New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

This time, as Astaroth darted into the now completely devolved battlefield, he collided with the foot soldiers.

And even they were more than capable of holding their own. Most of them were well over the power level of even the current strongest players.

Every demon he scanned in the foot soldiers was level fifty and over, and most of them were at least special grade.

Astaroth wasn't sure what kind of army could overpower this kind of raw strength. From what he saw in the few cities he travelled to, the armies weren't this level or grade.

Then again, with the mix of races, he assumed every kingdom and clan of the continent of light had pitched in their most powerful troops. He couldn't see demonoids or undead anywhere, though.

Even orcs were a rare sight. At least from what he could see in the middle of this hectic battlefield, every time he took some altitude.

Astaroth fought with all he had, summoning his soul companions, aside from his recent addition, the dragon, and spreading them around himself.

Luna's meld soon ended, and she flew out of his body, shifting to her animal form midair, before stampeding through the ranks of demons.

He wasn't killing the demons as fast as he wanted, but they still couldn't hold a candle to him. But, because of this, he caught the attention of a field officer fast enough.

Melding with White Death next, Astaroth felt a tingle in his spine. Something was coming for him from behind.

Spinning around, with claws lashing out, Astaroth slammed both his claws into a shield, raking across it, sparks flying. A sword was already coming at him from the right, so he kicked at the arm to cancel out the attack.

As both he and the demon jumped back from each other, he finally caught sight of his new foe.

A stoutly built blue demon, decked in a set of plate armour, chain mail rustling beneath it, its shield gleaming in the orange glow of the burning camp in the background. Astaroth eyed him up and down, as did the demon to him.

"A demon in armour? That's not something you see every day," Astaroth said, lowering his stance.

"I could say the same about a mortal using souls like tools. You are an oddity yourself," the demon replied, slowly strafing to his right, shield still raised and ready.

Both men twitched slightly before lunging at each other, crashing in a trade of blows.

Astaroth grinned, as both of them were almost evenly matched. He was technically weaker than the demon, level and grade-wise, but with his boosted stats from melding, he was actually slightly stronger.

In their exchange of sword swings and clawing strikes, Astaroth understood his opponent would hold him here for a while, if he stayed at this pace. But that wasn't his intention.

With their quest tracker showing a continually climbing kill count, he assumed his allies had done the same as him, and were gunning for the foot soldiers as much as they could. They were aiming for maximum rewards.

So he could hardly let himself get held up by a single foe.

'Luna! Morpheus! Genie! On me!' he commanded through their mental link.

Before the demon officer could understand what was going on, a gigantic deer, an equally enormous wolf, and a bat the size of a cathedral gargoyle suddenly swarmed him. And with Astaroth closing the encirclement, he was downed faster than he could cry for help.

But once he killed the field officer, Astaroth noticed something on the kill count, making him grin wider.

It had gone up by ten instead of one.

'Oh, hell yeah! The hunt is on!' he mentally cheered.

He quickly relayed the information to his allies before taking to the skies, melding with Morpheus to maximize his flight capacity.

"Luna, White, and Genie! You guys follow from the ground and kill anything that looks like a demon! When I find an officer, I will call you over!" he shouted to his companions.

He didn't want to pull out the dragon just yet. Shegror was still in a weak state while he assimilated to his soul.

Since he hadn't contracted the soul of a dead being, the connection between this soul shard and its previous owner was still fighting to snap them back together. It would take a while until the tether between his soul and the shard was stronger than the tether to the live Shegror.

So he had to use this new companion sparingly, and keep it close to his soul, to enforce the tether.

He also knew that Shegror's soul shard would always have double allegiances, as long as the main body lived. He silently hoped the main body was dead in his timeline.

Reaching a comfortable height to scan through the battlefield, Astaroth quickly found a foe that was higher level. And when he did a deeper scan on it, he grinned.

**

Demon Lieutenant Barthos

Grade: Special

Level: 60

**

This would be child's play, he thought.

He sent in the group chat a description of what he thought was the first rank of the command chain, so his party knew what to look for. Then he darted toward the demon, calling his soul companions to him.

He noticed that the sky was where most of the higher command of both the mortal side and demon side fought, so he didn't want to reach too high lest he become a target of choice.

He even wondered how some of these officers on both sides could maintain aerial combat. Some of them, he couldn't sense an ounce of magic from, aside from the gear they wielded and wore.

But it wasn't his concern. As long as he stayed out of their way, he wouldn't die for nothing.

Astaroth and his allies sprang on a hunt for low-level commanding officers. Their intention was only to gain more rewards for their quest, but another also happened.

As more and more of the lieutenants on the demon side died, the more the demon foot soldiers became erratic. Their combat line spread thinner, causing gaps and dead zones.

The mortal forces quickly took advantage of this, filling those zones with complete platoons, overpowering their counterparts.

Every bit of chaos Astaroth and his friends caused pushed the battle more and more toward victory for the mortal forces.