442 Chapter 442: Return of the Killer Bees

"Contact!"

Gunfire erupted across the plains as the mercenaries threw themselves under cover and began opening up with their rifles. It wasn't just guns – mages were flinging ranged spells from a distance and incinerating vast swathes of Killer Bees.

But there were just too many of them.

"Get down! Get behind me!"

Hissing to Adrian and Melina, I had them crouch behind the tall grass and flowers for cover, and slowly led them behind mercenary lines. I wanted to help the mercenaries out, but they could take care of the Killer Bees on their own, and my responsibility was to take care of the kids, not get into fights.

Besides, what was I supposed to do against a swarm of Killer Bees? I wasn't going to summon my Constellation spirits against them. They would get stung to death. I would much rather wait a bit to summon Vermillion Phoenix or Taurus to incinerate them in large swathes of fire. After all, fire attacks were super-effective against bug-type pocket monsters…ahem, I mean insect-type monsters. Nothing exterminated huge bugs better than fire.

In other words, kill them with fire!

Fierce buzzing and explosions erupted behind us, inciting both Adrian and Melina to look back, but I shepherded them backward, where Doctor Dorden and Glacia were. The silver-haired ice mage was escorting the support staff back toward the forest, to take cover, though I doubted the trees would provide any protection against the pursuing Killer Bees.

Then again, the moment we wiped out the Killer Bees, other monsters would have been drawn to the area. No doubt they would detect our presence, what with the tremendous amount of mana output the mercenaries were throwing out at the moment. Not that I blamed them. Killer Bees were a deadly foe that could sting even the most powerful mages to death.

Even though Killer Bees were technically ranked F, that didn't mean they should be underestimated. Indeed, their rank was based upon an individual Killer Bee. Obviously a single big bug was easy to deal with – even a child could probably swat it out of the air with a single basic spell.

However, Killer Bees always came in large numbers. An entire swarm of Killer Bees, zooming in an almost suicidal charge toward their target and paying no heed to the calamitous losses they would suffer, could sting even a rank B monster to death. Each individual drone had no sentience or consciousness of its own, a puppet or tool that existed only to serve the hive. They were expendable weapons that the Queen would unhesitantly throw at her enemies, uncaring of whether her countless drones survived the upcoming massacre.

That was what made them so dangerous, despite their deceptively low rank. Again, I hoped the readers wouldn't blindly make stupid comments like, "they are only rank F, they should be the weakest monsters, why are you so worried about them? They should be of no threat." Hell, no! Precisely because of the stupid ranking system people underestimated their power, let down their guard, and allowed themselves to get overwhelmed by near limitless numbers!

Never heard of how a horde of army ants can chew a poor jaguar down to its bones? Or a school of piranha able to devour a crocodile and leaving nothing more than a skeleton? Size didn't matter. As weak as they were individually, they were strong in vast numbers! Remember the old fable, United We Stand, Divided We Fall. A single arrow could be snapped easily, but bundle ten arrows together and you'll never be able to break them.

It's the same logic here. Stop applying your game or cultivation/xianxia story logic to reality. The real world just didn't work that way. Ranks didn't determine anything – they were just a rough estimation. To claim that I would never die to a rank F monster because I was capable of slaying a rank A monster was just the height of folly.

"Shouldn't we help?" Adrian asked as I escorted him and Melina back to the cover of trees, where Glacia, Doctor Dorden and the support staff were setting up. I saw them hurrying about and assembling heavy weapons, probably to mow down the Killer Bees and provde suppressive fire.

"I will help. You and Melina stay put. Otherwise we'll just get in the way."

"Be careful!" Melina warned. Spinning around, I caught sight of a small group of Killer Bees breaking away from the swarm and buzzing in our direction. One of the mercenaries swung about and fired at them, killing a few of the big bugs with mana bullets, but many survived, their relatively tiny bodies darting about swiftly and making themselves a hard target.

