Yang practically threw herself at the Iron Ant Guardian as she dropped from the ledge. With her Stone War Pick raised high, she slammed it down on the insect's head right as she landed, the full force of her strength, weight, and Skills creating a massive crack in its thick armor.

Yang was quickly shaken off as the Guardian reared back and began shrieking in pain, making her wince as the noise was loud even over the noise of battle. She quickly glanced at the readout created by [SIXTH SENSE].

[IRON ANT GUARDIAN] [Lv.36]

[HP]:{88%}

[SP]:{100%}

'Damn game is being really brutal right now,' she thought with a scowl.

The builders up above had been raining boulders down for a while now, but even then most of the damage was only structural, leaving dents in the thick carapace without actually reducing the monster's HP. Only when the Guardian got close enough for them to throw the boulders straight down, getting their full Strength behind the impact, could their attacks do any damage.

She had used [CRITICAL STRIKE] [POWER ATTACK] the bonus from [SKILL A] and got a little extra damage from a 30-foot drop, and still only did about 120 damage through its incredibly thick armor, 8.5% of its total HP. No matter how powerful her attacks were, they could barely compete against a 186-point damage reduction. Worse still, that attack cost a lot of SP. She couldn't hope to maintain that kind of damage output.

'Although...it did do a lot of structural damage.'

The Guardian's head had a large dent at the point of impact, as well as a thin, foot-long crack splitting it down the middle. The thick iron mesh beneath the carapace meant that shattering the Guardian's armor wouldn't be possible, but Yang's War Pick was more than enough to dent and crush it.

'If I can widen that crack a little more and remove some of the iron below, I should be able to force the piercing end through the damn thing's brain.' Yang tightened her grip. 'I just have to slow it down first.'

The Guardian kicked at her with its spike-covered front leg, but Yang dodged easily.

Unlike the last time she had fought against these monsters, she had had plenty of time to perfect using the [SPRINT] Skill efficiently. Now, she wasn't going to waste SP keeping the Skill active for too long.

'Alexx will probably need a minute or two to catch his breath and get any damage healed. I've got to take this thing down before then.'

Once Alexx arrived, his massive damage output would make defeating this Guardian easy, but EXP was becoming scarce with all of them being over Level 30. This time the rewards would be all hers.

Yang kept dodging the Guardian's attacks, waiting for an opening. And it wasn't long before one came. As she dodged to the left, a Mountain Goat had grown impatient and moved in for a [SKULL BASH] drawing the giant ant's attention. As the Guardian lurched forward to clamp its jaws around the goat's exposed throat, Yang swung her War Pick at the ant's front leg with the same force she hit it with before.

The heavy stone collided with the joint of the ant's leg with a satisfying crunch. The thick limb bends sideways from the collision, before nearly snapping from the pressure that the Guardian was putting on it. The giant insect stumbled, its head dropping to the ground instead of rising to meet the Mountain Goat. Yang jumped back, and a moment later the goat's head came down like a hammer.

*BOOM!*

Standing right next to the collision, Yang's ears were dominated by the sound of the Mountain Goat's [SKULL BASH] which briefly blocked out all other noise from the battle around them. The ground shook beneath her and she was forced to take a knee. Waving the dust out of her face, Yang looked up the see the Mountain Goat with its head lodged in the carapace of the Guardian's head, stuck for a moment as the iron within became bent around the beast's horns and face.

'Damn it! If you bastards can kill them so easily why do you need our help!?'

She was a little annoyed about not being able to claim more of the EXP, but she couldn't exactly get mad at a goat for stealing her kill. Besides, she knew that if she hadn't taken out its leg at that moment the goat would have had its head bitten clean off.

Yang wondered for a moment if the system would recognize that contribution and give her better rewards, but doubted it. EXP distribution in New Eden Online was purely damage focused, this was something she learned the hard way back when she was purely focused on her defensive abilities.

'Maybe we can ask for better rewards in the next version update,' she hoped. 'It's not fair tha-shit!'

