Darius noticed their dumbfounded expressions and chuckled. "I left a Spatial Mark here, before we entered the sinkhole just in case. I did the same outside the Divine Door, which will allows us to bypass any form of spatial block or barrier as long as we are within range."
Enlightened, the two smiled before Darius took them away, blinking towards the nearest Vault, which happened to be Vault 03, the Equipment Vault.
It was located in a nondescript valley, and it took them about 7 hours to arrive there. The scope of the Vaults traversed the entire Pokterr continent and they were lucky that Group Teleportation saved them the hassle of walking manually.
The first thing the trio noticed was that the valley had holes all over.
Before they could even discuss what was going on, hundreds and thousands of beetle-like Insects swarmed out of the holes and rushed towards the location of the trio.
There was no need for them to use Inspect or Analyze, the trio recognized them as Amateur bugs of the Killer lineage like Darius' own bugs.
The sheer number rushing at them was too hard to count, and Darius could not be bothered to deal with them himself. As such, he released his own bugs to counter those rushing at him.
The Queen Bug under his control had spawned almost 50,000 Bags of Holding worth of Amateur bugs. Darius had only used slightly more than 1% of that number.
500 to traverse the Safemoon Dungeon before he had transmuted the Dungeon Core and 100 to deal with those who had tried to occupy Andrato Kingdom, which had led to the creation of the 10 Bugsy families.
This time, he opened 5,000 bags worth of his bugs to meet the oncoming army, releasing 2,500,000 bugs from his side. While this may sound like a lot, the swarm of opposing bugs did not lack numbers on their side either.
It was quite the eery scenes to watch both sides skittering towards each other while screeching with hunger.
Once both sides crashed, an immediate slaughter-fest began. Despite what one would think, it was easy to tell both sides from each other. Darius' bugs had a blackish-red color on their carapaces while these enemy bugs were blackish-yellow.
The fight went on for many minutes, the numbers on the battlefield rapidly decreasing while their power levels were rather hastily increasing. From hordes of Amateur bugs on either side, to Journeyman bugs, to Adept ones, and even hundreds of Master bugs on both sides were quickly born.
However, Darius' bugs proved to be stronger than their foes. It was not because his numbers were superior, no. In fact, in the beginning, the enemy bugs had outnumbered them by over half a million.
The reason why his bugs were winning now was because their Bugcloud proved to be more developed. Either the ones who had spawned the blackish-yellow bugs was a new Killer Queen Bug that had just spawned her first batch of eggs, or a weakened one who had not been able to acquire many resources for her bugs, so they had not been able to grow.
Darius was more inclined to believe it was the latter because once the fight had entered the phase where Adept bugs started to appear, the tides had started to shift. It was clear that the opposing Bugcloud had some info for Amateur and Journeymen bugs, but was blank when it came to Adept and above.
However, just as Darius' bugs had once adapted mid-fight to the point they were able to kill longtime Master-stage experts, the enemy bugs too were busy filling their database with every hit they took and every bite taken.
This would be dangerous, but the thing was, Darius' bugs were adapting too. Sadly enough for the enemy bugs, when it came to these things, being one step ahead would always be one step ahead.
Soon, their numbers were greatly reduced until about 50 enemy Master bugs and some Adept ones remained while 144 Master bugs stood on Darius' side. At this time, Darius and Gunner rose to their feet as one and began walking to the battlefield.
Xela also rose and patted her bum before holding her staff gently.
Darius raised a hand and cast Lightning Bolt on one of the Master bugs that was fending off one of his own Bugsy boys. The bolt struck the bug and dealt brutal amounts of damage.
-8,354!
As the bugs had no equipment nor natural defense against magic, they took the full brunt of the overpowered attack. It lost almost 30% of its health in one shot, which was made worse when Darius added in another hit.
Gunner rushed in and began the fight without using a stomp or aerial entrance, but rather his Earthen Lariat. He glowed with a thunderous green aura as he laughed and rushed forward like a bullet.
His arms collided with two different Master bugs and knocked them into the distance. Gunner then used his Afterimage to appear in the midst of their trajectory and knock them into the ground.
He then jumped up and shouted out, using his Omega Blow to form a greenish ball of energy that collided with the bugs and dragged them down to the ground before exploding in a marvelous light.
His two attacks did not deal much damage since he hadn't activated his Earth's Guardian passive, but Gunner was here to have fun, not deal damage. Besides, he was the tank of the party and damage dealing wasn't his job.
He just fought more often because he liked it, and because, due to Darius' thoughtful allocations, any one of the trio could shift from their role to take on the others with ease.
Darius was the damage dealer here, so he continued spamming Lightning Bolt which was his most powerful spell at the moment. His attacks were further boosted by Xela who cast Divine Blessing on both him and Gunner.
With the assistance of the plentiful bugs on their side and their own combat prowess, the enemy bugs were soon wiped out.
Gunner then jumped down one of the holes, eventually coming out with a tiny Queen Bug that was screeching in fear.
