Allen’s stamina was down to about a third of its maximum just from cutting through the never-ending wave of monsters. His MP was nearly full though, thanks to Christopher dedicating every single point of his excess mana to the three front-liners, himself included. The speed, and shield buffs lasted indefinitely, until they were used to block or dodge. That was almost never, but the Queen was about to throw a wrench into that routine.

The Stirges continued to swarm though the colosseum, though for whatever reason, they stayed strictly within the confines of the pit. They were mindless creatures, but they were still part of a dungeon after all.

There was barely any light coming through the cloud of monsters as they constantly bombarded Allen, none of them actually managing to land more than a glancing blow on his armor. He clenched his jaw when the Stirge Queen fully emerged from the gate and gave off a shrill chittering noise that seemed to rally the smaller ones. The swam doubled back in three large swells before reconverging above the grotesque form of the Queen. The lapse in battle gave everyone the chance to get a better look at the monster.

It was the height of a horse at the shoulder, though the way it drug its massively engorged abdomen across the sand made it at least twice the weight of a horse. It’s four wings were shriveled and completely incapable of granting flight, but its skin was covered in tough chitin and its four clawed appendages were each the size of chainsaws, and much sharper. Although, what really set it apart was the mouth. Rather than a needle meant for piercing and sucking blood, the Queen had a set of four barbed mandibles dripping with a dark purple liquid, and a circular maw with rows of serrated teeth.

“It’s a tank!” Ty shouted.

“Agreed. Ty, you take Camila to draw its attention and hold off as many of the small ones as you can,” Christopher replied, speaking to Ty for Camila, knowing she couldn’t hear anything with Rage fully wound up. “Allen and Nora move in to strike from behind, I’ll support with barriers.”

It was a decent strategy, if not a little basic, but Allen knew it wasn’t going to go so well as soon as the Queen screeched like the devil and let off a wave of what was indisputably Soul aspect magic. The aura ignored the group of humans, but each Stirge that it washed over became frenzied. Each one started leaking a scarlet miasma as they chittered in unison. They seemed to stall for just a split second before Camila roared back at the Queen like an animal, causing Allen’s vision to blur from the mental effects of her skill. The swarm of Stirges instantly descended towards her in one concentrated funnel of fleshy wings and claws.

Ty cursed and planted his shield in the sand. There wasn’t much he could do to attack, but the Stirges had absolutely no chance of getting through him. His size along with his defensive skills would have to be enough to provide cover for Camila as the mass of monsters engulfed them.

No longer needing to worry about any stragglers getting past the formation, Christopher concentrated ranged fire on the swarm rolling around Ty and Camila. He even went so far as to advance closer with Amelia behind a layered barrier.

“They’re blowing their mana and stamina too quickly.” Allen thought. He pinged with Expanded Awareness and noticed that at least the normal Stirges had stopped coming out from the gate, that is, for the time being. “We need to take the Queen out of the equation.”

He and Nora were already sprinting around to flank the Queen on either side. In the seconds it took for him to reach the creature, Allen watched as it pulled itself across the sand and reared up. Its abdomen contracted and it lurched forward, spitting an enormous glob of steaming, near-black, fluid at the swirling mass of its brood, heedless of how many were hit by the caustic poison.

A barrier appeared when a third of the frenzied Stirges slammed to the ground from Ty’s skill. The acid spit hit the quickly formed barrier, but its momentum was too much for the magic, and it broke through like a sheet of thin glass. Both Ty and Camila had managed to doge out of the way, but the spit left a sizzling puddle on the sand that started to spread.

By that point, Allen had reached the Queen. He sprinted low to the ground where he couldn’t see the monster’s eyes. With killer instinct to guide him, he jumped into its blind spot from behind while Nora went for one of its limbs.

Allen’s approach was near perfect, yet somehow the Queen had managed to sense him the moment he jumped towards it. It spun around in a supernatural burst of speed, spraying Allen with poison and knocking Nora away with its bulk. Killer Instinct set off multiple alarms, just barely giving Allen enough time to rase his left arm to shield his head from one of the Queen’s claws. His defensive buff broke while the force of his jump caried him forward. The claw crunched through his armor while the spots of sticky poison started to sizzle.

