Sword Art Online - Volume 26 - Chapter 15

15

“Bunker B, durability forty percent!” shouted Holgar, waving his sword.

Next to him and Sinon was a simple shack structure consisting of a ridgepole resting diagonally on two angled pillars, propped up on the sides by logs and tied in place with rope. In outdoorsman terms, it was called an A-frame shelter. The back was open to the air, with no doors or windows or floor, but considering it could be built with a bare minimum of resources, it was surprisingly durable.

However, the open properties window of the shack showed that its durability was down from its maximum of four thousand to less than sixteen hundred. A number of giant wasps stuck to the wall—gilnaris worker hornets, technically—were chewing at the logs with their sharp jaws, delivering constant damage.

“I’ll repair it right away. Just hang in there!” shouted Dikkos from off to the right. Holgar shouted back, “Just make it quick!” before swinging his longsword at a wasp that had come diving at him.

The wasp spun and hurtled away thanks to the diagonal slash, but it spread its wings and legs to stabilize itself in midair. At that moment of stillness, Sinon aimed her musket at the base of its six legs and pulled the trigger.

Blam! A dry crack split the air, and the bullet shot through the middle of the creature’s chest, a weak point for all insects. The wasp’s HP went down to zero, and then it froze in midair before bursting into a million tiny blue particles a few moments later.

“Nice shot!” called out Dikkos, who had just rushed over after repairing Bunker B. He ignored the half dozen wasps clinging to the wall of Bunker A and tapped a log near the entranceway. At the bottom of the window that appeared were four buttons: INFORMATION, TRADE, REPAIR, and DISMANTLE. He promptly hit the REPAIR button, starting a thirty-second countdown.

If Dikkos moved from his current spot or took major damage, the repair would fail, but Holgar deftly held off any wasps that approached. In time, the countdown reached zero. The entire lean-to glowed faintly, and the durability returned to its max value of four thousand.

The ten or so wasps were still stuck to the wall, so the number promptly began dropping again, but they ignored the creatures chewing on the logs. This bunker was both a refuge for people to use while drinking healing potions and a trap to lure the wasps in and keep them distracted, rather than fighting.

Of course, that plan would be ruined if the bunkers were destroyed, but for now, Dikkos and Ceecee were managing to keep the three bunkers repaired. The real question was if the stockpile of logs and ropes for repairs would hold out by the end of the battle.

At last, Sinon finished reloading her musket. She had plenty of bullets, but only a bit over forty uses of blasting powder left. Unfortunately, they didn’t seem to be making a dent in the number of wasps.

“All loaded!” she cried, and Holgar gave her a thumbs-up with his sword hand.

Before them were the main attackers: Agil, Klein, and Leafa from ALO, Zarion and the insects, and the Bashin warriors, forming a battle line that fought off the descending hornets.

Agil and Klein were as smooth and practiced as ever, and the rhinoceros beetle Zarion and the stag beetle Beeming had gleaming carapaces that blocked the wasps’ venomous stings. On the other hand, the safety of the lightly armored Bashin was a significant concern, but they seemed to have experience fighting giant wasps, because they nimbly avoided the stings and performed powerful counters. It was expert combat, a clear sign that their AI was leagues above the NPC mercenaries you could hire in GGO.

Over five minutes had passed since the battle began, and no one on the attacking side had succumbed to paralysis yet. But it was hard to avoid the bites and ramming attacks from above, as the list of HP bars in the upper left showed the front line taking steady, regular damage.

“Tomoshin, pull back and heal!” Sinon shouted. Dikkos’s spearman companion waited for the right moment to leave the line, then rushed for Bunker C, the nearest shelter.

In exchange, the cricket Needy rushed out of Bunker B and up to Sinon, black compound eyes gleaming, and said, “I’m in.”

“Okay, to the left,” Sinon replied in English. Needy rushed off to fill the spot Tomoshin had vacated. Sinon watched the grasshopper go, feeling secretly relieved that she’d been able to communicate properly.

