The stingers that the wasps shot at Anton resembled thousands of bullets, and he didn’t know if his defenses could handle such attacks, so he quickly teleported out of the way, then continued flying backwards while casting Frozen Orb spells at the wasps.
Anton realized that one spell that he truly lacked was an active shield or defensive spells. Yes, he did have the armor spells from the different characters that he had from his Diablo II system, but he felt that an active shield spell, like an Earth Wall or a Mana Wall, would be great to have. His Energy Shield did resemble an active shield spell somewhat, but since his mana pool would be drained if he received a massive attack, and the shield would only block up to 80 to 85 percent of the damage, he felt that they were still lacking.
He knew that he was quibbling. His defenses were great, and Anton knew that as long as he increased his magical power and stats, the effects of his defensive spells would increase. He was thankful that his system informed him that he could create three of each of the Diablo II characters per season ladder, and that would provide 20 percent of the individual characters’ primary stats to his real-life stats. That meant that per season, he would earn a total of 60 percent of each of the character's stats.
For example, a normal Diablo II Sorceress were supposed to focus on Energy but players had been focusing on Vitality for survivability but since it would be different for Anton, since all of his other characters would provide the Vitality stats and the other stats, he would focus on Energy on his Sorceress stats and that stat could reach 450 to 500 depending on the build. Of course, during the leveling process, he was just like other Earth players and would focus on Vitality and would only reset his character once the character reached level 99 and was ready to transfer the stats to his real-world stats.
What it all meant was, 20 percent of 500 would be 100, and that was the amount of Energy stat that he could get from a single character. Since every season, he could level up to three Sorceresses, that meant that he could transfer roughly around 300 Energy stats to his real-world stats. It was the same for his other stats from his other characters, like Vitality from the Druid.
The stats from his characters were significant, and Anton felt that that was currently the sure way for him to become extremely powerful for now, until his Diablo II system would provide another significant update.
At first, Anton thought that he could only level up each one of the original seven characters each season, but his Diablo II system notified him of the maximum number of characters he could level up. The system also informed him that the ladders season would follow the Diablo II Earth ladder season which currently lasted for six months, but according to some news that he had read, in the future, each season might last shorter and that meant that the system would also decrease the number of characters he could level up per season.
Another significant advantage that he would get from the system notification about leveling up three of each character was the number of items he could transfer from the Diablo II world to the real world. That meant that soon, aside from his full gear from the game providing him power, he would also have full gear in real life. That was also the main reason why he wasn’t too interested in the items that he had been getting from the dungeons.
Also, with the increase in items, he could fully gear up his father and his sister. Anton also had not stopped transferring minor mana and health potions from the game into the real world since his system allowed him to transfer one potion per day. They had been gathering dust in his inventory and even thought of stopping transferring potions, but he thought that his sister and his father could use them someday. His sister could use the mana potions to increase the speed of her wizard rank up, and his father probably would need the health potions soon, since Anders informed him through a letter that he had formed a mercenary group.
Anton laughed at himself for thinking so much about different things while defending himself from the hail of stingers from the wasps. He didn’t stop teleporting away and flying backwards to avoid the stingers, and didn’t stop casting his curses and his attack spells. Soon, the number of wasps significantly decreased.
The wasp queen noticed the large number of wasps that were dying from Anton’s spells. She commanded the remaining to return to her, and both she and the remaining wasps tried to fly to Anton as fast as they could to destroy him.
Unfortunately for the dungeon monster insects, with Anton’s almost inexhaustible mana, he could teleport as much as he could and fly to avoid them, with him not stopping to cast his curses and his offensive spells.
Anton even dispelled all of his summons except the Valkyrie, who focused its bow and arrow attack on the wasp queen.
After a long time of grueling kiting tactics, the wasp queen and her army finally fell. Anton tagged the queen’s corpses and harvested its stinger and its wings to submit as quest items. He also went and gathered some of the wasps’ honey since, according to the guild book, alchemists could use them for potion making. After that, Anton waited for the dungeon to dissolve the corpses of the wasps so they could retrieve the mana stones, and once the stones appeared, Anton was pleasantly surprised at the number of stones that he had gathered.
The fight with the insects was a hard workout for Anton. After storing everything that he had gathered, including the items from a chest that was located below the wasp’s nest, Anton proceeded to summon his five Ravens and five Spirit Wolves and started moving forward again.
The Ravens were flying ahead, acting as scouts, and the Spirit Wolves were walking ahead loudly to detect traps or trigger an ambush. This plan worked because soon, the wolves were ambushed by monsters that came out of the ground.
When Anton saw the monsters that ambushed the wolves, they were large desert beetles as big as horses. They had long antennas that the insects were using as a whip weapon, and their mouth with its large pincers appeared extra frightening. The monstrous beetles did not look the same as the ones from the Diablo II world, but appeared as just overgrown beetles equipped with monstrous weapons, with their antennas and pincers.
Anton immediately summoned the rest of his minions to assist the dying Spirit Wolves. He then equipped the Fanaticism Aura to make sure that his summons were powerful, and he then cast his Necromancer’s curses on the huge insects.
He immediately dispelled the severely injured Spirit Wolves and summoned a new batch, and commanded them to join the rest of the summons in attacking the beetles.
Anton saw that the ten huge beetles were powerful. He had to switch his aura to the Prayer Aura to heal his summons, but when they had enough health, he would switch back to the Fanaticism Aura. Once the curse’s duration lapsed, Anton would cast new curses towards the beetle. He would then cast his Frozen Orb and Blizzard towards the insects to slow them down.