New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live



The little imp-like demon looked at Astaroth with craze-filled eyes. The demon's dark red skin teemed with small scars; thin lines, with most of them having perfect copies on the opposite of its body.

This demon was called Valac and was the lowest rank in the demon's nobility, a count. Valac was pretty weak, if compared to many of the others of his rank.

Astaroth had relative ease in bending this demon to his will when he fought all of them, as it could hardly defend itself properly. But his powers would be great in this scenario.

"Valac, I need you to focus. I am going to fuse with you. I need your powers, and this is the quickest way. Try anything funny on my soul, and I'll make sure you never see the light of day again."

Valac snickered, showing his wide mouth, filled with rows upon rows of teeth, like a shark.

"Khi khi khi khi! I would never dare do anything of the sort to the young master. My powers are yours to command!"

Reaching into the demon's chest, Astaroth found no resistance as he tugged on the soul, pulling it inside his body. Feeling the small horns poke out of his forehead, and wings the size of a bats sprout in his back, Astaroth just knew he looked ridiculous right now.

But it wasn't his focus.

Already, in his skill list, the new powers he needed had appeared.

Astaroth changed his Ad Astra to a bow, pulling the magical string on it, as an arrow appeared between his fingers.

Pulling the string next to his cheek, he whispered something into the arrow as it sat next to his mouth.

"Matter Multiplication; Thousand-Fold Creation."

Aiming the bow upward, he released the projectile, watching it arc high into the sky, before disappearing. In its stead, a thousand arrows reappeared, falling like a rain of death toward the battlefield.

Astaroth quickly sent a message to Jaxx through the party chat.

'Jaxx, defensive skills. Now!'

Jaxx, who was stuck between a group of ghouls dashing at him from the rooftops, using hit-and-run tactics, forcing him on his back foot, and a group of over-eager zombies, trying to bite at his body, was already falling prey to desperation.

When he saw the message pop in the corner of his eye, he obeyed, just glad someone was coming to his aid. He didn't have any proper defensive skills, having focused his attention on attack, but his quick thinking still made him use a skill that could work.

"Hundred Slash Axe Barrage!" he shouted.

His hands started moving on their own, much faster than his eyes could track, as his axe started slashing all around him, in a dome-like shape, batting away all the incoming attacks and dealing damage to anything that dared get close.

It came just in time as well, as a rain of arrows started dinging on the axe blades over his head, pelting the entire zone around him, striking the ghouls and zombies, killing most of them in two or three hits. But the rain didn't stop at ten or twenty arrows.

Jaxx turned his head up, horror filling his eyes, as he saw the hundreds upon hundreds of magical arrows filling the sky above him, making it almost white with buzzing energy.

'Is my skill going to last long enough to block all those?!' he wondered in panic.

In the next ten seconds, arrows hit everything in a hundred-meter diameter around Jaxx, knocking down enemies left and right, leaving nothing moving around him. His skill ended half a second before the arrow barrage, and two rogue arrows hit him in the shoulders.

Jaxx watched the damage numbers go up in his vision, his face draining of its blood.

*-2,765* *-2,765*

Considering his twenty-one percent of damage reduction from both his armour and his constitution score, the numbers baffled Jaxx.

His health dropped by more than half, from those two attacks alone, and his mind finally comprehended the difference in power.

'What kind of skill was that?!' he wondered.

In his mind, this attack couldn't be a normal one. It had to be one of Astaroth's most powerful skills.

If he knew it was only a spell that multiplied an existing attack, meaning the damage was all Astaroth, and not amplified, his mind would probably shut down from shock.

While Jaxx was stuck in a stupor, a ghoul that had survived the onslaught saw an opportunity and jumped at it. Jaxx didn't register the incoming threat until it was upon him.

The ghoul's raised arm, prepped to strike as it barrelled toward him, whistled through the air. The noise caught Jaxx's attention as the attack was already streaking down toward his face.

'Fuck!' he cursed.

But something crashed into the ghoul's side, taking it away right before the attack could connect. Jaxx watched, slack-jawed, as a stag the size of a double-decker bus slammed into the enemy.

"What the fuck is happening…" Jaxx muttered.

Astaroth ran next to him, seeing the two arrows in the Human.

"Are you alright?"

"Huh?"

"I said are you alright?"

Jaxx looked at Astaroth, whose skin was now in a dark shade of burgundy, with two small horns, and almost mistook him for an enemy. But an enemy wouldn't talk to him, or ask if he was alright, so he assumed it was an ally.

"Uh… Yeah. I'm fine."

"Then get your ass up and get back to fighting, you moron. The battle is far from over."

After admonishing him, Astaroth bolted away, slamming into another group of enemies. The battle wasn't over, after all.

Jaxx reeled from the insult, unsure what was going on. But when he got to his feet and looked around, he quickly understood that the battle was back under control and that his part was the only fuck up in it.

His sister was giving him the stink eye from afar, obviously disappointed in his actions.

Jaxx understood his stunt might have landed him and her in a terrible situation and felt bad. But he would have to face the consequences once they were safe.