After the Battle

Sure enough, once they climbed onto the serpent's body, they discovered something different. The ice armor had weaknesses!

The ice armor looked impregnable, but the Frost Serpent did not always keep its entire body covered in it.

Its body needed to move quickly. The ice armor was rigid enough but lacked flexibility. Covering itself completely would effectively freeze it into an ice pop.

Observing it up close after climbing onto the serpent, the Zerglings discovered that the ice armor was actually mistlike, with ice armor on the outside and frost mist within.

Nor did the ice armor cover everything. It moved back and forth to protect key areas. When an area came under attack, the frost mist became ice armor; when it needed to move, the ice armor broke down into frost mist again.

It had to be said that this defensive mechanism was quite comprehensive, ensuring both protection and mobility.

The frost mist also inflicted continuous damage on the Zerglings. The cold coated them in a layer of ice, severely impairing their agility, strength, and stamina.

To gather as much information about the Frost Serpent as possible before freezing to death, the Zerglings attacked its blue-green scales with the bone blades on their arms while leaping and crawling over its body.

The Enhanced Zergling also wanted to jump onto the serpent's head and try attacking its eyes, which were usually vulnerable in animals.

Feeling the itching on its back, the Frost Serpent grew furious. When had any creature ever dared climb onto its back? Rather than shaking its body to throw off the bugs, it reared upright and intensified the frost surrounding it.

The temperature on its body instantly dropped by several dozen degrees. Large numbers of Zerglings froze into ice sculptures and fell off. The lone Enhanced Zergling only reached a point a few meters from the serpent's head before it, too, froze to death.

Before dying, it thrust its bone blade at a scale with all its strength.

Whether the low temperature had made the scale brittle or the Enhanced Zergling's attack had landed just right, the blow penetrated its defenses. It made the Frost Serpent feel a prick of pain.

The enraged serpent quickly used its tail to smash the ice sculpture hanging from its neck into pieces.

Right Claw had originally assigned only a thousand Warrior Bugs to hunt the Frost Serpent. Now it had committed two thousand, including all the Enhanced Zerglings.

After paying the price of five hundred Warrior Bugs, the Swarm's gains remained limited. Although they had uncovered the ice armor's secret, the Frost Serpent fought with extreme caution. It would rather forgo dealing damage to the Swarm than neglect strengthening its own defenses.

Several times, the Swarm created opportunities for large numbers of Needle Crawlers to charge up and concentrate their fire on areas of the serpent's body unprotected by ice armor. Each time, the Frost Serpent instantly froze itself into an ice sculpture and took the torrential barrage of steel needles head-on.

With its current firepower, the Swarm really was somewhat helpless against this armored turtle. After fighting for so long, it had only damaged some of the Frost Serpent's scales, all superficial wounds.

Seeing that nothing more could be done, Chloe sighed and swiped her hand across the virtual battlefield. The entire Swarm began an organized retreat. Left Claw broke through the beasts and withdrew smoothly.

Right Claw had been held up. Only after leaving two thousand Warrior Bugs behind to pin down the Frost Serpent did the remaining Warrior Bugs choose a weak point in the Beast Tide and break out. Its losses were far heavier.

Throughout the nighttime assault, the Swarm had pitted twenty thousand Warrior Bugs against just over sixty thousand beasts. The Swarm lost twelve thousand, leaving eight thousand wounded and maimed Warrior Bugs.

The beasts' numbers plummeted to fewer than thirty thousand, and most were wounded. Only a handful of High-Level Magical Beasts capable of burning the Creep with flames remained.

Without the Frost Serpent's interference, the twenty-thousand-strong Swarm, opening with a surprise psionic blast, could very well have routed the entire beast horde and then devoured it.

But there were no ifs in war. Nearly two thousand Warrior Bugs had been lost in direct combat with the Frost Serpent.

Watching the Swarm slowly withdraw, the Frost Serpent wore a grave expression. It had originally intended to crush the bugs' main force here completely, so it had certainly planned to pursue them.

But after actually stepping forward and fighting the bugs, it abandoned that thought.

Merely watching from the sidelines gave no sense of just how terrifying these bugs were. At first, its frost breath had clearly been able to wipe out thirty or forty bugs.

Later, it could only kill a dozen or so. The bugs kept changing tactics, trying to hurt it from every angle.

Each bug was so weak on its own, yet together they became so terrifying. Moreover, they had clear objectives, excellent tactics, and no fear of death. Some scales had even been torn off its body.

Toward the end of the battle, the Frost Serpent had barely attacked at all, only stalling as much as possible and letting the beasts kill the bugs besieging it. It had no desire to suffer serious injuries from the bugs through a moment's carelessness.

"What are you still watching for, big bird?" The Frost Serpent viciously sent a message overhead.

After a gust of wild wind, the Storm Dragonhawk landed before the Frost Serpent, a hint of teasing amusement in its golden eyes. "Stupid snake, you're just jealous that I can fly. If you had wings, I don't think you'd come down either."

"So you just watched me get surrounded by those bugs? We agreed to wipe them out together. If Behemoth wakes up, we're both dead," the Frost Serpent said viciously.

"It's not that I didn't want to help. You saw how vicious those bugs were. My feathers are no match for your solid ice and scales. If enough of those steel needles came at me, I'd get hurt too," the Storm Dragonhawk said dismissively.

"If you're too afraid of getting hurt to fight, can you even call yourself a legendary magical beast? What's the point of you coming to help?" After delivering its taunt, the Frost Serpent picked up a beast's carcass in its jaws and began eating. It had expended a great deal of energy and needed to replenish it.

"There's no need to be so harsh. I've discovered new information about how those bugs appeared."

The Storm Dragonhawk's words caught the Frost Serpent's attention. It slowed its eating and turned its eyes toward the dragonhawk.

"They all emerged from underground. There are large numbers of tunnels in the earth beneath this slime. The bugs use them to move quickly and catch us off guard. So their nest is underground," the Storm Dragonhawk said unhurriedly.

"Can you tell me something I don't know? My flying beasts have already told me about that. The question is, so what if we know about the underground tunnels?"

"We don't know them at all. If we rush in, not only will we be unable to use the beasts' numerical advantage, we might also be surrounded and annihilated by the bugs."

The Frost Serpent swallowed a chunk of meat and looked at the Storm Dragonhawk with even greater disdain.

"No, you may not have understood what I meant. You know my Psionics are best suited to controlling wind. I can hear many things through it. And there's wind in the underground tunnels too. I might not hear anything from one or two wisps."

"But with the bugs entering and leaving the underground tunnels on such a massive scale, I did hear what I wanted," the Storm Dragonhawk said boastfully.

"You mean..." The look in the Frost Serpent's eyes changed as well. It looked at the Storm Dragonhawk with caution and excitement.

"Yes. Through the movement of the wind, I heard the location of the bugs' nest." The Storm Dragonhawk flapped its wings excitedly as well.