Astral Clone

Ignatius frowned in response to Ozyrus's oddly cheerful words.

'He intends to help me kill the boss?' Ignatius thought to himself. 'That doesn't really match the picture of him I've been building in my head. However… it's likely that he doesn't want me to be resentful or distracted by being so close to the boss and potentially losing. The sooner this boss dies, the more quickly I can unlock the major checkpoint and then be free to leave the Eternal Tower.'

After thinking this, Ignatius nodded. "Very well. If you're willing to offer your assistance, then I'll gratefully accept it. What class are you, anyway?"

A look of distaste crossed Ozyrus's face. "Astrologer," he said. "Though I don't enjoy all this fighting, if I tell you the truth. Of all the wonders this man-made world has to offer, I'll never understand why ordinary people are so obsessed with fighting and killing monsters."

Ignatius shrugged. "That's what you do in most RPGs," he said. "If you wanted to live forever in a world that wasn't filled with people who wanted to fight, maybe you should've waited for some other game to come out using the same tech."

Ozyrus laughed. "Now I know for certain that you have no idea of how all of this works. That's alright. There never 'will' be another simulated world like this one, my dear Ignatius. I am quite confident in that."

This made Ignatius feel uneasy, and he once more wondered whether Ozyrus was the person he'd been sent back in time to stop, the person who would fuse with Path of the Immortal's AI to form the being which would call itself God.

But there was no way he could act on that suspicion now, so he set the worry aside and focused on Ozyrus's next action, which was quite surprising.

The Revenant opened his inventory screen—which would appear blank to everyone else, unless he made it public—and equipped a staff from it.

The design of this weapon was quite familiar. It matched Ignatius's own equipped gauntlets.

"You've got Sarexia's Staff!" Ignatius exclaimed. "Then you used the same exploit that I did in the early story mission."

"Yes," Ozyrus said mildly. "Thank you very much for showing me how to do it. Of course, you weren't aware that you were doing so. And, in fact, it took me several replays of the game logs before I understood exactly what you'd done and why it worked. But once I unlocked the puzzle, I returned to the rest of my allies and informed them of the method."

Ignatius nodded in understanding. So now all the Revenants would have their own versions of his own Sarexia's Gauntlets. They'd all started with an incredibly powerful weapon, which would allow them to climb the Eternal Tower much faster than everyone else—if that was their goal.

And they were able to do this because he had accidentally revealed the technique.

How much of an effect would this have on the current timeline?

"Well?" Ozyrus asked, interrupting Ignatius's thoughts. "The Hunger Clock is still ticking. Are we going to kill this boss or not?"

Ignatius forced himself to look calm, not showing the turmoil and worry he was actually feeling. "Of course. I'll lead the way. I do really wish you hadn't knocked my companion out, though."

Ozyrus didn't apologize. He merely equipped a few more pieces of gear, making himself look much more like the Astrologer he was supposed to be, and then followed a short distance behind Ignatius as the Monk led the way through the crumbled wall of the City of Stomrus.

As an Astrologer, Ozyrus would have access to some incredibly powerful skills. Some of them were even stronger than the most potent Wizard skills which were currently available.

He'd also have access to some combat summons which might be very useful—though, at such a low level, these all needed to be summoned in combat itself, rather than beforehand, like a Necromancer's skeletons. They'd only last a short while.

The main weakness of the Astrologer class was that most of its skills had very long casting times and could be easily interrupted. Though they could equip a lot of Skill Gems which were common to all Intelligence-based classes, their class wasn't based around throwing fireballs and lightning bolts in the same way the Wizard class was.

Ozyrus could add an enormous amount of DPS and utility to the party, but Ignatius would need to keep him out of harm's way for any of that to happen. There was one additional encounter on the way to their destination, but the addition of a second actual player with a fully powered Sarexia's weapon would make it almost trivial.

They first came to a portion of the city where several buildings had been crushed by some enormous force that was now absent.

Pools of glowing silver-white liquid lay everywhere in this area, each with silver skulls resting in them. When the two players approached a pool, the eyes of the skull lit up with red light, and the silver-white liquid formed into a humanoid body with six arms with the skull on top. Each of these arms ended in a metallic scythe, and the monsters spun like tops to try to slash the players multiple times in rapid succession.

And unfortunately, when a monster came close to another skull pool, that pool would also awaken into a scythe-handed monster.

Ignatius and Ozyrus carefully selected the first pool to awaken, the one which was positioned in such a location that it would wake as few other pools as possible right away. Ozyrus stepped back and started to cast one of the early game Astrologer skills, [✧Astral Clone].

Ignatius had to defend them both against three enemies at once by the time Ozyrus finally finished casting. At this time, a particle of starlight descended into one of the enemies and then burst out again, stealing a huge chunk of the targeted enemy's HP and stats and then forming into a smaller copy of it.

The Astral Clone rapidly dealt small amounts of damage to each of the three enemies, distracting them long enough for Ignatius to destroy them.

As he did so, the deaths of these monsters caused several more to awaken, and Ozyrus began casting a skill which created a huge AoE where time moved more slowly for enemies, spreading out from the Astrologer's location.

It once more took a long time for the field to spread far enough to be useful, but Ignatius and the Astral Clone kept the enemies occupied until they were standing in the AoE. At that point, their spinning blades were incredibly easy for Ignatius to parry, and he didn't take a single additional point of damage for the rest of the fight.

At the end of it all, the two players restored a bit of their HP and their Hunger Clock, then continued with their new pet to the center of the city, where the first boss was waiting.