Yang was quickly snapped out of her thoughts as a group of Warriors suddenly dropped out of the air onto the Mountain Goat and her. While most of the Iron Ant's forces were treated as disposable, the Guardians were different. It clearly took a lot of resources for them to raise such massive creatures, so losing one before The Guardian Elder had even returned to the battle was a major blow, one that the rest of the ants couldn't just ignore.

With renewed fervor, many Warrior's and Drones charged toward Yang and the guilty Mountain Goat, surging past other enemies as the two of them became high-priority targets. The goats fell back, leaving Yang to be surrounded.

Yang swung her War Pick and knocked a Warrior out of the air, slamming it against the ground with a crunch before moving her leg out of the way of a Drone's jaws. The pace of the battle increased exponentially as more Drones poured in past the Guardian's enormous corpse and more Warriors dropped out of the sky.

"Gah! Shit!" Yang wasn't fast enough to keep up with them all.

A Warrior swung at her chest and she just had to take it while she focused on avoiding the jaws of a Drone aiming for her arm. Another Drone jumped onto her back, but she managed to shift her weight so that it was knocked loose by the blade of a Warrior aiming for her neck.

A Drone managed to bite down on her shinguard. She stomped on it and freed her leg, but there was damage to the armor.

She swung her War Pick downward, sending several Drones flying with crumpled carapaces before letting the swing follow through to catch a Warrior in the abdomen on the upswing.

She winced as she felt a blade slide between the plates of her armor, leaving an inch-deep gash in her side.

'I can't keep this up,' she thought, gritting her teeth in frustration. Focusing on defense for a moment, she surveyed the battlefield around her for a moment. '...that... might work.'

Using a wide swing to clear a path through the gathering Warriors, Yang jumped from the ground onto the back of the now-dead Iron Ant Guardian. As long as she was up here, the number of Drones would be far more limited since they could only climb up the legs.

A Warrior jumped at her from the ground, flapping its wings to close the distance. Before it could land on the Guardian's back she brought her War pick around with a heavy swing, demolishing its arm and torso before sending it careening toward the canyon wall.

'The Warriors aren't as bad up here either,' she grinned. As large as the Iron Ant Guardian was, the space on its back was somewhat limited. Without any space to maneuver, most of the Warriors could only lunge at her through the air, making them easy targets. Even when they did manage to land on the back, they couldn't move side-to-side, making their attacks and dodges far more predictable.

She kept fighting, demolishing Warriors with her War Pick and kicking away Drones that crawled up to her. After about a minute, she heard a dull thud and felt the ground shake beneath her. Turning around she saw Alexx land on the head of the dead Guardian, knocking aside another Warrior.

"SOZE SAYS TO COME BACK!" He shouts. "THIS WASN'T PART OF THE PLAN!"

Yang frowns but nods. She had already taken out the Guardian that had broken through and the others were all neck-deep in Drone corpses. Even though the original plan was in chaos from the Guardians tossing bodies everywhere, there wasn't anything they could realistically do about that at the moment.

The two were about to leap back to the ledges up above when suddenly the ground shook and they were thrown off the Guardian to the gravel below. The two landed on their feet as they heard a strange creaking noise behind them...like metal being twisted and bent.

'Why does this keep happening...'

Turning towards the source, Yang could see that the Guardian that she thought was dead was climbing back to its feet, clearly groggy from the massive damage to its head, but very much not dead.

[IRON ANT GUARDIAN] [Lv.36]

[HP]:{67%}

[SP]:{100%}

'I guess unconscious enemies count as non-hostile,' Yang thought bitterly as she readied her War Pick. She had thought that the giant insect had died because [SIXTH SENSE] stopped showing her its status, but apparently not.

"SEEMS LIKE THE PLAN NEEDS TO CHANGE!" Yang shouted. "WANNA BACK ME UP!?"

Alexx hesitated for a moment before nodding. It was difficult if Soze would want them to do this instead of sticking to the plan, but neither of them liked seeing a Guardian roaming free on the frontlines, even if it was injured.

....And if they were both honest with themselves, Alexx and Yang were eager to get a big chunk of EXP.

Their minds made up, Alexx and Yang jumped toward the Guardian, ready to take down the heavily armored bug.