Chapter 143: Knock First

“Cleanup time.” Darkshot said as he began firing multishots again. With the refresh on his mana, he was able to unleash a torrent of piercing shots that swept through the cavern. With a few redirects he was able to spread the damage to the weakened, singed swarm and finish them off. They dropped in numbers massively, clearing out the cavern floor of fodder around the boss.

“They’re still coming, though.” Rakkan warned as he looked on the far side of the cavern amidst the two glowing Voidreavers. Their glowing purple pincers illuminated several of the hive tunnels and allowed Aegis and his party to see that the Mosmir Soldiers were still streaming out. New, full health soldiers were joining the fray.

“They’ll probably stop once we take out the boss.” Lina suggested. Aegis took a few steps backwards, away from the boss to try and buy himself time to think, but it simply stomped forward to meet him. It pulled back its giant blade pincers and struck out at him.

You take 12,216 Slashing damage.

“Heal. Healing wind.” Aegis quickly cast the spells on himself, hopping back from the giant boss as more Mosmir soldiers swarmed around it’s legs, approaching Aegis. He looked to his left and saw Rakkan recasting his echoes and coming to his defense. On his right, a leveled up Snowflake pawed at the ground preparing to defend him from the swarm.

“We’ll only run out of stamina if we keep this up.” Aegis thought to himself out loud as he took a deep breath. “Everyone, focus your damage on the boss. Go all out.” Aegis shouted as he prepared for the bosses next strike. “Challenging roar!” Aegis roared, drawing the attention of the newest Mosmir Soldiers that had joined the fray.

“You sure? We don’t know what the bosses enrage will be.” Rakkan replied worriedly.

“It’s the only way we’ll win this. Stay near my aura and hit it with everything you’ve got.” Aegis declared.

“What about the Voidreavers?” Darkshot asked as he fired two arrows to interrupt them.

“I’ll manage them somehow. Killing the boss is the priority!” Aegis replied.

“You got it.” Darkshot gave a nod as he turned his bow towards the boss.

“I can take care of them.” Pyri announced quickly, staring over at Aegis worriedly. He briefly glanced back at her to see her strange expression.

“We need your damage on the boss, though.” Aegis replied.

“It’s okay. I can damage the boss and interrupt them.” Pyri replied confidently as Lina Shadowstepped back to the ground and looked between Pyri and Aegis nervously. When Pyri and Lina’s eyes met, though, Pyri gave Lina a knowing nod and Lina smiled back at her.

“Ok, that’s perfect. Go all out!” Aegis shouted, and with that, they all jumped into action. Lina, Rakkan and Snowflake all charged around the boss and got underneath its large towering body, striking at the underside of its abdomen to produce large damage numbers. “Challenging roar!” Aegis cast a few more times, worried about losing the boss's attention once he’d seen their damage.

Pyri split up her four cinderbolts. Aegis didn’t fully understand what Pyri was doing with her spells, nor the complexity required to pull off what she was doing. He only saw that she broke each of her four cinderbolts in half. She sent one half of each to the boss to begin dealing burning damage to it, and then sent the other halves around the cavern towards the Voidreavers. He briefly watched her eyes as she did it - her head was tilted up and focused on the ceiling, keeping track of the Voidreavers locations as best she could and waving her hands around to hit them with the moving halves of her cinderbolts. She was determined to make sure she didn’t let Aegis get hit by them again, no matter what.

Once Aegis was sure Pyri had it handled, he stopped paying attention to the Voidreavers altogether, trusting in her ability. He turned his focus fully to the boss and the soldiers swarming around him. His job was simple - survive until the boss died.

Easier said than done, Aegis thought, as the swarm began to tower up around him. He no longer had Rakkan and Snowflake to cover his flanks. The only thing preventing him from being attacked from all angles were the large bodies of the Mosmir themselves impeding each others movements, but that didn’t stop them from trying.

