Rohan twisted around mid stride despite every survival instinct telling him not to look.

And what he saw stopped him cold in his tracks.

The new E rank Elite — the one he suspected was the real queen of this beast nest — was gone.

It hadn’t escaped, or been killed in the ordinary sense.

It was gone.

Completely obliterated.

The Hollow Tide Burst had detonated half inside the tunnel of flesh that the Poison Rocksnake Pike had carved through its abdomen, and the result was beyond anything Rohan had expected.

The beast’s whole lower torso had been turned inside out. Great slabs of chitin and wet crimson-black flesh had been blown outward in every direction, plastering the entrance walls and ceiling in a gruesome spray.

One of its hind legs, still twitching, spun end over end through the air before crashing down onto the stone floor several dozen metres away. Another huge fragment of its shattered thorax slammed into the wall hard enough to leave a dent before sliding down into a sticky mess.

The queen ant’s scream ended mid-note.

There was no lingering aura anymore.

It had been blown to pieces so completely that even its massive aura, once overwhelming Rohan and causing his heart to race, had vanished from the chamber the instant after the Genetic Armament detonated.

Rohan’s eyes were rightfully widened.

He expected severe damage from this explosion, maybe enough to take the beast out of the fight completely, but this?

This was just annihilation.

’Holy... shit.’

The words didn’t form properly in his head, only his raw disbelief was able to be expressed.

Elane, having risked the briefest glance backwards herself, looked equally appalled. Her mouth hung slack jawed, but no sound came out.

Even Rudith, who had just been scrambling for her life moments earlier, looked like her brain had simply refused to process the sight. Her entire body had gone rigid, and the terror, hatred, the disbelief... all of it had been drowned out beneath the impossible reality of what Rohan had just done.

’He... he killed the E rank Elite...’

’As an F rank Awakened...’

If word were to spread of this, it would be sure to cause a ruckus all over the internet, and back inside Erenhot.

’I need to make sure people find out about this! Even if I can’t kill them here today, I can still bring a mountain of discomfort and frustration to their lives by bringing this absurd feat to light!’

However, that was only if she could even show proof of him doing such a thing. To do that, she’d have to survive what came next so that she could bring people over from Erenhot to see for themselves what Rohan and Elane had achieved.

An F rank Awakened taking down not only a beast of a higher rank, but one of a higher tier as well, was something almost unheard of.

This was the type of thing you’d hear from stories of the legendary and elusive S rank Awakened of the Federation’s past.

But things weren’t over yet.

The surviving boss also saw it too.

For the first time since returning to the nest, the monstrous ant hesitated.

Not physically by much, as it did manage to avoid the brunt of the blast itself by dodging in time.

But Rohan caught it.

The thing’s ember like eyes remained fixed on the ruined pieces of flesh and remains of its mate, with its body frozen in place by rage and disbelief.

Its mandibles returned to twitching, and its whole frame then trembled with what looked horrifyingly like confusion.

Then came the aura.

The pressure it gave off doubled.

Maybe tripled.

Rohan and Elane’s worries grew by the second.

Now, they were down to just a single Hollow Tide Burst remaining, not even having a spare Poison Rocksnake Pike to make another opening.

Rohan was unsure how to proceed from here. He could tell that Elane’s choice of using a penetrative type Genetic Armament to first break up the armour of the beast was the correct choice.

Despite the queen ant being blown to pieces, its armour still remained largely intact, just separated into larger chunks since the rest of its body was no longer there to connect it all together.

He could tell that the explosion only worked so well on the beast because of the opening he’d already made with the pike, as the explosion itself didn’t seem to have nearly as much of an effect on the beast’s extremely tough chitinous armour.

’Without an effective method to repeat this same thing on the remaining boss, we are screwed...’

The boss’ grief and rage rolled through the widened chamber like a hurricane while Rohan fell into his thoughts.

Th air around it visibly distorted, and a deep crack split through the stone beneath one of its forelegs as it dug in hard enough to gouge out the floor.

However, Rohan suddenly thought of something.

"Rudith!" He called out, surprising both her and Elane to his side.

"I don’t give a damn about any grievances we have with each other right now! If we don’t work together to take down this other boss, we’ll all be dead anyway."

Right off the bat, he laid down his idea of putting aside their hatred for each other to take down the beast.

She was clearly much stronger than every other Awakened they’d faced so far in her group, on par with even Rohan and Elane individually, so she wouldn’t drag them down one bit.

Her help in taking on the enraged boss would be paramount to whether they succeeded or not.

Rudith seemed conflicted still. Her gaze continuously darted between Rohan and the boss, as she struggled internally to make a decision.

’Arghh! I’ll probably regret this decision later on, but I have no choice but to fight along side them for now. Things will be much easier for me once this other boss has been taken down anyway — so it’s a win-win for me.’

But she had only a single question for him before she gave him an answer.

"Why can’t you use that same ability you just used against the other E rank again?"