Meteor's eyes flashed with surprise. "...Dead?"
"Dead." Drunkard looked dazed, unable to accept the fact. "He said your body had caused the grand show he was rehearsing to end early. A few minutes after sending that message, he died."
Meteor fell silent for a long time before slowly saying, "With that personality of his, it was only a matter of time before he got himself into trouble. But I never expected him to die at a time like this."
"Yeah, at a time like this..." Drunkard blankly shut off the Virtual Screen. After a moment, she looked up at Meteor. "Now you're the only Reincarnation Vessel left."
"What a pity," Meteor murmured.
"A pity?" Drunkard grew anxious. "You still have the mood to pity him? You should be worrying about yourself. Luckily, your bodies haven't been switched back yet. Otherwise, now that Short-legged Sheep is dead, you'd be the next one to be reborn!"
Meteor explained, "I pity the fact that I can't use his Card anymore. Your Black Pharaoh is powerful, but the conditions for activating its skill are too harsh. If we encounter a Hidden Boss in the future, only Poet's Heroic Ballad can restrain it. The heroic spirit summoned by Heroic Ballad has roughly twenty seconds of invincibility. If I remembered correctly, the last heroic spirit Poet recorded came from the battle where Black Spot killed the Hive."
—A Bard could not fabricate heroic spirits out of thin air. The so-called Heroic Ballad could be understood as a game recording: it captured a combatant at their peak, then projected that image onto a new battlefield while preserving its damage values.
Therefore, Players holding a Bard Card needed to choose their teammates carefully. If their teammates were too weak, the power of Heroic Ballad would be drastically reduced.