With a wet slurp, Bones yanked the lance out of the lifeless body and let out an irritated exhale. Another ant-man had fallen, and he found himself encountering patrols more frequently as he ventured deeper into the hive. It had been several hours since he last glimpsed a biodome, and he now felt truly adrift in the labyrinthine corridors and intersections of the hive.
The ant-men he encountered now were level eighteen, sporting a darker shade of chitin and a bulkier physique compared to their predecessors. Despite these differences, they fell just as easily to Bones' prowess. Gritting his teeth, he pressed onward, relieved when he finally emerged from the maze-like passages. Before him loomed the largest dome he had yet encountered, its towering height obscuring the ceiling from view.
Within the new dome, ant workers scurried about alongside ergates and ant-man soldiers, and for the first time in a while, Bones observed a new type of ant: the Woodland Flying Scout ants. He couldn't help but grimace at the sight.
The lack of individuality in their names struck him. They seemed merely distinguished from one another rather than possessing any sense of unique identity.
“Guess individuality holds little value in a collective hive”, he mused. Though dealing with flying ants could prove to be problematic.
As Bones set foot inside the dome, a prompt appeared, freezing him in his tracks.
Quest received: Kill the Queen 0/4
Reward: Skill Core (random)
"Hooh? A dungeon quest?" Bones muttered, contemplating the implications. "I suppose there are four stages then—one queen per stage." It dawned on him that if each queen required as much time to reach as the one he had just encountered, this dungeon run would indeed be a lengthy endeavor.
Scanning the expansive dome, Bones hoped to catch sight of the queen. The novelty of exploring the dungeon had worn off, replaced by a growing sense of impatience. What had begun as excitement now morphed into a desire to finish the task swiftly and depart.
"No luck, the dome's too vast," he grumbled.
Exhaling softly, Bones crouched down and began to stealthily navigate his surroundings. He observed that the worker ants were largely indifferent to their environment, focused solely on their tasks. It was the guards and flying scouts that warranted his caution. Moving along the perimeter of the dome, he reached a point where he spotted a significant recess in the far wall. There, surrounded by hundreds of eggs and guarded by winged ant-men and flying scouts, lay the queen—a colossal figure, dwarfing even the bulkier ant-men.
"Now then, do I take out the queen first or save her for last?" Bones pondered aloud, though he knew the decision was not truly his to make.
"I say as if I have a choice."
While he could potentially avoid the other ants until he reached the queen and launch a full-scale assault, such a strategy would deplete his mana reserves, leaving him vulnerable to counterattacks. Opting for a more methodical approach, he resolved to clear a path to the queen gradually, as the layout likely intended.
Starting with a lone worker ant, Bones tested the reaction of the guarding ant-men. The disposal of the ant elicited minimal response, prompting him to try again. This time, a few worker ants briefly raised their heads before resuming their tasks, seemingly unperturbed.
[...]
Ticked off by the lack of reaction, Bones took aim and swiftly dispatched one of the guards, finally eliciting a response. Worker ants scattered in panic while nearby guards converged on the fallen comrade, searching for the intruder.
Splurt
Another ant-man fell to Bones' deadly accuracy, attracting the attention of the guards. Counting quickly, he noted ten of them closing in on his location. With a sense of urgency, he turned and sprinted toward the tunnel entrance, simultaneously picking off another guard from a different group of ant-men. Now, almost twenty guards were hot on his heels. It seemed the dungeon was deliberately designed this way—monsters grouped in tens, with the death of one agitating the rest while others remained passive unless provoked. Bones didn't dare test the limits of how many ants he could attract at once.
Leading the pursuing ants into the tunnel, Bones put some distance between them and repeated his tactic of picking them off as they lined up. Soon, the bodies of eighteen ant-men guards littered the tunnel floor. Despite a few managing to close in for melee combat, Bones deftly dispatched them, having grown accustomed to their attack patterns and honed his close combat skills. He continued his methodical assault until no more ant-men remained in pursuit.
Proudly opening the system log, Bones scanned through the notifications. His Bone Lance had leveled up to four, progress easily gained in the early levels, and his class was accumulating experience rapidly. Only two more levels, and he would officially attain the status of a bronze-rank adventurer.
