Raven Hunter (P4)- Fangs of Basilisk

With that being said Darius suddenly frowned, he was briefed on something vital during his time preparing for this mission, something his employers wanted to be kept secret and something that made this very kind of re-estimation and rewards impossible from the system that ran this 'game', AI or not. Darius swiftly messaged Queen, Lancer and Bjorn with his findings and conclusions making the three, who had only recently started getting all of this after brutal lesson-style drilling, frown heavily at the implications of such a thing. The system's source for this information was the data being fed back to it in real time when the game Beta was released.

Just how good was the target of their mission to glean this much information from the quest and survive as long as he did in this game??

Darius and his half of the party kept their conclusions among themselves allowing the other half to make their, less informed, opinions on the matter before they would act as a group. During this lull of silence the tension on the bridge thickened as one of the younger female 'Claws' slowly approached the group from behind making it a point to reassess her initial plan of attack after seeing how her peer was shamefully defeated. 

Darius was equally resolved when he realised the potential scale of this game from this quest. He abandoned the arrogant mindset that he could half-ass one of this game's most difficult starter zones to traverse and fulfil his mission because frankly, such a thing wasn't possible even at his level of talent. He would try to improve himself in this game and build an adequate foundation before carrying on with his mission. 

With that in mind, Darius relaxed his stance slightly as his gaze sharpened- Not many things were known about Darius' personal life, but there was a reason he dared be so arrogant before experiencing the game for himself; The name Basilisk that he built for himself had an insurmountable legacy that he moulded throughout his years of VR and Immersion gaming. Within that legacy, there wasn't a single gamer in the world who wasn't familiar with the techniques Darius used when he fought seriously, so much so they were given an epithet to immortalise them in his guild's history.

These techniques were so complex that most games couldn't even judge their value properly, Darius was about to make use of his vault of techniques tailor-made for him to maximise the fighting efficiency of the tank class regardless of the nature of the game. Darius was about to use one of the 7 Fangs of Basilisk, at least that was the official amount of these techniques he had.

Noticing the change in Darius' demeanour the female Claw focused in on him as the leader and chose to clean out his clock to make the rest of the group more vulnerable. The Claw rushed behind Darius and struck down at him with her sword viciously- somehow, not only did she take 20 damage from the attack rebound, but her sword was starting to feel heavy. The claw grits her teeth and unleashes a flurry of attacks that only served to deal her damage as her weapon got progressively heavier with each attack, and as a result, the following attack was slower and easier to defend against.

By the 10th attack, the Claw was severely panicking as she had already taken 200 damage and her weapon was so heavy that she had lost 20% of her speed, bringing it down from 35 to 29, a significant drop considering that this change was including the buff she got from her stats. "First Fang", Darius muttered as he blocked the female claw's final desperate attack dropping her health to 20.

The female Claw in question found herself extremely unwilling as she started slowly backing away from Darius with fear plastered on her face. It would have been one thing if this was a fluke, but the freak had managed to go from barely blocking her peers' attack to outright suppressing her the entire fight.

Think of it like this, you play table tennis with a group consistently and for the most part, the skill level within the group is equal with all things considered- Then one day a new kid tries to join in and struggles against one of the less skilled members of the table barely pulling off a win with guidance from a group of friends the new kid brought. When you were called to step up to the plate though, the New Kid suddenly tells his friends not to distract him before proceeding to eviscerate you without you ever winning a point despite technically being better than your friend that the new kid struggled against.

Just as the female Claw was thinking of running away from this monster, the 5th Wing woman appeared behind her and swiftly beheaded her subordinate with a bored look on her face before once more returning to where she stood, "Attack all at once... you all will die otherwise", 5th Wing ordered casually before sheathing her blade and observing once more.

No one in Darius' party was surprised he could do what he had just done for entirely different reasons, but Soldier admitted that he was curious which guild trained this Tank that was impersonating the king of Tanks so much that he could so effortlessly mimic the 1st Fang of Basilisk and at such a high quality. Darius on the other hand found himself frowning- He had just roughly mastered the mechanics of this game, but he was so rusty with his early-stage technique that he wasn't using it at full power yet.

Darius tsked in annoyance, seeing that he had barely brought out 40% of his first technique's full power as while it did nothing to help his damage it was more practical than your run-of-the-mill technique that buffs your abilities or increases your damage by ludicrous amounts. "This is starting to annoy me now", Darius complained with a frown before cracking his neck and lowering his open stance slightly, he adjusted the grip he had on his shield and lowered his grip on his sword by a slight margin. After making these micro-adjustments however, the result was that a weird type of pressure descended on the 5th Wing and her subordinates.

The 5th wing frowned at this but didn't move to interfere with this fight, but one could note that this pressure sobered up the Bandit group instantly. A male and female claw rushed from both sides of the group with the ones behind the group aiming for Soldier and Queen, while the two coming from the front both rushed at Darius to try and suppress him with their 'Group pressure' skill.

