Risen World

Chapter 127: Rewards and Finishing the Grind

After the fight had ended most of the ants had been killed off by the other groups while the two large ant generals were lying dead on the floor after what Cinder and Tank had done to them. Cinder's opponent was filled with so many holes all over its body from Cinder spearing it with her legs. Some of the metal armor was completely burnt off exposing the fragile exoskeleton underneath while a couple smaller holes were on its neck where Cinder had injected it with her poison to make things even more oppressive. It was a complete one sided match after the ant had lost the security of its armor.

Tanks opponent on the other hand looked like someone had taken a heavy mallet to it with all the large dents that could be found all over its body. Its head was completely crushed in the end and that was the end of its life. Lilly was congratulating both of them for a well fought battle, but she seemed a little down at the fact that she let her opponent get away from her, of course there wasn't really anything she could do about it with the speed it had and in the end she had held it up more than long enough for Joshua to get the job done. If anything the fact that the elite ant had exploded and knocked Joshua away had prevented him from running into the hidden trump card of the Ant Queen. Derrick ended up taking that blow instead of him, and he wasn't quite sure if he was strong enough to survive it without his aura shield being available.

The other groups had lost a lot of their momentum in their fights after seeing the Ant Queen die by Joshua's hands. For the most part Robert and his group went back to taking care of the stray ant generals that were still alive. The ant generals were a mess without their queen and just fought randomly instead of a neat line like they had been doing at first. It made things much easier for Robert and the others as they grouped up and put the ants down one at a time. The rest of the Raider's Guild members on the other hand seemed lost. After seeing their leader die at the hands of the boss they became vacant and left most of the ant killing to the other groups.

In the end they were able to clear the rest of the ants out quickly before Robert came over to talk to Joshua. "I'm guessing you got the clear on the dungeon then?" He asked as he looked up towards Joshua.

Before Joshua could respond he saw the message from the system show that he had cleared the dungeon and could see it showing a bunch of rewards he had gained for accomplishing it. Joshua decided to wait until his group was alone to check to see all the things he had gained from clearing the dungeon. "Yep, it seems the group that kills the Ant Queen is the winner in this dungeon. Keep that in mind the next time you decide to enter." He replied after closing up the system messages.

"I don't think there will be a next time for me." Robert replied with a smile with all the tension from the battle and competition gone.

"Why?" Joshua asked with a bewildered look.

"Honestly it's time for me and a few other veterans of this area to move on to more challenging places. Besides I plan on joining my brother's guild soon. He offered me to join a while ago, but I decided to hold off until I could get in on my own qualifications." Robert explained before turning to look at the fallen dagger of his former rival in the area. "It's a shame that we lost men here, but that's a part of the life style I guess. Just hope those who've survived learned a much needed lesson."

Joshua nodded at the statement and watched as Robert turned and lead his group towards the exit door that had formed behind where the queen's body was left. Joshua watched as several people started following him out, even the Raider's Guild members followed his lead in a down trodden manner. "Well I'm glad that's over. It was a fairly tense situation." Lilly said with a sigh as she looked at the carcass of the Ant Queen.

"Tends to happen wherever I go." Joshua said with a smile. "Well let's see what exactly we got out of all of this." Joshua reopened the system message to read it and smiled at what he saw.

[Congratulations on clearing the Ant Hill Dungeon. You are the first group to clear the dungeon and that will go down in the system records. All members of your group or any guild that you create in the future will be given a thirty percent experience bonus when fighting in this dungeon. Rare materials will also appear more often in the dungeon for your group members. Individual reward being processed clear speed excellent reward decided, you shall be given the blink skill]

Joshua's eyes brightened up at this. He had a good idea what that skill was since he had just seen Derrick use it when he was escaping the Ant Queen's retaliation the first time around. It allowed him to move a set distance in an instant. From what Joshua could tell the distance was rather short and the cool down was probably on the long side since Derrick didn't use it the second time he charged in, but it would give him an alternative to wasting his aura blast to move short distances in a burst of speed. Whenever he did that he had to rely on his pure skills with his scale blade to do damage since at the moment aura blast and echo strike were the only skills or abilities he had that could deal damage.

[Blink- It is a movement skill that allows the user to instantly move to another location within his sight. The distance traveled can be up to thirty feet and the cool down is thirty seconds. As the skill levels the distance of travel will become larger and the cool down time will become shorter.]

