Chapter 146 - 146: Vampiric Strikes

When Ezekiel saw that his friends were staring at him as if he had just nuked them he stood up to check what had happened.

They described the cyclone of mana and the unsettling image of him being surrounded by a dense smog that radiated from his body.

He laughed it off and explained that he had possibly learned of a way to cultivate in that game the way cultivation existed in other game worlds as well as popular novels.

"Look I'll show you, Layla what is your strength at?"

She had to check her panel again due to not being used to the update quite yet and when she did she seemed unsatisfied.

"F plus, you know the effort of leveling up feels like it lost some of it's impact after that update."

"So your main combat stat is similar to my main combat stat, specifically my intelligence was graded at F plus. After I broke through in my cultivation my physical stats all went up by one rank so my strength is currently at a flat F."

This seemed to catch their attention while he explained that the cultivation only affected his physical stats with his mana core growing stronger as a byproduct.

"Well want to take some of the frontline? It sounds like you might be able to do so now right?"

Ezekiel chuckled to himself as he thought about the number of enemies he had used as practice dummies just to learn the Slash and Rend skills.

"Yeah sure, I will take point and you can watch my back while I test out a few skills that I got from Amaru."

~

With Ezekiel in the vanguard position the others could see how much he had actually improved the same way he had watched them to observe their improvements.

The first thing to notice was the simple fact that he was nearly as fast as Shade the assassin, each of his own inferior death marks left significant damage on the foes he slashed and when they noticed that his had a red glow in addition to the glow of his normal mana enhancements the trio got witness an entirely new set of skills.

Some players had developed a form of passive regeneration using life mana to create a sustained healing aura around their body but this was not what Ezekiel was doing.

Each strike gave his health bar a bump in the remaining value, each slash and each bleed effect slowly refilled his health bar making it clear he had found a way to gain lifesteal.

They had only seen Ezekiel fight like a mage till this point, sometimes using his mana enhanced physical skills to save himself from a dangerous enemy that got too close but to see him fully embrace the vanguard role was something else.

He stalked each enemy as if he knew exactly where they were and then using a skill they hadn't seen him activate in some time, Void Step, he burned a chunk of his own mana to teleport behind the enemy with a brutal strike from four blade covered limbs.

And that was the fact they had not really considered about their friend.

The wings that heavily resembled arms with clawed fingers at the joint of the wings actually worked like functional arms rather than simple a brutal slashing tool.

When he brought down his mana blade enhanced limbs it was like watching a creature suffer from a min maxed assassin build, except this wasn't an an assassin.

This was a mage that had gained some melee skills and used them like a savage animal to shocking efficacy.

His large wings were used to throw enemies off balance with razor sharp claws coated in mana that ate into their bodies even as the red coating of the lifesteal effect used their pain to restore himself.

His normal arms and even his tail were used to take advantage of those openings by slashing or piercing weak points in the body to deal critical damage.

While this was happening they would join in by first placing Layla as the primary heavyweight that would brutally knock enemies over with her extra strength added to the animalistic parries of Ezekiel.

Keith added extra damage from behind the party with his heavy sniper shots, he was even close to finally increasing his mark to the next rank!

Hope used her summoned blades to forcefully pin enemies in the ground in key places that would prevent the beasts from getting enough leverage to escape their attacks.

Finally Amaru made sure to launch periodic needles of shadowfire after finally she managed to make her shards into fully fledged needles with enough practice.

Their combined efforts made slaying enemies one by one so easy that when they finally encountered their first pack battle the plan had to change immediately.

"Seven creatures that resemble wolves with scorpion tails, if I had to guess the smaller members try to pin down the enemy by grabbing their limbs and pulling them to the ground before the largest stings them in the weak point."

Layla had experience with so many games similar to BLO that as soon as she heard the description and the number she planned the most likely strategy the creatures would use.

"Wolves are smart, they will gang up on anyone who is close to defeating a member of their group. Some of us may end up taking more damage than normal so I should probably be the one taking the brunt of their attacks."

Ezekiel spoke up with a possible way around the problem of the wolves numbers, with Hope there as healer they would have good way to take some of the heat off of their friend but this fight would still be very dangerous.

And so the plan was constructed, Ezekiel would draw aggro with as much damage as possible to keep his lifesteal up to mitigate the damage he took.

Layla would approach the closest wolf while they surrounded Ezekiel and Keith would circle around to different locations to snipe them from the shadows, during this chaos Hope would use the confusion of the wolves to spike each one against the ground with her summoned blades.

With the plan fully prepared Ezekiel enacted his part, teleporting in and slashing down on two wolves to damage them heavily before the fight even began.

As he brought his wings down like twin guillotines he immediately realized that the fight would not be going nearly the way they thought.

The first wolf did not even get a chance to react as the head was cleaved from it's body, the other he had planned on crippling with a heavy strike to the area where the shoulders and upper back connected together but he had not expected the same thing as the blade ripped through the wolf like a hot knife through butter.

Not only were the wolves caught off guard but even his allies were as well as himself, he quickly recovered however and grabbed each wolf corpse in his large wing claws to launch at the rest of the wolves like gruesome projectiles.

One wolf collided with the corpse of it's group mate while the other wolves moved out of the way, another wolf did not get away unscathed however as the stinger of the second wolf he threw struck it in the shoulder causing an injection.

With two of the seven wolves dead, two injured and three charging at him Ezekiel decided to test his luck, he launched himself forward with a beat of his wings before trying to use one of those same claws to grab the beast.

The wolf threw itself to the side and launched a tail attack at him which would have struck his chest if he didn't have Amaru.

She released a volley of small shadowfire needles that blew the stinger back from him and caused the wolf to shriek in pain.

With the wolf distracted he made another lunge at it, the large claw closing around the skull and maw of the creature before he turned back to the other wolves to throw this one as well.

Right as he threw the wolf he saw savage maw and claws trying to pounce on him, his immediate response through brutal instinct was to infuse his entire wing with void mana and meet the creature head on with a devastating slash.

The mana blade on his wing met with the snapping maw of the wolf, the beast clamping down like it's normal combat strategy screamed for it to do.

The result of this collision was the head of the beast being cleaved in half along the jaw, and with a large wolf beast body falling down on him he did the most logical thing.

He stepped to the side and looked at the remaining four.

This was when the shock apparently left his friends as he watched the largest wolf get slashed from behind by Layla and one of the wolves he injured got impaled by an arrow applying a new marking Ezekiel had not seen yet.

Hope targeted a wolf that was still getting up from being thrown like a rag doll, a blade forming in the air and stabbing through it with earth mana pinning it to the ground with an earth bind effect.

The mark applied to the precious wolf activated and with a whimper of pain the creature collapsed dead.

'Guess he ranked up his assassin's mark, I hope it is as powerful as he wanted it to be.'

With Keith able to turn his focus to another wolf he shot the one bound by Hope as the head made for an excellent critical point.

Finally he turned to the large beast with Layla as she met each attack with a powerful parry that threw the beasts attacks aside, she continued to battle the wolf with pure militaristic experience before finally dealing a killing blow.