After Minnie and rocky completed their ‘How to armor an ant’ guide, they once again gave all their attention to the humans.

They watched humans crawling on their hands and shared a laugh, but the tension didn’t decrease.

Then the humans decided to be stubborn and not divide their party on encountering the two tunnels. It made rocky angry because he had to order the ants to leave the tunnels, but it eventually made them both snicker once again, as they saw the humans wasting their time, and turning back to go through the other tunnel.

They had at first thought to simply save their ants and use them all once the humans reached the queen, but then they were provided a chance at the next room, when the humans decided to divide their party. They saw the five of them entering the tunnels in pairs of two and the mage girl going alone.

When Rocky had created the tunnels, he had never once thought that the simple idea would give them an exciting chance in the future.

“This is a great chance Minnie! Let’s ambush her with Ant soldiers. No matter how strong she is, she won’t be able to handle two of them, right?” his confidence took a whole 180 degrees turn by the time he finished his sentence.

“Yeah, let’s send the workers too. Six of them working together, no let’s make that four. We don’t want the humans to know that the dungeon deliberately made preparations to attack a single human.”

“But won’t that…”

“No, we don’t want anyone else know that you can think.”

“Okay.” He shrugged, not understanding or even minding her intentions as he simply trusted her completely.

Having known their strengths and knowing how overpowered they were, Minnie and Rocky made the decision to give up on harming all of them at once, and made sure to take care of the most damaging one of them, the fire mage.

And distributing their ants according to the plan, they sent four ants, two worker and two soldier ants to ambush the Mage, and also sent the rest of the worker ants to fight the knight who had mercilessly squashed the little ants.

Though the decision had come at a great expense, but they had still decided to simply give up on killing the Dark and green balls of light which had entered the middle tunnel.

Yes, they were too far from the dungeon core and because they were still out of range of Rockies Mana sense, so they still could only see the humans as balls of lights, glowing in the color of their elemental affinities.

……………..

Ten minutes passed and rocky and Minnie looked at each other’s swollen faces. They sighed at the same time, as the aftermath, no, the one sided massacre of the fire mage unfurled in front of them.

The fire mage single handedly took care of all the ants that came her way. When a single [fireball] wasn’t able to kill the ant workers, she fired ten and overwhelmed them. The soldiers fared well against the normal [fireballs], but the super compressed [light balls] evaporated them completely. The ants didn’t even get to shriek.

Minnie once again went to the corner to sulk, and Rock disappointed at his ants passed through the middle room. He was going to leave to see how his works fared against the knight, but then saw the humans coming and stopped.

Rocky actually didn’t know what he was waiting to see. He didn’t have any spare ants to attack them. He looked at their energies and sighed, and was just about to move out, when something dramatic happened.

The humans were walking side by side. They talked with each other about how there were no ants in the room, and were just about to leave the room when the one with the dark ball of energy recovered a dagger from his waist and plunged it directly into the other persons neck, killing the archer on the spot.

Rocky looked at it happening with his mouth wide opened and Minnie joined him when she saw it to.

Then they saw the assassin eating food, taking a nap and then making cuts on his body with his own dagger. He even made sure to look exhausted by sprinting around the room.

Then he went outside the room.

“Fuck, what was that!!!” Rocky erupted.

“And that is why they say, the only enemy a human has is another human.” Minnie mumbled.

Rock followed him after swallowing the body, and saw him blaming the ants for his murder.

He then went back to his inner world, as the humans rained fire inside the temporary boss room.

The queen flared and attacked them, but the duo didn’t care about that, as they had another mystery to solve.

Just as the humans entered the queen room, they entered Rockies mana sense range, and the screen once again starting displaying everything clearly.

On the screen they saw six humans entering the room, which gave them another headache.

“Now, where did that human come from?” Minnie pointed at William and said.

“What do I know? I have been looking at the humans from the time they entered, and I didn’t see him coming at all.”

“Ah! This is infuriating… no, wait go outside and check how many humans there are outside.”

“but…”

“Just do this once and then come back.”

