Second World Online

Terror is a weapon far sharper than even the sharpest steel blade. In the rear courtyard of the Ironhold gate, that terror took form: Four girls and a three-tailed white fox standing atop piles of digital ash from hundreds of elite players.

Thousands of Ouroboros and Black Wolf members halted outside the melted gate. Doubt crept into their eyes. The reputation of "the Mad Alchemist" had spread like a plague; the legend of a poison capable of permanently erasing Epic-class armor made their most expensive Tankers reluctant to step forward. No one wanted to risk equipment worth thousands of real-world dollars just to become the first line to die.

However, the pride of a giant Guild would not allow them to retreat merely because of five people.

𝕗𝚛𝚎𝚎𝐰𝗲𝗯𝗻𝚘𝚟𝚎𝗹.𝕔𝐨𝕞

"ADVANCE, YOU COWARDS!" A roar of fury rang out from the rear ranks of Ouroboros. A combat commander in golden armor and a giant sword split through the crowd, riding an armored warhorse. "There are only five of them! Their AoE magic Cooldown must be running! Form the Anti-Magic Phalanx formation! Crush them! Anyone who succeeds in killing that white Elf will receive a reward of one thousand gold coins from the Guild treasury!"

Hearing the figure of one thousand gold coins, the doubt in the players' eyes instantly vanished, replaced by greed and mad fanaticism.

"CHAAARRRGEE!"

The black sea surged once more. But this time, they did not charge blindly. Ignoring the corpses of their comrades that had already turned to dust, fifty Heavy Knights in thick plate armor and carrying Tower Shields advanced in unison, sealing the entire ten-meter-wide gate gap.

Behind those Knights, fifty Mages raised their staffs into the air, channeling Mana in perfect synchronization.

"[Legion Skill: Anti-Magic Dome]!"

A transparent purple energy dome formed, enveloping the ranks of Knights and Mages. The formation moved like a giant grinding machine, advancing with a rhythm that made the ground tremble.

In front of them, Yuna tightened her grip on her bone axe and Dragonscale Heavy Shield. Her red dragon scales radiated a warning glow.

"They're coming in a tight formation! Yuuki, break their formation!" Yuna shouted.

Yuuki, the three-tailed fox, wasted no time. She channeled her doubled Mana, making her three tails blaze brightly.

"Don't think you can pass! [Fox-Fire: Tri-Burst Inferno]!"

Three giant fireballs shot rapidly toward the enemy's shield wall. However, when the fireballs struck the transparent purple dome, something shocking happened. The fireballs did not explode. Instead, the flames unraveled into particles of light and were absorbed by the dome.

[-0 Magical Damage! (Nullified)]

Yuuki's silver-blue eyes widened perfectly. Her fur stood on end. "What?! My magic was completely nullified?!"

"That's a Legion Skill!" Lumina cried from the rear, her Elf face pale. "They're combining the Magic Resistance of fifty Mages at once! Elemental magic below Legendary tier cannot penetrate it as long as that dome is active!"

"Then I have to hold them physically!" Yuna roared.

The dragon Vanguard did not retreat a single step. She charged forward, slamming her dragon shield directly into the tower-shield wall of the fifty enemy Heavy Knights.

BBAAAMMM!

The physical collision of one person against fifty created a shockwave that sent dust flying. Yuna gritted her sharp teeth, the muscles of her arms bulging until they nearly tore her armor. She managed to halt their advance for two seconds, but the laws of mass physics favored the enemy.

Slowly but surely, the Ouroboros shield wall began pushing Yuna backward.

Long spears thrust through the gaps in the enemy shields, repeatedly striking Yuna's armor.

[-450 Physical Damage!] [-300 Physical/Piercing Damage!] [-500 Physical Damage!]

"Argh!" Yuna spat, virtual blood dripping from the corner of her mouth. Her HP bar plummeted drastically to 40%.

"Yuna! [Greater Heal]! [Regeneration]!" Lumina chanted frantically. Holy light continuously enveloped Yuna, trying to counter the incoming damage.

Flora flew above Lumina, firing [Poison Thorns] at the dome, but the thorns merely bounced off uselessly. "My binding roots can't penetrate the ground protected by their dome's magic! Sister Syl! Help us!"

From atop the stone pillar where I perched, I analyzed the situation with absolute clarity. My white military uniform fluttered in the battlefield wind. My eyes narrowed behind Eagle Eye.

