New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 1028: Slapping Some Sense Into Him



The slap resounded across the room, even amongst the hubbub of battle, and took everyone by surprise.

"Get your shit together, Yan! Are you trying to get others killed?!" Alex snapped, grabbing Liu Yan's jaw with his left hand and pointing at Cory with his right.

"You have the kid to thank for being alive again, but you better screw your head on straight, or the next thing to kill you will be me! Understood?!" he barked, making the young man's eyes widen.

"I... I... What is going on?" Liu Yan asked, confused.

"It doesn't matter right now! Get back into formation!" Alex growled before letting go of him and dashing to the dragonkin he was supposed to be tanking.

He could only hope he had shaken the fear away from Liu Yan's mind and that the man would listen. They couldn't afford another blow to their morale.

Alex could tell that seeing one of their allies die had affected the others, as their confidence had waned, and their faces all showed different degrees of fear. It was only expected to fear death when it happened right before your eyes suddenly.

But now wasn't the time to falter.

The dragonkin were piling up wounds one after another, and they wouldn't be able to last much longer at this pace. And it wasn't a moment too soon, either, as there wasn't just Liu Yan who was showing signs of fatigue.

Exhaustion might be a small thing when you were training or having fun, but in a life-or- death situation, getting weaker meant getting closer to death. And their faces were already showing signs of that intrinsic fear.

Something had to go their way fast, lest they react like Liu Yan and try backing out of combat. Killian might not seem like the kind to give up, at least in New Eden, but this wasn't a game. You didn't respawn out here in the real world.

If you died, there would be no tomorrow, at least usually.

Alex glanced at Cory from the corner of his eye, using his mana vision to scan deeply inside him, and he could tell that spell wasn't something he could use again anytime soon.

It had dimmed more than just his mana, and Alex could feel it inside him.

'Of course, the cost of a life is beyond what our bodies out here can handle. Even in New Eden, resurrection spells take a toll. We can't afford to lose someone else here today. Wasting it on that avoidable death was already too much,' he cursed mentally.

Alex focused on his opponent and noticed that the dragonkin before him had started breathing heavily. He could hear his heartbeat through his heightened senses and knew the dragonkin was nearing its wit's end.

'Shegror, how much of your power can I use? Are you back to full strength from earlier?' he asked.

'Not remotely close to full strength. But I can see why you ask, and I should be okay for a killing blow. Keep in mind that using some of my power here means you won't have it against the real threat to come,' Shegror acquiesced with a warning.

Alex pushed her warning to the back of his mind. They needed a win now, before his allies' minds broke.

The dragonkin on both sides had already taken a defensive stance. They used their tower shields to block as many attacks and spells as possible, only having to worry about the buzzing flies around their ankles.

They were trying to save their energy and tire out the humans first so that they could wipe them out. But Alex had a different outcome in mind.

"Hey, fugly!" he shouted to the dragonkin.

The monster turned its hate-filled gaze toward him, keeping an eye on the humans next to Alex, but focusing on him.

"Remember when I said you couldn't hope to imitate the power of a dragon? This is what I meant!" he shouted, taking a massive breath.

The next second, he exhaled, releasing with the air a greenish-black gas that flew directly at the dragonkin.

The latter immediately ducked behind his tower shield, trying to hide from the breath he could tell was infused with an enormous amount of mana. But as he hid, the dragonkin heard a sizzling that was too close for comfort.

Looking at the edge of his shield, he could see it melting at the thinnest part, and his eyes widened.

'How is he melting through moulded dragon scale?!' the dragonkin panicked.

Raising his eyes off his shield, he saw the human above him, a devilish grin on his face.

His right arm had mutated horrifically, now going from a human shoulder to a gigantic dragon's claw.

"I got you now, bitch!" Alex mocked, slashing his right arm at the dragonkin.

Even with the tower shield raised, the claw Alex had summoned from Shegror's actual form went through like butter, the shield already too thin to handle the blow, caused by the acidic gas he had blown on it.

Four enormous gashes appeared on the dragonkin's chest as its shield fell apart, and the monster's eyes rolled into the back of its head. It had been bested.

To the right, the second dragonkin witnessed this, and a guttural roar escaped its lips.

"BROTHER!!"Nôv(el)B\\jnn

*RROOAARR!!!*

But as it was bellowing to the sky, snout wide open, Kary decided to pounce on the occasion. "Let's see how you deal with fire on the inside! Eat this!" she shouted after flying over the dragonkin's head.

She unleashed a torrent of green fire directly into its gullet; the fire eating away at the fragile interior of the dragon's throat and into its insides, bloating him until the green glow showed through the thinned skin.

Pushing as much mana as she could, Kary burned the darned thing from the inside until it collapsed to the side, smoking and releasing a putrid stench.

She landed next to her allies, who were looking at her with mixed emotions, some horrified she would do something so cruel, others impressed by how quickly she came up with a

solution.

Looking at both corpses, Kary let her shoulders sag as fatigue settled in.

"Whew. That was a rough five minutes..."