Another worm burst out of the ground and lunged at Luo from behind, latching onto his back before he could even notice it.
But Cha Ji was right behind him.
He reached out quickly and tore the worm off before it could fully latch on, burning it the instant after, turning its body to ash before it could coil around him and attack.
The three of them were in terrible shape.
Exhaustion showed plainly on their faces, their breathing growing heavier, their movements slowing down with every passing moment.
And even though Luo was the only one of the three who'd been injured, he was actually the most stable of them in terms of energy.
The credit for that went to the Fat Reservoir Phantom.
It had multiplied his energy reserve several times over, letting him keep fighting even after a huge portion of their collective energy had been drained.
Even so, that didn't mean they could keep this up forever.
The worms never stopped appearing, and every time they thought they'd wiped out one batch, the ground would shake again and more would crawl out from beneath it.
"Is there even a limit to these things?!"
Luo wondered aloud, panting, frustration now clear in his voice, wishing for this nightmare to end any way it could.
Most of the worms were below the required level, some barely reaching Level One, so facing them individually wasn't particularly hard.
But the problem was the sheer number.
Killing this massive quantity of them continuously was draining their Aether energy and their physical stamina bit by bit. And even though the number of dead worms had already piled up substantially, the numbers still emerging from the ground never stopped, in fact, they seemed to be increasing as time passed.
The foul smell of their bodies mixed with the cave's dampness, until the entire place reeked of a suffocating stench.
And beneath their feet, green blood had begun pooling and flowing between the rocks, forming a small stream that kept spreading across the cave floor.
Every time the three of them moved, their feet made a wet, squelching sound as they stepped through that green fluid, while worms kept emerging from the cracks surrounding them.
The battle was shifting from a fight against beasts into an attrition war with no visible end.
Shun De began panting, but he never stopped picking off worms with his arrows.
He'd raise his bow, pull the string, then fire another energy arrow, each one piercing through one worm before continuing on toward another. Even though he could fire energy arrows without needing a bow at all, the bow gave a better result.
But as time wore on, the energy consumption began weighing on him visibly.
He finally lowered his bow and put it away, then drew his sword and charged straight at the worms.
The distance between him and them was short now, and he no longer needed to spend as much energy on each attack.
He fought with the sword for a while, until his arms began to feel heavy, his breathing growing more erratic.
"Damn it... are you all determined to back us into a corner like this?!"
He shouted, slicing through a worm that had gotten close, then stepped back, panting.
Shun De knew his own situation well.
Being the one using the Attrition Phantom, he knew the worms had come close to the absolute limits of what their bodies could endure.
Their bodies had grown worn out, their energy drained, and nearly any random hit now would be enough to finish them off.
But stopping the Attrition Phantom now wasn't a good option.
The moment he deactivated it, the worms would recover part of their strength, and the three of them would have to fight the whole battle all over again.
So he pushed through, forcing himself to keep going.
All he had to do was hold on for a few more minutes.
After that...
there would be a mass slaughter.
On the other side, Luo kept fighting with his bare fists.
He lunged at a massive worm, dropped his body low to dodge its attack, then drove his fist straight into its body.
BOOM!
The worm's body shattered under the blow, collapsing to the ground, motionless.
Then, suddenly, something strange emerged from its body.
A Phantom.
Luo reached out quickly and managed to catch it before it could get away.
The Phantom was roughly circular, surrounded by horns of varying sizes, giving it a strange appearance.
Luo stared at it for a moment.
Phantoms varied greatly in physical appearance, often tied to the materials they'd been formed from.
At its core, a Phantom was the translation of a certain ability into a physical shape; the result could be a gust of wind, the production of poison, the release of fire, or some other property entirely.
That's why one of the fundamentals of refining and crafting Phantoms was imitating nature itself.
Understanding how certain properties emerged within different materials, then converting that into a Phantom capable of reproducing that same property.
But Luo didn't have time to ponder any of that.
One of his hands was occupied holding onto the Phantom to keep it from slipping away, which made fighting considerably harder.
He approached Shun De and extended his hand toward him.
"Keep the Attrition Phantom active, and take this."
He tossed him the Phantom.
"Our first spoils."
Shun De's eyes widened in surprise, then he looked down at the Phantom in his hand.
A moment later, he seemed to realize something.
He turned to Cha Ji and shouted:
"You chatty bastard! I wanted to brag about killing everything single-handedly! Why'd you tell him about the Phantom I bought?!"
Luo gave him a look of pure contempt.
"You bastard, I could kill all of them too!"
Then he gestured at Shun De's condition.
"Look at yourself, you look like you're about to drop dead. Anyway, how much more do you need before you're done?"
Shun De smiled, then looked around.
The worms were dropping one after another, until only a few of the larger ones remained.
He lowered his sword slightly.
"I think I'm done."
Then he looked at Luo.
"The rest is yours."
The worms had stopped emerging from the ground.
Most of them had died inside the tunnels, while all the stronger ones had already come out earlier, and nothing remained in the clearing but roughly five worms, writhing weakly, on the verge of death.
But Luo didn't rush toward them right away.
This time, he had to be more careful.
He'd already killed three Level One worms before this, and yet he'd only managed to catch one Phantom out of all of them.
But now, he had a real chance to grab several Phantoms at once.
He wasn't going to waste it.
He lunged toward one of the worms quickly, but before he could land his strike, Cha Ji beat him to it.
A small fireball shot out and pierced straight through the worm's body.
FWOOSH!
The worm didn't even need a second hit.
Its body collapsed to the ground, motionless.
A spectral aura appeared inside it, and the Phantom tried to escape the corpse.
But Luo was ready.
He reached out quickly, catching the Phantom before it could get away.
Its weight was heavier than he'd expected, heavy enough that his body lurched forward half a step from the sudden force.
"Got you!"
But in that same instant, another worm took advantage of him being distracted.
It lunged from the side and latched onto his back.
"Luo!"
Cha Ji shouted.
Before the worm could attack him, Cha Ji lunged at it, grabbed its body with both hands, then lifted it and slammed it against the ground with force.
BOOM!
The ground shook beneath it.
He gave it no chance to get back up.
Cha Ji raised his hand, a fireball forming over his palm, then dropped it directly onto the worm.
EXPLOSION!
Its body turned to ash.
And just like the one before it, its Phantom began emerging from the corpse.
But Luo was still occupied with the Phantom he'd just caught.
Cha Ji looked at the new Phantom, then at Luo.
"Don't tell me you're going to make me catch this one too."
Luo gritted his teeth, trying to pin down the Phantom in his hand.
"You catch it! I already got one!"
Cha Ji stepped closer and grabbed the Phantom, while three more worms remained writhing on the ground, barely able to move.
The worms no longer posed any real threat.
Shun De's Phantom had worn them down to the point where nearly any blow now would be enough to end their lives.
But for the three of them...
these final moments of the battle had turned into a race to collect spoils.
CRACK!
A massive boulder fell from the ceiling of the cave, crashing into the ground after a powerful tre
mor that sent dust raining down around them.
The three of them had barely processed what had happened before the tremor returned.
CRACK!
Another boulder fell from above, this time directly over their heads.
"Oh, no!"