Hell. It was hell.

That was the only thing that could possibly come to mind as they entered the dungeon and were immediately swarmed by tens of thousands of insects. The place was well below zero in terms of temperature and, with all the ice mana flying about and in the air, was something that actually pinged against their resistances. And that was before considering the enemies were also attacking using ice mana and further freezing the air and just directly hitting their resistances with ice. Beth was doubly glad she and Blood had gone the extra mile and upgraded their resistances into the stronger combined versions.

The place was really a hell to navigate, though Beth was thinking more of the ninth circle of hell that was supposedly always frozen over. The dungeon was a long series of caves, wide and low-ceilinged, connected by twisted tunnels that doubled back on themselves. Navigating the dungeon was hell, and some of the rooms were partially or fully underwater. The ponds and flooded passages were, of course, frozen solid in the subzero temperatures that permeated the dungeon, meaning they all had to be melted through. It became rather obvious that Sera was going to have to be more strategic with her fire, as it wasn't something she could just use infinitely without consequence. The tall girl was already belching and hiccupping by room five, which didn't bode well for how much flame she would be able to spew overall.

Beth really needed to get even some basic fire magic, which was on her to-do list as well, but she had other things to compensate for that lack. Her Mana Physique wasn't just about fire, and she proved that here as she took full advantage of it to plow their way through the dungeon. She wiped whole rooms full of hundreds of thousands of the insects with her spatial powers, teleporting and obliterating and mincing everything in sight and beyond it in just minutes. She made use of her massive well of mana and ability to more freely move it through her body and control it more precisely to dish out devastating damage time and again. She also bored through the ice blocking their way in various rooms and passages, hammering and obliterating and annihilating it until there wasn't anything stopping them from getting to the boss.

It was a boss unlike any they had dealt with so far, but Beth had a very good idea that it was like what would have happened had Blood's resonance with her namesake not been so strong when they acquired the book and Neph. That dungeon was insect themed and had several queens at the end of it, likely having been able to spew out thousands upon of thousands of fresh beasts for them to fight as they worked through the dungeon. This was a similar situation, though there was only a single queen in the room. It produced insects that were very much like locusts, though they were armored, the size of Beth's forearm, and had ice mana. Other than that, just a million or so locusts to squash to complete their objective.

Sera had conserved her fire after the initial efforts to make the dungeon go faster, now deploying it to great effect in this final room. Unlike the small, fast, armored soldiers she produced, the massive queen was slow and unwieldy, not able to easily dodge anything they threw at her. Though she was also armored herself, that was no impediment to Beth's immense destructive power, her skills able to smash, crush, and pulp even heavy armor plating with ease. Even Blood wasn't much slowed, her claws and powerful wave skill able to slice through the armor, or penetrate deeply in the gaps where the plates joined together.

The fight entered a second phase at a certain point, though it wasn't anything so official; no giant flashing notice appeared in their visions or the room letting them know it was phase two. The queen had taken enough damage to become enraged, starting to thrash around and produce more enemies at a rapid pace. All those little spawns also became enraged, which was really the much bigger problem, as they now moved much faster and hit even harder. Each of them was not all that strong individually, but thousands of slightly powerful attacks all landing on a person at the same time did pose a great threat.

The insects were also annoying for Sera to deal with as using a spear against so many small opponents was rather difficult. Sera had several hard-hitting skills, and one that allowed her to strike much faster, but striking hundreds of insects in the span of a second or two was rather difficult with a spear, especially at only Expert level. She still forged on gamely, even when the insects became enraged and moved faster, causing her to have to concentrate even further to land the same amount of attacks in the same period of time. The one thing she brought that the insects couldn't handle was her breath, though it taxed her to breathe over and over and over again. Still, watching ten thousand of the icy little buggers melt at a time when she spewed fire in front of her was quite satisfying.

Beth was able to grab some of the fire that Sera was spewing all over the room and manipulate it, adding it in to her attacks to melt away thousands and thousands more of the insects. She focused a little less on the boss now as she wanted to try to bring the additional beasts under control. Blood, meanwhile, kept her full attention on the queen, tearing away more and more armor and further digging into the boss's flesh. The other problem with the queen, Blood was really finding, was that it was just so big. Mass was a strength all its own, especially in non-sapient beasts, as it just meant more flesh and vitality to work through before slaying said beast. The queen had plenty of vitality, but as Blood, and occasionally Beth, worked through it, the rate at which she was producing new insects also started slowing down.

The fight was just very long and tedious, as it was working through a ton of the additional beasts while also having to deal with the queen's massive vitality pool. Despite how strong Beth, and the other two as well, to be fair, were at the present moment, it still just took forever. If Beth had to say, she would say the boss was based entirely around END and resistance to damage in general. Even after working past the armor plates, the queen just took less damage to direct hits to her flesh than what Beth would expect of a boss-type beast of level three hundred twenty. She could even see how the flesh slightly resisted her annihilating damage, which was more than a small testament to just how powerful the boss in the supercharged version of the dungeon was.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

After finally killing the queen and all her innumerable brood, Beth was really feeling why the dungeon was very unpopular. Hell, one of the three key factors that had led to the overrun conditions was that nobody wanted to even enter this dungeon, let alone do enough regular runs every month or year to keep it maintained. Such situations were usually up to the local government or whatever greater polity controlled the area to maintain, though the CRA would assist at times. Eventually, the reality became that whoever was nominally in charge fucked around enough that the situation became untenable, then they went crying and whining to the CRA to sweep in and fix up the mess once it was totally out of control.

