New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Farther on the western side of the Bastion, two people were fighting with the fierceness of beasts. Gulnur and Blue Peacock had been engaged in their slugfest for almost ten minutes, and neither seemed to be close to dying.

Although Gulnur received many more attacks than Blue, he didn’t take a beating without retaliation. Every chance he got, he would swing his hammer, landing some attacks of his, albeit doing much less damage.

Every time he tried landing a powerful attack skill, Blue would whammy him with an illusion spell, making him miss his mark by inches. He was feeling infuriated by it, but he knew what her fighting style was.

That didn’t prevent him from trying as many times as he needed. He hoped Blue Peacock couldn’t hold this pace of fighting for too long, or he would be in trouble.

He was already feeling slouchy, even though his strength and constitution stats made his armor light as a feather for him, and his stamina pretty good.

Blue, on the other hand, was practically dressed like a belly dancer, making her weight close to nothing. Of course, this would help her last longer, but her much faster combat pace, as well as her constant attacking, had to be taking a toll.

She stopped for a moment, looking Gulnur in the eye.

“I will admit you have gotten much stronger, little man. But I can see you are tiring out.”

Gulnur huffed.

“Speak for yourself! You look out of breath. I’m fit as a fiddle!”

Of course, his panting while saying that betrayed his actual physical state. It made his reply quite comical.

“Hah! You still have spunk! Good! I’ll feel less guilty for killing you if you aren’t laying down.”

Blue Peacock started wavering from left to right, in a weird motion of her whole body. Her strange dance almost made her look like a drunken lady walking home.

But as she kept swaying, clones of her started appearing all over the place. Gulnur knew they weren’t all real. But annoyingly, their attacks still dealt damage.

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The image he hit vanished from its place. Blue’s voice echoed from all the clones swaying with the same rhythm as her.

“You won’t find me, little man. You aren’t the only one that has gotten stronger. Take in my new and improved illusory dance!”

Her swaying stopped, but it was already too late. Over twenty clones were surrounding Gulnur from every direction, and it looked bad.

Attacks started coming from every side, as the clones started circling him, with their chained kamas swinging in wide arcs at him. He blocked, parried, and dodged as many as he could.

But there was a limit to his abilities, especially since there was an enormous disparity in agility between him and Blue Peacock. His health started ticking down rapidly.

But instead of panicking, Gulnur endured quietly. This threw Blue off quite a bit.

The last time they fought, when Gulnur was close to dying, he became like a rabid animal, lashing out and scoring a few good hits before finally going down. His tame attitude now worried her.

‘Has he still got a hidden card? Or is he simply masking his emotions?’

Hits rained and rained on Gulnur, who did his best to knock away kamas with his hammer and shield, whilst evading what little attacks he saw.

His health kept lowering.

Fifty percent.

Forty percent.

Thirty percent.

Twenty percent.

Just as he hit ten percent, a grin formed on his lips. Now was the time.

His grin did not escape Blue, who felt reassured he was finally going to act normal. But it also worried her he waited this long.

Gulnur smiled.

He shouted at the top of his lungs, slamming his shield into the ground.

“Legacy Skill: Last Stand!”

Blue Peacock gulped at the mention of a legacy.

Players had found yet very few legacies, and none of their players talked about them much, since it was their trump cards. She secretly hoped Gulnur was bluffing.

But as the shield slammed into the ground, a shockwave echoed outward, blowing away the ashes of what used to be a wheat field, but also erasing all her illusions from existence.

Gulnur’s armour suddenly turned golden, the texture of it changing to resemble a form-fitting cloth more than metal. But the sunlight’s reflection off of it belied its solid material.

The hammer in Gulnur’s hands suddenly elongated, and its head thickened. It now looked more like a two-handed mace than a hammer.

Grasping the handle with his other hand, Gulnur leaned forward.

Blue’s eyes widened, shock apparent on her face. Gulnur’s speed had doubled, rivalling her own.

His health was also suddenly full, but it seemed to be rapidly ticking down.

Gulnur swung the two-hander hammer horizontally, aiming for her torso. Blue Peacock reacted by lowering her two kama into a cross position to block the hit.

When the mace collided with her weapons, it felt like she was trying to block a truck with a fly swatter. With a hollow dong noise, Blue was flung away violently.

She lost a quarter of her health in a single hit. Although she caught herself midair by twirling her body in flight, allowing her to land on her feet, she was still taken aback.

She knew she shouldn’t try to block the next hit. Next hit that wouldn’t wait too long to come, since Gulnur was now already above her head, mace pulled behind him, in a slamming motion.

Blue didn’t hesitate, and started running in the opposite direction, hoping she would be out of the strike zone before it hit. But she underestimated the power of the attack.

The mace in Gulnur’s hands weighed around four hundred kilos, which was close to his maximum liftable weight, with his currently doubled stats. But factoring in his own weight, and the power behind the strike, it was like a block of C4 detonated under his impact point.

Blue Peacock was flung away once again, this time smacking into the Bastion’s walls. People on the other side of the fortress felt the ground shake under their feet slightly.

Blue Peacock took another quarter of her health in damage on impact against the wall. When she got up, she looked at Gulnur with a gloomy face.

‘At this rate, I will lose.’