Chapter 44: Sacred Souls Combat System
Translator: EndlessFantasy Translation Editor: EndlessFantasy Translation

Jiang Qiao started browsing the post carefully, and the first thing he saw was a screenshot of a knight in maroon armor carrying his greatsword on his shoulder.

The knight’s expression was blocked by his helmet, but Jiang Qiao could somehow feel that the disappointment of the knight towards the player who took the screenshot.

TeaLeaf: ‘A bunch of NPCs appeared outside the Tower of Trials, and a new quest to PK with them was issued. I was the first to discover this so I tried my hand at it, but control skills don’t seem to work well on this fellow! I’ve already been defeated three times, and this *sshole keeps on saying things like “You sacred souls aren’t all that.” And keeps on provoking me, but I can’t defeat him no matter how hard I try. Waiting on my knees for a PK boss to help me beat this guy up!’

Backup: ‘An NPC PK mission? I got one back in Hawktalon City, but NPCs are so horrendously bad at fighting that I got finished in ten minutes. The guy above is probably too weak…’

DragonBoatKing: ‘What rewards are there if you win against this NPC?’

TeaLeaf seemed to be refreshing the page rapidly, and if there were any new replies they would reply immediately.

TeaLeaf: ‘I don’t think there are any rewards.’

DragonGodBreath: ‘Then why waste your time? Better spend your time on grinding levels.’

TeaLeaf: ‘But this NPC seems to look down on us, and keeps on provoking us that sacred souls are weak and useless, waiting for a boss to help me out!’

SpittingCurses: ‘I’ve never played Sacred Souls before, but judging from this NPC’s equipment it’s a character somewhat like a heavy-armor class. TeaLeaf seems to be a swordsman, and I’ve seen a livestreamer that uses this class… Wouldn’t he be able to defeat him with a simple Dual-Wielding Skill?’

Woah, a cloud player 1!

Cloud players could defeat countless enemies using only their keyboard!

Jiang Qiao finished reading all the replies on the post and then logged into the game, teleporting to the Tower of Trials through a transportation gate.

A whole bunch of native NPCs had appeared in front of the Tower of Trials, and they were all natives from Aquaflow. Thirty-two of them were knights, while twelve of them were mages and scholars. They were probably all here to check on the Tower of Trials’ current condition, as well as come into contact with the so-called saviors of the world.

One of the ways to do so was by testing their battle ability.

And so, they sent out their strongest knight to challenge the players one-on-one.

There were only thirteen players idling outside of the Tower of Trials at the time, while the rest were still in the starter village or exploring dungeons.

TeaLeaf was one of the players within the aforementioned thirteen, and it was his fourth time standing in front of the native knight.

Jiang Qiao came to the side of the arena, and there were three spectators that seemed to be TeaLeaf’s friends.

Jiang Qiao threw an inspection spell onto the native knight on the arena out of habit.

[Name: Solar]

[Level: LV40]

[Class: Warrior type]

[Description: A native of this world, Honor Knight]

A Level 40 warrior-type enemy…TeaLeaf who was fighting against this knight was a Level 33 Swordsman.

He was actually considered a high-leveled player in this game, but because there were seven levels between the two, Solar wasn’t using his full strength against him.

Even still, TeaLeaf was still at an absolute disadvantage because of two reasons: The first was because TeaLeaf activated the Battle Support System.

It wasn’t common for the regular player to know how to wield swords or guns, and so they would need the help of the Battle Support System to help them with the corresponding movements required to release a skill.

This method was useful, but at the same time there was a great flaw, which was that it was too rigid and inflexible! These skill movements that were supported by the system didn’t have variation or flexibility, and could only be used to defeat monsters or NPCs with simple intelligence.

But the enemy in front of TeaLeaf right now was an extremely experienced knight!

More deadly was the fact that this native knight didn’t quite play by the rules of formal combat, not to mention that he wasn’t confined to the rules of the Sacred Souls combat system.

Sacred Souls was a game and not real life, so it was a given that the battles were completely different than real life.

The combat system of the game was somewhat complex, but could be divided into two parts. The first part was the combat style scoring which was the same system as Devil May Cry, while the second part was the actual combat system itself. The player’s combat type could be further divided into Combo, Knock-up, Sweeping, Deflection, Blocking, Redirection, Detection, and Counterattack.

