His consciousness started to waver as he was on the verge of blacking out. Seeing this, the queen got ready to spew her goo all over him and let the acid do its job. He looked up at it and knew that he was probably about to die. He tried to channel the mana at that moment to heal himself, but everything was happening too quickly. It probably wouldn't be able to finish casting in time.

Coming to his rescue was Emma, as she blasted the biggest beam of pressurized boiling hot water he had ever seen her do great at the Queen's destroyed eye. Causing it to roll over and wince in pain, spilling the goo elsewhere. Marcelina finished off the final alpha by stabbing it in the head with the dagger, while Charles quickly dashed over and rammed his head into the bottom of the Queen's jaw, breaking some of the chitin in that area.

This bought Ben enough time for his healing spell to kick in and for a decent amount of the damage he had sustained to be undone. As he was able to get to his feet again, he slowly stood. He began to raise his hand to his chest as he started walking in the direction of the queen, who was now rolling around and accidentally knocking Charles back. As Marcelina caught Charles and made sure that he was not too badly injured, Ben cast his spell on himself again, healing even more of the damage as he started to run towards it. 

Arms still coated in that fire and lightning, he used minor geo manipulation to push himself off the ground once he generated enough momentum. All so that he could strike from above as it, yelping in pain, started to try and get back to its feet. Once it was back on its feet in full, it turned its attention to Marcelina, who was quickly dashing over to it and slashing at its ankles. 

Marcelina was able to inflict enough damage that it focused on her. Charles and Emma soon joined in the fray, once again attacking from two different sides, hoping to overwhelm the queen. 

The trio were able to reduce the movements of the queen and crippled her enough that the sheer active moving would inflict pain. As Emma started flying through the air and unleashing torrent after torrent of scalding water down upon it, Charles would rapidly bounce around the walls and ceiling of the cave at incredible speed, kicking the creature in its face. Crushing a few more eyes in the process. Marcelina used the dagger and her own momentum to rip into the queen's ankles and sever the tendons and ligaments that allowed it to stand. The queen's legs could barely hold her off the ground by the time Marcelina felt she had done enough before distancing herself from it.

All of this was in order to distract the creature from noticing Ben as he slammed his right fist down onto its skull from above. That one punch produced enough force that it caved in the queen's skull. The force of the punch was not the only thing that helped to kill it, as the flames burned the flesh underneath and the lightning fried its nervous system until its heart exploded. As it collapsed hard into the ground dead, Ben rolled off of its skull onto the cave floor.

He laid there for a moment as he caught his breath casting another use heart of health on himself. As his body felt like it was in perfect shape again, Marcelina came over and leaned down to look him in the eyes. 

"How you feeling? You took a pretty nasty hit there, and you slammed into the wall of the cave so hard I thought you got knocked out cold," she asked him, more worried at first but she calmed down when she saw that he had started healing himself. 

"Oh yeah that shit hurt. Thank God I got this healing spell. Lord knows that I would probably be dead if I couldn't heal myself right now," he said, almost grouchy-like but not directed at her. He was clearly frustrated by how close he came to dying just then. 

Killing a lot of enemies almost instantly became so frequent that he almost forgot that he was still technically pretty low level. He can't take too many big hits or else he'll die. Thankfully, it was over now and he remembered how Charles also got hit by the queen. Sitting up, he started casting heart of health on all of his allies just to make sure everyone got back in tip-top shape. 

With that done, they received a notification that they had completed the objective. The promised rewards would be allocated once they left the cave. Remembering the side objective, he looked at Marcelina, and together they got to butchering both the royal guards and the queen herself. 

Out of all the royal guards, only about three of them had soul cores. But they were all two-star cores at the very least. It at least made them feel better about it.

Butchering the queen's body for the objective was a much longer, more difficult task. Her sheer size meant that they had to go slow. Especially because they knew about her gooey sticky acidic spit that they wanted to avoid dealing with. All in all, it took about an hour to do the queen alone, but they were able to get a good chunk of her chitin and her both antlers which all ended up being unique material. 

The star of the show was her soul core. It was the most valuable prize of all as it was a 3-star quality. Happy to have collected it, they knew that this cave was the right choice as now they could exchange all the cores that they had for godly gold and items. 

Once they were done, they got a notification saying they had completed the optional quest and would receive additional rewards. Feeling accomplished, they got ready to go and Marcelina decided to do one final scan of the interior with her Wild Sight just to make sure they didn't miss anything. She was shocked when she saw a part of the wall that looked odd. She noticed there was a part of the cave wall that did not look like it was attached to the rest. Almost like the entrance to a hidden door. 

"Ben over there looks like it might be a false wall. I'm noticing some differences between it and the rest of the cave wall. I think it might be a hidden room," she informed him while pointing out exactly where it was. 

"Alright let's check it out," he said as they started to walk over, but then he examined the rest of the room and came to a realization. He grabbed her by the arm and said, "I just noticed something. This entire time we've been through this cave we haven't seen any eggs from these creatures or any newborns. It's only been adult vinuu. You would think that if they had a similar structure to most insects the queen would have a chamber where she would lay eggs."

"You think that whatever's behind that hidden door might be the room where she lays all the eggs," she asked him, seeking clarification. 

He responded with a nod, "I mean..... it makes sense at least. The only way we'll know is if we open the entrance.... If it happens to be the room where all the eggs and young are kept, there might be additional guards to protect them." 

"That your way of saying step back in case I have to start chucking fire everywhere," she sarcastically wondered. 

He snapped his fingers and gave an annoying looking smile while pointing at her, "Bingo. God, it feels good having someone who understands me."

"Alright, in that case I'll wait about 20 feet back with Charles and Emma while you open the entrance and get ready in case you need to attack," she told him, respecting his skill and knowing he could handle it. 