Rocky went outside, checked, and came back. Minnie asked her how many humans he saw and he answered looking at the screen which was showing six humans, “Five. I only saw five of them.”

“Ah ha.” Minnie smiled weakly.

“Don’t just smile to yourself, and tell me what are those humans planning?”

“No, no.” she gestured with her hand, “It’s not those! It’s him. Only one human is planning something, and the others are just road kills.”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, the one who killed the archer is planning something and using his clone to fool the other humans.”

And the fight between the queen and the humans reached its final segments. Enco, who was using his [Transform] skill to look like William, attracted the queen’s attention toward the others and then vanished.

But Minnie made the queen stop right in its tracks, as the earth mage somehow saved her partner from the assassins trap, and started fighting with him.

Rocky did ask why she wasn’t attacking the humans, to which Minnie replied saying, “There are two reasons. First, the queens’ mana and stamina is not enough to kill all the humans present and second..” She tapped the screen, “I want to know why this person waited so long to show his true colors.”

Then the fight between the humans concluded, with Dust loosing the match.

The assassin having killed the knight, injured the earth mage and made the fire mage use all of her mana, was feeling quite contempt.

He looked at Dust who was furiously looking back at him and said, “You know you have no one else to blame but yourself. You all were too greedy this time, little one. Who asked you to choose the mission? Who asked you to come here? Who asked you to form party with strangers? It’s your own fault and you will die cause of your own mistakes.”

“What? What are you even saying? WHAT THE FUCK DOES THAT EVEN MEAN?”

“Anger, yes, get as angry as you can!!” he looked into her eyes and spoke with a grim voice, “For this is the last time you can get angry after all. Haaha…”

“Then tell me…” She glared at him strongly enough to burn a hole in him and asked, “Who asked you to kill us, and why do you have to kill us?” she somehow controlled her anger and asked him, but couldn’t hide her expressions turning wild and ferocious.

“Are you trying to buy time? For who? Her?” he spoke pointing at the unconscious Martha.

He then smiled and pointed toward the ruble and slowly spoke, “Or him?”

A cold sweat ran down her back. Because of the ant mask, she could see a ball of light wiggling under the ruble, trying to do something and she was sure that it was Daniel.

She thought of buying some time for him, so that he could accomplish, whatever it was that he wanted to achieve. Maybe he could provide them a last chance to kill this devil spawn, but she had failed.

While she was having suicidal thoughts, and was thinking that it was over, Enco spoke again, “Well, forget about the sleeping bimbo, she is not going to wake up anytime soon, but about him, he’s…” and he smirked.

‘Why is he making that face’ she thought and he told her.

“Dead” and he started laughing.

She looked at the ruble through the Lenses, and saw the ball of light wiggling, waggling. She couldn’t understand what he meant by him being dead.

‘What is he saying? He is clearly not dead. Wait, does he…’

Understanding that he was having confusions, she once again tried to buy Daniel some time.

“You are going to kill me right?”

And Enco nodded to her question without any delay.

“So, won’t you at least fulfill one of my wishes?” she asked.

“Don’t wanna.” He rejected and went through the motions of attack.

“Please. Please. Listen to me. At least tell me what I am dying for! Or how you executed your plan? Yes, don’t you want to torture me by telling me how you executed your plan and made fools of us? Or do you want to live without telling anyone?” she was desperately tried to grasp lose straws in hope that he would help them.

All the while Minnie and Rocky calmly looked at the drama that was occurring in front of their queen.

“Ah! Now that I think about it, Yes, I do want others to listen to my plan.” He grinned and said pointing at Dust, “Especially you.” And then starting mumbling to himself, “No one knows how much I had to prepare to make it fool proof, but Mother won’t listen. She only wants results and nothing more.”

He sighed once after saying that, and looked at the ceiling.

When Dust heard him say ‘Mother’ she couldn’t help but feel a tinge of hope. So, she tried again, “Your Mother, who is she? Why does she want us dead?”

Enco creased his brows and looked at her by tilting his neck diagonally. Then he snorted once before saying, “She is my mother, my god, my everything! You don’t need to know who she is, but if you want

to…”

His eyes became sharp and he suddenly rushed at her with black daggers in both his hands.

