Anton was thankful that although the ten huge beetles had some sort of long-range attack with their whip-like antennas, the monsters concentrated their attacks on his summons. That meant that he could simply stay in one place, up in the air behind his summons, and focus on casting curses and attack spells on the huge desert beetles.
The attack power of the beetles was great because even though his summons were buffed by his Fanaticism Aura and his Oak Sage Spirit summon, coupled with the fact that his summons were max level, which boasted an impressive array of defensive and offensive capabilities, the damage that they received from the monster was severe. That brought home the fact that the monsters on the 50th floor were truly capable.
The ten beetles even formed some sort of rudimentary formation that protected their vulnerabilities from Anton’s summons, and that behavior confirmed the fact that the monsters on the deeper floor were intelligent.
Anton summons, with his commands, would attack the front, the sides, and the back. The beetles formed themselves into a circle to protect their backs. Unfortunately for the insect monsters, because of Anton’s curses and spells, the damage the insect monsters were receiving from both the summons and his spells was too great, and soon, the ten huge beetles fell.
The fight was very long, and Anton had to resummon some of his minions because the beetles were powerful enough to constantly kill some of them. Once the beetles were dead, Anton felt a little tired because the fight was a little hard, and it took him and his summons a long time to kill the ten huge beetles.
After storing the materials that Anton, together with some of his summons, harvested from the beetles, the mana stones that appeared after the dungeon devoured the monsters’ corpses, and the items that came out of the chest that appeared after the beetles died, he dispelled all of his summons except the five Ravens that he was using as scouts and the five Spirit Wolves that he was using to trigger traps to lure the monsters that were waiting to ambush them.
The dungeon setting of the desert canyon was starkly beautiful. The bare and grim beauty of the canyons brought out thoughts and ideas that would only form when one was alone with their thoughts in this type of surroundings. Unfortunately for Anton, he was much too focused on the dungeon monsters ambushing him and his summons to appreciate the beautiful scenery provided by the oddly powerful dungeon, which was able to create such environments.
The other issue with the environment was the exceedingly hot and dry weather. Anton thought that if this was one of the easier floors of a dungeon, he would have ridden his dire bear with a tent, and with one of his Frozen Orb air conditioner enchanted items active inside it.
At the very least, the temperature wasn’t hot to the point that he couldn’t function when it was the hottest times of the day.
The next set of monsters that ambushed his Spirit Wolves were huge desert snakes. His ravens were almost useless on this floor since, again, most of the monsters were hiding either deep in the ground or the surrounding rock walls and would suddenly come out to attack the wolves.
There were twelve snakes, but the fight was fairly easy since the snakes, even though they were poisonous, were only equal in attack power to the ten beetles that he had fought previously. The difference was, the beetles were encased in their hard shells, that was why the fight then was longer.
The snakes did not even manage to kill one of the summons, even with their poisons, because once some of the summons were poisoned, Anton would just switch to the Cleansing Aura, then to the Prayer Aura, then back to the Fanaticism Aura. After an easy, albeit still a long fight, Anton collected the poison sacs, the gall bladder, the skins, and the fangs of the snakes to submit to the Adventurer Guild. He then waited for the corpses to dissolve so he could retrieve the mana stones. Once the stones appeared, he stored everything in his inventory and moved on.
After a few minutes, his ravens reported seeing some sort of cave opening in one of the rock walls. The ravens must have triggered something because out of the huge cave opening came three large rock giants.
The rock giants were humongous. They were around four to five meters tall, and their skin was covered with rocks. Anton knew that because of the characteristics of the giants’ skins, the monster defenses were probably off the chart, and he prepared himself for a long and bitter fight.
Anton dispelled the ravens and the spirit wolves and summoned all of his minions in front of him. He made sure that all of his defensive buffs were active and the Fanaticism Aura was active.
The three giants saw Anton and his summons, and the three huge monsters started running towards him and his minions. Anton flew up in the sky and then commanded all of his summons to meet the three giants in battle with the Dire Bear and the Clay Golem at the very front to serve as their tanks.
Anton started casting curses at the three giants, but suddenly, the giants summoned rocks from the ground and hurled them at his summons. The Dire Bear and the Clay Golem tanked the boulders that the giants threw, and the rest were able to evade the thrown rocks.
“Fudge! The giants are earth benders!” Anton exclaimed to himself.
Thankfully, it appeared that the three rock giants were only able to use their skills to summon rocks to throw at their enemies and no other earth-bending skills like summoning rock walls, or forming earth spikes.
Unfortunately for Anton, when he started casting curses and offensive spells at the rock giants, they began targeting him with their rock throws. It was not too much of a problem for him, though, since he simply teleported out of the way, but looking at the impact that the rock made when it hit a wall or the ground, Anton wondered if he could tank the rocks with his defenses.
At first, he wanted to try it out because even if he received great damage, he could simply heal it with his aura. So when one of the rocks was thrown at him, he didn’t teleport out of the way and met it with his arms crossed in front of him.
Anton’s mana pool dipped by a quarter, and his health pool suffered a tiny dip. That meant that he could tank the rocks, which was a great relief to him. Of course, he would still utilize his Teleport spell to get out of the way of any thrown things at him and would not tank them.
After cursing the three rock giants, he summoned a bunch of Hydras so they would shoot Firebolts at the monsters. With his Frozen Orb and his Blizzard, maybe the cold and hot temperatures would make the giant’s skin brittle or something.
The strength of the three rock giants was tremendous, and his wolves would die after a couple of hits. Anton would just re-summon them and command them to fight the giants again. The Dire Bear and the Clay Golems' defenses were enough to tank the rock giants' attack, and if they were damaged enough, Anton would simply heal them using his Prayer Aura.
Anton’s Valkyrie and Shadow Master weren’t being hit, though, because their evasion was through the roof, and their damage to the monsters was great. He kept casting his curses and his offensive spells at the giant, and soon the three rock giants fell.