The latter two launched their barrage of attacks at Darius who managed to trigger, back-to-back, perfect critical-counter(s) with his first fang taking effect on every other strike taking 4% speed every time it triggered. With Darius dealing 150 damage on every hit though, he took the two bandits down in 10 seconds flat earning the party 4 exp per head, and the extra 14 that came with it once more totalling 36 exp for the party. The 72 exp he had earned each party saw everyone level up, and yet instead of the 33 exp left over he expected, Darius saw that he had 69 exp out of the 400 needed to reach level 4.

Turning around Darius saw the rest of the Raven killer party staring down in disdain at the burning corpses of the two claws that attacked them from behind. Now that 6 of the 10 Bandit members were dead Darius nodded to Soldier, who returned the gesture, before turning to face the 5th Wing woman who stood between the Party and the higher level hunting zone before them that led to the Raven Bandit group forrest resided.

Darius adjusted his stance once more, the result being that the pressure his body was releasing outright removed the level and rank suppression that the group was facing, something Darius immediately noticed and noted accordingly. He wasn't aware that The 5th Claw was still able to ignore his defence on each swing entirely, but that wouldn't be important anymore in this fight.

The 5th Wing drew the weapon she had sheathed to her right hip, just for it to be a rapier. She had managed to cleanly behead two people with a piercing weapon earlier, proving just how lethal that defence-ignoring effect was. For good measure, the 5th wing drew her shield and steadied it to receive any counters that Darius landed before instantly appearing behind him and hacking at his head in one clean motion.

What was this though?

What is going on??

The 5th Wing attacked Darius from his blind spot with 2 and a half times more speed than the man in question could muster.

So why didn't he take any damage??

Why wasn't his head freed from his shoulders like the woman's subordinates?

Even more. 

Why was it the 5th claw's left arm instead that was cleaved clean off landing towards the edge of the bridge?

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In that one instant, Darius managed to slip the sneak attack, spin into the 5th claw's guard and cleave her left arm clean off, disarming the woman figuratively of her weapon and quite literally. As a result, Darius never took any damage and instead dealt 90 damage for the attack itself, an extra 133 damage for severing her arm, and wouldn't do any bleeding damage since it was a clean cut. 

Any normal person would be wondering how on earth this guy pulled this off, and I wouldn't blame them. No matter what you say it shouldn't be possible to not only react to an attack you were not expecting, but one that was more than twice your natural speed. This resulted from the second of Darius' unique techniques, 2nd of the 7 fangs of Basilisk known to the world.

The 1st Fang made it so that the attacker got slower with every successful parry and guaranteed a perfect parry as a result- The 2nd Fang, however, increased the user's reaction speed 5 fold. Simple as it sounded it burnt a lot of stamina and as such couldn't be used for more than 2 minutes in one go, that didn't change the fact that such a technique was potent for a tank class like Darius to have in their arsenal, and there were potentially more than 5 more of these techniques still left to go.

Realising that she had lost her weapon, the 5th wing Launched her shield at Darius before rushing to grab her weapon from her severed arm. Just as she got close enough to reach out though her second arm was cut clean off. This did another 90 damage plus an extra 133 for the severe effect, dropping the 5th claws health to 87 out of over 500 in 2 attacks. "Is this all the Raven Bandit's amount too?", Darius asked with a disappointed look on his face as he witnessed his opponent drop on her face after failing to recover her weapon.

The 5th claw tried getting up to run just to lose balance mid-escape and have Darius cleave her head off in one clean motion killing her instantly and earning the party 10 exp each for the kill and 143 exp for completing a part of the Raven Killer Quest. The Party made short work of the last 4 bandits leaving the party members at Level 3 with 294 out of the 400 exp they needed to reach Level 4. 

The drops that the party got from the fight included 10 short swords, 10 basic adventurer sets, an incomplete basic armour set, a circle shield, the Bone Shard Rapier, and the Raven whistle. Darius switched out his regular clothing for the incomplete Basic armour set and his 'Cleaver' straight sword for the Bone Shard rapier- The Party put the other gear away to sell later while they assigned their levels according to their roles.

The party had Queen place her bow in the party inventory and opted to use Darius' straight sword over her initially planned bow and arrow. She handed her arrows over to Soldier before switching her basic bowman set out for a basic adventurer set from the party inventory. Now all that was left was for the party to assign their stats, and this was what everyone looked like after they did:

ID: Basilisk Age: 30 Race: Human Class: None Subclass: None Rank: 0 Lvl: 3 Exp: 294/400 Titles: Adventurer. Status: Normal. Items: Riot, Bone Shard, Basic Armour Set [7/8] & Belt Sheath HP: 196/196 MP: 30/30 Sta: 35/35 Atk: 45 (+35) M.atk: 75 Def: 55 (+60)(+20) M.def: 85 Str: 25 Spd: 20 Agi: 10 Int: 5 End: 30(+10) Luck: 10 Stp: 0 Skp: 105 

Race Skills: None

General Skills: Focus

Subclass Skills: None

Trade Skills: None

Item Skills: None 

Resistances: None

Special effects: None.

