Sword Art Online - Volume 26 - Chapter 13

13

The finished lobelia poison filled exactly twenty little bottles.

It was lethal enough that a single sip would kill, so they had enough to kill over a hundred players, but the massive green wasps seemed rather poison-resistant, and they weren’t just going to drink the substance on command.

Belatedly, Silica began to wonder how they were going to administer the poison to the insects. Thankfully, the Patter ancestors had already solved this in a most unorthodox way.

According to Chett, the giant wasps attacked the towns of large animals like humans and demi-humans, where much prey gathered in one place, and raised huge flowers in the soil where the corpses lay. The nectar of those flowers was the food they used to grow their numbers, so a large group could split off from the colony and start a new one.

There were many rafflesia-like flowers inside the dome they had seen. That meant it was once the home of some kind of animal until the wasps invaded and wiped them out to grow flowers in their place.

“…Meaning if the nest gets too big, some of the wasps will leave to build a new one…,” Silica muttered.

Klein added helpfully, “That process is called swarming!”

“Thanks, but we don’t need random animal facts right now,” Lisbeth said without missing a beat. Her lips pressed into a tight line. “If that’s true, then they might attack Ruis na Ríg next. That’s another reason we don’t have time to waste. And with the durability of the poison being very limited, we need to make this snappy.”

“That’s right. Is everyone ready?” asked Sinon, who was taking on the role of raid leader. The group cheered.

They had handled all the other preparations while the lobelia were stewing. Twenty-four players were taking part in the battle. They split into six parties of between three and five members, with each party receiving three bottles of poison. The last two bottles went to Argo and Chett as backup because of their quickness.

The logs they’d saved up in the hut went to the inventory space of all the strength-based players. The group shared food and drink to ensure everyone’s SP and TP were topped off, and morale was high. Now the only thing to do was pray that the Patter’s traditional method of killing the giant wasps actually worked.

At three thirty in the afternoon, the group went back through the tunnel and slipped into the dome under the giant tree’s branches. According to Friscoll, the rocks and bushes around the dome entrance were outside the wasps’ reaction zone, so they built a log wall along that line to serve as a bridgehead. Next, six scout-type players who excelled in stealth slipped into the wasps’ activity area, wearing ghillie suits they’d crafted after the Patter’s.

The goal was to pour the lobelia poison into the nectar-filled reservoir center of the dozens of rafflesia-like flowers—properly known as gargamols. The wasps would be drawn by the sweet scent, extract some of the poisoned nectar, and suffer its paralysis.

If it worked, it would decrease the enemy’s fighting power quite a bit, but the players pouring the poison assumed a lot of risk. The ghillie suits weren’t flawless, so if the wasps happened to spot anyone, and they couldn’t get back to the bridgehead, they might end up dead.

The volunteers for that dangerous mission were Dikkos, who had surprisingly taken the Swiftness ability, a tiger-beetle Six named Ceecee, Friscoll, Argo, Silica, and Chett the Patter.

Exposing an NPC to mortal danger wasn’t ideal, but Chett was absolutely insistent that she take part. She had shown the group how to look for the lobelia flowers, how to extract and use the poison, and even how to make the ghillie suits, so they owed her the right to take part in the mission if that was what she wanted.

Silica whispered to Sinon to provide backup with her gun if Chett needed it, then followed Argo beyond the bridgehead.

She had leveled-up to level-17 while exploring the forest, so her total ability points at the moment were sixteen. She’d saved half of them so far, and used them now on Concealment, a tier-four ability in the Swiftness tree. That would give her Hiding skill a major boost—but unlike in older, traditional games, VRMMOs always had the danger of slipping in muck or tripping over a rock. She warned herself not to be so focused on the air above that she got careless and stumbled over something on the ground.

Silica’s assignment was the nine o’clock area, if you viewed the dome like a clock from above and split it into six slices. There were tall bunches of grass here and there along the route, so she waited for an opening when no wasps were around and snuck from bunch to bunch.

The natural dome was fifty yards across, so it wasn’t even twenty yards from the waiting area behind the bridgehead to her zone. She reached a large clump of tall grass about halfway down her route in ninety seconds, took a short breather, and checked on the others. Ceecee and Argo chose to do the two farthest spots, and they were already reaching the middle of the dome.

Silica had only ever heard of a tiger beetle by name. It was apparently from Australia and was said to be the fastest land-running insect in the world. In keeping with that reputation, Ceecee’s long, skinny legs worked rapidly, zipping from cover to cover like a teleportation spell. Argo, meanwhile, slid along the ground as smoothly as a ninja.

Determined not to be the last to reach her spot, Silica was about to bolt out of the grass when she heard the loud, low buzz of heavy wings just overhead.

