"Now, I suggest that I take the lead from now on as I already know how we are going to get through this."
"You can do that?"
"Just watch and do as I say. First things first, Guy, please kick Peter. He fainted from almost having a heart attack but he's mostly fine."
I go over to Peter who's lying collapsed on the ground. His face is twisted like he's having a nightmare but from how still he's lying still, he probably just fainted with that expression locked on his face.
I try to shake him awake but Peter doesn't react at all. This coward is out like a light.
"Don't bother being gentle, his scales may not block an attack but they do make him very insensitive to touch."
I kick Peter and he indeed wakes up with a start. But that is interesting, Maribelle prophecies that I would wake him up with a kick. That did not prevent me from trying something else.
Got it.
Peter groggily gets up and is then lectured by Maribelle. According to her, Peter, a user of illusion magic should have had the highest resistance against hypnotism so he should have saved them not been the one effected the most.
We move to the next floor and Maribelle really does turn out to know everything. I raise walls, cover the floor in ice or cut down a few escaping branti as she and Pascal rain down hell on them. Every major charge the branti muster is dispersed by Maribelle's pressured water drill and all the minor ones meet Pascal's wall of fists.
Peter is sent to disperse or delay small pockets of branti that plan to do gods know what. Despite the number of branti objectively being the same flood like mass as before, it feels like there's way less since we are constantly beating them back.
The pressure we faced before is slashed in half when all the sudden surges are suppressed before thy can gain momentum.
The branti don't seem to realize that our combat effectiveness has skyrocketed. They just stubbornly try to find some direction, some hidden route that will allow them to break through or offense and land a few hits.
As Maribelle promised, the branti don't find any cracks they can exploit to make effective use of their overwhelming numbers.
Over the next few floors, the branti try a few different strategies, all just different times and places to rush us. They attack in the tunnels, getting absolutely wiped by Maribelle's pressured water drill. A pincer attack in the tunnels gets them ground up by Pascal and me while Maribelle clears the other side.
Waiting on the ceiling of the room that leads to the next floor turns out to be useless if we already know they are there. I waste almost my entire mana pool to make them drop like flies with a quake that shakes the entire room.
Disoriented and left prone from the fall, the branti don't stand much of a chance.
We get decent levels from the mass of branti we are killing but the difficulty does begin to rise again after the fifteenth floor. The levels we gain simply can't match the increase in difficulty from each floor.
But that won't stop us. While the difficulty rises, we've yet to get hurt even once since Maribelle took command. And at the rate we are going, we won't be outmatched before the twentieth floor where Roy joins us.
"Don't let your guard down. From floor 16 onward, stronger branti will be leading groups. They don't issue commands but are stronger individuals among them which hit a lot heavier."
The branti here are starting to hit their max levels which means those leaders have evolved into experimental branti. Not giant ones like the boss we faced but still much more dangerous than ordinary ones. From the archetype of ant bodies, a variety of insects come at us. There is that same condor scorpion mix but it lacks the boss size and doesn't have the carrion cry skill.
There's also centipedes with Grebe heads, the red eyes are scary but otherwise they mostly just skitter.
The challenging ones are the caterpillars with parrot heads as they can cast spells and imitate voices and the moth secretary birds. The latter ones have the body of a moth with the head and legs of a secretary bird. Them flying is a pain and those beaks are sharp enough to pierce any one of us. Not to mention the clawed legs that strike out like vicious vipers or try to stomp you in a blind flurry.
Maribelle's directions become even more vital when we face these opponents. Individually, we wouldn't be in too much trouble but with two or three of them accompanied by a hundred ordinary branti the situation changes.
The mass of ordinary branti becomes a distraction, a shield, or a way to block our line of sight. Whatever the experimental branti need to maximize their chances against us.
In this situation, Peter's breath attack comes in very handy. He can affect all the branti to some small degree if just a few of them get into his range and with the gas being unseeable combined with his stealthy camouflage, they never know when they are in range.
It disrupts them just enough for Maribelle and Pascal to reach the experimental branti by slaughtering their way through the ordinary ones. My task is to keep the ordinary from taking the big hits that are dished out.
Following Maribelle's commands, I throw rock needles at seemingly empty places only for an ordinary branti to jump straight into the path of the rock needle.