The progress of the group was blazingly fast. It only took each of them a few hits before they cleared out an entire hive, then moved on while Miranda had the Critterbots expand their network.
Gunner and Xela had originally made good progress, but their movement had been stunted, for one because they had cleared them together and also because they had so to make themselves useful to Darius.
However, without his commands, they had been unable to fully commit to the task. Obviously, the opposite was happening here and it was quite intense in its own right.
Unfortunately, this was just a type of work without the benefits. Neither Darius, Gunner nor Xela got any experience as even a peak Journeyman would only grant them 5 EXP at most.
Darius was not bothered by this. The Insects had a strict hierarchy in the underground, where one's placement had to do with the level of one's hive.
By the time they reached areas where there were high level and pinnacle level Journeymen, he would not be far from the Adept band he had first visited.
What was more interesting was that Darius had Miranda intercept messages within the hives by tapping into their various inter-hive communications.
The news about the massacre committed by Gunner, Xela, and himself were slowly being reported after a week of consistent and unrelenting work, making the other hives restless.
Their first response wasn't fear however, but desire!
In their eyes, Darius and co were simply fat pieces of meat ready to be eaten. Only the hive that could swarm them the fastest would get to enjoy food, while the others that played it safe would not get the delectable flesh.
And so, an interesting event occurred where the bugs dispatched their own members in the hive outward, scuttling through the underground as they rushed in the general direction of the trio.
Darius informed Xela and Gunner about this. It was best for them to find a defensible location and deal with the attack, then continue on their journey.
In truth, having a legion of Amateur bugs rushing at them was not a joke, nor something to be casual about. Even if they were powerful with Grandmaster stats, a few hundred thousand ants would be enough to defeat an elephant.
The bugs were not wrong, the simple solution to the issue was to swarm the trio and feast on them once they were overwhelmed.
For Darius' group, it was now of the utmost importance to not be overwhelmed by this assault.
That is when the first inklings of fear would appear in the bugs' hearts, as they would have finally encountered a foe that their favorite tactics would not work against.
As long as Darius and co kept up the slaughter, some bugs would be unable to sit still and would flee below to seek refuge and to warn the other hives.
That was when Darius' plan could be said to have borne its first fruit.
Darius himself found a nice cavern and set up there to rest until the Insects found him. He used this time to check the few nodes he had left at the Adept band to see if there were any changes.
From what the cameras and detectors could tell, the Adept hives were still active, most likely believing this Soul Curse to be an illness that would go away with time.
Even if it didn't, it was fine.
The Insect race only promoted the growth of the strong, so those Insects that would die from this pandemic would be marked as weak and would be thrown away, while those that survived would be allowed to carry the mantle forth.
Of course, this was simply speculation on Darius' part, but it was speculation based on facts and knowledge. He was confident he was right in the matter, and so paused his observation.
To make his upcoming battle a bit easier, he decided to place some traps in the cavern. Nothing too fancy, just some arrays that would mimic the effects of some of his spells.
As usual, he had handed some of these over to his Branded Servants for their personal use, only he figured that this time they would actually use it.
Hm, at least Xela might, Gunner wouldn't.
Then again, even if he was swarmed to death, those Amateur bugs would surely break off their teeth on his skin, so there was nothing for him to worry about.
Soon, the annoying sound of skittering emerged in the cavern, sounding faint at first, then growing in volume and capacity slowly. By the time Darius could see shadows in the tunnels leading to the cavern, the sound was thunderous.
It really was a blood-chilling sound, that Darius would not deny. If he wasn't so confident in his own prowess, he would likely be choked with fear and flee the cavern this instant.
Then, they came. The veritable sea of Amateur bugs of different classes rushed out from all sides but behind, moving towards Darius as if he were the only life raft trapped in the middle of the stormy sea.
Darius hummed and cast the Soul Curse on a random bug. Immediately, its charge withered as it was trampled by its faster mates, but this was like a domino effect. All bugs of a similar class to the first victim also slowed down and got trampled, then the other bugs of other classes soon followed.
After all, they were in constant communication with each other, roaring, threatening, and shrieking that Darius' flesh was their prize and all others should back off.
This constant communication was what Darius abused to make all of these bugs lost 50% of their already weak prowess, relative to Darius himself of course.
Once done, he smiled and slammed the butt of the Dragonscale Staff into the ground, and began casting his numerous AOEs. Fire, Ice, Water, Earth, Wind, Sound, Light, Dark, Spirit, Space, Gravity, Time, etc were unleashed repetitively in this small cavern.
Cooldowns only existed in a second for Darius, so every second saw a new one being fired out. With the mana demands of his spells, and his current mana consumption, he was like an indefatigable tank.