'Well that was much better than I thought.' Joshua thought to himself as he realized that he must have gotten a much better version of the skill then Derrick had gotten. Derrick didn't seem to be able to travel even half that distance, in fact from what Joshua could tell it seemed more like five feet or so for him. In the end it was an amazing skill for Joshua and it was something he truly needed for positioning in a fight, hell maybe in the future if he got the cool down low enough he could consider it a full on combat technique and be able to blink around often while fighting. It would definitely help with positioning and going for weak spots on enormous creatures.

"Nice, I got something rather interesting this time around." Lilly said with a smile as she sent something over to Joshua through the party chat.

[Empower- It is a support skill that allows the user to strengthen the ability of any of its pets while being used. It strengthens said ability by fifty percent and this applies as long as the user is currently using the empower ability or the pet is still using their ability that is being empowered. This skill can level up and with each level up the boost given by the empower ability grows stronger.]

"Well damn, that's pretty good. There are several ways you could use this." Joshua said with a smile. They had both gotten abilities that could be incredibly useful in the future.

"Yep, I could either use it to improve the power of one of Tank's or Cinder's attacks or maybe I can even use it to improve Flutter's boost ability or Mr. and Mrs. Floppy's healing abilities. It's all around skill that should come in handy." Lilly said happily as she started brain storming on all of the ways she could use the ability for their benefit. "It's just a shame that this time around my pets didn't get any new skills."

"That's not a problem, we can't get skills every time we clear a dungeon otherwise it would be a bit unfair to those without pets. Besides who knows what else we will gain when we finish with this place, we've still got to grind this place until level thirty five isn't that right Joshua?" Tank said with a big grin.

"Yep, and since we're already level thirty-three It's not going to take all that long. With the experience boost we should be able to grind this place at a fairly fast pace. In fact with our new abilities I have a few ideas on how we can clear this place even more efficiently, but for now let's head out and get some rest before doing anything else." Joshua said as he turned towards the Ant Queen and put the large body into his inventory. He definitely wasn't going to use it for food or anything like that, but he was going to use the heavy metallic armor for material and he knew Naomi would love it. The stuff was tough enough to block off his scale blade the only problem was it wasn't very heat resistant, but a few enchantments from Nathan could fix that.

The group headed out of the dungeon and got some rest on the fringe of the Ant Hill that night like a lot of other people. The dungeon didn't take all that long to respond, in fact the next morning both Joshua and Tank could sense the presence of the Ant Queen once again although it was faint since they were so far away, but it was there. For the next couple of days they grinded the dungeon once again along with some other brave people that took advantage of Joshua's group taking the lead. Of course Joshua made sure he always got the kill on the Ant Queen, but this time around he figured out some different techniques to take it down. For example Lilly was able to use her empower ability along with Cinder's smoldering smoke to amplify the heat to a point where the Ant Queen and her generals armor was over heated constantly. This gave Tank the freedom to tear apart the generals while Joshua rushed ahead and dealt with the Ant Queen. Of course the elite ant came out and tried to put up a fight as well, but even with its speed it was no match for Cinder and Lilly who made quick work of it.

The fight had become much easier and after going through the dungeon twice they had both reached level thirty- five along with most of Lilly's pets. Tank and Cinder took more to grow in level, but the weaker pets didn't take nearly as much. Lilly made sure to keep the other pets out when fighting the mobs throughout the dungeon and with that she was able to keep up their leveling. On their last run through both Joshua and Lilly were surprised to see three of Lilly's pets evolve into another stage. The two rabbits changed as they grew an extra horn and their ears seemed to grow longer to the point where when spread out they could cover their entire bodies with them. Their fur also grew a bit longer and softer and their eyes seemed to have a faint pink glow to them whenever they used their magic.

The pair of rabbits had an improvement in all of their healing capabilities and they also learned an assortment of abilities that could heal several different infections, some of which Joshua hadn't even come across at that point. It was like having little doctors along for the ride. They were still rather defenseless themselves, and their stats outside of the ones necessary to boost their healing were completely abysmal, but they could do their jobs incredibly well.

Flutter on the other hand had an evolution that made her grow in size to the point where if she were to cling on to Lilly's back it would look as though Lilly had butterfly wings. In fact one of the new abilities Flutter learned do to her evolution was a weightless spell that allowed her to carry Lilly and fly around like a pair of wings for her. Flutter wasn't as fast as Cinder, but she could definitely move very well in the air. Her boost ability had strengthened to the point where it boosted all physical or mental stats by twenty percent instead of ten and her illusions became more powerful with a greater variety. She could camouflage them with her dust or she could terrify her enemies to get them to back off.

All in all they had gained a large assortment of things from clearing the dungeon and now it was time for them to head back and get use to their new abilities. Joshua planned to finish one more expedition before joining up with Adrian and the others in their training for the foreseeable future.