New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Genie ran at full speed, arcing her path from the outskirts of combat directly toward the Zone Boss monster. Phoenix saw the movement and reached out to Astaroth through the party chat.

**

"You're finally awake, sleeping beauty? About time. I was at my wit's end dealing with this thing. It just doesn't want to die."

"Sorry. I was trying to find something that would do more damage to it. After all, I can't deal elemental damage to it like you."

"Eh, whatever. Did you get what you needed?"

"Watch and see."

**

Astaroth grinned as he closed the message interface. Genie was already taking him under the giant Ent, zigzagging through the roots that carried its massive body around. Some roots tried attacking them, but her speed far surpassed the appendages' speed, and they couldn't even hit her shadow.

Astaroth was already focusing inside himself, where he could feel the strange power he had sensed before. Only this time, it was much more evident.

He reached out to it mentally, pulling out the Ad Astra, and carried the strange energy over to the weapon's blade.

A faint gray hue imbued the blade, dull to the eye, even covering the sheen of the sharp blade. He wondered what it was, but wouldn't know until the system notified him.

Which it would most likely hold back until he landed a successful hit on the monster.

So he looked up.

From his position under the monster, he could see a burnt hole right up the middle that led into the beast, and he guessed that was Luna's handiwork. He couldn't see all the way into the hole, but he could guess it went at least ten meters in.

"I'll need a boost to get me inside it. Can you do that, Genie?" Astaroth asked the wolf.

'Of course, Master!' she replied in his mind.

Astaroth grinned.

"Then let's do this! Stop here and try to aim for that opening."

Genie's legs all stopped, angling forward to halt her momentum as she skidded to a stop.

Astaroth used that forward force to jump off her, flipping in the air. He pushed mana under his feet, forming a pocket of wind ready to burst, and waited for his boost.

The moment Genie was completely immobile, she stomped her front left paw on the dirt and howled, a slight tremor going through the ground under her.

The next moment, a small pillar of rock lifted from the dirt, about a foot in diameter, and lifted right toward Astaroth's feet, slamming into it hard, making the air pocket burst.

Astaroth's downward movement was immediately changed for an upward one as the pillar lifted him two meters before stopping and letting the air escape from under his feet. This blasted him upward, akin to a rocket launching from Earth, and directly toward his goal.

The twenty meters separating him from the underside of the Ent were quickly covered, and Astaroth was shot right inside the tree monster.

As he cleared the outside hole, he entered the monster and realized why he couldn't see inside. With no light source inside it and a thick black mist floating around, it was pitch black.

Covering his mouth, Astaroth frowned.

'Luna came in here? I hope she didn't get some corruption inside her…'

A small snickering voice echoed inside his mind.

'Rhakhakha! Why are you covering your mouth, coward? This little mist can't affect your body, anyway. Not with me inside it. Not after what I had to do inside your soul. Breathe it in. Breathe it all in!'

Astaroth wanted to tell the demon to shut up, but already, he could feel what the demon meant.

Usually, when he crossed through demonic miasma, the reddish kind, it stuck to his skin, feeling icky. But this black one was avoiding him, floating away as it reached near him.

He heard a distinct tongue click in his head as the demon felt discouraged by the mist's actions.

'Did you want me to swallow it so you could consume it? Tricky little shit!' Astaroth berated him.

'What?! No! That's not what I wanted! Liar!' the demon replied, becoming defensive.

Astaroth ignored the reply, looking around him. He couldn't see much, but the greyish glow from his axe was glinting off something on the ground, not far from his current position.

Walking towards that, he quickly started walking on shards of something, making cracking noises under his boots. Lowering to his knees, he grabbed a piece of whatever it was and inspected it under the glow of his axe.

A purple shard of glass-looking material revealed itself; the edges melted like something scorching had pierced through the complete object, shattering it into hundreds of pieces.

More pieces of whatever that was were littered across the surrounding ground, and he imagined this was what was sucking up the mana previously.

Even shattered into pieces, he could feel his mana tugging in his hand as he held the piece.

"This is nasty stuff…" he mumbled.

But he wasn't here for an inspection. This could wait for after the fight if the Ent didn't outright turn to pixels.

Grabbing his axe handle, Astaroth rose back to his feet and raised the weapon above his head.

"Let's see how this thing likes being hit on the inside!"

Astaroth activated his armour's active skill with a powerful war cry, boosting his strength by twenty points and swelling his arms up a bit. He brought his axe down with a mighty swing and watched the damage number rise before his eyes, grinning.

*137,200!!*

"Now we're talking!" he shouted before starting to hack away at the interior of the Zone Boss.

He looked like a madman, swinging his axe repetitively with a wide grin. Shards of wood flew in all directions with each of his swings, looking like fireworks were going off.

The grey light would flare up on each impact, glowing brightly for a split second before dimming again. This looked like a stroboscope was flashing inside the Ent, like a rave was happening.

Astaroth heard the notification ping in his ear but chose to ignore it in favour of killing this monster before anything else. Being safe was a priority to reading his new skill, and killing the Boss monster was the way to achieve that.

So he hacked and hacked until he heard a low rumble and felt the ground give out under him.

'About time,' he thought, feeling himself fall toward the ground as the body of the boss disappeared around him.

He opened the notifications to read his skill since the fight was practically over, and his face paled.

'Fuck… I should have read this before… Mother-fucking idiot.'