Sword Art Online - Volume 26 - Chapter 21

21

Fortunately, there was no need to climb up the trunk of the massive tree in order to reach the entrance to the wasp nest, sixty feet off the ground. There was a large hollow in the roots of the tree, which formed a natural passageway inside the trunk traveling up to the nest.

After the death of the gilnaris queen hornet, the four soldier hornets and dozens of workers crumbled as one, and Chett’s HP loss stopped, so there was no longer any concern. Still, Silica stood at the head of the insertion team and rushed up the passage, which was so tight that her shoulders nearly rubbed on either side.

The mossy passage made her shoes slip many times up the spiral tunnel, but at last she reached a large hollow space. There were hexagonal cells all over the walls, but any larvae or pupae had vanished along with the queen, so the cells were empty. She felt a tiny pang of pity, but more importantly…

“Chett! Where are you?!” Silica shouted, looking wildly all over the cave.

From the back, a faint voice replied, “I’m right here!”

Argo and Leafa caught up, and the three raced for the back wall, where they found a fresh tunnel. After crawling through, they were in an even bigger cave. This was probably the center of the nest because there were multiple exits on the left wall and a raised platform on the opposite that looked like a throne.

And at its foot, stuck to the floor with what looked like gray clay, was the tiny shape of a single Patter.

“Chett!”

Silica ran over and began to pull the sticky substance loose with both hands. Once freed, Chett shook hard and leaped onto her rescuer. “Thank you, thank you, Silica!”

“No, Chett…I’m sorry I wasn’t able to get you free sooner. Are you hurt?” she asked, then wondered if the NPCs in this world even had the concept of “hurt.”

But Chett’s pointed snout wrinkled and shook side to side. “The larvae just nibbled my tail a little. It’s fine.”

“Wh-what…?”

She glanced at Chett’s tail, and sure enough, it was missing a few inches off the end, and red damage effects were spilling from the cut. But a missing part that small should return once her HP was back to full.

Once she was calm again, Chett stepped away from Silica to face the others. She beckoned to them and called out, “Come on, everyone, over here!” and ran behind the throne.

Silica followed her and was dumbstruck when she saw what was piled up back there.

Weapons, armor, accessories, items, and coins of gold, silver, and bronze, glittered in the sunlight that shone through openings in the nest.

The queen and her subordinates, unlike all the other monsters they’d fought to this point, immediately exploded and dropped their resource items directly. As a matter of fact, the man-faced centipede, the Life Harvester, had also worked the same way, so perhaps the game considered it not worth the trouble to need to dismantle a boss monster for parts. She’d simply assumed that the material rewards for defeating the gilnaris queen hornet were wings, carapace, poison stinger, and the like.

“Oh, wowwww…There’s so much treasure!” squealed Leafa.

Silica, however, was confused. “But…why would insect-type monsters be hoarding gold and weapons and valuables?”

“Ain’t that obvious?” said Argo, picking up a coin and flipping it high into the air with her thumb. “When adventurers get captured and taken into the nest like Chett, they—”

“You don’t need to spell it out!” Silica interrupted. Argo smugly caught the coin.

Indeed, there was no other way to interpret it. She felt bad about the idea of just looting it all, but if they didn’t, either some other player was going to get it instead or it might be treated like abandoned items, which eventually lost durability until they crumbled away. Silica, Argo, and Leafa had charged into the nest first, so everyone else was waiting outside to find out what happened. They had to be quick.

“Do you think we can fit all of it into our inventory?” she asked, turning toward the others. Argo and Leafa grinned at her.

“Just about, I reckon.”

“If we dump out all the logs first.”

As soon as they saw Chett emerge from the hollow, the other Patter, Chinoki and Chilph, burst into excited chitters. The three hugged and pranced while the other human players, and even the Bashin warriors, looked on with pleased, relieved smiles.

But the mood changed when Silica, Argo, and Leafa dumped all the treasure they’d found onto the ground for everyone to see.

When fights started in MMORPGs, it was usually over fraud, insults, and item distribution. Silica had been adventuring with the same group since converting to ALO, but she’d teamed up with impromptu hunting parties all the time in SAO, and arguments had broken out more than a few times over loot. In fact, when she’d tried to get through the Forest of Wandering solo on the thirty-fifth floor, it was because one of her party members had said, “You don’t need any healing crystals because that lizard will heal you already.”

Of course, she might not have met Kirito if not for that experience, but when she thought back on her arrogance in that moment, it made her want to scream with embarrassment. Now she was determined to be fair and let the raid leader decide how the spoils should be distributed…

“We can figure that out once we get back to Ruis na Ríg,” said Sinon, as cool as ever. That was enough to snap Klein and the others back to sanity from their state of giddy excitement over the mound of treasure. If they started talking about it now, they could be here for twenty or thirty minutes. The purpose of this whole exploration wasn’t to defeat the wasp nest anyway, but to find a new spot for iron ore and to spot the path to the next step, as Friscoll had described it. They couldn’t turn back yet.

First, they split the mass of treasure into multiple wooden chests, then sealed the lids with wax and gave them to strength-focused members. That way, if anyone tried secretly opening the contents while in their item window, the seal would be broken, and everyone would know.

Once the task was done, Silica took one last long look around the natural dome.

Through the branches of the massive tree that formed the canopy, the afternoon sunlight carved golden threads that hung in the air. The red-and-purple gargamol flowers were still in full bloom, but no hornets were coming to drink their nectar. The only remaining traces of the ferocious battle that had just taken place were the three bunkers near the tunnel, but almost all of them were out of durability and wouldn’t be around much longer. Most likely the same fate would befall the nest stuck to the giant tree.

The place had been so full of the drone of giant hornet wings, but now the only sound was the rustling of the leaves in the gentle breeze. There was some undeniable guilt in Silica’s mind over destroying an entire colony of living things, but the gilnaris hornets had also destroyed the Patter city in the past.

“Hey, let’s go!” shouted Lisbeth.

Silica turned at the sound and saw all of her battle companions, packed and ready, smiling.

“Coming!” she cried, giving a signal to Misha (with Pina resting on the bear’s head) before running back to join the others.