The darklings had formed a substantial perimeter around the pool of black blood, their eerie figures reflecting off the clear black liquid. To complete this boundary, they had marched further into the chamber.

By now the swarm had finally crossed the halfway point into the large containment chamber.

There were still numerous darklings inside the blood puddle surrounding the boy but because of the overflowing pheromones around them they were in no condition to fight.

Most of them were just standing in place, their claws swiping at the empty space in front of them, while others were scuttling around in circles. Like the ones standing still, they were also attacking empty air.

Their abnormal behaviors were more reminiscent of glitching bots or AI, rather than those of living animals. Perhaps the way these darklings functioned was a lot similar to machines in the way they had a limited number of encoded instructions.

And in their encoded instructions they had no way to get around this phenomenon of over flowing pheromones.

The boy can only guess as he stands pondering in the puddle of blood. He was catching his breath from the terrifying bug closeup encounter he had just endured.

His face and suit were coated in their blood, completely covered from head to toes.

“When I was surrounded, I lost my cool at the nonstop stinging and then there was a surge of aether….”

He was retracing his steps in how he had channeled the shining beam through his sword.

It had cleaved a huge number of darklings in a single swing. Exactly the type of damage he was searching for.

Since these nasty darklings liked to completely overwhelm their prey with numbers, it was the perfect weapon for such situations.

“The increased flow of ATK aether travelled through the fuller of the blade and manifested into the shining beam, so technically if I increase the outflow of ATK aether….but how did I use mana?”

With the tip pointing at the roof, he raises the sword until the base of its blade is in front of his face.

Then he concentrates, channeling an increased flow of ATK aether into the blade, but the aether simply flows into the sword’s emblem and doesn’t climb any further.

A security drone quickly passes above his head, interrupting his focus and tousling his hair.

The four remaining drones were busy shooting at the glitched out darklings inside the dark blood pool.

“Jeez, watch where you’re going there buddy…how many bullets do these things even have?”

Looking at the hovering drone, his gaze falls on the gathering aether in its energy rifle. It was something he had seen right when the fight had started but he didn’t get the chance to observe it properly then.

Before firing each shot, the drone concentrated all aether into its barrel, letting it accumulate into a concentrated ball of aetherial energy.

Completely different from the approach of constantly channeling aether to boost abilities.

“…maybe….its not about the amount of flow……but the accumulation of aether before letting it flow out…” he remarks absentmindedly, staring at the drone shooting its aether blasts.

Refocusing back to his sword, he tries again.

This time instead of increasing the flow of ATK aether from his arms, he does the opposite. He maintains the normal amount of outflow, even slightly lowering it, but concentrates most of it at his core.

“Arya said the core was beside the heart.”

Gathering a large amount of ATK aether at this single point, he becomes aware of his own core for the first time.

He couldn’t exactly see it, but he was feeling its rhythmic whirl, a soft purr like the engine of a car.

As the ATK aether accumulates in his core the rhythm changes, like a sudden ignition or combustion of highly flammable fuel.

He feels an immediate rush of ATK aether flow through his arms, a powerful surge that he could barely contain inside.

The aether courses out his hands and into the grip of his sword, from where it rapidly passes through the emblem and quickly climbs the length of the blade’s fuller.

As it climbs the length of the sword’s fuller, the entire blade begins to shine brightly. The shine is so powerful he has to narrow his eyelids.

Reaching the tip of the blade, the overflowing mana-infused ATK aether bursts out of the sword through the tip and the arches on its sides.

The aether blade flows out, reaching a length of 3 or maybe even 4 meters, glowing and pulsating like pure plasma.

The burst lasts for about 3 seconds before fizzling out.

The boy stares in awe at the dissipating particles of aether from the aftermath of the aetherial blade.

“Fucking Yeah!” He celebrates loudly, not caring about the darklings around him hearing his voice.

It was like discovering he had a powerful loaded gun, a must have weapon in this hellhole of darkness.

However, a sudden bout of light headedness comes over him that lasts a few seconds.

“This must be the dizziness from using mana.”

It took a full night’s worth of sleep to gather mana inside the core, using it too much was bound to cause weakness.

But the feeling isnn’t too overwhelming and he recovers quickly.

By this time the darklings had completed their boundary around the pool of blood. Their perimeter was strong on the side of the entrance, since that was still where the majority of the swarm was, but thin on the opposite side on account of the low number of darklings on that side.

Looking around the boy wonders what they were up to, while the remaining trigger-happy drones continued to shoot.

Suddenly all the darklings in the perimeter turn around, lower their heads, and raise their rears, all of them pointed toward the empty space inside their encirclement.

“Are they going to….?”

His thought is interrupted as in complete unison, as if ordered by a silent command, they all start expelling black liquid from their rears.

But this was not the fine mist like spray from before, they were shooting literal high-pressured jets of black liquid that flew meters into the air.

