Boloxian Sand Devil's Status Basic Information Name: N/A Species: Boloxian Sand Devil Age: 202 Sex: Male Class: N/A Affinity: Neutral Description

This is a unique creature that shares a hive mind with others of its kind.

Much like most other things associated with the system, it failed its adaptability test while surviving, so it now faithfully serves the system.

I'm a bit scared of these cute little fellas. Not really of them, but more of the price it would cost to buy them a terrarium. Terrifying stuff.

Energies Lifeforce: 100,000/100,000 Stamina: 20,000/20,000 Stats Strength: 3,000 Defense: 7,500 Constitution: 8,000

'No class or skills, but these raw stats... And there's two of them... This won't be easy, especially since I can't let anyone die...' Daz's mind was racing.

How could he fight these enormous beasts with zero casualties? At the very least, he had to accept that he would probably have to sacrifice General Retford and his soldiers. He could bring them back with merit points, so while he felt guilty about this decision, if it was for the greater good of Fort Skip, Daz was more than willing to make it.

'First, we need to split into two groups. I doubt one will just idle about as we handle the other... I need to balance the groups so that they can both deal a good amount of damage, have sustainability and decent defences...' Daz's Ingenuity stat was working overtime as he hastily made a plan.

"Rimmy, Crusher and Ed, take the soldier and head over there with Will," Daz ordered as he pointed towards a flat area in the desert. "Deal with one of the worms at that place. Rimmy, you focus on defense, Crusher and Ed, you both alternate between attacking and recovery. These worms have one-hundred thousand health and twenty-thousand stamina, but thankfully they don't have any skills, so just pace yourselves, okay?"

"You got it, Lord," Crusher laughed.

"Rimmy." Rimmy nodded his head.

"Okay," Edward replied.

"Dorian, you're with me." Daz then looked onto the walls at Mini Daz and shouted, "You control M Destroyer and help Madison and my clone go back and forth between the groups to assist when needed."

Turning to Madison and Ben of the cosplayers, Daz said, "I need you to heal everyone when you can with your new skill, Angel's Breath, okay, Maddy? And Ben, I'm counting on you as well."

Madison bobbed her head up and down. "Okay."

Ben agreed excitedly. He was happy to finally be of some use for once.

The skill in question was one that had cost Madison a total of four-hundred thousand merit points, but it was more than worth it in both her and Daz's opinion.

Angel's Breath [S-Rank (Lower Tier)] Description

A skill inherent to Winged Angels.

The creator of the Angel species, the higher god, The God of Righteousness, was firm in the belief that only those pure of heart should possess the ability to heal others, and thus gifted this ability to his children.

While there are other skills out there that can heal people, this one is one of the best.

Don't you think it's a bit weird that it's called 'Angel's Breath'? I wonder if The God of Righteousness has a fetish for breathing heavily on others? That thought gives me the chills.

Level 1 Abilities Allows the host to consume Divine Power to cure the sick and heal the wounded. Cost: Varies depending on the injury. Limit: A single fatal injury. Any more than a single fatal injury on the target, and Angel's Breath will not activate or consume Divine Power.

Daz looked at Will and said, "You and your men have the most difficult task."

Shaking his head with resignation, Will replied, "Living shields, huh?"

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Daz nodded. "Rimmy doesn't have much energy left, so I'm not confident that he can protect everyone in your group for too long. I swear that I will spend the points to bring back all of your fallen troops in this battle and I'll get the Gnomes to build better equipment for them as a reward."

"I trust you, Lord." William bowed his head and thumped his chest with his fist.

"Good." Daz looked around at everyone and shouted, "Move into positions. I'm not sure that the worms will attack separately, but if they both go for your group, don't panic! Stay calm and hold strong. We will win this fight!"

Everyone nodded or verbally agreed in response while Crusher cheered and got excited. Dorian was shaking a bit, but he was far more collected than he had been during the Frost Phoenix battle, so he was at least somewhat confident that he could protect Daz as he fought a worm by himself.

"Crusher," Daz called. "I'm counting on you killing one of these fuckers quickly. Don't disappoint me. You'll be embarrassed if I somehow kill one by myself before you when you have so much help."

"I'll take you up on that challenge, Lord," Crusher laughed before she ran over to the previously pointed out area with her team.

Daz patted Dorian's shoulder. "Let's go. I want to get away from the walls. We're going to the edge of the ballista and lightning tower's range."

"Yes," Dorian replied curtly as he followed Daz through the blistering heat of the desert.

The two groups were now in position and they simply had to wait. Tensions were rising as nothing happened. The sun was slowly drifting across the sky and the hot winds were draining the people's stamina.

Dorian held his now iron umbrella, once again it had been upgraded, and he had a nervous look on his face. "Daz, d-do you think they're trying to tire us out?"

Daz looked around cautiously. "I don't know."

"Wh-What if they're going to wait until the very l-last second before tomorrow's attack before coming out? You know that attacks can stack, right?" Dorian was gradually getting more and more anxious.

