Ares, Henry, Sylvie, Jones, Venia, Marcus, and Nia stood face-to-face with the Queen Pale Stalker.
They didn't move.
They couldn't.
The crushing pressure of mana radiating from the queen froze them in place, making any thought of escape utterly futile.
She watched them as she would any prey.
The pressure she exuded was like strings wrapping tightly around someone, leaving no spot untouched.
The Queen shifted first, just slightly, but didn't charge—at least not yet.
"That power, it's an A-rank. It has to be," Venia said, trying her best to push back against the tremendous pressure bearing down on her.
Then the Queen let out a breath. That was the only warning they had, and the group knew it.
The sound that followed was not a roar.
It was lower than that, more deliberate, a resonance that traveled through the tunnel floor like she was trying to break it. The bioluminescent moss lining the walls dimmed as if the frequency had reached into the dungeon itself and turned something down.
Then the spike bone crown moved.
Using one of her many limbs,
She lowered it to examine closely. Each spike was about a meter long, thickening at the base and tapering to points that appeared to be carved rather than grown.
Then, like a baseball, the queen launched the spike at the group like a missile.
However, the speed was off. It was fast, but not fast enough to be seen as a blur by the naked eye.
Henry registered the incoming projectile in the split second he had, realized it was aimed at Jones, but kept silent.
Jones lifted his shield.
The spike slammed into it with a crack like a gunshot, burying itself six inches deep. The force shoved Jones back two steps, his boots skidding across the stone.
"—That's new," he muttered through clenched teeth. "Even though I'm a C-rank tank, that still packed a punch."
"I've never heard of a Queen Pale Stalker before," Marcus said from his spot near the wall, remaining still since the Queen appeared.
"What?" Ares asked.
Pale stalkers are creatures that always see eye to eye and follow their own path, serving no one—at least from what I've seen.
"Damn it, is this the same as that mutated snake from the first experiment?" Venia muttered, referring to the one she had fought to her dying breath during that initial trial, in a different containment from Ares and what he had encountered.
"Did the government mutate these guys and place them here?"
"No, they're not putting anything they've worked on the first floor. That would kill a lot of people, and fast," Marcus said.
"HELLO! We need to figure out a way to take that thing down, and FAST!" Sylvie shouted, her voice full of urgency.
The group absorbed her words at varying paces. Then the queen, having noticed their final exchange, launched her attack.
Head lowered, she charged forward, relying on her two spikes to deliver the damage.
"DODGE!" Everyone reacted instantly, rushing to one side of the wall and clearing a path for the queen to pass through, much like in a bullfight.
"She's not too fast. We might have a chance," Ares said. Henry stayed silent, staring into the tunnel. The Queen was there, but fighting her never crossed his mind. He knew that would be suicide.
He considered the alternative—ditching everyone here and running. It felt foolish, but it was the only logical conclusion he could reach.
"I know I need to escape, but... why do I feel like I have to go through this?" He hated the thought, yet it clung to his mind like glue.
The queen glanced at the group as they organized themselves, then turned her gaze to the spike she had thrown. With one of her many limbs, she picked it up and placed it back on her head, where it stuck as if it had never been removed.
"The heck, she can do that?" Sylvie said, shock clear in both her voice and expression, shared by the others around her.
"We can't let her get her spikes back," Ares stepped forward, fear in his eyes, but refusing to let it stop him. "When she throws a spike, we dodge, and Henry destroys it with his fire ability."
"What?" Henry frowned. "You're the Elemental Hunter, right? You clearly used it in the fight. I know you can control the elements to some extent, so just do what I say if you want to make it out alive."
"Why am I taking orders from someone of lower rank?" he muttered to himself.
"Alright," he added, still responding positively, knowing full well the gravity of the situation.
"Nia, I need you to distract the Queen for a while," Ares said, turning to her.
"Yeah yeah," she replied with a delighted nod, as if she'd been waiting for that command all along. With breakneck speed, the same speed she had used in the first experiment, she dashed toward the Queen and struck it squarely on the back.
KGH.
The queen grunted, then tried attacking but Nia dodged every single one of them and then started the distraction.
Ares turned to Jones, Sylvie, and Venia. "Jones, I need you to help Nia as well."
"I don't think I'll be much help to her."
"I just need you to buy her some time. Nia will know what to do." Jones paused, glanced at Nia and the monster, and let out a sigh.
