New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

With the crowd still cheering, Astaroth and his teammates were teleported outside the arena, into a spot in the bleachers. They were all grouped, and they could now watch all the other fights happening.

Astaroth sat down to enjoy the show, but before he could, a certain Demonoid in his team stomped his way before him.

“You! You stole my spotlight! How can a weakling like you kill those five players so fast!? You cheated for sure!” Anton shouted in Astaroth’s face.

The Archer woman and the Paladin weren’t talking, but by the looks they were throwing at Astaroth, he could guess they had similar thoughts. He didn’t feel like arguing, so he tried to brush it off.

“You are the one that assumed I was weak. I said nothing of the sort.” Astaroth responded, trying to sound as passive as he could.

“Stop lying! How did you kill them?! I don’t want to play alongside a cheater!” Anton kept yelling.

“Let’s cool down and talk like civilized beings.” Morticia said, trying to diffuse the situation.

“Bug off, you second-rate pro player!” Anton spat out at her.

Morticia’s face went sombre at the comment. Astaroth could see the mana around her head coalesce, and he acted before she did.

He quickly stood, pushing his chest into Anton’s with enough force to push him off balance and tumbling backwards down the next set of seats.

By the time he was getting back up, Anton already had Astaroth’s war axe under his chin.

“Still think I’m weak?” Astaroth said, with a snide smile.

But before Anton could even reply, a wave of pain assaulted his head. It was like a sledgehammer had just landed right in his brain.

He clutched his head, screaming in pain, as his eyes, nose, and ears started bleeding.

“Call me a second-rate player again. I dare you!” Astaroth heard Morticia say, from behind him.

When he turned his head, he could see the rage in her eyes, and the intense look of concentration she had, that was pointed directly at Anton.

Anton couldn’t even muster a reply, as her psychic attack assaulted his brain. He tried, but the words came out as an indelible jumble of letters.

After a few seconds of mental torture, much bleeding and a small puddle of piss under Anton, she let go of the mental attack. The poor Demonoid collapsed to the ground, convulsing slightly.

“You know he won’t take this lightly, right?” Astaroth asked Morticia.

“I know, but I don’t care. He can try to fight me all he wants. Posers like him always bark and don’t bite.” She responded, sitting down.

The other two players in their team were now slightly shaking, happy they hadn’t voiced their opinions.

‘Monsters!’ They thought, gulping.

Astaroth turned his head to the arena. He had seen the number of the next team, and from what he garnered through the interface, the next two teams fighting were a team of random players against the team Gulnur was in.

It seemed weird that the first two combats included a team with one of them in it. He looked up at the skies, hoping to see the chairwoman’s face still there, but it wasn’t.

Unbeknownst to him, the chairwoman was also looking at him through her monitor, from Evo-Gaming’s HQ. When Astaroth looked to the sky, their eyes met, metaphorically, and she shivered a bit.

The other player she then focused on was a pale-skinned man with black eyes. He also lifted his eyes to the sky, but unlike Astaroth’s questioning gaze, Khalor had an evil grin plastered on his lips.

The grin sent all kinds of bad vibes to Constantine, who switched her viewpoint back to the arena. She snapped her fingers without looking away from her screen.

Her assistant walked up to her and bowed.

“Pull out all the information we have on the players named Khalor and Astaroth, ASAP. Something about them feels off.” Constantine ordered her minion.

“Yes, Ma’am.” The assistant said, leaving the room promptly.

‘Who are you two, and how are you becoming so strong this fast?’ She muttered under her breath.

She knew from a glance that player Khalor had already unlocked some content that shouldn’t be available yet, and that explained his overwhelming power.

But as far as she could tell, player Astaroth was still playing a standard class. It made no sense how he could be this strong already.

A few minutes later, her assistant came back with a small data storage chip, and she bowed, extending the chip to her boss.

“This is all we have in our systems, ma’am. Any further information will have to be investigated externally.” The assistant said.

“That won’t be necessary for now. Thank you.” Constantine replied, taking the data chip.

She plugged it into her computer and browsed the files. Nothing out of the ordinary popped out at first, but then a detail caught her eye.

Player Khalor had unlocked a legacy, which wasn’t yet available content, through what seemed like sheer luck at first. But after analyzing his path, Constantine noticed something odd.

Every quest the player took, put him closer to the legacy, and after finding it, every subsequent move brought him closer to unlocking it. It was like he knew exactly what to do.

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She lifted her hand again, and her assistant walked forward.

“Ignore my earlier statement. I want you to investigate this player, player Khalor. His movements are too precise to be a coincidence.” Constantine ordered.

“Yes, ma’am.” The assistant replied before leaving the room.

Constantine focused back on the fight going on, and to no surprise, it was just over already, with the team hosting the dwarf named Gulnur being the crushing victors.

“These players are strong. Not abnormally so like Khalor, but strong enough to be top tier.” Constantine said, nodding her head.

In the arena, the public was in upheaval again. What they had witnessed made no sense.

They had watched a unilateral fight, where the tank on one side forced three melee players into hitting him exclusively, for thirty seconds, before whipping around and one-shotting a berserker.

This had let the rest of his team take down the back line, and then quickly wipe out the two remaining players.

And all of that looked like it barely took away any health from the dwarven tank. Armor alone couldn’t explain how strong a defence that required.

The dwarf had blocked almost all the hits coming his way, parrying others with his mace, taking no direct body hit. It was like he was a master martial artist, playing with kids.

That instilled fear in the other parties. A pattern was emerging, plain as day, for all to see.

The players in the last tier were menacingly strong.