Well, they would be the ones getting the situation here back under control, and that would be happening within a few days. This first run of the insect hell, as Beth was thinking of it, had taken more than twenty-four hours and was very draining, meaning they would be taking a rest after they grabbed the boss rewards. They had two big advantages, however, as they were only resting for forty-five minutes, or forty-five minutes objective time, as they would rest in Beth's gate and get plenty of sleep in less than one real-world hour. Also, using the spikes drained quite a lot of mana from the dungeon, so having even a several hour break after a clear wouldn't really negatively impact them. The biggest problem was that the longer they rested, the more of the insects would spill out of the entrance into the surrounding area, considering the dungeon was still in an overflow state.

Beth took just a minute, which was a few seconds objective time, to analyze their big payday before sleeping. The overcharged insect hell had produced three items, all of which were some kind of gem. Beth found that they were all enchanted, and all three had vastly different effects. The first would create an area of safety that beasts up to a certain level wouldn't want to enter, providing shelter as well as a healing light in that area for an hour. The second gem, another enchanted masterpiece, was meant to be set up in a home or base. It provided long-term, long-range observation and analysis capabilities. It was, essentially, an all-in-one security system in a gem a little smaller than Beth's fist and even included capabilities to be linked in to other gems or systems of a more…defensive nature.

The third enchanted gem was the most interesting of the three, as it was meant to passively reinforce a weapon. Beth frowned at it for a moment before shrugging and pulling her level two hundred epic sword that she still had out of her necklace. It seemed to just make sense to her, so she held the gem to the pommel of the sword, watching in fascination as the gem melded into the metal pommel, displacing and condensing the metal around it to make a space for itself. Once embedded, she checked the results and was rather surprised with the update, seeing that the rarity and level requirements hadn't changed, but the sword was certainly stronger. She looked at what the sword was before, having access to a copy of the sword's statistics saved in her communicator, comparing that to what it showed now.

Golden Crushing Edge

{This blade, forged of an alloy of mana gold and mithril, is both extremely heavy and extremely durable. It is enchanted with durability, repair, and mass adjustment.

20% increase in STR.

Minimum Level 200}

Golden Crushing Edge

{This blade, forged of an alloy of mana gold and mithril, is both extremely heavy and extremely durable. It is enchanted with durability, repair, and mass adjustment. It has been improved with a Great Enhancement Gem.

30% increase in STR.

20% increase in DEX.

Blade edge is sharper and more resistant to wear.

Minimum Level 200}

Nothing really shocking, but it had enhanced the blade a lot. It now gave boosts to two stats, more than it had previously to one of those two, and had something specifically calling out that the sword was sharper and took a lot more to wear down. That would be quite handy for her as her group was often fighting thousands to millions of enemies at once. A blade that needed to be maintained less often and was sharper when it was maintained was a bigger advantage for her than it might at first seem.

Luckily, they didn't have to suffer much longer, as they just had to finish the insect hell and they were off. After that first rest, they were back to it, and they repeated the same pattern again and again. It did really take them a week, even with Beth's gate to cheat their rest time to be much, much less than other teams would need. They had to do seven clears of the insect hell to get it back under control, again pointing to it being that dungeon that spiraled out of control and started the whole thing off. They got a lot more of the enchanted gems out of the rewards for that dungeon, though they did get some other interesting things. It was basically all enchanting related items, but it was a broader variety than just the gems. The thing that Beth liked the most out of all of it, something that almost made it all feel worth it, was an enhancer that could boost the speed at which someone learned a skill. It had limits, as something like that was obviously very powerful and would be a little unfair if it just let someone boost a skill from copper[0] to diamond[9], but it was still great. A new skill could basically be leveled very quickly to gold[0], depending on the circumstances and several variables, and the array wasn't a one-time use item either.

That reward did have other restrictions, which included not using any kind of time compression with it, so no using Beth's gate to double up on the cheating, but it was still a crazy find. While pretty much everything else they found could be created by a Master, or maybe possibly needed someone just advanced to Grandmaster in Enchanting, the array for skill leveling was the work of a Sage. Or it was the equivalent, as not everything the Path produced as rewards, especially as the level of Path-controlled content they were doing increased, was made by a person. The Path would produce atomically perfect copies of items, or simply produce items that no one had ever made a version of, but that was also a way people found out some things were possible. That happened far less these days, but sometimes even Sages or Divines were surprised by an item rewarded by the Path. Sera mentioned it could put some of the best crafters in a galaxy into a creation tizzy when a new kind, type, or variant of an item or work was produced by the Path. It was always big news, not just in crafting circles but in the circles of people who were in the know; basically, any big clan or sect or polity with powerhouses amongst their number would be clued in to such things.

Just as they were done with the insect hell, mentally and even physically exhausted, Baelvyr just happened to show up. Beth gave him a rather narrow-eyed glare, but he just shrugged, letting her scorn roll off his back like a duck shed water. He really didn't have any sympathy for them in doing a shit job and, if his crotchety old self was to be believed, that was all the work that the CRA did. Still, Beth would rather spend a year refereeing, or five working a desk like Tazeen was doing, than do this kind of shit work all the time. Her complaints only found fertile ground with the other two, Baelvyr just ignoring their grumbling as he took them back to the city, which is where Mortaine found them, also as if he had just been waiting to perfectly time his arrival.

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