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...
If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles.
~Sun Tzu
....
Before the battle began, there was actually one problem with Kyo's physical condition.
He had not logged off to sleep in nearly twenty hours.
During that entire ti, he had been holding a shovel and sparring with the Abyssal Knight.
Although Carl had finally released a combat system that Kyo was extrely interested in, this battle was a wager. If they won, Madam Calamity would grant Hasumi one wish. If they lost, Madam Calamity would take Hasumi away.
No matter how badly Kyo wanted to try the tachi, he was not arrogant enough to face such a powerful boss with an unfamiliar weapon right from the start.
So at the beginning of the battle, although it was not exactly honorable, Kyo planned to use Oath's existing combat system to test Madam Calamity's strength first.
In this battle, Kyo actually had many options.
The maxed Saintess, the maxed Griff, the maxed Hasumi, and Irene, who had always stayed in the background but had in fact been present the entire ti.
Even though Kyo's main Oath account had been banned, the Saintess, Griff, Hasumi, and Irene were all standing here right now.
Kyo could replicate the power they possessed at their peak.
This was probably the mindset of a top-tier player. First, figure out whether victory was possible. Then decide how to win.
Then Carl discovered that Madam Calamity really did seem to have arrived with her avatar.
Even as an avatar, her data signature was the sa as Anan's. In Carl's eyes, it appeared as nothing but question marks.
The mont Kyo and Madam Calamity clashed, he shalessly copied the Saintess's power and fired off her first, second, and third skills in rapid succession.
A large number of magic circles appeared beneath Madam Calamity's feet. Imdiately afterward, Kyo took the chance to switch to Irene's power, applying Irene's ultimate buff to himself, which was still absurdly powerful even in the current version.
Kyo also released the Saintess's ultimate. A bombardnt of magic circles descended from the sky like orbital cannons, all crashing down onto Madam Calamity.
The dense barrage of attacks successfully shaved off a portion of Madam Calamity's health.
But that alone was already ridiculous. From the first wave of attacks, Carl could basically determine that Madam Calamity's avatar was a boss on the level of an 80,000 point Extre Abyss encounter, or even higher.
It was also enough to make Oath players curse that the entire budget had clearly gone into the monsters. Compared to ordinary enemies in Oath, Madam Calamity's health pool had been inflated by at least twenty tis.
But twenty tis was still only twenty tis. Kyo's maxed Soul Seal team was not incapable of fighting her.
Kyo switched to Hasumi's Dawn Radiance stance and began clashing with Madam Calamity.
Basically, all he had to do was dodge Madam Calamity's attacks, then counterattack with the radiance attached to Hasumi's rapier.
During the counterattack cycle, once the Saintess's skills ca off cooldown, he would switch back to the Saintess template and unleash a full set of high-damage skills.
After completing that rotation, Madam Calamity's health dropped by another small chunk.
"There's hope! Lord Kyo! As long as we keep attacking, we can defeat her within twenty minutes!"
The Saintess realized with joy that this avatar of one of the Empire's Ten Great Archons was not quite as terrifying as she had imagined.
Suddenly, the red dragon in front of them whipped its tail toward the Saintess.
At that mont, the Saintess finally saw what the combat screen looked like from a player's perspective.
A yellow glow lit up on Madam Calamity's tail.
After the command "Parry!" appeared in the Saintess's mind, a transparent barrier lit up in front of her.
With a loud deflecting sound, Madam Calamity's dragon tail was instantly knocked away.
"So this is the power Elysium bestowed upon you Saviors? I would like to see how long you can last while relying on it."
In Madam Calamity's eyes, her opinion of players was actually the sa as Anan's.
They were a group of spoiled children.
The number of combat assists Elysium granted players was simply outrageous.
For example, one-button parries with absurdly generous timing windows, and every character being shockingly easy to control.
Take the Saintess, for example. Her gaplay consisted of placing three magic circles, casting her ultimate, and calling it a day.
When Oath's developers designed these assist features, their original goal was to lower the barrier to entry for combat.
Reducing combat difficulty was not a bad idea by itself.
But once it was combined with gacha chanics and pay-to-win scaling, Oath beca less of an action ga and more of a numbers check.
