Chapter 134: Zeus

Author note : We have reworked this chapter with my assistant, unfortunately in premiun we can not delete the chapter or modify them as we want so this chapter will contain 4 parts, good reading

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------ Part 1 ------

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CRONOS I PLANETARY CAPITAL—ONE HOUR EARLIER

ThreeDog and Jiraya finally arrived at the incredible city which had once served as the home of over twenty million Geoils.

Since the Orc troops had preferred to attack less protected cities, the capital had been spared during the first stage of the war. However, the renegade Coalition players were now throwing themselves viciously at the city in order to seize control.

ThreeDog and Jiraya's mission was to rally the players and guilds still loyal to the Federation and organize the defense of the city. According to the information they had, the city was mostly controlled by the Spartan SuperGuild. The player Zeus was both Spartan's star player and the acting commander of the city's forces.

Spartan was one of two SuperGuilds that openly opposed the Eternals' Coalition, as it had invested heavily in the Federation's economy. Unlike most other SuperGuilds, Spartan had openly committed to supporting the Federation, no matter what.

It didn't take long for ThreeDog and Jiraya to encounter a squad of Spartan members, who led them to Zeus.

He was a muscular, eighty-year-old man with a long beard and a bruised face. Zeus wielded a huge precision plasma rifle, but, most surprisingly,, he sat on a pile of Orc corpses which he used as a kind of throne, and was drinking what looked like blood from an Orc's skull.

Many "Horus" players were committed to roleplaying, but nobody had likely taken it to such extremes before!

As the Eclipse players looked around them at the hundred men escorting them, they understood why Spartan was considered the most powerful guild in the game. Each player was lvl 25, equipped with Epic gear, and it seemed as though everyone was completely, professionally prepared for PvP.

Spartan was renowned for its elitist and professional approach to the game. Unlike the other SuperGuilds who recruited en masse just to be able to exploit as many weak players as possible, everyone in Spartan lived under the same roof and had a strong sense of camaraderie. This cohesion was absolutely unheard of in a SuperGuild.

Jiraya stepped in front of Zeus. "Hello, Zeus! It's an honor to meet someone of your rank. My superior, Apophis, Commander of Federation Forces on this planet, sent us both to take control of the city."

Zeus took another long sip of blood from the Orc skull. "I don't take orders from someone like Apophis. We've been defending this city for almost a week. There's no way I'm giving it up to wimps like you! I'd rather rip your head off and taste what's inside your skull!"

Jiraya reacted badly to this, drawing his gun and summoning his combat pet.

In less than a moment, a dozen Spartan players had surrounded the two outsiders.

ThreeDog quickly raised his voice. "I'm very sorry! You misunderstood what my friend said. We're not here to take over your city in the slightest. You defended it after the war, and so it's rightfully yours! We're only here to help you defend it. To do this, I propose an alliance and unified command. You know that Apophis controls the NPC Federation soldiers. If you want to have a chance to win against the Coalition, we must unite our forces!"

ThreeDog was, of course, twisting Apophis's orders to fit the situation. Unlike Jiraya, who was unwilling to assume any kind of authority which didn't belong to him, ThreeDog believed that fulfilling the mission was more important than anything else—even if they had to make some false promises for the moment.

Moreover, ThreeDog realized that he and Jiraya couldn't get much done with only the two of them. Apophis might be able to retake a whole city on his own, but ThreeDog was nowhere near that level of power, being only C-Rank.

Zeus stood up and... stroked his beard with a superior air. "Interesting. We received news, a few minutes ago, of an enemy incursion in a nearby sector. Several thousand high-powered Coalition players. So! You two are going to accompany me and we'll see what you're worth in battle!"

The two Eclipse players looked at each other and nodded.

***

Though the Planetary Capital had once housed over twenty million Geoils, today, it was almost deserted. Most of the population had taken shelter by this point, as nobody wanted to be out in the streets!

Nevertheless, some Geoils had lacked the time or the means to find secure shelters in the capital's bunker. Because of this, many civilian lives had been lost.

Every square meter of the capital was now occupied by a guild that was either loyal to the Federation or which had betrayed the Federation and joined the Coalition.

Overall, everyone's goal was the same: to occupy the largest possible area for maximum profit after the conflict was over. In the richest city on the planet, every square meter could be worth tens of thousands of GC!

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---Part 2 ---

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Despite the extremely tense circumstances, the Spartan players didn't seem to worry much as they set out on their mission. They maintained solid discipline as they marched down the side roads which led to their destination.

However, both ThreeDog and Jiraya quickly got the sense that the Spartan players knew something they didn't. The two Eclipse players felt a sensation of rising unease as they passed through a district that had once housed several theaters and entertainment buildings—

The air fell extremely cold, and ThreeDog's eyes went wide with horror as he felt his breath freezing in his nose!

