New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Across the ocean, on the dark continent, Khalor was currently sitting on a mound of dead demons, panting heavily, with his death knight at his side. All around him, piles upon piles of dead demons, demonoids, and undead.

The battle against the demon stronghold had just concluded after days of combat. The demons had looked unprepared at first view, but it had been a subterfuge.

It seemed a high-level demon, with powerful illusion magic, had come out of the portal early, and it hid their actual progress on building a base from the world, behind an illusion that belied their actual might.

Only once they had passed the illusion threshold did they find out what mess they had stepped into. And it was already too late by then.

The reinforcements they had from the capital were far from being enough, being outnumbered five to one. Khalor had thought of abandoning this fight in its entirety at some point.

But he remembered the promise he made to himself, to never back away again, and powered through his instincts.

After four days of almost non-stop fighting, Khalor losing many of his undead army to the demons, a Demonoid general had finally breached into the inner layer of the demon camp, and slain the powerful sorcerer. Once the sorcerer died, the horn for retreat had resounded, and the demons ran back into the portal.

Their retreat came at a heavy cost, though, as the demonoids and undead tore at their backs with abandon.

Khalor looked further into the burning fortress, seeing the body of his drake lying upon the walls, the neck and head severed and strewn further inside.

"Tch! What a fucking waste… If I had known the sorcerer could cancel out my powers, I would have targeted him first…"

Reaching out with his magic senses, Khalor could no longer feel his connection with many of his undead. Their connection had been magically severed, and he knew these bodies would forever remain bodies from now on.

He knew he had to regrow his troops after this massive loss. Luckily for him, many more corpses littered the battlefield, and from most of them, he could feel the call of resurrection.

These corpses wanted to take revenge. Wanted to walk the world again, to get a second chance at felling their killers.

But he would need to ask permission from the Demonoids. He couldn't simply resurrect people without consent from their families.

It would be unethical.

But this would be a task for later. Khalor was exhausted and wanted nothing more than to go wash all the gore on him away in a hot bath, as well as take a long-awaited night of sleep.

As he stood up from the pile of corpses, Khalor had a stray thought for his old friend, from a time yet to come.

'I wonder how Chronos is doing… By now, in the past timeline, he was just reaching level fifty, and he was dragging me into Aces High. He couldn't have known, back then… Maybe this time, he'll make a better choice…'

***

Back inside the time capsule dungeon, Chronos was currently lying on his back, under the stars, looking at the sky.

But he wasn't watching the skies. Instead, he had his time vision active, and was looking at the time web, and how it differed from theirs.

The amount of threads in the time web was so much fewer, that he almost couldn't recognize it.

'By the looks of it, this dungeon is set at least a millennium before our time. But something seems strange…'

The more he looked at the time web, which usually spun itself slowly as time went by, the more he felt something wrong with it. It was a nagging feeling at the back of his mind, which he couldn't understand where it came from, and what caused it.

But it was making him restless. So much so that he failed to hear the light footsteps of Astaroth, who came to sit next to him by the campfire outside the tent.

"Beautiful night sky, isn't it?" Astaroth said, leaning back next to Chronos.

Chronos jumped a bit, startled by the sudden presence of someone else next to him.

"Huh? Ah, yes. That wasn't what I was looking at. But it is indeed a pleasant night."

Astaroth eyed him from the corner of his eye and smiled.

"So! Chronomancer, huh? How does one become a Chronomancer, if you don't mind me asking?"

The question took Chronos by surprise, a bit. He wasn't sure if he should tell anyone where he got his class from.

But something in Astaroth made him feel like he was trustworthy. And this was reinforced by the ever-so-strong tether between their time threads.

With an inaudible sigh of resignation, he spoke up.

"I guess I could tell you. But you have to promise me no one else will find out."

Astaroth turned his head towards him.

"That much of a secret, huh? Your secret is safe with me. I can even trade one with you if you want, so you don't feel like this is an interrogation."

Chronos nodded his head absent-mindedly.

"Do you know of the gods, Astaroth? Do you believe in them?" he asked.

With a chuckle, Astaroth lay down on his back before replying.

"If you had asked me that a few months ago, I would have told you no. But with all that's happened since I entered this new world, I can't say the same as back then. Especially since I met two of them myself."

Chronos' eyes widened a bit before his face returned to its placid, emotionless mask.

"Then it will make explaining this a lot easier. I'm sure you heard of the man that stayed stuck inside the game during the last update."

Astaroth nodded his head, before realizing where Chronos was going.

"That was you?!" he said, rising back to his elbows.

Chronos looked at him with disapproving eyes.

"Yes, that was me. But can you keep it down? There is no need to alarm the world about this."

Astaroth realized he had almost shouted and shut his mouth tight after apologizing.

"I was stuck here because I was in a cave that was outside of time itself. I was learning to use these powers under a very powerful being. The god of time, Tyr."

Astaroth looked at him wide-eyed.

He had met two gods, and not a single one of them had taught him special magic, so felt a little jealous.

'Lucky bastard,' he thought.