Bees Again

"Shaa!" Fwoosh!

In response to the threatening hiss of the python accompanied with a spray of poison Lyra lit up with flames and pounced, uncaring for the poison since it evaporated before it could touch her fur

"The sudden spike in Silver ranked ones is rather big"

Yu complained, he was only a three-day journey away from the burned down village now but as soon as he set this foot on this swamp these strong beasts started coming out of the woodworks trying to get a bite out of them with ranks ranging from peak Bronze to second or third stage of Silver

They've been easy so far though since most of them were water attribute beasts, am attribute that Lyra could get an edge over with how overwhelmingly superior her flames were

"Quaaack"

Mid fight a duck suddenly came dashing through the water, it must have thought it could get a free meal out of the 'exhausted' battelers

"How about you leave them be?"

Though assured of his wolf's victory he still didn't want to make it a three-way battle and asked politely, his crossbow on the other hand very rudely shot at the dashing duck

"Qua quack!!"

It dodged the bolt and cursed at him for the sneak attack, changing its trajectory to slam into him instead

He didn't step back nor call out his shield, instead he took out the dreaded black crossbow that had one successful shot so far, it was pretty useless in a real fight but...

"Qua?!!? Quack~"

Bidding him goodbye the duck ran away without a second thought, just the energy coming from the thing scared it quackless, facing it head-on was something only a birdbrain would do

Watching it leave Yu shrugged and stored Dead Silence once more, it was by accident he discovered that beasts feared being aimed at by the weapon as it gave then a feeling of extreme danger, ever since he knew about that he has been abusing the fact to bluff whenever he found a beast to be bothersome to fight

"Sssss...."

Hearing the fading hiss he turned back to the fight just in time to see the snake's body fall into the shallow water all burnt like a smoked eel

"Good job Lyra"

The victorious wolf turned her head to the side at his compliment, if she had human cheeks they'd be puffed right about now

'She's still mad huh, I shouldn't have entered the swam knowing how much she hated getting dirty'

As much as he wanted to appease her this was the fastest way to the next city, thus he could only smile wryly and lead the way, crying on the inside since his meat would be charcoal tonight once again

Buzz~

The sound of buzzing came before its owner did alerting the two of the approaching enemy

Lyra took to the front so she could face the threat, a bee the size of a fist

The bee didn't attack her though totally ignoring her and flying straight at Yu with such madness it felt like he killed its queen

Woosh Thuck!

What it received for the brainless attack was a bolt sticking thoughts its entire body before falling to the ground dead

"Great, bees, if I lacked anything right now it would be bees"

If he knew anything about bees it was their extremely sensitive smell, even normal bees were known to locate flowers or toxins a couple of miles away much less soul beast bees

"Unless this one strayed off far from its hive there must be a bunch more nearby, I'm carrying some honey to keep that egg alive so they will definitely find me"

He started to think of where to head in order to avoid the troublesome critters

"Hmm, honey..."

That is until he recalled his dire need of more royal jelly for the queen egg, his supplies had run out long ago and what little honey remained was being used to keep it alive

"It might not be worthwhile but..."

A queen bee generated from a Wax Womb must be one hell of a beast

"Haah, fine, Let's go raid some beehives"

He decided

The pitiful wolf had a sour look on her face, she was rolling in mud and dirty water during every fight and now she might have to bite more of those disgusting insects, what a horrible master she had

...

A giant tree lay in the middle of the swamp, it was over five hundred meters long, this tree wasn't alone in its size though as there were more just like it in the surroundings, while each was quite the distance from the other they didn't look too far apart because of their great height

In the very middle of this tree was a hole, one not too large with the bark surrounding it changing colour to anyone viewing it from afar, upon close inspection it could be seen that these yellow and brown stripes were groups upon groups of bees going in and out of the hive constantly, a sight that would give anyone apiphobia a nightmare to remember for the rest of their lives

"They made their hive inside the tree"

Yu found the hive pretty easily, or rather, the hive found him

Buzz Bzzz

One fist-sized bee after the other madly rushed at him in order to sting his thieving ass, thankfully the flames surrounding him kept them at bay

"Wuu"

"I know, you can't keep it up for too long, we will rush now, you set the entrance ablaze once were in and kill whatever remains inside, we leave once my ring is full"

Nodding in response she spearheaded the attack and cleared the way with her hot flames while he trailed behind

Reaching the tree with ease the two climbed it, either by jumping on the branches or using claws and tools to help them finally get into the hole

"Awuuu!!"

Once in the entrance was blocked off with a fiery howl from her

"Hey, that was easy, we might be stronger than we thought"

The overconfident remark earned him an eye roll from the wolf who did all the work

"Ahaha..."

An awkward laugh came out as he once more followed her inside, killing everything in their way and arriving at the queen's layer

It was much smaller than the big dome that the giant bee's queen made a home of but unlike that place's empty cells this one was filled to the brim with eggs, some of which looked like they were hatching while other were still sealed in beeswax until they were grown enough to break out, the most notable of them were the one's near the queen who's honey was sparkling, clearly these were the queen candidate eggs

"Woah, so many eggs, now this is a proper hatching ground"

Bzz puff!

The queen's guards attacked only to turn into ashes whenever they approached her flame shield, soon there was no one but them, the queen, and the eggs in the smoke-filled room

"Cough cough, let's finish up fast, I don't want to choke to death"

There were fires all over the place and almost no room to breathe, his work needed to be finished quickly

"I'll be taking this if you don't mind"

Buzzzz!!

It was only polite to ask the queen for her egg's royal jelly, surely her loud buzzing was her way of showing appreciation for making better use of it

"Hmm, I gotta say though all this was a tad too easy, maybe it's just me but I feel like Lyra is too powerful, there's probably nothing in the entire Whimsical Wilds that can harm her"

GROOOAAAR

".....I was wondering when my ego was getting culled"

He didn't need to check who's growl this was to know the world was punishing his budding confidence