The worker ants proved inconsequential from the outset, and the guards posed little threat now. However, the flying scouts presented a new challenge, potentially dangerous in their aerial maneuvers. Time to resume testing.
Summoning another Bone Lance, Bones aimed at the nearest flying ant in the distance. The lance flew true, but missed its mark. Unlike their grounded counterparts, the flying ants' erratic movements proved difficult to anticipate, and his miss alerted the rest of the flock. Five of them took off in his direction.
Tsk
"Maybe I should attempt to manipulate the trajectory of the lance using Bone Manipulation next time," Bones mused, gearing up for another round of experimentation.
This time, Bones opted not to retreat or seek refuge in the tunnel. Instead, he squared his shoulders and assumed a fighting stance, ready to confront the attackers head-on. As two flying ants hurled their spears from a distance, the remaining three swooped down with intent to pierce their target. While Bones easily sidestepped the thrown spears, he was caught off guard by the speed of the aerial assault.
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Rolling to evade the first ant, he was unable to dodge the second, which impaled him and sent him hurtling through the air. As he lay motionless on his back, the third ant halted midair, retracted its spear, and launched it at the prone figure. The spear found its mark, skewering Bones through the chest and puncturing the hole left by a previous acid attack.
As the ants cautiously approached to inspect their fallen foe, Bones seized the opportunity to strike. Casting two bone lances with swift precision, he dispatched the two ants closest to him. Startled, the remaining three ants retreated and took to the air. Without hesitation, Bones unleashed three more lances, one finding its mark, another clipping a wing and causing its target to plummet, while the third narrowly evaded.
For a moment, Bones entertained the notion that the surviving ant might flee to summon reinforcements, but instead, it circled back, intent on finishing the job.
"How bold. Perhaps I expected too much," Bones mused.
Sidestepping the swooping ant, he left a summoned lance suspended in its path. The ant missed Bones and impaled itself on the lance, succumbing to its injuries shortly after.
Realizing the imminent onslaught from a group of five flying scouts, Bones abandoned his conservation of mana and went on the offensive, summoning all four lances at once. Taunting a single flying scout from each group, he soon found himself beset by a swarm. Yet, he fought with relentless ferocity, swiftly dispatching them along with the surrounding guards.
With only the ten guards and five flying scouts remaining to guard the queen, Bones doubted the efficacy of his previous tactic—provoking one group without alerting the other. Thus, he decided against attempting it altogether.
As Bones stood before the queen, poised for the final confrontation, he assessed the situation. A quick scan of the surroundings revealed no advantageous terrain or obstacles he could utilize to his benefit. With no strategic advantage to exploit, a straightforward battle seemed inevitable.
"So be it," Bones declared resolutely, retrieving a mana flask from his inventory. With a single gulp, he downed its contents and surged forward into a sprint. Around the fifty-meter mark, the ants detected his approach, prompting him to summon four lances and launch them directly at the queen. Anticipating the guards' protective instincts, Bones watched as they hurled themselves in front of the incoming projectiles, intercepting the attack. Undeterred, he followed up with another set of four bone lances. While two guards and one of the flying ants fell to his assault, the rest managed to intercept the attack, sustaining injuries in the process.
Prepared to summon a third set of lances, Bones suddenly halted as a spear whizzed past his skull with alarming speed. Realizing his oversight, he swiftly cast Identify on the flying ant responsible for the near-fatal attack. It was a mistake to assume the ants protecting the queen were no different from the others—a mistake that almost cost him dearly. It became apparent that both the flying ants and the guards were tagged as elites, signaling a significant difference in their capabilities compared to their predecessors.
Enraged, three guards abandoned their positions and closed in on Bones with astonishing speed. Bones twisted his body unnaturally to evade their repeated assaults, narrowly avoiding the deadly strikes.
Swoosh
Another spear whizzed past his head, slicing off a piece of his skull. Panic surged within Bones as he struggled to keep up with the relentless onslaught. The fighting intensified, making it difficult for him to react effectively to the barrage of attacks from all sides.
His summoned lances dissipated almost as quickly as they formed, serving only to deflect a few attacks before breaking. However, with each exchange, Bones adapted slightly better to their attacking patterns and identified their weaknesses. One glaring weakness became apparent—they were simply too close to him.
