Guild Wars
chapter-852

Immediately, Ghost was sent back to his previous state, with his hands in his pocket and his words coming out slowly.

"And against a powerful Time element users like you-"

Ghost suddenly stopped as his eyes widened. Due to the Time Reversal, he did not remember his previous actions, obviously. He hadn't remembered what he said, but that did not ring true for Orochi, who was immune to the effects of the Time Reversal.

So before Ghost could fall into an endless loop, Orochi injected his memories into his host, which was why he had stopped midway. Right now, Ghostpro was looking at Shadowheart as if he had met his archenemy.

"Time Reversal, huh…" He muttered deeply, closing his eyes as he remained in his position.

Shadowheart simply watch on calmly with a slight smile, but inwardly, he was cursing. He had wanted to test his Bloodline Energy consumption against Ghost, someone on the same level as himself, but it turned out the price was exorbitant!

Just sending Ghost back by a few seconds had drained almost 30% of his total Bloodline Energy!

It should be noted that against those elementals from the elemental group, Shadowheart had barely used 1% to use time abilities on them and only about 30% to use Nihil on all of them.

Ghost was just one guy.

Then again, objectively speaking, Ghost could have easily killed all of those fellows, meaning his power rating was far higher than their entire group, so it made sense.

And similar to what had happened between Pedro and The Showman, they essentially had the same bloodline. As such, Ghost's defenses to abilities from his own bloodline - passively - was the highest.

It was pretty much the same reason why Ghost's poison abilities would never work on Shadowheart, because he too had such passive defenses. Of course, neither had total immunity to the other, just about 50% resistance.

Shadowheart wasn't going to bother trying to use Nihil nor Existence on Ghost. It was likely he would end up in an ugly tug of war with him in terms of burning Bloodline Energy, which was something he absolutely did not want to do.

Existence was Shadowheart's ability to affect the 'existence' of living beings. He could either grant them eternity or remove it, causing his target to be Thanos-wiped from reality and replenishing his internal stock.

Nihil was the flip side of this ability. It affected the 'existence' of non-living things and objects, allowing him to either make it eternal or making it such that it never existed before.

As such, Shadowheart was left with his ability to control time itself to battle Ghost. He could of course use his OP Divine Class, but Ghost's Classmaster Divine Class was basically a bane for all class users.

Ghost opened his eyes and a gleam shone in them. He suddenly took to the air with the power of the seventh head of Orochi and flew towards the sky, away from what he assumed to be Shadowheart's range.

Shadowheart himself frowned deeply as he wondered what Ghost was up to. However, he soon got his answer as his face warped, shocked that Ghost would use such a basic strategy.

That's right, Orochi's inheritor had decided to go for a battle of attrition!

As he floated in the air, he began swinging his hands down, firing balls of flame and huge chunks of deadly ice downwards towards the arena. The number was truly frightening, and Shadowheart's face became black.

Shadowheart frowned and set up an invisible barrier around him made of Nihil power. All the fireballs and ice chunks that should have crashed down on him turned into ashes the moment they touched it, becoming non-existent.

Shadowheart's forehead creased. Doing this barely consumed Bloodline Energy for him because these attacks, although created from Bloodline Energy, were not tainted with bloodline power once they left Ghost's body.

In essence, they were basically just fireballs and ice chunks, and negating such simply objects was barely a channeling for Shadowheart.

However, on the flip side, Ghost too was barely even spending decimal points of Bloodline Energy as he had long trained with his three offensive abilities from Orochi's first three heads, so as to minimize his consumption.

So for the next interval of time, the two remained in such a situation, exchanging fatal blows of such nature as their Bloodline Energy drained slowly. Even though it recovered in real time, the expenditure - while tiny and negligible per attack - was colossal given the sheer amounts of attacks being released.

Shadowheart began to sweat as he contracted the scope of his Nihil barrier. Initially, he had used it to cover the entire arena in order to prevent his 'stepping space' from being destroyed.

It wasn't that he couldn't fly, but it would require input from his class which he was reluctant to use, not to mention flight would not grant any real advantages to a Time user like him.

He contracted his Nihil barrier more and more until it only covered his body. Ghost used this chance to ravage the stage and leave barely a single point of flooring for Shadowheart to step on, the rest ending up destroyed, leaving him on a damaged crater.

Ghost was unrelenting, also narrowing the scope of his attacks to remain on Shadowheart's singular position after dealing with the rest of the arena. Seeing this, Shadowheart could only sigh deeply and utilize his class to alleviate the problem, which he knew would be like drinking poison to quench his thirst.

Void of Existence!

Magical Nihil!

Entropy!

｢Void of Existence – Active skill

Effect: Activate this skill to spread a domain around 10 kilometers surrounding the user that suppresses all forms of life that do not have either the <Eternal Source> passive skill or do not possess an aspect of Eternity. All stats reduced by 99% and all enemies suffer from a 3 Rank Suppression.

Duration: 10 minutes

Cooldown: 1 day.｣

｢Magical Nihil – Active skill

Effect: Activate this skill to spread a domain around 10 kilometers around the user that negates all forms of spellcasting for all types of magic. The silence is 100% effective on all Legendary and below classes, as well as all entities below the Rank of the user. At the Same Rank, whether class or level, it has a 50% suppression on spellcasting.

