"Not good."
With the shield shattered into pieces, there was nothing to stand between them and the monsters anymore.
Agata and Theo had the same reaction when it snapped. They raised several pillars at random locations to confuse the monsters.
The pillars reached the ceiling to make it look like a wall.
Unexpectedly, the monsters didn't seem to fall for the same trick anymore. After learning Agata's smoke disappeared together with the shield, the monsters didn't hesitate and rammed their heads against the wall.
Theo's pillars instantly disappeared as he didn't train his Awareness for this. Agata's pillars managed to hold for a second before snapping into two.
Seeing the situation become chaotic, Theo took a deep breath and gathered all his killing intent into one single point before releasing it toward the monster at the very front.
"!!!" The monster stopped for two seconds.
Theo took that chance to hit the monster with his spear and crack the skin. After that, he sent several Magic Bullets and killed the monster from the inside.
Two monsters managed to break Agata's walls and ambushed him, but Ava reached him on time and turned back to her battle form after becoming small to sneak around.
She struck the monster's belly and electrocuted the organs before blowing the body to the other attacker.
With the force Ava's generated, the other monster tripped and crashed to the wall, struggling to get away from the corpse.
Theo didn't have enough time to thank Ava because three more monsters pounced on him. Ava even had two before her.
Suddenly, a huge block emerged from the floor and another one came out from the ceiling. The bottom one lifted the monster up and the top block stopped them from moving.
This pair of blocks seemed to appear around them, trapping all the monsters.
Without even looking at her, Theo knew Agata was the one summoning them.
This was her technique where she incorporated the environment to her advantage like Theo's advice. In this case, she used the strong stone floor to gain enough support for her own stone block to lift the monster up and used the ceiling to lock them.
Seeing the chance appear before him, Theo smiled and struck the monster on the head, piercing through it and destroying the brain.
After that, he moved to another monster and killed it without a problem.
Ava also did the same, knowing she couldn't let the monster alive and send it to Theo since they were trapped inside here and surrounded by monsters. One wrong move would lead them to death, so she chose to kill them herself.
Little did she know, her action actually allowed Theo and Agata to bring a precious sample back to the city later since the monsters she killed wouldn't become a card if they touched them.
Still, Ava somehow decided to split her focus as she kept glancing at the darkness. She seemed curious about the monster who dared to hit them from afar.
The answer soon came in the form of action. The fire-like aura that covered the monster earlier reappeared. This time, the monster was closer to them, so they could finally see its appearance.
Unlike other monsters, this one didn't have transparent skin. Instead, it had a solid and hard red skin. The monster looked like a lizard crawling on the floor.
When the lizard reached a certain position, it opened its mouth again and planned to shoot another light ball.
This was the time Clone Theo had been waiting for. He changed back from his ant form to his human form and appeared right above the lizard.
His Magic Augmentation had incited the Magic Power in his body and he poured all that power into his fist using the Magic Power Expansion.
He then struck the lizard's head from above.
Bam.
The lizard's head crashed to the ground and made a small crack. The lizard seemed to lose consciousness for a second, but the head was still intact.
It indeed had a tougher skin than others, so Theo changed his plan.
Before the lizard could recover, Theo opened its mouth and sent the Magic Bullets into his throat.
The Magic Bullets exploded simultaneously, creating a powerful explosion inside the monster's body.
In that instant, Theo received a notification for killing the lizard.
Now that the threat had been eliminated, Clone Theo changed back to his ant form to sneak around before ambushing some monsters.
They worked together to kill all the monsters in their area, hoping that no more monsters would come at them.
Luckily, their hope came true as the lizard became the last monster that attacked them. Theo and the others finally killed all 35 monsters.
"Huft…" Agata let out a long sigh a few times to get her breathing back. She looked at Theo with a tired expression, saying, "Theo. Do you think we can continue like this?"
"I am not very sure. The air is pretty thin in this area, so it's gonna be dangerous for sure." Theo nodded, noticing their problem.
"Still, it's not like we can get some oxygen tanks." Agata shrugged. "At the very least, the air circulation should be enough for a small fight."
"Yeah. Agree with that. We should kill 20 monsters at a time before resting for ten minutes. This should be enough…" Theo glanced at her.
"I am not very sure. We should try to fight for ten minutes first and check whether our body can continue."
"Yeah. Let's do that." Theo then turned to Ava and asked, "How about you?"
"Same. The air is too thin, so I need to rest. I wonder if we can get some air if we come closer to the crack." Ava pointed at the gap above them.
"Unless you're very close to the surface, I don't think it will work." Theo shook his head in disappointment.
"Well, I will just rest like usual then."
"Okay. I will send my clone to scout and bring more monsters later. I will make sure to control everything."
"Got it."