The Pinnacle Warrior

Though Astrid stepped forward first, it was primarily to re-orient herself instead of anything else. Their plans were based around very firm structures of who would fill what role in battle, and she was only going to fill in a frontliner role if a second monster appeared or Felix was injured. For now, her duty was to locate the main body of the monster within the construct it would fight from. Barring that, her focus was to keep everybody safe while Muti verified if there were any other monsters nearby.

With a thought, Astrid stretched Immortal Warrior’s Aura out over her party as she looked for something solid within the construct that threatened. The water was clear enough for her to potentially see her target, but the naiad within the water was well-suited to blending in with its native environment. Once, Astrid thought she saw a flashing scale within the swirling water, but it was long gone before she could be sure. After all, the swiftly swimming beast didn’t need to remain in a single spot while using its spell to attack the Wanderers.

Felix hurried forward and jumped into the air, sailing forward until he was right before the watery golem’s face. Its arms crushed forward towards him, the attack sure to be crippling, if not deadly. Instead of allowing gravity and momentum to carry him to his death, Felix jolted back down to the ground in front of the party in a move he’d practiced over the past months. Guardian’s Wrath repositioned him with a thought while also drawing the monster’s attention towards him. Even better, by strengthening his position as the current threat, he then activated Tiger’s Pride. The dozens of water javelins that flew towards him were turned away through a combination of dodging, adjusting his stance, and allowing his armor to turn the hits aside.

Astrid still couldn’t see the main body of their enemy, and, seeing that Felix had things well in hand for now, she reluctantly retreated a half dozen steps closer to Skandr and Benedict. The Bard, actively using Hasty Rebuke, stopped just for long enough to say, “It doesn’t affect the construct. It probably slows the naiad inside, but I’ll focus on haste.”

With that, he pulled his flute back up to his mouth and resumed playing Hasty Rebuke, using Doubletalk to layer it over itself. Behind him, Skandr stood with both of his feet planted and his hands spread. His fingers flicked through a series of sigils and left crackling tendrils of lightning in their wake. Each of the chains of lightning knitted together as Skandr’s cloud flew out from under his hood and merged into a single misty, crackling spear.

Astrid felt the drain on her health and stamina as Skandr empowered this spell with Warlock's Constitution before he threw it forward. The lightning shifted from a hazy bluish white to a deeper and deeper red until it was nearly crimson, and only then did he make his attack.

“Now!” Astrid called out. In response, everybody backed away, even Felix, and they watched the first real attack they made against the steel tier monster. Red lightning exploded across the entire construct, then spread into the water all around the place the naiad had attacked from. The monster's construct was wreathed in red lightning for several seconds, but it didn’t slow down in any notable way.

“The resistance to electrical magic seems to be as high as we thought,” Skandr groused. “More experiments will be necessary, but I’m sure the monster itself was hit somewhere.”

“Main body spotted,” Muti reported. “Currently burned, look for flashes of black inside of the water.”

Astrid immediately turned her attention towards the construct to do as Muti had instructed, and Felix hurried back to resume his position as the frontliner. As she did so, she asked, “Do we have any idea how long it can keep this up?”

“Maintaining that magical resistance definitely costs it something,” Skandr answered. “It wasn’t just mundane resistance that kept it safe. I can keep hammering it and seeing how long it takes before its resistance dies out, but I’m not so sure about getting into a mana reserves contest with a Steel tier monster.”

Astrid grunted in agreement and looked on, feeling useless. What made a naiad as dangerous as it was was its ability to protect its body so well with its spells while only sacrificing mana to make its attacks. Unless she was absolutely confident she would be able to strike the physical body, Astrid couldn’t throw herself into battle needlessly, given how physically limited she was.

“I can feel something approaching,” Muti called out. “It is approaching from deeper into the Dungeon, inside the sandbank.”

It didn’t take long for Astrid to also sense that the subtly rumbling ground wasn’t just from the naiad’s fists falling towards Felix and smashing the ground.

