Dave's [Aura] melted the frost from his avatar and returned him to full mobility. He strafed around the queen, punching at her and dodging the swings of her ice-scepter.

Yelling out, the queen shot a burst of frost at Dave. He leaned forward and raised both gauntlets to block the ice blast. But the force of the attack still pushed him back, his feet skidding across the floor and his gauntlets steaming.

Lone shot a [Penetrating Arrow] at the queen, Staggering her. Dave used the opportunity to close the distance to the queen.

Dave punched up with [Rising Dragon], launching the queen up and backward. He cast [Spectral Skull] and sent the four bombs at the queen then detonated them with a snap of his fingers, sending her sprawling across the ground.

From her knees the queen smashed the base of her scepter on the ground. A vortex swirled and acc.u.mulated into the shape of a knight, brother to the knights that lined the stairway.

Dave Inspected the soldier,

Venhime Royal Knight

Level: 100

Damage : 3,000 -3,500

HP : 30,000

MA: 2,000

DN: 2,000

A frozen statue of an old Royal Knight, sworn to safeguard their queen no matter what, in their loyalty the will follow her to the depths of h.e.l.l.

Dave rushed toward the queen as she got to her feet, "Lone take out the ice soldier!"

He smashed a fist into the queen's stomach, staggering her.

Ramp-up activated!

A miniature twister of fire surrounded Dave's gauntlets. His [Aura] surged out adding to the conflagration. He spun into [Infernal Tornado], nuking the ice queen with huge damage values. Suddenly, the flames around his gauntlets went from bright red to blue-white. He felt a ma.s.sive increase in heat and hoped it meant an increase in damage output too. A notification flashed up:

Gauntlets of the Stalwart Fully unlocked!

New Skill unlocked:

[Dragon Kick] a flying-jump kick knocking back enemies and doing 100% of the base damage. A successful attack conjures a fiery phantasmal dragon that does an additional 100% base damage in Fire Damage.

New Skill Unlocked:

[Advancing Dragon] Explode with the might of a dragon, targeting multiple enemies at once with a series of rapid attacks. The attacks cannot be nullified with evasion or escape Skills. Each attack does 100% of the Sworn Stalwart gauntlets base damage.

5 Minuts cooldown

Unlocked:

[Fist-Fighting Style] you can now train your fist-fighting. Every additional level increases fist-weapon damage by 5% (pa.s.sive).

Unlocked:

[Dragon Awakens] instantly resets your Sworn Stalwart skills. The user enters a fugue state in which all learned fist skills are merged and then used in one fist-fighting combo attack. [Awakened Dragon] has a two hour cooldown period. The skills used during an [Awakened Dragon] attack will individually have an extended, 200% cooldown period.

An evil smirk appeared on Dave's face as he skimmed through the newly available Skills. He sprinted toward the queen and activated [Dragon Kick], leaping into a flying-kick attack that struck like a homerun. The attack sent the queen flying across the room until she hit one of the pillars with a crunching sound.

[-18,258]

Dave used [Advancing Dragon] to teleport his avatar, swinging at her head with a claw-hand. The queen ducked under the attack. Dave kneed her in the abdomen and spun back, striking her ribs with his elbow. The gauntlet runes had procced and the queen was under [Poison] and [Shock] status effects, so he finished the combo off with a roundhouse kick that sent the queen sprawling to the floor once again.

"Holy s.h.i.+t! When did you learn kung-fu?" Lone had just finished off the ice soldier.

"Just now. You ain't seen nothing yet, these gauntlets are OP!"

"Well, duh, they dropped from a level 750 mob." She nocked and fired [Bombarda] arrow at the queen.

Dave dashed toward the queen and repeated the same combination of attacks as earlier. He started with [Advancing Dragon], then added [Rising Dragon]. His fist took on the aspect of a dragon and curved up in a flaming uppercut, sending the queen flying through the air in a blast of fire. Dave wire-fu jumped in pursuit of the queen and used [Infernal Tornado] on her in mid-flight. He jumped again while in mid-air using [Dragon Kick]; flipping over into a downward attack, his heel slammed into the queen from above like an axe. An Eastern dragon made of fire materialized near the ceiling. Opening its maw, it dove down and engulfed the queen. Cratering the ground around her on impact, it exploded into an inferno. The queen bounced when she struck the ground, helpless, battered and critically low on HP. A single Damage value for the combo appeared above the queen.

[-150,898]

"You just used those skills, cheater! I call hacks!"

"HA!" Dave laughed at Lone's comment. "[Dragon Awakens] lets me reset the cooldowns on my gauntlet Skills then use them in a single combo. The only drawback is after using them with that way all the cooldown timers are doubled."

Dave approached the fallen queen, her HP was at less than 10%.

The queen stood and slammed the tip of her scepter to the ground. A wave of freezing cold washed over the room, ten ice soldiers materialized in front of her.

"d.a.m.n!" Dave cursed.

The addition of the soldiers greatly increased the difficulty of the fight. Dave couldn't afford to ignore them and just go for the queen, they might attack and kill Lone which would mean failing her quest.

"Lone, play it safe, hang back and let me handle these guys."

"Yeah, about that. I think we are screwed."

Dave became aware of movement behind him. He turned, the frozen knights on the stairs had reanimated and were rapidly making their way toward Dave and Lone.

"s.h.i.+t!"

"Stop attacking my queen!" Jura struggled furiously against the ice that held him to the wall, trying to free himself. His name-tag was the lurid red of a hostile.

