Chapter 145: A Mosmir's Life
Aegis and his party approached the Mosmir hive and carefully walked around the giant tunnel in the cavern floor out front of it. It was beckoning them to enter the hive using it - the very same tunnel that the boss had created when they were being swarmed by the hive's defenses. But thanks to the map, Aegis knew better than to use that tunnel.
Entering Dungeon: [Mosmir Hive of Kalmoore - Level 100]
The group waved off the message and arrived at the tunnel they’d planned to enter the hive from. Aegis took the lead, Darkshot and Lina behind him, followed by Snowflake, then Pyri, and lastly Rakkan to cover their rear. Darkwing remained oblivious and obedient atop Darkshot’s shoulder.
The group moved as quietly as they could. The tunnels were not uniform in shape but maintained a general circular form, occasionally narrowing or widening at random. It was enough space that two people could walk side by side, without needing to crouch, but they opted to walk single file instead.
Upon entering, the light behind them coming from the Reltrak Forests’ bioluminescent moss and mushrooms disappeared, leaving them with nothing but the Lumina spell on Pyri’s staff.
The air thickened, it got heavier and harder to breath, and while there was a coolness to the air, it overall felt like it was getting much warmer. The ambient sound of chittering and clattering feet began to echo off the tunnel walls all around them. The deeper into the hive they went, the harder it became to tell if sounds they heard were coming from behind them, in front of them, or through thin walls resting between their tunnel and a neighboring tunnel nearby.
It was unnerving, but the sound covered up the sounds of their own echoing footsteps.
After walking on for a few minutes, they were met with their first branching path, but Aegis already knew exactly where to go and led the party down the left tunnel out of a possible choice of left, right, and middle.
It was down this tunnel a few meters that they encountered their first curious drone, wandering about the tunnels carrying out his basic tasks. The moment the drone spotted them, it stopped moving forward and wiggled its feelers.
“Don’t let it alert the hive.” Aegis whisper-shouted. He quickly blessed his party while Lina shadowstepped behind it, before it had even registered that it wanted to flee. As it turned to try and run away, Lina blocked its path and Darkshot hit it with a pinning shot. Everyone drew out their weapons and unleashed as much damage as they possibly could on the unsuspecting level 80 drone.
Several flashes of light later, they managed to take it out without it moving a single meter thanks to repeated pinning shots from Darkshot. Once it went down they all paused and went quiet, waiting and listening to see if the hive had been notified, but there was no change in the ambience, so they continued forward.
They encountered a few more drones like this as they pressed onward through the tunnels until eventually nearing their destination, the first soldier chamber. The chittering and clattering sounds got extremely loud as they approached it.
“Alright, here’s the plan.” Aegis said as he stopped and turned to face the others. “I’m going to run to the center of the chamber and challenging roar to get them away from the walls and floors as best as possible, so they don’t try to burrow around us. Pyri, do your normal cinderbolt stuff, but keep the ground around my feet burning if you can, to prevent them from digging up at me from below.” Aegis said and she gave him a nod.
“Darkshot, stay at this entrance to the chamber. Rakkan, there’s another entrance on the opposite side, I want you to watch that one. If you see a drone approaching, take it out - don’t let it alert the rest of the hive.” Aegis said and they both nodded.
“Lina and Snowflake, you’re on single target duty. Lina, shadowstep to help kill any drones if Darkshot and Rakkan say one appears, but otherwise just shadow dance the hell out of these things.” Aegis said, and while Lina nodded, Snowflake gave an affirming squawk.
“Eat the kebabs, let’s get ready.” Aegis instructed them as he took them out of his inventory and handed them out to everyone.
“Nothing like a tasty snack before murdering some insects.” Darkshot grinned as he gulped it down. Aegis confirmed the powerful stamina buff was on all of his companions before he began blessing everyone, then activated his aura of beauty.
“Everyone ready?” Aegis asked, and they all nodded back at him with weapons drawn. “Here we go.” Aegis turned and charged forward into the chamber, his party in tow. The moment he entered, the soldiers began screeching out at him.
It was a large, oval shaped chamber filled with roughly 100 Mosmir Soldiers. Some were resting, others were picking at each other and playfighting when Aegis appeared. They all stopped what they were doing and turned their attention to him and the bright light erupting out of him due to the aura of beauty.
“Challenging roar!” Aegis shouted, and in an instant they all rushed at him. He ignored the ones immediately near him at the entrance and maneuvered his way around to ones in the middle of the chamber, making his way to the center.
Once he got a few meters inside, the entire chamber erupted in a dark red glowing light. Pyri created her cinderbolts and spread them thinly along the floor and walls of the room, beginning her burning process as the red damage numbers started to stream above the soldiers’ heads.