"Espers!" he shouted, drawing his huge shield and club!

In a moment, the huge, dark window of a nearby building exploded into slivers which spun in the air before pointing at the group! It wasn't glass at all, but a sheet of ice disguised as a window!

The Esper standing behind the window came into sight as he raised his glowing blue staff and pointed it at the group of players!

In the next moment, the hundreds of daggers of ice came hurling through the air and pelted the players, dealing some damage, though the Warriors in the Spartan group had all raised shields to protect themselves and their comrades.

Jiraya reacted more slowly than ThreeDog and was only able to summon his mutant bear combat pet to stand between him and the ice. The bear quickly died, tanking almost all the ice daggers, but Jiraya was left unhurt, and he raised his plasma assault rifle. In a moment, he charged his ~Plasma Hell Grenade~ skill and lobbed a sticky blob of super-heated plasma into the building!

Or at least, he tried to. The blob of energy hovered in the air a few meters away from him, and Jiraya quickly looked around until he realized a second Esper was crouching behind some nearby rubble, using a powerful form of ~Telekinesis~ to hold the energy in place until it cooled down.

Jiraya yelled the location of the new enemy, and ThreeDog quickly ran in that direction. Fortunately, the telekinetic Esper was so focused on preventing the grenade from exploding that he was too slow to react, and ThreeDog quickly killed him.

The ice-specialized Esper panicked as he realized their ambush had failed, and he summoned ice armor around himself and tried to run away, as well as raising a thick ice wall where the false window had once been.

However, Jiraya had been resummoning his mutant bear during this time! He shouted a command, and his pet threw itself at the window, smashing it to pieces, allowing ThreeDog to use his ~Steppe Warrior Leap~ ability to jump all the way across the street and into the building.

As a skill once used by barbarians who lived on icy plains, it actually gave him more jump distance while there was ice at his landing point!

Jiraya sent bursts of ~Expanding Mass Liquid Rounds~ which pelted the fleeing Esper's armor. They stuck to him, growing heavier with every fraction of a second.

This slowed him nearly to a stop. ThreeDog switched to a two-handed grip on his huge club in the air and used his ~Earthquake Slam~. Combined with the speed and height of his leap, this let him kill the physically frail Esper in a single blow.

Several other enemies had been fleeing during this time, but nobody followed them. In fact, the Spartans hadn't lifted a finger during this entire fight, except to protect themselves from the ice daggers.

Jiraya turned and glared at them. "Why were you all just standing there?! We could've beaten the rest of them!"

Zeus let out a loud chuckle. "I told everyone that you wanted a chance to prove yourselves! It would've been rude to deprive you of the chance."

ThreeDog had been breathing hard, but now he raised his head, understanding. "You knew this ambush would be here," he said. "You led us right into it!"

Zeus gave a coy smile. "Oh, did I? Think of it as an appetizer. Don't worry... the main course is coming right up."

Not knowing how else to respond, the two Eclipse players moved back into position. Each had lost some energy, but hardly any health. They'd won easily against such a lopsided enemy composition, but it didn't seem as though Zeus was very impressed. They hoped they'd have a better opportunity to prove themselves soon.

Once they arrived at their destination, though, the Eclipse players were horrified.

The report was wrong. There were at least ten thousand players spread over four buildings in the zone! In particular, a strong unit of troops controlled what had once been a children's park in the zone's center.

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---Part 3 ---

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The Coalition players had both a height advantage and the positional superiority of each zone being able to support the others without worrying about allies being caught in the crossfire. It gave every tactical advantage to the Coalition.

Besides their positional advantage, there was one Federation player for about every ten Coalition players.

Jiraya said in a quiet voice, "I propose that we divide into four groups and simultaneously attack the occupying forces in the buildings before attacking the center from all sides."

Zeus smiled. "We're not here for an easy fight, but to test your warrior abilities! What you propose is not the way of the warrior! We'll fight like real warriors, or not at all!"

ThreeDog and Jiraya were appalled. Was this guy really one of the best players in the game?

Before either of them could react, Zeus drew a golden grenade from his inventory, charged it with energy, and hurled it into the center of the park.

The shock wave from Zeus's skill knocked both Eclipse players on their asses, as they weren't expecting to brace against an attack from an ally.

However, it did far more than that to the enemy, killing or seriously injuring thousands of Coalition players in the park! What an incredible amount of power from a single grenade! ThreeDog thought about the destructive power of his own plasma grenades and realized that the difference in destruction between the two of them was so great it might as well be infinite.

However, in addition to killing many enemies, Zeus had also revealed their position. The Spartan group was soon surrounded by swarms of Coalition combatants who emerged from the park and the first floors of the buildings!

Jiraya had his two-meter mutant bear stand in front of him and raised his plasma assault rifle. At the same time, ThreeDog equipped his huge shield and club.

