New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Phoenix and Astaroth dashed back at the beast-man, catching up to him rapidly. Astaroth could tell the boss wasn’t taking them seriously, since the speed he was using now was nothing compared to earlier.

It was more like a predator playing with his prey than an actual fight. But he intended to make Leon understand they meant business.

As both he and Phoenix caught up, Leon noticed them. He sped up a bit, immediately catching up to Violette and distancing himself from the duo again.

Leon raised his clawed hand high over his head, slashing forward, his claws glowing in a red fiery glow. But where he was supposed to hit a little girl, he instead hit something solid like metal.

Violette had disappeared from before him, suddenly replaced by a dwarven male with heavy armour. Gulnur looked up and smiled.

This was a new move he had learned by studying other tanks. It was called In Extremis.

In Extremis allowed Gulnur to switch places with a party member about to take a hit. But it also had a secondary function.

The ability gauged the damage dealt to him, and compared it to the original target. If the damage it would have done surpassed fifty percent of the original target’s health, Gulnur gained an aggro lock for a full minute.

That meant that Leon could no longer try to hit anyone else. His eyes went red, and all he could see was the small dwarf before him.

“Gotcha!” Gulnur exclaimed cockily.

But his troubles were only beginning.

Leon was now not in his right mind, and since the system forced him into a semi-berserker mode, he lost control over the strength he exerted. Gulnur learned that quickly when the next hit came at him.

Gulnur quickly activated Steadfast Protector, boosting his defence by another ten percent, and lifted his shield again. Leon struck the shield five times in quick succession.

Even with Gulnur’s shield blocking fifty percent of the damage, his armour blocking another twenty-five percent, and his defence blocking another nineteen, for a total of ninety-four percent reduction, his face still became gloomy.

*-475* *-476* *-475* *-476* *-475*

If that was just six percent of the damage done, he didn’t want to know the full value. An unprotected mage would have died instantly.

The pressure on his mind increased. But before he could think of it more, a heavy blow hit the center of his tower shield.

Leon had just kicked him, trying to send him flying, and by the looks of it, his strength was incredibly higher than Gulnur’s. The Dwarf skid backwards for many meters, slamming his shield into the ground to stop himself with it.

Although the kick itself did almost no damage, Gulnur immediately knew that he would lose a contest of strength. And since he was aggro locked for the next minute, he was in for some poor treatment.

Astaroth and Phoenix caught up again, since Leon was no longer running away. Both of them started dealing damage in massive numbers, hitting his wide-open back.

Every time Phoenix hit, it applied a small burn effect that would rapidly escalate if the boss monster didn’t extinguish the flames or break the effect. But the burn damage wasn’t doing as much as Phoenix would have wanted.

ƥαṇdα- ηθνε|·ƈθm

Astaroth, on the other hand, had no such issue. His damage was purely physical, boosted by magic.

Every hit he did was taking a solid chunk of damage, even though it looked like mosquito bites to the boss monster. Every strike or slash he dealt did over three thousand damage.

This seemed like a paltry amount against a boss with health as high as it did, not that he knew exactly how much that was. After dealing almost a hundred thousand points of damage, they saw the percentage of its health drop by one.

They could estimate he had close to ten million HP with that information. It gave them a goal.

Of course, every other party member wasn’t staying idle while this happened. The back liners took some distance from the melee, trying to avoid getting suddenly chased by the boss.

As for the others, they had already started attacking. In the time Gulnur was aggro-locked, the party took out fifteen percent of the monster’s health.

This in itself wasn’t bad, but it was insufficient. Now that Leon had regained his senses, his earlier smile had disappeared.

The beast-man had finally acknowledged them as genuine threats. He no longer restrained his power as before the aggro lock, but now he was back to fighting in control.

Over the next few minutes, he often tried going for surprise attacks on the weaker members of the group. Gulnur and Astaroth always contained him, keeping the threat to an acceptable level.

But that was bound to eventually fade. Astaroth’s meld with Luna ended, and he swapped with White.

The drop in stats affected his ability to restrain the boss, and mistakes started happening. Of course, the mistakes were mitigated enough that no one died in one hit.

But the damage was rapidly piling on the party, and Silent and I’die could not keep up the healing.

In time, that could be catastrophic.

Violette forwent dealing damage at one point, focusing on using ice magic to slow down or impede Leon’s movements. It was helping, and everyone knew, but with her damage gone, the health drop significantly slowed.

And the trouble would keep piling on. After almost ten minutes of combat, the boss’ health dropped past fifty percent.

Leon stopped in his tracks. Everyone stopped attacking him, wary of what would happen next.

It also gave them a few seconds of welcomed respite.

Leon smirked at every one of them.

“Seems like I will have to be serious.”

After saying that, his body started ballooning. His muscles rippled as his body mass increased twofold.

His blond mane grew almost a foot longer, and his face elongated slightly. His face had become more feline-like, and it was easy to recognize which kind of feline.

After finishing his transformation, he roared, as pressure descended on everyone present.

‘Round two, I guess,’ Astaroth thought.