Dusk (BL Light Novel)

By the time we reached Outpost 13, the entrance to the “Fallen Aerial Fortress of the Ancient Landlord”—a.k.a. the farming dungeon—was already swarming with Jeopa players. They were huddled around, either forming parties or preparing to enter, moving about in that usual chaotic but oddly cheerful way. Every now and then, speech bubbles full of gibberish—Jeopa language—popped up, and they tossed social motions back and forth like friends at a picnic.
Unfortunately, that peace was about to end.

The moment they spotted us, the Jeopa players snapped into battle mode and began grouping up fast. One guy who had been sitting on the ground repairing his gear scrambled to his feet, clutching his toolkit as he got ready to fight.
As we neared the outpost, I did a quick headcount of how many combat roles were present. I saw two full parties—twelve players—and about three more who seemed unaffiliated, putting the total at fifteen.
Sitting near the entrance, I spotted a Jeopa priest sluggishly trying to put away their repair kit and dashed straight for them. I didn’t use any defensive skills—I wanted to save those. They weren’t going to dive me right away anyway, not while we’d caught them off guard. No need to waste cooldowns, especially with a healer on our side.

The priest noticed me coming and quickly dashed back with an evasive skill. I didn’t let it go. The second their evasion animation ended, I hit them with a grappling skill. Then I immediately followed up with Chain Bind, my combo move, which caught not just the priest but four other players standing nearby and yanked all five of them straight to our side.
We didn’t say a word—no voice chat, no typed callouts. But the party, being seasoned rankers, immediately unloaded massive burst damage on the five I dragged over. The squishier DPS were wiped out almost instantly, and the two tanks who survived were left limping at half or even critical HP as they tried to scramble away.
One of those critical tanks was instantly hunted down by Ceylontea and Slayer, who used their gap closers to burst him, and then our lone ranged DPS, FlipIt, landed the killshot and turned him into a glowing ball of light.

From fifteen, the Jeopa force was down to ten. A fantastic start for us, who only had a single party.
[Party] Ceylontea: Just flanked them
Ceylontea, an assassin, had slipped back a little and used her stealth skill, leaving a shadow trail as she vanished. I saw her creeping around behind a Jeopa party off to the side, so I started drawing aggro up front.

In big team fights like this, a tank’s job was surprisingly simple. You didn’t need to deal tons of damage. You just had to turn the battlefield into complete chaos—for the enemy team. For our side, things should stay as clean and orderly as possible.
Watching the movement of enemy DPS, I waited until a Jeopa Sentinel rushed in, then popped a defensive skill to boost my armor and used Shield Slam to leap right into the center of the enemy formation. This broke their front-to-back positioning. At moments like that, it was my job to push deep and isolate their tank to disrupt their structure.
While Nickjung, acting as a sub-tank and secondary DPS, marked their tank, I scanned the enemy party and slapped a target mark—Number 1—on an archer assassin. That was the signal for focus fire.

As soon as the mark landed, the guy’s HP started melting. I pushed through incoming attacks to combo him, used Shield Block where needed, and interrupted enemy spell casts with stun skills when I could.
Even with all that, I noticed our focus target’s health wasn’t dropping fast enough. Which meant their healers were keeping him alive.
So I changed targets on the spot to one of their healers mid-cast. Slayer read the situation like it was second nature and followed the new mark instantly. The healer was hit so hard he couldn’t finish casting, and between CCs, he barely had time to breathe.

I saw other healers trying to pump heals into him too, so I quickly re-marked the original assassin DPS and prepared to pull in a distant Jeopa support priest with a grapple.
But just before I made my move, that priest’s HP bar suddenly drained and they dropped.
[Party] Ceylontea: Mage down, healer down ^^

[Party] Honeybread: Nice
True to her status as the top-ranked assassin, Ceylontea had cleanly eliminated both a magic DPS and a healer in that chaos. The flow of the fight was looking good.
[Party] FlipItIfItsPancake: our healer
[Party] FlipItIfItsPancake: got bit

[Party] FlipItIfItsPancake: 2 assassins
I stared at the chat for a second, not quite sure what she meant—then got smacked in the face by a projectile from one of the Jeopa assassin destroyers. As I shifted into a more defensive stance, I decoded her message. Our healer got bitten = she’s under pressure. Two assassins are on her.
Bad news.

