Raid 2 [64]

"I think this is where we stopped" Artria said to Siddra

"it's probably deeper than we anticipated, it could even take us another month for all we know" Siddra replied

The cave or rather the biome like area they were in was vast, the ceiling was almost a mile in height and the terrain stretched downwards in a slight diagonal line. It wasn't all stone, it had large patches of grass with tiny forests managing to grow even though the cave provided zero light. Luckily the army had mages to provide external light sources to light up the path for the small raid team.

"hey.. You think I can scoop up some abandoned gems here, there's alot of minecarts stocked with rare ores" Artria whispered to Siddra

"please... respect the miners who mined those, don't just yoink them" Siddra replied with a serious face

The raid team continued to walk deeper, from behind? The sides? Or the front, a larger army of monsters could swarm them from anywhere or maybe even everywhere including the top or the ground. As they walked deeper, the signs of the cave being a mine slowly faded away, the rusted tracks and the minecarts filled with gems and dirt slowly disappeared each time the raid team took a step forward. By now, it all seemed like a normal cave with creepy insects that could instantly make you say nope!

While marching forward, Artria quickly gave off a sign to halt the army. She heard something, it was slight but it sounded like a heart beat with a deep sound similar to Darth Vader speaking.

"do we have a bat beastman here?" Artria asked to the team

Eventually a volunteer came up to her.

"can you do that echo location thing? Just right there" Artria asked while pointing forward

The beastman looked fairly human, the only difference being a giant bat ear and a tail. He looked a little nervous being in front of a high ranking adventurer.

"a-alright" the beastman nervous said

Artria replied with a smile and slapped him in the back for encouragement, the beastman took a few deep breaths then he weakly shouted on the direction Artria pointed at. To give himself a boost in hearing, he made his ears wider by doing a cupped hand right beside it. He listened like a dish operator, he closely listened to anything that's reflecting his sound.

"100.. no.. roughly 500 meters away.. It's~ a circle? 100 meters wide and~ 150 meters tall, it's just a rough estimate.. Don't take my rough intuition it's basically guesses at best"

"no, it's better than not knowing anything.. You can go back now and thank you"

The beastman gratefully accepted the praise and he ran back to the raid team with a small smile of accomplishment. The raid team slowly marched forward while anticipating a boss but what they saw was to be unexpected, something similar to a beehive but instead of it having perfect shapes like the hexagons on a beehive, it has a more chaotic style to it with no orderly design. It looked like a crudely built hive and yet it looked functional for whatever reason.

"ugh.. it's kinda disgusting, the hell is that?" A raid member said with disgust

Since they got close enough to view it directly, the sounds of a heart beating became more clear. The sound waves emitted by it vibration traveled through their bodies giving an illusion of someone phasing through you. All of them couldn't begin to describe what that thing even is, but one person spoke up out of all the confused adventurers.

"I think it's a demon hive" a mage girl said

[Note]

Demon hives are basically nest for demons, they are rare but they pose a great threat. A single hive can produce thousands of demons per day with each created demon having a high quality build and that's only for the small hives, some hives can even reach Mt. Everest size and some larger than that. At this point demon, arch demons, demon commanders don't really matter anymore, those titles are just an understatement to what they are capable of. A giant human with no face, a flesh ball with wings or basically anything that hell can provide are demons because our bodies instantly know what they are as if we have an inbuilt instinct made to identify demons. ©I wanna poop right now :) ®

"a hive?" Artria asked

"I read some history, judging by the looks of it in pretty sure.. I can even tell that it's the one of the small versions" the girl answered

Artria was surprised at the last bits of the sentence she said, it took them almost a year to clear most of the dungeon and this mage girl decided to say that this giant hive that's also considered to be small by its standard, manage to hold back a full raid squad made up of a hundred high ranking adventurers in almost a year.

"the demon war thing just started a month ago, was this thing always here before?" Artria asked

"it could be left out in the previous demon war, usually demon hives are flesh like but this... it looks like it rotted over the past thousands of years but from the heart beating noises it seems like it's still active"

"..."

During the first day of them raiding the dungeon they saw quite alot of demons roaming around, even after the hive rotted away for thousands of years, it could still contain hundreds or even thousand of demons.

"?" Siddra reacted

Siddra saw something within the hive, the rotted flesh of the hive pulsated a bit. A slice came out of the hive as if something sliced it from the inside, suddenly they heard something similar to a bug flapping it's wings or the sound of a helicopter flying. A giant humanoid mantis popped up and closed the distance in less than a second, its blades were close enough to cut Artria's head off.

-slice-

[End]