"Elemental magic neutralized. Yuna's physical attacks are insufficient to break a wall of mass. AoE poison attacks will be blocked by the dome's wind," I muttered quickly, my calculative brain working in milliseconds. "If that dome is created by fifty mages in the rear… then I only need to disrupt the synchronization of their concentration."

I drew a giant arrow from my quiver. Not a bomb-laden arrow, but an extremely heavy projectile: [Obsidian Tremor Arrow].

I nocked it onto the cable of the Titan's Ironbark Compound Bow. I drew the pulleys to maximum tension, chanting [Charged Shot Lv.3] that drained my stamina. I did not aim at the Tankers in front; instead, I arched my bow upward, targeting the ground right in the center of the enemy Mage formation.

"Fall back one step, Yuna!" I shouted.

Yuna, trusting my instincts, immediately leaped backward, allowing the enemy spears to strike empty space.

DZHAAAANG!

The sledgehammer-heavy obsidian arrow shot in an arc through the air and slammed into the rocky ground precisely at the center of the anti-magic dome.

BOOOM!

There was no fire explosion, only a seismic blast. A high-destructive earthquake shockwave erupted from the impact point, brutally cracking the castle courtyard ground.

The enemy mages, whose physical defenses were as fragile as paper, instantly lost their balance. Several of them were hurled into the air, while others collapsed as the ground split open.

[-2,800 Physical/Blunt Damage!] [Status Effect: Staggered! (2 Seconds)]

Because the fifty mages had their concentration interrupted simultaneously, the transparent purple energy dome flickered wildly before finally shattering into pieces like broken glass.

"The dome is destroyed! Yuuki, burn them to ash!" I commanded.

Yuuki did not waste a single millisecond. "TASTE THIS, TIN-CAN HUMANS! [Fox-Fire: Tri-Burst Inferno - OVERDRIVE]!"

A giant pillar of fire exploded from Yuuki's staff, this time with no resistance. A sea of blue-red flames swept across the Ouroboros Knight shield wall and the mage ranks behind them. Hundreds of players immediately screamed from the heat. Their armor melted; their HP bars evaporated to zero instantly. The remnants of the Phalanx formation shattered into a sea of digital ash.

However, amid the euphoria of Yuuki's deadly attack, my Elf senses detected the real danger.

The Ouroboros commander earlier had not been foolish. That frontal assault was merely bait to draw out our defensive skills.

From the shadows beside the collapsed stone pillars outside the area of Yuuki's firelight, three black silhouettes shot forward at insane speed. They were a squadron of Level 38+ [Shadow Assassins]. Using the skill [Shadow Step], they leaped over Yuna's defense and landed right behind our ranks.

One Assassin aimed straight for Lumina's neck. The other two targeted Yuuki's blind spot while she was still in cooldown after casting her large spell.

"LUMINA! BEHIND YOU!" Flora screamed in panic, trying to fire thorns at the killer, but her speed was far inferior.

Yuna spun around, but her heavy shield would not reach them in time. The death of a Healer was the beginning of a party's destruction. The Assassin's eyes grinned wildly, his green-poison-gleaming dagger only a few centimeters from the defenseless Elf priest's neck.

In that seemingly frozen second, the Mad Alchemist did not allow anyone to steal her members.

I dropped my giant bow and leaped from the pillar more than a dozen meters high. I did not chant a shot, I chanted [Wind Walk].

Not to glide downward, but to shoot horizontally like a ballistic missile toward the close-quarters fight.

My passive INT that touched a pure figure above 150, half of which I converted into AGI by pouring more mana into the skill [Wind Walk], made my movement untrackable by the eyes of players below Level 40. In mid-air, my right hand snatched the backup weapon at my left waist: the gleaming silver [Spellweaver's Dirk].

CTTAANGGG!

The sharp clang of metal colliding rang out, piercing the ears.

The Assassin targeting Lumina's eyes widened in horror. His dagger never touched Lumina's neck. Instead, the blade was stopped with absolute precision by my silver knife, only two inches from the priest's neck skin.

I landed with my knees half-bent in front of Lumina, my white military cape fluttering fiercely and sweeping the dusty ground. My ruby-red eyes stared directly into the Assassin's eyes from behind my high collar.

"Wrong target, Rat," I whispered as cold as a glacier.

