Classmancers - A MOBA Esport Story

Vol.7 Ch.22: Vanishing Phantom

SLASH

Outta nowhere, a dagger cut through Lars from behind! Nia was behind him and she gonna wreck if he doesn't act fast!

"Crap!" She gonna go for that airdrop move! I gotta get outta here!

Ok! Nia nodded to herself. She successfully infiltrated enemy territory and delivered the opening strike. The passive of her Imperial Spear boosted the damage of her abilities by 50% after landing a basic attack so it was time to end this with Izuna Drop!

Nia thrust her arms to wrap herself around the enemy. After that, she gonna leap into the air and-!? Wha!? She only caught air! The enemy disappeared!

"Eh? Wha..." Nia blinked. How? What? But, Izuna Drop is supposed to be a guaranteed follow up after the opening attack...

"Phew!" Lars exhaled after barely escaping in the nick of time. He rolled away as soon as the ambush hit him and just barely got out of the range of Nia's Izuna Drop.

"Hell yeah! Safe!" Lars pumped a fist.

"Such reaction speed!" Vincent exploded. "Did you all see that!? An instant roll after getting hit from behind! Ultra instinct at its finest! Nobody could pull off such as stunt except for the Insane Beast of the Apocalypse!"

"#JustLarsThings." Luke joked. By now, everybody got used to seeing Lars pulling off such inhuman miracles.

Not going for Izuna Drop right away was greedy. Yuel thought. Then again, landing one hit from behind and then doing Izuna is probably fast enough to catch most people off-guard. It takes a special kind of reaction monster to dodge such a play on reaction.

Lars thwarted Nia's assassination plan but the battle wasn't over yet. Nia was deep in Lars's territory so, of course, he was going to capitalize on this awesome opportunity!

"Let's rock n' roll, yo!" Lars pointed his mic-slash-pistol at Nia. From now on, the prey gonna be the predator, yo!

How? It should've hit... Nia trembled. Ever since she first started using this assassination tactic, this was the first time she failed to land the Izuna Drop after the opening attack.

Of course, it's not like she always landed Izuna Drop on everybody every time for zero effort. For example, there were times she failed to sneak up to her opponent because they were too cautious of her presence. But, whenever she successfully got to her opponent's back while in stealth - it was over. Nia started with an opening basic attack from behind to trigger the damage boost of Imperial Lance and then wrapped things up with an Izuna Drop that always landed without an accident.

In fact, even landing two strikes before Izuna Drop usually worked. Nia only stopped doing that after some Diamond rank opponents started dodged it recently. It became risky to rely on a setup that only worked 90% of the time so she opted for the one that worked 100%. At least, it should've worked 100%...

Was this setup dodgeable this entire time? That's... Nia's entire life was a lie. She has executed this setup at least a hundred times by now. So, as turned out, in each of these times her opponent could've easily countered her with a simple Dodge Roll? No way...

BLING

"Ah!" Nia jumped. A sound note struck her. The commentator Pirate was shooting fiery commentary at her!

Bad. Bad. Bad! What do I do!? Nia never imagined her setup could be countered like this. What should she do in this alien scenario? This situation was yikes through and through.

Thanks to this failure, Nia found herself deep in enemy territory at her opponent's gunpoint. Her opponent was a marksman who successfully created some distance between them. With all of that in mind, should she try attacking anyway? No way. She'll die.