Book 3, chapter 18

Her flared aura, infused with a spark of compression crushed the bugs, sending a plume of rock, bone, and carapace splattering across the ground. The mounting pressure built, as all that energy flooded toward her.

Getting slammed with so much energy at once was like getting punched in the face, staggering her. The hoard of beetles didn't give up, charging while she was reeling.

She would have been overwhelmed if her team wasn't there to watch her back. A torrential pillar of white fire exploded up from the mass of beetles, roasting dozens, making the hoard falter for a few precious seconds.

"Zee, they have us surrounded, we should fall back!" Allison shouted. Head throbbing from pain, Zee clenched her sword tightly. She glanced back at her team, who were slowly falling back, as the bugs pushed in to surround them.

She glanced back to the princess's terrifying fire skill, which had created a hellscape between her and a tide of bugs. The bugs were already pressing, some of them braving the scorched ground and getting toasted to get at her.

She gritted her teeth, fighting back against the pressure weighing her down. She felt overwhelmed, her body overflowing with energy that begged for release. No, they would not flee here. These bugs had numbers, but they weren't so tuff.

"Allie, let's stand and fight, we can take them, "Zee shouted, using the overflow of energy in her body to call out Dern. He came out at over eight feet tall, draining much of the pressure on her body.

The princess's only response was to send out a crescent of white-hot fire, toasting bugs by the score. The bugs came like an endless tide, swarming them with unceasing zeal, uncaring for their own lives.

Dern plowed into their ranks, uncaring of injuries as he stomped and scythed the bugs down. Zee fell back with the others, not wanting to get surrounded and overwhelmed.

Despite the hundreds that died, the bugs charged, climbing over their own dead. The ceaseless slaughter felt like it had no end, the beetles refusing to give them any reprieve. By now, thousands of beetles had already fallen. The beetles were burned to a crisp, sliced, riddled with arrows, pummeled, and blown apart, and yet, they just kept coming.

With Allison's widely destructive fire and Yukna's explosives, it was fairly easy to hold back the tide. That was at first. An hour of fighting was incredibly taxing on Yukna's supply of explosives and Allison's reserves of energy.

The rest of the team was not idle either, fighting to keep the sporadic beetles at bay. Zee flitted around the clearing, moving to assist whoever looked like they might be overwhelmed.

Their team fought in a loose circle, needing to watch each other's backs. In the heat of battle, they were quickly adapting, learning to fight together. Bastion and Dern were the meat shields, both extremely durable, though in different ways.

Bastion used his bizarre momentum-based skills to dodge opponents with a burst of speed, or rob an entire group of their speed, before turning it back onto them in a massive strike. Dern was the fulcrum of their formation, swinging that glaive in wide deadly arcs, drawing hoards of beets towards him with high-pitched screeches that drove them mad.

Unlike Bastion, Dern didn't bother to block or dodge, letting the beetles gouge at his armor, killing them by the dozen for their insolence.

The beetles never relented, an endless tide that was intent on drowning them in bodies. The forest echoed with the sound of screeching insects as the clackson hive gathered for another push.

This push was looking a little more dire than the others. It was a mass of insects, attacking their team on all sides. Earlier, some of the bugs even climbed trees to leap down on them, before Allison set said trees on fire.

"Yukna! Let's slow them down." Allison shouted, activating her newest and most devastating skill.

The burning tree line lit up with a series of explosives tearing apart bugs by the dozen. The wave of explosions was immediately followed up by a pillar of fire amidst the densely packed swarm.

The mass slaughter was followed by pinpoint shots from Greg, picking off any of the stragglers that they missed. The attacks, though impressive only slowed the hive.

Heart racing in her chest, Zee leaped over a fallen tree, lashing outward to cut a beetle's head in half. It wailed as it died, the sound high-pitched, and grating.

Another bug leaped over ten feet, its pincers open wide, ready to gore her face. An arrow slammed into it mid air, a shower of gore splashing the dirt.

She didn't have time to thank Greg for the assist, frantically dodging another one as it leaped for her back. Nearby Dern swung his massive glaive, cutting down the beetles like a farmer threshing wheat.

His armor was covered in dozens of fine cracks, and gore, his glaive a blur, as he fought to keep the bugs from getting at Yukna.

Summoning him was normally incredibly taxing. But in this case, it was actually a huge relief. It helped alleviate the pressure she was under, pulling some of the energy assaulting her away to fuel his form.

That was proving more valuable by the minute, as her kills wracked ever higher, drawing in dozens of wisps of energy. It was growing to the point that her body vibrated, despite channeling as much power into her skills as fast as she could.

She smashed the pommel of her sword into the thin carapace on its tiny head, crushing its skull. The creatures died in droves, killed from one good hit. Still, they just didn't stop coming! She scrambled back, moving to avoid a burning tree as it fell with a loud crash.

