beings to Rank 1 losers like the natives of the outpost. Even then, a few of the Rank 1 natives had managed to escape the flames, much less Rank 3 fellows. They'd be able to escape the fire in under three seconds at most.
That was why Draco stayed.
If any wise fellow decided to risk the flames, he'd probably survive and discover what happened. Although it would be impossible to trace back to Draco directly, one shouldn't forget that the whole reason he was wasting time here was to situate Umbra's headquarters in this area.
Even if he wasn't on good terms with the underground natives, it wasn't to the point of hatred. Killing a whole outpost of young natives however, was detestable.
Forget him being in their Paradise Lands, had Draco even situated himself in the capital of Sturgehaven Kingdom, they'd still do all they could to end his life.
However…
That wasn't really why Draco stayed. It was just a side reason.
You should know this fellow by now. He was arrogant, daring and bastardly. He believed himself to be infallible due to his reincarnation and the fact was that this was somewhat true.
Naturally, the main thing on his mind was how to make the fellows, who popped up from the underground to check what happened, stay here forever!
Unfortunately, things didn't always go the way one wanted. When the duration of the Armageddon spell was about to end, Draco sighed with regret before blinking himself, Riveting Night and Zaine away.
The moment the spell came to an end, the area was swarmed with Rank 3 natives who didn't even stop to breathe, instead rushing out in different directions to catch the murderer of their youth.
Some had even reached Rank 4, which Draco couldn't have predicted. After all, he couldn't possibly have known every single thing about the world of Boundless in his first life.
This was obvious when taking in his ignorance of titles, legendary and divine chests as well as the true state of the world under the influence of the hidden powers.
There was too much to the world of Boundless and we haven't even left the Western Fantasy section yet.
...
Draco spawned in Cario city with Riveting Night and Zaine in tow. It had not been a problem using return scrolls since Riveting Night had leveled up to level 10 after that massacre.
Since killing NPCs stunted experience gain, she didn't get much, but enough to level up once.
She had naturally achieved the optimal trait for the Shadow Assassin class.
Riveting Night moved away to search for a place to keep her catch, while Draco began walking to the Adventurer's Association. Before he reached his destination however, he made a request to the AI.
"You can release my acc.u.mulated rewards now."