New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

A couple of minutes later, the plan was set into motion. Astaroth and Gulnur rushed out of the jungle from one side of the clearing, and the rest of them sneaked in from the other.

Astaroth had already melded with White, and he also summoned Morpheus, his new companion. Morpheus served as an additional long ranged harasser, and his occasional debuffs would help them too.

Once Astaroth and Gulnur had gotten the attention of all the monsters, the rest of the party started going to town. Arrows started peppering the frogs, as well as binding spells and blasts of fire.

Violette was carefully tucked behind Silent Light, her forehead creased, as she maintained concentration on her spells. Around the body of every other party member, a thin film of water was floating.

When the first acid attack finally hit Gulnur's shield, his face scrunched for a second, before a smile gleamed from his beard.

'It works!' he thought.

He then stopped worrying and went all in. The faster these frogs went down, the less strain Violette had to endure.

Astaroth was much too fast for the frogs to catch him, and he was using this criss-cross between them, sometimes causing friendly fire.

It seemed the frogs' mouths were immune to the acid, but the rest of their body, not so much. When they got attacked by the other frogs, their bodies sizzled and showed clear signs of corrosion.

This was a positive turn of events. Athena noticed the spots and grinned.

The melted spots that kept appearing on the frogs gave her more and more weak points to target. She shot arrow after arrow, using skills amid them, maximizing her damage output.

Every arrow she fired planted itself into the small melted spots on her targets, making the frogs slowly look like porcupines.

The group of seven frogs was slowly ground to death until the last one died to Astaroth's axe. Once the frog dropped to the ground, Violette let go of her channelling, dropping to her knees.

She looked exhausted, but a smile floated on her lips. She had done it!

She had maintained six spells at the same time. Even if they were the same spells, and were not complicated ones, this was a great step forward for her.

But it was a tiring one. Almost all her mana was gone, and she had used Mana Siphon a few times during the fight, too.

Water Skin was not a costly spell to maintain on its own. It only cost ten points of mana per second.

But when you maintained it on six players at once, that rapidly became a burden. Even though the fight lasted about three minutes, that was a very costly three minutes.

The team elected to take a small rest, so Violette could get back to peak condition. She was a very important asset to the party, after all.

After resting for five minutes, her mana was back to full, and her breathing had steadied, too. Violette stood, signalling she was ready to keep going.

While the others picked their things up, she walked over to Silent Light.

"Thank you for covering me earlier. I saw you take a few attacks for me, and I know the healer should be the one that gets protection," Violette said, giving a small bow.

"No worries, young lady. If I couldn't take a few hits for an important teammate, I wouldn't join dungeon runs," Silent Light replied, his tone monotonous.

His lack of emotion almost took aback Violette, but she then remembered who she was talking to. The man barely talked or reacted even during combat.

It was almost disconcerting. She bowed again, this time feeling a bit more embarrassed.

'Am I the one that is overacting?' she wondered, as she walked back to Astaroth's side.

Meanwhile, Silent watched her walk away, his eyes deadpan and emotionless. But in his head, a whole other thing was happening.

'Yuss! She saw me act cool and save her! I bet I looked awesome when I stood up for her too!' he screamed in his mind.

Silent Light was his gaming persona, but the human behind it was far less silent. He had always enjoyed acting cool and collected when he gamed.

Roleplaying the silent hero was his favourite activity, but he himself was an overexcitable kid that had the eighth-grade syndrome. Silent Light was a young teenager, with too much time on his hands.

And he loved gaming more than anything. He knew Phoenix from another game, and had stayed friends with her when transferring to New Eden.

Phoenix knew how he really was, since she had gamed with him for some time now, and sometimes he would drop his act accidentally. But he stayed a very talented player and healer.

So she never held his weirdness against him. She had also seen the interaction between him and Violette, and was chuckling inside.

'He must be losing his shit right about now,' she thought, shaking her head with a giggle.

Astaroth noticed her laugh and saw who she was looking at.

'Is she into the silent type? That would explain a lot of things.' he thought.

'I couldn't act like that even if I tried,' he said internally.

After having picked their things up, the party started advancing slowly into the dungeon once more. Their pace was steady, as Athena kept using her new skill to tell them which direction to go.

After plowing through a few more quick encounters, the party finally reached the first boss room. It was established in the forums that all the currently known dungeons had three bosses.

There could be more in higher-level dungeons, but that was the current established paradigm. So they were happy to reach this place, since that meant they were progressing well.

They could tell they were in the boss room, because the jungle opened up from the small path to a large open space, with a stone floor.

At the far end of the room, there was a wall that stood tall and strong. It seemed the only door to proceed forward was in this room.

And in front of this door, a humanoid was sitting cross-legged. From the distance they were standing, they couldn't make out his traits.

But to his side, planted in the ground, there was a tall halberd. They understood he was the boss.