Once again Killer Instinct guided Allen into the optimal strike. He followed the best option and stabbed the Queen through one of its compound eyes with his most powerful combo of skills. The organ was instantly turned to mush, and the surrounding chitin was cracked, but it was far from a lethal blow. At the same time, Allen’s hand was shattered and the tendons in his elbow were torn apart.

The monster shrieked, and her brood was sent into chaos. Allen pulled his only functional arm free as a large portion of the normal Stirges flew back to protect their Queen.

Allen found Nora while looking for a place to jump off to. “Go for the le—shit!” He began, but Nora was tackled to the ground in a blur of motion.

Allen didn’t wait, he moved immediately. He jumped off the Queen, dodging another claw on his way. A step on the ground and a ping with Expanded Awareness gave Allen a quick analysis of the situation.

Name: Bloody Stirge Royal Guard

Scourge Beast – Monster – Level 262

The monster on top of Nora nearly her size, and it looked like a bigger, but leaner version of the normal Stirges. Its wings were strong, and it looked built for speed, though the massive vertical jaws it had on its face could do serious damage, based on how much blood was being sprayed around as the girl struggled against the monster. It had barely been a few seconds, but she was already visibly losing strength.

Allen slammed into the Royal Guard an instant later with a heavy kick and an Accelerated Chaotic Destruction, blowing the monster’s guts out and snapping his ankle in the process. He landed hard on top of the Royal Guard and jammed his knife through the gap in its exoskeleton near the back of its head.

It was an easy kill, but Allen saved his confusion for later. A weak healing potion appeared between his teeth as he rushed back to Nora’s prone form. Allen used Expanded Awareness again too look around, finding seven more Royal Guard Stirges flying around, a wave of normal ones coming at him from above and behind, and Shoam calmy waiting on top of a boulder near the very edge of the pit, a ball of Scourge fire burning above his hand.

“Not yet,” Allen said to himself. He opened the potion with his working hand and spit the cork to the side before dumping the red liquid onto Nora’s mauled shoulder.

“Contact! Seven at two-sixty! Queen is alive, need help! Christopher catch!”

Allen shouted out a few calls while the potion stopped the majority of the bleeding. Then he pulled a random mana bomb out from his inventory and threw it behind him. Activating it with his Chaotic Mana caused the thing to explode in less than a second, but that actually worked to his benefit.

Next Allen picked up the unconscious Nora and threw her as hard as he could towards Christopher. Superhuman strength and the low weight of the Rogue allowed him to throw her nearly twenty meters. A second later, a barrier flashed into existence in the air underneath Nora and quickly carry her away.

How exactly Christopher had managed to get his hands on movable weight-bearing barriers so soon would be a question for later.

Killer Instinct screamed into Allen’s head and he jumped to the side on impulse. A Royal Guard pounced on air where Allen had been an instant before. He spun to his back as the thing became a blur of motion. He slashed with his knife and the blade cut a deep groove in the monster’s exoskeleton.

Ty suddenly exploded out of the cloud of Stirges that had been circling Camila. He launched himself at the Queen with some form of movement skill and smashed straight into it with his shield.

All wrestled with the Royal Guard while more frenzied Stirges descended on him from all around. He couldn’t see anything but the Royal Guard’s massive jaws snapping for his neck, but he could feel the other Stirges latching onto him and pecking at his armor. It wouldn’t take long for them to get through.

Allen kept pushing against the Royal Guard with one arm, but the thing was much stronger than him. It was practically all strength. At the same time, he felt one of the little ones get its sharp proboscis through a gap in his armor, puncturing his lung and filling him with poison. Dead Calm was doing its best to keep him together, but with the pain, his mind was starting to fray at the edges.

“Damnit, get these shits off me! Where’s Camila?”

Allen switched up his approach when another Stirge got through his armor on his lower back. He used his dagger to pry apart the Royal Guard’s chitin plating near the base of its neck. It screeched and clawed at him until he jammed the splintered bone of his forearm into the gap. A fully buffed Chaotic Destruction shredded through the Stirge’s head in a cone shape, killing it instantly. Allen’s arm was blown off below the shoulder.

