This time, the target wasn’t human.

Rohan poured every scrap of focus he had in him into that throw, shutting everything else out. Rudith’s shallow breathing, Elane’s trembling, even the heavy and furious breathing of the E rank Elite: all of it faded to the edge of his awareness.

All that remained was a new one.

The unfamiliar beast, one which he assumed was the true queen of this beast nest.

One which seemed to be following the other’s lead.

Rohan’s body twisted with the throw, with every muscle in his shoulder, back, and arms all straining to their absolute limit as he hurled the pike with everything he had.

His Firestone Skin bit down over his body harder in an instant, with his strengthened frame lending every bit of force it could muster to the release.

And the result was equally monstrous.

From their perspectives, the pike had instantly vanished from his hand, being far too fast to follow with their weak eyes.

Only Elane, with her Enhanced Senses gene, was able to get a vague sense of its position while it flew through the air.

A deep crack ripped through the chamber a split second after as the weapon once again tore through the air at a speed no F rank Awakened had any right producing. The sound barrier shattered again, and this time everyone there felt the shock wave in their bones before their minds could catch up to what was happening.

The familiar E rank acted first.

Its ember-like eyes flared, and its whole body jerked sideways with terrifying speed, recognising the danger of the projectile after seeing the speed with which it was released.

But the second beast...

Didn’t quite react the same.

Not because it was slower or along those lines. If anything it looked faster, more powerful and better put together than the other beast.

But it was unfamiliar with the situation it faced.

Perhaps a tad too arrogant and prideful. It had likely looked down on humans its entire life, and had taken the lives of countless, so expecting one to be able to launch such a terrifying projectile towards it wasn’t something that even crossed its mind.

And that instant of ignorance and arrogance was enough.

The Poison Rocksnake Pike struck.

The impact was so violent, much more than the one that took out Noa and Niko, that it looked as if the beast’s entire abdomen had caved inward around the point of contact.

Rudith looked at Rohan slackjawed as a sickening crunch tore through the entrance as the pike smashed into the lower side of its torso, shearing through plate after plate of thick black-red chitinous armour and digging into the monstrous flesh underneath.

Then it kept going.

Sadly, not all the way through.

Its body was far too thick for that. Far too dense, and an F rank Elite disposable Genetic Armament could only push its power so far.

The fact it was able to severely injure a beast an entire rank above it was already a testament to its strength.

The force of the strike was still enough to bury it a full one and a half metres of the three metre shaft into its abdomen, right down to the mid point.

The barbed, thick tip disappeared entirely inside the beast, and right on cue—

"SCREEEEE!!"

The beast screeched, sounding different, somehow... feminine.

’The poison must have just kicked in!’ Rohan thought, realising this was the one chance they had to maybe secure themselves a chance to make it out alive.

The shock of seeing its companion be impaled and the resulting scream grabbed the full attention of the other E rank Beast, which gave Rohan a golden opportunity to strike again while it wasn’t looking in his direction.

He waited to see the pike still inside the ant’s body to dissolve into dust, as its single use had already been used up, then he summoned one of his precious Hollow Tide Bursts.

’I have no idea how powerful this thing is going to be.’

He then threw it full force towards the now open wound.

The wound’s opening was quite wide, only getting shallower as it went deeper inwards, so Rohan didn’t have to be as accurate with his throw this time.

But he still hit his mark almost perfectly, with the "bomb" landing a few centimetres off from the centre of the small crater the pike had made in the ant’s abdomen.

’Thankfully, explosive type disposables like these things can be activated mentally from a distance. Otherwise, we might get caught up in the explosion too.’

Rohan didn’t even wait to see what happened next. He immediately entered a full sprint in the opposite direction of the beasts. Elane was already ahead of him, as she’d been watching his movements from the very beginning.

The moment she saw the Hollow Tide Burst appear in his hands, she was already on the move.

Rudith was a step behind though. She was still in the middle processing her shock of watching Rohan severely injure a beast a full rank above himself when Rohan and Elane suddenly darted away.

She wasn’t a complete idiot though. She knew there had to be a damn good reason for them to suddenly do that, and she didn’t want to be left alone with two utterly pissed E rank Elite beasts either.

She pulled herself together and trailed behind the other two, in the nick of time at that.

Rohan had just activated the Genetic Armament.

BOOOOM—

The explosion was instant. There was no flash of light or fancy sparks and fire, as the Hollow Tide Puffer relied purely on air pressure.

But that didn’t make it any less spectacular.

The whole beast nest rumbled around him as Rohan watched the Genetic Armament detonate.

Rudith cried out as the force clipped her from behind, slamming her face first to the ground. She was still a good dozen metres or so closer to the epicentre of the explosion than him or Elane, so she felt the effects of it much more than either of them did.