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“I continue to be impre-“

With a mental command, Jake shifted the stability to destruction as the arrows all exploded right in front of her face, making her scream in pain and retreat.

You talk too much, Jake mused as he decided to make the Hive Queen his primary target. With Arcane Awakening now active, he was on a timer, and he didn’t want to drag out the fight too long. Seeing as the Hive Queen could heal, he would prefer to not end up fucking himself over by just fighting the King and having it constantly healed.

On the note of Arcane Awakening, it hadn’t changed after his evolution besides going down in rarity; it was his body that had changed. The toll the boosting skill had on his body was higher than before after the evolution, and while he still wouldn’t get a backlash from only using the 30% boost, the resource drain was still amplified. Hence the time he could use it was lessened. As he progressed through the grade, his body would once more acclimate to the skill, and he would be able to keep it active longer and longer. This was another reason why he started on the stable 30%.

He would save the full 60% boost for the finale. He wanted to savor this fight.

The Hive King seemingly enraged at his attack on the Queen, charged Jake recklessly, and finally, he felt something he had been missing from this fight. Bloodlust and killing intent. The King was no longer simply trying to injure and capture him. It was going for the kill.

Jake reacted accordingly, dodging away as he still focused his attention on the Queen. The explosions earlier had injured the humanoid upper body, but it was small insignificant wounds. He saw her begin to retract her human side, but Jake quickly capitalized on her transformation and managed to hit the chest of the humanoid body just before it merged into the rest of the large termite body.

The arrow had naturally been coated in poison. A poison that was now merged with the Queen’s body, making it spread fast as he felt the large ectogna fight it off. He wanted to shoot her again but was forced away by the King’s charge. He saw it open its mandibles, and the moment it did, his eyes opened wide as he ducked.

As the mandibles snapped shut, a second semi-transparent apparition of them also snapped where Jake had just been, with this second pair being roughly ten times larger. While in a precarious position from the quick dodge, Jake could not counterattack but found himself forced to blast himself away to avoid a second such attack cutting him in two.

He barely avoided two more such attacks before he was in a better position to teleport away, but this annoyingly allowed the Queen to prepare herself. Stone shards flew at him from the large insect, each of them the size of a spear. So… spears of stone.

The King was hot on his heels even as Jake teleported, shooting an arrow toward the Queen in between every teleport. She raised walls of earth to block them while trying to predict where he would teleport and cut him off with stone spears to allow the King to catch up.

Jake thus teleported in a hopefully unpredictable pattern, but he knew that patterns would emerge even if he tried to avoid them. A few of the arrows he released managed to hit the Queen, which only made her pick up the pace of her magic as he saw her power churn more and more. Streams of gold fired out at the King to make the ridiculously strong and fast insect even stronger and faster as her earth magic went for Jake.

She, too, displayed proper killing intent now and didn’t waste time speaking.

From Jake’s back, wings finally sprung as he began spreading a mist of poison behind himself, the King constantly running into it. At the same time, he began condensing an Arrow of the Ambitious Hunter, along with some other preparations. His occasional arrow at the Queen was enough to make her constantly poisoned, even if she worked to eliminate it, while the King now finally also got affected by the mist. What little his attacks had left earlier was long gone.

Golden waves were sent out by the Queen, pushing away his poison mist and faintly cleansing the King, but Jake responded simply by pumping out more misty death. He felt the frustration from the Queen – the King seemingly only capable of anger or indifference – and he knew it was an opportunity.

He dodged for a bit longer until he “made a mistake.”

His teleport was too short, making Jake semi-cornered with cavern walls to two sides. The Queen cut off the last paths as walls sprung out from the cavern wall, leaving only the path between Jake and the Hive King open.

The King charged straight at Jake as he smiled. He flew straight toward the King, looking as if he wanted to clash with it directly. Then, at the very last moment, his eyes glowed. Gaze activated as the King froze, and rather than attack, Jake twisted his body and kicked off the Hive King, launching himself toward the Queen while sending the King in the opposite direction.

Spears of stone met him, but Jake shot off arcane bolts to blow them up mid-air. The Queen then tried to make a wall, but Jake teleported around it, not allowing the Queen to impede him. Behind him, the King had finally unfrozen, the paralysis lasting far longer than one would expect – proof that the King had a weak soul as a spawn of the Queen.

Jake had already reached the Queen when the King began its charge, and he did not waste his time. The Queen tried to stomp him, but Jake dodged and went wild with both katars. He stabbed her underside dozens of times, her carapace laughable compared to the Hive Kings. She let out a screeching sound as the earth below his feet began glowing, and Jake used a katar as leverage and, with a pull, launched himself into the air to avoid massive spears shooting up toward him. The spears did not pierce the Queen but instead covered her underside to make it unattackable, which just resulted in Jake launching himself down onto the back of the termite. Both katars slammed into her hard, smashing her into her own bed of stone as the poison pumped out of both weapons.

From behind, the King finally arrived. Jake let go of both weapons, attaching only a string of mana to each as he turned to face the King. Unarmed, he dodged the first of its strikes but found himself forced to use Eternal Shadow to counter the next. His Shadow shot out of Jake as he countered with his real body, landing a palm strike on the forehead of the Hive King with Touch of the Malefic Viper active. At the very next second, his hand was airborne, and just before his entire body was torn in half, he disappeared, his body replaced with shadowy smoke as Jake switched places with his Shadow – none of the damage actually suffered. He had still lost a bit of health, but the hand was back.

