The doorway was practically clogged with bodies. Too many monsters to count, ant-like bodies scrambling forward to attack the enemy, scrambling over and around each other in an effort to scratch and bite at their foe. Darius still had his shroud up, plugging the hole like a cork, and it was the only thing that had kept them from being overwhelmed.
The shroud was only visible when it took damage, a crackling corona of energy surrounding Darius like a cloud for a brief moment. Or, it was supposed to be for a brief moment. He was under such constant attack that the shroud was almost constantly visible, a swirling aurora of light and energy.
That energy was fading in places, cracks in the shield as the monsters attacked again and again. Every few moments the shroud would flicker, and those weaknesses would disappear—but at the cost of the entire shroud fading just slightly. When it failed, it would all fail at once. The stench of ozone was strong in the air.
Mary stood behind him, her handguns alternating fire as she shot over his shoulders. She was having minimal impact, though she was cutting down any of the insects that tried to climb up its fellows and over Darius' head.
Josh couldn't help but be impressed by their coordination and trust. Darius was standing there stoically while Mary shot at him. Sure, his shroud could handle a few bullets, but it was still an expression of trust that he could stand there without flinching.
Impressive as it was, it couldn't last. Darius' shroud would fail any second, and Mary didn't have unlimited bullets.
“Oi!” Josh yelled. “Head's up!” He forced as much mana as he could into one of the grenades, then tossed it over the shroud. There was a pause, and then a burst from the other room. Not an explosion, a burst. It clearly wasn't as strong as the other grenades they had made.
It still made the Formics angry, though, and they withdrew from the door, just a bit. Josh heard chittering screams of rage and pain from the next room. He looked past Darius. Were they... attacking something? Did they think they had been attacked from behind? That didn't make much sense, Formics were infamously loyal to other members of the same hive.
Still, it gave a chance for Darius' shroud to recover, so Josh would take it. Darius stumbled back, sweating and gasping for breath. Pushing that much power into his shroud wasn't comfortable. Josh passed out the grenades to Mary and Darius. When he looked up, he was surprised to see that Ruth had taken up the place in front of the door, her giant club held ready, her face determined.
“Oi!” he called, caught between annoyance and panic. “You looking to die?”
“I'm the only other one with a shroud. Plus, I've got armor.” She looked back and gave him a shaky smile. “I can do this. I promise.”
Josh didn't know how to respond to that. Ruth was a tiny little girl who had never had any class besides Mender before now. Everything about her screamed that she needed to stay in the back and be protected. He had never thought anything was strange about her father insisting she stay out of combat. She looked like a girl born to be a valuable support class, and for the most part she acted that way too.
Except... she had insisted they start working out together. She wore armor whenever she could. She had invented special rune-chains to allow her to use a heavy weapon in combat. She had accepted the shroud that Darius had made. The rest of them had intended it as a precaution, a way to keep her safe if the worst should happen. He suspected she had taken it for entirely different reasons.
He remembered what she had said earlier. That the reason she had gone with them to the dungeon in the first place was because she wanted to help people. That she wanted to do something that she could actually see was important.
Unlawfully taken from Royal Road, this story should be reported if seen on Amazon.
Ruth Moore was a born Defender, stuck in the body of a Healer.
The ants returned to the attack, their chittering like the sound of pebbles in an aluminum can. Ruth smacked one down with her heavy club, shouldered another back, and took the bite of a third on her shroud. Her shroud dipped dangerously; it would regenerate on its own, but she couldn't bolster it like Darius could with his own.
Josh shook himself out of his fugue. He charged another grenade and threw it into the next room. Darius and Mary followed suit, and a moment later all three exploded almost at the same time. The screeches of pain were louder now, as was that bitter smell of dead Formics.
“Come on!” Ruth yelled, and charged forward. She abandoned her superior tactical position so that she could dive in the middle of the enemy.
Josh and the others stared after her. He could tell they were all thinking the exact same thing: Ruth might have the soul of a Defender, but she would need a bit more training to have the brains of a Defender.
There were more chittering screams from inside, and Josh rallied. He raised his sword, gripping tight with his remaining fingers, and charged in. They didn't have any grenades left, and not much more material to make more even if they wanted to. They had to finish this quickly.
The second room was nearly identical to the first. It was big, and the walls were covered in wax and tunnels. There were Formics everywhere, but they were all on the ground, not up above and out of reach. Their grenades, though weaker, had damaged more of them than last time. Every single one of the dozens of ant monsters had at least one major wound leaking yellow blood.
Ruth stood in the middle of the crowd, swinging around that club that looked as if it was heavier than she was. She swung it with such wild abandon that it almost swept her off her feet, but every swing cracked at least one carapace. Josh wasn't sure how many kills she was getting, but she was at least pushing the ants back. Not many of them were getting hits in.
Oddly, in the center of the room was a small wax... nest? Altar? A circular section of wax, creating a bed or protective space. There were four ant corpses here, each killed by the massive bee trapped in the nest.
It looked like nothing so much as a normal bee, though it was twice as big as the Formic Destroyers—meaning it was about the size of a truck. Its wings and legs had all been torn off somehow, leaving a limbless body trapped where it was. Still, it was so large that it had managed to easily crush the Formics when they got too close to its mouth.
Josh examined its properties.
Apid Queen. Level 28 Monster. Like most insects, Apids utilize an unenlightened form of government. Rather than trying something silly like democracy or something wise like a meritocracy based on the levels and powers granted by a nigh-omniscient neutral System, Apid hives follow unelected, unproven monarchs called queens. Thankfully, they aren't smart enough for it to actually matter. Anyway, the Apid Queen is a bit different from a normal bee queen. In addition to serving as the sole source of baby Apids, the Apid Queen has a number of unique support spells that can affect her entire hive at once. If monsters had class roles, she'd be a Healer.
That... was strange. On the one hand, it explained all the wax. This had, apparently, been an Apid Hive instead of a Formic Colony until recently. Josh wasn't fully up to date on dungeon theory, but he'd guess that the Formics came in during the solstice. The question was, why had they kept the queen alive?
Josh glanced around, identified the nearest Formic Mage, and cut its head off with a single swipe. The queen could wait. At least she was no threat so long as they didn't get within reach. The rest of the insects were another story.
Since Ruth was for the most part holding her own against the normal Formics, Josh circled around the fight, looking for more ranged combatants. There was only one more Formic Mage, but he had to kill three Formic Spikers—ants that grew spikes and threw them with disturbing accuracy.
While he was doing that, Darius and Mary rushed in, having recovered enough from their previous fight. Darius jumped in next to Ruth, putting up his shroud again, and Mary started firing off Pyro Shots to finish off the wounded Formics. Josh, seeing no more ranged threats, started picking at the flanks of the mass of ants centered on Ruth and Darius.
It was not an easy fight. Even with the ants injured, confused, and clearly outmatched on every level, there were loads of them. It took a good ten minutes to finish them off in a grinding fight that somehow managed to be both slow and frantic at the same time. Josh lost himself in the motions and flow of the battle, which might be why he got distracted and took a bad wound to the arm from one of the Brutes.