Desolate World

"What the! Noah, could you tell me, what's going on?" Ace asked in confusion.

After a 15 minutes journey, they came to the mushroom field near the vampire nest. The spectacle in front of them shocked Ace. Dozens of luminous big crabs around 2 meters in size with levels between 5 to 10 filled the field. One or two of the creatures kept coming up from the underground river every a few seconds.

Some of them had already entered deep into the area that was used as a dwelling. While the rest ate the mushrooms in the field.

They were called 'shining crabs'. Such an obvious name for their physical characteristics. 

Ace's and the rest's arrival made them startled. However, maybe because Ace and the rest didn't attack them or because of their numbers, they didn't immediately take any action.

"Seemed like underground monsters. They came from the river to eat. I didn't find any of them a few hours ago," Noah said.

"It seems that we had an extra job. I'm worried about the goblins. Let's kill all of them!" Ace suggested.

"Uh… Okay, but it is better if we check the goblins' conditions first. With their levels, it is impossible for them to fight the monsters," Noah said. 

Ace nodded. He then made Red go in further, to find out that Red's body was too big to enter the area, as many pillars of stones and minerals obstructed the way. 

"Red, could you wait here? You can have an earlier dinner if you want," Ace said while tapping her head. 

Red answered him by launching an AoE lightning attack from her tail.

Ace knew that without Geo's presence, it was a little difficult for Red to answer Ace. So, it looked like the skate wanted to answer with her action.

Red's attack blew some crabs under her. It made them panic, as they spread distancing Red. The attack didn't directly kill the monsters, but it made them paralyzed and more than ¾ of their HPs gone.

"Haaaa…!" Ace then heard Noah's yelling while jumping on top of the paralyzed crabs and swung his axe at them. Instantly killed them.

Ace grinned. He also jumped and threw two cards to a level 5 crab not far from them.

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He then threw 2 more cards to finish it. It seemed the monster's magic defense was as bad as the ants. However, with their thick carapace, they should have a good physical defense.

But as Ace looked at how easily Noah killed the monsters with two or three ordinary swings of his axe, it looked like they were paper-thin in front of a tyrannical force of Noah.

"As expected of an elite," Ace murmured.

He and Noah then went deeper while harvesting the lives of the monsters. Leaving Red created a miniature thunderstorm alone in the field.

Fighting with Noah, made him recall when he fought with Sampson and Adrian's family. It was so effortless. While Noah was keeping the crabs away from Ace, he could throw his cards without worry. 

One thing that surprised him was, Noah's agility didn't seem too low as he could wander around hitting the crabs that were attacking them from all directions. 

Slowly but surely they pushed their way deeper down the corridor. There were more and more crabs along the way. It forced Ace to gulp mana potions once every dozen seconds, keeping his Mana above 50%. It was his habit to not let his mana below 50% to prepare for any emergency.

He also avoided using Jack, Queen, and King cards, as they had little use in such dense enemies. Once a while he would throw Ace cards that inflict AoE damage. Even if they couldn't directly kill the crabs, Noah could finish them with a round swing of his axe.

While slowly pushing their way, Ace wondered how dozens even hundreds of monsters would come up from a river. There should be a reason behind it.

He thought that maybe the crabs used to live in the cave, but because of the vampires' arrival they were forced to leave the cave. Or maybe the vampires left something that could attract the crabs' attention.

'But, it seems they are not the reasons. After all, with their numbers alone, they can drown the vampires alive. And something that can attract the crabs' attention, I don't believe the vampires had something like that. Well, I can ask the goblins later,' Ace thought.

It needed half an hour for Ace and Noah to arrive in front of the bars the goblins had been detained before.

Ace couldn't remember how many crabs they had killed. However, it made Ace level up to level 24. Even his experience was halfway to the requirement of leveling up to level 25. At the moment, he knew why Gon and the dragons came to Ant territory. 

Although each of the low-level monsters gave them not too much experience. When the numbers were large, they would give them so much experience. And their low levels also meant a low total of HP. Their attacks were also not too dangerous. It made them a perfect means to grinding experience.

The number of monsters that were pouring into the cave also reduced a lot after a period of time. It seemed Red had succeeded in stopping the crabs from entering. 

But, Ace had paid too much to clear the crabs. Ace's health and mana potions almost bottomed out, as Ace needed mana potions to replenish his mana. Ace also had to give dozens of his red potions to Noah to keep his HP above 30%. 

Although Noah's attacks could easily kill the monsters, he also suffered much damage along the process. It couldn't be helped. As he was alone tanking the crabs' attack, he couldn't avoid the damages that the crabs dealt to him.

However, it didn't make Ace upset, as his low-tier health potions were too many as he had bought the entire stock of consumables in the system shop with the bug that Cloud had told him. They still had many more such potions, of course not in his hand at the moment.

This circumstance had also shown him the importance of potions. He then recalled the reason many dragons had been killed when grinding in the ant's territory was because they didn't bring potions. It also made him wonder if the dragon for some reason couldn't consume potions and wear equipment, as even if they were an intelligent race, they didn't wear any equipment.

After killing the last crab, Ace and Noah approached the place where goblins were detained before. The place that was used to imprison them seemed to have saved them from the crabs' attack.

Ace could see the nervous green little people from the opposite of the bars. Although they seemed to be scared, at least they were saved behind the jail.

***