Dust knew something bad was going to happen to her. So, she yelled out, “Don’t kil…” but the answer to her cry came before she could complete her sentence.

“Don’t worry I am not going to kill, you just taking precautions.” he said and moved his daggers, following which came a sprout of blood from both of her arms and a loud cry.

*Thud*Thud*

“AHhhhhh”

Her arms fell on the ground, and her cry rang out in the empty room.

He cut her arms from the shoulder as a precaution.

“Well, now that this is done, let’s continue.” He said looking at her with eyes that looked like he was enjoying this.

Rocky shuddered when he saw that happen, and Minnie commented, “See, that’s what humans are like. He is not following orders, he is enjoying himself.”

All the while Dust screamed, and screamed, and screamed. What happened after that? She had no idea. Time blurred by as she wailed from the pain. She wanted to lose conscious, but the pain, anger and frustration was too deep and too horrible, and kept her conscious through the first some bouts of pain.

She kept on wailing, and Enco kept on speaking. She couldn’t hear what he was saying and couldn’t care less about it either.

She wanted to die, but she wanted to kill him too. So she held on. She forcefully held on to her soul that wanted to leave her body.

Enco got irritated from her crying and shit, so when she didn’t stop being noisy even after some time passed; he finally lost it, and started kicking her.

He kicked her in the gut, on her face. She curled into a ball, but he didn’t stop hitting her, once, then twice, then again and again and again, until her voice couldn’t leave her throat, and she stopped breathing.

Stolen content warning: this tale belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences elsewhere.

“What dead already? I even gave you a hand to stop your crying. Are you not going to wake up now?” He said to Dust, and then mumbled to himself, “What should I do now? Let’s just kill her.”

…………..

When Enco cut off Dusts arms, Daniel was looking.

When Dust cried in pain, Daniel was still looking with wet eyes.

When Enco kicked her ruthlessly and almost killed her, he was still watching as his eyes turned blood red.

His mind went mad with fury and his hair stood up straight up with rage. He wanted to go and snap Enco’s neck and drink his blood.

He kept on looking at her, till blood started flowing from his eyes, it was madness.

He was going to yell out loud, and curse the living shit out of Enco and his whole fucking family, when he saw Dust turning her head, and their eyes met.

There were no tears in her eyes. Her face showed not even a tinge of pain. Her mouth was sealed shut. She didn’t cry again, but he knew she had not lost her soul yet.

It was not anger or hate or retribution, but vengeance.

She wanted Enco dead, and she wanted his help. Her eyes told him to wait, wait for the right moment, to wait till Enco tells them everything.

How he knew all of this?

Well, call it his intuition or his ability to read faces, but he just knew.

He was happy not for Enco, for he was just a dead man walking, but for Dust. Her eyes still contained hope and they were burning with desire, and were waiting for a chance to repay all of her pain back.

He knew they could still be saved; just getting the regeneration potion was not enough. They needed something more, something that could handle that piece of shit; and he remembered the queen.

‘But why was she not moving anymore?’ He looked at her and for some reason she looked in his direction.

‘Shit!! What was that!!’

He gestured Dust with his eye to look at the queen, and he himself tried to find Martha.

Dust moved her tired self, and encouraged herself to look at the queen.

Enco saw her looking at the queen and felt a bit surprised to see her alive. His surprise doubled when he noticed that she was using her earth ability to stop her bleeding. Well, although it sure as hell looked creepy, but it was doing wonders for her, at least she was still not dead yet.

“No need to look at her, she can’t see us.”

To that bastards chant both Daniel and Dusts ears perked straight up, to capture everything that he was going to say.

Even Minnie and Rocky got serious as he said that, but ended up laughing instead.

“Forget about seeing us, I think it’s already sleeping.”

“Wh..y?”Dust asked him.

“Ah! Yes, why? Huh. Because currently it is captured in my illusion, and in the illusion this room no longer has anybody inside, and is empty.” He then pointed at the queen and said, “Which means the queen has no one to attack, so I think that its s.l.e.e.p.i.n.g.”

