New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Astaroth and the grey alpha dashed into the fray, crisscrossing each other’s paths, changing targets as they went. They aimed to get rid of the weakest link in the corrupted wolves, and to reduce numbers as fast as they could.

Astaroth was scanning the creatures as he went, hitting every one of them, marking them for the alpha to command his underlings to focus on them. He also attacked the marked targets to maximize the damage output.

This hit-and-run resulted in many casualties on the corrupted side, as a combination of Astaroth’s high damage, and the other monsters’ focus, rapidly dispatched all the weaker corrupted monsters.

Astaroth thought about his skills as he marked the weakest creatures in the bunch, still trying to find other ways to boost his damage. With how the grades of every corrupted monster were higher than their normal counterpart, their health was also higher.

It made killing them much harder than it should have been, and their passive regen also did not help.

‘I need higher damage if I want to take care of them faster. Is there anything else I can do with Enhance Weapon?’

He was confident in his ability to manipulate mana, inside him, on himself, and even around himself. But he still wondered what he could do that would boost his damage.

Casting Ignite on a nearby giant bear, to aid the weaker monsters in containing it, Astaroth noticed something. Although the bear was regenerating the paltry damage he was doing, something else happened that made him smile.

The upticks of health on the burning monster were suddenly lower!

To confirm the budding theory in his head, Astaroth spun around and ignited another enemy. Just as he had hoped, that monster’s health also started regenerating at a slower pace. ｎｏｖ𝚕．𝚌ｏｍ

It was half of the amount from before, which still was around five percent, but anything that made their health stagger was good. If he could ignite every monster in the corrupted monster horde, he would give a tremendous advantage to his allies.

‘But targeting them one by one would take way too much time. I have to find a better solution.’

Astaroth kept on slashing at the corrupted wolves, aiding in taking those creatures down as fast as possible. They had already taken out half the horde, which was not a small feat, but some monsters on his side had also perished.

All in all, the numbers advantage had been reduced on the corrupted side, but they still hadn’t entirely flipped the situation around fully. He needed to take more drastic actions.

He was half tempted to set the entire forest ablaze, and let the regular monsters deal with it on their own, but he had a feeling that would upset the forest guardians.

Astaroth’s mind rushed through many different ideas, all as worse as the next.

That was until he thought of something.

‘When I use my mana to cast a fire spell, am I turning the mana to fire mana? Or am I igniting the regular mana, turning it into fire mana after?’

He had only one way to find out. Astaroth rarely focused on the spells he already knew from his early days in New Eden, since they were more of an automatism at this point.

But masteries opened up a whole new realm of magic, that would require him to learn the functioning of every individual spell he learned.

Raising his hand toward another bear, Astaroth squinted his eyes to look at the mana particles floating around the monster. He cast Ignite and watched closely what happened.

He had half expected his mana to turn into fire mana through his will, and light the fur on fire, but that was not what happened. The mana that left his body surrounded the area he was targeting, before suddenly agitating all the lingering mana around itself.

Once all the mana particles in the targeted zone started vibrating, faster and faster, under the coaxing of his mana, the air sparked, and the fur caught fire.

‘Oh my god! We call it magic, but it’s really just science! Mana is only our mystical way to affect physics on a deeper level than what humans can!’

What his mana had done, was exactly what they taught you in science class, in high school. Heat was generated by the friction of the molecules, a phenomenon also known as thermal energy.

By this logic, the mana he pushed out forced the mana in the air itself to react in a way that caused it to heat up. To most people, this meant nothing, other than an explanation to a known theory.

But to Astaroth, who had perfect mana sense, and could discern every kind of mana around him clearly, this was an epiphany.

Turning his head toward the wolf he was tag-teaming with, Astaroth shouted.

“Can you keep the corrupted monsters busy for a while by yourself?! I think I found a solution to our problem!”

Although the wolf couldn’t understand his words, the grin on his face was practically enough to convey his feelings. The giant grey wolf dashed toward him, brushing against Astaroth, as he sent his emotions and intentions in a pulse of mana, directly to the wolf’s brain.

The information now much clearer in the animal’s head, it ground to a halt, before raising its head to the skies.

*AAAWWWWOOOOOOO!!!*

Its howl resounded through the basin like a nuclear alarm in the Nevada desert. The dozens of dire wolves still alive responded to the call, howling out briefly themselves, causing a wave of fear in the hearts of the corrupted monsters.

But this wave of fear was rapidly overridden by their madness, as they howled or growled in response, redoubling their rage and efforts to tear down the resistance.

But the wolves rapidly retreated from whatever combat they were engaged in, sometimes at the risk of getting attacked, and suddenly surrounded Astaroth and the grey alpha.

Astaroth grinned at the move. He nodded at the alpha, before closing his eyes and focusing intensely.

‘Let’s hope this works as I think. Otherwise, this defensive stance will turn into a deathtrap.’