The King's Avatar

The three came out from their hiding place. They looked around, but didn’t see any signs of Deception.

“Let’s go over and take a look.” Ye Xiu said. Lord Grim walked forward. Soft Mist and Steamed Bun Invasion followed covering his left and right.

“Maybe he went to use the restroom?” Steamed Bun guessed. Even though it would be another escape, it really was a possibility.

“In any case, he logged off here, no? Should we stay here and camp this place then?” Tang Rou asked.

Steamed Bun had experience in other games. Tang Rou couldn’t really be considered a noob anymore. She began playing Glory in December of last year. It was now June, so half a year had passed. Games were usually pretty easy to get into, but difficult to master. Glory was the same. Otherwise, there would be no difference in skill levels between pro players and normal players.

Tang Rou had played for six months already. She spent most of her time in the game too. If she were still a noob after all that time, she’d be laughed at to death. It just took a long time to level up in Glory. In half a year, most players wouldn’t be able to enter the Heavenly Domain. From this perspective, the Heavenly Domain players might think people, who had only played for a half a year, were still beginners, but Tang Rou clearly didn’t belong in this category. Her skill level had already been enough to crush most normal players before she had even started playing the game. It was mainly her lack of knowledge and game sense that made her a noob. Now that half a year had passed, how could she not have more knowledge and game sense compared to before?

“Waiting won’t do…..” Ye Xiu said. They were just three people. If they were going to wait, they couldn’t be the ones doing it. Should he allow the big guilds to continue helping him?

Just when Ye Xiu was thinking about this, he saw something flash. He immediately turned his camera and saw Deception jump out from who knows where. Deception quickly formed a seal, which Ye Xiu recognized as Shadow Dance, but he was a bit at a loss: why did this guy suddenly take the initiative to attack them? Was his brain broken?

Around ten shadow clones pounced towards them. Ye Xiu could tell that this was an attack. What trump card had Deception grasped? He clearly saw all three of them, yet he actually dared to attack?

Ye Xiu didn’t understand, but Deception had already arrived. How could he be polite? He swiped his mouse and his cursor hovered accurately on a shadow clone. With a beautiful swing, Lord Grim switched his Myriad Manifestations Umbrella into its spear form, which pierced through a clone. Then, he switched forms again, changing it into its gun form. He leapt backwards, while firing. The same time that the shadow clone was hit, Lord Grim quickly Aerial Fired backwards and escaped from the encirclement of shadow clones.

“Retreat first.” Ye Xiu said to Tang Rou and Steamed Bun. Deception’s unusual boldness puzzled Ye Xiu. Unable to predict what strange method Deception had in store, it was best to be on the cautious side.

Tang Rou and Steamed Bun wanted to retreat, but they weren’t able to do so as easily as Ye Xiu could. Ye Xiu just looked like he had killed the nearest shadow clones and then leapt back with an Aerial Fire. But in reality, he had looked around to clearly see where every shadow clone was arranged to see the focal point of Deception’s attack and to figure out the most optimal direction to break out of the encirclement. Most normal players wouldn’t have the awareness to do all of that.

When Tang Rou and Steamed Bun tried to retreat, they did it in a more forceful manner. They weren’t being completely brainless though. They each took off in opposite directions. This way, unless Deception could push both of them back to their original spots, if the two rushed forward, he wouldn’t be able to deal with both sides. Shadow Dance had a limited range!

When Ye Xiu looked at the situation, he knew that if Deception wanted to have both of them stay within Shadow Dance’s range, it wasn’t going to be a possibility.

Tang Rou was so fierce!

Her spear danced about with light, dark, fire, ice, and neutral chasers circling behind her. Deception threw all of his shadow clones at her to keep her, but this only gave her more opportunities to create chasers. Chasers were a huge feature of Battle Mages. Even though they mainly dealt magic damage, because of the buffs given by the chasers, even a strength-oriented Battle Mage like Tang Rou couldn’t ignore their importance.

Tang Rou had played Glory for so long already. She was extremely familiar with chasers at this point. Right now, she was using all sorts of methods to create chasers in order to break out of this encirclement. Every time she hit a target, a chaser would also hit the target. At the same time, another chaser would be created. This loop continued. For Battle Mages, this was called Chaser Flow. There were players, who specifically geared their skill levels towards this playstyle. They would give up on using a spear and battle staff. Instead, they chose to use magic wands. Magic wands had high attack speed, high magic damage, and gave intelligence bonuses. Battle Mages, who specialized in Chaser Flow, stacked intelligence to increase the damage of their chasers. This sort of extremely specific playstyle didn’t exist in the pro scene because there were quite a lot of restrictions to chasers. For one, chasers could only be produced by hitting the target with a certain skill. The chaser also had to hit the target. The amount of damage that a chaser could do, even when stacking intelligence, couldn’t compare to a powerful high-level skill, so the burst it did wasn’t enough.