“We’ll see how well I can take its attention while you all focus on the naiad,” Astrid commanded. “Benedict, I think it’s time to start using Song of Vindication as well, and Skandr, focus on volume and variety of attacks instead of huge ones for now, see if that wears it down more effectively. Muti, if you can somehow reach the main body, do so; otherwise, you’re on auxiliary vision-disrupting duty.”

The rest of the party didn’t respond except to do as Astrid had said while she hurried forward. The approaching enemy was, supposedly, something that would be particularly well-suited for her to fight. Instead of being something so magically reliant like the naiad, the antlions were—

Before Astrid could finish the thought, the ground below her began to fall out. Having been prepared for it, she managed to jump back and out of the monster's range, just as she activated Gravity Surge above it, and began pulling the beast out of the sand. Dust choked the air as sand was thrown heavenward. Astrid’s Skill yanked the majority of the sediment covering the monster away, and its grotesque body was revealed.

Astrid had heard that there were mundane insects called antlions, though she’d never seen any. They were, to her limited knowledge, thick, beetle-like ambush predators that threw sand at anything that came near their homes. This monster was only slightly like that in that it had buglike aspects and lived under the ground.

The antlion that was partially hauled out of its hiding place was quite large, its head a meter long and half as wide. That same head was somewhat insect-like, but had more of a mammal’s mouth than an insect’s, able to open wide and filled with teeth. Its body was long and similar to a centipede's, and the three meters that had been pulled out stretched deep into the sand and reminded Astrid that there was a whole lot more to this monster than what was above ground.

Though initially confused, the antlion quickly recovered from Astrid’s sneak attack and started yanking its body back under the sand more quickly than she’d expected. Rushing forward, Astrid managed to smash a Spectre Burst into the chitin just behind where its head met its body. The blow smashed home, but only the faint sound of cracking accompanied the successful hit, not the crunch of destroyed defenses that she’d hoped for. Before she could manage to get another attack in, the monster was able to get back under the sand with a screech of pain and anger.

“Is it that tough?“ Skandr asked, taking a brief break from sending flurries of spells at the naiad.

“Tougher than I expected,” Astrid answered, “but if I’d gotten a good hit in, I know I would’ve done significantly more. Just need to be more ready for it to be strong enough to resist any sneak attacks, and I should be fine.”

Any further communication was cut off as they both returned to their fights. Astrid glanced to the side and saw that the firm form of the naiad’s water construct was dripping, drooping as the monster evidently spent more of its magic, and she grinned fiercely to herself, wondering if she would be able to kill the antlion before her party could deal with the much tougher naiad.

With that in mind, Astrid flooded her body with mana of every attribute in preparation for her next attack. Her steps grew lighter on the sands as she stretched her mind to try to anticipate where the antlion was going. Though she knew that they worked alongside the naiads, she knew nothing about whether they were able to communicate or if they simply worked together somehow, so all she could do was hope to take care of the beast. Then, as she realized that the rumbling ground wasn’t approaching her, but was instead escaping, she cocked her head to the side, trying to understand what was happening.

“Protect yourselves!” Muti commanded as she disappeared from creating chunks of ice in the naiad’s construct, and instead appeared in Skandr’s shadow, crouched down with her head between his legs. Before he could react, she jumped from that position into the air, the Wizard riding on her shoulders like a child. The antlion burst out from below, its mouth gaping and screeching as its toothy mouth snapped closed ineffectually below them. Astrid sprinted over, and though the antlion tried to go back under the sands and escape, Muti shrugged Skandr off while he was still four meters high in the air.

The Wizard flipped successfully, his robes flapping in the wind as he demonstrated his bodily control during the fall. He landed lightly on the ground, and lightning enveloped his body as he dodged away from the antlion that seemed to have decided he was the greatest threat.

