New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Over the past day and a half, I\'die had taken the druids with him, along the inside of the walls. He had taught them to visualize their magic with more accuracy, so they didn\'t need to see where the spell was cast.

Helping them out with this had allowed the few druids in Paragons to set up traps outside the walls from within their safety. And it also allowed them to proceed without being seen.

Only very perceptive mages would have noticed the movements in mana under the ground. And since most of those mages were either guild leaders or officers to all the guilds attacking, they hadn\'t been in scouting positions.

If one were to look at the Bastion from high above, the following scene would be what they saw. The thousands of players ran forward, creating a black wave of different races, swarming the Bastion.

But when they crossed the hundred feet mark, their advance stalled. Traps of various kinds started swallowing players all around the base.

Be it pitfalls, with sharp stone spikes at their bottom, or simply vines suddenly springing from the greound to tie them up, very few safe spots remained to reach the walls.

I\'die zone had been the one with the most vicious trap. He had dug an underground moat, carefully leaving enough dirt and roots to hold its ceiling until people walked over it.

Inside this underground moat that circled a third of the Bastion, he had been using his new staff\'s ability as often as he could. The first few players that fell inside the ten-foot-deep, water-filled trench panicked.

They could read the reports of all the traps surrounding the fortress and wondered what horror awaited them. After a few seconds, seeing that nothing was happening yet, they signalled back to their allies.

"This is just a moat. It\'s safe. We can swim across!"

Most players waiting at the top started plunging into the trench. The more cautious players waited a bit more, looking down below with squinting faces.

As more and more players jumped down the trench, the waters became blurrier and dirtier. What had been clear blue waters were now muddy and opaque.

And soon, the more cautious player started loosening up, too. Only the cowardly ones refused to step into the muddied waters.

But it would soon prove them to be the smarter ones. The players traversing the trench started convulsing, one by one.

Any player that started convulsing eventually sank, with the people around them wondering what was happening. Seeing them not come back up, many started worrying.

One fighter swam to where his friend had sunk, wanting to see if he could pull him back up. But as soon as he got close, the water where his friend sank became red.

"What the f–"

As he was exclaiming this, he felt something brush against his thigh, followed by a sharp pain in his leg. A moment after, something brushed against his other leg, repeating the pain.

More and more things brushed against his body, sending shocks through it, forcing him into a convulsing state. He felt himself stop swimming, which caused him to sink.

Suddenly, all his eyes could see were the murky waters. Until something long and black crossed his eyesight.

Whatever it was, the player could not react, and soon enough, a small swarm of snake-looking fish started accumulating over him. Damage numbers floated in front of his eyes, in rapid succession, until his health zeroed out.

This continued happening to all the players in the moat until one of the dead ones figured out what was killing them. The player wrote in his guild chat, and people still alive relayed the message to others around them.

"Electric Eels! They filled the moat with Electric Eels! Don\'t jump in!"

The players still swimming inside the moat went into full-blown panic. They swam like madmen, trying to reach the other side of the trench to climb out.

Spots of red started spreading everywhere where players had sunk, and soon, the trench waters went from their muddy brown colour to a river of red.

Few players inside the moat made it out alive, and the people standing over the moat dispersed to the sides, trying to reach a crossable zone further away.

All around the Bastion, traps sprung, pits appeared, and walls formed, all hindering the sieging force\'s advance. To add to their difficulties, arrows rained on them from above, coming from high in the tree branches hovering over the walls.

Athena was using her connection to the wild Elves to guide them into defending the zones that were most at risk. This allowed her to rain hell on any side of the Bastion that required it most.

She had a silly passing thought about how this felt like a tower-defence game she would play on her tablet. But the scales of this battle largely overshadowed her tablet games.

Athena had to contend against rival snipers at times, dodging arrows, bullets, bolts, and spells that came flying at her from the forest, and edges of it. Many times, they forced her into using her camouflage skill to make herself impossible to spot.

She had yet to fire back at them. Her longbow wasn\'t made for firing that far, and her lack of range annoyed her.

She was already using the height advantage she had to increase her range, but it still wasn\'t enough to hit the ones further back in the forest. She became increasingly angry at her lack of options.

\'I need to take them down before they switch their focus to the defenders on the walls. But I can\'t hit them. They\'re too far!\'

She suddenly focused her sights on one of the wild Elves shooting his bow near her. It was the village chief.

She had seen him fire his bow many times already, but her intuition told her to watch him this one time. And when she did, her mind went blank in shock.

The village chief shot his bow, eyes closed, aiming straight forward, not at the players downward.

\'What is he aiming at?\'

He answered her question as soon as he loosed his arrow.

The arrow, instead of leaving the bowstring and flying forth, completely disappeared. Athena stared, her mind unable to grasp what had happened.

But a scream caught her attention, even amidst the ocean of battle cries. That was because of its provenance.

This scream of pain came from deep inside the cover of the forest below. She snapped her head towards it, seeing a player with a rifle fall from a tree branch.

He had an arrow stuck in his back. But that made no sense.

Only allies should have been behind him. When Athena turned her head back to the wild elf chief, she saw him smirk.

She quickly jumped to where he was standing.

Athena gave a slight bow, paying her respects to the man, before asking what was burning her mind.

"Sir. How did you do that?"

The tall Elven man looked at her with a smile.

"I don\'t know if it is worth your time. You Abnormals might not grasp the concept I am using."

Athena frowned. \'What concept?\' she thought.

"Please, sir. I want to defend my new home and my friends, and these snipers are too far for me to help."

The elf thought for a moment. He then gave a brief nod.

"But you cannot show this to anyone else. My father passed this technique of archery down to me, learning it from his own father before. It is not something for the world to know."

Athena received a notification.

*You have triggered the secret legacy, \'No one escapes the Hunter\'. Do you wish to accept this legacy quest? The choice is irreversible.*

*Yes/No*

Athena had only heard about legacies, and didn\'t know what the quest line could entail. But if it meant she could gain the ability to defend her friends, at this time of peril, she would never hesitate.

She slammed the yes button before agreeing to the village chief\'s terms. The man nodded solemnly.

He explained his concept of archery to the girl, who listened, her eyes wide. After telling her his piece, he offered to help her guide her first shot.

Athena doubted that what he had told her was even something possible, but since he had already proved it was a reality, she trusted him.

She got in a firing stance, pulling her bowstring back, with an arrow nocked. She closed her eyes, listening only to the Elven man\'s voice.

Following his instructions, she shut out every other sense than her hearing and focused on that alone. The elf was telling her to focus on the sound of the world, to locate her target.

Even though it sounded like philosophical bullshit, she tried anyway. After a minute of focusing, her ears picked up the sound of a bowstring stretching.

After locking her mind on that sound, she did as the man ordered and loosed the arrow.

\'Here goes nothing.\'