Duration: 1 hour

Cooldown: 1 day.｣

｢Entropy – Active skill

Effect: Where order is effected, chaos will be dispersed. Activate this skill to grant all your spells and skills positive entropic consequences that double their effective power.

Duration: 5 minutes

Cooldown: 1 hour.｣

The two control skills he used first actively buffeted Ghost. The first reduced his power and the second nerfed his ability. Since bloodlines were considered 'abilities' and his current bombardment was categorized under spellcasting, it affected his power directly.

As for the last one, it was done in order to take advantage of its effect in battle. Just as Shadowheart was about to use more skills from his repertoire, Ghost's calm face broke into a smile as his eyes shone.

"Finally!

Immediately, the reason why Shadowheart was reluctant to go down this path became apparent when Ghost counterattacked.

Anti-Class Domain!

Skill Copy!

Provisional Class!

｢Anti-Class Domain – Passive skill

Effect: A domain forms around the user that covers an Area Zone, in which all other classes below the Rank of this one are automatically silenced and weakened by 90%, while classes at the same rank are weakened by 30%.｣

｢Skill Copy – Active skill

Effect: When another player or NPC uses any skill, you can immediately copy it and permanently add it to your roster. It still has the same costs and limitations as the original, and also the same power.

Note: Skills below the Rank of this class can be copied 100%. Skills at the Rank of this class are a case-by-case basis.

Cooldown: 10 minutes.｣

｢Provisional Class – Active skill

Effect: The Classmaster is the archetype and combination of all classes. Upon activating this skill, the Classmaster can temporarily adopt the nature of any known class below the Divine Rank as well as its basic skills and stats.

Duration: 30 minutes

Cooldown: 1 hour.｣

First, Ghost activated his feared Anti-Class Domain which directly suppressed Shadowheart by 30%. While it was not as terrible as Shadowheart's own skill, one had a timer and one was permanent as long as Ghost wanted it to be.

After that, he used Skill Copy and was lucky enough to succeed, using the Magical Nihil on Shadowheart. Unlike Ghost, who was disturbed slightly, Shadowheart almost coughed blood when the suppression hit him. As a magical class user, losing 50% of his spellcasting power was a severe loss.

However, all of this was predicted by Shadowheart and in the next second, he activated his most powerful class skill, Omni Beam Strike!

｢Omni-Beam Strike – Active skill

Effect: Rise into the air and fire a beam of all elemental energy that strike the ground and spreads over an Area Zone, dealing 1000% omni-damage to all enemies within range.

Cooldown: 1 day｣

Immediately, Shadowheart flew in the sky higher than Ghost and began charging a giant energy beam filled with a multicolored light of all the elements. He then fired it downwards, engulfing the entire Arena realm in a semicircle explosion that tire the land apart.

It even reached where Ghost was airborne, rushing towards the airborne fellow with utter menace. With his lowered stats and the suppression he was suffering, it would be a one hit kill even if he tried to use Bide or reflected the damage.

This was Shadowheart's gambit!

However, Ghost still had one trick up his sleeve. His final skill, Provisional Class!

Immediately he cycled through all the Legendary classes he knew of selected one he remembered from his own Class Up selection.

Dragon King - Legendary Class!

Since he had little time to check out the other skills of this class, he quickly activated the one he was targeting from the beginning but needed the right time to activate it.

Dragon Form!

｢Dragon Form (Rank 4) – Active skill

Effect: Assume your True Dragon Form temporarily.

Duration: 20 minutes.

Cooldown: 16 hours.｣

Immediately, Ghostpro's body exploded in size, growing exponentially as his dark skin became black scales, his legs swelling in size and most horrifically, his head splitting into eight different lumps that expanded in size.

By the time he was done, he had gone from a handsome young man into an eight-headed behemoth.

With a potent roar from all eight heads, Orochi announced his presence in the mortal realm!

At this time, Shadowheart's attack struck over. However, Orochi simply watched it with disdain before using his invincibility and reflect ability at full power. Despite the suppression Ghostpro was under, it barely affected Orochi due to his higher State of Being and power.

If it weren't for the fact that Shadowheart's skills were Divine skills from a Divine Class, Orochi would have easily dispelled them. As it were, it could only reduce their effect, like how a control skill would be weakened when used against a boss character.

When the Omni Beam struck Orochi, the Dragon was blown back a few meters and had cracks all over its body. Despite using invincibility, it was still damaged because no matter how you put it, it was spawned by mimicking a Legendary class.

Still, it clung to life and roared with indignation. Its eyes still gleamed with superiority as it reflected the damage back twofold, which struck Shadowheart immediately.

Shadowheart attempted to use Nihil, but it was ineffective on a fellow God Serpent's attack, especially when done by the God Serpent itself. Maybe if Ouroboros was out and able to direct the flow of battle, it would have turned into a stalemate.

As it were, Shadowheart was down one level thanks to Ghostpro's annoying class abilities, forcing him to suffer the metaphysical attack.

After all, what Ghostpro reflected was not the attack itself, but the damage from it, especially in the case of class based skills like this.