Reincarnated Avatar; I got 2 SSS-Rank Unique Skills
Chapter 74: Guild war [2]

Chapter 74: Guild war [2]

The war horns screamed across the canyon, the first war cries echoing off the jagged cliffs as the top guilds charged in unison.

Thousands of players, elite forces from the most powerful factions surged forward with absolute confidence.

Five players.

Just five.

The casual players spectating from the stream networks had already written Lord Doom’s crew off. Some watched in morbid curiosity, others simply waited for the inevitable.

After all, how could five players hope to stand against thousands?

And then, it happened.

Very few saw it coming until they moved.

Like a whipcrack, they moved. No hesitation, no retreat.

Noah and his teammates had a basis for their confidence though. In a game where physics mattered, where the environment was a weapon, they had something their enemies did not.

Brains, and experience.

They didn’t derive all their confidence just from their skill and experience though, it was mostly because this was Warstar.

This was a revolutionary video game with perfect setting, coding, and graphics. This was a video game where players can’t overlap and run over each other, which meant there was a limit to what overwhelming numbers could do, especially in tight places.

Besides, an important feature of Warstar and why it was so realistic is because the environment is not just some decoration.

If smart enough, players can actively fight with their environment and terrain.

And the Canyon of Ruins was a perfect battlefield to show casual players the difference in I.Q between pro players and casual players.

The Canyon of Ruins was not an open field.

The elite guild armies expected an overwhelming stampede, an inescapable tidal wave of bodies crashing down on five helpless players.

But they weren’t fighting on an open plain.

They were fighting in a canyon; a maze of natural chokepoints, narrow paths, unstable cliffs, and deadly verticality.

And Noah’s team knew exactly how to use it.

The first wave poured in through a narrow gorge, a hundred players charging to overwhelm the five.

At the very front, Aria stepped forward.

Her Blades of Aamon gleamed, her stance relaxed, as if she was merely out for a stroll and not currently facing overwhelming numbers in battle.

The charging players saw only one target.

They thought she was alone.

Maybe the others ran? But they were wrong.

The first row of attackers lunged, and in that instant, Aria moved.

Like a ghost.

Whoosh!

She sidestepped, her blade flashing, a perfectly calculated strike sending a Warrior crashing into the narrow walls.

Then another.

And another.

In mere seconds, with her twin blades flashing repeatedly, the frontline collapsed into chaos, the cramped terrain turning their numbers into a curse rather than a blessing.

They couldn’t maneuver.

They couldn’t swing freely.

All they could do was trip over each other, a bottlenecked mass of warriors becoming a perfect target.

And that was when Noah stepped in.

With Aetherforge in Rifle Form, Noah aimed at the canyon walls above the trapped forces, and then...

{Piercing Shot=}

A low-level Gunner skill that fires a high-velocity round that pierces through multiple enemies.

KABOOM!

A single charged shot.

A blast of pure kinetic force, shot at just the right angle and stress point.

The entire cliffside cracked.

And then, it fell.

Hundreds of tons of rock came crashing down, sealing the entrance, burying dozens of players alive, and turning the narrow pass into a mass grave.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Noah’s Lord Doom was assaulted with a pile of notifications.

[You have killed a player...]

[You have killed a player...]

[You have killed a player...]

Just like that, the first wave of attackers was annihilated in seconds.

"..."

"..."

".....!"

For a moment, the spectators surrounding the canyon could not believe what they just saw, but this was only the beginning.

The guild armies didn’t stop, rather, becoming more riled up even.

With overwhelming numbers, they pushed deeper into the canyon, determined to crush the five no matter the cost.

But they weren’t fighting fair.

They were fighting in three dimensions.

While the guild forces rushed forward, Noah and his team moved upward, expertly showing incredible mouse control to scale the cliff walls.

And then from the rock formations above, Caleb and Genevieve rained death.

Caleb’s summons struck from unexpected angles, monstrous spirits hunting down players down through the winding canyon paths.

Genevieve, instead of healing, played bait, taunting melee fighters into dead-end passages where they were ambushed and eliminated.

And then..., the master of chaos struck, fishing in troubled waters.

With a wild grin, Benjamin expertly leaped between cliffs, casting devastating elemental barrages.