Instantly, she froze. Her body was one with the grass, and she thought, Go away! Get! But the buzzing only went back and forth and didn’t leave her position.

If it had spotted her hiding, it would have attacked by now. She’d have to turn her face upward to learn what was happening, but that would be pointless if it caused the wasp to detect her.

Pina was waiting behind the bridgehead with Misha, and she wasn’t equipped with any weapons or armor that would stick out from under the ghillie suit. What was it that was drawing the wasp’s attention?

Suddenly, she could hear something scraping near her left shoulder.

Staying in position, she reached over with her right hand to search for the source of the sound. Her fingers brushed a round mass, so she grabbed it and pulled it off her shoulder so she could see it for herself.

“ !!”

A silent scream ripped out of her throat; it took all her willpower not to allow it to take form.

Scrabbling and working its legs in her hand was a gigantic bug about four inches long. Of course, it wasn’t gigantic compared to the monstrous wasp hovering overhead, but it was certainly horrendous by real-world standards. The body was as round as a ball and translucent, with golden liquid packed inside. The head was long and narrow, with a protruding needle-type mouth. It probably stabbed plants to suck out the sap, but there was no reason it couldn’t do the same with animal blood.

Grabbing it must have counted as an attack, because the game displayed the title Amber Honeysucker Tick on a cursor above the insect’s head. So it was a tick, not a bug—but that only made it seem 30 percent more disgusting, not less. If the tick was the reason the giant wasp was hovering overhead, though…

“…!”

With nothing more than the flick of her wrist, Silica hurled the amber-colored tick to the left. The rounded bug, full with nectar, skittered and rolled along the ground.

Suddenly, the green wasp descended with an especially large buzz. It cradled the tick in its six legs, then flew upward. It had been after the honeysucker tick the whole time. If she hadn’t noticed when she did, it might have come right down on top of Silica and spotted her through the disguise.

Looking around with a bit more attention this time, she noticed similar ticks walking here and there across the dome basin. They were probably traps intended for the players trying to steal their way across the dome. If you didn’t notice the ticks wandering onto your body, the wasps would come to grab the ticks and spot you.

She wanted to warn the other five players but couldn’t shout about it. She could send a player message, but Chett wouldn’t get one.

But our companions are all experienced, veteran players, and Chett is a brave, clever warrior. As long as they notice the ticks, they’ll figure out the danger they pose, Silica told herself. She resumed her trip, careful not only of wings overhead but also of ticks on the ground. She made it across the remaining ten yards to her objective zone.

There were six gargamol flowers in this area. She had three bottles of lobelia poison, so she could use half a bottle for each flower. But the wasps were landing on the flowers one after the other to suck up the accumulated nectar inside. She would have to gauge the timing very carefully.

Silica lurked in a patch of grass ten feet from the first flower and watched the tree at the center of the dome. While it was big, the size of the wasp nest growing on the trunk like a malignant tumor was truly grotesque. Just in her field of view, there were over a hundred wasps going in and out of the nest. Cursors did not appear in this game unless you attacked a target or were targeted in return, so the name of the wasps was still unknown.

According to Friscoll, who’d been scouting the dome before anyone else, the wasps’ feeding activity seemed random, but once a wasp had drunk from a flower, no other would visit the same flower for at least thirty seconds. In other words, if you waited until after a wasp had left a flower, you would have a surefire chance to insert the lobelia poison.

Up close, the gargamol flowers were quite unpleasant. The bigger ones were a good six feet across. The thick petals were a brilliant reddish-purple with lots of fluorescent green spots. If you stared at it long enough, it was likely to make your eyes flicker.

Real rafflesia flowers had no stalk, growing directly out of the ground, but the gargamol flowers did grow on a trunk about twenty inches long and wide. The honeysucker ticks crawled up the trunk several at a time, sticking their sharp mouths into the tough surface.

A giant wasp lit upon a thick gargamol petal. Its antennae waggled a bit, then it lowered its head toward the vaselike center and stuck it inside. The metallic sheen of the midsection wrinkled as it stretched and contracted. It did not look like any 3D model she’d ever seen.

After ten seconds, the wasp removed its head from the flower, cleaned its mandibles with its forearms, then spread its brown wings and took flight.

Now.

Silica emerged from the grass and ran to the gargamol flower. She pulled out the cork on the bottle of poison and reached as far as she could over the petals. It was just enough to get to the center, so she carefully tilted the bottle.

A blue, barely viscous liquid poured from the mouth of the bottle into the hole in the center of the flower. She eyed about half of the material out and quickly straightened the bottle.

But it was a bit too rough of an action, because a few drops splattered out of the top right past Silica’s hand as they fell onto the petals.