Once your numbers failed to keep up, every battle beca exceptionally painful.
Painful or not, as long as they could win, it was fine.
Just as the Saintess was thinking this, a faint snore suddenly ca from beside her.
"Huh?"
On such a tense battlefield, logically speaking, that kind of sound should not have existed.
The Saintess turned her head and found that Kyo had already fallen asleep on the battlefield.
How could you sleep in a situation like this?!
"Lord Kyo! You, you, you, wake up!" the Saintess shouted at Kyo, half on the verge of breaking down.
"Ah? Uh, sorry. I actually haven't logged off for almost twenty hours. I just nodded off for a second," Kyo apologized, shaking his head.
"Nodded off?! How can you fall asleep in the middle of such a tense and dangerous battle?!" the Saintess asked in despair.
"So where's the tension? Where's the danger?"
As Kyo spoke, Madam Calamity's red dragon incarnation attacked again. The red dragon lunged at Kyo with one claw, and once again, a yellow glow lit up.
Kyo did not even look at the red dragon's attack. With the help of Oath's combat assist system, his character automatically raised a hand and blocked Madam Calamity's strike.
"See?"
Kyo found that although Madam Calamity's various stats were extrely high, her movent speed was far inferior to the Extre Abyss monsters after their action speed had been increased. So he simply turned on combat assist mode and began steadily shaving down Madam Calamity's health.
Kyo really did want to take this battle with Madam Calamity seriously.
But a maxed Contract Soul team combined with Elysium's combat assist system was simply too effective.
So effective that even when Kyo tried his hardest, he could not fight off the constant waves of sleepiness.
"Asleep? Savior, you are the first opponent to fall into a deep sleep while fighting . Is battling truly that boring to you?"
Madam Calamity was successfully enraged by Kyo's dead-to-the-world sleeping state on the battlefield.
At this point, Carl gave Madam Calamity a tily explanation.
"What's boring isn't fighting you. It's Elysium. The combat system Oath gives its players is too dull."
"Take the Saintess template Kyo is using, for example. All he has to do is wait for skill cooldowns, press whatever lights up, dump every skill, then switch to the next character and repeat the rotation."
"Add in the various prompts for yellow-light parries and red-light dodges, and that is basically the entirety of Oath's combat. Kyo is just chanically repeating those steps during the fight."
"To exaggerate a little, as long as their stats are high enough, most players can defeat most monsters in Oath with a single button," Carl said.
The reason Kyo had needed real chanical skill while playing the Extre Abyss before was that the deeper he went, the faster the monsters beca. Eventually, the combat assist simply could not keep up with their attack speed.
But even though Madam Calamity's stats were off the charts, her attack motions could still be tracked by Oath's combat assist system.
"Then it seems I can only tear apart the greenhouse Elysium built for you and let you experience the cruelty of this world firsthand."
With that thought, Madam Calamity stopped holding back and directly activated Extre Abyss mode.
A large amount of plague corruption spread from her body.
In the next second, within the Saintess's field of vision, her combat assist prompts were instantly corroded and shattered by the plague.
After doing all this, Madam Calamity struck at the Saintess again with one claw.
"Parry. Parry. Wait, wait a minute!"
At that mont, the Saintess did manage to call upon Elysium's parry ability.
But the timing was wrong. The parry failed to trigger, and she took Madam Calamity's claw head-on before crashing to the ground.
"Your turn!"
Madam Calamity fiercely whipped her tail toward Kyo.
But Kyo raised a hand and still used Oath's parry system to block Madam Calamity's tail whip with flawless precision.
However, the heavy impact caused countless cracks to spread across Oath's parry system.
Madam Calamity's next attack would be enough to break through Oath's built-in parry ability.
"I originally wanted to shave your health down to a certain point before trying the brand-new combat system the Shopkeeper made. Looks like I'll have to do this the hard way."
At that mont, Kyo finally switched the weapon in his hand from the Saintess's magic staff to Hasumi's tachi.
(To be continued.)
◇ You can read the ahead chapter on Pat if you're interested: p-atreon.c-om/Blownleaves (Just remove the hyphen to access normally.)
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