Alone, the intense flowing line of black liquid was not something to worry about, but since there were hundreds of darklings shooting them together, it was in fact something to worry about.

Their collective jets combined together in the air to form a black blanket that covered the entire space inside their formed perimeter.

The boy’s eyes pop out of their sockets as this black liquid blanket falls down on top of him.

“It’s impossible to dodge.” Is his thought as the liquid makes contact.

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It also spills on the drones which were still busy with their shooting.

The boy wipes the liquid off his eyes, feeling its sticky texture with his hand. It felt sticky, soft, and malleable to the touch.

A lot of it got in his hair, and he felt it sticking to his scalp as he ran his hand through his hair.

Although he was already covered with darkling blood from head to toe, he felt nausea rising up from the pit of his stomach.

He was used to foul liquids and blood but whatever this thing was, it stank!

Clearing the liquid from his eyes, he looks up to see the darklings back in their upright position. There was a slight change in their behavior as some of them were clearly following the trajectories of the flying drones with their eyeless domes.

“So that’s how they’re going to play.”

The boy starts to walk, his eyes focused on the darklings’ eyeless domes with every step.

He notices the ones closest to him turning their domes toward him as he walks in the direction of the thin section of the perimeter.

It was enough confirmation for him.

This black liquid was the very same one they had been spraying earlier, except now they were squirting it over longer distances.

These darklings actually did have coded instructions for scenarios with large puddles of black blood.

They had judged the amount of pheromones in the air was far too much to be used reliably for navigation, so they had marked him and the drones with a liquid they could easily track.

“I take it back. These darklings definitely have their own strategies.”

The behaved like an emotionless army of robot killers.

“Thankfully, this plays into my plan perfectly.”

Now that he was marked with the black liquid, he knew the entire swarm could perceive his location and movements, which was exactly what he had wanted.

He could finally lead these machine-like bugs on a while goose chase across the length of the chamber, until the entire space was bursting from darklings.

That is when he would release the chemical in the nozzles overhead.

First, he had to make the entire swarm focuses exclusively on himself.

Looking at the concentrated bulk of the swarm near the entrance, he could see that they were still turning toward the drones hovering before them.

“Let’s get their attention with this new move.” He decides, a grin breaking across his face.

These bloodthirsty bugs have been hounding him, ever since he opened his eyes in this world. It was time to give them a taste of their own medicine.

He starts walking toward the horde of darklings, increasing his pace with every step. As his speed picks up, he breaks into a run, and then a full-on sprint.

His black boots splashed through the pool of blood, sending droplets of black liquid in every direction.

One by one, the darklings also start to rush into the pool. Most of them focused on the drones although some of them were turning toward him.

Running through the puddle of blood, the boy jumps and slices through one of the glitched darklings that had scuttled into his path, before resuming his sprint.

He closes into the large swaths of darklings that were resuming their death march toward the drones, and as he does so he starts to gather his ATK aether into his core.

Thankfully, the drones were retreating, floating away from the swarm while shooting at them. Whether by blind luck or an unknown directive, they were leading the swarm directly toward him.

He stops a few meters away from the rushing darklings and takes his stance, staring at the hundreds of black insectoids rushing toward him like a wave of darkness.

Just when both, the swarm and the boy, are barely a foot from each other, he lets the mana-infused aether explode throughout his body.

His blade shines with a light that resembled sunlight and an aetherial beam shoots out of its tip.

Putting all his power into this attack, the boy swings his sword in a wide horizontal arch in front of him.

The aetherial beam follows the sword’s trajectory, slicing through the flocks of darklings inside a 3-meter radius as if they were paper, before fading away.

One by one, the darklings start collapsing, their cleaved bodies breaking apart.

Black blood oozes and squirts from their severed parts, extending the puddle of blood even further.

A giant cloud of experia rises from their dead bodies, out of which several small chunks separate and float toward the boy.

Absorbing the wisps, he feels a tremendous rush of energy the likes of which he has never felt before.

As he unfurls from his slashing posture and observes the damage, all the eyeless darklings in the swarm turn their heads toward him.

“That got their attention.”

There is a small moment of stillness in which all the darklings simply “stare” at the boy with their eyeless domes, marking his position inside their minds.

Then suddenly they all burst into a mad scuttle toward him as he turns away and begins sprinting in the opposite direction.

Ahead of him, the darklings on the other side of the puddle had also joined in the hunt. Their 8 arachnid legs barely making a splash in the black pool of blood.

The darklings on the sides of the perimeter were doing the same, scuttling after him through the puddle.

The pitch-black insectoids were chasing him from all sides, including the front.

When the boy sprints pass the floating drones, he glances back to ensure the darklings were still chasing him, and they were. They had completely ignored the drones, which were still carrying on with their mindless bombardment.

Turning his attention back to the front, he is startled by the sudden appearance of a darkling in front of him.

