Want to read ahead? Read for free on RoyalRoad.com
And search: MOBA System
Landen swung wildly at Ryker's chest. Ryker barely had to move, and the punch sailed through empty air. Landen swung again—wider this time—and missed just as badly. Then another, sloppier than the last. And another. The misses piled up, each one messier than the one before it.
"That form," someone in the crowd said.
"What form?"
"More like the absence of one."
Landen kept swinging into nothing. "Stop moving, will ya?"
Frustrated, he lunged, grabbed Ryker around the shoulders, and hauled himself up onto his back, raining down punches from above. They weren't pretty, but they landed.
"Get off—get OFF of me!" Ryker twisted under the weight, voice cracking somewhere between rage and panic.
Everyone—including Landen's own teammates—stared, stunned.
"To be fair," Jareth said, "he did warn us he can't throw a punch."
"Yeah, I didn't think it would be this bad," Maledic replied.
"He did so well against the simulation match, though," Veya said, almost to herself.
"Must be the avatar," Elle offered. "Has to be something with the system, right?"
"I told you," Ember said, already crossing her arms. "He's an idiot who got lucky once." She turned to leave. "This'll be over soon."
Outside the arena, the crowd had written him off. Inside it, the numbers told a different story.
With every hit that connected, the damage kept piling up. Since the stats dump, his base damage had nearly doubled, climbing from 65 points to 129. But for all the punches landing, none of them had come close to a clean critical hit yet.
"Come on. Just roll the twenty-five for me, one time," Landen muttered, throwing another wild chop.
He really needed the critical hit to do real damage. According to the system's formula, his Total Attack Damage was calculated as:
Physical Attack = 50 + (400% of Strength) + (100% of Agility)
Equipment: Basic Attack Orb +5 attack
Attribute: Strength: 12 and Agility: 2
[Critical Hit]—a 25% chance to deal an additional 200% damage.
Total Attack Damage + Critical hit = 351 points of damage.
All he needed was one clean crit.
Out of patience, Landen grabbed Ryker by the head and headbutted him.
CRACK!
The sound cut through the arena, sharp and sudden, and a bright red 350 CRIT DMG exploded into the air above Ryker's head. Landen jumped off as the force of the blow sent Ryker stumbling backward to his knees, his health bar taking a massive hit.
Ryker stayed down for a moment, stunned. Then a low hum built from his arm. He shot Landen a glare and leveled his speakers at him.
"Let's see your thick skull handle this one."
[ Resonance Pulse ]
The skill caught Landen square on the temple. A high-pitched ringing flooded his ears, and the world tilted violently.
Ryker didn't capitalize on the opening. Instead, he turned and bolted, putting whatever distance he could between them. "No way that actually hurt this much," he muttered, half to himself, half in disbelief.
Landen rubbed his head, surprised that out of every attack he'd thrown, the headbutt had done the most damage by far. He filed that away for later and refocused on the match, watching Ryker limp into the distance, his health visibly low.
I can't let him reach Level 2, Landen thought, shaking the last of the vertigo from his head.
Thanks to his speed boots, Landen had the clear speed advantage. He closed the distance in a few strides, cutting off Ryker's path. Before Ryker could react, Landen wound up and threw a desperate, lunging haymaker.
Then a shimmer crossed Landen's body, signaling a level-up. He glanced back to see that the minion wave had finally cleared on its own.
When he looked to Ryker again, the same level-up burst flooded his body as well.
This was what Landen was trying to avoid.
Shit.
Without missing a beat, Ryker activated his second skill.
[ Omni Wave ]
He slammed his fist into the ground, and a shockwave of force rippled outward in every direction.
Landen dropped to his knees, absorbing a hefty chunk of damage. It was all the opening Ryker needed—he turned and began the long walk back to base to heal.
The crowd, teammates included, fell into a heavy silence. Then came the comments.
"What did I just watch?"
"His punches couldn't break wet paper, but that headbutt—"
"That must be his special attack."
"Ryker's got 1500 HP. That one hit took over 20% of it."
Elle, Veya, and Jareth traded confused glances. But Maledic didn't move. He just watched in silence, analyzing the situation.
Amazed as everyone else was, Landen only felt the window closing on him.
Damn it. Ryker was able to hit level two—two abilities to my one passive.
"You don't have one ability. You have two," the system said.
What are you talking about?
The display flickered into view. Inside the |[ ABILITIES ]| tab, a small +1 sat beside the |[ Fist ]| tab.
Right! My secondary specialization. I forgot I even had that.
"Correct," the system replied. "Try not to forget next time."
A list of abilities, along with their tier and point value, appeared. Landen scanned it fast and picked the first B-Class three-pointer whose name caught his eye.
[ Cultivate ] (Level 1)
Channel for 5 seconds to store a Charge. Each Charge amplifies a selected attribute on your next attack. Stack up to 5 Charges — each can target the same or a different attribute.
