New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Inside the trap zone between the walls of the Bastion, the guerilla tactics were still in full swing. Even though the three most powerful players in Paragons were not inside the base, the thinning number of assailants was also reducing the forces they had to fight.

The overhead pinning of enemies from the ranged players, combined with the mobile strikes in the trap zone from the melee players, was proving to work beautifully.

One player in Paragon, in particular, was thriving in this setup. A gnome with a pistol and a knife.

His name was Berny. It wasn’t the best player name, but it was the one he chose.

He had started as a gunner class, but his choice in skills, as well as his fighting style, had changed it to commando. And he loved being in situations like these, where he tracked down, and slew his enemy, while remaining discreet.

Berny was once an American Navy Seal, and infiltration missions were his specialty. This made him like a fish in water in this setting of combat.

Aside from Astaroth and Khalor, he was the one that had taken out the most infiltrators yet. His pistol was now equipped with a short barrel add-on that many would recognize.

He was currently stalking a group of three players, two fighters and a mage, who were teetering dangerously close to the inner wall. But before they could reach it, he suddenly snuck behind the mage, slitting his throat and firing three times into his back.

The loud banging of Phoenix’s fists on the stone doors, in the distance, covered the muffled firing noises. So the mage’s allies never realized one of them went down.

It took them about thirty seconds to realize one of their party members was now greyed out on the list. When they turned to look for him, they found nothing.

Berny had already dragged the body to some foliage, where it disintegrated.

He was now looking at them from above, laying down on a tree branch. He could feel their uneasiness from up there, and it made him grin.

He slowly crouched up, as the two men were about to pass under him. He had already scanned them, showing which one was the lowest in health.

Dropping on the weakest, Berny stabbed three times in a swift motion, and fired his silenced gun through the eyeball of his target. The fighter exploded into pixels in a second, as Berny rapidly shuffled back into the shrubbery.

The second invaded had tried following him, but as soon as he ran through a bush, the man lost him. But Berny knew exactly where his next kill was, and soon enough, he pounced again.

The man never saw him coming, as a knife struck him in the back of the throat, muffling his cries for help, and bullets pierced the back of his head, exploding out the front.

Berny started hunting again, in the look of his next victims.

In another part of the newly grown jungle, Declan was doing the opposite of Berny. He was making as much noise as he could, attracting enemies to him.

Declan had been in the army too, but he was an Irish Infantryman. He hated being subtle, and would rather fight things head-on.

As invader after invader ran at him, attracted by the screams and clanging of his weapon against rocks, Declan cut them up like a giant meat grinder on legs. His was not a subtle battle, but still worked very well.

He was the only one that was crazy enough to bait enemies toward himself, though. Most would rather do hit-and-run tactics, as it was safer.

The only other player who was actively baiting players was another of Declan’s pals. The military Battlefield Engineer.

The dwarven man kept setting up traps everywhere, before baiting players into them with bells and whistles, before letting them get caught in the traps.

He had dug out pitfalls with spikes, built log drops, jury-rigged bolt launchers, that shot out sharpened branches, and many other traps.

His mind was surprisingly nimble for a man his age. The number of different traps he thought of would put many Viet Cong to shame.

His scheming didn’t kill many players, but his traps always left the victims in poor shape. Other players on the ground, or the ranged players in the tree up above, eventually picked these poor lads and ladies off.

The ten top guilds were getting more and more reports of incredible resistance from within the fortress. If they were to believe all of their members, they would believe an army defended the place, rather than by less than a hundred players.

And to add to their difficulty, their dying players couldn’t rejoin the battlefield anymore. Something was killing them at the mobile graveyard.

At first, it was reports of a zone boss, but it rapidly changed to reports of a player hindering their respawn. Over this issue, another was added a while ago.

Monsters had come running out of the forest all around them, wreaking havoc on each front, stomping players into the ground like they were flies. 𝒷𝒹𝓸𝓿𝓁.𝒸ℴ𝓶

It took the officers of each top guild to stop these beasts from massacring their troops. And that was the reason they hadn’t been able to send help to the graveyard, yet.

These issues were rapidly escalating into a possible defeat. The only reason they hadn’t backed out yet was that their pride as top guilds was clouding their judgement.

But they knew they had to make things change, and fast. They kept hope, as the three beasts they had stopped were slowly but surely dying.

Considering the beast at the graveyard, they had four unexpected enemies disrupting their conquest of this fortress.

They hoped they could take care of them soon, or their enemy would just bunker down even more. But the invading guilds had missed another enemy.

This one was already inside the trap zone, prowling after players from both sides, not even giving them time to react. Athena was receiving reports of something killing her underlings inside the trap zone.

When she used her echolocation to find out what it was, the ping she got back drained the blood out of her face. The creature was looking in her direction, its eyes staring at her like a predator looking down at its prey.

She instantly knew the only players who could take that thing head-on were not in the base currently. So she had to go to her only other option, Leon.

‘Let’s just hope he listens to me,’ she thought, as she vaulted from branch to branch, going down toward the second-floor windows.