After nearly an hour of constant fighting, the number of attacking crab monsters seemed to slowly dwindle.
By then, Blaine and the four 2-Star captains were nearly exhausted.
Rick was especially bad in this regard, as he desperately struggled to prevent himself from falling to his knees.
However, exhaustion wasn't the worst thing.
All of them had sustained some degree of injury from the confrontation.
Blood decorated their battered bodies, both from the crab monsters and their own, dying their once pristine white uniforms with splotches of red and blue.
Sections of their skin were covered in purple-coloured bruises or long fleshy gashes.
Blaine even broke his left arm, which caused it to dangle limply by his side.
Though he didn't let any of the pain show on his face.
With everyone slowly growing tired and weary, it wasn't just once or twice that a Rock Crab had broken through their formation and snuck in a couple of attacks from behind.
During these two-pronged pincer attacks, the group members sustained the most damage.
Blaine's mana had almost run out a long time ago, so he wasn't able to rely on his ability to create green mana constructs or utilize his sword's glowing white form.
As the only 1-Star among them, his body was far less durable than that of his peers.
Once a living being reached the 2-Star rank or Rank 2, their bodies would be enhanced by the mana in their cores to become faster, stronger, and more durable depending on the maximum amount of mana their core had absorbed.
Even though Blaine's 1-Star core was nearly full, he couldn't utilize it to improve the state of his body.
It was due to this reason that 2-Stars almost always outclassed 1-Stars in confrontations.
There was a nearly insurmountable qualitative difference between the two.
Even though Blaine had trained his body to its utmost limit, this simple rule made it so he couldn't overpower most 2-Stars in a straight confrontation, much less those as experienced as the Captains accompanying him.
But if there was a bright side to their grim situation, it was that since most of the crab abominations had all died in the confrontation, they had managed to form a natural barrier of bodies.
That wall of chitinous corpses made it extremely hard for the ones behind to squeeze their way through.
Even though they made a pile of bodies to climb over each other, at some point, they had reached the ceiling and couldn't go any higher.
Since Rick had compressed the tunnel pathway, the ceiling level had also decreased significantly.
All the creatures could do was mindlessly push against the corpses of their fallen brethren or simply cut their losses and consume the multitude of already available corpses.
Through this, the group managed to catch a breather.
No longer having a target to fight, Ginny pulled back before quickly scanning the members of their group.
After contemplating for a moment, she made her way over to Blaine.
Seeing her approach, Blaine used his only remaining good arm to deal a fatal blow to the injured Rock Crab he was fighting.
"Let me see your wounds," Ginny said as her hands began to glow with a soft aquamarine light.
Blaine nodded before turning his injured body to point his injured arm in her direction.
Pulling back the slightly torn sleeves of his blood-soaked uniform, she frowned as she saw pieces of white bone protruding from his arm.
"This… Your arm is fractured and horribly so."
She threw Blaine a worried look before placing her glowing hands on his wound.
The bone fragment slowly retracted back into his skin, leaving a bloody hole where it had protruded from moments prior.
However, even that sealed up as if it were rewinding through time.
As she finished the treatment of his arm, Blaine could feel the excruciating pain be replaced with a blissful sense of pleasure.
It wasn't of the sexual variety but closer to the feeling of enjoying a nice warm bath after enduring the bitter cold.
Soon, the various other injuries he had accrued across his body sealed up as if they never existed in the first place. Blaine closed his eyes momentarily as the feeling of relief washed over him.
Even though his injuries were treated, Blaine was still exhausted… Both mentally and Physically.
Furthermore, his mana core was still almost completely dried out, and it would take a considerable amount of time for it to naturally replenish itself.
While he would be able to put up a better fight with two arms instead of one, it was a fair cry from his usual ability.
After getting the go-ahead from Ginny, Blaine separated himself from her.
After returning to the mountain of corpses, he thrust his sword into a rock crab that was forcing itself through a gap between the dead bodies.
Ginny, on the other hand, went over to Rick to treat the tired Captain's injuries.
However, just as Blaine's sword was about to reach its target, he sensed the entire pile of corpses suddenly start to move.
It was then that he heard Delsie's audible voice ring out.
"Everyone back away! It's about to collapse!"
Rick, who was still undergoing treatment, let out a short curse under his breath before he and Ginny pulled themselves back to safety.
The others followed suit immediately as well.
Just as they did, the area they were standing in moments earlier was utterly consumed by the tide of crab-like creatures, most of which were dead but some of which were still very much alive.
Without giving the weary humans a moment of reprieve, the tide continued surging forward until it wasn't too far ahead from their white van.
Furthermore… They had also spilled out of the narrowed section of the tunnel, giving unrestrained freedom to still-living crabs at the front of the pack.
Some directed their attention away from the weary fighters and hungrily eyed the two girls standing behind them.