The queen waved her scepter and a magic circle materialized, ice shards began shooting at Dave rapidly.

"Incoming!"

Dave rolled away from the first frozen spikes, he came to his feet and ran from the continuous stream of projectriles. The queen adjusted her aim, tracking Dave's movements as he tried to use the soldiers as cover and let them soak up the damage. But the ice shards simply penetrated their bodies harmlessly. Then the queen's line of fire swept across Lone, she had to duck away then use [Blink] when ice soldiers managed to maneuver around and flank her.

Between the queen's ice shards and the royal ice knights Lone and Dave were soon backed across and into one of the corners.

"Dave, can you use the [Demon Maw] Skill? Or one of your other skills that deal flat damage?"

"No. [Demon Maw] has a 10% chance to work on boss monsters, [Call of Chaos] needs open s.p.a.ce and [Ray of Flames] is still on cooldown," Dave answered.

"I can use [Ice Dome] to protect myself, while you kill her. The soldiers will probably ignore me and go after you anyway, you have the highest threat value."

"Alright, sounds like a working plan," Dave said.

Just as he was about to use [Immortal apparition] to teleport himself close to the queen he heard a commotion coming from the stairway and a head made of ice flew past Dave and hit one of the surrounding knights.

Dave looked at the stairway and saw the trolls fighting ice knights. One of the trolls grabbed a knight by the arm and repeatedly swung him back and forth into the ground while a second troll watched. Shaking his head in disapproval, the second troll grabbed the same knight by the ankle and repeated the smas.h.i.+ng move. The other troll nodded and hooted in understanding.

"Are they trying to imitate Drahma's Hulk-style smash?" Lone said.

"I think so, look at Red-Mane." Dave said.

The red-maned troll power-pressed a knight over his head then slammed the struggling figure down across his knee, breaking his hapless victim in two. Another troll swung an ice club like he was teeing-off on the golf range, shattering the broken knight's head into a spray of ice particles. With raw power the trolls broke through the ice knights and joined the fight on the boss floor.

Lone I will use [Double Edge] on the queen, dodge it with your [Blink],"

"The fluffies are going to get hurt!" Lone said.

"Don't worry, I will try to get enough distance so the trolls aren't in the AoE."

Dave used [Immortal Apparition] and appeared next to the queen, he used [Double Edge] and [Vertical Slash] removing a good portion of her HP and the HP of the knights around her. He followed up with more hits on the queen. Just as he was about to land what would have been the finis.h.i.+ng blow, Dave's point of view changed to the third person. Another cutscene had taken over.

"d.a.m.nit! That's bulls.h.i.+t!"

"Another cutscene?" Lone said "Oh Jura is freed! I hope this isn't a two-staged combat."

Jura had broken through the ice, he ran toward the draugr who was about to kill the queen and pushed her out of the way, taking Dave's fist attack to his chest.

"Dave! You shouldn't hit old people!" Lone had jokes for the draugr.

"Hey, I didn't do that! It was the cutscene!" he protested.

Jura's body rolled across the room and fell, his chest caved in.

The queen stopped, startled, the redness of her eyes disappeared and changed back to sky-blue color.

"Jura!" the queen shouted. She ran to the old man and knelt down, taking him in her arms.

The cutscene ended. All the trolls and soldiers disappeared from the room, leaving only Lone, Dave, the queen and the old man, Jura, who was taking his last breaths.

Dave frowned, but seeing the queen's name-tag change to green, didn't say anything.

"My Legacy quest updated," Lone said, "It's in the final stages now," Lone approached the queen.

"Queen Nashandra, what happened?" Lone asked.

Ignoring the archer the Ice Queen placed a hand on Jura's exposed ribs, frost gathered.

"Don't concern yourself majesty…. I have fulfilled my duty, it is my time." Jura went into a fit of coughing, blood coming from his mouth.

The queen stood, grasping her scepter she whirled on Dave, her name turned from green to deadly red.

"d.a.m.ned undead!" the queen raised her scepter toward Dave, "You caused this!"

Dave thought something was off, he was certain he'd almost beaten the queen, she should be close to the end of her HP. But ice was gathering around her much faster and more powerfully than before, even Dave's [Aura] flickered like a candle in high winds, threatening to snuff out. Dave inspected the queen again:

Ice Queen Nashandra

Level: 600

Tier: Mythic

Danger Level: ☠☠☠☠

Damage: 300,000-350,000

HP: 1,500,000

MA: 150,000

DN: 150,000

Skills:

[Absolute Zero] Pa.s.sively saps heat from the atmosphere, causing a Freeze status effect. Frozen targets will take 200% increased Damage from the first attack that hits. All of the ice queen's spells shorten the time it takes to Freeze her enemies.

[Ice Spear Barrage] creates a magic circle that conjures 30 ice shard projectiles in rapid succession. Each ice shard does 10,000 ice damage.

[Ring of Frost] freezes an area with a 10 meter radius rooting all targets within. Targets take 120,000 ice damage.

[Ice Sovereign] the queen periodically summons an ice soldier to battle for her.

Lore:

Nashandra, Queen of Venhime, the lost Kingdom of Ice.

A mighty ruler that lost her powers when the the Black Skull Order captured her. The Queen made herself untouchable when she spelled herself inside the Icy Sarcophagus to foil the order, but they laid a spell-trap on the floor around her. If the queen is freed and steps on it, she will lose her sanity and become a raging killing-machine. Now having been freed from the hands of the Black Skull Order, the queen is ready to rebuild her kingdom.

"Ahhh c.r.a.p."