For all of his newfound bravery, he was still a coward deep down. It had only been little more than a week since the start of the apocalypse, so of course, it was hard for a person to change so drastically in such a short period of time. Daz was a rare exception to this.

"Don't worry." Daz used his Legendary Gift of The Gab skill to calm Dorian down. "If they even dare to try some nonsense like that, I swear, I'll dig up this whole fucking desert if I have to so I can kill these worms."

As if to answer Daz's bold claims, the ground shook. Dorian owned the Perception stat, so he was able to immediately tell that the worms had split up and were going for the separate groups. "Your idea worked!"

"Yeah, now focus, Dorian. We need to hold out for as long as we can." Daz tightened his grip around Hamson.

Daz trusted his friends and comrades, so he focused all of his attention to the shifting sands beneath his feet. "It's coming."

With a thunderous sound, the earth split apart and the massive worm showed itself once more.

With frighteningly fast movements, the jagged-teeth-riddled head of the worm slammed against the ground where Daz and Dorian were stood mere seconds ago.

Luckily, Daz's instinct had told him about the attack before it was too late, so he had grabbed Dorian and jumped out of the way.

As the monster was receding back into the sand, a lightning bolt and a ballista shot fired at it, impacting against its rock-hard and coarse body.

From what Daz could see, the lightning bolt had done some damage, while the ballista bolt had been nearly useless.

Daz made sure to take a note of this and said to himself, 'I'm definitely going to focus more on the base's offence after this attack. The ballistae are heavily outdated already.'

The Sand Devil continued to mount several strikes against Daz and Dorian. The two fought very bravely, though Daz rarely found the opportunity to actually counterattack. Dorian was doing most of the work by blocking all of the charges that Daz couldn't dodge with his iron umbrella using his newly upgraded skill, Iron Bulwark.

Daz was getting frustrated at the lack of opportunities to properly fight back. Yes, his team was meant to distract this worm until its counterpart was defeated by the other group, but Daz felt like he could be doing more.

From what the young Reaper had seen, the only way to damage the beast from the outside, was by using Reika as she cloaked Hamson, but even then, it was difficult. Hamson himself just wasn't powerful enough.

There was only so much that Reika could do to enhance him with her aura. As an example: If Hamson was capable of cutting into a tank by himself, all that Reika was able to do, was make it so that he could do that with more ease. She couldn't actually enhance Hamson to the point that he could cut things beyond his capability.

'Well, that's another thing added to the list of needed upgrades after this attack, I suppose. Also, it's about time I start using my new magic,' Daz thought.

With that idea now in mind, the next time the colossal worm showed itself, Daz launched his skill, Weak Death Beam. His target was the lower half of the creature's body and he fired as soon as he had successfully escaped the monster's attack radius with Dorian.

Surprisingly, the creature let out a shriek of unimaginable pain. Clearly, the strike had been effective and had injured the worm rather severely which was an unexpected, but welcome, surprise.

After seeing this success, Daz decided to try out his Grip of Death skill.

He wasn't sure that it would be as powerful as the Weak Death Beam since this skill required a soul, and from what he had seen thus far, these creatures had a hive mind, which Daz was unsure of how that would affect his skill.

Still, not wanting to just disregard Grip of Death, Daz used it the next time the worm surfaced from the sand.

"Grip of Death!" Daz shouted as he pointed his hand to the massive Sand Devil lunging towards himself and Dorian. Daz quickly clenched his fist to attempt to strangle the beast's soul.

The monster wavered for a mere second before it dived back into the sand just past the two young men.

Daz grinned. "Well it's not quite as efficient as I would have liked, but it certainly worked, at least."

"What was that?!" Dorian asked with surprise and awe overflowing from his voice. "Why did it suddenly just move out of our way?!"

"It was a magic skill. I don't think its very useful though, considering it didn't work at maximum power, so it's a bad use of my energy," Daz explained briefly as he waited for the next assault from the monster.

"Still, I wish I had some attacking abilities. I feel so useless here," Dorian lamented in a slightly depressed voice.

Daz shook his head. "You've never been useless, Dorian. Your umbrella and your skills are being really helpful right now, so don't put yourself down, ok?"

"Y-yeah," Dorian stuttered in response.

Daz briefly glanced over at the other group and saw that they were making more progress than he and Dorian were, but it was still slow and he wasn't sure if they would win this war of attrition, so he made a decision.

'I guess it's time to see what the big deal was about this Laughing Skull skill, huh, Laughing Empress?' Daz smiled a bit mischievously.

'If my instinct is right, which it usually is, Crusher might get a bit upset at me,' The implications in Daz's thoughts were clear. He had confidence that the strange growth-type skill of his might actually be able to kill the creature, or at the very least, get it to a point that it wouldn't even be a challenge to defeat it anymore.

Daz could only hope that was the case. If he wanted no deaths, he needed to end this soon before the other group of fighters started to get exhausted.