Aldric's crow circled back. His expression was grim but determined. "She's right. We've thinned their numbers enough. We can handle what's left."

Kara looked down at the battlefield. The bears had done their job. The Mire-Crawler horde had been reduced from four thousand to maybe half that. The ground was littered with corpses. But two thousand level 100 monsters were still an army, and the raid members were around 150 level 95s.

"Are you sure about this?" she asked.

"No," Helga said with a feral grin. "But we're doing it anyway. The monsters are scattered enough for us to take advantage of it."

Aldric nodded.

His gaze swept the swamp. The Mire-Crawlers were dying in droves, but the surviving ones were tearing through the bears. Soon, there would be nothing left but enemies.

Kara gripped her bow. She thought of Seraphine and what she would have done if she had been in her shoes. She thought of the raid members who looked to her for guidance. She thought of the quest rewards waiting at the end of this nightmare.

"Alright," she said. "We go down."

Helga raised her warhammer high, the weapon catching the afternoon sun. Her voice boomed across the sky, cutting through the sound of battle and wingbeats.

"All units! Prepare to land!"

As the raid formation shifted, crows spiraled down in controlled arcs while their riders checked weapons and readied spells. Every face displayed bone-deep exhaustion from days of nonstop fighting, though some displayed fear and others showed determination.

"Form defensive clusters when you land!" Helga said. "Stay with your groups! Watch each other's backs!"

The crows dropped lower. The stench of blood and mud rose to meet them. The sound of dying bears and shrieking Mire-Crawlers grew louder.

Aldric's Sun Chasers descended first, landing fifty yards from the main fight with a tight, disciplined formation.

As their spears came up and shields locked, they formed a phalanx reminiscent of ancient warriors.

They knew they had only 15 minutes to kill as many monsters as possible, so they had to make it count.

Helga's Ironsides landed next to them, spreading wide to establish a defensive perimeter as they moved with the confidence of soldiers who had survived every nightmare the valley had thrown at them.

Kara's fighters followed, landing in clusters near Aldric's position with bows up and arrows nocked, ready to provide ranged support by picking off stragglers and covering the melee fighters.

The smaller groups descended last, finding spots between the major factions, and although they looked nervous, they held their weapons steady.

As two thousand Mire-Crawlers charged the human force of around a thousand, Helga roared, "Let's have fun!"

The raid braced just before the two forces collided with a sound like thunder.

...

…

…

Meanwhile, the Vorathid Foragers moved like a living flood, with thousands of insectoid bodies surging across the Mire as they churned through mud and standing water in search of the church.

They followed the orders Reidar had given them during their summoning: get to the Chittering Tunnels, find the church, search the tunnels, and kill everything.

Even if they were weak compared to Reidar, a swarm of level 90 monsters was not to be scoffed at, especially since the raid itself was only at level 95 with around 150 people, representative of the power dynamics out there.

Due to this disparity, Reidar was able to easily eliminate the church members, who should not have been as powerful as the raid members.

The swarm split and reformed whenever it encountered obstacles, turning trees into temporary highways as the foragers climbed trunks and crossed branches.

Pools of stagnant water disappeared beneath a carpet of chitinous bodies, and the creatures moved fast, as their small size allowed them to navigate terrain that would slow larger beings.

They reached the Mire's edge within 15 minutes, where the landscape shifted from open swamp to dense undergrowth.

The foragers adapted by shrinking their bodies further to slip through gaps in the vegetation, with some becoming no larger than rats while others reduced themselves to the size of mice.

As their F.L.A.I.R. and speed increased, the swarm flowed like water through cracks in the stone.

Ahead of them was the entrance to the Chittering Tunnels, which was the same gaping wound in the earth Reidar and the raid had entered before.

It was wide enough for trucks and surrounded by disturbed soil and broken vegetation, and the foragers poured into the darkness without hesitation.

Inside, the tunnels branched in every direction, so the swarm divided, with each group taking a different passage while their thousands of compound eyes reflected what little light penetrated the depths.

They found the remains of corpses first, investigating each body for signs of human presence, but they discovered nothing but monster kills.

Pushing deeper, the swarm encountered side chambers that the Skitterers had once used as nesting areas.

The foragers flooded each chamber, searching every corner and crevice, only to find them empty.

As they swept through more tunnels and hollowed-out rooms, the underground maze stretched endlessly, having been carved over months by relentless insect claws.

Reidar's map gradually filled up, but they found nothing: no humans, no ritual sites, and no trace of the Church of Unbinding.

A larger chamber appeared ahead at some point, which was the one where the Skitterer Queen had died.

The foragers entered, spreading across the walls and ceiling to investigate the shattered eggs and examine the queen's corpse, but they found no signs of tampering or human presence; it was empty.

The foragers kept moving, swarming through the tunnels. Every new room told the same story: empty nests, broken passages, and dried-out Skitterer corpses. Nothing new, nothing hidden. Just more of the same emptiness, stretching deeper into the dark.

The passages branched and twisted like veins in the earth, with some barely wide enough for a man to squeeze through while others yawned into vast, empty cavities that swallowed the lights.

After searching another warren of side tunnels, another group of collapsed chambers, and another stretch of silent, empty darkness, they still found nothing.

The deeper they went, the more the tunnels showed signs of the Mire-Crawlers' passage, but there were still no humans, no sign of the Church, and no evidence they had ever been there.

There were just endless miles of empty, echoing stone and the occasional decaying monster corpse.

Although the foragers' search was thorough, with each tiny body investigating every crack and crevice, they found only what the Skitterers had left behind and what the Mire-Crawlers had taken.

The underground maze seemed infinite, a sprawling network that could swallow an army whole, and still, they found nothing but the remnants of monsters.

However, the Chittering Tunnels were bigger than what Reidar expected, which meant there were still places the foragers had to go, and they were for sure going to check those places.

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