Before the Assassin could withdraw his weapon, my left hand seized the collar of his leather armor. Using the momentum of his attack, I pulled him forward, twisted his body, and drove my silver dagger precisely into the gap between his helmet and neck guard.

JLLLLEEB! [-5,500 Critical Hit! Lethal Strike!]

Digital blood sprayed. The Level 38 Assassin died instantly without managing to utter a single sound.

Without wasting a single second to pull out the dagger, I spun toward the other two Assassins who were diving at Yuuki. I no longer used a melee weapon. With the reflexive muscle movements of an archery athlete, I summoned the Titan's Ironbark Compound Bow back into my left hand.

At a distance of less than two meters, I drew two [Steel Bodkin] arrows at once. Without Charge, without prolonged aiming, I activated [Rapid Shot] and released a double shot.

DZHANG!

The two steel arrows shot forth like crossing lightning bolts, piercing straight into the chests of both Assassins still airborne. The kinetic thrust from the pulley bow instantly halted their momentum, bouncing them backward until they slammed into the courtyard stone wall and shattered into fragments of light.

In less than five seconds, the elite Ouroboros Assassin squadron had been executed with brutal slaughter efficiency by an archer fighting at close range.

Lumina collapsed to her knees, gasping for breath, tears welling in her eyes. "T-Teacher Syl… thank you…"

Yuuki, whose fur had all stood on end from the shock, immediately bared her fangs at the fading digital corpses. "Sis is truly the best! How dare they try to sneak in!"

I flicked my silver dagger before returning it to its sheath, straightening the slightly tilted collar of my military uniform. "Don't let your guard down. As long as they still have spare lives at the respawn tents, they will not stop."

Yuna returned to her position in the gate gap. But this time, there were no more cheers from the enemy side.

Thousands of Ouroboros and Black Wolf players who had witnessed the earlier events stood frozen in silence. They had just seen with their own eyes how the absolute Anti-Magic Phalanx formation was destroyed in a matter of seconds, and their prized Assassin squadron was slaughtered like insects by an Elf girl they had thought could only shoot from afar.

"Monster…" whispered one Black Wolf player in the front ranks, his weapon trembling. "She's not just an Alchemist who uses bombs. Her Agility and accuracy are beyond reason! That white Elf is a system glitch!"

The enemy's fighting spirit was completely shattered. Fear had finally defeated Guild pride. The wave of troops that had been ready to swallow us whole now reflexively retreated slowly, creating a very wide distance from the range of my bow and Yuuki's magic.

They gave up on breaking through this gate. They realized that the single narrow point guarded by the '5 Beautiful Girls' was not a gap, it was a doorway into a bottomless meat grinder.

At that exact moment, a victory trumpet exploded from the direction of the Castle Core inside Ironhold fortress behind us.

Instantly, the entire sky interface of the server changed to silver-blue. A giant announcement text appeared, covering the night sky.

[GLOBAL SERVER ANNOUNCEMENT: CONQUEST COMPLETE!]

[Guild 'Knights of the Round' under the leadership of Arthur has successfully destroyed the seal and seized the Castle Core!]

[Castle Siege Event (Ironhold) has been halted!]

[Winner and New Ruler of the Central Territory: Knights of the Round!]

The thunderous cheers of thousands of Knights of the Round players exploded from inside the fortress, echoing all the way to the courtyard where we stood.

Meanwhile, the Ouroboros and Black Wolf players crowded outside the melted gate immediately dropped their weapons in frustration. Their mission had failed completely. The system began activating the post-war peace shield (Post-War Safe Zone), preventing further PvP in this area. Enemy players began activating their Return Scrolls, disappearing one by one in blue light with the remnants of bitterness.

I lowered my bow, letting out a long breath that released all the tension from my virtual muscles.

Yuna planted her axe into the ground and laughed in relief, wiping the sweat from her forehead. Yuuki jumped around in excitement, spinning as she chased her own third tail like a happy puppy. Lumina and Flora hugged each other tightly.

The five of us stood in the middle of the crater and the remnants of molten metal from an impregnable giant gate, bathed in the light of victory. We had held back tens of thousands of troops throughout the war without allowing a single enemy to step past us.

"Mission complete, ladies," I said with a sincere smile from behind my white mantle. Tonight, we had not only had fun, we had carved an urban legend that would be feared by every player of Second World Online for a very long time.