The black sphere rapidly descended through the chasm and smashed through any stone bridges it collided with, due to its velocity. After a few more seconds, the sphere crashed into the ground leaving a huge crater. The sphere began to unsolidify and it started to open. Devo and Xeno, with a disorientated Shira in his arms, jumped out of the sphere. The sphere quickly gathered around Xeno and reverted to its cloak form. Devo looked around the practically pitch-black cavern, which was only slightly lit up by the crystals that adorned its surfaces.
"It appears we're on the eightieth level.". Devo looked at his poriferan vision and noticed an icon of glowing wings with an X over it.
"So we're on the lowest possible level for this dungeon then," Xeno remarked as he lightly tapped Shira on the face to try and snap her out of her dazed state. While he was doing this, both Devo and Xeno heard heavy footsteps. They both looked in the direction of the footsteps and spotted the Ant Golem Guardian slowly approaching them, with a giant hole on the right side of its body along with missing all of its right arms.
"What a persistent bastard.".
"Language, Xenolith.".
"Yeah, yeah I know it's not cool to swear in front of children.". Xeno continued to tap Shira on the face while Devo checked the ant's status.
[Ant Golem Guardian(Male)]
[LV: 273]
[HP: 5456/32,555]
"He's basically dead so you can sta-". Devo paused when he spotted the six glowing cyan eyes looming above in the dark. His eyes widened when he saw two glowing cyan scythe shaped objects started to ascend into the air.
"Xeno watch out!". Xeno looked up and spotted the thing Devo was yelling about. He quickly created a wave of shadow underneath himself and Devo activated his lightning cloak skill, which surrounded his body in flowing purple lightning bolts. They barely managed to move out of the way as the scythes swung down and sliced the ground along with cutting the Ant Golem Guardian into multiple pieces.
The shrouded creature let out a high pitched screech, causing the crystal parts of its body and all the crystals on the walls of the cavern to shine brightly. The entire cavern was illuminated with a rainbow of colours and the creature that had defeated the Ant Golem Guardian was now visible to Devo and Xeno.
The creature was a tall slender white stone with thunderstone veins all over its body golem that had the appearance of a queen ant mixed with a praying mantis.
"It sure is a hassle not being able to fly," Devo said as he landed. Devo and Xeno watched as the ant queen tracked each of them with three eyes respectively. All six of the queen ant's scythe arms started to glow. The queen ant sliced the air and launched multiple rainbow coloured energy blades.
Devo narrowly dodged the energy blades and Xeno blocked the blades with a giant shadow shield. Devo tensed up his legs, causing the lightning around them to become more intense, before launching himself at the queen ant.
Devo spun around and surround his right foot in flames before trying to strike the queen ant's head with a burning kick. However, the queen ant blocked him with four of its six scythes.
"That's new." Devo thought as the intensity of his flames decreased.
The queen ant attempted to slice Devo with its free scythes. Devo quickly jumped off the scythes and the queen ant pulled back all of its scythes.
The moment the queen ant tried to attack Devo mid-air and volley of shadow tridents flew at high speed towards it. The queen ant quickly sliced the tridents with its scythes, which were covered in lightning magic. Devo landed next to Xeno.
"Thanks for the cover.".
"Don't mention it, so do you have a plan?". Devo shrugged as the two looked over at the queen ant, which was in the middle of trying to pull out the shadow tridents that had pierced its body. Shira began to slowly wake up. She noticed Devo and Xeno were talking to each other but their words were too mumbled for her to understand. The two jumped away from each other when an energy blade tried to hit them. The lightning around Devo became more violent before he rushed at high speed towards the queen ant. Xeno created a shadow pillar underneath himself and raised himself about twenty meters. Shira made an eep noise, causing Xeno to realise she was awake.
"Nice to see you're still in the action, kid.". Shira tried to ask what was going on but was surprised when she spotted the queen ant.
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"What's that?". Xeno rolled his eyes and opened a status menu displaying the queen ant's info while Devo was distracting it.
[Queen Demise Ant(Leucistic)]
[Raid Boss]
[LV: 356]
[HP:1,754,567/1,756,750]
Shira looked confused and asked Xeno what raid boss meant but she realised he seemed slightly concerned.
"Xeno...lith?". Xeno snapped out of his concerned state by Shira waving her hand in front of his face. He explained bosses that are, as stated in the trivia section on the Eldrian Online website, mutated versions of normal boss monsters that appear during raids, given the raid boss title.
"But if it's meant to appear in a raid, then why is it here?". Xeno simply shook his head and stated he has no clue. She tried to ask him another question but he requested if she could hold off on the question until they get out of the boss area. Shira was puzzled by the last part of Xeno's statement.
