Agent of Seraphim-Chapter 38: Scarab Form

Raml-d’ah was the same as him when he fully transformed the Scarab Shell. It senses the warriors through the vibrations from the ground.

If so, he would need to think. How to make such a creature ’blinded’ to even the vibrations. To take out this sight even.

If they spread out now, Raml-d’ah will detect their movement and chase after them. Because they were standing still, the worm was just towering in its place, waiting for its prey.

Brand raised his hand to Ruby and whispered.

"Fire Ball, but lower output, please." Brand requested.

Ruby followed and shot a small fireball towards Raml-d’ah. The spell cleanly hit the monster’s face, and it was clearly uncomfortable with it. This helped to reaffirm Brand’s guess.

Agitated, Raml-d’ah thrashed around, sending a wide spread of Lighting Fractals in the direction of the fireball. The attackers missed the warriors, as they had already spread out and were not in the way between the monster and Brand with Ruby.

The warriors caught a hint of what Brand was doing and started to think about how to make use of this information.

Some of the warriors poured oil on their weapons and set them ablaze.

Ruby wanted to join them in the battle, but she had to stay behind. Not only to aid Brand’s recovery, but also to have a safe place for casting her ultimate spell. The one that she used when the raid began.

"Seraphine, were there any skills that allow me to go airborne?" Brand asked.

"Not so soon, dear." Seraphine teased.

"How about the beetles?" Brand muttered while crouching down. He remembered the beetle whose signal got cut abruptly. The worm ahead of him must be the one who did it.

Ruby, who was beside him, glanced at his weird demeanor. Even though she had seen this gesture a lot of times, she was still not used to it. She also thought the word he mumbled from time to time.

’Beetle.’

"Hmm, six fingers left." Brand muttered. He then turned to Ruby. "Please keep this a secret, okay?"

"Okay?" Ruby was taken aback, but she nodded, curious about what Brand would be showing him.

Brand took off his gloves and revealed his missing fingers to Ruby. She stared at them, speechless.

"Your missing fingers increased?" Ruby was surprised. When he just entered the village, he had only one finger missing.

How did he lose so many fingers in such a short time span? Now, there were four missing fingers!

"Don’t be too surprised, alright?" Brand giggled awkwardly and snapped two more fingers out.

Ruby looked at Brand as if she had just witnessed the most bizarre thing, but there was more to it. Brand threw the finger in the air, and they morphed into beetles.

The beetles flew in the direction of Raml-d’ah and dove into the ground beside it, where there were no other warriors.

Raml-d’ah reacted to the stimulus and began thrashing its tail, attempting to strike down the source of movement it sensed.

Karl scoffed and led the warriors to inflict damage on the mutated worm.

"No matter how much resistance it had, it would eventually break," Karl spoke to his fellow members. "Just like raindrops hitting a rock."

"Thundra’s Impact!" Karl leapt onto the worm’s head and stabbed it. Lightning sparks spread from the point of hit.

He knew the worm had immunity to lightning damage, but he still did it. Because his role now was to buy time for Ruby to cast her spell.

Raml-d’ah continued to bash around, and some recruited warriors had been caught in the attack. They were almost flattened by its attack. Lightning sparks would accompany its attack, crushing and numbing its victims.

The Ed trio tried to charge at the mutated worm again after recovering, but their attacks were nothing. At this point, only Karl managed to leave meaningful damage on it.

The mutated worm would dive back into the ground most of the time, and only reemerge when it was dealing damage.

The two beetles Brand sent were able to track their location through triangulation by intersecting their sensed vibration magnitude and distance.

After picking up the signals, Brand would yell out to let his teammates know the attack path of the mutated worm.

By now, all the warriors listened to his directions without complaining.

"I need to bring an additional spear next time." Karl was displeased that his attack was incompatible with this raid.

Ruby continued to cast her spell. It would take some time to cast a spell with such magnitude. She would be the key to completing the raid, as the mutated demon worm was weak against her attribute.

While she was casting the spell, Brand stood up and cracked his joints, as if he was doing some warm-ups. Brand looked at his hands. There were only two fingers on each hand.

"It looked like the pincers of beetles..." Brand muttered in a low voice.

"That’s funny." Seraphine examined his hand, circling it.

’I’m starting to feel like a beetle now. Maybe my final form would be a giant beetle?’

Ruby tried to avoid looking at his hand. It was too distracting. However, what happened next was unbelievable.

"Keep this a secret, please," Brand whispered to Ruby and started his Scarab Shell’s transformation.

Black bubbles started to appear from his skin and turned into shells when they settled down. They then twirl around him, as if the shells started to weave into each other, merging into a seamless black armor.

While transforming, the shells cut off the remaining fingers in Brand’s hand. Brand was shocked at this.

Four beetles morphed in the air, hovering around Brand, like his little followers.

Strands of beetle shells crawled across his hand, weaving together in a tight spiral. His hand vanished beneath a cone of shell, sharpening into a needle-like blade.

’That looks menacingly sharp... maybe it could pierce into the worm.’

Brand was now clad in full-body jet-black armor, covering even his face.

"Safeguard yourself if the monster charges at you, okay?" Brand shoved his Vibrant Shield in the ground for her protection.

Seeing that Ruby did not say anything to him, Brand leapt toward the giant demon worm.