Daniel and others rested for an hour, and after William’s health returned back to its fullest, they decided it was time to move onwards.

Though the death of Bill did leave a lot of suspicions in the hearts of Dust and Daniel, but they didn’t let their trust in William dwindle. After all he didn’t have a reason to kill Bill.

Daniel looked toward Dust and saw her looking toward him, and both nodded their heads at each other.

With Enco at the front followed by Daniel, and William walking between the girls the party with one less member descended down to the third floor of the dungeon.

The tunnel following was long, not really long, but longer than the other tunnels that they had to travel through in the dungeon. They didn’t know what could be waiting for them at the end other than a queen. Moreover the ambush of William had made them extra vigilant.

But their vigilance only ended up being a determent for the state of their minds.

The tunnel didn’t connect with any rooms. It was just a straight pipe, but fortunately it was wide and tall enough for them to walk comfortably.

“Why is this tunnel so different?” Martha mumbled.

“Different? How do you mean?” Dust asked.

“Martha means, this tunnel, it is so large and wide? Isn’t this strange?”

Even Daniel joined them in their discussion.

“Yeah, this is confusing. What kind of an ant requires a 4 meter high tunnel to move around in?”

Hearing that the others smiled wearily because comparing the size of the ants they had met on the upper floors to the outside one only one monster came to their minds.

“The queen!!” the three spoke spontaneously.

William smirked and said, “Haha, looks like this is the last floor.”

They walked for another ten minutes and finally reached the end of the tunnel.

The light Balls that Martha had created really did wonders. Her lips twitched a little when she thought about the amount of mana that she had to expend just to lighten the area around them, but it seemed like her preparation was wasted, because no one came to attack them.

The light exited the tunnels and entered the room, and the spectacle made the shiver. The room was empty and not at the same time. There was nothing on the ceiling or in front of them.

Dust estimated that the ceiling was probably twenty or so meters high and width of the room was even more than that.

They continued to move forward, and the radiance from the balls also continued to reveal the room more and more.

Then after walking some more steps they officially exited the tunnel and entered the room.

“Is this really the boss room?”

“Why is it so empty? Where are all the ants, and the army that you were talking about?”

“Do you think we are in the wrong place or there is no queen here?”

Dust, Daniel and Martha talked with each other, while Enco and William remained silent.

Another three meters and they saw a large amount of cracked and empty egg shells, by the time they crossed the six meter mark, there were no more empty shells on the ground, and instead live eggs laid everywhere.

And they stopped.

“Aren’t these…”

“Yes.” Daniel replied to Martha.

“So what now?” Dust asked looking at the light ball covering and reveling more and more of the egg infested ground.

Daniel sighed and William for the first time in a while intervened their discussion.

“Martha how many light balls can you create?” To which she answered saying, “Not many?”

“But if you want Martha to-do a big boom, then Martha has something else too.”

“No, I just want you to light this place on fire.”

This excited Martha even more.

“Oh, oh, Martha has just the thing to make this place bright.”

She started by creating a light ball and like poured enough mana inside it to make the skill go out of control.

“That looks dangerous.” Dust and Daniel started stepping away from her.

“Isn’t this the same as…” But before dust could complete her sentence, the light ball deformed and changed into an amoeba.

Then Martha threw it into the air and ran back.

“Come everyone!!! Don’t stay so close to it!!” she laughed as she ran.

The others didn’t get much time after her warning, and just as they returned back to the tunnel, the room lit up.

The amoeba ball broke down in thousands parts and flames fell from the roof like a meteor shower.

*SCREECH!!*

*ROAR*

And as the fire rained down from the roof it made the room go ablaze.

In the 25 meter long room, at least a diameter of 15meters was completely covered with eggs.

There were eggs everywhere Martha tried to count them, but stopped after reaching hundred.

The fires rain, destroyed a lot of the eggs, but the amount left still scared them.

Then their eyes met with the queen, which stood at the center of the circle of eggs.

Not only did their eyes bulged out and dropped on the floor, but their jaws also opened wide enough to touch the ground.

“That is no ant! How can an ant be so fucking huge? Is this a trick? What the hell is going on?”

No one answered Daniel. They were too mesmerized looking at the queen.

When all of them were still trying to figure out what the hell they were looking at their leader spoke, “Daniel where the fuck are you running to? Come here to the front and don’t you fucking retreat again!”

Daniel wanted to run away, and he really had almost gotten away, but he also knew that there was no way he would be able to escape the fight and leave the others behind to save his life. Because he still would have to report to the guild, and he knew that at that place none of his lies would matter. So he did, what was asked of him, and went to the front line with his shield in front of him.

“Dust and Martha, you both handle the little ants. We will distract the queen until then. Okay?”

