New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

As the party slowly inched forward, on high alert, the path behind them suddenly closed up. Vines sprouted from the trees and ground, intertwining together, forming an impassable wall.

There was now only one way out, and that was behind the boss. When they reached the center of the room, the humanoid figure lifted its head.

Now that they were closer, they could gleam more details of his appearance. The humanoid figure was a lean, well-built male.

His body looked like a professional martial artist, sculpted from the toughest stone. As he stood from his cross-legged position, the party noticed something weird about his legs.

His thighs seemed much thicker than normal, and his shins were slim but looked sturdy. As for his feet, he had no footwear on, and they could see four long toes with pods at the tips.

Then his face was revealed more clearly to them. His traits looked nothing human, as his head was one of a frog.

His big, bulging eyes looked straight at them with a predatory look. That's when the party could finally scan their enemy.

Grippli Lieutenant:

Level: 50

Grade: Elite (Zone Boss)

HP: 479'250

MP: 8'580

As they scanned him, the frog man opened his mouth.

"Are you ready to meet your maker?"

"You can speak?" Gulnur asked, surprised the frog could talk.

"What an ignorant question. I would expect as much from a lowly life form like yours, dwarf. Now answer my question. Are you ready to meet your maker?"

Gulnur felt insulted at being called a lowly life form. But he knew better than to succumb to his anger and charge at a boss monster without thinking.

"Hmph! We'll see who's a lowly life form, once you are on the ground dying, you amphibian freak."

The Grippli Lieutenant started croaking rhythmically, in what the group assumed was a laugh.

"So you have chosen death. Very well."

As he finished saying this, the frogman jumped forward, his muscular legs propelling him like a drag racing car. His acceleration was almost instantaneous.

Gulnur had already prepared his shield for an attack, and the impact still pushed him back into his party. But from there, Astaroth used the opening to the boss' side to attack with his long sword.

But the attack didn't reach its intended target, as the Grippli lifted his halberd's butt end, sending it to meet the longsword, as the frogman jumped back out of range simultaneously.

*Clang*

The weapons collided, and Astaroth felt the force behind the impact.

'So heavy!' he thought.

He melded with White in that instant, trying to mitigate the blowback, and succeeded to a minor degree. His feet still slid back a few feet.

Then he summoned Morpheus, keeping Luna in reserve for now. He wanted to meld with her next, so he couldn't waste her timer just yet.

Morpheus appeared out of his back, flying up in the air. The small bat started bombarding the Grippli Lieutenant with sonic attacks, using its debuff attacks every time they were off cooldown.

Astaroth dashed back into the melee with the frog, trying to keep it pinned down, while Gulnur slowly ran back at it too. Together, they tried pinching the monster between each other, but failed at it.

This was an experienced combatant, and locking him in place was almost impossible. The Grippli would parry and block the incoming attacks from one of them and entirely dodge the others, in a graceful movement.

His halberd swung around him like the blades of a windmill, in a constant rotation, batting away any attack that threatened him. But they weren't the only two enemies he had to worry about.

Astaroth's attacks were coming at him with a speed high enough to warrant some attention. So when arrows and spells started coming at it from different angles, it started taking hits.

It had to choose between taking the blows in melee, or the attacks from afar, and its defence was slowly showing openings. But that was short-lived.

The boss jumped back, reaching the wall behind it, before running up it like a ninja. Once it was at a decent height, it croaked loudly.

From the top of the vine wall surrounding the boss room, three more frogmen came jumping down. They were armed with shields and swords, and started running at the party's back line.

Astaroth had to divert his attention from the boss, so he could keep them off the healer and ranged players. Even though they could have taken care of them by themselves, it was better to have him tank them.

It would allow the back line to make quicker work of them. He dashed through the three frogs, tagging them with his daggers on the way through, to catch the aggro.

Once he was between them and the back line, he started dancing around them while attacking, imitating the knife style he had stolen from Stinger during the tournament.

Athena also pelted the three adds with arrows, shifting her focus there to get rid of them quickly. Thirty seconds after they appeared, the frogs were already dead.

All the focus then returned to the boss monster, who was attacking Gulnur, with rapid consecutive blows. The dwarf was sweating from the pressure, but still mitigated every hit.

When Astaroth came back into the melee, Gulnur was finally able to breathe a little. But the situation rapidly changed again.

The Lieutenant started dipping in and out of melee, and spitting water bullets at Phoenix, Athena, I'die, Violette, and Silent. The first time it did so, Phoenix took the water bullet to the face.

Her health took a rapid drop, as the damage from the attack was nothing to scoff at. Silent had almost instantly healed her back to full, but this put the back line on the defensive, effectively reducing the pressure on the boss.

They could see how taking a dungeon at this level, with a small party, was playing against them right now. But it was too late for regret.

They fought with all their might, as they still had confidence in their victory. Two minutes after summoning the first batch of soldiers, the Grippli summoned another.

Phoenix kept track of the timers on skills and took mental notes. The more she knew about it, the easier it was to counter it.

Surprisingly, for now, the boss had yet to use anything other than his water bullets and the soldier summoning. Then again, his martial skill alone made him a terrible foe.

This was going to take a while.