Sinon felt reasonably confident in her English-speaking ability, even if it wasn’t quite on the level of Asuna’s or Kirito’s, but there was a vast difference between getting good scores on tests at school and actually holding a conversation with a native speaker. For a second, she thought, If I’d just registered for the North American GGO server from the start, I might be more fluent by now. But then she would never have met Kirito in the BoB tournament on the Japan server or become friends with Asuna and the others, and she wouldn’t have been here in this battle, fighting giant wasps.

The friend who had invited her to GGO, Spiegel—Kyouji Shinkawa—had been taken to a youth medical facility three months ago. Technically, it was more like a juvenile correctional education center for criminally maladjusted youth. While he’d been more of a secondary figure in the Death Gun incident, there had been four homicide victims, so his sentence was going to be very, very long.

Sinon had gone to visit the facility just once, but she hadn’t been able to see Kyouji. If only something, some little thing had gone differently, she thought, maybe he wouldn’t have gotten involved in that horrible incident. On the other hand, perhaps it had all been inevitable.

At the bare minimum, Sword Art Online was at the center of everything. The Death Gun incident, Project Alicization, this Unital Ring event, everything tied back to the SAO Incident in the end.

Would this really be the final act? Or was this just a step in the process, like everything else?

To know the answer, they’d have to survive and reach the center of the world, the land revealed by the heavenly light. And if Friscoll was right that the continent was designed as a series of raised steps, they couldn’t get to the next stage without clearing this wasp lair.

Gotta stay focused.

Sinon swept aside all unnecessary distractions and readied her musket.

Gigantic green wasps continued to fly out of the nest stuck to the giant tree in the center of the dome, but the ten or so frontline fighters were able to hold them off because over half the wasps had been paralyzed by the lobelia poison. There were an almost uncountable number of wasps littering the ground all around, their wings and antennae twitching feebly.

All of that was thanks to Silica, Argo, Chett, and the others for undertaking the dangerous poisoning mission, but now they had to rescue Chett at all costs. Her HP bar was staying at 80 percent, but the wasps could be prepping her to be food for the larvae any moment now.

Once no more fresh wasps were coming out of the nest, they’d hurry and clean up all the paralyzed wasps on the ground, then rescue Chett. But if the wasps on the ground recovered before they had finished off the nest, they’d have no choice but to retreat.

Sinon realized she was clenching her teeth when a friendly voice called out, “Thanks for waiting!”

It was Lisbeth, who had emerged from Bunker A with full health again.

“Go in the middle! Klein, pull back!” Sinon commanded. The katana-user replied, “You got it!” and left the line. A wasp tried to chase him, but Holgar jump-slashed it to keep it back.

Its HP must have been low already, because it split apart before Sinon could even shoot it. Seeing that he was in the clear, Klein started drinking his potion next to the entrance of the bunker, without bothering to go in.

“Hey, Sino-Sino, you think things are going well so far, too?!”

“I warned you, if you call me that again, I’ll light you on fire,” she threatened, jabbing a finger at Klein. He grinned back at her briefly before eyeing the wasps chewing on the wall of the bunker, checking his own HP bar, and then eyeing the nest twenty yards away. He must’ve been worried about Chett, too.

The nest had to have a durability rating of its own, so in a pinch, she could destroy it with the Hecate II. But she had only five more 12.7 mm bullets, which she could not replace at the moment, and there was always the possibility she might accidentally hit Chett’s location inside the nest.

Plus, the gilnaris worker hornets were tough foes, but there would be many greater obstacles on the way to the center of the world. If you didn’t have the strength to tackle those challenges in the intended way, there was no way you’d match the hardy warriors from other worlds like Asuka Empire and Apocalyptic Date.

We’re fine. I know we’ll win, Sinon told herself, resuming her orders and shooting.

After several more minutes, her gunpowder stock had fallen under thirty—and the wasps finally stopped flying out of the nest.

“Adds are finished! Wipe out the ones flying now, then the ones stuck to the bunkers, followed by the paralyzed hornets on the ground!” she shouted. The attackers roared back with enthusiasm.