Taking Knock-Up as an example, which was a system that many games had. The most prominent example of this was the Devil May Cry series. Players more or less all had the ability to knock enemies up into the air, and most enemies wouldn’t be able to fight back while they were still in the air so players would be able to combo as much as they liked.

But this didn’t work for Solar!

Jiang Qiao saw TeaLeaf use a simple Unterhau, which was a basic skill for a Swordsman, and the hit connected!

In the unbelieving stared of the knights and mages behind Solar, TeaLeaf’s thin tachi sword flung the enemy in heavy armor a meter into the air.

It was the first time that Solar was hit by this skill, and so he never expected himself to be knocked up into the air with such a flimsy movement.

“What?!” Solar shouted in disbelief, and for a couple seconds when he was floating in the air, he completely lost his cool.

The livestreamer ModaoSwordsman was a Swordsman too, and after he knocked an enemy into the air he would usually follow up with a double-sworded attack, then a Cross Slash followed by a Tsubame Gaeshi, then another Unterhau, then a Crushing Slash…After using a whole set of skills and hitting a high combo, he would wait for the skills to cooldown before doing it again.

TeaLeaf was somewhat experienced in the Swordsman class, so he created a blade of sword qi with his other hand. The Sword Qi Blade ability was a passive ability of the Swordsman class which would attach onto his sword and make it sharper, or create actual blades out of sword qi. He used a double-bladed attack on the knight, and the blades created sparks and marks on the knight’s armor for a split second.

His next step would be to use other skills to create combos, but Solar had already adjusted himself and swung his sword towards TeaLeaf.

TeaLeaf quickly retreated and dodged the attack, and Solar fell onto the ground.

This was also a common situation when experienced players fought between each other. Neither players nor natives were stupid, after all, and no one would let their enemy attack them endlessly before falling onto the ground, instead choosing to fight back in mid-air.

As soon as Solar dropped onto the ground, TeaLeaf got into the starting position for an Iai Slash, and when the flash of a blade appeared, Solar raised his own greatsword and deflected the oncoming taichi sword quickly.

This movement was akin to the other combat system in the game, Deflection. It was a skill that most monsters and enemies didn’t know how to use, and only a select few humanoid elite enemies could know how to use it.

“Your attacks are childish! If you keep on using the same moves over and over again, only an idiot would stand there and let you attack them as you wish!”

After he deflected TeaLeaf’s attack, he kicked the latter to the edge of the arena.

According to the rules, TeaLeaf lost once again, but Solar who had done all this dropped onto one knee.

This was because he was internally wounded.

No matter if it was Deflection, Blocking or Redirection, none of these ways could be used to completely protect the enemy from the player’s attacks, and could only be used to decrease the damage.

There would definitely still be damage, the only difference was whether the damage was decreased by the armor and the act of deflection itself.

This was the strongest point of Sacred Souls players, which was that no matter how the enemy blocked or deflected, they would still be able to kill the enemy with one hit if their stats were high enough.

Of course, TeaLeaf wasn’t strong enough to defeat the enemy with one blow, but after several of these attacks he somehow still shaved around a thousand HP from Solar.

This was around a tenth of his maximum HP, which wouldn’t count as much for the average player, but Solar was a native! No one would be able to withstand it if a tenth of their lifespan were cut off from them.

Jiang Qiao stared thoughtfully at the knight that was being helped off the arena by his comrades.

“Summon the tower spirit, Ocean Blue,” Jiang Qiao instructed Ocean Blue.

“You’re going to challenge them too?”

Ocean Blue didn’t really like how these natives from another plane were bullying her players… Granted, Solar was the one who was actually hurt in this situation, while TeaLeaf could go back onto the player forums after drinking one vial of potion, but it would probably require a couple more days before Solar could accept anymore challenges.

“No, let the spirit of the tower heal this knight up so that he can continue fighting with the players.” Jiang Qiao opened the system composition page, and started editing a quest.

“What?”

“We can’t just let go of such good sandbags and PVP teachers. Also tell them to bring the other knights here, let’s make this a repeatable quest.”