She flinched with surprise, then fit the cork firmly back into the mouth of the bottle. Over twenty seconds had passed since the wasp flew away. Ten seconds was the soonest possible time the next wasp might approach.

She crouched and moved away from the gargamol. Once she was back in the patch of grass she wanted, she finally let out the breath she’d been holding.

During the strategy meeting, she assumed that actually applying the poison would be easy, but in practice, it was much trickier. If any of the droplets had landed on her hand earlier, she would have been instantly paralyzed and fallen onto the flower.

Wearing Lisbeth’s iron-plated gloves would have given her more poison resistance, but it interfered with the sensation in her fingertips. That was another problem unique to VRMMOs. Silica made a mental note to get some fingerless leather gloves like Kirito wore if anyone she knew had the Leatherworking skill. She ran to the next flower.

The second, third, and fourth poison applications went much smoother, and she was down to her last bottle.

Fifteen minutes had already passed since the mission started—technically, since the lobelia poison was finished. They needed as many wasps as possible to ingest the poison before its effects wore off. There was no time to waste.

She waited impatiently for the wasp to leave the fifth gargamol flower and had just left her hiding spot when she heard a high-pitched screech right behind her.

“Squeeeeee!”

She spun around and saw, about fifteen yards away, a huge dark shape take flight.

At first, she thought it was a mammoth wasp, but quickly realized her mistake. It was two wasps, working together to carry something. It was a grassy, fluffy plant. No…

It was a ghillie suit. With Chett inside.

They had her by the head and back, but she was doing nothing, her limbs and tail dangling below her—she had already passed out. Silica looked at her cursor and saw that she still had over 80 percent of her HP, but there was a Debuff icon displaying a poison stinger. One of the wasps must have stung and paralyzed her.

Chett was the smallest and best at hiding of the six of them, so how did she get spotted before anyone else? Whatever the reason, they had to rescue her.

Silica set the bottle on the ground, then stuck her hand into her ghillie suit and squeezed the hilt of the fine steel dagger on her left hip. But the wasps were already twenty feet up in the air. Even a jumping-type sword skill would not help her reach them now.

“…Sinon!” Silica hissed, glancing toward the bridgehead on the south end of the dome.

Sinon was already kneeling at the edge of the structure with her musket at the ready. But a second passed, then another, and the muzzle was not firing.

Shoot! she urged silently, then at last realized what was wrong. The two wasps were overlapping with the paralyzed Chett. Even a crack shot like Sinon would have trouble ensuring a clean, perfect shot of just one of the wasps. But if nothing changed, they were going to take Chett into the nest high overhead.

If only Kirito or Asuna were here! Silica thought.

She clenched her jaw. They were off in the Underworld, doing their best. She couldn’t just rely on her knee-jerk reflexes. She had to think for herself now.

Two wasps had spotted and attacked Chett, but none of the others flying around the dome had linked to the action. The wasps probably identified the little Patter as prey, not an enemy. That was why they paralyzed her, rather than killing her on the spot.

It probably meant they wouldn’t kill her right away inside the nest. Although it was awful to consider, she probably had some time before the wasps tried to eat her. If they could wipe out the entire colony before then, they could save Chett.

With a great act of will, Silica tore her gaze away from her helpless companion—her friend.

She rushed to pour the lobelia poison into the remaining gargamol flowers, then tossed the empty bottle. She was making her way back toward the bridgehead when she heard something fall to the ground with a thump nearby. It was a paralyzed wasp.

As Chett was a raid member and had been attacked, cursors appeared over the wasp’s head. The name there was Gilnaris Worker Hornet. The first word was unfamiliar to Silica, but she recognized the last one; hornets were the largest kind of wasps. On the right side of its HP bar was an icon of a blue flower on a black background. The lobelia poison had done the trick and immobilized the wasp with paralyzing venom.

Another one fell…and then another. The wasps were dropping left and right. If they could neutralize half the swarm, then even a midsize raid party of twenty-four—without Chett they were twenty-three—could win this fight.

Above, noticing the change in their fellows, more wasps that hadn’t taken any poisoned nectar were buzzing about with alarm. Once the battle was on, the dome was going to devolve into a ferocious battle.

There would be no time to think after that. She’d just have to stay abreast of everything possible and make the best decisions as quickly as she could. The way Kirito and Asuna did, but in her own style.

Silica reached the bridgehead about the same time as Argo, Ceecee, Friscoll, and Dikkos. She pressed her eye to a peephole and saw Chett being taken into the nest.

I’ll save you. I guarantee it, Silica swore.

The raid leader, Sinon, called out in fierce tones, “Initiate combat! Construction team, protection team, onward!”