New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

A certain teenage boy was grumbling his night away inside New Eden, as his plans had fallen apart during the day.

This boy was Silent Light.

He had planned to stay a few days with Phoenix and Astaroth, but when he arrived at the building where they lived, the receptionist told him they weren't there, and that he didn't know when they would be back.

He had called Phoenix, trying to get a hold of her, but she instead deferred to Mr. Gu, who had to fix lodgings for the boy, at least for one night, as they were in a meeting with someone and didn't know when that would end.

But Mr. Gu didn't want to waste time hooking him up with a hotel, so he instead invited the teenager to stay the night at the private hospital compound. It also gave him a reason to pass the boy through many tests, much to the latter's reluctance.

When they gave him a room with a hospital bed and a helmet to connect to New Eden, it was the only moment he felt like it wasn't a prison. But he was still pissed.

"How could they tell me to go to their house, and then ditch me here… I thought Phoenix would be a better host than this," he grumbled.

Silent was travelling from one city to another, taking the long route instead of the teleporters, so he could help heal victims of the new roaming monsters and close portals when he crossed some.

He was sitting in the back of a slow-moving carriage, pulled by two oxen, that a merchant had been nice enough to invite him aboard.

The old man was not unpleasant company, by any means, but Silent Light was peeved at his supposed friends, who had hung him out to dry.

"Rhikhikhikhi. Boy, it would be best if you smiled once in a while. Or you'll end up old and wrinkled, just like my deceased wife. Look at me. Smiling since I was a kid, and not a wrinkle on my handsome face!" the merchant exclaimed, smiling widely at Silent.

Silent gave him a distracted smile, trying to be a good passenger, but his mind was elsewhere. Plus, the old man was lying.

He was covered in wrinkles.

The teen lost himself in thought once more as the old man shook his head with a chortle.

"Ahh, kids these days. Troubled by every little thing," the old man said mockingly.

But Silent Light was already deep in thought.

There had to be a reason his friends couldn't receive him at home, right? They were the ones to tell him to meet them there, after all.

They wouldn't have said that to tease him. They weren't like that.

As he was lost in thought, a sudden rumbling, with loud cracking coming from the forest to the right, caused Silent Light to snap out of his thoughts.

It sounded like something was crashing through trees at high speed, heading directly for the carriage.

Silent's face turned serious.

This was a known spot on the road for high corrupted monster activity. So he was half expecting this to happen.

He ordered the old man to speed up the carriage while he jumped off to take a look at the sound. The old merchant did not need to be told twice as he whipped the oxen into a gallop.

Silent Light stayed in the middle of the road, his shield and mace now equipped.

As the cracking grew louder, Silent braced himself.

When the noise passed the threshold of the side of the wide road and the trees shouldering it, Silent Light's face changed to surprise.

Instead of a monster, as he had expected, a human boy was flying at him at high speed. And he didn't look in good shape.

Silent only had a second to act, as the boy flew at him head first, his back parallel to the ground, blood seeping out of his mouth and leaking from his face.

Silent had a gut feeling that if the boy hit the ground or any other obstacle, he would die right then and there. But he could hardly move aside anymore.

It was too late.

So he did only what he could think of in that split second.

A small golden bubble appeared around the boy as he slammed into Silent Light's shield, pushing the healer back several feet as his feet dug into the ground.

When the momentum was finally depleted, the boy fell to the ground, the surrounding shield dissipating as Silent Light breathed heavily.

He knew this kid hadn't flown this way of his own volition.

'Whatever threw him or whacked him this way did so with incredible force…' he thought.

The path of broken and uprooted trees before him was a testament to that. But he couldn't see any monsters nearby, which was strange.

Monsters, especially corrupt monsters, rarely gave up chasing after throwing an enemy away. They were particularly vicious and unrelenting.

Silent Light stepped around the boy, trying to put himself between him and whatever would soon be coming after him, and turned to look at his injuries.

That was when he noticed something.

Kneeling to heal the kid, Silent wiped some of the blood covering his face away, revealing a familiar face.

"What the fuck? Gale?!"

A shiver went down his spine before Silent could recover from that shock, and a shadow appeared over his head.

Reflexively, he raised his shield above himself, bracing for an impact to come, and it followed immediately after.

With a loud 'Dong' that sent Silent's ears into an eardrum-piercing ring, Silent Felt his entire body sink into the ground a few inches, as the ground under cracked like a spiderweb.

'So heavy!'

He instantly felt like his body would be crushed under that hit and he had to activate a defence skill to take away the weight before he collapsed.

A loud screech resounded as Silent watched his mana reserves dip under half instantly, the shield consuming his mana to absorb the damage.

He turned around, only to see two massive clawed hands raking at his golden barrier as his jaw slacked.

"What the fuck is this?!"