Legendary Traveler: By Earning Progress Points I will Become Supreme!

'What the fuck are those things?' Tightly clenching his fingers around Austr and Vestr for courage, Aoni's head barely peeked around the stone spike jutting from the cave floor with which he was using for cover.

He had long since expected that something used this cavern as a base of operations or domicile; however, wasn't this a bit too much?

Through the warm aqua-colored light bathing the cavern, Aoni could see hundreds, if not thousands, of strange insectoid creatures scrambling around.

What they were doing was anyone's guess because upon flooding into the cavern through its various tunnels and entrances, the silverish blue creatures would spread out, some going toward the lake, others climbing the walls. Then there were a few who seemed to be…'getting it on.'

'They aren't an ant species, of that much, I'm certain, but they kind of look like a cross between a mole cricket and a cicada of some type.' He leaned forward and was extra careful not to scrape his weapons on the stone floor accidentally or make any noticeable sounds.

'Ugly little shits…tsssss, fuck don't tell me that behemoth was their leader or something,' thinking back to before the new barrier came up and how a giant insect drew his attention, Aoni couldn't help but draw a parallel between them and the creepy crawlies swarming the cavern.

'Their wings are far more underdeveloped, but the silverish carapace is the same, along with that weird upper body…; still, that big one seemed to be able to walk more upright; these guys are on all four…er, sixes?' taking a quick count of a nearby insects legs, he saw a distinct pair of overly developed and slightly muscular front arms, followed by two pairs of slimmer legs, further down its body.

He did notice, though, that although most of the back legs were bent in a way that indicated it had strong jumping abilities, the silverish insect definitely had a nasty pair of wings running the length of its entire body.

Its head was flat and heavily armored, with one big greenish brown dot on the center of its pronotum, and when he noticed that, for some reason, Aoni hyper-fixated on it as if it held a secret.

'Wait, one dot on that one…' observing several different groupings of insects; he saw something interesting: not all of them had a single dot, although a good majority did; there were also a bunch that had two greenish brown circles.

'Grade…it must be an indication of its grade being either one or 2-Stars; I don't see anything with more than two, so that MUST be it,' feeling as if he broke a code of some sort, Aoni's eye twitched when a sudden notification popped up in his vision.

| 35 pp Earned |

Well, sudden is a bit of an understatement because ever since he separated from his summons, a rolling stream of numbers and pop-ups had been appearing, the bulk of which was about getting half a Progress Point with the occasional full point thrown in.

Those were, of course, the efforts of Glacia and Nyria killing off everything in sight; however, the big 35-point jump was surprising, to say the least.

'What to do, what to do,' turning his eyes away and focusing on the cluster of insects working on some type of structure near the lake, Aoni weighed his options carefully.

He was by no means experienced nor strong enough to rush in and start hacking his way through everything in sight; that would not only be a death sentence but also only serve to rile up the creatures into a swarm.

'If anything, it would be smarter to try and seal off the cave and gas them like with a bug bomb, but I don't have anything like that on hand…I could try lighting a bonfire, no…that won't work either; as dumb as these guys are, I don't doubt they'd have some means of stopping the fire from getting too big.'

'Sniping them off wouldn't work either, considering there's only one of me and a shit ton of them; by the time I got the first few bullets off, they'd have my general location, and considering how they lack physical eyes and have digging claws, I can assume they rely on sound, instead of sight.'

Narrowing his eyes, Aoni ran through every possible idea he could come up with, picking it apart before moving on to a new one, yet no matter what he came up with, most ended with him either being eaten by a bunch of bugs or running with his tail between his legs.

'Tsk, if this fucking place wasn't so big and didn't have almost a dozen exits, I could potentially corral them into a centralized space and pick them off in droves…hold up…that may be a possibility.'@@novelbin@@

Whipping his head around and staring up at several parts of the cavern ceiling and walls, a plan was rapidly seeing the light of day.

It was a stupid plan, and if he was lucky, he had a maybe 5% success rate, but if pulled off properly, there was a very strong chance he'd be rolling in progress points soon enough.

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The only problem he could foresee was he'd have to make some serious preparations.

Although rather difficult to achieve, the plan was quite simple: make four massive ice walls, from ceiling to floor, cut the cavern into four distinct spaces, then get up high and rain hell from above.

'Okay, the first thing I'ma need to do is get a good vantage point…' visualizing his idea, Aoni's eyes scanned the nearby wall, looking for and plotting out a valid path in which he could quickly climb up, allowing himself to get as close to the ceiling as possible.

Thankfully, he wouldn't have to worry about being quiet because the moment he started the plan, chaos would ensue; still, that didn't mean Aoni was going to be dumb enough to turn the entire insect population against himself at once.

'Alrighty, let's get this show on the road…' Storing away his weapons, Aoni took a slow and steady breath before getting into a pose that would allow him to use his Ice Manipulation better.