Thankfully, Ceylontea returned to our side just in time and spotted the two assassins going after Goso. She and Nickjung dove in to intercept. Still, the fact that Goso was under fire meant my own HP was dropping fast.
[Party] Honeybread: FlipIt
[Party] Honeybread: behind

[Party] Honeybread: backup
[Party] Honeybread: plz
[Party] FlipItIfItsPancake: ko

[Party] FlipItIfItsPancake: ol
[Party] FlipItIfItsPancake: ok
Since FlipIt was now backing me up, I figured I should retreat and minimize incoming damage. But just as I started to fall back, the flurry of attacks targeting me shifted—and slammed into Slayer instead. Clearly, the enemy team had marked him for death while our healer was tied up, trying to make sure they at least took one DPS with them.

I could survive those attacks—Slayer couldn’t. DPS classes melted even from a fraction of what I took as a tank.
Since Goso wasn’t in a position to cover us yet, I charged back in to rescue Slayer, using my Taunt skill. Every enemy in the radius shifted their aggro to me, and Slayer was freed from the storm of damage.
Slayer, barely alive, immediately used Moonlight Fade—a short-duration stealth skill usable even in combat—and [N O V E L I G H T] retreated to the backline. With him out of the danger zone, and now that Ceylontea had helped clear the rear, Goso was finally free to heal. My HP, which had dropped to a scary 10%, slowly started climbing again.

It took everything I had to survive that kind of damage, and yet Goso had kept me alive. That’s how powerful a Harmonizer healer was. And Retaking had fought me using that class? The more I thought about it, the more pissed I got.
[Party] FlipItIfItsPancake: back clear
[Party] FlipItIfItsPancake: tank peeling mid

[Party] Ceylontea: mage and assassin down
While I was hanging on up front using every block and stun I had, good news kept rolling in. The backline was secured, and Ceylontea had managed to snag two more enemy DPS.
Now there were only four Jeopa players left. We still had all six. Unless they got reinforcements, the outcome was clear.

...
[Race Chat] Bia Supreme Commander Honeybread has declared at Outpost 13!
Title: Honeybread, are you insane??
Author: [Jeopa] HaveAnAgileDay

I was about to go farming when I saw Honeybread rolling up to Outpost 13, and I tried my best to stop them. But what the hell is up with that block timing? Is this the infamous “Honey. Bread.” I’ve only heard about in stories?
Every time I tried to use my big burst skills, they were blocked. It’s like he has unlimited stamina or something. Even if I got behind him and marked him, the moment I tried to backstab, he’d turn and block it. What are you supposed to do?? He even blocks all our party’s heavy attacks. His Taunt timing is god-tier too—anytime we got a DPS low, we couldn’t kill them because he just dragged all aggro away. I’m losing my goddamn mind.
Our assassins were already getting shredded in the backline, and then Honeybread landed a perfect chain capture, their priest nuked everything, and now we’re all sitting here crying. Fuck this. A full-party grief run with two Supreme Commanders? This is too much.

(33 comments)
[Best Comment] Why Honeybread is OP: most tanks crumble if they dive in, so they delay. But this guy uses block and defense skills perfectly, so he lasts 2–3x longer than any other tank.
└ 2–3x longer is a bit much

└ You’ll take that back after you meet him └ For real, lol. I played support with him once and I *actually* got to DPS as a healer
He’s not ranked #1 for nothing… I once asked him how he times his blocks. You know what he said? “I just press it when it feels right.” Dude’s a natural-born genius
└ What’s the point of being a genius in a game, smh

└ **[Best Comment]** If his reflexes are that good unconsciously, he could succeed at anything lol
[Best Comment] LOLOL this was shaping up to be the best siege ever—why the hell am I at work?? ㅠㅠㅠㅠㅠ Let me quit, please GOD!!!!!
└ Why is your dick hard, bro, change “shaping up” to “hyped up” before you get reported

└ Same diff └ You serious right now?
└ If you’re gonna grief... do it after work hours…!!!!!
└ Retaking’s probably going there too and I’m stuck watching this HOTTEST PARTY LIVE FROM THE FORUMS only

No other Sentinel plays like this… no way… Most ranked Sentinels have like 70–75% success rate blocking crits, but this guy? Over 90%. He was born for it
└ That’s even possible??
└ That’s gotta be hacks

└ 90% crit block rate LOL is he even human??
└ Newbie here—where do you even check block rates?
└ Let me gently pat this newbie. Pat pat. └ Go into your UI settings and turn on the damage meter, there’s a checkbox for defense success rate └ Ahh thank you!

└ 90% block rate in PvP, not even a dungeon? Unreal
So what the hell is Retaking supposed to do against this lunatic?
└ On the flip side, Jeopa Support units have really high defense outside of tanks, but Sentinels deal *piercing* damage, so that defense is kinda meaningless—it’s a hard counter both ways…

└ Because even though he’s a “human,” he’s got the brain to stand against “gods.”
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