Cost (per Charge): 2 Light Energy / 5 Soul Energy / 3 Dark Energy
Charging
Charge Time: 5 secDelay Between Charges: 2 secMax Charges: 5Decay: -1 Charge every 10 seconds without an attack
On Attack
Expends all stored Charges+40% Movement Speed for 5 secondsStarts a 20-second cooldown
Next Level: Attribute Boost per Charge
Level 1: +10% Level 2: +20% Level 3: +30% Level 4: +40% Level 5: +50%
Okay, so. [ Cultivate ] Simple concept, annoying execution. I channel for five seconds per charge, stack up to five of them, and each one slaps a ten-percent attribute boost onto my next attack. The catch? If I sit on them too long without swinging, I start bleeding charges at a rate of one every ten seconds. So it's not a buff I can just bank and forget — it's a timer the second I stop stacking. Every charge also lets me pick a different attribute, which is either incredibly flexible or a trap for people who can't commit. Probably both.
The real payoff is in the math. Five charges at level 1 gives a fifty percent increase on any attribute for one attack. The cooldown afterward is twenty seconds, which hurts, but if I'm setting up a burst window, that math gets very interesting very fast. The movement speed boost on activation is just gravy, honestly. Five seconds of forty percent, which in a real fight is the difference between walking into a counter and not being there anymore. Back in Legends of Heroes, we called that a "get out of there for free" buff. I'm choosing to believe that tracks here too.
— — —
In the time it took Ryker to recover, Landen cleared two more minion waves, downed a healing potion, and sent his courier, Sprout, scurrying back with a fresh haul—including an intermediate damage orb that added another +12 to his attack.
When Ryker returned, the lane was empty. No minions. No Landen. Just him. He stood at the edge of his tower and waited. Eventually, the minions arrived. Still no Landen. He waited for a moment longer.
He must have gone back to heal, Ryker reasoned. Seeing his chance, he stepped out from the safety of his tower to finally farm. Since the beginning, he hasn't gotten a single minion kill.
Every minion kill paid out gold. Allies standing nearby when one died still earned a cut, just a small one—around 20%. The one who landed the final blow took the full value, plus a 20% bonus on top. Ryker hadn't gotten a kill yet, but he'd been collecting that 20% off Landen's lane the whole match. It wasn't enough. He needed real gold, and that meant stepping out and earning it himself.
As he worked through the wave, he drifted toward the bushes lining the lane. A sound came from somewhere behind him—a thin whistle, almost like a pressure tank hissing as it filled. It cut off after a second, then came again. Then again, two seconds later, exactly the same. Curiosity got the better of him, and he went to check it out.
As he got closer, the bushes rattled. He stopped, realized his mistake, and tried to run.
"Wait, what—"
The words never made it out.
Landen burst out of the bush headfirst and crashed into Ryker's back.
492 CRIT DMG
Cultivate had loaded the gun. Critical Damage had pulled the trigger. This was his biggest damage yet.
Ryker stumbled into the range of Landen's tower, which swung down and swatted him away.
240 DMG
He flew back toward Landen, whose head was already lowered and waiting, and crashed into his stomach.
134 DMG
Like a ping-pong ball, he bounced right back into the tower's range.
300 DMG
He caught Ryker's skull in both hands like he was catching a ball.
"Hope you learned something today," Landen said, almost gently. "Shouldn't have checked the bush."
He slammed their heads together.
351 CRIT DMG
Ryker dropped to his knees, eyes rolling up toward the artificial sky, and went still. His body flickered and vanished. A few seconds later, the AR environment dissolved around them—the bubble popped, the stat board blinked out, and the match was over.
Ryker had forfeited.
Gasps rippled through the crowd.
Ryker didn't say a word. Too embarrassed to meet anyone's eyes, he turned and shuffled toward the tunnel, shoulders hunched, looking like a man trying to disappear into himself.
Before Landen could catch his breath, Elle barreled into him from behind, hauling herself up onto his back. "You did it! I never doubted you, not for one second."
"Liar," Jareth said. He reached over and rapped his knuckles against Landen's forehead, twice, like he was testing a door. "Your head's a rock."
"OW—hey—" Landen flinched, but Jareth had already moved on, unbothered.
"Your forehead must've leveled up since the obelisk," Veya said.
Elle caught Landen's wrist before he could rub the spot and thrust it into the air. "The winner—Team Halvek's captain—Landen Knight!"
A few people clapped out of courtesy. Though he'd won, there was more confusion in the crowd than admiration.
"Is that even allowed without an ability?"
"Pretty sure he just got carried by some fluke crit mechanic."
Slowly, the crowd began to peel away toward the exits, still arguing over what they'd just seen. And there, near the back, unmoved by any of it, stood Ember.
She hadn't left after all.
Arms crossed, jaw tight, she stared at Landen like she was searching for the trick, the loophole, the explanation that would make the scoreboard make sense again.
"Luck," she muttered. "There's no other explanation for it."
As the crowd died down, Maledic stepped up beside Landen, a hand landing on his shoulder with more weight than the gesture should have carried.
"Come with me," he said. "You need to learn how to fight."
Landen blinked, the high of the win draining out of him just enough to actually hear what was being said. "You'll train me?"
Maledic's eyes didn't leave him. "I will not let my brother fight like that again."
The celebration continued, and amid the commotion, a notification chimed inside Landen's head.
DING!
Then another.
DING!
They continued.
"Sir, you have four new notifications," the system said.
Silence.
"Sir?"
Want to read ahead? Read for free on RoyalRoad.com
And search: MOBA System