Dodge, dodge, brace, block, sidestep, deflect, jump, backstep, brace, dodge, heal. Aegis focused fully on the pincers and claws that came at him from all sides. He primarily made sure not to let the boss hit him, as it did significantly more damage than the others. The red damage numbers from his allies were visible through his interface, but he could no longer see any of his companions.

All he saw were the legs and exoskeletons of the Mosmir soldiers. They clamored overtop of the boss as well, with no regard for each others personal space. They attempted dropping down on him from the roof of the cavern, toppling towers of 5 to 6 Mosmir over as they landed pincer first.

Aegis was forced to keep backing up, re-entering Reltrak forest. Pyri and Darkshot continued to back up as well, focused fully on their assigned tasks and keeping their distance from the swarm as best they could while they fulfilled their duties.

There were no longer any living Mosstrappers or Fishers near the edge of the forest - if he wanted assistance from the wildlife, they’d need to retreat further in. Running was no longer an option, though. The Mosmir soldiers had ran wide circles around Aegis and his party and were swarming around the back of them - there was already a perimeter of Mosmir now closing in on him.

It was all or nothing, they could no longer escape. Aegis thought this as he attempted to keep backing up, but saw he no longer could. Pyri and Darkshot found a large, moss covered rock to stand on and stay above the swarm that moved around them like a flowing river of black and purple insects.

“I can’t believe they’re still alive.” Tommy commented as he watched the battle unfold in disbelief. “They’re lucky they even leveled up.”

“Not luck. There’s only a few of them, they gain experience much faster than a raid party would. That’s the major advantage they have, and Aegis used it to its fullest.” Shinji replied with a smirk as they faintly heard the voice of Hae-won casting in the background while they worked.

“Two Mosmir drop down the ceiling towards Aegis. Aegis sidesteps the Boss’s pincer attack and uses it as a shield against the dropping Mosmir. Three maneuvering around the left and lunging at him. He ducks under one, blocks the other, guards the third. Already casting his heal spell to recover from the hit but they’re at him from behind. He crawls under the legs of the ones that just missed him, forcing the others to hit each other.

They don’t care, they’re relentless. They’re attacking through the Mosmir that Aegis is hiding under. He finished his heal cast, he’s rolling backwards just in time to dodge another strike from the boss. The bosses' pincers cleave clean through the Mosmir but just miss Aegis. He’s rolled into another four Mosmir though, they’re attacking. He sidesteps one, blocks another-” Hae-won spoke at rapid speed, as if she was rapping a song, barely taking time to catch her own breath as her eyes zoomed around the footage Shinji presented to her. The viewership of the livestream had now reached 430,000. It wasn’t just Feng’s fans that were tuning in now, other Networks started reporting on the bold attempt Aegis’ party was making to breach the entrance to a Mosmir Hive.

“It feels like any single slip up from Aegis or his party will result in game over, but none of them are letting up. Without a single word of communication between one another they are perfectly executing Aegis' strategy, dealing massive amounts of damage to the boss. The sign of a strong, cohesive group that’s spent the last three weeks grinding toget- Ah, there it is! The boss is enraging!” Hae-won shouted excitedly as she leaned forward over her broadcasting desk to watch more closely the footage of Aegis’ stream in front of her.

The boss let out a ferocious roar of anger as it suddenly straightened its legs to make itself taller for a moment as its dark body began to emit a glowing red aura.

“Keep killing it, whatever it does, I’ll handle it!” Aegis shouted to his party. “Challenging roar!” He cast a few more times. He barely had time to stop and speak, his stamina was bouncing up and down. His right hand was packed with steaks that he was shoving in his mouth to try and prevent his stamina from dropping to 0. He was getting his moneys worth out of his Aura of Beauty.

All of a sudden, the enraged boss released a burst of dark black smoke. It erupted from his abdomen so quickly that none of them had time to react, engulfing the entire surrounding area including all of Aegis’ party members within seconds. It didn’t deal any damage, much to Aegis’ relief, but it applied a debuff to all of them. Once Aegis saw the debuff, he wished it had just been damage instead.

