The battle continued, and the number of Drones showed no signs of decreasing.
'We need to fall back,' Yang decided. Yang took a deep breath. "WE NEED TO MOVE BACK A BIT," she shouted, her own voice tearing at her throat as she tried to be heard over the noise around them. She wasn't sure if the others would be able to hear her, but she couldn't risk backing up into Alexx while [DANGER SENSE] wasn't fully functional. "YOU GUYS HEAR ME?!"
"YEAH!"
"FINE!"
Yang let out a sigh of relief as she just barely heard their shouts. Even though they managed to stabilize the situation, there was no way they could keep this pace up forever. They weren't going to be the ones changing the course of this battle, there was no need for them to burn themselves out like this.
The three began to edge back slowly as they continued fighting, careful to leave no openings for the Drones trying to surround them. They soon passed the point where the number of ants attacking them had suddenly increased, but this time the decrease wasn't as drastic. As much as the dust muffled the Drones' sense of smell, they had still managed to catch their scent, and they knew that they were targets worth defeating.
But they couldn't focus on them forever, and eventually the number of ants that entered their clearing fell to a more manageable level.
"STOP HERE!" Yang shouted. "YOU GUYS CAN KEEP GOING RIGHT?!"
"DON'T MAKE ME LAUGH!" Zed shouted. "I CAN DO THIS ALL DAY!"
"I'M GOOD, BUT CAN WE GO BACK TO THE OTHER FORMATION!?" Alexx asked.
Looking back, Yang realized that they had moved far enough away from the front lines for the Drones to stop coming from the sides. There were still a few, but they were so infrequent that Alexx wasn't even in a fighting pose anymore, and was just waiting for them to show up so he can stomp on them.
"GOT IT! ZED, FALL BACK!"
"FUCK THAT, I WANT TO BE UP FRONT THIS-" his eyes widened and said something that no one heard.
"ZED STOP ARGUING AND JUST-"
"SOLDIERS INCOMING!"
Yang took a quick breath and turned to look toward the sky. Sure enough, a cluster of flying specks had just entered the range of her vision, becoming larger and clearer with every passing second.
'Zed said those things can kill a Mountain Goat in less than a second. If they start taking out the larger goats... or even The Guardian Elder...'
Yang glanced at Zed. He was the only one with the AGI necessary to fight these things. He wanted a challenge, and it was time to step up.
It was at this point that Zed quietly stepped back to take up their previous formation.
"ZED!" Yang nearly felt a blood vessel burst in her skull. "THE SOLDIERS!"
"I CAN'T FIGHT THAT MANY!"
"THE GOATS-" she stopped suddenly. 'Fuck, my throat can't keep this up.'
"HAVE STOPPED THESE RAIDS BEFORE!"
Yang was about to shout out a response but stopped as she processed his words. Faced with the unfairness of air superiority, she had forgotten that the Mountain Goats of Ziege Basin have been fighting and winning against the Iron Ants and their raids for months, if not years, and there was little chance that it was because the Soldiers chose to stay home until today.
The only question she had left was how the hell goats stop an enemy that could fly and attack faster than a normal human could react to.
'Is it because of Hardened Skull?' she wondered, recalling the Mountain Goats' Skill list. 'No, probably not. Loran said the Soldier Blade was able to damage that Hell Pig through the Skill and those bugs will be swinging it a lot harder and faster than he could.'
Yang's mind ran through several different scenarios for how the goats might defend themselves, but each one seemed too flawed. She could only watch as the Iron Ant Soldiers came closer.
Suddenly the Soldiers began to drop from the sky, beginning their attack. Yang wanted to stop fighting and just watch, equal parts concerned and curious as to how the Mountain Goats would respond.
*BAAAAAA*
The Guardian Elder let out a bellow that shook the air. Time seemed to slow down as Yang, Alexx, and Zed turned their attention to the mighty beast. The giant goat ignored the Iron Ants around her for a moment as she lowered her head.
This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.
Then she vanished in an instant.
"WHAT?!" Yang shouted reflexively, her mind unable to comprehend how something that large could disappear so completely. 'Where-'
*BANG*
A loud noise from above shook Yang out of her confusion. She looked up, and her jaw hit the ground harder than a Mountain Goat's [SKULL BASH].
The Guardian Elder possessed STR greater than Alexx and AGI greater than Zed. With those two stats combined, the beast was able to produce an unimaginable amount of force. Enough force, it turned out, to propel her massive body from wall to wall almost in a blur. It took seconds for The Elder Guardian to reach the height of the Soldier ants, and the ants that didn't manage to evade were instantly reduced to paste against her horns.
As it turned out, The Guardian Elder's response to air superiority was to ask "What air superiority?"
"YANG!"
Alexx's shout snapped her attention back to the fight at hand and she knocked away a group of Drones before they had a chance to climb up her legs. With Zed behind her again and the number of ants reduced, Yang began swinging freely and let herself be pulled around by the weight of her War Pick again.
