New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live



Astaroth, Phoenix, and Khalor were all smart enough to deduce that the invaders had something to keep bringing them back to life. It was easy to guess that such an item or structure existed.

But finding it, all the while fighting off thousands of players, was not a minor task. So they had bid their time.

They were certain Athena wouldn't have brought anything to their attention that wasn't at least that important. And now, with the whistling echoing in their ears, it would be easy to find.

All three of them dove out of the base over the southern wall in quick succession. Phoenix had been monitoring the fight from inside the tree's canopy, while Khalor was close to that wall doing his massacre run.

As for Astaroth, he was inside the tree and could rapidly orient himself in the right direction. All three could fly, so reaching their destination was easy for them.

As the three reached the spot marked by the alarm spell, they quickly noticed the huge black puma shredding any player that respawned, as it prowled around the graveyard.

It was easy to tell what this was, as the mausoleum in the center was pretty standard. Plus, some graves had sprouted all around it.

Phoenix was the first to arrive. When Khalor and Astaroth joined her, she started giving instructions.

"Khalor, can you take care of the players' spawning? Your army can cover the most ground."

"On it."

His lack of rebuke almost surprised Phoenix, but she took it while it lasted.

"Astaroth, you take care of the zone boss. Khalor can help you when there are no players in his way."

"With pleasure!"

Astaroth rapidly dove onto the puma's back, two daggers in his hands, formed out of the Ad Astra. He started stabbing it repetitively, drawing spurts of blood with every new puncture.

Phoenix looked at the stone structure in the middle. She could tell this was the key to keeping the graveyard active.

Now the question was how to get inside it. The stone doors keeping it shut seemed pretty sturdy.

She landed in front of the structure, sliding her hand across the stone. It reddened at the contact of her hand, but nothing more.

There was no sign of the stone melting. She concentrated, pouring more mana into her Avatar of Flame form, pushing the heat it generated higher and higher.

Soon enough, the flames on her body changed from bright orange to vivid blue. She pushed her hand on the mausoleum again, watching the reaction.

The stone reddened to the point of almost becoming white, but there were no signs of melting again. Phoenix sighed in disappointment.

'I guess heat alone won't be enough.'

Phoenix closed her eyes, focusing on the nexus of her power. She then modelled it, pushing the form from a full-body one to a condensed layer of armour.

Her hair stayed lit up blue, but the rest of the flames moved about her body, correlating to her chest, legs, wrists and extremities.

Opening her eyes, Phoenix looked down at her body. Her stomach was exposed, as were her upper arms and lower legs.

Astaroth glimpsed the change while he was jumping off the bucking puma, and his heart skipped a beat. From afar, she looked like a fire goddess, coated in flames of bright blue, ready to burn the world.

But he rapidly focused back on his task, since the puma was lunging at his throat.

Phoenix took a solid stance in front of the doors, pulling back her fist as she pivoted her shoulders and hips. When she punched forward, the motion was fluid and instant, like she had practised it many times.

The direct punch impacted the stone doors, shaking the entire structure, as the heat from her fist melted a part of it inward. The sight of the melted dent made Phoenix smile.

She changed her posture to one similar to a boxer in front of a punching bag. When she started swinging at the doors, each hit resounded throughout the forest, like fireworks going off.

Khalor was happy to be on her side. Even if he could overwhelm her with his army, there was no way his body could take these hits directly.

Glancing at Astaroth, he thought, 'Maybe he could?'

But his attention was rapidly brought back to the players he was hunting down. One in particular, that he had been wanting to see for a while, had just respawned close to him.

Hearing a gunshot, as one of his undead dropped to the ground, Khalor smiled viciously.

"There you are, you fucking midget!"

Azamus' head snapped toward the voice.

"You! Good, I get to kill you again!"

Azamus' rifle snapped in Khalor's direction, only to be knocked away by a halberd hitting the barrel as he fired. The bullet flew next to Khalor's head, barely missing him, as he was still grinning.

"Don't even think that taking me down will be easy again. I'm going to skin you alive this time!"

Azamus, seeing his rifle would not be an option for now, pulled out his blunderbuss. He fired it at the death knight, using Recoil Shot to jump back to a safe distance.

He rapidly swapped weapons again, pulling out two pistols with comically big revolving chambers. He started firing the pistols at Khalor, who was moving in a random pattern to make himself hard to hit.

It was working well, although not perfectly, making him hard, but not impossible, to hit. But the pistols were not as powerful as the blunderbuss or his rifle.

Azamus glanced at where the loud banging was coming, other than his guns, and saw Phoenix wailing on the mausoleum doors. He turned one of his pistols to her, trying to pull a shot in, to stop her from destroying the mobile graveyard.

But before he could pull the trigger, something came flying at him, hitting his back. The enormous black puma that had shredded him to bits earlier turned back on its paws, surprised someone sent it flying.

It ignored the gnome it had just rolled over, dashing back at Astaroth. Azamus looked at Astaroth with hatred, as the latter smirked at him, conscious of what he had done.

Azamus' skin was going from brown to burgundy faster by the second. The three players that dared humiliate him more than Killi were all present at the same time around him.

But he was too busy fighting one of them to even lash out at the others. His head snapped back at Khalor, who was almost in his face.

"Fine! You'll die first!"

"Right back at you!"