[59th floor of the Beast Challenge Dungeon]
One more floor, one more floor before we finally conquer the whole challenge dungeon, and currently
"Both the devil ants and Drant's minion are engaging one another" [Charlotte]
"And it seems neither side are going to give up anytime soon" [Farhah]
Even when all I see are an endless wave of ants, the two ants are different that I could easily categories them simply by looking
The minion of Drant, is having a more naturally looking mutation. Their wings sprout naturally from the back of their exoskeleton, and thus, their flight look completely normal. Even when there are some unnatural part that one wouldn't expect seeing from an ant, for example the tusk that blended in with the claw, it still look just like part of the ant itself. This of course, might be due to Drant itself giving birth to its minion. All of us, especially Farhah, theorized that Drant assimilate the gene of the monster coming from the food it consumes, and passing the advantageous trait from particular monster to it child, thus making it looks like that. Plus, it integrates perfectly with the minion that it didn't hinder with any of their movements
On the other hand, you got some beast like ants from the devil minions. More of a beast than an ant, but alas, since the beast parts are basically attached to the exoskeleton of the ants, we decided to call this devilish minions as devilish ants. One look (excluding the obvious black devilish miasma oozing out from them of course), and you could totally tell that something is wrong. Plain wrong. For starter, just how did an ice mammoth head sprout out and act independently over the head of one of the devilish ant. Not to mention, there are wyvern like wings sprouting in each feet of the devilish ants, which is actually good for the defense, but straight up giving disadvantage to the devilish ant as it heavily restrict the ant mobility. It can't even fly using the wyvern like wings.
Alas, these devilish ants are stronger than Drant's minion. Some by several folds. With how ants being ants, ie their numbers are simply numerous, simply NUMEROUS, they bring nothing but trouble for us. We can't just power our way through them, as we need to conserve our mans should we encounter any high ranking devil. Given how the situation were in previous floors, the possibility of encountering one is high, and thus, reserving our mana are mandatory, as it seems like a fight will be inevitable
"Should we just, pass through and get to the next floor?" [Singa]
"Depend. With how violent they're fighting against one another, we might get drag against our will, so choosing to help with Drant's minion isn't that bad of an option" [Rean]
"On one hand, helping them will make our passage on this floor easier, but on the other hand, us fighting alongside Drant's minion will only cause the devilish ants to react violently as they could detect our heroes blessing, redirecting all their attention and bloodlust from Drant's minion to us" [Kara]
"Not to mention, some of the Drant's minion can't even recognize your heroes blessing, and they will attack you because we are basically intruding their territories, but that being said, on the long term run, having as many of them as possible will definitely helps all of you in your quest of defeating the fallen god" [Aries]
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With that said, we have a short discussion where we decided to help Drant's minion before moving on to the last floor.
The opening remark is Behe's light laser magic, a beam of concentrated light magic being fired continuously at the devilish ants. With the beam of light destroying, even vaporising some of the devilish ants on the spot, their attention shifted toward us, as we not only begin to fire our long range magic, but also flaunting our magic
The devilish ants come rushing, marching brazenly against our barrage of magic infuse with our blessings, making it even deadlier against them, but once again, ants being ants, with their advantage in number, it didn't take long for Mother Aries use wide range shield spell to, well, shield us. The close range fighter (Rean, Mara, Karon, Singa and Savel) also start using their weapon, with us long range fighter supporting them from behind the line.
It helps that some of Drant's minion actually recognise our blessings and opt to help us, giving rise to a pincer attack to the devilish ants as they're trap in the middle.
However, a cornered beast makes a terrifying foe, and true to that, they instinctively, without any instructions from anyone, begin launching a suicidal attacks one after another. Depending on the devilish ants, some simply explode, with their bloods and fluid so corrosive that it literally melts through Drant's minion, effectively killing them, while other going all out, pouring every last bit of their mana into some powerful spell to obliterate nearby Drant's minion. Even Mother Aries is having trouble shielding us against such attack. If it weren't for us continuously healing and invigorating her, who knew what will happen...
"That!" [Farhah]
"What is it?" [Elise]
"That devilish ants with strange plants attached to its head, it secrete some sort of... "thing" together with their devilish mana, it causes nearby devilish ants to become stronger!" [Farhah]
"You're right! Plus, other of similar also start mimicking it!" [Zerolith]
"This will definitely spell trouble. We have to take them out fast!" [Kara]
"Already on it! Karon, I'm using the bow and arrows you crafted for me!" [Farhah]
"It's still a prototype, but go ahead!" [Karon]
Taking out a bow half of her size, Farhah begin infusing her racial magic into the bow, and slowly, the bow begin to take root into the dungeon floor and roof, creating one large bow. A wooden arrow, a big one for that matter, begin sprouting in the middle of the bow. As it grows larger and larger, it basically stretch the string by itself, before
"Plant magic: Forests carnival!" [Farhah]
Farhah release the arrow, and it hit dead center on the ant she targeted, before, spiky branches protruding out from it, and those spiky branches give rise to more spiky branches, and so on and so on, until
"I can't control it!" [Farhah]
"It's coming this way!" [Mara]
""Ice wall!!"" [Charlotte]
"It's not enough! Kara, Mara, make sure to provide some air circulation!" [Rean]
"You don't meant to!" [Kara]
"What other choice do we have! Rean, I'll support you as well!" [Elise]
The spiky branches easily pierce our ice wall. Rean and Elise, through their combination magic, start to burn the spiky branches, at a rate faster than the spiky branches can generate, and before we know it
"Cough.... Cough...." [Charlotte]
"It's over" [Savel]
"Yeah, but..." [Karon]
"Looks like the fire not only consume the devils, but also some of the Drant's minion" [Rean]
It's inevitable. As I begin to open my eye and start using some ice magic to make ourselves cooler, I can see that some of the surviving Drant's minion start running away, frantically hiding from us. I guess they wanted to save themselves from the twelve monster in front of them
"Sigh... We have done what we can. For now, let us move ahead and went to the next floor" [Aries]
"Right!" [All]
The final floor. I wonder what awaits us