Nearby Bastion smashed one bug's chest in with his fist, his blow so powerful it turned the bug's carapace into shrapnel injuring and killing five more.

Over a hundred bodies ringed him, not even a dent in the tide of enemies.

"There are too many! We need to fall back." Bastion shouted, kicking a bug from the air in an expert display of flexibility.

His voice was partially drowned out by an explosion as Yukna turned a nearby group of bugs into flying chunks of meat and shell.

"Where to? They have us surrounded." Zee shouted back, blocking a bug's pincers with her sword.

"I don't know, but we can't keep fighting like this, I am running low on energy," Bastion said, worry crossing his handsome face.

"Me too. I can't keep this up." Allison said, drenching herself in gore as she cut a beetle's head off.

"Not much we can do! Just keep fighting." Zee said, hoping something changed soon.

Something did change, just not the change she was hoping for. The swarm, enraged at Dern, charged him with overwhelming numbers. Dern staggered, falling under the weight of a beetle the size of a full-grown lizard.

With pincers the length of her arms it bit down, crushing the back of his breast place like it was made of paper. His body, riddled with gaping cracks fell apart, turning into silvery and violet mist, rushing back to her.

"What was that?" Dern asked, miffed, his voice back inside her mind.

"Watch out! A big one just killed Dern!"Zee shouted, her voice hardly audible over the chaos of the screeching beetles.

"That must be the hive queen, we need to go kill it," Allison said, frantically protecting their rear.

"I don't think we need to go do anything, it's coming to us," Bastion pointed out.

"Deal with it, Yukna and I will hold the rear for as long as we can," Allison shouted, heat billowing around her.

Zee turned away from the desperate battle to their rear, trusting the princess and Yukna to handle it. Bastion was right. The queen and a swarm of its brude advanced, trampling their own dead. The queen was about ten times the size of the normal beetles, though she wasn't the only one who stood out.

Two other beetles, about half the size of the queen flanked her, moving in step. All around them, the beetles attacked with renewed ferocity, forcing the princess to focus all her efforts on keeping them back.

The ever-burning flame beat in Zee's chest, thrumming to the beat of her heart. Her skin steamed, the wisps of energy around her so thick it looked like fog in her spatial ripple. By now, the pressure was like a physical thing, one she was having trouble releasing.

With Dern forcibly dismissed, she needed a new outlet. "Greg, Bastion, cover me," Zee said.

In response, an arrow slammed into one of the large beetles surrounding the queen, punching through its side with an audible thunk. Bastion appeared next to her a moment later, using that odd momentum-based skill of his.

His clothes were tattered, soaked in ichor, his body covered in shallow cuts, leaking blood. Zee was startled, not having realized just how much he had been hit.

"Plan?" Bastion asked calmly, ignoring his own injuries like he couldn't feel them.

"Distract the queen's guards, while I take her down," Zee said hesitantly.

"Got it. Be careful." Bastion said.

Zee's response was drowned out by the queen's challenging wail. Bastion leaped forward, catching a leaping beetle in mid-air. This was one of the queen's guards, radiating the pressure of a peak F ranker.

They clashed, and surprisingly it was the beetle that nocked Bastion back. Zee didn't have time to worry for him, and used his distraction to teleport in above the queen, cutting down at the queen's neck.

Sparks flew, her sword grating against the queen's thick carapace, drawing a thin line of blood. She cursed, turning into her mist form to dodge the other of the queen's bodyguards.

That was way too close, if not for her spatial ripple, she wouldn't have noticed it in time. The oversized beetle moved with surprising dexterity, leaping atop the queen's back despite having an arrow sever one of its legs. Zee came out of her mist form swinging, severing two of its other legs in one go.

The beetle reeled back, its legs gushing ichor as it fell off the queen's back. She was immediately forced to dodge another smaller beetle leaping for her, as well as the queen, which was not happy that she was on its back.

In a stroke of bad luck, the queen's thrashing to get her off, put her right in the path of the leaping beetle. The bug collided with her, throwing her off balance. Floundering, she fell off the queen's back. Zee lit on her back with a whomp, amidst a tide of beetles.

Their spiny legs bit through the thin sheen of spirit echo that covered her body, their long mandibles lashing out to tear her flesh. In a panic, she let it all out, pushing aura to the max, and infusing it with her spark of compression.

The queen, as well as two dozen other beetles, were torn apart, crushed by an incredible force. The sight of her enemies being decimated should have filled her with relief. The opposite was true. The flame in her chest thrummed like a war drum, as dozens of threads of smoke leaped from all the dead around her.

Like a tempest of spiritual smoke, the wild energy burrowed into her body, sucked in by the flame in her chest. She groggily rose to her feet next to the queen, which was giving her the death stare.

