New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Astaroth scanned the boss as it charged at them.

Stone Ape King:

Level: 45

Grade: Special (Zone Boss)

HP: 83'822/189'500

MP: 5'500

He smirked as he saw how low his attack had brought the zone boss. It was worth cancelling his melding early, in his opinion.

Now was not the time to ponder his damage, though. And so he prepared to face the monster again.

But there would be no more fighting.

I'die had been casting another spell, which made the ground in front of them into soft earth, instead of stone. He then turned his head to Violette, who nodded in return.

It seemed the synergy of the vine wall had given them an idea, and they were now trying it out.

Violette sent a constant stream of mana into the now soft dirt, forming water pockets inside it. When the ape kind stepped on that spot of ground, his foot immediately sank.

Astaroth looked on in awe, as he understood what they were doing. They had created a sinkhole with magic!

The ground soon collapsed further under the heavy ape king, causing him to become submerged up to his torso. The ape was flailing around, trying to dig himself out, but the ground kept collapsing deeper and deeper.

Phoenix caught on to their plan and started concentrating mana, too. She soon had an enormous amount of mana gathered before her, which caused the air itself to heat up.

Once the ape was sunken to his shoulders, she released the wave of concentrated heat at the pit he was in. The dirt and sand quickly dried out, before becoming red with heat.

Damage numbers started floating above the monster's head, and they were slowly rising. The pit went from a spot of hot dirt to a pool of molten stone rapidly, as the ape was flailing around in pain.

The damage he was taking was constantly rising, as his tough skin slowly melted, exposing weak spots that the magma was burning into. Gulnur and Athena watched in horror as the monkey cooked alive.

They hadn't thought mages working together could be so dangerous. They silently gulped, remembering to stay in the trio's good graces.

Astaroth, in the meantime, was watching the mana reactions closely. He was trying to understand how each spell had synergized together.

Since he had no specific elemental affinity, he could recreate these things on a smaller scale if he understood how they worked. So he studied every little detail, ignoring the screaming and burning monkey.

After a round a minute of burning and melting agony screaming, the ape king finally fell silent.

*You have killed a Stone Ape King (Special, Zone Boss) (Lvl 45). 4500 Exp awarded for contribution (Bonus 100% for kill one tier higher).*

Astaroth looked at the Exp disappointingly, but when he checked the amount he got from the normal apes, he shrugged his shoulders.

*You have killed a Stone Ape (Lvl 36). 225 Exp awarded for contribution.*

The amount in itself was wholly inadequate, but then, they had killed so many of them. From the digit next to the unseen notifications, he understood they had killed almost five hundred of them.

This made the amount of Exp a little more reasonable. He was very close to levelling up with this.

Everyone in the party aside from Violette was at a higher level than him, and that peeved him a little. He knew it was because of many circumstances, but still.

Genie, who had been in a passive role in this fight, picking off apes that slipped past him and Gulnur, had levelled up, though. He was happy.

His companions were all becoming stronger. He couldn't control the stat direction for Genie, so he only eyed her status screen while nodding.

White Death was also close to levelling, and Luna. Well.

Luna was so high level that the EXP she was getting from combat was being diminished greatly. That meant she wouldn't be levelling any time soon.

On the bright side, it mattered little, since the stats she had were still greatly superior to any monster he was fighting currently.

He was hoping the dungeon where they were going would help him level up quicker. He missed the days when he was in the top one thousand level ranking.

The circumstances that pulled him out of it were out of his control, but it still irked him. It didn't really matter much, though, since he knew he was on par with the top ten players, anyway.

His semi-finalist title said as much.

Back to the matters at hand. He had observed the interaction between each form of elemental mana, as the magma pool was forming.

He understood the underlying principle of what they had done, but there were still some details that escaped him.

'I'll have to keep observing when they do some synergized spells,' he thought, rubbing his chin.

Phoenix walked up to him, while he was still deep in thought.

"Can I ask you something?"

"Hmm? Sure, go ahead," Astaroth responded, snapping out of his pondering.

"When you melded with your second companion during the tournament. You weren't this strong, were you?" she asked.

"You mean Luna? No, I wasn't. Luna was still unborn at that point, and I only had half her stats from the melding," Astaroth responded, not even wondering why she asked this.

"So, you weren't at full power?" she questioned.

"I mean. I was, at that time. But since Luna has been born, her stats have doubled. So I guess not?" Astaroth said, scratching his chin pensively.

"Do you think you could have won against Khalor if Luna had been born back then?" Phoenix asked, curious.

"No," Astaroth flatly replied.

There was a tinge of disappointment in his answer. It was like he felt regret for his weakness.

"There is something about one skill Khalor used, that I feel like he could have torn me to shreds if he wanted," Astaroth stated, his eyes serious.

Phoenix stopped questioning him, as she started thinking about what skill he was talking about. The only one her mind kept creeping back to was when everyone had been logged out.

But no one except for the devs and the two players present knew what had happened in there.

'What kind of skill was it?' she silently wondered.

She shrugged off the question for now, as they had to keep going if they wanted to make it to the dungeon soon.