He looked back at her and saw that she was still looking at him; he felt that something was odd. Something was odd with her eyes.

But his vigilance went away as soon as it came, when he looked at her pathetic self trying to increase her life by the seconds.

He noticed that even though Dust was using her mana to stop the bleeding, her blood was still flowing out, and even her mana was also almost exhausted. So, to him, she was just a guest of a few more minutes, nothing troublesome at all.

As he was thinking that, Dust voice once again sounded in his ears, “Why?”

Again the same question, but he understood the difference between the two, and he answered, “Like I said, my master ordered me to enter with a human party and kill everyone inside.”

*Pfft*

Minnie spurted a fountain of saliva onto the screen in the inner world hearing that.

Even Rocky couldn’t help but check his ears when he heard that. “What did he say?”

Enco continued with, “You see the real target is not you guys. You guys are all just preparations, raw materials for a big boom. The real target is this dungeon.”

But dust couldn’t believe all that he was saying. After all, the dungeon was a new born.

“Why? What did this new born dungeon did to you? ”

{[Yes ask her that.] Rocky nodded his head from inside his inner world, but her follow-up made him go, [Huh, what?]}

“And even if you want to destroy the dungeon what does that have to do with us? Just destroy it and let us go.” Dust requested, but then froze, as she thought about her wording.

But Enco was feeling too high on his triumph, and didn’t acknowledge her words.

“This one is no good, it needs to be destroyed. As for the reason to kill all of you, think what would happen if you all die here and no one returned back to the guild.” He asked her.

“If we die here then the guild would send more adventurers to investigate. Ah!” and then the thought suddenly hit her.

“But if they investigate then, won’t they also just destroy this dungeon. Because who would want to let a killer prosper in its own backyard, a monster spawn that could kill ‘B rankers’ Even though it was clearly a new born.” Her tongue rapidly fired words.

{ Meanwhile Rocky and Minnie reacted like this to the sudden turn of events.

“…”

“…”}

Dust wanted to milk all the information out of Enco before killing him. So she didn’t let go of the moment and continued asking him question she could think off.

“But, why does your master wants to involve our guild in this mess?”

She really believed that they were just preparations; the real mission was something much more sinister and evil than she the one she could even reach. She knew that whatever the reason to their supposed deaths was, Enco didn’t know it, but she still asked him and he also gave her the expected answer.

“That I don’t know. Well, everything has its cause and effect. The world doesn’t work on fairness and pride, but on money and politics. So, how would this weak me know about my masters genius. This is just one of the works that goes behind in the background, while others continue to live their lives, strangers to all of these. You all are dying for a greater cause, so don’t feel sad.”

“Just do it already!!!”

This was not an invitation from her to Enco, but to the queen, who still wasn’t attacking.

Enco looked at Dust in disdain and continued speaking, “Anyway as I was saying. Well, now that I am telling you all of this, let me tell you this too…”

But Dust defeated him to it, and spoke first, “You killed Bill right? And you used your fucking clone to trick us, and there is no captain William, he was you all along, right!!!” She smirked, as if she had finally one upped him.

Air around the assassin shook slightly and he clenched his fists, but then cooled down and started laughing.

“Ahahaa… good, good, very good.” A snap of his fingers and he got engulfed by black smoke. Ten seconds passed and William came out of the smoke with tears in his eyes and his clothes shredded. He looked exactly like the time he had come out with the news of bills death, and he even repeated some of his lines from that act.

“You are not as idiot, as I thought you to be, but how did you find out?”

And Dust explained how William never showed any signs of being preset in her [Earth sense] and how the mask she was wearing further improved her doubts.

Enco looked at her with twitching face, but Dust continued speaking in a very soft and low voice. Although she was feeling extremely exhausted, and was suffering from negative effects like; ‘Mental Strain’ ‘Physical Strain’ ‘Anemia’ “Infection’, she held on to her life and told him in a breaking voice,

“You see… your illusion, and clones, and whatnots… they might have worked on us humans… but… it has…” And as she completed her sentence a large fireball came whirling toward Enco’s back. “No affect on this dungeons monsters.” And she smiled.