[Assault Pheromones]

Marked by the scent of an invader to the Mosmir hive, all soldiers will ignore threat priority to target any and all players with this scent.

Duration: 1 hour

He turned back around and saw that suddenly, the Mosmir that were swarming around Pyri and Darkshot stopped ignoring them, turned, and started attempting to climb up the rock and strike out at them. Aegis took a deep breath and focused on his task at hand.

“Avatar of Eirene!” He cast, exploding in a burst of bright glowing light. “Keep damaging the boss.” Aegis ordered them. Darkshot and Pyri glanced at Aegis nervously, between the swarming legs of the Soldiers around him. They both gave him a hesitant nod before going back to dealing damage, Pyri still focusing on the Voidreavers warping around the cavern. “Dodge what you can. Healing wind!” Aegis casted repeatedly, hitting all of his party members. He rushed forward to get under the boss where Rakkan, Lina and Snowflake were and saw that the other soldiers were swarming in, attempting to get under as well and strike at them.

“Guard!” Aegis shouted as he spun around, targeting several that had climbed up behind him and were attempting to hit Darkshot and Pyri. He took three hits instantly from the guard. “Heal.” He cast on himself as he positioned himself behind Snowflake to block a strike from another. Rakkan used his echoes to stand guard for Lina and his real body, using parry as much as possible, but his health was dropping.

“EVERYTHING YOU’VE GOT!” Aegis shouted as he moved to block another from hitting Snowflake. “GUARD!” He shouted, projecting his shield for Pyri and Darkshot again.

Lina slashed at the boss furiously, using all of her skills possible. In between her flurry of dagger strikes, she was adding in shadow daggers as well.

Rakkan frostrbranded and enlarged his longsword and spear respectively, cutting up at the abdomen alongside Lina.

Snowflake pecked and scratched upwards toward the underside of the bosses abdomen with everything he had.

Darkshot was firing multishot after multishot of obsidian tipped arrows through his Ironwood bow, aiming them all at the underside of the boss with redirects.

Pyri’s cinderbolts burned at the boss and the Voidreavers continuously, preventing the Voidreavers from focusing their beam attack on anyone.

From the time the boss had enraged to the time it died was only 30 seconds. But in those 30 seconds, never before in his life had Aegis ever needed to focus so hard on a task. Keeping his party alive took everything he had. There were 5 targets to protect against so many enemies, spread around the area. He was thankful that the boss struggled to maneuver to hit him once he’d got underneath its large body, due to all of the Mosmir that had swarmed on top of and around it.

In a way, their numbers worked to their disadvantage. The fact that Aegis’s party was not strong enough to keep the army of Mosmir under control ended up helping them in suppressing the bosses ability to land enraged attacks.

The boss let out one final screeching cry of pain as it hit 0 health. The red glow faded, and immediately after it had, all of the Mosmir soldiers began screeching out as well.

In an instant, they stopped attacking Aegis and his party and all began their retreat, turning and running back towards their hive.

Aegis and the others had to quickly dash out from under the boss as its huge body collapsed to the ground, a blue item orb rolling out of its body as it did. Gasping for air, Aegis dropped to his knees as he watched the swarm fleeing away, disappearing from the light of his Aura of Beauty.

Looking around, he saw Snowflake collapse as well, breathing heavily and wounded, but alive. Darkshot was nearly out of stamina, which was rare for him. Lina grabbed her knees while Rakkan wiped his brow and tilted his head back, and Pyri let out a huge sigh of relief as she was finally able to let up her focus on the battle.

“What about the Voidreavers?” Aegis asked.

“They fled as well.” Pyri replied. After that, it was silent, save for the sound of heavy breathing.

“I was not expecting that.” Aegis sighed as he dropped onto his back, lying on the mossy cavern floor at the edge of the forest. After a few more breaths, he suddenly let out a chuckle, which slowly grew into a louder laugh. “Fucking hell, that was crazy.” He said between his laughs.