Rakkan and his echoes made their way to the opposite end of the chamber while Darkshot and Pyri positioned themselves in the tunnel entrance Aegis had come in from. Snowflake and Lina immediately got to work on dealing damage, slashing out at the nearest Mosmir.
“Challenging roar!” Aegis cast a few more times. After that, he focused on keeping himself alive. He’d tanked these creatures already once before, he knew what to expect. They hit hard, but not hard enough to pose any real threat to him as long as he didn’t take too many consecutive hits in a row. He had plenty of mana and regeneration to offset the amounts he needed to heal through their damage.
It was incredibly easy. Within 10 minutes, the entire chamber was cleared of soldiers and Aegis’ group had gained a large amount of experience. Scattered amongst the corpses of the soldiers were several Plashrim emblems that Aegis began collecting once the last few died to his varibhadra.
“Either we are really strong, or these mobs are stupid easy.” Darkshot bragged.
“I’ll divide these up evenly once we’re back in Pakro’Vielle.” Aegis explained as he collected the emblems.
“If these things respawn, this’ll be a crazy good grinding spot.” Rakkan said excitedly.
“It could be like the Darxon hideout, though.” Lina replied.
“Yeah… I don’t think they’ll respawn. Otherwise, the request to kill the Queen wouldn’t make a whole lotta sense.” Pyri shrugged.
“We’ll wait and see. Plenty of Mosmir to harvest, at the very least.” Aegis shrugged as he took out his creature harvesting tools. “The ones that attacked us outside the hive all despawned when they died, but these bodies are sticking around.” Aegis explained as he got to work. After harvesting the first one, he was excited to see the item he had received for harvesting them.
Name: Mosmir Soldier Pincer
Type: Crafting Material
Option: Increases the damage of slashing weapons when crafted with them.
Quality: 26%
“Nice.” Aegis said while rubbing his hands together. He then turned to the next one and harvested it. He got another pincer, the quality varying. As he did, he spotted the body of a drone amidst the soldiers and went to harvest it, curious if it’d drop something different - it did.
Name: Mosmir Drone Pincer
Type: Crafting Material
Option: Increases the damage of piercing weapons when crafted with them.
Quality: 22%
“Oh man, I’m going to make you guys some crazy good weapons when we get back to Rene.” Aegis cheered as he saw it. He spent the next while harvesting the bodies of the Mosmir. In that time, his party was forced to take out several wandering and curious drones to prevent them from alerting the hive, of which he harvested as well.
After 30 minutes, he’d finished harvesting them all, but nothing had respawned. They continued waiting patiently for an hour, but still no respawns.
“Guess that settles that.” Rakkan declared once a 2nd hour went by. “No respawns.” he shrugged.
“Sucks for our experience, but its good news for the Plashrim. We’ll stick to the plan, then. Let’s clean out all of the soldier and drone chambers first, Then the voidreavers. And lastly, we’ll pay the Queen a visit.” Aegis said as the group gathered and headed onward back out of the chamber and into the winding tunnels of the hive.
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“Do you still know which way we need to go?” Lina asked him curiously.
“Yup. I’m good at remembering this sort of stuff.” Aegis replied confidently. Pyri heard him say this and couldn’t help but grow a big grin on her face.
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Congratulations, you have reached Level 87!: 5 attribute points available, +463 health, +154 mana!
Quest Complete!
Quest Complete!
Quest Complete!
Quest Complete!
Quest Complete!
It took roughly 12 hours for Aegis and his party to navigate around the hive and clear out all of the large soldier and drone chambers. In that time, they’d gained the experience required to level up and completed a large number of the crafting quests that Aegis had received.
Most of the time was spent traveling from one chamber to the next. While the Mosmir Drones had made it look small through the scrying spell, the hive was actually quite gigantic and the chambers were very spread out. Aegis was thankful they at least knew exactly where they were going and didn’t get lost making any wrong turns, but walking around the tunnels was not a comfortable feeling.
By the time they’d cleaned out the final drone chamber, his inventory was loaded with high quality crafting materials, some even reaching a quality of 60% due to his creature harvesting leveling up a bit along the way.
The ever-present ambiance of chittering and clattering sounds from the Mosmirs had, for the most part, completely stopped. It somehow made traversing the tunnels more unnerving though, as now they were filled with nothing but eerie silence, and they could hear their own footsteps echoing off the walls.
“I almost feel bad, we’re wiping out an entire species.” Rakkan commented as they traversed towards the Voidreaver chamber.
“They’re invasive, and they’re not real.” Darkshot replied with a shrug.
“Yeah, and I hate bugs.” Pyri added.
