New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

With flashes of white light, Astaroth reappeared on the platform they had appeared the first time. Astaroth looked around, as other players were already here, and more were appearing by the second.

It didn’t take long before all the remaining five hundred players were present. As soon as the last one appeared, the face of chairwoman Constantine popped up in the sky again.

As she did, she also clapped her hands to garner attention.

*Clap*

“Welcome back to all of you. I can see some determined looks on your faces, so let us get to phase two quickly.” She said.

After saying that, the image in the sky split up, to reveal a board with the names of the players, separated into five tiers. In the last tier, only five names showed up.

The names were Astaroth, Athena Woodland, Gulnur Deepshield, I’die Ad-Tempus, and Phoenix. Some players present gasped when they saw the last name.

They all wondered how the player in the second position of the level rankings could be in the last tier of points. All five in the last tier had zero points.

That effectively meant they had killed no players during the first phase. Most of the participants had the same thought at that moment.

‘Those five hid for the first phase.’

They were wrong but none of the five concerned were going to say anything to disprove it. To them, this was a tactical advantage.

No one would suspect their power if everyone already thought they were weak cowards. Gulnur was the only one about to contest this, but he received a sharp glare from Phoenix that instantly shut his mouth.

The chairwoman also knew this, and was currently tweaking the team-building algorithm, so that these five players were mixed with the weakest top-tier players.

She had seen what all five of them were capable of, and this was one of the few ways to balance out the power of the teams.

While the players were snickering and glaring in condescension, the screen with the tiers switched out. What replaced it was a screen showing the teams as they were picked.

The five teams that were paired with the lowest-tiered players were grumbling in frustration, sure that they were going to get knocked out of the competition already.

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“Alright, now that this has been settled, the first round of fighting matches will soon begin. We assigned all teams a number. When your number is called, you will be teleported to the arena. Good luck to you all, and may the strongest prevail!” She exclaimed, lifting her arms high.

The board in the sky started showing the numbers next to the teams, and soon after, it swapped to show the first two opposing teams.

As a matter of fate, or bad luck, one of the first teams to fight was Astaroth’s team. There was a timer that showed under the team numbers, and it was set at five minutes.

That meant that Astaroth had only five minutes to get to know his temporary allies. He was slightly sad that he couldn’t keep the party members he had earlier, but this was how it went.

He was teleported to one side of a vast arena, and next to him were three people he didn’t know, and one person he had not expected to be paired with.

The top-tier player assigned to his team was Morticia, a heavenly thousand player, from ToB. In this game, she had chosen Fey as her race, and he could now see her class too.

She had chosen Psychic, and the choice did not surprise him. In ToB, Morticia had played Mind-Bender, which was the equivalent of Psychics in this game.

It was her type of gameplay, and Astaroth instantly knew he had a powerful ally. But he wondered one thing.

‘Why was she at the bottom of the top-tier list?’

To him, it didn’t add up. He knew Morticia was a powerful player, and an excellent pro player at that.

It made little sense that she would be at the lower end of that ranking. And then it clicked.

‘She must have played conservatively.’

It made sense if she did. The algorithm that set the teams would try to balance the power levels. If she underplayed her hand, she would end up with better teammates.

Astaroth knew she was shrewd, but this was beyond shrewdness. The amount of thought it took to deduce that in the few minutes of the introduction was insane.

‘What a wicked woman.’ He thought.

He looked around the rest of his team, and most of them were random players that had made it to high levels in time to be in the tournament, but didn’t look like pro players.

His team was composed of Morticia, the Fey Psychic; Anton, a Demonoid Monk; Gabriel Lightshield, a Human Paladin; Helena Hawkeye, a Human Archer; and himself.

They were well-balanced, in terms of classes, but he could easily see where the power focused. He knew none of these three other players, and their gear was subpar.

Of course, gear-wise, he wasn’t any better, but he knew he could wipe the floor with these three on his own. It augured badly.

As he was analyzing their strategies in his mind, Anton, the Demonoid, walked up to him.

“Hey, weakling! Don’t get in my way! Understood?!” The man told him, with a heavy Russian accent.

Astaroth, who was too busy thinking, didn’t even hear him speak. This caused the misunderstanding that he was ignoring Anton, and that angered the latter man.

Just as he was about to punish his impudence, a soft hand landed on Anton’s shoulder. It was Morticia’s hand.

She looked at Anton with sweet eyes and simply shook her head.

Anton took it for a ‘Don’t waste your energy’ head shake, and huffed, before walking back to talk with the other ‘Useful’ members of this team.

Morticia watched him walk away before her smile dropped. She looked back at Astaroth, and in her eyes, the look was one of worry.

She had a bad feeling about Astaroth. He looked sturdy enough to her.

She couldn’t understand how someone that gave off his aura had no points from the first round. It made her think he might have done like her and massively underplayed.

Morticia would not call him out on it though. It meant a possible wild card for their team.

As she was about to ask him what he was thinking about, the timer ran out and a loud dong echoed in the arena.

The match was about to start.