Chapter 19

After it was all over and she had time to think again, Silica realized that,

despite the danger they'd been in, she'd never once lamented the lack of Kirito,

Asuna, and Alice.

The only things she'd thought about were how to get through the situation

with the people and weapons they had at the moment.

The worker wasps pressing in from all directions weren't that impressive in

terms of stats, but the long-term paralysis their poison caused from just a single

sting was extremely dangerous. They'd focused hard on preventing anyone

from being surrounded by multiple wasps because avoiding that poison attack

was the absolute top priority.

But once the queen and soldiers had a fresh swarm of workers at their side,

they suddenly outnumbered the human group two to one. That meant people

were going to get targeted by two or more wasps at the same time; even a

veteran player would have difficulty if attacked from opposite directions at

once. If multiple people got paralyzed and the formation broke down, it might

even be difficult to retreat outside the dome.

Sinon's brain must have been burning itself out wondering whether to give

the withdrawal order.

There were just ten seconds until the cleanup team with Argo and Friscoll

could regroup with the frontline team. In another ten seconds, the workers

would be surrounding everyone. Sinon had to do some very tricky calculations

before that point. If they retreated now, the hopes of saving Chett from the

nest would be snuffed out.

It was just an NPC from just a game, as nearly every player in Unital Ring

would think. But Silica had come into contact with many NPCs, many AIs,

through SAO, ALO, and the Underworld, and she couldn't classify them as "just"

programs anymore. She knew the others would feel the same way, and even

their new friends from this world like Zarion and Holgar would probably agree

now. They'd sat around the fire with the Bashin and Patter in Ruis na Ríg and

shared drinks with them, after all.

I want to save Chett.

As if to mock that very wish just as she made it, the HP bar for Chett on the

left edge of her vision dropped slightly but surely.

There was no way to know what was happening inside the nest. But their

leeway on the rescue was now over, and Chett was taking damage. Based on

the rate of the decrease, it would reach zero in less than a minute.

If there was any hope to overturn this devastating development, it was

simple: Kill the gilnaris queen hornet controlling all the hornets.

But the queen still had two whole HP bars, and more importantly, at a height

of over twenty-five feet off the ground, there was no way to hit her. Misha's

thornspike attack was on cooldown, and even Agil's ax wouldn't be anywhere

near long enough to hit if he stood on the bear's shoulders instead.

If only we could drag the queen down to the ground—!

Silica gritted her teeth so hard they could have cracked. All seemed lost.

"Silica!" shouted a voice with a particularly fluid enunciation. In high-speed

English, the voice continued, "Move and have Misha squat down!"

Either her practical English lessons at the returnee school helped her pick out

the words or some kind of frantic emergency telepathy was doing the trick.

Silica immediately hopped off of Misha's shoulders and commanded, "Misha,

get down!"

The bear reacted instantly, its front paws landing heavily on the ground.

Behind it, a shadow leaped speedily into the air. Its form was flowing and had

extremely lengthy legs: the grasshopper Needy.

He raced up to Misha's shoulder, squatted briefly, then shot upward in a huge

leap like he'd been shot from a cannon.

It was the kind of jump that only a grasshopper could make, not the other

Insectsite players and certainly not any of the humans. The brown body soared

toward the queen hornet high overhead. Although using Misha as a trampoline

added seven feet to the floor, he still jumped well over fifteen feet just on his

own.

Needy's arms closed in on the queen's rear legs. He was planning to grab her

and weigh her down.

But the queen's wings buzzed, anticipating this attempt, and she rose even

higher.

Needy's hands swung and hit only air—

Or so it seemed.

At the last second, the grasshopper opened his mouth and shot white thread

upward. It was the special cricket web he'd shot to capture Friscoll when the

man was a scout for Mutasina.

The thread wrapped around the queen's long stinger, and Needy's descent

after the apex of his jump was halted with a hefty jerk. The added weight

caused the queen's ascent to stop, too. But she wasn't falling, either. Her

climbing ability and Needy's weight were canceling each other out.

A number of yellowish-green lines of light crossed the space over Silica's

head. Sinon was firing her special laser gun rather than the musket. She was

aiming for the queen's wings rather than its body. The superheated bolts were

punching burning holes in the delicate membranes of the insect wings.

At last, the queen hornet began to drop.

This is it. Our final chance.

The moment the queen hit the ground, they'd deliver a concentrated group

attack on her weak points. But over half the group's damage dealers were

fighting the soldier hornets, and in Unital Ring, where stray attacks could hurt

your fellow players, there was a limit of only five or six players who could safely

hit the queen at the same time. Even if all six of them used their best sword

skills, that wasn't likely to eliminate both remaining HP bars.

There has to be something that can do more damage than sword skills.

Something, something…

Silica felt her brain burning, racing into overdrive as the queen slowly

descended, Needy dangling from her stinger.

And then things she'd witnessed before flashed across her mind in quick

succession: logs tumbling off the roof of the log cabin. The Hecate II propped up

on sturdy supports. Two images that fused into a single idea.

"Everybody, surround the spot where she falls!" she yelled, then realized that

saying "everybody" might summon more people than the ones she actually

wanted. Thankfully, those few—Lisbeth, Klein, Agil, and Leafa—were the very

ones who reacted quickest.

They left Zarion, Beeming, Holgar, and Dikkos behind to handle the soldiers,

and rushed to the spot where the queen was going to fall, as Silica instructed.

"Hold your weapon aloft with your left hand and open your equipment menu

with your right!"

All of them were right-handed. If they practiced executing a sword skill with

their left hand, the precision would always be poorer than if right-handed. But

the four of them did exactly as she said, switching their weapons to their

nondominant hands and raising them. Then they rotated their right hands to

bring up the ring menu.

Silica's dagger, Lisbeth's mace, Klein's scimitar, Agil's two-handed ax, and

Leafa's longsword made a circle, in the center of which landed Needy.

He grabbed the thread coming from his mouth with both hands and yanked

the queen with it, then leaped away, out of the circle.

A moment later, the queen's seven-foot-plus body crashed into the ground. A

faint stun effect appeared over the hornet's head, but that would not last long.

The final order:

"Change the weapon in your left hand to your inherited weapon!"

They must have realized what she was asking for by now. The words hadn't

even fully left her mouth when the four of them rotated their equipment wheel

and hit the selection button.

Five raised weapons made of iron flashed white and vanished, replaced by

dazzling weapons of the highest quality:

Silica's dagger, Issreidr.

Leafa's longsword, Lysavindr.

Agil's ax, Notthjorr.

Klein's sword, Spirit Katana Kagutsuchi.

And Lisbeth's hammer, Lightning Hammer Mjölnir.

These weapons, brought over from ALO, required more strength than anyone

possessed, like Sinon's Hecate II, and even approaching level-20, no one could

even lift them.

But if summoned to a hand held overhead, there was nothing stopping you

from dropping it straight down. Controlling their fall by the inch might be hard,

but the queen hornet's weakness, her midsection, was still about as big as a

midsize car tire.

"Ryaaaah!" Silica roared, uncharacteristically ferocious, giving everything she

had to adjust a dagger as heavy as a boulder as it fell and slamming it onto the

base of the queen's leg as it lay on its back.

Her companions' inherited weapons all did the same, creating a thunderous

roar all around, severing the thick carapace in a tightly formed circle.