New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

The first five minutes of the fight went by quickly, as everyone was hyper-focused. As soon as Astaroth’s melding timer hit zero, he summoned out White, and Melded with Luna.

He immediately started amassing Aether, while he went from a melee stance to a kiting mage stance. He still hadn’t learned any hard-hitting spells, so he was rapidly firing weaker ones instead.

The boss was also starting to get affected by the debuffs Morpheus was inflicting. This effectively reduced the pressure on Gulnur some more, as some of its attacks started missing him entirely.

Astaroth honestly felt like it should have been worse by now, but he took what he could get. Three stacks of dissonance, and one stack of drowsiness currently affected the Grippli.

The dissonance status was making it have a fifteen percent chance of missing its attacks, five percent per stack. And the drowsiness reduced its agility, making it more manageable to fight against.

Of course, this only slightly bettered their odds, but every bit helped. With the boss getting slower and hitting less, the pace of combat steadied out a bit.

A minute later, the lieutenant summoned the next batch of soldiers. This time, Astaroth barely had to do anything, as Phoenix incinerated them almost instantly.

She had been waiting for them to spawn, charging up a flame tornado. This ensured that their attacks on the boss kept going without delay.

She couldn’t do this to the next batch, but she was already instructing Violette to take the next group out similarly. The girl nodded, already having an idea of how to do so.

Seeing it was becoming more and more difficult to hit his prey with his halberd, the Grippli went into a more hand-to-hand style, using his halberd like a bo staff.

Fighting closer like this made it harder to miss, since the discrepancy in his movements was smaller. On the other hand, he also put himself within Gulnur’s reach.

Gulnur, who had been purely on the defensive until now, grinned as he switched to a more offensive style. His hammer started coming into contact with the frogman’s body, slowly chipping at his health.

He also let attacks hit him more often, but it was a tradeoff he was willing to pay. After letting a few good hits through, Gulnur primed his weapon backward, as it shone in a golden light.

“Retribution Strike!”

*Thwack!*

*-41’630!*

The Grippli Lieutenant tried blocking the hit with the shaft of his weapon, but the power behind the strike exceeded his expectations. It batted aside the halberd as the hammer impacted his ribcage.

The frogman felt the air inside his lungs escape his body, as the blow threw him like a rag doll into the wall he was guarding.

*-19’800*

The impact on the wall took another slice of his health away, but his troubles were far from over. Seeing as the boss was shortly incapacitated, every other party member threw hard-hitting spells and skills.

The damage quickly piled onto the boss monster, as it received a sudden bombardment of spells and attacks. The attacks kicked up a cloud of dust as they hit him, making the area unseeable.

They stopped attacking, for fear of hitting nothing and wasting resources. As they waited for the dust to settle, they heard the weird jerky croaking from inside the dust cloud.

ƥαṇdα-ηθνε|·ƈθm

As the frogman finished saying this, the cloud of dust had settled back down. The monster’s health was down to around twenty-five percent of its full value.

But then, the Grippli did something unexpected.

It pulled out a dagger from a hidden sheath on its back. The dagger looked rather simple, but the etchings on the blade were glowing red.

Astaroth and Violette had never seen anything like it yet, but the rest of the party had.

“I’die! Restrain him! Quick!” Phoenix shouted, as she fired a bolt of fire at the dagger.

I’die conjured a vine out of the ground under the boss’ feet, trying to tie his arm down. But it was quicker than him.

The Grippli Lieutenant jumped back, landing on the wall, as its feet stuck to it, and it laughed.

“Now, you die!”

After yelling that, it violently stabbed the dagger into its own heart. Astaroth looked at it incredulously.

But once the dagger was embedded to the hilt, red glowing veins started spreading from the stab wound.

“Fuck! We need to kill it! Now!” Phoenix howled.

She then started charging up her flame tornado again. But before she could finish casting it, a shadow appeared next to her.

It was the boss. He had moved so fast; it was like he teleported.

He had no weapon in his hands, but his leg was coming at her blazingly fast, and she couldn’t move in time.

Just as the boss’ foot impacted her side, her skin glowed goldenly. It violently knocked her away, sending her flying off like a rock from a catapult.

Phoenix rapidly slammed into the vine wall surrounding the boss room, the air being knocked out of her lungs. Luckily for her, Silent had put up an invulnerability skill just in time, and she took no damage.

But that skill didn’t come cheap, as it almost fully depleted his mana reserves, and the cooldown on it was extremely long. After kicking Phoenix away, the frogman turned to the man that had saved her life.

His eyes were bulging and red as he grinned like a madman. He dashed toward Silent Light, who was huffing for air from mana depletion.

Gulnur was running toward him, but he wouldn’t make it in time. Fortunately, Astaroth was closer and faster.

Astaroth deflected the incoming punch from Silent with a Shield Bash skill. But that put him directly in front of the berserk frogman.

The Grippli pivoted on its left foot, sending a roundhouse kick at Astaroth’s back with his right foot.

*-12’980!!*

The kick sent him flying forward, taking away almost a quarter of his HP, as he flew toward the trees and vines at the edge of the room. But Astaroth had a surprise for the boss, too.

Right before he impacted the wall of trees and vines, he used his skill Traveling Roots, melting into the tree trunk without taking damage.

He circled the room from within the wall of trees and vines, before popping back out behind the boss, who was still walking toward their healer.

“Eyes on me, you amphibian fuck!” he shouted.