The queen looked like she had been through a meat grinder, her shell cracked in a dozen places, her legs wobbling to keep her up. The E grade beast queen leapt for her. Head filling as it might explode, she met it head on, swinging her sword downward with all of her might.

One of its mandibles punched into her side, just as her sword buried into the queen's skull, flooding its brain with decaying fire. The pain in her side was blinding, but it was nothing compared to the pressure.

A tidal wave of wispy energy drifted up from the dead queen, rushing into her body. The pressure was so great that all other sounds were ignored, even screams from Dern in her head.

Her body trembled, her hands shaking with a shocking amount of energy. She felt like she was a conduit of the world river, stuffed to the brim with soothing spiritual energy.

A scream ripped from her mouth, her pain pushing her to infuse her aura with tremendous amounts of mental energy. It was a primal scream, of both anger and pain, the air around her so heavy that any beetles who entered it were violently crushed.

Pain, like being stung by a thousand angry willow jacks suffused her body, blinding her with agony. Every second felt like a year, that one moment stretching to eternity.

Finally, after killing the beast queen, something changed. A raging river, all that energy from the kills flowed through her body, into the flame in her chest. The flame in her chest flashed like a burgeoning sun.

And then, everything went quiet. Not even Dern's mental railings to get her attention could enter her mind.

Zee frantically glanced around, startled by the sudden silence filling the area. It was odd. The silence wasn't because everyone stopped fighting, no, it appeared everyone was frozen. Including herself.

She didn't have time to wonder what was going on as she was forcibly dragged into a vision. Her surrounding changed, and her mind was suddenly assaulted by a familiar, and overwhelming aura.

A tiny figure hung in the vast emptiness of space, backed by what could only be a star. Both the being and the sun radiated unquestionable power, their very presence making the universe bow in sublimation.

It was the bug-like creature from her first vision, only this time, it wasn't fighting to compress the star. Or was it? She didn't know how she could tell, but she had a sense that millennia were passing in the vision.

The star flickered, then it beat, and with each beat, the cultivator shudder. All the while, the figure drifted slowly alongside the star, undaunted by its torrential power.

At first, she didn't know what was going on. With every beat of the star, she sensed that tens of thousands of years passed. The two slowly matched each other's rhythm.

Even through the vision she could feel it, as a connection slowly formed. Finally, after what could have been a million years, the bug-like cultivator opened all twenty of its eyes.

The universe rumbled as the star suddenly vibrated, shrinking at an impossible rate. In a single planet-shattering heartbeat, the star shrunk to the size of her fist before entering the bug's chest.

The heart of fire, beat, and space gave way, capitulating as the two became one. The vision rapidly fell apart, leaving her in a sense of awe. What kind of existence was that cultivator? And were they the originator of the ever-burning flame?

More concerning, how did she get it? Was she a relative of that monstrously strong cultivator? Zee didn't feel like she was part bug, but who knew?

She shook her head. She could feel it, as time gradually went back to normal. Any moment now she would be thrust back into a fight for her life. It was a thought that filled her with trepidation.

Would she be returned to her body, only to experience that blinding pain once more? Or would she be drained and exhausted like last time after witnessing the vision?

A sense of calm assurance washed over her, a calming pressure flooding her mind from Dern's splinter. She couldn't hear him, but the simple reassurance was comforting. The calm was violently pushed aside as her consciousness was forced back into her body.

Zee staggered, clutching at the bleeding wound in her side, using her sword like a cane for support. She felt like she had been hit by a cart, her body shaking from pain and fatigue. Her mouth dropped open as she took in the destruction around her.

She stood amidst the corpses of hundreds of beetles, the dead arrayed around her in piles. Gasping for breath she collapsed on her knees, her body incredibly weak.

Even still, she could feel it, the heart of fire, thrumming in her chest. It was just a fire now, but it could one day hold the power of a star.

Zee shook her head, her mind still hazy from the vision. She wasn't delirious enough to think she had a literal star in her chest. No, she most likely had a watered-down version of the bloodline. Her eyes darted around, looking for her team.

She found them quickly. They were about a hundred meters away, watching her with a mix of concern and fear.

The crushed bodies around her were probably the cause for their caution. She glanced around the forest, noting that the hoard of bugs had retreated.

Had she really killed so many that they had fled? Her eyes fell on a once large beetle, its shell crushed to an unrecognizable pulp.

She glanced back around the forest, noting all the dead, or dying beetles. Had she really done all of this? She didn't remember it, but then again, she was rather delirious from the pain.

The princess approached her first, cautious like Zee might be a wild animal.

"Are you alright?" Allison asked.

Zee was exhausted, her body numb from both pain and fatigue.

"I'm fine, I think," Zee said, her voice raspy. With that barebones response, she fell face first onto the blood-soaked ground, too wrung out to remain conscious any longer.