It was nothing short of a marvel that they’d fought for nearly ten minutes and not a single person had taken a poisonous stinger attack. The tell was clear and the attack’s range was short, so it wasn’t that hard to block with a shield or back-step away, but you couldn’t do something like that for so long in a huge, chaotic battle on your first try without very firm willpower.

In that sense, the greatest advantage of Team Kirito was the experience itself of having been through so many events and trials. Of course, there were also many new companions from the past few days, and there would be more in the future. But the main thing was that the bonds holding the team together would only grow stronger with each challenge surpassed.

And that was probably what would be tested in the very end.

Sinon finished reloading her musket and pulled out the ramrod.

But when she lifted her head, what she saw sent a subzero chill through her spine.

The wasp nest, which should have been empty of reinforcements, was active again. Something was appearing from the highest hole of the bunch.

This was the hole big enough to pass the paralyzed Chett through. Now, pushing and cracking its way out was a wasp head with three curved compound eyes, and horrendously menacing jaws. Only this one was at least four or five times larger than the heads of the wasps they’d been defeating thus far.

After the head came a gleaming chest, six legs, and an enormously bulging abdomen. Lastly, a venomous stinger the size of a sword glittered in the flickering sunlight through the leaves.

The gargantuan wasp that came crawling slowly down the side of the nest was easily over six feet long. The green on its head and abdomen was as vivid as an emerald, and its folded wings were orange in tint. Above its head was a cursor with three HP bars. Its title was Gilnaris Queen Hornet.

“…There you are, queen bee,” Klein said with a grin.

They were fighting an entire nest of wasps, so this should have been a predictable outcome. But even now, through the hole the queen had destroyed on her way out, more wriggling shapes were visible.

Next to appear were wasps smaller than the queen but with notably sharp forms and developed jaws. These were gilnaris soldier hornets, and there were four of them.

The queen and soldier hornets took flight all at once.

Their wings buzzed deeper and louder than the workers, five large shapes in formation. They circled through the air of the dome, gradually spiraling higher and higher.

Sinon quickly glanced around to survey the situation. The flying workers had almost entirely been eliminated. But there were still nearly a hundred paralyzed wasps on the ground from the lobelia poison. Based on their reactions, the paralysis would probably start wearing off in a minute or two. If they were surrounded by this many workers in addition to the queen and soldiers, they wouldn’t stand a chance.

It was time to utilize the secret weapon.

Sinon spun around and shouted, “Silica, it’s time!”

“Right!”

Two shapes, large and small, burst out of the tunnel at the south end of the dome. The smaller one, of course, was the dagger-user with brown pigtails. The larger one was a quadruped with blackish-brown fur.

Silica and her pet, the thornspike cave bear Misha, had been staying back all through the battle on Sinon’s orders, waiting in the safety of the tunnel. If a boss monster happened to show up in the fight, they might need a powerful backup strategy to handle that kind of extra pressure. So Sinon had them in the metaphorical back pocket, but that was the only secret weapon they had. From this point on, it would be an all-out battle in which even the slightest mistake could not be tolerated.

“Silica and Misha, grab the queen’s attention and check her temperature! Agil and Klein, Zarion and Beeming, Liz and Leafa, Dikkos and Holgar, work in two-man teams and take one of the guards each! Everyone else, clean up all the workers!” Sinon announced as quickly as she could. The others shouted back to show they were listening.

On the right, with Silica on its back, Misha rumbled forward. His HP recovered, Klein charged after them, determined not to be left out of the fun.

Holgar started up, too, but thought of something and turned back. “Sino-Sino, don’t you need a guard while you’re loading the gun?”

“I’m fine. I’ll use my laser gun if I really need to,” she said, patting the Bellatrix SL2 on her left hip.

Holgar smirked and nodded. “All right. Just be careful!” This time, the swordsman continued running after Klein.

When this battle is over, I’m going to need to explain to these men what I mean when I say “no Sino-Sino,” Sinon thought. She hoisted the loaded musket and pointed it at the descending queen.