New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 990: A New Threat



There was a slight pulse of mana from Winston, and Kary knew the taunting words had the effect they were supposed to have, as the small horde of twenty kobolds started rushing at them.

With the distance between them already relatively short, they would be upon them in seconds. But the four of them were ready.

With Violette at her side, the two of them started bombarding spells at the running kobolds, thinning their lines in a speedy manner. But the harpies weren't going to let them slay their slaves with impunity.

With a mighty screech, one harpy dove toward their ranks, aiming for the smallest of the four, Violette.

But it never made it to the girl, an arrow flying out of the darkness and planted in its head. "Decent shot," Jin-Sil complimented, looking at Killian.

The Englishman had swapped out his two swords for a bow and was currently frowning.

"I was aiming for its ear, and hit its temple... I'm not satisfied with that shot," he groaned. "You can talk shop once the room is clear," David barked, diving forward.

With this arrow, his group had been exposed, and they couldn't hide any longer, engaging with the group of harpies at the right, a gunshot resounding in the cavern.

David had insisted that Killian swap to a ranged weapon for this since he could hold a frontline on his own. He already had a few hardy skeletons dashing with him, bony swords in their hands and rickety wooden shields in their off-arm.

Before the second group of harpies could react, a sudden flash of black flame appeared next to them on their perch, and out of it came flying a man with black skin and two jutting horns.

The harpies barely had time to react before two of them were cut to pieces, and the other four were sent flying off with kicks and elbows. Already, the ones sent barreling down were getting caught by Jonathan, Liu Yan, and Rì-Chū.

There wasn't much of a fight on this side before the harpies were dead.

Down in the center of the room, the twenty kobolds had already dwindled down to a dozen, in the span of a few seconds, and Violette and Kary had no intention of slowing their pace.

Winston could only slam his bone mace into the kobolds that got near, making sure they couldn't get past him, while spells flew over his head, either impaling or incinerating the kobolds.

Cory stood almost completely still for the entire battle, which barely lasted a minute, making sure no one got injured. He was relieved when it was over, and the gravest injury was barely a scratch on Jonathan's arm, which wasn't even caused by an enemy.

The boy had flown too close to a wall while charging at a harpy, and nicked his arm on a dark stalagmite he couldn't see, barely even drawing blood from his mana-toughened skin.

Jonathan refused Cory's healing, saying it would heal on its own fast enough, and the group started gathering at the center of the cavern.

"This was much easier than I was expecting," David admitted.

"Yeah, almost too easy, if I'm honest," Alex added, a frown on his face.

"Hey! Don't jinx us, you two!" Kary barked, glaring at them both.

"Jinx us?" Alex asked with almost a snicker.

"How else could we describe this? It was a massacre. Hell, for more monsters, and what we thought might be sentient ones, it was almost faster than all the other rooms we cleared," he mocked.

As he was about to open his mouth again, to tease Kary a bit and relieve tension, his head snapped toward the east, before he quickly raised his hand, screaming, "Watch out!"

An explosion rocked the room as flames licked the quickly erected barrier Alex had conjured, the flames lighting up the entire room like a miniature sun.

'I couldn't feel a thing until just now,' Alex mused as his eyes lay on the east.

His senses were picking up multiple foes surrounding them in the room, even though he could only see one monster at the moment, and he knew something was up.

Looking at the single enemy he could see, in a corner he could swear they had gone over at least four times during combat, Alex's eyes became focused.

"Your reaction is impressive, human," a guttural voice uttered in that same direction.

Light footsteps echoed in the room, combined with light wooden taps, as the new enemy walked forward until it appeared over a ledge that was keeping it from view.

The new enemy, albeit looking almost exactly the same as the fallen kobolds, piled up behind the small group of humans, was twice as tall, and his scales glistened red under the golden glow of Cory's mace and Kary's fireball.

Its eyes, albeit lizard-like in nature, reflected a sharpness that was uncommon in monsters, and Alex understood that whatever sentience he had thought the harpies held was nothing but a joke when compared to him.

"To think we had come here to release our kin from the winged invaders' yoke, only to find them dead at the feat of a new breed of invaders," the harsh voice echoed once more, this time the taller kobold's mouth clearly moving to follow the words.

"Yes. Such a shame that we were too late," another grinding voice echoed from behind that one, as another lizard-like monster slid into the light.

Looking at them, Alex couldn't help but rethink to his days playing 'ToB', as they reminded him of monsters they could see in the early stages of it.

The one on the front, whose left hand held a crooked branch that could have been mistaken as a staff, were it not so gnarly that it looked like a piece of driftwood, was wearing a set of brown robes, with only defining feature on them, a set of red eyes embroidered on the front. And the one now next to him only made Alex more certain that the danger level had just spiked. With a set of light leathers covering his slim lizard-like body, the same red eyes embroidered on the front it, the taller kobold was holding in his hands a set of well-crafted daggers, the sheen of which reflected the light of the room.

"Such a shame, such a shame," the one with the daggers repeated.

"No matter. They attacked our kin, and for that, they must die. Kill them all," the one with the staff said, before raising his staff again, a fireball the size of its head launching forward.

*BOOM!*