Chapter 17

The first action the gilnaris queen hornet took was not a charge attack, as

Silica expected, nor a bite, nor even a poison stinger.

Hovering about five yards off the ground, the queen opened scissorlike jaws

and emitted an unearthly screech.

It was a supremely unpleasant frequency, like a cacophony of abrasive metal

objects scraping together. It was hard to believe the sound filling Silica's

eardrums could be a virtual signal sent by the AmuSphere into her brain, and

she couldn't help but cover her ears with her hands. On her shoulder, Pina

wailed pitifully. It was an attack directly on the senses, not a kind of systembased status effect, but she had never experienced something so powerful

before.

On her left and right, others were hunched over the same way. Silica was

about as experienced a VRMMO player as there could be, and this was new to

her, so it had to have taken others like Holgar by complete surprise. Even the

insects, which did not have visible ears, were covering the sides of their heads.

It would have seemed funny…if it were possible to think about anything in this

situation.

Bzzz! The four soldier hornets charged. It was a simple body-blow attack, but

when a human-sized creature covered in tough armor came hurtling toward

you at high speed, the force was greater than a critical hit from a two-handed

hammer.

"Gwah!"

"Aieee!"

Deep bellows and high-pitched screams ensued as the eight attackers aside

from Silica and Misha were knocked off their feet.

On the left side of her view, eight HP bars lost a big chunk. The biggest

damage happened to Leafa, who was high-level but put all her points into

attack and wore light armor.

"Leafa!" Silica cried, starting to rush her way. But Leafa, despite a stun effect

visible over her head, bravely shouted back, "I…I'm fine! Focus on your role!"

"...!"

Silica grit her teeth and faced forward. The queen wasp was already

recovering from the delay after the sonic attack. The next attack would be

coming in a second or two. If it was poison or an area-based physical attack, it

might actually break down the front line.

Her job was to draw the queen's aggro—more precisely, to have Misha draw

it. But as long as the queen was hovering twenty feet in the air, even Misha

couldn't reach far enough to hit it with teeth or claws.

There was only one option remaining. It was a major attack that couldn't be

repeated, but it'd be the height of foolishness to put yourself in a corner

because you didn't want to use up your secret weapon.

"Misha, Thornspike!"

On her command, Misha reared back on its hind legs and spread its front

paws wide.

The queen curled up in midair, fearsomely long stinger shining red.

Silica had a sudden intuition that a poisonous area attack was coming. But the

attack was just a split second too late.

"Groaaaah!"

The lightning pattern in the fur on Misha's chest glowed as silver lights shot

out of it. It was the namesake of the thornspike cave bear, a special attack that

transformed fur into steel quills that shot at the enemy.

The storm of needles, which had wiped out Schulz's team and nearly shot

down Mutasina, struck the queen and the four soldiers at her sides directly.

"Greeeee!"

The five hornets screamed in a hideously metallic way and flew over ten yards

backward with the force of the attack. The queen took the brunt of the damage,

losing nearly 80 percent of her first HP bar. Her guards lost half their health,

too.

"Can you manage, Silica?!" Sinon asked from the rear. Silica held up her hand

and replied, "I'm all right!"

"Got it! Argo, continue cleaning up!" Sinon called out. From the back of the

dome came an energetic "No sweat!" Argo, Friscoll, Needy, the Bashin, and the

Patter were finishing off the paralyzed hornets in quick fashion. It took only one

or two blows to the neck or chest, where they were most vulnerable, but there

were just so many of them. It would take at least five minutes before any of the

cleanup crew could join the fight against the boss.

"Great job, Silica!" said Agil.

"What a relief!" followed Zarion in English. They had just recovered from the

stunning effect of the body blows. The stun icons on the other frontline party

members' HP bars were blinking, too.

But the queen and her soldiers were stable again after taking Misha's big

attack, also, and were closing the distance once more.

Most likely, their basic tactical pattern was for the soldiers to repeat physical

attacks while the queen performed a number of special attacks from a high

altitude out of weapon range. If they finished off the soldiers, the queen might

fly lower, but the group would certainly take more than one area attack in the

meantime.

For now, it was only Sinon's musket that could hit the queen. If Silica told her

she couldn't withstand the queen's attack pressure, Sinon would help, but as

the leader of twenty-three, her main duty was to give orders.

Silica and Misha were waiting back in the tunnel for when the boss showed

up. There was no way they could use their special attack once and call it a day.

She glared at the descending queen and thought hard. What would Kirito do

here?

After the UR incident began, Kirito continued to break through difficult

situations with his trademark outside-the-box thinking and proactive style.

Dumping loads of logs from the roof to crush monsters, using temporary

construction ghost objects as a visual impediment, firing his ghastly Rotten Shot

inside his own mouth to break out of the feeling of suffocation—Silica didn't

have that kind of ingenuity, but there had to be something she could try that

would help.

She was at least ten feet too short to hit the queen hornet with a weapon.

Lisbeth could use the Carpentry skill to build a scaffold, but monster AI in Unital

Ring were sophisticated, and the queen would probably just move out of range

again. Maybe a movable scaffold would work, but there wasn't going to be

anything like that in the construction menu…

And that was when an idea took form. It was so perfectly simple that Silica

was momentarily dumbfounded. She had to shake off her hesitation and act.

She placed a hand on Misha's side—the bear was glaring up at the queen

overhead—and jumped as high as she could, climbing the beast's furry back so

she could get on its shoulders.

"Misha, stand!"

"Grau!" the bear growled and straightened. Its shoulders rose, lifting Silica

like an elevator. Naturally, the angle of her feet changed, too, but she'd be a

poor excuse for a light, nimble fighter if she couldn't handle that.