Sure enough, once she felt she was far enough away, and he was right at the entrance, he used Geo manipulation to make the hidden stone door sink below the ground. Revealing a massive entrance to an almost as equally huge room to the chamber they were already in. Inside lining all of the walls and ceiling were eggs held there by that acidic green liquid. On the ground were young larvas that resembled caterpillars with ant-like heads and bee stingers on their rear ends that all seemed to be a fleshy blue color with about a dozen green eyes. They crawled about on their little nubs that they had for feet. Inside the room with them were about five more alphas that were there to protect them. These alphas actually had miniature antlers similar to the queen but of a much smaller size.

Without hesitating, Ben started casting minor pyro manipulation and setting fire to everything he could within range. It helped that the sticky substance that the eggs were held up onto the walls of the cave of that room by, all happened to be extraordinarily flammable. The fire spread quickly, cooking the eggs. If it didn't kill the unhatched larvae inside with the flames, the fall to the ground would definitely finish the job, as a lot of them could no longer be held up with the sticky substance burned away.

The alphas tried to protect the larvae and the eggs, but they were quickly dispatched by the flames as well. Once they got within range of his fire, they started to ignite and die. In a matter of minutes he was certain that he had killed most of them, but he wanted to give the fire some time to do its job. Walking away from the entrance and letting the smoke billow out, all the while he was listening to the sounds of the creatures dying and screaming as they burned to death.

After about 10 minutes, he was certain that nothing survived as the flames were only continuing to burn off the charred remains of the dead vinuu. The smoke eventually cleared out after about 20 or so more minutes. They gave it some more time to naturally cool off before entering it. 

Once inside, they saw that everything that once filled this room was nothing more than ashes and bones on the ground. The only thing that stood out from it all was what looked like to be a hidden treasure chest that was covered by the now burned away eggs towards the back of the chamber. As they passed by the alphas, they noticed that inside the skeleton corpse of one of them was a single two-star soul core. Benedictus put it in his inventory before continuing to the chest.

Once he stood in front of the chest he looked at Marcelina and they both silently wordlessly agreed to open it together. After, of course, she gave it a quick stab with her dagger to make sure it wasn't secretly a mimic. Thankfully, it was just a normal chest and they opened the lid on it. Instead of having something on the inside, it glowed with light, and they saw that light take the shape of a rapier. The light faded away and sinking into the bottom of this now open chest was a rapier. 

The design of the rapier was quite unique. It was longer than most standard rapiers by about maybe an additional half a foot in length. The handle of the rapier was made out of a similar green chitin to that of the vinuu, and it was perfectly smooth. The guard of the rapier seemed to be made out of a similar material to the antlers of the queen and had a spiral floral design. Grabbing it by the handle, it would look like you were sticking your hand into the center of a green and gold rose when you got closer to the end of the handle as it was covered by the guard. The guard of the blade was also accented with gold and so was the pommel of this rapier, which at the very end held a flawlessly cut round emerald. 

The blade of the rapier itself was made of a solid steel metal. He did not know what type of steel, but he would assume that it was spring steel. But that assumption could be wrong given the nature of this world. He noticed something that almost slipped from his perceptive view. Along the handle there were small intricately carved and inlaid green rune symbols. These did not look like any kind of runes that he had seen before. 

A part of him wanted to take the rapier, but instead he looked at Marcelina and told her, "You can have it. Suits you better. After all, rapiers are great for your fighting style." 

"Wait really?! You're going to let me have it," she said, kind of surprised, expecting him to claim it since he did the majority of the work.

"Yeah it's all yours," he quickly responded back, confirming she could take it.

Without thinking, she hugged him, "Thank you. Thank you. Thank you." 

Before he could process the fact that she hugged him, she let go and quickly reached in to grab the rapier. Once she took it, she got a notification saying that she had claimed the Emerald Stinger. The notification explained to her that it was made using the horns of a staghorned vinuu queen, vinuu chitin, spring steel, and a small amount of polatite. 

Outside of being a rapier, it apparently had two abilities that she could use. One was called Queen's Protection, and it basically said that once activated it granted her and up to 5 allies within 100ft resistance to all acid and earth damage for 10 minutes. The second ability was the more eye-catching one. It was called Blood of the Queen, and it essentially allowed her to enhance the rapier to deal sizable extra acid and poison damage for 10 minutes. 

She was very excited to receive the rapier, but before she could let her excitement grow too much, both of them received another notification. It stated that they had completed a hidden quest to destroy the vinuu breeding room and claim the hidden treasure. As a reward, they would receive 3 2-star soul cores each once they exit the cave. That actually really excited them. That would mean that their total soul cores would be 3 1-star cores, 10 2-star cores, and 1 3-star core. All in all, the gold and items that they would receive in total after they exited would be more than worth this excursion into the cave. 

With nothing left that they knew of, they all began to make their way out of the cave. Along the way they checked to see if there were any more hidden passages, but it appeared that there weren't anymore to be found. Thankfully, that also meant there were no more vinuu inside the cave waiting to ambush them.

Once they stepped out of the cave, they were both hit with a flurry of notifications. The first one was congratulating them on completing the exploration of the cave and all the quests inside. As the first of their species to complete a dungeon, both of them would receive an extra reward in the form of 500 godly gold each. The second notification was congratulating them on officially slaying all staghorned vinuu in the forest, ending their infestation and completing the quest, Pests of the Polakka Forest. As a reward, they received one 3-star soul core each. 

Next, they receive notifications about them completing each of the quests inside the cave. They were given the promised rewards for defeating the queen and her guards. Upon completing the optional objective, they are both given a token to summon a master blacksmith to create one item for them for free. Finally, they received the rewards for completing the hidden quest. That was the end of their joint notifications.