“I’ve been thinking,” Jeanny said as she watched Jack delivered hit after hit against the destructible wall. “How do you know there is something in this section of the wall? You have also known about that boulder that had the treasure chest inside.”
Since they opened the treasure chest, Jeanny had gone around hitting every piece of available boulder, but none of them getting any response or producing damage numbers upon her hits. Jack was just sitting in the corner watching her. And just now she had stab at the wall adjacent to the one Jack was currently hitting, there was also no reaction. She strongly suspected that Jack did not have found out about this wall simply by luck. Same case as that boulder from before as well.
“Just a feeling,” Jack gave the same explanation as he had when Peniel asked about the boulder.
Jeanny didn’t push further, if the guy did not want to tell her, there was nothing she could do.
The wall crumbled on the seventh hit. It was more tenacious compared to the boulder. Before them laid another long dark corridor.
“Let’s go,” Jack said as he reequipped the torch and took the lead into the dark corridor.
The corridor was similar to the previous passageway they passed through. It was a linear path, there was no fork. After a short distance of walking, Jack noticed some red dots scattered around not far to the front. His sword was still on his right hand. He gripped it tightly.
“Don’t let down your guard,” he told Jeanny who was following behind.
They came out to a bright and gigantic cavern hall, around four to five times the one they had been before. The hall this time was not a flat terrain but had several miniature rocky hills and valleys around it. Many places to hide around the place. The red dots that Jack had noticed were within this huge hall, hiding away from sight.
What was more notable within this hall was the whole place seemingly filled with round egg-like objects with silky surface. Jack approached some of the closest ones and realized that the surface was covered by silver colored slime. It was disgusting. The egg-like objects were not registered in his radar, but his monocle marked all the eggs with red markers.
‘What is this?’ Jack asked Peniel in his mind.
“Don’t know,” she answered. “But if your God-Eye gives red markings to it, then it should be a hostile destructible.”
‘What’s a hostile destructible?’
“It’s something that you are supposed to destroy. It was something that might harm you if you leave it be or something that contains monster hatchlings. From the look here, I would say the latter. Usually you could only identify these things with a high level Inspect skill, I just can’t stop being amazed by that eye thing you wear. Where exactly did you find that thing?”
‘Never mind that. So we are supposed to destroy it? Let’s get to work then,’ Jack said as he brandished his sword.
He slashed at one of the egg things, a damage number appeared. Jeanny was dazed, why did this guy keep on assaulting inanimate objects?
After just two hits, the egg broke and some oozy liquid poured out. Jeanny immediately took a step back, the liquid looked disgusting and gave out unpleasant smell. They saw a figure dangling inside the broken egg-thing. Upon closer inspection, they recognized the thing was a deformed Giant Ant.
They looked at the cave floor filled with these eggs. There were probably hundreds of these things. If they all had Giant Ants inside, they would get badly swarmed if all these eggs hatched.
“We need to destroy all these egg things,” Jack told Jeanny in a serious tone, who nodded with a grim expression.
“Let’s spread out, the eggs don’t seem to have much HP, but stay alert, there might be hatched Giant Ants around,” Jack said as he looked at the red dots in the radar, they were unmoving. He decided to ignore them for the time being and destroyed as many as the eggs as possible.
The two of them spread out and started destroying the eggs. Even though the eggs did not provide experience points or drops, Jack noticed that each egg destroyed sent an almost imperceptible soulfire that was then absorbed by his body, which meant that destroying these eggs gave him soul points. Jack was ecstatic, even if each egg only gave 1 point, it would still be a large amount if he destroyed them all. Knowing this, he redoubled his effort, destroying egg by egg in a rapid manner.
Jack was afraid that triggering the red dots which were still hiding might cause the eggs to hatch, thus he had told Jeanny to focus on the eggs in the outer perimeter first. The red dots he saw was mainly located in the inner section. But without giving her accurate information, he could not expect her to completely avoid them.
When she got close to one of the red dots, Jack saw it moved. Jack immediately ran to her position, afraid that the eggs around her area would hatch and she would be overwhelmed. But when she came into view, Jack saw her fighting one monster, the eggs around her stayed calm.
The monster was the Giant Armored Beetle like the one they encountered on the rock bridge. But since it was only alone and the space was not as constricting as when they were at the rock bridge, Jeanny could still handle the monster. The way she moved and attacked with her spear was exceptionally skilled. No wonder she was chosen among her guild members to participate in clearing this dungeon.
At first Jack was thinking of lending her a hand, but after watching her for a while, he decided to let her deal with the monster. He went back to destroying the eggs as fast as possible. Now that he knew fighting the red dots would not trigger the eggs to hatch, he was having much freedom in making his move.
But he could not help but thought of something, if a fight nearby did not trigger the eggs to hatch. What exactly would trigger them?
—————
When the Giant Ant Queen made a soul piercing shriek just after its HP dropped to 50%, ten Giant Ants had emerged from the holes in the wall. Silverwing and the Magicians in the team immediately engaged the Giant Ants while Warpath and Honeycomb desperately defended against the Boss’ merciless assault.
Luckily, they had got used to the Ant Queen’s attack patterns, hence they could still barely survive. They continued to burn through their recovery potions though.
After they took care of the ten Giant Ants, they returned their attention to the Boss again. With their recovery potions dwindling, they focused more on defense and only attacked when they were sure of their safety. This made their fight stretched longer.
While they did not suffer fatigue from overexertion as they would be in real life, they were still affected by mental fatigue. Honeycomb made a mistake and allowed the Giant Queen Ant to deal a fatal blow on her. She was struck by the Giant Queen Ant’s explosive air shot. Her shield which had blocked many hits from the Queen Ant, finally shattered as its durability was depleted. She did not make it in time to replenish her life with her basic healing potion and was impaled by the Queen Ant’s scythe claw. She lost her life.
With one defender short, Warpath were having more trouble restricting the Queen Ant’s movements. The pressure on the Magicians who was responsible for chipping away the Boss’ HP increased further, as the Queen Ant sometimes totally ignored Warpath and rushed to the magicians. It sometimes also shot out tiny sharp spikes from the gaps between its carapaces. This had several times caught the magicians off guard.
“This is my last healing potion!” Selena exclaimed when he drank the potion.
“I also only have one left…” Queen Magenta said bitterly.
Warpath who had been engaging the Boss in melee burnt through his recovery potions the most. He had been given by Queen Magenta twice the other members’ stock due to him being assigned for tanking role, who would face the boss directly, but even his stock was down to the last bottle at the moment. The Boss itself still had around 30% of its life left.
The Queen Ant suddenly made another soul-piercing cry similar to the one that had summoned the ten Giant Ants previously. The Walls of the cave shook, and some portions of its walls started breaking and fell apart.
The cry immediately shattered the little bit of courage that Warpath still had in his heart. He said loudly to the others, “I don’t think we can defeat this boss at this time, let’s retreat to make another try later!” Even though dying in this dungeon only resulted in losing one level, he was still not willing.