He stood up unsteadily and swung at the Stirges that were still swarming him. He gutted the one attached near his shoulder but couldn’t reach the other with just one arm. More and more kept slamming into him from every side and throwing him off balance with his broken ankle.

He tried to look around while dodging and slicing Stirges, but he couldn’t see straight. Christopher’s arcane bolts seemed to have stopped, which was worrying. Other than Ty wrestling the Queen with a few Royal Guards flying around, there was a swirling dome of frenzied Stirges.

Allen killed another Royal Guard on his way to where he assumed the rest of the group was, turning his foot into a stump along the way. Despite with their high levels, massive strength, and speed, the Royal Guard Stirges were extremely fragile underneath their shells.

Arcane whips lashed out from the mass of Stirges when Allen reached it, carving him an entrance which he quickly dove through. He flopped to the ground inside a barrier near where Amelia was kneeling over Camila and Nora. The Healer was working on fixing a gash across Camila’s side, while ignoring the Stirge heads embedded in the gaps between her armor. Camila was awake, and by the looks of it, her Rage skill had broken, leaving her fully lucid. Nora, on the other hand, was still unconscious, but she seemed stable with the flesh on her shoulder crudely melded back together.

“We’re running out of mana,” Christopher said, “and there are still four of the bigger ones and the Queen.”

“I need healing, then I can out the Queen. Mostly my foot,” Allen replied. His breathing was rough, but his heart rate was barely above eighty beats per minute due to Dead Calm. “We need to help Ty.”

Amelia turned around and gave him a once over with a haggard look in her eyes. His wounds had turned black, and his vision was dark from the poison. The pain was also excruciating.

“That’s all I can do right now,” Amelia said, looking over at Camila. “Go help Ty.”

Camila nodded as she stood up, though her jaw was firmly clenched. Amelia turned to Allen’s stub of a foot while the Berserker left through the barrier. She roared her challenge and the Stirges swarming outside immediately followed.

It took nearly five minutes for Amelia to clear the poison, patch up the holes left by the two Stirges in his back, heal over the stump of his left arm, and regenerate a completely pale and numb foot.

Allen slowly stood up and covered his bare foot with a random boot from his inventory. “Try to snare the bigger ones and keep them off me,” Allen said to the professor as he waited for his vision to clear.

“They’re fast, but I can try,” he replied, lowering the barrier and switching back to his whips. The lashed out as if on their own, cutting through any Stirges that hadn’t gone after Camila.

The blood covered Healer stood up as barriers formed around her. “The bones in your foot are very brittle,” she said in a tired monotone.

Allen nodded once before launching himself into a sprint. Running on uneven boots with foot he couldn’t feel was extremely difficulty, but he could manage with his dexterity.

He found Camila fighting three Royal Guards and the horde of small Stirges while barriers flashed in and out around her. She was struggling to keep up with the Guards, but Allen couldn’t stop for her. He rushed towards the Stirge Queen pinned sideways underneath Ty. The Defender had two Royal Guards crunching into his shoulder and knee while the acid spit had eaten away his armor in a few places.

Allen charged forward as the Queen struggled underneath Ty’s crushing weight. One of the Royal Guards detached itself and flew at him, but it was caught by Christopher’s barriers and arcane shackles.

Allen threw another small bomb into the Queen’s gurgling mouth as he ran past, careful to activate it with his Dusk aligned mana that time.

Then Killer Instinct swiftly guided him to the back of the monster’s neck where he stabbed with his dagger and every skill at his disposal. On impact, the Queen’s brains burst out from its mouth and eye sockets while Allen’s right forearm was shredded and broken from the inside. He deftly jumped away moments before the bomb went off and the Stirge Queen’s massive abdomen exploded like a rotten, black tomato. Ty was sent tumbling away, though mostly unhurt, even as he fell on top of the Royal Guard biting into his shoulder and crushed it into paste.

“Nice, and I probably got that kill too,” Allen thought, looking around while the ringing in his ears subsided. He thew a few needles at the shackled Royal Guard nearby before kicking its head in and destroying his recently healed foot. “Now it’s just clean up.”