Chapter 77 - Ring of fire

The Hercules beetles were indeed tough, they had a hard outer shell and were quick in movement. Their main strength though was their forceps. If they managed to grab hold of you, they could crush an average human's bones in seconds.

The hardest thing for me was to act like I was struggling. The good thing though was I was at least getting something out of it. I would simply block the beetle's attack using my gauntlet with one hand and strike with my blade with the other. Putting on quite a show. Then when I thought enough time had passed, I would infuse my sword Ki killing the Beatles.

Gary was faring quite well. The two beetles would attack him from both sides but he managed to block their strikes in a way were one beetle was in the way of the other. The problem was when Gary struck the beetle with his sword, it bounced right of its body. His sword Ki and his sword were just not strong enough.

The beetles had him cornered by either side, Gary waited for the right moment for one of them to attack, then when he dodged one beetle, he used his sword to shove the beetle into the other. The added momentum from Gary' strike allowed the beetle's forceps to pierce the other, killing both of them in the process.

Martha and monk showed brilliant teamwork. Monk would lure the beetles out and get them in a good enough position to allow Martha to shoot. Martha had just upgraded her bow into an intermediate bow allowing her arrows to pierce the shells of the beetles. But the beetles were tough, the arrows would only get stuck in the beetles, they didn't go all the way through. Then it was Monk's turn, he would further use his strength to hit the bows fully through killing the beetles.

Ian was currently using his brute strength against the beetle's piercers; they were locked in a stalemate. The beetle was trying it's best to crush Ian but Ian was putting his blood and sweat, not allowing it to close its mouth.

Kyle couldn't do anything but run away. He avoided the beetle's strike well but any attack he did back, wouldn't even leave a mark on the beetle. The battle between Ian and the beetle were coming to an end and Ian had won. Manging to rip the beetle's pierces from its body.

Ian picked up the piercers and slammed them down on the beetle. Now with only one beetle left Ian picked up the two pierces holding them like Axes and Ian was good at using Axes. It was only a matter of time before the two of them defeated the next one.

Dan was doing oddly well, he switched from his regular spear to the heavy stick we all tried to carry when we first met him. Currently, he was swinging it at the beetle like a bat. Even if he couldn't pierce the beetle's shell, he was doing a lot of damage to it. Eventually yellow liquid started to spit out from the beetle and it stopped moving.

Lastly was Slyvia. Her shield acted as an impenetrable defence, not allowing the beetle to attack her. The problem was her attacks were far too weak. No matter how skilful she was with the blade she couldn't do anything to hurt the beetle. The beetle to knew there was nothing it could do, so it started to fly off. Martha shot the beetle down as it was flying away and the others finished it off.

Martha could see that Slyvia was upset that she was one of the only ones who didn't defeat the beetle. She ran over and said.

"Don't worry it this just isn't your type of beast, plus it's not like you couldn't beat it, you just need to upgrade your sword."

"You're right, come on let's gather the crystals."

Each pair had fought a fair distance away from each other but not far enough that we couldn't see each other. The system had collected one of the intermediate crystals for me so that left me with carving one out of the beetles.

When we were all done getting the crystals, we started to make our way back towards Slyvia. Suddenly, a creaking noise could be heard, I looked around and a tree was falling between the two of us. The tree slammed to the ground blocking the path between Me and Gary and the rest of the group.

Then the trees suddenly were lit ablaze. They were on fire. As I turned around, I could see that multiple trees had fallen and were on fire. The trees completely surrounded us and now I and Gary were in a circle of fire.

"Slyvia the whistle!" Martha shouted

"It's broken." Slyvia cried.

"Just go back and get help!" Gary shouted.

The reason Gary had shouted that wasn't because of the fire. Currently, there were three people stood in front of us with high levels of beast equipment. They were covered head to toe in armour while each wielding a different weapon. One had a sword in his hand the other was spinning a chain with a blunt weight at the tip and the third one a pair of daggers.

They all had one thing in common though. Their faces were completely covered by a Red mask only allowing slits where their eyes where. They had clearly caused the fire and wanted to keep me and Gary in here.

If we told the others it would only worry them more.

"Do you think it's the dark guild?" Gary asked.

I scanned them with my Dragon eyes but they didn't show signs of being infected by the shadow plague.

"Whoever they are, they're strong."

The man with the sword quickly jumped at me striking from above. I lifted up my arm to block ready to attack him with the other but I could feel the blade slicing through my gauntlet. I quickly pulled my arm away and stepped back away from him.

The fact that his blade managed to slice through my gauntlets meant one thing. His blade was a higher tier, this was bad.