## Chapter 318 – The Great Bumblebee Brouhaha
“Killer Hornets on the Loose!!!!”
“Aaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!”
“This is helllllllll!!!!!!!!!”
The city’s interior was already a complete mess thanks to the hornets, but the outside was a genuine hellscape beyond comparison.
The air was thick with a savagery that made it seem like Ox-Head and Horse-Face, the guardians of the underworld, might leap out of the bushes at any moment to pluck out the eyes and tongues of sinners.
ㅡScreeeeeech!!!
It wasn’t this bad even when I went to investigate the jungle a couple of weeks ago. The sheer misery of the situation made even my iron heart want to weep.
ㅡBuzzzzzzz!
ㅡBuzz buzz!!
ㅡBuzzzzzzzzz!!!
“Gyaaaaaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!!!!!!”
The severely enraged hornets formed a massive swarm, slaughtering, dismembering, and kidnapping people like the mythical locust plague.
The only sounds were the devilish, cruel buzzing of wings and the desperate screams of humans in agony.
If this wasn’t hell, then what was?
There was no God or Buddha, after all.
“Ugh, aaaaaaagh!!!!”
One small-framed adventurer was being carried away alive, limbs grasped by the hornets. I decided not to dwell on the fate that awaited him.
ㅡKiyaaaaaaagh!!!
Just as a well-respected local figure’s birthday party would be filled with joyous laughter, this hell was filled with unending screams.
The sight of hornets flying around, each clutching a human limb dripping with blood, reinforced my conviction that the world was nothing more than hell.
“This is quite a sight.”
Being turned into a meatball was the least of it.
Ten giant hornets swarming one person was too much to handle. One adventurer, stung dozens of times, collapsed and was immediately torn to pieces.
“Sis, I feel like I’m going to throw up.”
Even Winia couldn’t be immune to the gruesome spectacle of dozens of people being torn apart, not just a few dying.
“Should we turn back?”
“No.”
She incinerated a hornet flying towards us and answered with obvious displeasure. Her desire to investigate the nest we hadn’t been able to find was still stronger.
“Gather ’round! Let’s stick together!”
Someone shouted loudly amidst the screams of dying people. Realizing they couldn’t go on like this, they were suggesting they band together.
“Y-yeah! We need to form a formation!”
“We can’t even move like this!!!”
“Let’s gather quickly!!”
Eventually, the adventurers, who had been trying to move separately, gathered in one place like a school of sardines and began to move in formation.
Unable to cope with the sheer number of hornets, they had temporarily formed a team.
“Katt. Let’s follow them.”
“We have to. Looks like we won’t even make it to the front otherwise.”
We also decided to stick to the back of the group and head towards the jungle.
Whatever the case, there was a bounty on the nest, so we had to go and check it out. The lord’s soldiers had already been dispatched, so we couldn’t miss the opportunity.
The adventurers here felt the same way.
ㅡThud, thud.
ㅡClang, clang.
The formation included several mages and their guards, adventurers, martial artists, archers, and spearmen. It looked like a messy, makeshift ragtag army.
Well, even though it was a cobbled-together group, the hornets couldn’t easily attack them when they were together like this. They were all shouting and waving their weapons overhead, threatening the hornets.
“We’ll make it to the jungle like this!”
“Understood!”
As soon as the middle-aged adventurer at the front shouted, almost everyone answered loudly. They were all enraged after seeing people die before their eyes.
ㅡBuzzzzz!!
Of course, the hornets still attacked even in this situation.
The attacks had become less frequent, but they hadn’t stopped altogether.
“Shit!”
“Next to you! Look next to you!”
ㅡCrack!
Still, being together allowed them to defend themselves and advance without much damage. Swords, axes, and spears worked together to slaughter the incoming hornets.
The archers also drew their swords and fought fiercely.
They probably didn’t want to waste arrows.
The mages also shot fireballs and ice spikes into the air.
We also helped kill the hornets from behind as we walked. It was a real shame there was no bounty for this.
“It’s so damn loud.”
“Should I cover your ears?”
“No.”
Winia was showing her annoyance, so I spoke to her in an obsequious manner. It was definitely too loud. The decibel level was too high and it wouldn’t be good for Winia’s chest.
And so, we followed the procession.
Thanks to Katt and Claudia’s reliable protection, there was no damage to the rear, but there were intermittent casualties at the front.
These guys are lacking in skill.
ㅡSwoosh!
These hornets weren’t a problem for me. I would have been utterly defeated by them in the past, but I’m different now. I easily cut them down without even using much stamina.
I could handle several at once. I was focused on intercepting the hornets that kept flying in, when Claudia said,
“Oh, Katt. Look at them.”
“At what?”
“That.”
She pointed to the distance after slicing a hornet in half.
Wondering what it was, I looked and sawㅡ
“Hey, hey! What the hell are those guys doing!”
“Don’t know, tell them to go die!”
“Idiots.”
ㅡSeveral guys were breaking away from the formation and running out into the open.
The adventurers were jeering at them.
“What are they doing?”
“Hmm, who knows?”
The deserters were running at high speed towards the hornet-infested space. What was it? Were they suicide hopefuls?
There were plenty of ways to commit suicide, but being torn apart alive by hornets wasn’t a recommended one. No matter how desperate you were, it was a choice you should never make.
Wondering what was going on, I kept watching, and the running guys shouted urgently.
“Hurry! Hurry!”
“Watch your back!”
Ah.
I knew what it was.