Dust nodded her head and told Martha what to do, who shook her hands excitedly.

But the queen had plans of her own.

She didn’t let them do what they wanted and just as Dust moved, she moved too.

The speed at which the queen moved wasn’t very fast, but she only had to cover the distance between them, and not run a marathon. She was agile, mean and vicious.

Her eight legs blurring, Daniel only saw a black shadow moving toward him, and before he could create his mana shield, its head collided directly with him and made him fly. Fortunately he was able to get his shield between the head and his body, which saved his life, otherwise the strength with which he was flung, was enough to make paste of him.

Its head stuck his shied, his shield got pressed on to his body, and his body fell through the air, before it collided with the ground with a bang.

The impact was a vicious one. The sound which came from his collision easily explained his situation to the others.

The queen rushed past Enco and William as a wave of little ants came to overwhelm them.

It reached Dust in two seconds, and struck with its front leg.

Dust only saw a huge and thick pole like spear moving towards her at a speed that she as a mage wasn’t made to react too.

The leg ripped apart the sand wall that she had only just started to create, and was just about to get her, when Martha pushed her away, but ended up getting touched by its leg on her shoulder.

“Ahhh!!” she cried out, as the leg gave her a superficial wound.

“GOD DAMMIT!!” William shouted, but then Enco attacked the queen from its back. The queen turned sharply, and Enco disappeared from his place. He appeared from Martha’s shadow, and was just about to help her, when he saw a leg attacking him directly at his head.

The queen actually nimbly moved her body to once again face the mage and the newest arrival. Her legs creating after images, she pounded on the assassin with all of her power.

But the assassin actually fared well against the coming attacks. He was easily able to evade all of them, but Martha was having a lot of difficulties.

Because she was not a fighter, and a mage, no matter how much she tried, she wasn’t able to Evade the attacks like the assassin.

So, she used a highly condensed ball of fire as a barrier to absorb the queens attacks, but even that had a limit.

Queen slapped the fire shield from both side without giving Martha much time to breathe. The make shift barrier of hers wasn’t easy to hold either. Her mana drained with every second, and her injuries increased every time queen’s legs struck the shield.

The series of being slapped and being flung reached the count of fifteen, but it was stopped by Dust who made a spike to emerge from the ground and mercilessly stab at the queens’ leg which was in the motion of slapping Martha’s shield.

The spike failed to pierce the ant queen’s leg, but it interrupted her attack and Martha fell down

Seeing the chance, Enco moved and firmly caught Martha between his hands.

The fire shield Martha was using had already cooled down and didn’t hurt Enco. He quickly backed far away, and stopped only when he was near Dust.

They smiled when they saw each other looking so beat down just after the initial barrage of her attacks.

“It is more difficult than we thought it would be.”

They thought that the queen would follow them to attack, but that didn’t happen, and instead it shrieked. Following which the eggs near them started cracking.

*Tick*crack*Tick*

With every second ants in the tens started coming out of the eggs. The ants came from the front like a wave and tried to drown the trio, but Dusts sand wall held the ants out, and Martha made burritos of them.

The queen sent the little ants to attack them, and even made snack out of some of them.

“What kind of a queen is this?” Dust scoffed.

But the queen visibly regained her stamina by eating her kids. No one had the liberty to take part in this debate about the queen’s debauchery, because she was coming. The queen didn’t even look at William who was standing at the side, and pounced at them.

Martha got tensed and fired numerous fireballs at the queen. Daniel reacted and started charging his sword with mana and got ready to fire his skill [Cross slash] at her.

But Dust left them behind in dust, and before anyone’s attack could land a blow on the queen, a very heavy and thick pointed spear of sand, zoomed past everyone and landed squarely on the queen’s chest.

*Roar*

The queen roared in pain, and the room shook with her rocking emotions, as the sand spear pushed the queen back with its momentum. But although the spear got embedded deep in its chest, it ultimately failed to kill her and angered her instead.

Daniel Checked Dusts condition and found out that she wasn’t fairing well at all.

“What happened did you use too much of your mana?” He asked

“Yeah, it took… too much time… to create and depleted a lot of my… mana, but it worked right?” she tilted her neck to look at the queen behind Daniel, and saw her wound closing as she ate the eggs around her one by one. Dust tensed watching the monster eat her kin, but just then the fireballs Martha had sent reached the queen, and exploded on her body.

*Booom*

The explosions destroyed the ground beneath the queen and created holes in her exoskeleton, as a pillar of fire rose atop her, and touched the roof. The blast wave from the explosion left deep trenches in the ground, and travelled towards Daniel and the other in anger.

Dust looked at the upcoming storm with fearful eyes, and just as it was about to hit them, Daniel shouted,

“Iron cage!!”

