New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Astaroth started aiming at all the blood bats that were flying in his direction, his weapon already enhanced at a hundred percent, dealing maximum damage on regular attacks.

Loosing another arrow, he watched as the charged magic projectile hit his target. He caught something in his mana vision he had never seen before while using Ad Astra in bow mode.

A small flicker of mana came back to him after every shot, melting back into his bow. This happened so fast that he could hardly see what that flicker was.

So, using his already back off cooldown Thousand Thoughts skill, he slowed down his perception of time after firing another arrow. Once the arrow pierced a bat, the flicker appeared again, zooming back toward him.

As it got closer, he could see it clearly this time. It was a tiny sliver of metal that fused back into the bow.

‘I wondered how the arrows conjured. I guess it makes sense.’

But this opened up a new realm of possibilities for him. His brain was still churning at a thousand percent speed, ideas flashed through his mind.

As the skill went back into cooldown, a grin appeared on his face.

‘Let’s try this out.’

He had already enhanced his weapon to the maximum value of one hundred percent that the skill allowed, but he wanted to try something else. The Ad Astra’s arrows were conjured out of condensed mana, giving it a shape.

Since he could enhance it more, up to catastrophic levels, as he had done in his combat against Leon, it made him wonder. What part of the arrow contains the enhancement?

Focusing his mana vision on the arrow, he noticed most of the mana originally came from the sliver of the bow that formed the arrowhead’s tip. But once the shaft formed, the energy to create it all came from the sliver, and almost emptied it.

‘What happens if I charge the tip again?’

Wanting to test it out, he poured a hefty amount of mana into the sliver of metal. But instead of supercharging the arrow, and making it unstable as it had done the last time he tried this, since he was focusing on one point specifically, only the sliver charged up.

And just as it started becoming unstable, Astaroth loosed the arrow at an incoming enemy. The arrow penetrated the blood bat, just like any other arrow, dealing its enhanced damage.

*6,445*

Astaroth was disappointed that this didn’t work. But then he noticed something strange.

Not even a second after the arrow pierced into the bat, it suddenly ballooned up, shining blue through its skin, before bursting like a party popper.

*31,500!*

A bit of blood splattered over Astaroth, who hovered there, surprised.

He saw a notification light slowly start flashing at the corner of his vision, but he temporarily ignored it. He didn’t need to check it to know what it was, since he felt the bow in his hand grow slightly stronger.

‘I gained a mastery level.’

His face stretched into a grin once more.

Fighting was the perfect moment to learn different masteries. Of course, his basic abilities made it easier for him to learn new masteries on them, since they weren’t anything complicated to start with.

He couldn’t imagine how a spell like a flame tornado or icicle rain would be difficult to find masteries to them. But that wasn’t his problem, since he couldn’t cast those spells to begin with.

His affinity for these elements was too weak for the mana to obey him on such a large scale.

But what skills and spells he had were plentiful, and that made them a treasure trove of possibilities.

Over the next few minutes, while his meld with Morpheus lasted, he determined that his new skill had a ten-second cooldown. With this information, he could time his attacks perfectly, and became more effective.

The four minutes left to him were enough to get rid of all the flying pests that Genie couldn’t deal with, and freed the non-corrupted bats from the dogfight they were losing. This allowed them to go into a tactic they were used to, air-to-ground harassment.

Seeing this tactic from an allied perspective showed Astaroth how a number advantage easily overpowered larger foes.

‘And to think the villagers fought these things back for years. No wonder a more powerful version of them suddenly became troublesome to deal with, causing casualties.’

Of course, he didn’t delude himself into thinking the corrupted bats were the only culprits. The corrupted wolves and bears were very much a threat, too.

With the power the bears brought to bear, a single swipe was enough to take out an Ash Elf who wasn’t prepared. Or even one that wasn’t tanky enough.

There was no wondering why they had been pushed underground and into a defensive fight. This had turned into a siege, and the endless waves of enemies would eventually corrode all their fighting power, leading to a gruesome end.

Shaking the gloomy thought out of his head, Astaroth landed on the ground, melding with White Death. He swapped the Ad Astra’s form from a bow to metallic claws, re-enhancing them, since the timer had run out.

Dashing into the fray, Astaroth looked around him, rapidly spotting Genie. The wolf was dealing with two bears on her own, holding them at bay.

The uncorrupted blood bats were swooping in on the other bears, harassing them with their numbers and speed, making sure they were too busy to gang up on weaker enemies.

But the monsters could barely kill their corrupted counterparts on their own. And since the numbers advantage was still on the corrupted side, this fight would eventually end badly.

That was where Astaroth came in. .

Seeing as Genie had her side well in hand, he looked over at the other giant wolf on his side. Rapidly spotting the massive grey wolf, he dashed to its side.

Arriving next to it, he stopped at its side. He raised his hand, looking the wolf in the eye, before motioning that he wanted to touch his head.

The grey wolf looked reluctant to put his most vulnerable point so close to the dangerous-looking metallic claw, but the mental messages coming from Teraria and Arborea reassured it, and it lowered its head.

Astaroth opposed his hand to the wolf’s head, using the same method he had used with Genie, and communicating through simple emotions and images.

When he pulled back his hand, the wolf opened its eyes and nodded at him.

“Good. Then let’s get to it.”