'That...that's just not fair,' Loran thought as he watched The Guardian Elder start fighting the Iron Ant Guardians. 'Those Guardians are already too strong, how the hell is she that much stronger!?'

The giant goat rampaged through the Iron Ant's backlines. Every step crushed a dozen Drones and every swing of her horns took out any Warriors that were bold enough to try and approach.

It only took a second for the remaining Guardians to switch their focus to the leader of the Mountain Goats. The giant ants moved with surprising speed as if they had been saving their energy to go up against the massive beast. They dashed to bite at her legs, but The Guardian Elder was faster than a Soldier ant, so she easily evaded the attacks and began stomping on their heads. The two Guardians had their head shoved into the gravel as the other six moved to surround the elder goat.

Loran could barely keep up with The Guardian Elder's movements as she started swinging her head and kicking, knocking the multi-ton insects around like they weighed nothing. However, the Guardians were not slow, and with their numbers advantage, they were able to start landing attacks, focusing on The Guardian Elder's legs to hinder her movements. The effect was limited thanks to the elder goat's [UNYEILDING] Skill, but the regenerative effect was not instantaneous so she was still slowed down slightly. It was just long enough for the Guardians to attack again and open more wounds.

Loran watched as their battle became a pure and simple damage race. Minimal effort was put into defense and evasion, the winner would be decided by who had the stronger attacks.

'The Elder definitely wins out in individual damage, but she is outnumbered,' Loran thought as he watched the battle play out. 'Their total HP is also higher than hers. Mindless attacking will just get her killed.'

Even thinking that, Loran was sure that The Guardian Elder would win, because she wasn't attacking mindlessly. After the initial round of attacks, she started focusing on a single Guardian, eliminating it in just a few blows before moving on to another one.

'It's costing a lot of HP to ignore the other Guardians like that, but each one she kills means less damage as the battle continues.' It wasn't that complicated to figure out, but Loran was impressed to see the beast figure it out so quickly. 'I wonder just how intelligent she really is...'

Putting the potentially interesting question aside, Loran opened his menu to Level up [EXTREME PERCEPTION] again, raising it to Level 7. Aside from the time limit increasing to 7 minutes, the description didn't change.

'Just a little short of Level 8. I can't believe I fought for almost four straight minutes and only got this much,' he thought bitterly. 'I know I was stuck playing defense for most of the fight, but still...'

Because he was responsible for keeping the ants away from Alexx and Yang he needed to surround himself with more enemies than normal. He could handle it thanks to the bonuses from [EXTREME PERCEPTION] but between defending himself and keeping an eye on the others, he didn't have much time to look for openings to attack.

'Whatever,' he thought as he closed the menu. 'The siege is still going. I'll get the EXP I need. Hell, for a Skill this good I'll grind out Moss Wolves if I have to.'

Closing his menu, Loran returned his attention to the battle between the Guardians and The Guardian Elder. Including the one that Yang and Alexx killed, five of the original nine Guardians were still standing. The fighting was intense, but Loran couldn't help but feel that something was...off about the situation.

'Yang said that The Guardian Elder wiped the floor with four Guardians in a minute or two, so why is this taking so long?'

Loran watched as another Guardian was sent flying by a kick from the gigantic goat, flipping it onto its back. The Guardian Elder moved forward to finish it off, but was cut off as two more Guardians and several Warriors got between them and attacked.

Knowing that The Guardian Elder was immune to physical debuffs, Loran expected the beast to ignore their attacks and finish off the defenseless insect, but instead she backed off and even defended against some of the attacks with her horns. More attacks came from the Guardians behind her, and she did her best to defend herself from these as well. A handful of Warriors died in the exchange, but a few survived and were latching onto the goat's fur.

'...How much damage has she taken already? Let me just...?' Loran tried to use [ANALYSE] on The Guardian Elder, but the usual window didn't open up. 'Why isn't Analyse...oh right. That was added to Extreme Perception too.' Loran sighed but disregarded the issue. 'Whatever, that has to be the problem.'

Even if The Guardian Elder could take out a Guardian in a few blows, that still meant that she was taking attacks from several others at the same time. Their crushing jaws worked similarly to those of the Drones, so the elder goat avoided most of the damage by escaping their grips, but mandibles that large still had to do a lot more damage than normal.

A case of literary theft: this tale is not rightfully on Amazon; if you see it, report the violation.

No matter how much HP The Guardian Elder had, it was still being shaved away from the constant attacks from the combined forces of the Iron Ant army. The Guardians could cover each other well enough to just buy time for more attacks, and now that the elder goat was on the defensive it was even easier for them to keep her contained. She couldn't focus fire on a single Guardian anymore and was forced to attack with whatever opportunities she could find.