Misha was larger than a real-life brown bear, and when it stood on its hind

legs, its shoulders were over ten feet above the ground. Silica had the secondsmallest avatar of anyone after Yui, but if she used a sword skill from this

position, she should be able to reach the queen at fifteen feet high.

The wasp seemed to recognize this, too, and stopped to hover. But the four

guards were approaching slowly from a low height. Apparently, the needle

attack had transferred their aggro to Misha. However…

"You're supposed to be fighting us!" bellowed Klein, who came running up to

do a tremendous jump slash. He was using a scimitar rather than a Japanesestyle katana, but Lisbeth had forged the weapon to be as long as possible on his

request, and it was enough to just barely reach the soldier hornet's belly.

Following him, Leafa, Dikkos, and Holgar leaped as well, slashing at the

remaining soldiers. The hornets' attention turned to them, and the four

resumed buzzing angrily around the players.

In the back, the queen opened her jaws as far as she could again: the setup

for the sonic attack.

"Forward, Misha!" she instructed. The bear stomped toward the queen. Silica

waited for the right moment, then activated her sword skill in the air: the single

thrust Rapid Bite.

Silica's inherited skill from ALO was Short Swords, but since her proficiency

fell down to 100, she couldn't use the high-ranking four-and five-part skills for

now. Still, a single-hit skill should be enough to sabotage a special attack

activation—should.

Stop! she willed, slamming the tip of the dagger into the queen hornet's

mouth.

At present, they'd only been able to mine iron ore, so they wouldn't be able

to make steel weapons for a while. Silica's fine steel dagger was made with

steel ingots gained from melting Kirito's favorite sword from ALO, Blárkveld. In

other words, this dagger had originally been Kirito's sword.

Of course, the source of the resources wouldn't make a difference on the

specs of the result, but in a tense battle that could go either way, your feelings

might be enough to affect the outcome of the fight. With her righteous weapon

in hand, Silica pierced the queen's defense with a fierce blow and not only

stopped the sonic attack before it could start but also knocked back the

creature, which was twice her size.

"Gyashhh!" the enemy hissed with fury. Silica did a backflip in midair and

landed on Misha's shoulders. Pina came back down to land on Silica's head, too,

and squeaked "Pyui!" with pride.

"Nice one, Silica!" cheered Lisbeth from the ground.

"Only thanks to the dagger you made for me, Liz!" she shouted back. And

thanks to Kirito's ingots.

As for the queen, Silica's Rapid Bite had been a critical hit, and the boss's first

HP bar was now gone. There were two left, but this probably meant a change in

attack patterns. She would have to keep handling the queen safely and ensuring

that every attempt at an area attack was prevented.

The queen had recovered from the knockback and came rushing forward

again. Her matte-finish compound eyes had no eyelids or pupils, but somehow,

they expressed anger anyway.

"Gyiii!" the queen snarled threateningly. Silica stared boldly right back at it.

All around them were the sounds of furious battle between the four soldier

hornets and the eight players fighting them. As long as she could keep the

queen off-balance and occupied until the soldiers were wiped out, victory was

assured.

Just hang in there, Chett. We'll rescue you soon, she told the distant nest,

squeezing her dagger.

At that moment, the queen's cutting-machine jaws opened slightly, the sharp

mouth behind it twisting. Almost like a mocking smile.

The queen hornet rose higher. Six yards, seven…At this point, Silica couldn't

reach her even using Misha's shoulders for a lift.

Did the queen have a hidden attack that could hit the ground from that

height? If that was the boss's special, most dangerous trick, she had to stop it

somehow. Throw the dagger? No. A Throwing Weapons sword skill might be

one thing, but simply hurling an item wasn't going to cancel out a major attack.

Hovering at over twenty-five feet, the queen confirmed Silica's fears by

starting a motion she hadn't used before.

The giant wasp's body curled up as round as it could go, compressing the legs.

Its long antennae stood erect, and pale light shone from the ends, then started

traveling up the antennae. If the lights reached the base, something very bad

would happen.

"Sinon!" Silica shrieked, fighting back against a chill that threatened to engulf

her whole body. "Shoot it!"

The raid leader must have sensed the danger already. At almost the exact

moment Silica cried out, there was the dry crack of a musket.

The queen's left antenna broke off right along the middle.

It spoke to Sinon's shooting skill that she could hit a narrow antenna with a

gun as clumsy as a musket. But it was a fraction of a second too late. The light

passed through the point where it split just before it happened and reached the

queen's head after all.

The triangular array of eyes flashed so brightly you couldn't look directly at it.

The light turned into a ring that spread to cover the entire dome.

That was all. There was no damage to Silica, Misha, or any of their

companions, and there was no TP or SP loss. No Debuffs, either, it seemed.

Then what did the attack do…? Silica was at a loss.

A low hum began to fill the dome. It rose in volume very quickly: the buzzing

of wings. The worker wasps that had been paralyzed by the lobelia poison were

getting up off the ground.

The blue light wasn't an attack meant for the players. It was a special

technique that removed all Debuffs from the other hornets.

"Cleanup team, gather around Misha!" Sinon commanded. The scattered

players all around the dome began racing back. Workers rose and began to

congregate as well. There were at least forty—no, fifty of them.

The queen and soldiers were dangerous enough enemies as it was, but if they

got surrounded by this many workers on top of that, even retreating might be

difficult. Silica was utterly stunned by this development.

Overhead, the gilnaris queen hornet's mouth once again curved into a

mocking smile.