"Damn it." He had no choice—he'd joined this experiment of his own accord. Surviving, even when it seemed risky, was better than running and waiting for whatever death awaited deeper in the dungeons.
"Alright," he said, dashing toward Nia and the queen. Ares then glanced back at Sylvie and Venia.
"Sylvie, how's your bow?" he asked, specifically because he had told her to give it to Nia. Considering her brutal strength, it would be surprising if she had broken it.
She examined it closely, testing the string a few times. "Nothing's wrong with it. Why?"
"Nothing," he replied.
"Now I need you two for support. Sylvie, try to aim for the eyes to blind that monster. Venia, I need you to target the queen's body anywhere you can."
"Huh! Wouldn't it be better for me to help the pretty girl as well?" Venia asked.
'Pretty girl'—a fleeting thought for Ares, but not for Sylvie herself.
"Sylvie is a sharpshooter.
Plus, I need you to cause as much damage to the queen's shell as possible with your guns and see if we can find any weaknesses to exploit."
Venia nodded in understanding.
"But what about you? What are you going to do?" Henry said, trying to recover as much of his mana as possible.
Ares gave him a look that suggested the question was ridiculous. "What else? I'm going to help Nia and Jones, too. We all need to put in the effort to survive."
"What kind of question was that?"
Henry clenched his jaw, deciding not to push the matter. "Just and recover your mana... and please, do your job here."
With that settled, everyone went to their respective tasks. Sylvie stood a couple of meters from the queen, conjuring her arrows to strike the pale stalker's eye.
Venia, a bit closer than Sylvie, began creating mana bullets shaped like regular ones and fired them at the shell with her compact pistols, using her sharp eyes to spot any changes or signs of excessive damage.
Ares, Nia, and Jones were on the frontline, creating distractions while trying to damage her—well, at least Ares was.
He wanted to confront the monster up close because he felt it was necessary. With his mana force sealed, he had to figure out a way to break the lock. An idea came to him, but it would require the pale stalker's death to put it into action.
"I need to see if there are any changes with the fragment in me."
The Vhala Fragment had a few traits he noticed—one being that it resonated perfectly with the mana in his body, as if using it as a storage rather than his body, much like most monsters have cores in them.
Yet, he felt no change within himself.
It was likely because his Manaforce was locked and his body was adjusting to the Restructure that had occurred. Along with that, he experienced minor but consistent headaches from time to time, as the interface had said, he didn't really think much of it.
He was a bit suspicious about whether he could use the manaforce, especially since Sylvie had already unlocked hers and could wield it. Still, he felt relieved knowing he wasn the only one—Jones and Henry hadn't unlocked their manaforce either and, for the time being, were using mana as usual.
But he wondered how long it would take before he noticed his first change.
Gripping his mana blade, he charged toward the distracted pale stalker—Nia had already dealt it some damage. Mana bullets whizzed past him as Venia was also shooting.
With his sword raised, he delivered a vertical slash aimed at its limbs, but the blade bounced back as if striking solid metal.
"The shell's too thick," he muttered, just as the pale stalker turned her head toward him.
'Shit.'
He dodged one swinging limb, then another, and another. One slipped past Ares' view, aiming for his back, but Jones blocked it in quick succession.
"Watch yourself. She's tough to block against."
He tried again to strike the limbs, but met the same unyielding resistance.
This went on for a while until…
SPURT.
Sylvie managed to strike the pale stalker's left eye, partially blinding it.
At the same time, Venia had spent so many mana bullets that her reserves were nearly empty, but when she struck the center spike of the three, the sound wasn't harsh—it was a soft swish as the bullet sliced cleanly through it.
It was then that the Queen pale stalker let out a shriek, as if she were in pain.
"THE CENTER SPIKE IS HER WEAKNESS. AIM FOR THAT." Noticing the change, Sylvie, Venia, and Nia—the only hunters capable of pulling it off—knew exactly what to do.
"We can win this. Just a little more."
Suddenly, a powerful pressure hit them all at once. Nia, air-borne, hit the ground hardly, Syvlie and Venia as well, Jones, Ares, and Henry too.
The Queen Pale Stalker's shell shifted from its usual coloration to a vivid crimson as she let out a furious shriek. Her mana began spilling into the air, spreading in every direction.
Cough.
Cough.
One by one, they started coughing as her mana seeped into them, clashing violently with their own.
"She's gone berserk."