Bloodlines Online

The story of the Devil Queen interested many of the players that encountered the church of light, the church reported that their goal of slaying shadow element users was due to some effort of making the goddess of light recognize their devotion but perhaps that was only the story told by the church.

Many began to theorize that the church has obvious ulterior motives.

One of the public reasons for the shadow element being banned in certain cities was easily tied to the church, it certainly made it easy to tie back to them since every city that outlawed the use of shadow magic had a heavy presence from the church.

In other regions there were actually never any signs of the reported crimes that these cities were constantly bringing up as defense for their law.

It was said that shadow users would eventually get so strong that they could only grow by hunting down people who had high stats and using them to consume, the problem with this theory was that shadow users tended to find more value in hunting stronger opponents or simply hunting the regions that respawned creatures.

There was only a single shadow user that was known to break this pattern.

The Devil Queen.

-The Silent Watcher (Player Journalist.)

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The tree protected the ants from the brunt of his attack but his spells were easily shredding through their armor due to how much focus he put into the penetration effect.

He almost wondered if the spell had a natural defense penetration beyond the armor penetration.

The way the tree degraded so sloy was beginning to annoy him so he actually started to attack specific points on it with the frenzy wing spell just to push his damage deeper into the tree.

If he tried this on the larger trees he knew it would be a waste of time but by killing this nest he could learn more about the ants and how they inhabited these places.

Such a large tree was small in comparison to the swarm of ants that left it so they must have a nest beneath the tree, perhaps in the roots of it.

He focused his needles on the base of the tree to tear through the roots,

The ground was blown away by the spell but it was not enought to expose the nest, the spell projectiles were digging into the roots much more easily than the tree itself so he chose this as the focus of his attack from now on.

With the ants swarming on the ground now he realized that these soldiers were not the most intelligent creatures, as with all ants they made their mark on the world through numbers and swarm tactics rather than power or skill.

Since they were now at an easy point to destroy since they were undefended he rained bombs upon them while drilling into the roots and base of the tree.

’So if I kill the queen I wonder what the ants would end up doing? Where would the ants even put her actually?’

Through his mana sight he could see that the tree itself was infused with mana while the ground only had a soft glow like ambient light in the area, he could see the roots tracing into the ground by the glow of a strange silver mana the tree contained.

’How odd, haven’t seen that before.’

The spells he bombarded the ground with began to cause significant impact now that he could target the earth between the roots.

Eventually when he saw a drastic decrease in the number of ants he started to descend to the ground and have a better look.

A few ants lept at him but a blink before they hit was enough to remove the threat, he saw the ground had signs of tunnels.

Reinforced by whatever means the ants used, the tunnels were still visible but mostly hidden by debris from the explosions of his spells.

He could probably crawl through those tunnels if he tried but he instantly pushed that thought away when he realized how stupid it was.

The tunnels converged on the tree’s roots so he suspected there was a way into the tree from below, if this was the case he had an idea.

He started to target the tunnels to make it easier to see the underside of the tree, he wanted to find the opening to the inside of the tree.

To remove the excess dirt he created he had a wasteful idea but certainly it would work.

Once the dirt filled the hole to much to see the roots again he prepared to cast the frenzy star, the beams focused on the roots of the tree as best as he could but the true test would be how the explosive power cleared the dirt.

When he let it loose he blinked to the ground as close to the roots as he could and threw the star into a tunnel as far as he could before blinking back.

When the explosion went off the ground went up in a geyser of dirt and mud, he could see much more of the roots now as well as a swarm of ants entering the crater.

To cast the spell cost more than half of his mana so he had to return to the sky while he recovered it and while he did so he began to cull the ants in the pit.

He examined the many exposed roots while he burned the infestation away and what he saw was that the roots were slowly breaking down due to his magic so the possibility of seeing the space inside if the tree was sooner than he hoped.

Once he felt that he was safe to cast the star again he began to while he casually let bombs drop upon the ants.

The bombs were mostly made to be extra damage over time so they did not take much effort to make due to all of his experience.

With the beams converging they slew many ants but he was focused on getting ready to expose the central point of the tree.

He saw an opening and blinked to puth the star in place before blinking away again.

His mana was severely depleted but it was no issue as he watched the star shred through every ant in the pit while also tearing it’s way through the dirt to expose the roots.

When he saw this he hurried to scout the exposed region and saw a large hole which had many ants swarming from it.

This hole seemed to go into the heart of the tree so he threw multiple fremzy bombs into the heart before leaving.

He had exposed the heart and he would soon be destroying it with what he just did.

He flew back into the sky to start regenerating his mana since he knew his next step would be just as dangerous as the previous one now that the ants were swarming the area where he had to go.

He liked how powerful his mana regen was despite being able to cast thousands of mana in any given effect.

When his mana bar was filled with void mana once again he got ready to cast the frenzy star again until he heard the sound of a notification.

~~~~~~~~~~

Secret event step complete!

Slay the psycho ant queen in the expansion nests.

1/10

~~~~~~~~~~

He nodded when be saw this and prepared to cull the rest of the ants for free stats as well as exp so when the ants began to return to their holes after the slaughter of the queen he began to think.

’So if the queen is dead then that means they’re returning somewhere, but this was the primary fear since it mean gods knew their movement skills were terrible.’

He began to observe the results but he was unsatisfied.

’Dammit!

The ants were not dying as quickly as he wished and they also left faster as if they suddenly had a sense of self preservation.

’There must be an intelligent one somehwere, why are they trying to cultivate here anyway? This place deserved to be destroyed.’

Since it appeared the ants would not return he put himself on the ground and got ready to examine the tree to learn more about it.

The only issue was that he wasn’t a botanist so he only had basically ideas.

He saw that the trees had one tap root but they trunk bloomed outward like a flower which turned back in on itself until this flowers warmed about it.

The trees would apparently leave a gap or the ants manufactured a gap so that it eas easily to get in and out of the tree, the rest of the tree exposed itself to his theoriesrather quickly.

’Well I will meed to make sure no one who I magically sensory doubde.’

’What a little disaster.’

He was so focused on cleaning that he did notice those approaching him.