Chapter 188 - 187 The Cordillera Depths (3)

Having defeated the alpha of the wolf pack that had came to attack them while they dismantled their earlier kill, Lilia looked towards Marcus with an expectant smile on her face.

Seeing that his little sister wanted to be praised Marcus walked up to Lilia and patted her on the head and said, "You did a good job, you made sure to be carful even when you enemy was injured. Now let us get out of here, these were just regular wolves so we do not need to take them apart, if we stay for too long another beast or monster will come by."

Nodding her head Lilia began following Marcus as he began walking around the periphery of the woods away from the sight of their battle.

'Well, that was a much better second battle for Lilia. I can tell now she has gotten too used to fighting people at the academy so this will be some good experience for her. Ah and the aura suppressor I made for Blitz seems to be doing well. The wolves and the scaled bear seemed to disregard him, which is good. Otherwise, Blitz would scare off all of the weaker monsters and beast with good instincts and attract the stronger ones.'

While they walked around the outside of the large forest around them, Marcus continued to analyze Lilia's battle and come up with a rough plan of what they were going to do going forward, when he abruptly stopped and grabbed Lilia before jumping back.

And in an instant later what appeared to be a tree suddenly bent forward and the top of it jammed into he ground where Marcus had been only moments ago.

With its initial strike having been evaded, the creature that had been pretending to be a tree burst out of the ground, and before Marcus and Lilia was a huge scorpion that had dug underground and disguised its stinger as a tree.

'Level twenty-four faux tree scorpion. Damn that things camouflage is good, if it were not for danger sense, I never would have known it was there until it attacked.'

Looking at the twenty-foot-long scorpion that had just revealed itself, Marcus said to Lilia, "Step back and attack it with your ranged spell, I think it is time for Roxene to get a bit of experience."

Popping Roxene out of his companion storage, the sleeping wolf yawned once before looking at the at Marcus and then the fast-approaching scorpion.

Jumping out of Marcus' arms, Roxene bounded towards the scorpion as Lilia's first spell impacted its body.

Unfortunately, her spell did little damage as the hard exoskeleton of the scorpion barely dented from the impact.

However, as Roxene got closer the scorpion reached out with its right pincer and tried to crush her.

In a flash of light Roxene began shining and nimbly avoided the pincher before she began running up the arm of the huge scorpion.

Feeling and seeing the small wolf pup running across its body, the faux tree scorpion tried to grab Roxene with its other pincer but found the small target she provided difficult to grab.

With the little beast having avoided both of its pincer the scorpion struck towards Roxene using its stinger with deadly accuracy.

Seeing the stinger coming for her Roxene jumped and spun her body in the air as she cast the tier three darkness magic spell, blades of darkness.

A ten-foot-long blade of darkness then flew from her tail and met the incoming stinger.

Meeting no resistance, the blade of darkness cut clean through the scorpion's tail causing it to let out a piercing screech as one of its most potent weapons was permanently taken from it.

Its tail now severed from its body, blood blue began gushing from the stump that was left as the scorpion began flailing around trying crush Roxene.

Easily dodging the scorpion's wild attacks, Roxene waited for one of its claws to pass by and as it did, she ran under the scorpion, jumped, and using her powerful bite skill ripped off one of the scorpion's legs.

Roxene then continued to slowly dismantle the scorpion until all of its limbs were gone having been ripped out by Roxene's surprisingly powerful jaws.

With the scorpion now torn apart and left with only its abdomen and head, Roxene jumped on top of the helpless creature and raised her left paw into the air.

Striking down in a burst of light her claws pieced into he scorpion's head and the light around them came out the bottom as the life of the scorpion was ended.

Jumping off of the scorpion Roxene sauntered on over to Marcus and telepathically said to him, 'I suppose that will do as a warm up, so shall we go in deeper to find suitable prey.'

Shaking his head Marcus looked at Roxene and said to her, "Actually I was thinking we stay on the edge of the forest for a few days and train Lilia up a bit where the weaker beasts and monsters are before heading in."

Her interest rapidly plummeting Roxene said back, 'Fine but do not expect me to fight against anything weaker than that scorpion.'

Roxene then made her way over to Blitz who flinched when he saw her coming and nearly had a heart attack when she jumped up on him.

