Darius had no interest in wasting his time dealing with those weaklings as there was not even a single Adept bug present.
He used Group Teleportation to travel through the tree to the central part down below. In one of the dark tunnels underneath the tree, the trio found a shaft that went further down into darkness.
Gunner jumped in first, just as he had done back at the sinkhole, then Darius duped Xela into following after him. Eventually, they arrived in a subspace that was no different from the one they encountered before, down to the size and the details of the door.
This time, Darius directly emulated Source Energy as he pressed his hand to the door. Despite its so-called sentience it did not seem to care that his biological make-up was not that of a member of the Polito Race, it just slowly opened up to reveal the room with the pedestal.
Smiling, the group began to ransack the Alchemy Vault with the glee only a fellow grave robber would be able to understand. In less than half an hour, this Vault was as clean as the Ressource Vault.
Eventually, they used a Spatial Mark to return to the wasteland. Their next stop was the Source Vault, where the same thing occurred. All that knowledge got added to the Database, which Miranda then helped transfer it directly to Darius' mind.
Vault 06 and 07 had both been near the south-westernmost edge of the continent, the closest one, Vault 05 was more than a million kilometers away.
In the span of the next 4 days, they proceeded to clear out the remaining Vaults, without any occurrences. The Polito Race had done an extremely good job in preserving their resources.
Alas, it all fell into the hands of someone who used means they simply had no way to account for...
[Congratulations on completing the Event: Civilization Protection Vaults!]
Darius gazed at the windfall that were 460 AP and SP for each of them, an amount surpassing anything they had received before. It should have been 470 AP and SP, but they had already spent the 10 AP and SP from entering the first Vault.
As such, he decided to invest them all right away.
He had long since been receiving feedback from his bugs that they were engaged in a heavy battle.
He knew he had to hurry and enter the underground world to start dealing with the actual Insects who were his Quest target.
If the valiance of his bugs made those at the top feel fear, they might descend upon the continent and try to take matters into their own hands.
.........................
At this time, the eastern coast of the Pokterr continent was a brutal battle zone that was like a meat grinder of death and horror. The Killer Bugs Darius had left behind had defended the routes into the continent like an unbreakable bastion.
On the side of the warriors, many were shocked and confused by the sheer amount of Insects and their valiance. Those veterans who had come here before knew for a fact that in the past years the Insects would hide from them during this period minus the newly born brainless ones, knowing that as long as they survived, they could rebuild.
Of course, while the Insects did fight back, it would usually only be when they were first attacked. They definitely didn't expect the Insects to lie there and take the assault, no. But this was…
The casualty rate for these cullings was already super high and that was on the premise that the Insects only fought back when attacked. They had never before encountered a scene where a bunch of them actively sought out confrontation first.
Those who came here for the first time had only heard of the terror of the Insects and had never witnessed it in actual action, but now they were. Their simple arrival had turned into a form of D-Day, only far more brutal.
Unfortunately, the veterans were aware that even these mighty Master Bugs had a weakness and that was their inability to use skills. They had immense physical prowess that was impossible to defeat by same-stage enemies, but they had trouble dealing with skill, spells, and abilities, especially those their tribe had never encountered before.
As such, more than one slipped under the net and breached the continent, like those who had the map leading to the carriage Darius had ransacked or those who had been chosen to enter the sinkhole and try to enter the Vault in the subspace.
The Killer Bugs might be able to slaughter the majority of adventurers with ease, but they were still ill-equipped in the end. Their ferociousness could not make up for their glaring weaknesses which were becoming more obvious by the second.
One of which was the fact that despite many Bugsy boys reaching the limit of the Master stage, they were unable to become Grandmasters.
It was in their genes to be unable to rise above the Queen Bug who had birthed them, most likely to prevent cases where she might get overpowered.
The one Darius had raised for currently an early Grandmaster, forbidden to rise above that, until he had increased his own power to match hers. If she were to escape his command, it could lead to unforeseen complications for the entirety of Faust.
So with this in mind, one could imagine that when the Grandmasters among those who were sent onto the continent arrived, things greatly changed at the battlefront. While thousands of bugs had now hit the Master stage thanks to the plentiful infusion of corpses for them to devour, they were like toys in the face of true Grandmasters.
While the peak Master-stage Bugsy boys had stats bordering on the Grandmaster stage, it was still a gap they could not cross. Were it not for the existence of Gods/Demons and the True Lords of Faust above them, Grandmasters would indeed be the rulers of Faust!
In fact, in the eye of the common people, Grandmasters were just that, living gods of this world!
The first Master-stage bug to be slaughtered happened to be Bugsy Linoone. He was a new Master Bug that had risen in this fight and was just getting to experience what was virtually the pinnacle of power for his species.
Alas, it was a short experience, as he found himself pierced by a beam of light that had been fired from the palm of an elderly man with a gentle smile.
Despite the extremely high HP and Endurance, the bugs did not have any natural elemental defense. Not to mention, with Darius so far away, they were playing by the rules of Faust's inherent system, not that of the Supreme System.
What would have been some deduction to its HP and a status effect turned into a true one-shot kill!