Clicking my tongue, I skidded to a halt, whirled around and summoned Orion. Pulling the bowstring back, I fired a volley of arrows upon the approaching Killer Bees. As before, they ducked about in midair, but the volume of my shots was so overwhelming that it didn't matter that I missed 90% of them. The sheer number of arrows crossing through the air left no room for the poor Killer Bees to evade, and they got obliterated.

"Cool!" Adrian exclaimed, his eyes wide in admiration. I gave him a shove with my right hand, my left still clutching Orion, and yelled.

"Move!"

As I said, the Killer Bees were easy to kill, but I had only taken down a mere drop in an ocean. The mercenaries were bellowing back in the plains, roaring out orders and snapping off sharp retorts. Their rifles thundered, sprayng the horde with superheated mana bullets that incinerated them in brief flickers of flames.

"Activate Device!"

The mercenaries on the frontline were tensing up as the Killer Bees drew closer. For all of the carnage they wreaked among the horde, there were still so many bees left over. As mentioned earlier, the danger lay not in the actual strength of each individual Killer Bee, but the amount of harm they could inflict as a whole horde. An entity, rather than a single specimen, if that made sense.

Liken it to water, or an ocean. A single drop of water was harmless by itself, but merge all the thousands, if not millions of drops together and you'll get a tsunami that could drown entire coastal towns and kill countless.

It was the same concept here. A rank F monster was fragile and vulnerable on its own, but as a collective they were as fearsome as any high ranked monster.

Against such a terrifying wave of foes, the mercenaries stood firm, continuing to release an unrelenting hail of fire. At the command to activate their devices, they hastily completed the spell that they had been casting this entire time.

Then I understood why they were ushering us support personnel back into the forest.

Their rifles glowed, and then thick, unyielding mana expanded all over their body before solidifying into armor. Now clad in mechanical exoskeletons, the mercenaries bounded forward, energy blades erupting from their forearms and turrets rotating about their shoulders to blast plasma into the swarm of raging Killer Bees. The metallic layer of armors gleamed silver, and the distinctive crest of the Silver Wolves was emblazoned proudly upon their silver breastplate, the head of a howling wolf atop two metallic blades.

"Holy…!" Adrian gasped. "What the hell is that?!"

"A Crystal Suit?" Melina stammered, awestruck. "Is that the Mystic Skeleton Battlesuit?"

"You're in the wrong story, girl!" I bellowed at her, exasperated. "This isn't a world where humankind has undergone forty millenniums of cultivation! And I'm not some genius refiner who doubles as a martial artist!"

"It's the Colossus-class Combat Exoskeleton Armor," Glacia explained from behind us. "It's what happens when you infuse your Device with mana and trigger its activiation with a basic spell. It is mass produced and meant for frontline soldiers to fight in." She glanced at me with a smile. "This is the first time you're seeing this, right? We just only procured these new suits recently."

"I see." Certainly, I hadn't seen the Silver Wolves use this particular weapon before. From what I knew, combat exoskeleton armor, or CEA, were highly expensive equipment. Even a top guild such as Silver Wolves would find it difficult to purchase them in bulk. Then again, they should be able to afford at least a few CEAs here or there…I guess the reason why they didn't have any for so long was because they waited until they had saved up enough funds to procure a whole bunch of CEAs in bulk, at one time.

Very impressive.

The Killer Bees crashed into the line of heavily armored soldiers, their stings incessantly stabbing at the gleaming exoskeletons. Yet, they failed to penetrate the mercenaries' armor, their stings breaking off, shattering or denting instead. The Silver Wolves fought back fiercely, their arm-blades or lightning claws slicing through the air and literally cutting hundreds of Killer Bees apart. Plasma bursts roiled about, incinerating thousands in superheated flares.

Within a few minutes, the horde was visibly thinned out. Despite their horrendous losses and mounting death toll, the Killer Bees continued to fanatically throw themselves against the armored forms of the Silver Wolves, dying in droves. To what end, I had no idea. But the Queen apparently cared little for the lives of her drones.

