New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Astaroth kept on this farce for about a minute until his meld with Luna ended. He immediately switched to Morpheus, summoning Luna back to the battlefield.

He had to find out the reason they weren’t dying, and quickly. If he got held up by them now, a lot of players would go swarming inside the Bastion.

That wasn’t an option.

He continued attacking any player that deigned to get closer to the gates, but the same five players kept taking no damage at all. He focused his attacks on them, trying to understand the phenomenon.

He finally caught sight of something weird. A wisp of energy left their bodies as the attacks hit and left toward the back of their formation.

Following the wisp with his eyes, he noticed something weird.

At the back of the formation, almost outside of all the fighting players, a totem was standing about four feet high. On this totem were small cloth effigies, pinned with needles.

Astaroth could see a person crouched in front of the totem, prostrating repeatedly. And between the player and the totem, a string of energy.

But something was odd about it. The string was much too bright in his senses to be mana.

He gasped out in shock.

‘He’s using Aether! How did he even find out about it?!’

Astaroth fired another attack, a sonic one this time, to one tank he couldn’t damage. With his eyes, he followed the wisp of energy to the totem, where it entered a doll, and sunk into the totem.

As it did, the tether between the totem and the player flashed a bit before going back to normal.

Then it clicked.

‘He’s using his mana or Aether to absorb the damage from his allies! Since I have no way of knowing how long it can hold out for, I better eliminate the threat entirely.’

But his eyes, being fixed on the totem and player like that, made it pretty clear to the nine other players where he was looking. Instantly, understanding Astaroth had made them, they became much more aggressive.

“Surround him! Don’t let him move a single step away!” one tank shouted.

The three tanks and two melee players suddenly all lunged simultaneously forward, locking Astaroth in a pentagram formation. Any step he took, in any direction, put him in the range of one of them.

Astaroth was going to push his way through, but when he took his first hit, his eyes went wide. He had dodged and parried all the attacks up to now, so he had yet to take damage from them.

But the number he saw now was not something he wanted to receive repetitively.

*-144,519!*

Admittedly, the hit was a critical hit, because it hit his exposed back. But that still didn’t explain the numbers.

His defence was currently locked at its maximum twenty-five percent from constitution, and he had his fourteen percent from armour. Factoring in the mana skin he had been keeping active all along, he was currently cancelling out fifty-nine percent of the damage he received.

A number this high shouldn’t be possible.

Seeing the shock on his face, the player that struck his back smirked.

“You didn’t think we would come unprepared to take you down, right?”

ƥαṇdαηθνε|

This time, instead of a knife strike to his back, he received a shield bash that shoved him forward off balance, which allowed the naginata wielder to strike his exposed ribs.

*-47,367!*  *-86,513!*

Astaroth glanced at his health bar.

Health: 288,351/566,750

His eyes widened. They had shaved half of his health off in three attacks.

It was a good thing his legendary grade was still active, because he would be dead. But he still understood he was in peril.

He needed to get out of this lock, and fast.

Astaroth had noticed that his wings hadn’t sprouted on his back, and he wondered if it was due to using Leon’s power. But he could still subconsciously feel the wing muscles.

He decided to test that theory. Crouching down in a swift motion, Astaroth shot back up, lifting off the ground many meters.

Thinking about flapping his wings, two massive wings made of pure fire sprouted out of his back. He smirked as his thoughts were confirmed.

The five players that had been locking him in place looked angry, but there wasn’t much they could do. On the other hand, the four ranged attackers now had clear lines of sight on him.

Astaroth had to veer left and right, dodging incoming projectiles and various spells coming his way. But his target wasn’t the DPS.

He had already locked his sight on the totem and player in the back line. Killi ordered all his weaker players to rush inside the Bastion, as he and his guild leader instantly dashed to flank the witch doctor.

But as they ran to reach him, Astaroth practically appeared next to him, a long spear in his hands. The spear swiftly pierced through the witch doctor’s back, pinning him to the totem.

Astaroth took a breath in, before launching out a sonic attack that was currently boosted by his legendary grade stats. The witch doctor stood no chance.

The sonic wave resonated inside his head, turning his brain to mush, before his head exploded in a magnificent fountain of brains and blood. Astaroth smirked, looking at Killi and his vice leader dashing towards him.

The real carnage could now begin.

Launching back into the sky, Astaroth shot out another sonic attack, this one in a cone, hitting a hundred players in a single breath. The few players that were streaming this scene for their viewers had many complaints for the days to come.

The sight of one hundred heads exploding in a rain of blood and brain matter was not a pretty one. Astaroth laughed it off, knowing they weren’t really dead, and that with players, he could use violence with abandon.

“Let’s see how big a firework I can make of your guild, Killi!”

Killi gulped in terror.

‘Monster’ was all he could think.