Rakkan and Darkshot joined in with laughing themselves, while Snowflake let out a tired squawk.

“That was some insane tanking, man.” Darkshot said. “If you’d let Darkwing die, I woulda been pissed.” He added with a smirk.

“Pyri’s spell control was impressive too.” Rakkan gave her an appreciative nod.

“Thanks…” She smiled nervously. Lina looked between the two, and couldn’t help but grin at the interaction.

“Next time we approach a hive, let’s not knock first.” Aegis said as he sat up and looked over at the blue orb that had cracked open. Out of it had rolled a large greatsword in the shape of one of the Bosses giant pincers. “You want that?” Aegis turned to Rakkan as they all looked towards it.

“Nah, too big for me.” Rakkan shrugged.

“Ok, I’ll sell it when we get back.” Aegis replied as he walked over and put it into his inventory. It was blue quality, with high damage and interesting options, but Aegis didn’t look much at it as he was more interested in checking out the entrance of the hive. He was initially planning on harvesting all of the bodies of the fallen combatatants, but was disappointed to see that they had all dissipated, even the body of the boss. So instead, he waited patiently until all of his party members had recovered their stamina and mana before moving forward.

“Let’s see what the entrance looks like when it's not covered in bugs.” Aegis said as he motioned them forward along with him.

They moved beyond the petrified Mosmir and across the dead moss towards the soilrock cavern floor. Pyri cast a lumina spell on her staff to grant them light, and it was only a few moments before they arrived at the edge of the giant hole in the ground the boss had created when he burst out of the hive. The moment they got to the outer rim of the slanted tunnel, a notification popped up on their screens.

Entering Dungeon: [Mosmir Hive of Kalmoore - Level 100]

“So this whole hive is a dungeon?” Pryi asked as they waved away the message.

“Guess so.” Aegis shrugged as he tried to peer down into the tunnel, but saw nothing of interest beyond that it continued deep into the ground. He then looked up and saw the numerous tunnel entrances scattered about the walls and ceiling of the cavern nearby. “The Reltrak Forest cavern seems to end here at this hive… The question is, which tunnel leads to the queen?”

“There are almost 100 entrances right here.” Darkshot sighed.

“Can your tracking do anything for us?” Aegis asked him.

“No. There’s too many tracks from the hundreds of soldiers. I can’t even differentiate them to find where the Voidreavers went.” Darkshot shrugged.

“Well…” Aegis leaned back and crossed his arms as he went deep into thought. “We walked for several hours to get here from Pakro’Vielle, and the Plashrim said that they occasionally get attacked by the Mosmir from them tunneling into their village.” Aegis thought out loud.

“That means that the network of tunnels is likely massive, stretching miles in various directions.” Lina joined in.

“Yeah.” Aegis replied. “If we can’t use tracking due to the heavy foot traffic, then exploring the tunnels to find the Queen will be a nightmare. Especially if we consider that her chamber is likely hidden.”

“Ulaipu said that the Queen usually keeps the Royal Mosmir close. So if we explore and encounter any of them, that’d mean we are near her lair.” Rakkan explained.

“If we take enough wrong turns, we might not ever see them, though.” Pyri replied as the group stood around the edge of the large, downward sloping tunnel, Snowflake curiously poking his head around and sniffing the air. As Aegis tried to think of a solution, he went into his inventory and pulled out a piece of fisher meat and tossed it to Snowflake, who excitedly caught it and gulped it down.

As he had, though, they all heard curious skittering footsteps coming from a tunnel on the far wall. They went silent and looked in the direction of the sound, only to see the head of a Mosmir Drone poking its antenna out and wiggling them around. Once its eyes met Pyri’s light, though, it retreated back into the tunnel.

“I think I’ve got it…” Aegis said as an idea came to him the moment the drone had scurried away. “I know how we can navigate the hive.” He added excitedly, his viewership holding steady at 350,000.