The fear and panic that Iris was feeling from earlier had completely disappeared as now she only felt confidence and the thirst for revenge. The Beetle King halted approximately 20 feet away from Iris as it also somehow sensed, Iris' overwhelming anger and power.
Without wasting a single moment, this time Iris was the one to rush in and engage in the fight. She ran towards the giant Beetle at a quick pace with several streams of water following behind her.
The Beetle King responded with a loud shriek as it firmly planted its arms and legs into the ground and the areas where its limbs had dung into started to glow a bright brownish orange color.
The Beetle King was currently using the Earth ability which was the weaker ability and since the anatomy of the Terra Beetles only allowed them to use one ability at any given time, the King Beetle was not in its strongest state.
It takes a few moments for the King Beetles to switch from one ability to the other and Iris wasn't going to let the giant beetle have such an opportunity. She had quickly closed the distance between them and was about to launch all streams of water toward the Beetle King; however, just as the streams were about to make contact and penetrate the Beetle King's skin, a wall of glowing earth was raised from the ground, blocking the attack.
Iris stared at the wall in confusion as she had never seen the Earth being manipulated by an Earth ability user to glow; however, she didn't have time to worry about the glowing Earth wall as she had to continuously put pressure on the beast and make it so that it wouldn't be able to shift into Lightning mode.
Just as Iris had expected, the Beetle King was busy using the moments it had gained from distracting Iris using the glowing wall to switch to its strongest ability.
However, Iris was just in the nick of time to stop it from completely switching by attacking it again with streams of water. The Beetle King raised the same glowing wall as before, but this time, Iris was ready with a counter.
Instead of slowing down, Iris began to speed up as she ran straight at the wall. She had not used all of the streams of water this time while attacking the Beetle King, and now she merged all the remaining streams of water into a single giant blade of water.
The water was very pressurized and condensed by Iris' insane aura and it had a razor-sharp edge that would cut anything in its path. By merging the streams of water into one, she increased the volume of water so more damage would be dealt upon impact and it would have a larger surface area, which meant a bigger blade.
As Iris approached the glowing wall, she jumped into the air and turned herself 90 degrees so that she was now horizontal while in mid-air. She maintained that position in the air as she swung the giant blade of water horizontally as well, cutting right through the glowing earth wall, and following through as it also managed to sever two of the Beetle King's legs.
The Terra Beetle King shrieked in pain as blue blood began gushing out of its severed limbs pooling underneath.
Iris wasn't done yet. After landing a successful hit, Iris was back on the move charging her water streams for another attack.
This Beetle King was already weakened after receiving all of their previous strongest attacks while they were still in the head start and now it was receiving heavy blows from Iris that were strong enough to kill it in his weakened state. Now there was only one thing left to do that beast did when they were on the verge of death and knew they couldn't do anything.
Go Berserk!
Whenever a beast would fear that its life is about to end, it would go into a special type of state that could be compared to Mako's rage mode where it released all its energy at once and fought wildly without any regard for its life so that they might just escape and get to live on.
As Iris approached again, ready to slice more limbs of the King Beetle, the King suddenly let out a massive shriek, one that was heard all over the west mountain, and it basically announced its power and desperation.
Even though the Beetle King didn't possess the sound ability, its sheer strength alone was able to crack and level the earth around him and send Iris back flying.
Now the roles were reversed as this time it was the Beetle King who took the agro and ran after Iris, aiming to end her in a single swipe.
The beast's berserk mode was rare to see as most beasts wouldn't choose to go berserk even when all the conditions are met. The reason for this is that after they choose to go berserk, it is basically similar to overloading a battery with so much charge that it explodes. The crystal within their body, supplying the beasts with endless power, would get completely overloaded when a beast goes berserk.
If a crystal becomes overloaded, it basically gives almost 3 times the regular output of aura and mana to the beast, but this massive increase in output causes the crystal to become unstable and crack up, thus resulting in shattering and ending the connection of the beast with its abilities.
Once a crystal destroys itself after a beast has gone berserk, it would never be able to manipulate mana again, and even though it is alive, it won't be able to use abilities but still retain the strength and other stats that it had before losing their crystal as those are part of their physical body.
The Beetle King refused to die a humiliating death as he was played with and humiliated from the beginning of the fight and it wouldn't die until it had killed all those that disrespected its authority.
Even though Iris' ears were bleeding from that sudden shrieking attack, she looked calm and collected while in mid-air. Her eyes were still glowing blue and she was focusing her Healing aura to repair her healing as soon as possible.
Soon enough, Iris had lost enough momentum and began descending to the ground, followed closely by an insane giant beetle beast that had insane bloodlust in its eyes, ready to slice up Iris with the very sharp limbs that she had tried to cut off.
Even though it looked like Iris had no hope left, she surprisingly still remained calm and collected. Her healing ability had already healed her hearing and now she was calculating different ways to get out of the situation.
The remaining group was bust dealing with the other King Beetle and its army of regular Terra Beetles and they were too affected by the earlier shriek which basically meant that she was on her own and this time nobody was available to come and save her.
Luckily, thanks to her awakened Mutant Gene she didn't need anyone to save her as the next couple of seconds were absolutely crazy.
She descended faster and faster, and the Beetle King was getting ready to get its first kill right out of the air and then move back and finish off Bill whom it had smacked into the forest after emerging from the ground.
Even though it had smacked Bill quite hard, it felt like hitting something metallic and was smart enough to realize that Bill was wearing armor and that he was still alive.
As Iris got within slashing range, the Beetle King lunged forward and extended its limbs out to cut Iris, but just before the sharp claws sliced Iris' face, the limbs themselves just fell off the Beetle King's body without any resistance, like butter sliding off a hot knife.
Blue blood jutted out of the freshly severed limbs as well, and now the beast didn't have enough limbs to support itself and was at the mercy of Iris who had successfully landed back on the ground right after the King Beetle crashed head-first into the ground after getting outplayed by its prey.
What Iris had done was she had taken a very small amount of water and started focusing all of her water aura inside the small water droplet.
All of it!
As the aura concentrated into the water droplet, Iris commanded the water droplet to spin around a fixed circumference forming a ring of water. The ring of water was spinning so fast that the water droplet was stretched pretty thin, so much so that it became barely visible.
While she was falling through the air, she had prepared super lethal invisible water cutters which were strong enough to easily penetrate the Beetle King's skin and sever the whole limb.
Iris could feel her power fading as she had put almost everything into that last move in the air, but she had to make sure and lessen the group's load by killing this Beetle King right here and now.
She slowly and exhaustedly started walking closer to the Beetle King who couldn't move due to having insufficient limbs and conjured several more water streams to end the beast's life and kill it for good.
However, it looked like Iris wasn't the only one with an ace up their sleeve. This time, the Beetle King didn't let out an ear-deafening scream or anything showy. It simply let out a super strong ultrasound that alerted the nearby Terra Beetles, giving them a special command.
Before Iris could even realize it, 50 or so Terra Beetles were now dashing towards her having the same exact crazy look as the Beetle King.
"OH, S***!"
Updat𝓮d from freew𝒆bnov𝒆l.co(m)