Darius watched the carnage as hundreds of bugs were slaughtering each other with each passing second under his efforts.
Despite the shocking number of their casualties, they still kept coming, screeching and shrieking as if they believed that the first one to reach his body would win it all, becoming the next bugmilllionaire.
Darius shook his head. No wonder the Insects let their lower-ranked compatriots live near the top. With these sorts of numbers and mindless behaviors, they were the perfect cannon fodder to restrict an enemy's movements.
Even if Darius slaughtered all the bugs here - something that wasn't really an if but when - the queens who had stayed behind only needed a bit of time and some energy to spit out a few hundred newborns.
Inexhaustible, indefatigable, relentless… all of these words could be used to describe the bugs and how they acted as well as fought, yet it was countered easily by the same exact thing.
Darius was also tireless in his slaughter. His Spell Mastery had reached level 100, reducing all mana costs by 100%. His Magical Mastery was at level 20, which also reduced spell costs by 100% while increasing everything else.
As such, Darius paid practically nothing to use this endless barrage of spells!
If it wasn't for the fact that the Supreme System had seemingly been created to deduct 1 MP at the minimum despite all odds, it would have been completely free, not that reality was much different.
Putting aside his various modifiers, his base mana regen was equal to his level, which granted him 40 MP per second. Unless he started casting more than 40 spells a second, he would not be losing anything.
So one could easily picture the scene of the battle. A magnificent array of magic was used and abused, the same spells used continually and on repeat like a music playlist.
One moment there was an explosion of fire that fried all Insects into char, then there was a huge wave of high-pressure water that sent all of them crashing against the walls, splattering many of them to death.
Next, there would be a wave of greenish wind blades that would move at abhorrent speeds through their forces, lancing them endlessly.
Following that, the very ground beneath them would become unstable as if some giant entity was moving underground and needles of earth would emerge and turn them into shish kebab.
Not stopping there, the bugs would abruptly come to a halt, bleeding out of every orifice they had due to the high-intensity sound waves that rumbled their innards into mush. Along with that, a ray of searing light would erupt from Darius, turning all bugs in its path to ash.
There would also be a crude wave of dark miasma that would crawl over the wave of bugs within a range, turning their flesh into rot and causing them to fall apart biologically until only a little wisp of energy was left, which would then be sent over to Darius for him to consume passively.
Some bugs would run into dark portals that would open up before them, not understanding what it was. These portals would then close immediately afterward, trapping the bugs in a veil of space unknown and unexplored by any or all living things.
For some other bugs, it was less visceral. They would just be scuttling alone, and they would slow down gradually until they stopped in one place, their carapaces wrinkling as they aged within minutes then died a natural death.
Some of the bugs also stopped in place, but they fell to their underbellies and thrashed on the ground as the weight of their bodies began to become too much to bear. Eventually, they would be crushed into paste due to gravity.
The fates of these bugs were not enviable in the least. The numbers were many, but it was only a matter of time until they were run down into nothing.
The endless scuttling sound came to an end around three days later, allowing Darius to take a breath of fresh air.
He was certain that if he didn't have the Supreme System casting his spells for him, he would be far less casual than he was now. Not only would he be more fatigued, but he would also not have been able to cast that quickly.
Not a single point of experience had been gained despite all his efforts, although there were millions of meaningless drops. If Darius did not stock up on so many Bags of Holding, he would have to drop more than 95% by the wayside.
In fact, he was tempted to do just that, but some of these materials would be useful for Safemoon's experts to use as crafting material, so there was no need to go so far.
He then checked in with Gunner and Xela to find that both were fine. Gunner had dealt with them as one would expect the half-giant to do, stomping, bashing, and mashing.
He reportedly had changed his battlegrounds almost 20 times, always because his previous locations had been approaching the point of a cave in.
Right now, Critterbots were working on getting those passageways open again, so there was that. As for Xela, she had adopted a similar path as Darius.
The Elven Princess had used a lot of the traps and items he gave her to give her resting breaks while he mostly used her psychic abilities to fight.
Due to the sheer number, this was quite tough for her, making Darius feel that it was about time to transmute some Intermediate light spells for her.
After all, her Purify was only a Basic spell, which she had learned without his intervention, so its prowess was questionable.
He had refrained from doing so as he had not wanted Xela to diverge too far from her role as a support. For offense, she had her archery skills which should have been good enough, yet was lacking in a fight against a plethora of enemies at once.
Well, that was something to consider later.
As it was, she was doing fine with Psychomancy, though it drained mana quite intensely.
Her battles had been the least smooth and most difficult amongst the trio, but she had persevered till the end which made the other two respect her even more.