"Don't you mean beat it?".
"As if, the weakest raid boss requires at minimum forty people; so it's a miracle Devo's managing to keep it a bay.". Shira looked over at Devo and wondered if he'll be ok.
Devo dashed around the queen ant and dodged its attacks while surrounding his fist in flames and firing a barrage of Burning Impacts, super-condensed fireballs, at the queen ant's joints. The queen ant tried to pin down Devo with all six of its scythes.
Devo crouched down and concentrated more energy into his legs. Devo quickly launched himself into the air right as the scythes struck the ground. The queen ant tracked Devo as he flew through the air and landed on the cavern's ceiling.
Devo surrounded his feet in flames before jumping off the ceiling. Devo launched a volley of Burning Impacts at the queen ant's back followed up by him striking it with a Burning Kick, spewing flames all over the queen ant's back. The queen ant fired multiple energy beams from its eyes. Devo evaded the energy beams before surrounding his right hand in blue flames. The queen ant focused all the energy in its eyes and fired a super-concentrated energy beam. Devo countered by firing a Blazing Flash, a blue, more concentrated and stronger version of Burning Flash.
Xeno, after closing a menu, and Shira watched as Devo was slowly moved backwards from the force of the queen ant's energy beam. Shira panicked as she took out her staff from her inventory. Xeno got an idea while looking at the remains of the Ant Golem Guardian.
Devo surrounded his left arm in blue flames before placing it next to his over and firing a second Blazing Flash. The two Blazing Flashes merged together and barely managed to match the force outputted by the queen ant. His arms started to shake/wobble a little and his arms started to go numb. The queen ant noticed this and increased the intensity of its attack. The energy beam started to overpower Devo's attack and started to creep closer to Devo. However, Devo's body flashed red and he noticed the flame icon appeared in the bottom left of his vision. Devo smirked as he strained his arms to their limit before firing a supercharged Blazing Flash.
The queen ant was taken by surprise at how quickly Devo overpowered its attack. The queen ant tried to increase the energy beam's power but it wasn't fast enough. The Blazing Flash managed to completely overpower the queen ant's energy beam and its blue flames enveloped the queen ant's face. The queen ant instinctively moved its head away from the way of Devo's attack, with its head now covered in soot. The queen ant was about to fire another energy beam and Devo went to counter again but a sharp pain coursed through his arms followed by his right arm going limp.
Devo was about to evade the attack but stopped when he spotted something behind the queen ant's head. The queen ant tried to look at what Devo was looking at. Before the queen ant could get a good look at it; a shadow spear pierced through its middle right eye, causing liquid lightning magic to spew out. The queen ant recoiled in pain. The volatile movement of the queen ant caused Devo to stumble and fall off the queen ant's back. The figure that pierced the queen ant's eye rushed over to Devo. It grabbed onto his left hand and flew over to Xeno.
The figure dropped Devo and he landed next to Xeno. Devo looked up at the person who caught him and realised it was a winged version of the Ant Golem Guardian made out of shadows. The ant looked identical to the Ant Golem Guardian aside from its body being made out of helliminium, magitite infused with concentrated shadow magic, making it almost pitch black aside from the reflections on the metal's surface. It also had the same glowing marks all over its body that were purple instead of the original's cyan, its eyes were also didn't appear to have any pupils, its iris' were a glowing purple and its sclera, the white part of the eye on most animals, was pitch black like its body. It has six insect wings, three on each side of its back, that were transparent and were glowing a faint purple.
"What's up with the flying shadow guardian ant?" Shira asked.
"For the record, it's a Shadow Ant Sentinal,". Xeno looked towards Shira who seemed kind of lost.
"The shadow version of the evolved form of the Ant Golem Guardian, that gives it wings.". Shira made an ohh face in response. Shira asked why he made it. Xeno pointed to the approximate area on Shira's vision of where the icon of the glowing wings with a cross over them was.
"That's the icon for a non-magic wing flying zone.". Shira nodded her head and Xeno realised she completely understood the situation.
An extremely loud screech echoed through the cavern, causing Shira to cover her ears. The three of them, including the Shadow Sentinal Ant, looked in the direction of the screech and saw it was coming from the queen ant. The volume of the queen ant's screech became even louder, Xeno created a pair of noise-cancelling headphones out of shadows and placed them on Shira's head. The intensity of the queen ant's screech became so intense that the walls and ceiling of the cavern start to crumble.
Xeno picked up Shira and requested the Shadow Ant Sentinal to get them out of there.
It nodded before grabbing onto Devo and Xeno, holding each of them with two of its six arms. The shadow ant took off and carried the group out of the cavern right as it started to collapse.