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