As a result, in the pro scene, Chaser Flow was just a technique. It was rarely used as a main playstyle. Ye Xiu had obviously told Tang Rou about this before. However, using Chaser Flow to break out of the Shadow Dance encirclement was a very good choice. Chasers continuously flew out. The colors of the five different types of chasers were all different. Their explosions made a colorful mess out of Deception’s shadow clones. The most terrifying part was that chaser damage was added in the combo count. And combos activated the Battle Mage awakening skill: Battle Spirit.

A faint golden glow soon emerged around Soft Mist. As her combo count increased, the golden color grew more and more prominent. The shadow clones from Shadow Dance actually became helpers for Soft Mist to accumulate combos.

“What is he doing?” Ye Xiu was puzzled. He was waiting for Deception to come out with some sort of big move, but all he did was use Shadow Dance, giving Soft Mist the opportunity to build up Battle Spirit. If this continued, how was he going to run? His shadow dance was being ripped apart by Tang Rou. No….. ripped apart was being too polite. He was practically assisting Soft Mist!

Tang Rou clearly understood this point. She felt like there was no need to run from this Shadow Dance. In the end, she was just pretending to break out of the encirclement. She stood there, killing the shadow clones coming at her.

Finally…...

The shadow clones all disappeared. They hadn’t been killed, nor had the skill duration passed. Deception cancelled the skill himself. He was clearly aware that his Shadow Dance was a mistake. How did things turn out like this? Ye Xiu really wanted to interview that guy.

When Steamed Bun saw the annoying clones disappear, he was even more brave than Tang Rou and threw a brick at him.

How could Deception be hit by such a simple and crude move? He stepped to the side and used a Shadow Clone Technique. His character instantly moved a distance away. It seemed like he wanted to run now?

What was this guy doing? Ye Xiu chased after him with Lord Grim, while wondering.

Steamed Bun chased after him enthusiastically, while shouting: “Punk, don’t run! To think you’d actually hide and ambush us!!”

Hide and ambush us!?

Ye Xiu suddenly came to a realization after hearing Steamed Bun’s shout.

Lord Grim chased after him. Tang Rou and Steamed Bun also followed along. Their equipment had gone up a tier again. Deception’s movement speed was no longer anything amazing to them. Lord Grim kept on pestering him with long-ranged attacks. Steamed Bun Invasion threw a brick at him from time to time too. Deception was greatly impacted by their combined efforts. He couldn’t run straight and had to zigzag around. In the end, the three caught up. Lord Grim stabbed forth with a Circle Swing, when “hu”, his Myriad Manifestations Umbrella didn’t even hit yet and Deception was launched into the air. Soft Mist had used a Circle Swing first.

“No need to fight over him!” Ye Xiu urged. He didn’t want to kill Deception. He was afraid Tang Rou would instantly kill him again.

Circle Swing was completed and Deception crashed into the ground. Soft Mist’s spear pulled away. Deception immediately tried to get up, when Steamed Bun Invasion grabbed a brick and slammed it into his character’s head.

“To think you’d be so fierce and actually attack us!” Ye Xiu said and had Lord Grim shoot at Deception twice. Ye Xiu had figured out Deception’s intentions.

That guy had actually tried to ambush them.

These past few days, Deception hadn’t been online, but how could a scrap picker like him not be busy during this opportune period of time? He clearly had more than one account. He had used those alternate accounts to scrap pick. They were all scrap picking experts and picked areas good for scrap picking. Today, Deception had seen Ye Xiu and the others in this Blue Brook Guild battlefield on his alternate account.

Every time the three of them scrap picked. They would come out with their inventories full. With such heavy weight, their character’s movement speed, attack speed, and jump stat would be heavily impacted. Deception was aware of this point, so he switched accounts to try and ambush them.

He had run over, not to scrap pick. He had the same idea as Ye Xiu. He wanted to ambush them. Hadn’t he been hiding there, waiting for Ye Xiu’s group to come, so he could attack? It was just that after awhile, Deception quickly realized that something wasn’t right. How could these guys be so nimble, if they had such full inventories? When Deception realized his mistake, how could he not try and run?

Ye Xiu didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. He had been planning on letting that guy know their might. Who would have thought that he would be so brave. As soon as he saw that there was an opportunity, he ran over alone to mount a sneak attack.

Unfortunately, if he wasn’t alone and had friends that could give him updates, he might have known that Ye Xiu’s group had quickly unloaded their inventories shortly after he had logged on.