ID: Enemy Soldier Age: 22 Race: Human Class: None Subclass: None Rank: 0 Lvl: 3 Exp: 294/400 Titles: Adventurer. Status: Normal. Items: Iron Bow, Pristine Arrows (*20), Chipped Arrows (*60), Basic Bowman Set & Worn Quill HP: 162/162 MP: 25/25 Sta: 25/25 Atk: 41 M.atk: 66 Def: 40 M.def: 65 Str: 20 Spd: 21(+6) Agi: 21(+6) Int: 5 End: 20 Luck: 17 (+3) Stp: 0 Skp: 105. 

 Race Skills: None

 General Skills: Quick Draw

 Subclass Skills: None

 Trade Skills: None

 Item Skills: None

 Resistances: None

 Special effects: None. 

ID: Stellar Blade Age: 20 Race: Human Class: None Subclass: None Rank: 0 Lvl: 3 Exp: 294/400 Titles: Adventurer. Status: Normal. Items: Sword Apprentice Set & Argent HP: 170/170 MP: 45/45 Sta: 50/50 Atk: 40(+5)(+20) M.atk: 85(+5) Def: 45 M.def: 90 Str: 20 Spd: 20(+5) Agi: 5(+5) Int: 25 End: 25 Luck: 10 Stp: 0 Skp: 90 

Race Skills: None

General Skills: Ignite & Dash

Subclass Skills: None

Trade Skills: None

Item Skills: None

Resistances: None

Special effects: 1% chance to trigger a Magic Attack.

ID: Cruel Silence Age: 28 Race: Human Class: None Subclass: None Rank: 0 Lvl: 3 Exp: 294/400 Titles: Adventurer. Status: Normal. Items: Deus, Cloak & Basic Adventurer set HP: 180/180 MP: 20/20 Sta: 15/15 Atk: 65(+25) M.atk: 85 Def: 25 M.def: 45 Str: 15(+5) Spd: 50(+5) Agi: 20(+10) Int: 5 End: 10(+5) Luck: 5 Stp: 0 Skp: 90 

Race Skills: None

General Skills: Critical strike & Stealth

Subclass Skills: None

Trade Skills: None

Item Skills: None

Resistances: None

Special effects: 5% chance of invisibility outside of combat.

ID: Mighty Bjorn Age: 32 Race: Human Class: None Subclass: None Rank: 0 Lvl: 3 Exp: 294/400 Titles: Adventurer. Status: Normal. Items: Rusted Tomahawk, Leather Chest Plate, Leather Pants & Leather boots HP: 210/210 MP: 30/30 Sta: 35/35 Atk: 50(+30) M.atk: 80 Def: 55(+30)(+5) M.def: 85 Str: 25 Spd: 25 Agi: 15(+5) Int: 5 End: 30 Luck: 5 Stp: 0 Skp: 105 

Race Skills: None

General Skills: Vigour.

Subclass Skills: None

Trade Skills: None

Item Skills: None

Resistances: None

Special effects: None

ID: Guerrilla Queen Age: 25 Race: Human Class: None Subclass: None Rank: 0 Lvl: 3 Exp: 294/400 Titles: Adventurer. Status: Normal. Items: Basic Adventurer Set & Cleaver HP: 160/160 MP: 30/30 Sta: 30/30 Atk: 40(+25) M.atk: 70 Def: 40 M.def: 70 Str: 20(+5) Spd: 20(+5) Agi: 25 Int: 10 End: 20(+5) Luck: 10 Stp: 0 Skp: 105 

Race Skills: None

General Skills: Sprint

Subclass Skills: None

Trade Skills: None

Item Skills: None

Resistances: None

Special effects: None.

ID: Immortal Lancer Age: 29 Race: Human Class: None Subclass: None Rank: 0 Lvl: 3 Exp: 294/400 Titles: Adventurer. Status: Normal. Items: Halberd, Basic Adventurer set & Spear Holder HP: 200/200 MP: 40/40 Sta: 30/30 Atk: 50(+25) M.atk: 90 Def: 50 M.def: 90 Str: 30(+5) Spd: 20(+5) Agi: 15 Int: 10 End: 20(+5) Luck: 10 Stp: 0 Skp: 105 

Race Skills: None

General Skills: Feather Walk

Subclass Skills: None

Trade Skills: None

Item Skills: None

Resistances: None

Special effects: None.