Enco saw her eyes and his surrounding glowing with an orange glow.

“Fuck!!” he looked back to the side and saw a fireball just inches away from his face.

The thing is; Dust understood more about dungeon than others. She knew how vicious and intelligent the monster, especially final monster of a dungeon could be, and also knew that the queen was probably listening to the reason and was waiting for him to finish talking.

Though she could not lift her head high enough to look at the queen, but neither could Enco see her actions, because he had his eyes fixated on her.

But she was not alone. Why would she need to look at the queen herself, when she had Daniel to do the part!

Her job that was to buy time was over. Now it was others time to act.

Why was the questions needed to be asked?

They were asked to confuse Enco.

It is a proved fact that, a second of delay in making a decision, and taking action could prove fatal in a life or death battle, and to make his thought process slow was her intention.

When he moved his neck to look back, one of the light balls behind the queen exploded in a flash of light.

It created radiance so frightening that everything got covered in a white light.

It suddenly became so bright that Enco almost became blind cause of it, but the queen wasn’t affected like him, and then her fireball finally reached him.

It engulfed his body and flying over Dust exploded on the wall behind her.

*Booom*

It created a sea of fire just like the one that Martha’s poorly aimed attacked had created, though the effect of this single fire ball weren’t so drastic and dramatic.

The impact created no pressure waves just a small earthquake, but it did brighten the room exponentially.

{[Fuck.] Minnie cried out, as she saw that assassin emerging at some distance away.}

By the time the flash ended and the fireball reached Enco, he had already moved from his initial position.

His level and Rank wasn’t for show after all. When his body noticed that he was in danger, it moved at the top speed that it could muster without any command from his brain, and escaped the danger.

Human mind and muscle are more complicated than they are thought to be.

Sometime no matter how much one wants their body to move it doesn’t listen and refuses to do so, but sometimes, it moves on its own.

But Daniel was prepared. He knew that Enco wouldn’t die or even get hurt by any attack from the queen, and would use his fast movement speed to escape the fireball.

Enco ran In Daniel’s direction because there was no other place for him to run. The destruction that Martha’s fireballs had created was not on a small scale. It had nearly destroyed the whole room.

There were big wide stones everywhere, and some places even had part of the roof fallen down. The only safe route lead Enco directly toward Daniel.

……………….

Daniel started charging his sword with mana just as the light ball exploded.

He had tried to use the same skill before, but hadn’t gotten the chance to, and his mana charged sword was left buried in the ground.

So he made his already charged sword into an overly charged bomb. He emptied all of his mana inside it, and waited for Enco to get close enough to him.

And just when Enco got near the debris area where he was, he unleashed his skill, [Cross-slash].

His sword broke and turned into dust. Well, it was bound to happen because he had not slightly, but massively over charged it with mana.

But he didn’t care; the skill had already left the sword, and was it was moving extremely fast, faster than the fireballs and even faster than the assassin.

Enco, who was running away from the fire, suddenly saw a blue colored cross slash coming towards him, but because of his speed, he couldn’t stop at time, and directly collided with the beam like attack.

The ‘Cross-Slash’ touched him, cut him, and moved on. It didn’t stop even after passing through his body. It travelled some distance at hyper speed, and exploded after colliding with the wall behind him.

When Danile saw that he knew that it was finally over. The villain was dead and they could leave if the queen let them. He was going to move his body and walk toward Dust, but his feet stopped in the middle of their motion.

He saw Enco’s body that was cut in four pieces by his skill not falling down, and instead floating in the air. It then slowly turned translucent, and then completely vanished.

Luck is a very difficult attribute to comprehend.

Just when the cross was about to collide with Enco, his foot touched a shadow created from the fallen roof and the fire from queens fireball.

Enco then went with the flow, used shadow movement, and vanished. The cross cut his after image, passed him by and made a huge impact on the wall.

Daniel’s mouth hanged, he had failed. He had expended all of his energy, his sword was broken, Martha was already unconscious because of high mana usage and Dust… ‘We are going to die.’ He thought.