Muti’s rope darts, the threads reinforced with so much mana that they glowed in the bright sunlight, smashed into the outline before its escape could be finalized. She flew towards it, but it appeared to see her coming and raised its mouth to snap her out of the air. Astrid hustled, using a charge of Body to restore herself to full, even the stamina and health consumed by Skandr’s continuous spellcasting, and then activated Spectre Burst again.

Sand exploded behind her with every step as Astrid’s superhuman pace threw the ground she walked on everywhere. She worried, but Muti pivoted in the air to smash her feet into the top of the antlion's head and close its mouth just as Astrid's hammer smashed into the same defensive plating on the monster's neck it had before. With how much she’d recovered with the charge of Body combined with Spectre Burst and fortifying her entire body with mana, the fortified armor cracked like an egg shell, and the head of her hammer shredded through the undefended body underneath.

The monster's neck went limp as its head fell to the side, but it wasn’t quite dead from Astrid’s attack. At least, not immediately, but as Spectre Burst spread and necrotized the white flesh, the glorious kill notification flashed in Astrid‘s vision.

Marine Antlion slain. 1,800 experience gained, split among party.

“I desired to shed its blood,” Muti laughed as she dismissed the swords she had summoned. Her rope darts resumed whipping around her as she turned and jumped to continue dealing with the naiad.

Against a naiad, as it was right now, Astrid really didn’t know what she was able to do, and she just watched as her party overwhelmed the beast. Evidently, with Felix forcing the monster to keep its attention on him and the rest constantly harrying the beast, it wasn’t long before the defenses of the naiad slipped, its watery avatar fell, and it began to try to escape.

“I shall ensure it is slain,” Muti said as she sprinted forward and jumped over the fifteen meters that separated the stretch of sand they all stood on from the next. As she flew over the water, one of her rope darts screamed through the air and pierced into the water, where it evidently caught the monster. On the other shore, Muti yanked her cord, and the monster flew out of the air towards her.

Finally, Astrid saw it clearly, and the monster that was giving them so much trouble looked pretty unremarkable when not surrounded by swirling water under its control. The magic it wielded created a truly massive water effect, an avatar that looked somewhat like a featureless human. The naiad itself, though, looked much like the stories that Astrid had heard about mermaids. It had a fishtail that, somewhere above the hips of the creature, became a vaguely feminine silhouette. Its entire body was covered with scales, though those above its fishtail were much finer and bore a very human-like complexion of a pale tan. It had hair that looked vaguely like seaweed, and as Astrid looked, Muti’s seax appeared in her hand, and she decapitated the beast.

Freshwater Naiad slain. 1,950 experience gained, split among party.

“Level 57 and level 60,” Astrid said as she allowed herself to relax just a little. Muti jumped back to join the rest of the Wanderers as the party continued looking around to see if any other threats approached. When Muti gave the all clear, they settled down to talk, though they didn’t look at each other, but instead continued to observe their surroundings.

“That was tougher than I expected,” Astrid was the first to speak. “I knew I would probably struggle to do anything against the naiad, but experiencing it firsthand was especially frustrating. We’ll have to try out some more options the next time we fight them. Skandr, are there any of the enchanted stones you want me to try out first?”

“No,” he answered. “Anything should work, and it seems like the monster, contrary to my own expectations, has some measure of natural resistance to lightning. Actually, since it looks like it got way weaker after being pulled out of the water, try the wind burst ones. If that separates them from their avatars and makes the spell fall apart, then that’ll be the perfect tool.”

The Wizard continued muttering to himself as he quickly drew a couple spell schematics on the ground. The equations that made it were entirely beyond Astrid’s ability to understand, but after just a dozen seconds, he seemed satisfied with the general idea.

“I’ll make adjustments, but only after we give it a couple of goes. We ready to move on to the next?” Skandr asked. The party looked at each other, and it was obvious that they all were prepared for the next step.

“To the next monster, then,” Astrid smiled as she said. Then, with Muti leading the way, they sought out the next naiad, one to do more than just get experience against.