Blacksmith of the Apocalypse

Seth stayed behind in the camp to not take too much of the Faer's experience for himself. Instead, he was working on a new mask for Jonah. Currently, the man was hiding his face behind the beard-shaped detection items Seth had given them some time ago.

For this mask, he went a different route, since Jonah was now the chosen of the goddess of gruesome beauty in battle, he could give her champion a demon face. Instead, Seth took inspiration from some visual novels he used to read.

The face he tried to sculpt was beautiful, unearthly beautiful, and cold. Since Jonah didn't want to be charming, or cute, this was the best compromise between his preferences and divine blessing. An expressionless, beautiful face that seemed almost cruel, or menacing was the vibe he went for.

It was a shame that Lydia was the only one that got a piece of special metal from her divine sugar daddy.

Since the goddess of gruesome beauty was not nice enough to provide the materials, Seth used <Olympian Silver> for the mask.

He was in the middle of sculpting the mask, which gave him quite some trouble in his limited artistic vision when the orb in his pocket started vibrating over and over again.

"We are massively outnumbered. We have to pull out." Mike reported about his situation and the group of Faer he was leading. He wasn't the only one to report the need to pull out. Several other parties had already begun retreating.

It seemed like the bugs were not joking around and sent out over a thousand soldiers to several of the entrances. This wouldn't have been a big problem if the members of the field teams stepped in, but that was not the purpose of the invasion.

The point was to have the Faer gain levels, which they couldn't if they were drowned in an ocean of enemies. The retreat was an obvious decision when facing this situation. Since there were some people he didn't hear anything from, he decided to call them to assemble with the others.

When he called Monique he could hear the noise of battle in the background. The screeching of bugs, the crunching of shells, it sounded like a big fight.

"Monique? I heard that some people face huge numbers of enemies... but it sounds like you already know that."

"What? Ah, yes. We are currently holding our position at a bottleneck of what seems like an old boss room," she confirmed their situation.

"Do you need help?"

"It's okay. There are quite a lot of them, but the Faer are faring well."

"I see, well, I was going to inform you that everyone is pulling out for now, but since you are already engaged, I guess it's a little late for you to get out now. Are you sure you can deal with it?"

Although she seemed confident, she began to ponder and gave her answer some thought.

…

After the call, Monique's eyes returned to the row of Faer that held the gateway into the boss room. Although the Faer had technically infinite stamina, the same wasn't true for their mana. Without mana they would have a hard time just moving, it could be called their only big weakness.

To prevent this she kept cycling people between resting, defense, and offense. This went great for another 30 minutes, but the cycles became shorter and shorter, while the enemy numbers showed no sign of dwindling.

They had killed so many that corpses should have been piling to mountains outside the gate, but whenever one of their brethren died, the corpse was pulled back into the sea of legs, eyes, and shells. In disgust, she quickly realized that the hive ate their own dead to keep them from getting in the way...

But it didn't matter. If things went bad, Monique could still step in. She immediately regretted thinking that as she belatedly evaded an attack from her blind spot. Despite evading, she felt a sharp pain in her nape.

"tsk!"

Battle ready she faced the enemy behind her, but it was already gone. Following a minute sound from the right, the spear demon managed to evade another launch for her neck and get a look at her attacker.

<Vespinae General lv.96(Boss)>

A roughly humanoid wasp the size of a child. Its many arms ended in golden claws and its black, faceted eyes emitted unmistakable malice. It didn't speak, but it was clear that it wanted Monique dead.

Her thoughts raced. Tekar and Seth had talked about this one. Where did it come from? Monique took just a blink of time to observe the boss room to spot a hole in the floor behind the throne overgrown with hive matter.

At this moment she realized, that the position she had deemed easy to defend may not have been as safe as she thought. These giant insects were practiced in creating all kinds of tunnels. What would stop them to do so in their own dungeon?

She wanted to smile in derision. She wanted to do as Seth had told her and try to impress the goddess of strategy, but she had miscalculated.

The warrioress didn't have much time to think about it, as the general was back to attacking her. This was really the worst kind of situation. Unable to even check on how the Faer were doing, she had a hard time just keeping up with the wasp's attacks.

It was too fast and its fighting style somewhat resembled Fins. The wasp kept using its speed and skills to get in her blind spot to attack with her claws or stinger.

Only her dynamic vision trained through martial arts focused on counters and strengthened by the system was currently keeping her alive against the enemy attacks. She couldn't keep up with its speed to get a chance to attack, but she slowly grew confident in her ability to dodge and defend.

Like in a haze, the wasp's attacks seemed to become predictable as she got used to the attack pattern. Except, it wasn't. The moment she wanted to block the next attack, a sudden bout of vertigo hit her hard, completely breaking her stance.

The attack she anticipated did not come, the wasp had vanished from her sight like a phantom. The next thing she knew was that she was flying into the row of Faer with a terrifying pain in her stomach.

Kneeling on the ground among the people fallen around her, she needed a moment to realize what had happened. The wasp had managed to escape from her view and stabbed her in the stomach with the stinger.

The attack had not penetrated her armor, but the impact still churned her insides. How did that happen? What was this vertigo? The haze? She had to throw up to feel slightly better. Belatedly she checked her status to see that he was under the poisoned status.

No wonder! She immediately realized that it must have been the wound in her nape. She could only curse her own vanity and overconfidence. If she had just worn her helmet, there would have been no way for this to happen.

Her realization happened in a matter of moments. While she was stuck in her short stupor, things took a turn for the worse. She had been catapulted straight into the defending line of Faer. Now, the nightmarish hordes of insects flooded into the boss room.

When she came to it, there was not much she could do to turn the situation around. She managed to barely evade the general's next attack and finally equip her helmet. Not a moment too late, as her head was thrown back from a heavy impact just after wearing it.

This was embarrassing, but she had no choice. Monique lay down on the ground and rolled together like a turtle. <Turtle Warrior's Defense Curl> Trusting her armor and the skill's power, she bought a moment of time to drink an antidote potion. The price was a terrible bruise on her back, as the skill and armor were not enough to completely dampen the attack of the lv.96 boss insect.

Still a little wobbly on her legs, she managed to stand up. Monique could already feel her head clearing, after drinking Alison's Antidote Potion. She grimaced when she saw their current situation. The Faer were drowning in enemies. She doubted the buff of <Athena's Strategy> would have helped much, even if she was able to use it.

Monique could barely stand straight while being bombarded by the wasp general, much less use any skills to support her allies. Although the Vespinae general's level was lower, it was a much harder fight than the giant mantis.

She shook her head. It didn't matter, her spirit was unbroken. With her mind clearing up, she would go all out, kill the general and then buy enough time-

WHOOMP!