Chapter 696: Insect Nest
“Okay, this feint plan seems somewhat feasible. However, their objective is to rescue someone, while ours is to kill monsters. If there’s an opportunity, we should still try to take care of the Iron Winged Bee swarm.”
Afterward, we followed Tandri to capture the bait he mentioned. It was a Bobo, a herbivorous monster somewhat resembling a wild boar with two tusk-like fangs. Tandri demonstrated his skills as a seasoned hunter and smoothly found the Bobo’s hiding nest. He personally jumped in and captured the pathetic bait.
While they were capturing the bait, I sidled up to Older Brother Jayad and asked him what Tandri and Lair had asked him while we were bathing earlier. As I had expected, they had indirectly inquired about our identities. Jayad simply said we were cultivators from a certain sect of the Church undergoing trials and asceticism. Then they asked about Jayad’s needs, likely to gauge what remuneration we would require to help them with all their might.
I didn’t mind them prying for information. After all, even a benefactor would feel uneasy if they knew nothing. And it wasn’t as if I wasn’t trying to gather intelligence on them myself; it didn’t necessarily stem from malice. It was a pity they chose the wrong target. Perhaps they thought Older Brother Jayad was easier to talk to, but Jayad, being a former thief, was incredibly shrewd. They couldn’t get any true information from him. It would have been better to ask the straightforward Lorna.
“Alright, I’ve smeared oil and spices on this Bobo. When we reach the Iron Winged Bee nest, we’ll light the smoke grass on the cart and push it forward. Simultaneously, we’ll release the Bobo to charge the nest and disturb the bees. This will lure the Iron Winged Bees away, and we can rescue the captives then,” Tandri said.
It was impressive that he had made so many preparations in such a short time. We pushed the cart filled with smoke grass and set off toward the Iron Winged Bee nest.
On the way, Older Brother Jayad quietly came up to me and shared a strange piece of intelligence: “The Iron Winged Bees I killed earlier had no souls.”
“What do you mean?” I asked, frowning. No souls? What kind of creature has no soul?
“Didn’t Parul ask me to collect Monster Souls with the Ruby Shortsword? So, I deliberately used it to kill those Iron Winged Bees, but I discovered that the Ruby Shortsword didn’t absorb their souls. It’s very strange; this hasn’t happened before,” Jayad said.
This was indeed a peculiar matter. I could think of three possible explanations: First, their souls were too powerful for the Ruby Shortsword to absorb. Second, they genuinely had no souls and were merely puppets. Third, a force intercepted their souls the moment they died. All three inferences stemmed from the settings in works or games I had encountered in my previous life, combined with the knowledge I had acquired in this world, allowing me to deduce the possibilities.
The first explanation was likely impossible. How strong could the souls of a few insects be? My Life Drain could kill them instantly. The second possibility was also unlikely. Although their wings were metallic, their bodies were clearly biological, possessing the basic organs of insects. The chance of them having no souls was slim.
Therefore, the third possibility was more probable. This scenario did exist in reality, with demons being the most typical example. It was said that demons could not be killed in the real world; their souls would return to the subspace or the Twisted Void to revive. The record was vague and ambiguous, and I didn’t quite understand the resurrection process, but that was the general idea. Could these Iron Winged Bees, such tiny insectoid monsters, possess the ability to have their souls guided away?
Although we learned of this, we kept it to ourselves, as it was uncertain. Furthermore, whether the Iron Winged Bees had souls would not significantly impact their plan. Their primary objective was to rescue someone, so there was no need to discuss factors with such minor influence.
With our deliberate acceleration, we soon arrived near the Iron Winged Bee nest. Less than an hour had passed since they were first attacked, so the probability of Liya still being alive was high. I had already used my God’s Eye to confirm the situation within the nest. It was a massive beehive located beneath an earthen hole, with an estimated diameter of about ten meters.
Under the divine eye’s penetrating gaze, the insect nest looked terrifying. It resembled a colossal sarcoma attached to a pillar within the cave. The honeycomb was like flesh covered in hexagonal holes, with various irregular connective tissues overlaying it. I even felt as if the insect nest were alive, subtly pulsating, with countless Iron Winged Bees flying in and out.
This situation felt eerily familiar. It was like something I had seen in a dream – the nest of the Shoggoth, also constructed from what seemed like living biomass. However, this nest was far more repulsive than the Shoggoth nest, as Iron Winged Bees were monsters, while the Shoggoth were considered intelligent beings.
The girl we were trying to rescue was near the outer perimeter of the nest, or rather, that area was also part of the nest. Many parts of the cave had been modified into a flesh-and-blood beehive structure suitable for the Iron Winged Bees’ survival. Several cocoon-like structures stood on the ground. Upon closer inspection, they were humans. Indistinct human faces with twisted, pained expressions could be seen on the surface of the cocoons. These were the girls captured by the Iron Winged Bees. They were brought to this hatching ground, where the Iron Winged Bee queen would lay her eggs on them. Then, they would be completely encased and sealed with beeswax, forming an incubator for the Iron Winged Bees.
They could only be engulfed by the numbness brought on by the poison within the beeswax, experiencing in the darkness the sensation of countless larvae hatching within their bodies. Of course, the process wasn’t so easily fatal; the beeswax was sufficient to sustain their lives for a period. However, their minds would eventually shatter, and their bodies would be consumed by the larvae. Inside the broken cocoon shells were human bones.
Liya had not yet reached that stage. She had been taken to the lower part of the nest, where the queen would lay eggs inside her body. Currently, a layer of beeswax covered her to prevent resistance. Her face was flushed, her lips slightly parted, and she was moaning softly, clearly disoriented. Iron Winged Bees perched on her body, feeding her a blood-red honey. This nutrient-rich honey sustained her life and ensured a stronger maternal womb for the larvae.
“Below the northeast corner, about twenty meters deep into the cave, the beehive is right beside it,” I had Older Brother Jayad say these words, making them think he was the one with the detection abilities.
“Right beside it? The advantage is that it’s indeed in a low-lying area and inside a cave, where the smoke grass will be very effective. The disadvantage is that we don’t know the specific terrain inside the cave, making it difficult for us to rescue them,” Tandri remarked.
