Inside the forest, covered by the thickness of the branches and foliage, many ranged players from all the different guilds were taking aim. Most of the ranged forces were already standing much closer, but these players were different.
Their classes allowed them to shoot from much further away, and they were tasked with counter-sniping, and taking down strategic enemies, to open up the defences.
When an arrow suddenly hit one of them through the back, the nearest archers all started arguing. The risk of foul play was high, since they didn't all belong to the same guild.
The sniper that got hit wasn't dead, but he had lost a lot of health. This put the fear of betrayal inside everyone's mind.
The argument between all of them heated up, becoming progressively closer to a confrontation. Soon enough, guns were raised, and bowstrings were pulled.
The situation had escalated into a standoff, and things looked glib. The furthest one from the Bastion was the least worried, since to his back was nothing other than the forest.
Needless to say, when an arrow pierced his throat from behind, everyone gasped in shock. Athena, who was thousands of feet away, was grinning from ear to ear.
She knew she hit her target when a damage number appeared before her eyes. She rapidly closed her eyes again, focusing back on her hearing.
Her focus was higher this time, since she knew this could work. Then she heard it.
A slight humming, coming from all around her. It was like the wind itself was singing her a tune.
The humming was so relaxing; it calmed her down, making all her muscles aside from her taut arms become hyper-relaxed. It was like she was in a hot bath, enjoying a head massage.
The sound of metal sliding on metal soon replaced the humming, followed by a crisp sound that resembled a spring expanding. Keeping her eyes closed, Athena released her fingers holding the nock of her arrow.
She opened her eyes as she did, wanting to see the process happening. What she saw baffled her.
The arrow was springing off the bowstring, but at its tip, a small purple hole had opened in the air itself. The arrow was traversing through that hole, as it disappeared from in front of her.
Soon after it completely disappeared, another damage number appeared in her sights. She grinned again.
'This is amazing!' she thought.
But something caught her attention. Under her stamina bar, in her interface, something new had appeared.
It was a counter. And on this counter, numbers were shown.
*8/10 (3:57)*
She didn't quite understand what they meant until she opened her status screen.
On her screen, she could see some new skills and passives, which explained the new counter.
*Displaced Shot (Level 1): Fire a shot of any kind through the world's channels as long as you can lock on it. (Requires Passive Hearken The World). The range extends given the range of your level with the passive. Any type of pre-existing skill can be used with Displaced Shot. Shot Limit: 10. Cooldown on shots: 5 minutes.*
*Hearken The World (Hearing): Your sense can be attuned to that of the world, allowing you to extend your sense much farther than normal. Current range extension: 1000 meters.*
She had a hard time believing her eyes. This was a game-breaking skill, by any measurement.
Meanwhile, the chaos in the forest had redoubled again. A third arrow had bolted a sniper player from an unexpected angle.
They were now on sudden alert for an enemy, possibly coming in from the rear. Their counter-sniping suddenly stopped as they focused on tracking down where the next shot would come from.
Inside the base, high on her wall, Violette was tasked with defending a part of the wall defenders from ranged attacks, as well as attacking anyone that made it to the foot of the wall near her.
She was focused on maintaining watery shields in front of her allies, dishing out the occasional hurt to players down below. But something suddenly caught her attention.
A sound resembling a water drop echoed in her head. It was soon followed by a second one, and not long after, a third.
She tried pinpointing what could cause this, but her eyes couldn't catch anything that looked like dripping water. Her mind was on high alert, half expecting a mental attack from an enemy, but nothing ever came.
The only thing that kept happening was that water drip sound echoing in her mind. Focusing on her mana senses, she finally found where it came from.
When she sent her sense in that direction, what she found made her frown. High above her, standing on a branch, was Athena.
Violette wondered why her mana senses brought her there, since she knew Athena was not a mage, and didn't use spells. But what she saw next made her lose focus.
She almost dropped all the shields she was holding up, putting her allies in tough spots before gaining focus again. But her mind was still in turmoil.
Through her extended mana sense, she saw Athena shoot her bow, and a ripple emerging at the tip of her arrow. Then the dripping sound echoed again, and her mana sense caught its direction, far away in the woods.
The girl couldn't quite grasp what had happened, but she promised herself to ask the archer later, when the battle had ended. Focusing before her again, Violette noticed something hurling at her.
In the blink of an eye, a massive wall of ice appeared in front of her, and something impacted it. The ice wall exploded on impact, but the projectile had already lost its momentum, falling below the girl.
A giant boulder was the projectile. Violette was pretty sure that no guild had brought catapults, so she wondered where that boulder came from.
Her answer soon came, in the form of another gigantic boulder. She blocked it again, this time shooting a jet of pressurized water to stop it from reaching her.
Following its trajectory, Violette could see what was throwing these. At the edge of the woods, a humanoid-looking machine was bending down, picking up another boulder.
In this machine's chest cavity, a gnome was pulling on levers. Violette could deduce his class from this.
'A Technomancer.'
Standing at the machine's feet, another gnome was yelling at the one inside the machine.
"You idiot, I didn't make this machine so you could throw rocks at a little girl! Use it as intended and go pierce those walls!"
"Yeah yeah. I was just testing out its strength. I'm going!"
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