'Fuck, I'm losing my touch,' Yang thought as she swung her pick through another group of ants. As someone who regularly defaulted to a Tank build whenever she played an RPG, she was no stranger to being surrounded on hectic battlefields. This swarm of Iron Ant Drones wasn't completely new to her, but even before she got trapped in NEO it had been months since she experienced something like this. Apparently, the lack of high-level combat was making her skills dull.
'Guess I'll need to fix that.' Yang gritted her teeth and nearly snarled as her pick tore apart another Drone. Her focus sharpened as she unconsciously decided that she wasn't leaving this battle until every Iron Ant was dead.
As she stared down at her next target, Yang started to swing her weapon when she noticed a buzzing sound just barely piercing through the noise surrounding them. A millisecond later a shadow passed over her and her instincts screamed at her to move.
"RAAAA!"
With a guttural roar, she ignored the desire to dodge and changed the course of her weapon mid-swing, directing it upward as she got her first up-close look at the Iron Ant Warrior trying to ambush her.
Although the Mountain Goats made the Warriors look like they were made of tissue paper, they were a fair bit more sturdy than Yang had expected. The blunt side of her War Pick crashed into the side of the giant insect, just as its own blade fell upon her shoulder, snapping one of its legs but doing little damage to the torso.
As the ant was knocked aside from the force of the attack, Yang chose to ignore the Drones at her feet for a moment and chased after the injured Warrior. While it was probably faster than her, she closed in quickly and readied an attack with the piercing side of her weapon.
Bringing the War Pick down on the giant ant as it hit the ground, a sharp crack could be heard as the impact split open the carapace on the Warrior's chest. The bug silently shrieked as the stone spike dug several inches into the soft flesh beneath the tough armor.
Changing her grip, Yang activated [PULL] and brought the War Pick up in an overhead swing, the Skill dragging the injured ant along. Bringing the weapon down again, the pick tore its way through the rest of the Warrior's torso, burying itself in the gravel below.
Yang was bent over, needing a moment to pull the weapon out of the ground, but she didn't have a moment. Two more Warriors were coming, their blades aimed directly at Yang's partially exposed neck.
Before she could respond, Yang felt a weight on her back as Zed used her as a step to better attack the descending Warriors. His Soldier Spear beheaded the first ant with little effort before tearing a huge gash through the second, both hit the ground as dead as stones.
Yang straightened herself, tossing Zed back, and realized that she could see more Warriors coming.
The Elder Guardian had been impossible to ignore while on the ground, but now that she was in the air fighting the Soldiers, all the Iron Ants that had been targeting her were now free to attack the rest of them. The number of Drones reaching the front lines greatly increased, and Warriors were now harassing the goats from above.
"I'LL DEAL WITH THEM!" Zed shouted as he charged forward, leaping into the air before Yang could protest. Now that Zed knew how effective his weapon was against these enemies, he wasn't going to hold himself back.
He landed on the back of a nearby Mountain Goat and quickly jumped off as the beast reared back. As he flew through the air, Zed bisected one of the flying ants with ease before landing on another goat.
Alexx and Yang remained in the clearing, fighting against the new wave of Drones that poured in around them. Both felt the rise in difficulty as they had to make up for losing Zed, but the strain wasn't as bad as the front lines had been.
*DING*
Yang was surprised to hear a system notification, especially over the noise of the battle. At first she considered ignoring it, but when she thought about what it might be she decided to risk taking a look. She was not disappointed.
[ACTIVITY {Defeat 100 Insect Type Enemies} PERFORMED]
[WOULD YOU LIKE TO GENERATE A NEW SKILL?]
[YES] / [NO]
'Hell yes I would!'
Yang grinned as she waited for the new Skill to generate. The process seemed longer in the middle of a fight, but soon enough she was presented with exactly what she expected.
[ _ _ _ ] Lv.1
(Passive) Increase damage against Insect-Type creatures by 3%.
'Alright, now what to call it...'
Yang hadn't forgotten her promise to Zed about making every Skill she could name something silly, and she was determined to spite him. Unfortunately, that was easier said than done, as the battle raging around her prevented her from devising a proper joke.
"Would you fuckers just let me think!" she said aloud, her voice easily being drowned out. 'At this rate, I'll just have to call it Skill A so I can focus.'
[ACKNOWLEDGED]
Yang's eyes widened.
'WaitnoIdidn'tmeanit.' Her mind attempted to respond so quickly that the thought was less words and more a mixed feeling of fear and regret, but it was too late. Yang could only watch as [SKILL A] appeared in her menu.
'...I fucking hate this game.'
Having resigned herself to having created the worst Skill name in the history of gaming, Yang spent a small amount of the EXP she had gained today to raise the [SKILL A] to level 10, giving her a 30% damage bonus.
Yang swung the blunt side of her War Pick at a group of approaching Drones, and the results helped alleviate the bitter feelings in her chest. When she struck the ants before, those at the end of the swing were more likely to survive since the attack would have lost some momentum after killing the first ant or two.
Now though, the ants at the back found their bodies crumpling like paper mache, while the ant at the front was reduced to paste with ease.
'Alright,' Yang thought, readying her next swing. 'Let's squash some bugs.'