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Friday, July 7, 2017

What You Missed at: Neden Monster Clean-Up



by Cory "Asharn" Roy

    We arrived in Neden ready to face not only monsters, but other adventurers in a friendly competition to see who can survive the whole day. Sir Syruss greeted us and explained to us what we were going to be doing that day. The games started shortly after. We were all given a map, a bunch of extra lives, and a head start before we would have to start trying to survive the oncoming monsters. Once the competition had started, I quickly made a truce with some of the other competitors. From there we worked together to try and find the treasure chests that were hidden around the land. Early on we encountered a couple different types of creatures from undead to people infected by brain slugs. We even encountered some strange monsters that required more than just fighting to beat. I personally enjoyed the different types of boss monsters that were out there they offered new and fun ways to interact with the creatures.

    Among the many fun aspects of this competition, every 2 hours our playing field would shrink giving us less places to hide. It didn't seem like much of an issue at first, but along with people running out of lives and coming back with brain slugs controlling them, this made the game a lot harder as we lost allies and gained enemies. We also had to worry about other adventurers who were going for the title Slaughterer of the Innocent. So not only were we fighting monsters everywhere we went at this point we were also fighting the people that we were used to adventuring with.

    As the last hours of the competition reached us the playing field shrunk a final time. I was able to see from one end to the other with almost no issue apart from some trees. Hiding spaces where limited and we were losing allies fast. It seemed as fast as we killed the monsters more appeared. It came down to only a handful of us at the end. We were just trying to survive— at this point fighting them seemed hopeless. I was only able to pick off some stragglers here and there hoping to get a few extra kills before the time ended. A lot of the time I would be swarmed and have no option but to run and hope I could get some distance between us. Finally, the horn was sounded marking the end of the competition. We all headed it back to hear the results of the game. 

There were three prizes for different aspects of the game. The titles were: Most Lively, won by Kwido; Slaughterer of the Innocent, which I'm unsure of who they are but they were very good at what they were doing; and Monster Killer, which I ended up winning after a tie breaker against Kwido. All in all it was a wonderful time with a lot of great people. Neden presented us with a fun challenge and from what I could tell most people had a great time. I for sure plan to compete again next year and I highly recommend everyone to do the same.   
-Asharn