It was another one of the glitched out darklings that were silently spacing out in the puddle of blood, except this one had regained its senses and was swiping its claws at him.

It appears that the black tracking liquid squirted by the swarm had restored them from their faulty status.

The boy jumps over its attack and body, swiftly impaling his sword in the top of its dome before passing overhead.

The darkling collapses as he is lands on his feet.

Quickly he scans the space around him for anymore glitched darklings.

There were still quite a few inside the puddle. None of them were glitched anymore and they were all actively chasing after him.

Thankfully all of them were far enough to not become a hindrance.

Continuing his sprint, he reaches the relatively thin row of darklings advancing from his front. Just as they’re about to make contact, he concentrates his aura inside his legs and takes a few powerful bounds, before jumping above them.

These darklings struggle and slip over the black blood as they try to reverse gear and follow after him while he passes a couple of feet above them.

Landing and rolling to his feet, he looks forward and finds the rest of the chamber clear of all darklings.

The entire swarm was behind him now.

“Alright, everything going according to plan.”

He continues running for a few seconds until he reaches the wall on the other end of the chamber.

Turning around, he observes the endless swarm scurrying toward him like a black tsunami.

They were still a bit further behind since their SPD aether was far lower than his.

They were bounding across the pristine white floor, their legs moving quickly and erratically. Their black forms enveloping every square inch of the chamber’s floor.

The boy gulps.

Seeing such a large army of giant insectoids was unnerving even if he did have a plan against them.

“Let them come closer.” He thinks to himself as they advance.

The swarm was more than fifteen meters away from him.

“Closer.”

Now they were barely ten meters away.

“Just a little more.”

A few meters of distance left.

“…Maybe just a little bit more.”

When the darklings were just a couple of feet away, the boy put a finger to his ear and shouted.

“Arya! Release the chemical!”

“Roger!” She responds immediately.

He looks up just as all the nozzles covering the chamber’s ceiling simultaneously start releasing a golden white mist.

It lazily drifts down like a cloud, filling the space inside the chamber.

“It’s too slow!” The boy shouts inwardly as he jumps up the chamber’s wall to avoid the crashing wave of darklings that ram into the wall where he had been standing.

Impaling his sword into the chamber’s wall, he hangs onto it to avoid dropping into the mass of bloodthirsty bugs.

Beneath him the darklings were jumping up to claw or bite at his feet, trying to pull him down into their numbers. Some were even starting to climb the polished wall after him.

That’s when the gold-colored mist finally drifts down pass him, completely enveloping him in its embrace.

As it engulfs the darklings directly beneath him on the wall, they screech with pain before crashing down onto the swarm infested floor.

The entire swarm looks up at this approaching mist.

Although they did not have any eyes, they could sense something dangerous advancing toward them.

In a few moments the mist covers them completely.

“It’s finally done…..what’s going to happ..!”

His thought is interrupted by a collective piercing screech erupting from all corners of the chamber.

The darklings were screaming from pain after making contact with the fog, from the noise it seemed like all of them inside the chamber were suffering.

“That sounds like it’s working.”

Their shrieking was loud enough to damage the eardrums, but to the boy it sounded musical.

He had felt a little bad for the rats at some level deep inside, but he had absolutely no sympathy for these insectoid darklings.

The screeching lasts for few moments and the mist a little bit longer.

Detecting the chemical in the air, some panels on the chamber’s walls had slid open, revealing suction vents that started sucking out all the chemical.

They cleared out all the fog in under two or three minutes.

Still hanging on the wall, the boy scans the chamber’s floor that was now littered with twitching darklings.

They were all lying on their backs, their legs shriveled and folded up in the air.

The scene resembled the aftermath of a bug spray extermination, except instead of an ant infestation it was a darkling one.

“The chemical worked perfectly.”

Yanking his sword out with a jolt, he lands down among the incapacitated insectoids.

Staring at the shriveled up darkling closest to him, he stabs it with his sword to check if it is still alive.

It thrashes weakly, its legs swaying slowly in the air.

Retracting his sword, he slices through its dome, killing it.

Experia along with black blood oozes out of its severed wound. A small wisp floats inside him, absorbing into his core.

“Scratch that…the chemical worked even better than perfect.”

If all the bugs in front of him were alive like that, then he was staring at a buffet of experia.

Straining his eyes, he peers through the jungle of shriveled darkling legs toward the entrance.

The drones were still shooting without pause, their pristine white forms ruined by splotches of the filthy black blood and liquid.

“God damn someone give these drones a medal of honor.” He thinks while shaking his head.

Ahead of them, toward the hole in the entrance, more darklings were pouring out. Apparently, they had somehow realized their advancing force was down.

The boy stares at the new incoming wave and a phrase he had seen in a movie passes through his mind.

“Abandon all hope ye who enter.”