New Eden: Live to Play, Play to Live

Chapter 982: Making The Jump

But the next wave of enemies was only seconds away from rising above the volcano's cauldron, and Alex had to make his call now.

He wasn't sure he was ready to trust Liu Yan enough to show him this part of him yet. And there was also Killian and Aapo, whom he had only sparsely met in the game.

Hearing the screeches of the next wave, as the harpies collided with the barrier as soon as they crested the edge of the mountain, Alex grit his teeth and cursed.

"We can't keep fighting them here! I think there are too many of them on the hill below," he shouted, catching everyone's attention.

The numbers they were seeing also surprised David. The harpies hadn't been nesting for long, so there should be this many of them.

The only explanation was that whatever was rekindling the volcano's flames, was also turbo- charging the harpies with mana, thus accelerating their reproduction speed.

"I agree!" David called out, a dozen meters away from him.

"But getting to the tunnels isn't going to be easy! The closest mouth is right next to their nest, fifty meters lower than the mountaintop!" he added.

Alex looked at him knowingly.

He dispelled the barrier, his body starting to glow.

"I'll get their attention away from you guys! Start making your way there. Deal with stragglers if there are any!" Alex exclaimed as wings burst out of his back.

"What the fuck?" Killian, Liu Yan, and Aapo all said at the same time.

Winston, Jin-Sil, and Rì-Chu were also surprised, but to a lesser degree, as they had seen him use wings in the game before. But they had no time to stand there gawking.

Alex blasted off the ground with a powerful jump, combined with a strong flap of his angelic wings, and slammed directly into the incoming group of harpy reinforcements.

They squawked and screeched, surprised by suddenly having one of their prey within their midst, and anger blinded them to the group below.

This gave Kary a simple plan to follow, as she charged up a powerful wave of flames, incinerating the handful of harpies left in a single spell, before she rushed toward the hillside that the new group had come from.

"Let's go!" she shouted, snapping the others out of their stupor.

Alex was already in the middle of an aerial ballet with the new group of harpies, finding it harder than he had imagined. The harpies, for their lack of physical strength, immensely compensated it by their nimbleness in the sky.

Every time he dove into their midst for a kill, he came out the other side with scratches on his arms and face, as the harpies managed to nick him in areas uncovered by his leather armour.

But he was still thinning the herd much faster this way than from the ground, which made him grin.

With a quick glance toward the volcano, he saw that his allies had already reached the lip of the cauldron, and saw Ri-Chu on his knees, hands to the ground.

He already knew what the young man was doing, but he wondered if now was the time to slow down. Alex knew a few of them could fly down there without issues, and also knew that the others were land-bound, but creating a pathway down would take a lot of time.

But he had no time to worry about them too much, given the harpies were starting to harry him back.

Their ballet redoubled in ferocity, as Alex accelerated to force his pace onto the monsters. He could tell the harpies were getting more and more frustrated at their inability to catch him, which was causing them to become reckless.

And for each dumb decision they took, he punished by reaping one of them, the herd thinning quicker and quicker, until only a handful remained.

It had been just over a minute since he went airborne, and already the group of close to twenty harpies was down to five.

This was a net amelioration to their earlier pace, but Alex wondered if it was a good idea to kill them so quickly. He looked down at the rest of the group, and his eyes went wide.

The party was already scaling down the mountain, hopping their way down on small stepping stones now jutting out of the cliff.

Alex looked at Rì-Chu, who was in the lead, and smiled.

'Smart move. He made stepping stones instead of a full path. Much faster and less mana- consuming this way,' Alex mused, slashing at a harpy that flew too close.

The group was progressing smoothly, with Kary flying off the side, picking off Harpies that hadn't flown into the fray yet, as they tried attacking the hopping humans.

Already, Rì-Chū was close to reaching the opening David had mentioned, and he was slowing down.

Alex was unsure if he was slowing down because of nervousness, or if they could see something he couldn't, but he knew it wasn't wise to stop while still on the cliff side.

After dashing one last time into the harpies harrying him, and taking the last two down, he dove toward them.

He quickly reached the first few nests, looking at the piles of bones inside them and sighed internally.

'How did they get so many people without an investigation starting sooner?' he asked himself internally.

He could count dozens of human skulls, and that was just at first glance as he flew by the nests. He didn't dare assume those were all of it.n/ô/vel/b//jn dot c//om

As he reached Kary, about to ask her why the party was slowing down, a loud screech, carrying with it an intense killing intent, laced with enough mana to make Even Alex shiver slightly, echoed all around them.

*SCREEEE!!!*

Instantly, Alex understood why they had slowed down. The reason for the quick reproduction

of the harpies became clear.

They already had a queen.