“Fair enough.” Rakkan reluctantly nodded in agreement.
“Do we really have to deal with the Voidreavers, though? Those things are elite.” Darkshot asked.
“Better we deal with them now then possibly have them join the Queen when we fight her.” Aegis replied.
“Yup." Lina agreed. “We don’t want another Kolz situation, where the whole dungeon comes after us when we reach the final room.” she added.
“Do you have a plan for the Voidreavers?” Rakkan asked Aegis as they continued to walk along through the tunnels in formation, Rakkan speaking loudly as he was in the back and Aegis in the front.
“They were like spellcasters, right? They went after the biggest threat, but hitting them interrupted their spell.” Aegis rubbed his chin. “If we’re careful and work together, we should be able to stop them from casting. The bigger issue is that they teleport away.” Aegis replied.
“Most short range teleporting skills have a weakness. The most common one with monsters is that they can’t jump away while being grabbed by a living creature.” Lina suggested.
“But you were standing on them and they warped away, right?” Aegis asked.
“Mhm, but it's very literal. I wasn’t grabbing them, only touching them with my boots.” Lina explained.
“So if we grab their legs or something, they won’t be able to warp away and we can lay into them?” Aegis confirmed, and Lina nodded. “Okay. Pyri do you think you can manage interrupting them?” Aegis turned and looked at her as they continued walking.
“I can…” Pyri replied hesitantly.
“There were about 20 of them in there when we saw the chamber through the drone… How many do you think you’ll be able to handle interrupting?” Aegis asked her curiously. Lina looked and saw Pyri’s nervous expression, her eyes went wide, but Aegis had turned back forward and didn’t notice. Pyri looked from the back of Aegis’ head to Lina’s face, and Lina gave her a reassuring smile.
Pyri hesitated. It went quiet as they walked on. Aegis assumed this was due to Pyri calculating and considering what her cinderbolts could handle, but in truth, Pyri was debating whether to be honest with what she could handle, or hide it. She continued staring at Lina, as if asking her to answer for her, but as she thought this, she became disgusted with herself. She took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“I’ll try to interrupt all of them.” Pyri spoke, and as she did, she felt her adrenaline rise and her body flush with heat from a rush of anxiety. Every millisecond that passed after the words left her mouth felt like minutes as she waited for Aegis’ reaction to her response. Her mind ran over various times in the past where she had stepped up and handled difficult tasks in games by herself, and was scolded for it.
> “Leave some for me to kill.”
>
> “I didn’t need your help.”
>
> “You make it too easy. It ruins the fun.”
“Ok, good. Darkshot, back up Pyri just in case she loses track of some.” Aegis replied calmly.
Pyri expected something more - a bigger reaction. Did Aegis just not grasp how hard it was to control cinderbolt in that way? No - that wasn’t it. Pyri looked around at Darkshot and Rakkan. They weren’t reacting at all either. It wasn’t a big deal - they didn’t even care. Maybe they thought she couldn’t really do it? Maybe she should mess up on purpose a bit, like they might be expecting her to do?
Pyri looked to Lina, in the hopes of getting some explanation, but Lina just shrugged back with a smile. Pyri forced a smile back, but she couldn’t relax yet. She hadn’t actually done it, yet. Maybe that's when the bad reaction would come out. But she couldn’t let Aegis get hit by those voidbeams, the sound of his painful scream was still fresh in her memory.
“Ok, will do.” Darkshot replied.
“Lina, I want you to single out a voidreaver and shadowstep to it, and grapple it. Once it’s held down, that’ll allow the rest of us to approach it. Rakkan can have one of his echoes then take over the grappling, and we’ll focus them down one by one like that.” Aegis explained. “That’ll be our strategy. Darkshot also keep an eye out for wandering drones joining the fight, but I think we’ve already taken out most of them.”
“Got it.” Lina and Darkshot replied. After that, it fell silent as the group continued walking on for another hour before reaching the final tunnel before the voidreaver chamber. They could tell they were close, because it was the first time in a longwhile that they could hear chittering sounds again.
Outside the chamber they prepared their buffs and ate their kebabs, then proceed with the plan by charging in.
Aegis’ head count was off by one - there were 19 Voidreavers, not 20. As he rushed in, he didn’t bother using challenging roar. Instead, he waited until Lina shadowstepped to the one nearest to the entrance they ran in from, and she grabbed at its thorax with her arms.
The other Mosmir Voidreavers sprang into action. They warped to various spots around the room, their pincers glowing purple to illuminate their locations. Once they settled into their spots, they began charging up their beam attacks.