'I think she'll still survive, but I don't know how much HP she'll have left, and that might not be a risk she's willing to take.' Loran's brow furrowed. 'But if outnumbering her was all it took to incapacitate her like this, why hadn't they done it before now?'

Overwhelming the enemy through sheer numbers was practically the main strategy of the Iron Ants, and it was certainly how they chose to deal with the Mountian Goats. But if that was the case, then why hadn't they done this until now, or if they had then why hadn't it worked before?

Loran thought for a moment before realizing that today's siege was entirely different from any that had been held in the past because the players were participating as a major force. Their strategies had created the wall of Drones, an impassible barrier that utterly changed how the battle was being fought. Just as the Drones and Guardians couldn't easily pass, neither could the Mountain Goats.

While the Mountain Goats normally struggled to fight against the Guardians, that was only when they couldn't flank the giant insects. Any time the Guardians would have tried to surround The Guardian Elder in the past, the other goats would have just come up from behind and taken them out. As a result, the Iron Ants learned only to send enough of these expensive units to hold the front lines while the Soldiers distracted the enemy leader.

However, with the version update giving the Iron Ants a massive advantage, they must have chosen to put out as much of their forces as they could spare, hoping to either finish the Mountain Goats off in one fell swoop, or to start widening the gap the update gave them.

'I guess our plan to help out the normal goats kind of screwed over the elder then...'

There was no way for them to predict this, but it was still their fault. Fortunately, while things were starting to look bad it would only be a problem if The Elder Guardian actually died from this, or if she became too wounded to defeat the Guardians.

After another minute of watching the battle, [EXTREME PERCEPTION] was finally off cooldown, so Loran reentered the battle, heading straight for The Guardian Elder. He was the only one with the ability to heal while also being able to survive the chaos of that high-Level battle.

Dashing through the battlefield with the same ease as before, he landed on the back of one of the Guardians in just a few seconds. The giant insect paid no attention to him, focusing its attention on the stronger enemy.

'So how injured is she?' Loran focused on The Guardian Elder, but once again there was no menu. 'Wh-why isn't it working?' Loran thought with a growing sense of panic. 'The game didn't just destroy my Skill did it?!' As someone who regularly complained about the design choices in New Eden Online, his immediate thought was that the game finally had its first glitch, that the merging hadn't actually given him a way to use [ANALYSE] through [EXTREME PERCEPTION].

Loran took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. 'Forget it, there are more important things to worry about.' He looked at the giant goat again. 'She has about 35% of her HP left, so at least she isn't going to...how the hell do I know that?'

After a moment, Loran realized that he also knew how much SP The Guardian Elder had, as well as the exact wording of her Skills. He knew all of this but didn't know how. Loran nearly lost his balance as he tried to understand this new information. 'Okay, so I guess Analyse isn't gone, the new Skill is just being weird.' Confusion was replacing his worry, but it didn't change the situation.

A few of the nearby Warriors had noticed him and turned to attack. They came at him from the air, so their movements would have been predictable even without [EXTREME PERCEPTION]; with it, Loran was able to handle them almost without consciously acknowledging them, cutting them out of the air with ease.

Timing his steps, Loran jumped off the Guardian's head just as it lunged forward to attack, propelling himself forward toward The Guardian Elder's back. He had to unequip his sickle to grab her fur with his good hand, but that didn't stop him from stabbing a Warrior in the neck with his Bladed Glove as he landed. The bug had tried to dodge him but was too tangled in her fur to move and was now hanging limply as Loran took note of the other Warriors clinging to the large goat.

'Priority number one, get these bastards off her back.'

Moving along The Guardian Elder's body was incredibly difficult. Her movements threatened to throw him off thanks to her monstrously high Strength and Agility stats, and he could only use a single hand because of his injury. Frankly, if it wasn't for [EXTREME PERCEPTION] helping him to time his movements with hers, Loran wasn't sure he could have done this. It did become easier after The Guardian Elder noticed what he was doing. She couldn't exactly slow down when she was surrounded by enemies, but she did avoid spinning about randomly so as to not throw him off with the centrifugal force.

His progress was slow but steady, and after about two minutes Loran had managed to remove all of the Warriors that had latched onto her fur. Only a few Warrior ants were still alive, and The Guardian Elder was able to knock them out of the air easily enough.

'Okay,' Loran thought as he sat at the base of the elder's neck. 'I've got maybe four minutes before Extreme Perception craps out on me again. Time to start healing.'

Loran summoned up as much mana as he could, a whopping 90 MP thanks to the bonuses from [EXTREME PERCEPTION], and used all of it to cast the basic healing spell. Loran smiled as he formed the spell. Controlling this much mana at once gave the spell a far greater potency than normal, more than doubling the spell's usual output.

He began healing the elder, but his smile quickly started to fade.

'Damnit, it's not enough!'