New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live



Inside the coliseum, as Phoenix and the other party members were rushing there, Astaroth stood still, looking at his hands.

His body glowed in a bright white light, with after-glows of golden. Astaroth could feel a surge of power inside him, but he didn't know where from.

Next to his name, on his status screen, a question mark appeared, and he couldn't open it to get more details.

But he could feel the power was not permanent, so he needed to make the most of it.

When he erupted, the surge of energy had pierced the black veil enclosing the area, and Morpheus used the gaping hole it created to fly inside before it closed up again. As soon as the bat got close to its master, the white glow spread to him, as it had to all the others, including Genie.

Her wound on the stomach had healed, and the effect was gone from her status.

Looking around himself, Astaroth noticed the undead had stopped attacking him, hiding their faces from the light he exuded. This made him grin.

At the other end of the coliseum, the undead master of all these monsters shrivelled up slightly. Khalor would have recognized this entity as a lich, one of Death's most powerful escapees.

It squinted at the light, now pervasive in his domain of darkness, frowning at the boy emanating it.

'What is someone like him doing here, on the material plane… I must not let him leave here alive, or death will come knocking…'

Opening his mouth, the lich let out a husky shrill. A command to all its minions, to kill the intruder basking in divine glow.

The undead closest to him started pushing forward, forcing the ones in front of them to do the same, and soon enough, this caused a chain reaction. Like dominoes tumbling forward, the undead pushed each other until they forced the front ranks to march.

But Astaroth wasn't standing idle, either.

Dashing forward, he smacked his fist into a skeleton's face, blowing it cleanly off the spine. When the undead dropped to the ground, it didn't rise.

Grinning even wider, Astaroth gave a command of his own.

"Kill them all!"

A concert of howling and screeching echoed in the coliseum, echoing on the dark barriers in place. Luna tried howling as well, in her tiny Ash Elf form, before transforming into her hulking stag figure, towering over everything present.

She opened her mouth, a white glow accumulating in her throat, before unleashing a Moonbeam the size of a freight train, reaching a distance of a hundred meters, simply vaporizing anything in its way.

"Yes, girl! Y'all better keep up!" Astaroth shouted, sending his other companions into a frenzy.

No one wanted to be left behind, even if they knew Luna was a monster in her own right. Genie forced her magic into action, using her armoured form a second time for the day, against its usual cooldown.

White couldn't do something like that, but he wasn't without tricks. Focusing on his mana, his body suddenly shimmered slightly, becoming translucent. Starting a mad dash forward, he pushed through the undead waves, circling back to his original position.

Nothing died in his wake, but every undead he clipped was suddenly stuck in place, unable to move a muscle or bone. This was a new skill he had gained not too long ago, called Mind Freeze.

Astaroth had wondered what it did until now. But it was quite a useful skill.

Charging into battle himself, Ad Astra switched to a greatsword, Astaroth was spinning around his blade, akin to a human-sized blender, and everything he hit fell to the ground, inanimate. After a few moments, seeing as they didn't rise, he gleefully laughed.

'Now I can make leeway into this army!' he thought.

Morpheus fought for aerial supremacy, against some kind of winged abomination, as well as zombie Birds, while Luna, Genie, and White plowed through the ground forces. It was a massacre.

Whatever glow was covering them right now was boosting their power, by at least double by Astaroth's estimates. He didn't even feel the need to meld with a demon from the ring.

Not that he thought he would be able to. Something about the glow on his skin dripped in divinity, and he doubted the demonic essence mixture would bode well.

He imagined it would either disappear, or his skin would blister from his temporary power.

From inside the ring's domain, Solomon could feel the surge in divine energy, and for a second, he thought Astaroth was under attack by a minor god. But when he tapped into his powers to observe the ring's surroundings, he only saw death and glowing monsters.

Confused by this, he went back into the ring, minding his business.

***

On the outside of the dungeon, the shimmering entrance to it had already closed. No one would know a dungeon was ever there, even if they passed right in front of it.

But one bystander was silently observing from its position in a nearby tree.

As it slowly licked itself clean, as if it were any ordinary cat, the multicoloured pelt feline occasionally turned its head toward the base of the tree. It was watching a dozen of golden threads as they disappeared inside the tree trunk of the large tree, waiting for something.

When one thread began glowing much brighter than the others, the cat became curious, jumping from tree to tree, reaching one where it passed into the branches. It pawed at it, feeling a tingling in its cushions every time it touched.

The feline even nibbled on it a bit, realizing this was what had brought it here. This was the thread that wasn't weaving like it should.

The feline could feel another thread on the web, that was entirely out of place, but this one's call was stronger. Whoever it belonged to was causing the entire web of time to change, and it needed to meet them.

Deciding to take a nap, right there, in a monster-infested zone, the feline awaited the exit of its proprietor. No monster was stupid enough to bother it, the aura it released strong enough to make them shiver in fear.

Not a moment later, it was already fast asleep, purring softly as the sun delicately passed through the bough of the tree, bathing it lightly in its glow.

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