Roxene not caring about the terror she was instilling in Blitz fell asleep on his back.

'Sometimes she acts more like a cat than a dog, but I guess that is just her personality.'

With the scorpion that had threaten them now defeated, Marcus turned towards Lilia and said, "Congratulations on your level up, now how about we look for the herbs that you need for some of the request you took."

Lilia and Marcus then got to work searching the outside area of the forest quickly finding the common herbs that Lilia had accepted to find.

During this time a large python had attacked Lilia, but the beast was only level thirteen and Lilia made quick work of it.

"Well, we have collected all of the herbs you needed, now we just need to get a few more magic cores and you will have all of your first requests done and can rank up."

Nodding her head Lilia stored away the collected herbs into her magic bag and their group continued to walk around looking for more opponents.

Continuing, Marcus soon spotted something that caught his attention, there was an area of rock about forty feet high that had a number of tunnels going into it.

Having everyone stop, Marcus went up in his ghost form and investigated and after floating in found that it was actually the hive of some type of bee monster.

'Tunnel bee level twelve, tunnel bee warrior level fifteen, tunnel bee captain level twenty-one, tunnel bee general level twenty-eight, and tunnel bee queen level thirty-two.'

After going around the hive Marcus had appraised all of the different variations of the bees he could find and was pretty happy with what he had found.

The lower-level bees would be a good way for Lilia to get some experience while the stronger one would not be bad for him and Roxene.

With the information from his scouting Marcus floated back down to Lilia and his beast companions and told them the plan.

"I will go and lure a few of them out and bring them back to fight. Lilia you will be taking on the first few batches which should be a bit weaker than you and after we get through a few groups I will go and really shake the nest and bring out the majority of the hive. Once that is done me and Roxene will go in and finish off the queen."

Their plan set, Marcus floated back up to the hive and began banging on the walls.

After waiting a few seconds five bees came out to investigate the sound but found nothing around anymore.

Except as they were searching a force cannon fired from Lilia blasted one of them out of the sky and the four remaining bees angrily flew towards her.

Of course, these were not your normal bees but three-foot-long flying syringes with a stinger sharp enough to pierce iron and a potent venom that could incapacitate an average man with one sting.

Unfortunately, Lilia was more than capable than dealing with four bees lower level than her and as they tried to sting her, she easily avoided their attacks and with one punch killed each of them.

Marcus then continued to bring out small groups of bees by making little disturbances near the openings of the hive and Lilia would take them out.

However, it was not long before a much larger group of bees numbering over thirty came flying out to investigate and being lead by one of the bee captains.

Jumping out of the tunnel instead of his normal routine of turning ethereal and invisible when the bees came by, Marcus made his way back to Lilia.

"There is a bigger swarm coming this time. I will thin out their ranks a bit and let you deal with the remaining ones."

After telling Lilia their game plan, the large swarm of bees came out and quickly locked onto Marcus and Lilia who had been attacking their hive.

The bees unlike before did not swarm towards Lilia and Marcus but stayed airborne and began shotting some type of acid out of their mouths.

Throwing up a shield of light Marcus brought Lilia close to him as the acid rained down harmlessly on Marcus' magical protection.

The acid itself was not very strong, but the bees now that they were being lead by one of their captains seemed to be more organized and were trying to tire out Marcus and Lilia and make an opening before going in for the kill.

'Fine you can go first.'

Reaching his hand around the shield Marcus fired a darkness bullet toward the tunnel bee captain, but before it could reach one of the warrior bees around it flew in front and took the darkness bullet.

Grumbling Marcus decided to get a bit more aggressive and this time instead of a darkness bullet he cast a fireball.

Boom!

With a loud explosion a twenty-foot radius fiery death expanded around the swarm of bees killing most of them.

Luckily a few of them managed to survive just being on the edge of the fire ball, and with room to maneuver now Lilia went forward and dealt with the remaining bees.

'Well, I killed a few more than I wanted to, but Lilia managed to pick off the stragglers, and now I know to kill the captain first before they get into any type of formation.'

However, before Marcus could go back up and lure out more bees, a loud buzzing sound reverberated throughout the area as a swarm of hundreds of bees began flying out of the hive and in the lead, Marcus could see one of the ten-foot-long tunnel bee generals.