Chapter 32 - A lot of Phase IIIs (Part I)

"Whoah," Eo remarked. "These monsters look quite easy. Reya, you want them?"

Obviously, it wasn't easy, as they hadn't faced five Phase IIIs at once (though they had faced two—of which one of them had to be pushed off).

Reya nervously laughed. "Okay, but I'm getting all the loot then. You sure you want to opt out?"

Eo nervously laughed as well. "The loot? Nevermind! I'm staying!"

"Wow, you sure are greedy."

Reya managed to just barely finish that last sentence as a giant bone impaled the ground right behind her.

There were two less powerful Phase IIIs, similar to the tortoise and demon-types they had fought earlier. These were a Giant Queen Ant-type and a Bear-type. Then, there was the more powerful Sykhus-type and the much, much more powerful Phoenix-type.

Eo cleared his dry throat.

"So, do you wanna like, kill the anty or the cute teddy bear first?"

"I used to have a teddy bear I kept with me when I slept, so that's probably going to make me feel guilty."

"Aww, how cute."

"Suddenly, you look like a perfect target for my lightning strike. Weird, isn't it?"

Eo gulped and stopped the banter.

"Aight, let's attack the Giant Ant-type first then."

"Finally we're on the same page."

Eo dodged another bone from the Sykhus and ran to the Giant Queen Ant-type. Reya followed.

The abdomen of the Giant Queen Ant quivered, and the head of a smaller ant started emerging from it.

Reya put on a disgusted face.

"I'm telling you, that's not how ants are born. Why do they gotta name these monsters after creatures that are way more innocent!"

"Technically, we're naming them because that's sort of what they look like… no one actually remembers their 'scientific' names."

"Still, that's disgusting…"

The freshly birthed Giant Ant immediately went in front of the Queen Ant. Five seconds later, another Giant Ant defended the Queen Ant.

"How did we kill that Phase III Demon thing again?"

"I remember something popping like a balloon. Did we inflate the enemy or something?"

"No, I'm pretty sure I managed to electrify your dagger and stab it in the face."

"That's pretty un-vague for not remembering how to kill an enemy."

"Haha. Toss me more daggers."

Reya electrified the dagger she already had in her hand and threw it with pinpoint accuracy at the Giant Ants. When it struck, the head of the ant seemed to briefly glow white before exploding. Eo tossed Reya freshly synthesized daggers, and Reya would repeat the process.

The other monsters were starting to annoyingly get in the way, so Eo set up a dozen or so dagger-chains that would flail back and forth extremely fast, shielding him and Reya. That way, they could focus on destroying each enemy one by one.

While Reya was throwing the sparking knives like some sort of madman ninja, Eo yelled to her.

"Start spamming the lightning!"

"Of course!"

And with that, the Giant Ants also experienced the repeated smites of a really excited Reya.

After about fifteen minutes Reya was finally one-to-one with the Giant Queen Ant. It was really annoying how she couldn't single out the queen with her smites because the queen's spawn would crawl on top of her to absorb the damage. Reya had killed at least 200 ants at this point. Occasionally a twin or triplet ant would get birthed, making the number crawl up even faster.

Finally, however, she was finished with all of the Queen's babies.

"Time for the grand feast!" Reya threw the electrified daggers in certain arcs, where the Queen Ant backed away from predictably. Reya had gathered a large amount of voltage near those places, and unleashed an absolutely ungodly amount of electricity into it.

The Queen Ant, with entire amps of electricity running through it, quickly collapsed. Although still alive(!), it was temporarily paralyzed. Reya took advantage of this and ran over to it. She whipped out an Eo-certified piece of sharp metal, electrified it, and plunged it deeply into its head.

Being unsure about her own knowledge of ant biology, she quickly plunged more electrified daggers into other parts of its body in a panic. Fluidy explosions dotted all over its giant body as its exoskeleton crumpled from the pressure.

"You know Reya, you looked pretty cool there until you looked scared that it would come back to life to haunt you or something." Eo started cracking up.

Reya glared at him. "Yeah, and what are you doing? Flailing a bunch of knives randomly in the air? You looked cool until I saw you."

Eo looked at himself. "Wait, what if you were blind? Would you always think I'm cool then?!"

"Ahh, just forget it."

"Wait, so if I flailed knives randomly in the air would I look really cool to blind people or something?"

"I said, FORGET IT! Also, blind people can't see."