Zeus barely seemed to care about the danger. In less than a second, he'd drawn one of the huge sniper rifles on his back and had used a skill to increase his fire rate by 300%. He let off shot after shot, firing his giant rifle as though it were a light machine gun! In the first two seconds, he killed a dozen enemy players.

As enemies fired upon them from the high buildings and engaged in both close and medium ranges, ThreeDog and Jiraya returned to fighting. They were nowhere near as practiced as the Spartans, but they quickly realized they were far more effective than most of these Coalition players, who had little cohesion once the battle started!

Many Coalition players seemed to ignore the front lines, sending bullets and energy blasts directly at Zeus. They seemed to think that if they killed him, The Spartans' morale would break at once.

However, though several Spartan Warriors protected their commander with their shields, Zeus himself hardly seemed to care! He even laughed with insane glee and put out his hand to let a bullet drill right through it, then somehow used that bleeding to trigger an ability that made his attacker's weapon turn red hot and burn her!

But ThreeDog and Jiraya were paying little attention to this. The mutant bear and the Warrior made a semi-circle of several dozen Snipers and Espers who had failed to retreat before reloading or recharging. The Eclipse duo pummeled these frantic enemies with disruptive melee strikes that did little damage but interrupted almost all their actions.

If the Coalition players had focused on evasion or cleansing effects during this time, they could have easily escaped, but they were far too panicked.

A pair of Espers desperately tried to heal this group from a third-story window, as well as to activate wide-scale cleansing effects, but it was no use. Jiraya combined his ~Plasma Hell Grenade~ and his ~Expanding Mass Liquid Rounds~ to create a ~Expanding Mass Plasma Grenade~. This took much longer to charge than either ability on its own, but when he hurled it through the window at the floor with the enemy Espers, it worked exactly as he intended!

Screams came from inside as the grenade exploded, covering every surface with super-hot plasma that grew far heavier with every heartbeat, eventually crumbling the entire floor and partially collapsing the building!

At that point, there were so many crowd control abilities on the few dozen Coalition players that ThreeDog switched to pure DPS and sent one ~Earthquake Slam~ after another into the tightly packed group, shaving off huge chunks of HP with every attack.

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----Part 4 ---

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In less than a minute, the two Eclipse players had destroyed a huge portion of the enemy's DPS support, allowing their Spartan guild allies to attack the enemy healers and tanks without worrying about being attacked at long range by focused DPS.

For their part, the Spartans were terribly efficient. They were divided into squads of Snipers and Warriors with a simple, effective strategy: the Warrior kept enemies crowd-controlled while the Sniper charged up a burst damage ability. Once the skill had charged, the Warrior used a stun or stoning ability, allowing the Sniper to easily kill them.

It was a very difficult combination to learn in a way that would be effective against other players—but the Spartans had mastered it, and it made them horrifically effective.

The fight didn't last long. The enemy guild lost almost half its players in the first few minutes and then withdrew to avoid further loss.

ThreeDog and Jiraya were happy! This was their first time participating in PvP, and they'd been very effective.

Jiraya said, "Well done, man! We crushed them! I hope Apophis gives us a reward for all that. We definitely deserve it... We've been playing non-stop for two days!"

ThreeDog smiled. "Hah. I don't think we should count on it too much. From the few tweetsr messages I've seen, Apophis is even crazier than Zeus. He's apparently single-handedly attacking Zelda—you know, from Hyrule—and a bunch of her elite escort players in Nokful."

Jiraya laughed. "Haha! This guy's really insane if he'd do something like that! Come on, let's go talk to Zeus. We still have to finish the mission."

When Jiraya and ThreeDog found Zeus, they were shocked at what they saw!

Zeus was covered from head to toe in entrails. His beard was gray, but his hair was now stained a bloody red. Zeus was talking with the deputy head of the Spartan guild, a beautiful, brown-skinned Warrior named Hera.

When the pair approached, Zeus interrupted Hera and said, "Congratulations to both of you! I heard you killed at least ten players each. If you wished, you could apply for the Spartan guild! We offer an excellent salary, you know!

ThreeDog answered, "Thank you very much, but we've already made the choice to remain with Apophis, sorry. We're here to learn if you'll honor what we asked of you."

Zeus gave a light smile. "I'm sorry, but Spartan has its own agenda. If we allied with Eclipse, we'd become pariahs among every other guild—far more than simply opposing the Coalition, as we currently do, due to our vulnerable trade and mining concessions with the Federation. Sorry, but we can't risk anything more right now."

ThreeDog and Jiraya were very disappointed, and the latter began to respond—

A violent shock wave hit them, leveling several buildings around them, cracking the ground, and damaging them for 10% of their HP!

And when both staggered back to their feet, a bright light blinded them for a moment.

Zeus also rose to his feet. "What is this? It comes... from the north."