100\% Drop Rate: My Special Ability is Perfect Replication

At some point Thalia and Greg joined them. She followed him like a shadow and set traps around the knights as they increased.

They fed Faust more easy kills.

Faust also got to finally see how the Interrupt Skill worked.

A skill that, as long as timed properly, could stop you mid attack was just unfair. And in Thalia’s hands was even more terrifying. She retreated to a safe distance and studied the knights and how they moved, interrupting at critical moments and destroying advantages.

Faust began to feel bad for the knights as more skilled players joined. The Puppet Knights were much better fighters. Also a better team. But skills and Schemas broke that and made you play a new game.

[You have killed six "Puppet Knight" and gained 6 memory fragments.]

The battlefield opened up and spread. Faust walked between twenty skeletons and fifteen ghosts with Nirvana close behind him.

Ahead the crimson-face Puppet Knight captain came. Behind him were three puppets dressed in white robes wearing elaborate headdresses. Faust guessed those were the mages. In front of the captain were six Puppet Knights all wielding pikes.

Spells immediately began to rain down on the captain and his retinue. Faust cursed and quickly casted heavy fireball.

But the Puppet mages connected their hands and glowed white, erecting a strange blocky shield around them.

BOOM!

The spells crashed down fruitlessly against the shield, but the knights weren’t done

The crimson masked knight captain raised its sword and stabbed the white barrier around them.

Its sword glowed blood red.

"Argh!" Faust flinched and grabbed his stomach. It felt like he had just been stabbed.

"Faust!" Nirvana cried, grabbing his shoulders.

All around them mages cried out and fell. Some just died straight up. The other players looked around in confusion, but a few understood what happened.

"Some kind of revenge strike?" Faust groaned.

He didn’t feel close to death, more like he had taken a sudden unexpected blow to the stomach, so the skill wasn’t unstoppable. Maybe it scaled based on the constitution of the targets.

Mages are screwed against this guy then.

Faust pushed through the pain smiling. Let’s see what this has to offer.

The six knights lowered their pikes and engaged Nirvana’s ghosts.

Faust touched the ground and it surged and threw the six knights aside. He marched up to the captain calmly.

He glanced at the stream and he was front and center now.

"Let’s put on a good show then."

The knight captain came at him slowly. His greatsword was held low at his hip. The coat over its armor fluttered in the cool sharp winds born from the battlefield.

Faust frowned. He slowed down and tried to gauge what was about to happen, but the knight had no stance.

Appraise.

[Knight Puppet Captain]

[Level: 7]

[Combat Power: 900]

High strength and constitution stats, likely a bit above mine. But my speed and magic are far above.

Then it shot forward suddenly.

Huh?!

Faust sidestepped the stab, but the puppet’s hips spun completely around for a heavy slash. The wind roared along steel. Faust fell back, dodging the blade and rolling away.

He kept his axe in front of him and frowned. That was faster than he expected. It looked like the knight was being pulled by the blade.

Growth.

His strength increased as he prepared to meet the knight again.

The captain exploded forward. Their weapons clashed heavily, creating a burst of air around them.

He twisted his axe and pushed the greatsword aside, then he kicked the leg hard enough to dent metal.

But the leg barely bent sideways.

"Strong," Faust nodded.

The knight performed a weird shoulder check and threw Faust aside. The strength of the strike staggered him and from then he was on the defensive.

The knight’s swords came from unpredictable angles with blurring speed. Glowing red like a bloody streak. Its limbs bent and twisted each time it even got into a bad angle.

Each strike was pulled towards Faust like a blood magnet.

It’s luring me into striking when I think it’s open.

Ghosts swam in, surrounding the captain, but they were slashed apart in seconds. Like the knights, ghosts could regenerate, but they could only take so much damage.

But that was just a distraction.

Nirvana flew in and transformed back wielding her mage staff. Green, phosphorus energy poured from it as she used the Wailing Whip skill.

She lashed the staff forward as a whip formed from screaming ghostly faces formed. The knight captain raised his sword to block the whip, which just phased through and struck the captain’s chest.

The knight was briefly stunned by the attack. Faust was moving in before he even thought to exploit the advantage.

He brought the axe down on the puppet’s back. Steel screamed. Sparks flashed in Faust’s eyes. But the injury to the armor was superficial at best.

Instead of struggling to pull out his axe, Faust jumped back—just as the puppet’s elbow turned to disembowel him—and just summoned the weapon into his hand with a flash of light.

The captain rose slowly and jagged gash in its armor close. This one likely had way more hp than the others.

But its fate was already sealed.

As the captain shuddered, adapting to their style, Faust said to Nirvana. "I’m king now. All summons are pawns. Use your whip at a distance."

So the match began. Faust and the puppet traded heavy blows with him focused on defence. The ghosts and skeletons threw themselves at the knight to slow it down and Faust slashed through its armor.

He avoided using Annihilation, because of the revenge skill the knight captain had.

But every skill flashed here. Thalia joined the fight with an Interrupt, so Faust entered a chain of attacks. Silver and black sparks filled the air as skills slashed and cleaved into the dense armor of the knight.

The knight staggered away briefly. Coat and armor ruined. Weakly, it raised its sword, but Faust had already claimed the left arm and one of Nirvana’s ghosts almost took the other.

Faust finished the fight by cutting the knight captain in half.

He stretched his fingers, which still shook from parrying those heavy blows and smiled.

"Okay now i want to meet their owner."

[You have killed a "Puppet Knight Captain" and gained 1 memory.]