Poison can seep through the carapace… but barely, Jake concluded. He would have to wrestle with the Hive King for far too long to pump in any meaningful amount. Having it slowly absorb the poison mist was a better idea for now.

Back at the Queen, she had finally managed to push both katars out of her body, forcing Jake to retrieve them using the mana strings. The moment he had both back in his hands, he attacked again, stabbing the Hive Queen several times before he had to retreat away due to the King.

Jake planned on getting the King off his back again, but he failed to even after dodging tens of blows and retreating a bit. As he blocked one of its blows, he felt his arm hurt, and when he went to dodge its leg, a small scratch was left on his thigh.

Faster. Stronger.

The Hive King was getting more powerful than before, despite seemingly nothing changing. It had made him let down his guard slightly, resulting in losing out in the exchange, and as the Queen was allowed to stabilize herself, things got worse.

Massive amounts of mana gathered, her body practically glowing. Brownish energy gathered above her into an orb that looked almost solid, floating there like a ball of mud. Jake had no idea what it was until suddenly, it shot out a thin brown beam toward him.

Jake felt the danger and dodged, the beam missing and flying toward one of the small plants within the cavern. When the plant was hit, it instantly turned into stone before crumbling into dirt. He assumed it was some kind of petrification, but it felt far more powerful than whatever that manticore in the Order of the Malefic Viper dungeon had done.

The beam had thrown him off his game, allowing the King to close in. Its attack failed to cut him, but it still slammed its leg into his shoulder, making Jake spin in the air to reduce the damage from the impact. When he landed, Jake teleported away just in time to avoid the massive mandibles about to sever his head from his body.

Pulling out his bow, Jake decided that keeping his distance from the Queen would be the wisest as he also ran away from the King. More beams got blasted out, forcing him to not only dodge the extremely fast Hive King but also not get petrified. He still managed to adapt, the King’s powerup not impacting its patterns, giving him opportunities to get off potshots at the Hive Queen. She seemed quite distracted with her giant orb, allowing the arrows to simply strike her body.

Each one did little damage, but with enough, it would accumulate. Especially the poison. The beams began to become less and less frequent, which made Jake frown. Because the orb summoned by the Queen was giving off more and more intense energy, and his sense of danger grew with every second.

Jake decided to pick up the pace as he pushed himself further. Arcane Awakening increased in intensity as he activated the Destructive Form, boosting Agility, Strength, Intelligence, Perception, and Willpower by 50%, with every attack now also dealing a small amount of extra arcane damage. The defensive stats he could do without, as dodging was his only option.

With increased Agility, Jake could finally get some distance, enough to shoot off quickly-channeled Arcane Powershots at the Hive Queen. The first two hit, each noticeably dealing damage as they penetrated deep, leaving holes in the C-grade’s body, the wound’s themselves burning with arcane energy and poison. After the second arrow, the Hive King suddenly stopped chasing him and instead moved to defend the Queen.

His third Arcane Powershot was blocked by the Hive King simply throwing its body into it, and to Jake’s astonishment, the insect just got back up again. No real damage was dealt besides a few minor cracks in its carapace that were already visibly healing.

Determined if a little dejected, Jake shot off several more Powershots at the Queen, but every single one was intercepted by the King. The beams from the Queen had completely stopped at this point as she just poured everything she had into whatever she was preparing. He knew something powerful was coming, something he knew it would be wisest to stop, but he also wanted to see what she would do. Additionally… he had no idea how to stop her. Gaze didn’t work either when he tried that. It did work on the King, but all that allowed Jake to do was hit a single Powershot on the Queen.

Still, he continued trying to land enough Arcane Powershots to break her focus, but the King kept blocking. Just as he began to feel like he was wasting his energy on the Hive King – after the twenty-third quick Powershot that hit it - he saw the monstrous termite actually begin to get affected.

While his blows didn’t manage to pierce or destroy its armor, they still caused a bit of internal damage from the sheer impact, reminding Jake that he was facing a flesh-and-blood lifeform. This was not like the Altmar Census Golem, which was honestly the opponent this Hive King reminded him the most of. They both had resilience way off the charts, with his attacks feeling meaningless before their defenses. However, while the Altmar Golem was indeed just a machine, this termite king was not, and the repeated impacts would affect its combat ability.

If he kept going like this it was a sure road to victory, but just then, a change.

He felt the power within the orb reach a crescendo. It was overflowing with earth affinity, and with just a single push from the Hive Queen, the floodgates would open. That push came as a crack formed on the orb, releasing a beam of brownish light that hit the ground and petrified it. Another crack then came, microfractures covering the entire thing in less than a second.

Jake did not know what he had expected the attack of the Queen to do… but at that moment, he knew he had underestimated her when it came to her magic. He retreated backward as he formed dozens of layers of stable arcane barriers, scales covered every part of his body, and he activated Pride of the Malefic Viper to further strengthen his magical defenses. Finally, he shifted Arcane Awakening to its Stable Mode, boosting all his defensive stats by 50% instead of the offensive ones.

Just in time as the orb shattered.

The explosion made no noise but was simply the outer layer of the orb turning to dust. Brown light spread out through the entire cavern like an expanding domain, turning everything in its wake into stone. Jake, even with all his preparations, could only grit his teeth as the wave reached him. His barriers turned brown one by one, and his scales gave off noise as they fought the petrification. In vain, as they too turned to stone, Jake was forced to shut his eyes as he felt them also begin to petrify, the world going black as the energy invaded his body, turning him to stone from within.