Following his voice, his shield shined in blinding light and in a second, a cage of blue light enveloped them all.

The shockwave collided with the cage and made it to vibrate, but otherwise didn’t left much of an impact on the skill.

Daniel hurriedly canceled the skill, as the wave went past them, and drank a mana potion.

The girls wanted to thank him, but their happiness didn’t last long, as a silhouette emerged from the firestorm.

Dusts spear had turned to dust from the onslaught of Martha’s fireballs and the hole left behind by it closed completely, as the queen ate last of the eggs.

Even the superficial burns from Martha’s normal fireballs healed with her chest wound. The queen then without wasting time started charging mana inside her mouth, which gave birth to uncertainty inside their hearts.

Daniel understanding what the queen wanted to do, asked the others to scatter, but Dust stopped them and told them that if the queen’s next attack was an AOE skill, then scattering would only lead to them getting severely injured.

The other option they had was to interrupt the queen before she could finish charging mana, but it was already too late for that. One she was too far away, and they also didn’t know what kind of an attack it would be, and second fire from Martha’s fireballs was still burning.

So they ultimately just decided to defend against it.

Dust quickly used her leftover mana and created an [Earthen wall] in front of them, hoping that whatever that monster was trying to do would be stopped by it.

Martha on the other hand saw the queen smirking and felt an ominous feeling.

“Guys!!” She said, but before she could complete her sentence, the atmosphere in the cave got heavy and the zing coming from the queen stopped.

Due looked past the earth wall to see the reason for the sudden silence. He saw queen eating the condensed mana, lifting her mouth to face the ceiling, as she took a huge breath.

Then his eyes met with the queen and he yelled, “Incoming!!”

And at the same moment a beam of highly condensed fire left the queen’s mouth with a bang and it reached them in the next second.

*Boom* It struck the [Earth wall], their first and only line of defense, and just the impact alone drilled a two meter deep hole in it.

The wall started trembling in the next second, and Dust started moaning from pain, as a drop of blood came out of her nose.

Daniel watched the wall crumbling, and decided to try the shield fusion once again. He stood up and slammed his shield on the wall, and activated his skill [Mana Shield], as the wall almost broke from the impact.

Martha screamed as she saw him try to do something to the wall.

“Hey! What are you doing? Stop it!!” she said, but then stopped when she saw the wall glowing with a pale blue light, and the wall itself started changing.

Firstly the wall shrank, which increased Daniels heart rate then it engulfed his shield. The next change came suddenly as the whole wall solidified and became circular.

Dust felt the stress on her mana decrease and took a breath of relief. She looked up to see what was happening, and saw her Earth wall having become round like a shield and glowing with blue light, as Daniel alone held it in place against the beam.

Daniel smiled happily when his fusion with the wall succeeded, but then the ant upped the rate and intensity of her Beam.

As a result, a ball of mana travelled up the beam and viciously struck the shield.

*Boom*

The impact cracked the newly created fused shield and made blood rush to Daniels mouth, as the force pushed him into the ground.

He swallowed the blood, and furiously slammed his sword in the ground to get an anchor, and not just fly way from the impact.

The beam of fire continued for half a minute before it finally ended.

Daniel snorted as the beam stopped, and the great Earth shield crumbled into dots of light. His bloody and torn arm couldn’t support his shield and it fell to the ground.

Daniel peacefully lied there, Dust was on the verge of losing conscious, and Martha was too scared to do anything. The assassin sat behind them, completely unharmed, and their captain was nowhere to be seen.

Dust lifted her head to see, why the queen was not doing a follow up attack on them, and saw her guzzling fireballs on the opposite side.

But because of all the dust scattered in the air, she couldn’t see anything properly. She sighed, but then remembered that the ant mask from before could work even in bad conditions, and recovered it from her pouch. She sighed and wore the mask, looked at the queen and saw her fighting with a black radiating ball.

Remembering that it belonged to their captain, she took a breath of relief. She looked at Martha and Daniel noticed that noticed that the light balls indicating their identities had gotten to the size of a small bean.

She looked back with the intention to glare at the assassin who had done nothing noteworthy so far, but saw that there was no on there. Her brows furrowed, she removed the mask and saw that Enco was sitting right behind her, with his eyes closed.

It confused her, but she let him be and turned back to watch the queen.

But then William or the black ball of light did something outrageous, and started running toward them with the queen on his back.

"Oh my Fucking god!! The fuck is he doing??" she cried out.

Well, it was understandable. They were all expended after all, and held no chance to hurt or kill the queen.

The queen was almost upon them, but then the dark ball running in front of the queen disappeared.

With the mask on, dust clearly saw him vanishing into the queen’s shadow formed from Martha’s light balls.

