New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Far east of this conversation, a pair of players were having the time of their lives.

In the eastern borderlands of Bastion City, in a part of the forest that had lost all its lusciousness to the point of almost being a marshland, Astaroth and Phoenix were currently dealing with a handful of powerful treants.

They were not particularly powerful, and Phoenix's fire was highly effective against them, but something set them apart from regular monsters. They showed cohesion.

The ones not being attacked would actively defend the others, sprouting roots and branches in the way of Phoenix's attacks or pushing Astaroth back when he charged. The other part of their strength came from the massive health pools they had.

These treants were level sixty and uncorrupted, but their aggressivity was reminiscent of corrupted monsters.

The treants travelled in groups of five to ten and were hard to kill since they rotated from front line to back line, actively defended each other, and had health pools equivalent to boss monsters.

But this didn't stop the mighty duo from burning hundreds of them to ashes during the day. But they could tell they hadn't found what they wanted yet.

Phoenix had intel on a much larger treant that should be visible from afar, given it towered over the forest. However, during their entire day of hunting, they had seen nothing of the kind.

Finishing up the five treants simultaneously, Phoenix landed next to Astaroth, extinguishing the flames covering her body from the avatar form, and frowned.

"We've killed hundreds of them today… Why is the Zone Boss still nowhere to be seen? The intel I have said that it popped out after you killed two or three groups. This doesn't make any sense…"

Astaroth tended to agree with her.

But he couldn't find it with his mana senses, either. It was like the entire forest was devoid of mana.

Not even a speckle of it registered in his mana vision, whether at a short distance or a long one. They had even received a debuff when they entered this part of the forest called 'Mana Deficiency'.

The lack of mana in their surroundings caused their mana regeneration to get suppressed. This debuff took away half of their mana regen; for Phoenix, this was a lot, given her heavy reliance on the resource.

"I tried to find it, but even the treants are only visible once they start moving. This massive treant must be hiding. And I can't think of a way to flush it out without burning the whole place down."

Phoenix snort-laughed.

"If I do that, we'll have to deal with it, and all the remaining treants, simultaneously. I know we're strong, but this is pushing it. I'll do another flight recon and see if I can find a tree bigger than the others. It can't just be taller; it must also be larger."

Astaroth nodded at her, starting to walk around the forest alone. Up to now, this was the time when the treants would usually appear and gang up on him.

It almost made Astaroth pity the monsters.

They had cohesion and fought together like a well-oiled machine, giving hope to sentience. But then, they tried to gang up on the one player who could raze this forest to the ground single-handedly.

'Maybe they aren't smart individually? What if the Zone Boss was the one controlling them from afar?' he wondered.

Astaroth crouched down, pushing mana under his feet, and jumped up. He wanted to check where they were compared to the kingdom, and wasting melding time with Morpheus for this was stupid.

As the air released from under him, pistoning him upwards as he launched from an arbalest, Astaroth soared fifty meters into the sky, using short bursts of mana to spin himself around simultaneously.

He could spot Bastion City in the distance and smiled.

"We've made quite the road trip today," he mumbled.

As he spun, he also caught sight of a trail of flames further west as Phoenix scrutinized the forest. But even from his spot, he couldn't see any tree that seemed abnormally larger or taller than the others.

Wherever that Zone Boss was hidden, he was being extremely cautious.

'This makes no sense… Where is it?' he mused as gravity slowly reasserted itself over him.

Astaroth glimpsed at their position through the mountain range he could see a little way north. Those were the Guntarr mountains, the end of the Elven forests, and the delimitation of Dwarvenkind's kingdom.

He'd been studying maps recently, on the order of Phoenix, who found his lack of regional knowledge worrying and unacceptable. And he now knew how terribly positioned Bastion City was, relative to the Elven Forests.

Bastion City was to the northeast of the forest, almost cutting it at two-thirds of it and close enough to the edge of it that the entire northern part of the forest was lost to the Elves.

He no longer wondered why they had been so pissed when the kingdom was formed and the world recognized those lands as his. He had basically stolen a third of the Elven forests for himself.

But this position was also where all the demon portals would open, according to Khalor. It was the hotbed of activity on the continent of light, at least from his recollection.

With how controlled the region had been since they established Stellar Woodlands, it hadn't devolved into that. But the problem only seemed to have been delayed and shifted elsewhere.

Astaroth's senses went on high alert as he landed back on the humid forest ground, his boots sinking two inches down with a slurp.

As soon as he had landed, he felt a presence brush his, if only momentarily, and now he felt like he was being observed. Spinning around, he tried finding where the feeling came from but couldn't pinpoint it.

'It's almost like it's coming from everywhere simultaneously…' he thought, his eyes focused on any movement.

"This damned forest is creeping me out…" he muttered.

He couldn't wait to return to a more regular part of the forest. There, at least, he knew when to expect attacks from monsters.

"Come on, where are you, you overgrown twig?"