Seizing the next summoned lance, Bones deflected a jab, creating a brief opening to unleash a devastating Mana Blast that sent all three combatants sprawling back with crushing injuries. Jerking his body to the side, he narrowly avoided another thrown spear, all the while keeping his focus on the guards.
Bones' senses heightened, absorbing every detail of the chaotic scene unfolding around him. The irregular flow of mana surged through him, imbuing him with power as his core entered a state of overdrive. The fiery blue hue of the mana swirling around him instilled fear in the eyes of the ants.
Despite their injuries, the three guards did not flee—they couldn't. Their lives belonged to the queen. Trusting in his Bone Armor to defend against ranged attacks, Bones rushed the guards, catching them off guard and unnerved by his newfound aura of power.
In a swift and fluid motion, Bones dispatched one guard with a thrust of his lance, leaving it impaled through the chest. Summoning another lance, he struck the remaining two guards with a wide sweep, sending them crashing to the ground.
As the Bone Armor deflected projectiles with proficiency, Bones swiftly decapitated the two grounded guards and turned his attention to the flying ants. Expecting them to swoop in for an attack, he was surprised when they held back, hovering erratically in the air, keeping their distance.
"Clever," Bones mused, recognizing the queen's strategic instructions to her troops.
Glancing at the bloated bulk of the queen, motionless and observing, Bones felt a surge of impatience. She sought to prolong the fight, while Bones desired a swift end.
"No can do," Bones muttered. "If the ants won't come to me willingly, I will make them."
Emptying the mana flask and discarding it, Bones propelled himself forward, prompting the remaining guards to charge ahead to meet him. With determination in his eyes, Bones launched three lance projectiles at the queen, reserving the last one as a melee weapon. One guard fell, while the others attempted to deflect the trajectory of the projectiles, leaving them vulnerable.
As the remaining guards closed in, Bones consecutively cast Bone Nova, inflicting minor injuries on the ants and granting him a brief respite. Seizing the opportunity, Bones finished off the guards with a powerful Mana Blast, clearing the path for his final assault on the queen.
As the queen stirred for the first time, momentarily diverting the attention of the flying ants, Bones seized the opportunity. Without hesitation, he prepared a new set of four lances and aimed them at the flying ants instead of the queen. Following up with another set specially intended for the queen, Bones watched as two flying ants fell, one lost its wings, and two narrowly evaded the projectiles.
The other set of lances, however, found their mark, impaling the queen. A deafening shriek reverberated throughout the dome, causing pieces of the ceiling to shake and fall. Bones was grateful he couldn't hear it; the sound would likely have left him deaf or paralyzed.
At the queen's command, undoubtedly, the remaining flying ants rushed toward Bones. With swift precision, he dispatched them one by one, neutralizing the threat.
Now only the queen remained, her massive form seeming too cumbersome to move. Bones, unwilling to risk getting closer, maintained a safe distance, observing her as she hissed and attempted to provoke him. Refusing to be drawn into a confrontation at this late stage, Bones sat down, entering meditation to regenerate lost mana.
However, the queen had other plans. Seeing an opportunity, she conjured a swirling sphere of menacing green acid and hurled it toward Bones. Reacting quickly, Bones expelled what little mana he had recovered into a Mana Blast, blocking and dispersing most of the acid while being pushed back a few meters by the force of the collision.
"That... would've covered my whole body if it had hit," Bones muttered, shaken by the close call.
Unlike the other ants in the dome, the queen moved differently, resembling the movement of ants from the first biodome—slow and swaying from side to side, as if she hadn't moved in years. Realizing he needed to conserve mana and choose his moments carefully, Bones dismissed the lance and retrieved a weapon from his inventory.
Charging toward the queen in melee combat, Bones slashed and stabbed, aiming for any vulnerable spots in her chitin. Though the wounds he inflicted were superficial, he remained undeterred, recognizing that his lances hadn't penetrated much deeper either.
As the queen struggled to respond to his constant movements, she resorted to her only ranged and area damage attack, swelling her stomach before unleashing a stream of sizzling liquid. Backtracking quickly, Bones summoned a Bone Lance, empowered his body, and launched it at the queen, repeating the process with each opportunity that presented itself.