New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live



The fight started with a bang, as Astaroth shot a Moon Beam into the compacted monster horde, killing dozens of them in a single spell. He then started running through that cleared line, shooting Fire Bolts and Wind Blades.

As he zoomed away from the stone dome, the horde followed behind him, nipping at his heels. Astaroth shot spell after spell, gravely wounding or outright killing enemies.

He also took damage, since there was no way he could dodge every incoming attack. He was fast, but not that fast.

But the damage he took was paltry compared to what he dished out. After two minutes of running around and killing enemies, he had already thinned the herd by a quarter of its mass.

He suddenly recalled something. The description of the Ad Astra specified it could emulate any damage.

He hadn't tried using it to cast magic yet, since he thought it was mainly a melee weapon. But what if he could use it as a spell-casting focus?

Astaroth didn't want to use it as a wand, since it would be a waste of his second hand. But he was having trouble thinking of a weapon that would allow him to cast from both hands and not slow down his casting speed.

A staff would use both hands, but it would slow down his attacks, since he would fire one spell at a time. As he wracked his brain on the matter, he kept dipping in and out of combat.

He was less focused on his fighting, so he took more damage, but it was still manageable. But then he had an Eureka moment.

He envisioned it in his head, sending the mana into Ad Astra, forcing it to morph. His artifact flashed white for a second, before disappearing from his hand.

The next second, the pommel of the Ad Astra appeared over his chest, with the metal forming some kind of flexible tube going from the orb to his two hands.

The tubes split at his hand, forming some weird tubed glove with metallic fingertips. Two of the fingertips, his index and middle finger, had open tips.

Astaroth looked at it with a wide grin.

eαglesnᴏνel He inspected Ad Astra, wanting to know how this weapon was called by the system.

*Ad Astra (Spell-slinger's Gloves Form)*

Grade: Artifact

Attack Power: (Level 48) 1920 (All stats) (Tens of level * ten * level)

Durability: ∞

His grin widened.

'Now we're talking! Time to test these bad boys out!'

Astaroth formed guns with his hands, leaving the index and middle fingers extended. When he channelled a fire bolt, he felt the spell go through the weapons' orb, before leaving toward the hands.

Two identical bullets, made of fire, left his hands, hitting two nearby enemies.

*-14,200!* *-14,200!*

The two enemies instantly turned into flaming corpses before turning into pixels and vanishing. Astaroth had used four points to max out his Firebolt spell, and the increase in damage, along with his weapon's damage, and landing crits surpassed his expectations.

He rapidly dumped another four points into Wind Blade and Stone Bullet, maxing them out too. They were basic spells, and only gave two hundred percent damage, but that seemed plenty in this case.

He hurriedly cast Stone Bullet and Wind Blade, which also came flying out as bullets made of their respective elements. The speed at which they flew was augmented, though.

Their penetrative power seemed augmented by the Ad Astra, guaranteeing critical hits, as long as he didn't hit a well-covered spot on the monsters. Astaroth was in heaven.

His killing power drastically went up, allowing him to mow through the enemies with great ease. But he also noticed something else.

The spells cost more mana to cast than usual when fired through the gloves. Astaroth took it as a trade-off for the augmented penetrative power and longer spell travel.

Since he wasn't casting through his body directly, there seemed to be some loss of mana along the weapon. But with his extremely high mana levels, he couldn't care less.

By the time his meld with Luna was close to expiring, Astaroth had already cleared out half the monster horde. He had slowly started seeing higher-levelled monsters, as well as high-grade ones.

His damage was still good enough to contend with them, but he was also taking more damage than before. Astaroth switched his meld to White, in a practiced manner, morphing from one form to the other quasi-instantly.

While he transformed, he also thought it wise to switch the form of his weapon. Since his meld with White allowed for greater combat capability than magic, he thought of something new there, too.

He infused the Ad Astra with more Mana and it flashed white. The orb that had been over his chest disappeared from it and reappeared as two smaller orbs.

The two small orbs were adorning the top of his new weapon. He had transformed the Spell-slinger's gloves into a set of large metallic claws that covered the ones that already came from melding with White.

His hands looked a little funny, suddenly metallic and oversized. But the sharp sheen the claws gave off was more than enough to convince anyone of their lethality.

Astaroth abandoned his kiting tactic, switching to a hit-and-run tactic. His speed in this form wasn't any inferior to Luna's form, even considering the lower stat increase.

This allowed him to weave through the enemies deftly. Astaroth reminded himself of something a martial artist had once said.

'Float like a butterfly, sting like a bee.'

That was how he felt at that moment. His graceful movements allowed him better evasion than earlier, since his focus was more on his immediate surroundings than on further targets.

And his hands sliced swiftly through anything too close, spurting blood everywhere he went. The fight went on for the full duration of his meld, dashing in and out of enemies, spraying their insides on the ground.

When it was time to switch again, Astaroth was bloodied red, dripping with blood of many colours, and bits of flesh. It didn't seem to bother him much, though.

He focused his mind on one thing: surviving. Inadvertently to him, his running and fighting had brought him closer to Leon's unconscious body.

Body which was twitching and shuddering.

Leon was waking from his slumber.