Pyri was quick to materialize her 4 cinderbolts, and even quicker to split her bolts up into 19 smaller balls of fire, which she then shot around the oval chamber at the channeling Voidreavers. The moment each reaver took fire damage, it stopped charging its beam and warped to a new location. The moment it warped, Pyri repositioned the cinderbolt ball to hit it again.
As she did this repeatedly, one of Rakkan’s echoes grappled the Voidreaver that Lina had hugged, preventing it from warping around just as Lina had suggested. Unable to move, it began using standard gnashing pincer attacks at those nearby. Aegis, Rakkan, Snowflake and Lina swarmed the creature and unleashed their bless enchanted attacks on it.
Darkshot held his longbow pointed up at the roof of the cavern for a few moments as he stood beside Pyri. He was waiting to see if she’d needed help interrupting any of them, but once he saw she had it under control, he instead fired at the Mosmir Voidreaver the others were beating on.
“Nice! You’re really good at that. All that practice paid off.” Darkshot cheered encouragingly at Pyri.
“Thanks.” Pyri replied with an awkward smile, but she couldn’t look away from what she was doing. Truthfully, despite her being very good at games, what she was doing was incredibly difficult, even for her. It took all of her focus to keep track of 18 teleporting targets, and she only had a window of about 5 seconds from when they’d disappeared to hit them and interrupt them, lest they hit Aegis and her party with the voidbeam attacks.
She got so wrapped up in what she was doing that she didn’t have any time to worry about the others' reactions.
One by one, using these tactics, the voidreavers went down. With Pyri’s ability to interrupt them all, the encounter was easy. Aegis took a few pincer attacks from each grappled voidreaver, but it was nothing he couldn’t heal through, and after roughly 15 minutes of fighting, the battle was over.
“Phew. Those things are not that tough once you know how to handle them.” Rakkan sighed with relief as the last beast collapsed on the ground.
This was the moment of truth, Pyri thought. She waited patiently for Aegis’ reaction, frozen in fear as she canceled her cinderbolts.
“Nice job, didn’t even need my help.” Darkshot gently patted her on the shoulder with one hand and gave her a thumbs up with the other. She forced a smile at him before turning to look back at Aegis.
“Really good teamwork guys.” Aegis replied as he gleefully took out his creature harvesting tools.
He didn’t even say anything to her about it. Did he not notice what she did? She kept her spells on 18 teleporting targets for 15 minutes, without a single mistake. That was actually really hard to do, and he didn’t even notice? Slowly, she was starting to get annoyed. Partly at Aegis, and partly at herself for stressing so much about this, for so long.
“Wow, Mom!” Aegis shouted excitedly after he’d finished harvesting one. “These ones have really good pincers for spellcasters, check it out!” He said excitedly as he tossed the Voidreaver pincer to her that he’d harvested. As it flung through the air, he saw the odd expression on her face. “Oh, everything okay?” Aegis asked her worriedly.
“Huh? Yup… that was just pretty tough.” Pyri smiled as she caught the pincers.
“Really? But I thought you were really good at games. Maybe old age is catching up to you.” Aegis smirked at her.
“What?” Pyri suddenly glared at him. “Are you calling me old?” She snapped at him.
“Just kidding, kidding. Touchy touchy.” Aegis threw his hands up in surrender, and this caused Lina to throw her hands over her mouth to try and hold back laughter. “Better watch out though, soon I might be better than you.” Aegis grinned mischievously. Instead of Pyri replying, she just stared blankly at him for a moment. He really didn’t care, at all. Trexon’s words echoed through her head.
“Keep dreaming little boy.” Pyri sighed with relief as tears began to swell up in her eyes. She quickly turned away to hide her face from Aegis.
“Look at the pincers.” Aegis said insistently, and Pyri finally checked the item card of the void pincer that Aegis had tossed to her.
Name: Mosmir Voidreaver Pincer
Type: Crafting Material
Option: Increases the magic power of weapons when crafted with them.
Quality: 29%
“Whoa… have you found any crafting items like this before?” Pyri asked excitedly as she eyed it.
“Nope. I’m guessing from here on out, all the crafting materials we get will help make really strong items. It’s how people have been beefing up iron equipment to take on high level enemies.” Aegis replied.
“Then we’ll be getting some sweet iron and ironwood weapons too, right?” Darkshot smiled.
“Yeah… maybe… or something better.” Aegis grinned suggestively, eying his viewership holding steady at 300,000. “First, I think everyone wants to know if we can find the Mosmir Queen.” Aegis motioned to his viewership number.
“There’s no other Mosmir chambers to clear out, right?” Lina confirmed.
“Right. All that's left is the Royal Mosmir and the Queen herself.” Aegis announced to the group. “But before that…” he excitedly ran over to the next voidreaver corpse and got to work on harvesting it.