……………

Enco was really scared; the one after another coordinated attacks had given him a heart attack, after heart attack, but he had also become aware of his mistake, which was to not just kill everyone, and be done with it.

‘Why did I not just kill her? Why did I not just kill that monkey? Why did I not check on that bimbo?’ He regretted his decision of playing with them.

He wasn’t scared of the queen, he wasn’t scared of Martha’s mana burn, he didn’t even care about that brute, and he definitely wasn’t scared of that no arm girl, but their team effort had almost ended his light.

“I’m going to kill them.” He thought, but then smirked. ‘But I will not kill those girls without playing with them to my heart content.’

Like they say, old habits die hard. He decided to make all of them pay for their crimes, and had already decided their punishment, ‘I’m going to cut all of their limbs, and then skin then alive, slowly. Just you all wait and see.’

He felt safe, so he exited the shadow and…

*Guck*

“Huh?”

A sudden rush of pain and then blood leaked out of his mouth.

He looked behind him and saw no one. He looked to his left and right and saw no one, then He looked down, and saw a spike joined to the ground. It extended straight to his chest, entering his heart and leaving from his back.

He lifted his head, and saw a girl without arms lying on the ground, but looking at him with a crazy smile on her face, clearly laughing at him.

He couldn’t speak properly because of blood that was climbing his throat.

“I see” he said. His eyes turned red and veins bulged on his forehead.

How could he have thought that the girl who was nothing more than dead meat to him would end up taking his life? Moreover using a simple spike! A spell that he could evade even with his eyes closed.

He kept on looking at her, and her smile slowly turned into laughter. It looked like they were having completion of who would die first, which he lost.

The light in his eyes dimmed, and he died while looking at a face which mocked him till his death.

……………………………………………………………………………………

Daniel saw it happen with his own two eyes, but he couldn’t believe it.

Enco had clearly gotten away, their plan had also clearly failed, but what happened next was excitement from out of the world.

He didn’t know how Dust had pinpointed the point of Enco’s exit, but she did the impossible and the villain who didn’t die even from the collaborated effort of the queen and his super spell, died from a mere spike.

He moved, no he rushed, no he ran to Dust.

He couldn’t stop at time and slipped on the floor, but his excitement was too high for him to care about such small stuff.

He lifted her head with his left hand, and placed it on his lap for support. He opened her mouth, and started pouring health regeneration potion in her mouth, but she didn’t swallow and it soon flowed out.

He knew that the situation was dire and he need to take some drastic measures, if he wanted to save her.

So he chugged some of the regeneration potion, placed it in his mouth, and made her swallow it by giving her mouth to mouth.

He repeated the same procedure until he had poured two flasks worth of medicine into her body. Then he placed her head back on the floor took, out two more such flasks, and directly poured them over her cut arms.

He knew that just lesser regeneration potions won’t be enough. She needed immediate help from a cleric or a healer.

The regeneration Potions did make her bleeding stop, and her face also regained a bit of its redness, but she was out of danger. She was still unconscious after all.

Even though he was worried about Dust, he still kept his eye on the queen who was looking at him from where she was standing at.

He didn’t knew whether she would attack them or not, but he didn’t care and after finishing helping her he ran straight towards Martha, who was lying on the ground, unconscious.

He knew that she was not injured in any way. She and had only exhausted her mana reserves. So, he lifter her from the ground and started shaking her to wake her up, and after feeling some earthquake like vibrations she woke up and started screaming.

But then she saw Daniel and her screaming stopped, but instead tears started falling down from her eyes. She hugged him tightly and started crying.

“We don’t have time for this.” He said and gave her a mana potion to drink.

Then both of them returned to Dust, lifted her up and were going to go out of the room, when the queen moved.

That petrified them. Martha even stopped breathing.

But unlike what they expected, the queen didn’t attack and instead returned back to the dungeon core.

Martha took a breath of relief.

Daniel lifted Dust up in princess carry and carried her out of the room. They stooped at the exit to look back as Feelings of excitement and eagerness flooded their veins, but Daniel shook his head once, before he started walking again.