New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

The copies she made this time were different in his eyes. The perfect mana sense made him see solid blocks of mana earlier, but this time, they were like silhouettes of fog.

He guessed they also couldn't deal damage to him, because then that would be incredibly powerful. But he played along with the illusion.

The real Blue Peacock was not moving for now. But the same couldn't be said about her clones.

The clones all started doing weird dance manoeuvres, circling the arena in seemingly no conceivable pattern. They were dancing about, using Blue Peacock's usual dancing style.

It didn't take too long for them to start launching attacks at him, from close and far. Astaroth was swiftly dodging the attacks, focusing only on this.

This gave out the illusion that he was cornered and could only dodge. Which was exactly what he wanted her to think.

'He's good. But he doesn't know what's real and what isn't. So he's dodging all of them,' Blue Peacock thought, as she observed from the distance.

The woman was patiently waiting a few minutes, so that her opponent was mentally exhausting himself. This was a surefire plan, in her mind.

After waiting for three minutes, she started making her move. She danced.

She was dancing, following the random pattern of her dancing style, but slowly making her way amongst the fakes. She made sure not to take a straight path, as that would make her obvious.

She had circled her opponent twice by the time she was in range to strike. She then lunged forward, at the same time as one of her illusions, aiming for Astaroth's neck.

But that's when she noticed something. Astaroth was looking at her from the corner of his eye!

The man was already no longer melded, so his stats were not overpowered, but he was still a powerful player. The other thing she noticed, as she was darting forward, was that Astaroth was no longer wielding swords.

He had swapped out his weapons for a great axe! And it was on a direct course for her throat!

It was too late for her to change her trajectory, and she understood she had been played. Blue swiftly lifted her arms to protect her neck, but it wasn't enough.

Astaroth's great axe cut right through her two arms, sending them flying, before continuing into her throat. The strike didn't behead her, since the amputation effect had already struck, but the damage was still incredible.

Her health bar rapidly zeroed out.

"Well played," she told Astaroth, before exploding into particles.

Astaroth stood there grinning. The illusions vanished at the same time she did, and he was promptly taken back to the stands.

Astaroth heard a system ping as soon as he appeared in the stands.

*Ding*

*You have a message from a player not on your friend list. Do you want to display it?*

He tapped the yes icon and read through the message.

All it contained was "How?".

He sent a reply, saying "That is a secret for another time.".

He then turned to look across the arena stands and winked at Blue, who was looking at him.

Astaroth saw the woman scoffing, as she was looking downwards, and then she looked at him wink and smiled, before flipping him the bird.

Astaroth laughed it off, sitting back down next to Phoenix and Athena, the former about to disappear. Athena saw the weird interaction and frowned.

"What was that about?" she asked.

"It's nothing. Don't worry about it," Astaroth said, chuckling.

'Making friends is not my forte, is it?' He thought, still smiling.

But as he thought that, another ping rang in his ear. It was another message.

Another ping, this time a friend request followed it. From Blue Peacock.

He read the message first. It said, "You better accept it.".

He laughed and clicked the accept button on the friend request.

'Never mind,' He thought.

By now, Phoenix had already teleported into the arena. Her fight was against War-Machine, and by the looks of it, the gnome did not want to be there at all.

His mechanical form was shivering as he waited for the gong. And it didn't make him wait long.

Astaroth ignored the fight, since he had a good guess of who would win, and went to talk to Khalor. He had a few questions he wanted to ask, and he hoped he would get some answers.

After walking the few meters that separated them, Astaroth sat next to Khalor. The man was silently looking at the arena, rubbing something between his index and thumb.

It looked like a necklace, shaped like an hourglass.

"What's that? Something precious to you?" Astaroth asked, trying to break the silence.

Khalor snapped out of his thoughts, turning his head slightly. When he saw Astaroth, he put the necklace into his shirt.

"It's nothing, just a trinket. What can I do for you, mister ripple?" Khalor asked, smirking.

"I'm not sure how I feel about you calling me that, but ok," Astaroth replied, frowning slightly.

"Whatever. I have questions for you. And I would like some answers." He then said, looking back at the arena.

Khalor turned his head back there too, before replying.

"What do you want to know?"

"I want to know how you know all the things you said to me earlier. I'm not sure if I should believe you yet, and answering that question would go a long way for that," Astaroth said.

Khalor thought for a bit. Not that he didn't want to answer his question, but he didn't know how to, without sounding like a madman.

He finally settled on giving him a hint.

"Would it help you believe me, if I said I will explain all in due time?" he asked.

Astaroth sighed.

"How long is due time? Understand that you are asking me to believe in things that sound so out of this world, and do things according to that. I need to be able to trust you here, so give me something," Astaroth said, turning his head back to Khalor.

It was Khalor's turn to sigh.

"I will make a deal with you, then. Make it to the finals, and I will show you. How about it?" Khalor said, looking Astaroth in the eyes.

He then extended his hand forward towards Astaroth.

Astaroth hesitated for a few seconds, but he eventually shook his hand.

"Deal."