His fire spells ignited dry brush, turning the canyon into a fiery inferno.

His wind magic created violent drafts, sending archers stumbling off ledges to their deaths.

And as players screamed, confused, and panicked, falling left and right, Benjamin cupped his hands to his mouth and shouted.

"This is what happens when you put a hundred I.Q players against a thousand I.Q players!"

Then he dodged a flying axe and snorted.

"Fine, fine. Eight hundred I.Q against zero, happy now?"

The guild players gritted their teeth.

The guild forces realized too late. They weren’t hunting Noah’s team; they were being lured.

Corridors collapsed, rockslides triggered, fire and lighting tore through their ranks at far too frequent intervals.

They weren’t fighting a fair battle.

They were fighting in Lord Dom’s domain.

And in the end, to the shock of thousands of spectators, the once unstoppable army of thousands was being massacred.

Not by raw power, not even by stats, but by superior intelligence.

It was as if Lord Doom’s group mocked them, saying. ’You’re still too green to confront these old masters’.

It was humiliating.

And as the rest of the world watched in stunned silence..., they finally understood. This wasn’t just a battle.

This was a lesson.

A demonstration of what it meant to be truly elite.

A war of brains against brawn, and only one side was winning.

...

As the slaughter unfolded, as thousands of their elite members fell like cattle, the guild leaders of the attacking factions found themselves in an exclusive voice chat, a private council of war.

What was supposed to be an overwhelming victory had become a humiliation.

The chat exploded.

"WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON?!" One of the guild leaders, Gale Striker roared into the chat.

"We sent thousands! Against FIVE PLAYERS!"

"Are you all blind?! It’s the damn terrain! They turned the canyon into a killbox!" Another guild leader, Iron Tooth cursed.

"Whose bright idea was it to rush in like brainless idiots?!"

"Oh, don’t look at me! Shattered Star, your people charged in first! You led the damn charge, and now we’re all paying for it!"

"EXCUSE ME?!" Shattered Star, Cyber Crew’s guild leader snapped.

He may be in his Shattered Star Avatar now but his alternate account had been one of the first to die even before this war, and he was still fuming from the humiliation. "YOU ALL AGREED TO THIS STRATEGY!" He raged.

"I DIDN’T AGREE TO GETTING MY PEOPLE KILLED FOR NOTHING!"

"ENOUGH!"

A cold, commanding voice cut through the chaos, the voice of Night Razor, one of the most respected strategists among them, Flame Phoenix’s guild leader.

Flame Phoenix was the guild representing the pro club, Phoenix Rising.

Night Razor glared at them. "Bickering won’t win this battle. Face the reality, we’re losing".

A heavy silence fell.

Losing, the word stung.

Their pride as top guilds was being shattered in front of the entire world.

And worse, they had no one to blame but themselves.

"This is the cold, hard truth," Night Razor continued. "We charged in like foots. We thought numbers would be enough, well, we were wrong".

A long sigh came from Bladestorm, the guild leader of Crimson Fang, one of the strongest guilds. "Damn it, we underestimated them".

"No," Night Razor corrected. "We underestimated Lord Doom".

The name along sent a chill through the group chat.

Lord Doom.

In just a short time, that name had become a nightmare.

A name that had just made a mockery of the most powerful guilds in the new server.

"We can’t keep throwing bodies at them," Bladestorm admitted. "If we keep fighting like this, we’ll just keep feeding them kills".

"So what do we do?" Iron Tooth growled. "Retreat? Accept defeat?"

"No".

Nigh Razor’s voice was calm, firm, and full of conviction.

"We fight smarter.

And then he dropped it. "We need a real strategy".

The statement hung in the air.

They couldn’t brute force this. They had to play Warstar as it was meant to be played, a battle of skill, intellect, and precision.

For the firs time, the guild leaders set aside their egos.

"We need an army commander," Gale Striker finally admitted. "One person to take full control of the war effort, direct movements, and counter their tactics".

Silence.

Then a name was spoken.

"Night Razor".

There was no argument, no protest.

But deep down, they all knew; if there was anyone who could bring down Lord Doom, it had to be him.

A new war had begun.

One fought not just with numbers, but with strategy.