They were aiming for the remains of the torn-apart adventurers. It seemed they were risking their lives to pick up the dead men’s dropped items.
They must have figured they could quickly go and come back, so they shot out like arrows. It was quite exciting, so I decided to keep watching.
“Got it!”
After watching for a while, one of them managed to pick up two swords and a backpack and quickly tried to return to the formation. A strong desire can sometimes give a person incredible strength.
Two swords and a backpack.
That was definitely worth about 3 silver.
It was worth risking his life.
ㅡTap tap tap tap!
The moment he picked up the items and tried to return was truly instantaneous. Oh, was he going to succeed?
“Yeah, you need that kind of grit if you want to make money.”
I admired him and nodded, watching the brave fellow.
“I wonder what will happen?”
“No, Claudia. Let’s wish him well in this kind of situation.”
In contrast, Claudia seemed to want to witness the ominous end of a fool with her own eyes.
What a gore maniac.
“Hehehe. I don’t want to.”
Well, even if Claudia said that, it seemed like he had already succeeded.
The other guys in the formation would have been interested in the dropped items, but they had given up because they were afraid of death.
He had overcome that fear and hardship and brilliantly obtained the spoils of warㅡ
“ㅡKkeuhaaaack?!!”
He failed to do so.
The hornets swarmed him as he was returning.
No, seriously, you did so well, how could you fail here?
The number of attacking hornets reached as many as eight. It was a bit much for him to handle alone, so he was quickly subdued.
“H-help me!!!”
He reached out to the procession with a desperate voice and a pale face, but there was not a single Good Samaritan to be found here, of course.
The swordsmen, spearmen, archers, and mages simply watched and laughed.
“Hehehe.”
“Hehe, what an idiot.”
“Just die, you moron!”
They weren’t just not helping, they were even jeering.
Adventurers’ personalities never change. They were the kind of people who were ready to laugh at others’ misfortunes even in difficult times.
ㅡCrack!
ㅡRip!
“Kkeuaaaaaaaaaaagh!!!!”
In the end, he met his demise, becoming a dropped item himself without anyone’s help. Of course, not a single person broke away from the formation to pick it up.
ㅡBuzzzzz!!!
He was torn to pieces in an instant and disappeared into the sky with the hornets.
Come to think of it, the guy who ran out with him to pick up the loot was already gone without a trace, except for a bloodstain. It was too miserable.
He unintentionally showed the lesson that greed leads to death with the spirit of self-sacrifice. Although it was a cruel event, it was an incident that showed that righteousness and cooperation still existed in this world.
“You have to die if you’re stupid.”
Winia said as if spitting it out, having watched his demise from beginning to end. It was a casual tone that showed no emotion.
“Too bad. He would have lived if he was just a little faster.”
It was such a pity.
Anyway, taking his death as a lesson, we advanced towards the jungle more carefully and helping each other.
ㅡBuzzzzzzz!!!
We arrived at what was not a jungle, but a beehive. No, it was actually a jungle, but there were only hornets around, so it felt like a beehive.
However, unlike the open road, this place was overgrown with bushes and vines, so it felt easier to deal with the hornets.
“Iyaaaat!!!”
Above all, there were a truly enormous number of adventurers.
The ones who had just arrived, including us, and the ones who were already here, had all come together to form an army. Of course, Isvant’s forces were also advancing from the center of the jungle.
Still.
There were this many hornets.
ㅡBuzzzzz!!
ㅡWhack!
The only good thing was that the killer hornet’s venom sac was worth money. It was extremely cheap compared to the bounty, but you could earn about 5 coppers per hornet.
Of course, you could only get the full price if the venom sac was undamaged.
I felt a little bad about the corpses of the hornets that had died on the road, but I couldn’t do the work of collecting the venom sacs there, and they were almost all damaged because they had defended so fiercely.
That’s why we ignored them.
Above all, the bounty for destroying the nest was in the tens of silver. In fact, everyone gathered here was aiming for that.
The nest had a core, and you could take that as proof of subjugation.
Even though it was called a core, it wasn’t particularly useful, and it was just proof of destruction. It wasn’t a core organ or anything like that, but when the hornets built their nests, they made a pillar in the center to support the nest, and that was the core.
Anyway, the adventurers formed groups from here and carefully entered the jungle while dealing with the hornets.
According to the announcement, the hornets’ nests were ‘fucking’ numerous.
Even the sizes varied greatly. There were small nests and huge ones. Of course, the bigger the nest, the bigger the bounty. The core was also bigger.
“Anyway, Darkie. Let’s go in. Let’s find it today.”
“I’m definitely finding it today.”
We had been rummaging through the jungle under Winia’s command, but we couldn’t find a single nest. It seemed like some of the other guys had found a few, but we hadn’t seen any at all.
Let’s definitely find the damn thing today.
We broke away from the group of adventurers and went straight into the jungle. The other adventurers also formed parties of about 10 people and went in their own directions.
I hoped we wouldn’t run into them inside.
ㅡBuzzzzz!!
“Hehehe. You’re all just fodder.”
As soon as we entered, five hornets rushed at me, but I kicked off the ground and charged at them, quickly closing the distance and cutting down two of them.
It was a skill that was possible because I could cut through their carapaces with a single blow.
As soon as I cut down the two, I turned around and kicked and punched the heads of the guys attacking from behind, subduing them.
Honestly, even if the world turned into hell, you could always overcome it as long as you had enough power.
“Kyaa, Katt is so cool.”
“Dejaaaaaaaaat!!!”
