New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

“Excuse me?” Khalor asked, slightly confused.

Had he not made his point abundantly clear? Had Astaroth not just agreed to help him?

Why was he still refusing to concede this tournament?

“I said no.” Astaroth reiterated.

“You just agreed to help me. Why aren’t you accepting my demand?” Khalor asked.

“I will help you. But I will not give up on this tournament. You want first place? Defeat me. That shouldn’t be that hard for you, right?” Astaroth said, pulling out his shortbow and aiming an arrow at Khalor’s head.

*Tsk*

Khalor looked at Astaroth in disappointment. He had hoped the man would understand that fighting this pointless fight made no sense. Logic dictated that he should win so he could garner the attention he needed to enact his plan.

Yet, Astaroth didn’t respond to that logic. Instead, he wanted to fight it out, make it a contest of strength again.

After clicking his tongue, Khalor let out all his undead. He spared none, as legions upon legions of zombies; skeletons; ghosts; ghouls, and many more poured out of his body.

“Then I shall not go easy on you. I will make this quick, and be done with it.” Khalor said, his face becoming cold again.

‘Damn. That is a lot of undead,’ Astaroth thought, as he watched the undead pour out of Khalor.

Inside him, the spirit seed he had used earlier was dormant once again. Slowly pulsing once in a while.

‘Well, that’s no longer an option,’ he thought, focusing back on the army before him.

‘Are you ready for this, White?’ he mentally asked his companion.

‘We are not going to win this, master. But we will not go down without a fight either,’ White responded.

Astaroth could feel the eagerness to fight from the response and smiled. This was going to be one hell of a brawl.

Astaroth did not wait for Khalor to give a signal of any kind. The gong had already resounded long ago, so this was already free game.

He shot arrows in quick succession, taking undead monsters left and right. They were not very high level, so they weren’t very hard to take down, especially not when melded.

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That way, he could maximize his time with it. It didn’t take long for that to happen, though.

Even if he was running backwards while shooting, some of the undead were incredibly fast and closed the gap in barely thirty seconds.

The first to reach him were the ghouls. As soon as they reached a few meters from him, he melded with White, swapping out from his bow to his polearm.

The extra reach allowed him a little more breathing room for now. He kept mowing down his undead enemies, but they were trying to box him in, so he couldn’t keep fleeing away from the main force.

That meant that not long after the ghouls reached him, the skeletons and ghosts reached him, too. He swapped out from his polearm, this time going for his longsword and shortsword.

He rapidly became a tornado of blades, as the undead were felled by the second. As for the ghosts, when he first slashed one, he noticed the very low damage he did.

So he coated his weapons with mana instantly, quickly plugging that weakness. He would also periodically send out waves of fire, shooting it from the edge of his sword.

That unlocked another spell for him, and that made him happy, but he couldn’t dwell on it for long. After the skeletons and ghosts, the zombies also soon joined the melee.

He was rapidly being surrounded, and although he was killing everything that got too close, the gap between him and the monsters was shortening.

He tried using Alpha’s Howl at some point, but that failed miserably. It seemed fear did not affect the undead in any way.

After fighting for what seemed an eternity for Astaroth, his melding finally ended. He quickly summoned White, making sure they did not drown him in a never-ending wave of undeath.

Somehow, Astaroth felt like he was fighting in vain. No matter how many undead he killed, there always seemed to be more behind it.

From somewhere nearby, he heard Khalor’s voice.

“What you are doing is futile. Surrender to death’s embrace. Don’t make us both waste time.”

“I said you would have to earn your victory. I meant it,” Astaroth replied, never stopping his slashes and stabs.

“Then so be it.” Khalor’s voice came, from much closer this time.

Astaroth barely had enough time to turn around and block as a bident came flying at him. Khalor was now getting serious.

It only took a few clashes for Astaroth to grasp that their skill level was very close to one another. Where the problem lay was that Khalor wasn’t alone.

Astaroth had to focus on Khalor’s attacks, but he also had to make sure his undead did not swarm him. White Death took a part of that burden, but his health was rapidly dwindling, and he would soon un-summon.

And the cherry on top, Astaroth had to dodge the occasional surprise attack from the death knight, the ranged attacks from the manticore, and the swift swoops of the two-headed raven.

Long story short, Astaroth was burning out incredibly fast. Even though he wasn’t a stranger to fast-paced combat and long-lasting fights, this one was on another level entirely.

It was soon clear to him he wouldn’t be winning this combat. Try as he may, he could never break the lock around his position.

It was like he was playing a first-person survival game, and Khalor was playing a real-time strategy game. Wherever he looked around himself, Astaroth saw only undead.

After another three minutes of fighting, White succumbed to the onslaught. Moments later, the pressure on Astaroth increased tenfold.

He was already panting and sweating profusely, and now the pressure became suffocating. It only took a single mistake for him to fall on the path of defeat now.

And that mistake soon came about, as he stepped on a small rock, losing balance. When he started stumbling, Khalor struck at the speed of lightning, empaling Astaroth in the stomach with his bident.

Astaroth was already low on health, and that strike took the last of it.

“You fought valiantly. I hope you fight as hard when the time comes to save us all,” Khalor said to him, as he turned to pixels.

‘I lost,’ Astaroth thought, as his body disappeared.