Or perhaps she, like all other monsters, harbored some kind of deep, instinctive hatred and uncontrolled aggression toward humans.

Amidst the armored forms of the mercenary soldiers, the elite mages continued to fight unabated, their weapons and spells expanding from their figures. Even without any armor, Redfield emerged from a skirmish unscathed, fires burning all around him in a protective barrier that incinerated any Killer Bee stupid enough to hurl themselves at him. Brent swatted multiple bugs out of the sky with his staff, razor-sharp winds blowing about him and ripping them apart with tremendous force. Feng Hai stood at the center, hundreds of blades dancing around him and each automatically homing onto poor Killer Bees and cleaving dozens of them apart in a single stroke.

And these all did unarmored, yet they didn't sustain any injuries at all. Not from what I could see, at least.

Scary.

Unfortunately, what was scarier was that a bunch of Killer Bees broke off from the main group and headed in our direction, correctly identifying us as the weaker threat.

"Incoming!" Glacia warned the support. Fortunately, they had already set up their heavy weapons, and were ready for the enemy. Manning a portable laser cannon, the gunners fired brilliant burst of ruby light, the superheated ray disintegrating columns of Killer Bees before they could get within a hundred meter of us. Another heavy weapon spat out thousands of plasma bolts per minute, peppering the horde with fiery death and incinerating them. I added my firepower to them, unleashing 1,200 azure arrows consecutively from my Orion.

Yes, I admit that I'm a big fan of Bleach. Got a problem with that?

Adrian and Melina added their firepower as well, with Adrian casting wood spells and throwing out razor leaves and Sakura petals. His skills were reminiscent of Cecilia's, and I wondered if he would ever reach her level. Well, he still had about 2 or 3 years before he reached the same age, so there was stil some time for him to catch up. That said, I suspected that he was nowhere near her level of strength when she was his age. That said, Cecilia was quite the unfair comparison because she was considered a prodigy. If I were to rate Adrian more objectively, I would have to admit that he was above average for a mage of his age. he certainly could give several of the lower-ranking mercenaries a run for their money. Not bad at all.

Melina's repertoire was limited, because she was more of a short-ranged fighter. Armed with a sword, she fought hard as hard as she could, but right now she couldn't…do anything except hold her sword in front of her.

I sent her a glare. "I haven't taught you any swordsmanship yet, so don't bother. Use your normal magic spells."

"Yes, Sensei."

Realizing that this wasn't the time to be smart, Melina complied. Putting away her sword, she cast several holy spells, flinging rays of light to blast Killer Bees apart. Inwardly, I was slightly impressed. Just as what I had heard, she was extremely proficient in magic. She still had some ways to go before she reached the level of Cecilia and the rest, but she was getting there. She didn't seem pleased – I guess she really wanted to be a swordswoman, but she understood that this concerned her life and death, and this was no time to be stubbornly sticking to her ideals.

"Hang in there! There's not much of them left!"

Glacia was encouraging the team, even as she strode forward and entombed a swarm in ice. As she did so, a tide of flames headed in our direction and incinerated the last of the Killer Bees. While shooting down a few stray ones that were buzzing away, I caught sight of the armored mercenaries and elite mages heading back in our direction.

The swarm of Killer Bees had been exterminated.

"We should hurry," Brent said, gesturing for the support team to pack up. "It won't be long before the higher ranking monsters get here."

I shuddered when I remembered the Phantom Tiger and Medicinal Mastodon. Already the ground was shaking, indications of something massive and heavy approaching us. The mercenaries double-timed, hurriedly packing up their gear and melting back into the forest.

"Well, that was a complete waste of time," Redfield complained as we slunk back among the trees to remain out of sight. "All that fighting, and for nothing."

"That's not necessarily true." It was Brown, and she was smiling. "I may have found some clues."