Which confused her, not the disappearance, but the skill used. Because according o hr understanding the only skill which used shadows as a mean was from the shadow category and the only person who could use it in their party was Enco who was sitting behind her, or maybe not.

She wanted to tell the others about this oddity, but before she could do so, a dark hole opened from her shadow just below Enco. The dark ball came out of it and fused with Enco.

She wasn’t dumb and understood what was happening.

But then Enco moved. He jumped up and unleashed a deadly attack directly onto Daniels neck, whose eyes were too focused on the rampaging giant moving towards them, and had no idea about everything that was happening behind him.

Though Daniel in the end did notice a slight killing intent coming from behind him, but before he could understand anything, or even move his neck to see what was attacking him, something struck his left Side, and he body rolled on the ground, five meters away from his initial position.

When he looked back to see what was actually happening, he saw that the place that he was laying at had a dagger stabbed deep into the ground. Right next to that place, there was a curved stone pillar that dust had probably erected to push him away.

‘Huh? What happened?’

It was normal for him to have such thoughts.

Who would believe their eyes if they saw a person they trusted attacked them out of nowhere.

But before he could do anything, Martha opened fire at him with fireballs.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING? STOOOP!” He cried out. Fearing for the future that was becoming non-existent with each passing second, as the fireballs silently flew toward him.

He had lived his life on the spur of the moment, but had never regretted any of his decisions.

He remembered the sword that his dad gave him as a present on his coming of age ceremony. The girl he used to adore. His mother whose tender and warm smile he could never forget, and his dead friend, whose shield he was still holding in the hand he had left it in.

Emotions and feelings of having lived a short, but warm life started rushing to his heart, and filling his eyes with tears.

He sobbed once, but then remembered the promise that he had made with his friend on his death bed. The ambitions his friend had passed onto him.

His feelings erupted, and all the ideas of having lived a fulfilling life died.

His mind that was reassuring him that it was okay to die wavered and life came back to his eyes.

He glared at the balls of death coming to take his life and gritted his teeth.

He tried to move his exhausted body, but nothing happened.

He put even more effort and tried again, but other than vibrating somewhat, his body didn’t move an inch, and just as all of his hope broke, the hundred of fireballs exploded near him and he died.

Well, that’s what he thought, but unfortunately he didn’t die, or at least he hadn’t died yet.

Looking above him he saw a thin layer of yellow sand taking the brunt of Martha’s fireballs. Noticing the cracks, he moved his trembling shield above him, and just as he did, the dome of sand broke and the fireballs fell upon him.

*Boom*boom*boom*boom*

The fireballs exploded, but his shield saved him. Being buried inside a ton of debris might have been the real reason, but who cared about the order. He was alive and that was all there was to it.

He strained his neck and looked back to see where the real battle was happening, and saw Dust making spike attacks on the assassin, who was actually attacking her martyr style.

Enco was attacking her using his clones. Not real ones, but an illusion of sorts. Dust on the other hand was creating obstacles in his path, and turning his clones into shadows by spiking them.

Daniel understood that Enco being an assassin was probably trying to find a gap to go stealth mode.

And to summarize it all, there was one unconscious Martha, one porcupine Dust and five running assassins trying to turn ‘Dust’ into dust and one him, who couldn’t move.

Ah! And a giant ant queen that was watching them from the stands.

Then his sight fell on Dust’s face and his expressions changed.

“Is she wearing the ant mask? But why is she attac...”

But those things didn’t matter because at the moment Dust slipped and successfully provided real Enco a chance.

Dust failed to stop one of the clones which suddenly turning material, slashed his dagger and vanished after cutting open her stomach.

“Gwack.” She fell on the ground, as blood splashed and made a small puddle underneath her.

Her face losing its color, her hair disheveled, her eyes losing sight. Her personality taking complete 180 degrees turn, she got angry.

While Daniel came out of his trance, and hurriedly tried to open his sack and get a regeneration potion out of it.

“Why you fucking piece of shit? Why?... Tell me fucking why?” Dust cursed him, as the she tried to close her stomach wound with sand.

But then Enco did something which made her even more furious.

“Ah hahaa. ” He laughed.

“Ha haahaa… You little girl! what were you trying to achieve by interrupting me from killing that good for nothing Muscle headed brute?”

Dust couldn’t believe her ears. “You can speak!” She glared at him without blinking till her eyes turned red.

And to her anger filled questions Enco laughed again. He touched his temple and said, “You all are fools. Who told you to believe an unknown stranger? It was a plan, everything that happened here was a plan constructed by me.”

“How could that be?” her eyes showing exactly, how much that one line had shook her.

“Don’t believe me? Then maybe this will take care of most of your delusions.”