Lyra was starting to feel panicky, she had been in this stalemate for five minutes already, she either had to disengage and head back to try and escape with Yu, or she had to risk getting seriously injured to kill the drones

But the choices were nearly identical, if she tried to run with her master they wouldn’t make it past the huge numbers, if she got a crippling injury here she wouldn’t be able to fend off the incoming bees, either way they would die

Without noticing it she was steadily cornered into the wall, if she didn’t decide now the drones might decide for her

The walls here were honeycombs made of wax, they had a dome shape to them that curved upward, if they got near then the drones could use the comb’s dangerously to their advantage

Suddenly an idea popped in her head, and instead of trying to get away from the wall she headed straight to it

Seeing her do so the drones gave pursuit, the small distance between them and the wall wouldn’t give her enough momentum to jump, thus they would have cornered her from all sides with her back to the wall

Lyra seemed stubborn though and ran as fast as she could anyway, she got faster and faster but alas she couldn’t make enough momentum to jump and the wall was already in front of her

Buzz

The drones were delighted, the mad wolf won’t be able to slow down and will crash into the wall, they dove with their top speed to sting her to death, they will definitely not give her a chance to run around anymore

Crash!

But they were destined to be disappointed, Lyra hadn’t gone mad as they thought, instead she used whatever speed she built to run up the wall, the curve gave her just the right angle to get above the drones taking a big bite of its head while the other one crashed into the wall

Buzz

What she didn’t take into account was that the third drone was lagging behind its brothers due to its earlier position to intercept her, thus it gave it the best distance at which Lyra couldn’t dodge when she jumped off the drone’s back

There was nothing she could do, she had tried her best, she did everything she could do and maybe more, still though, a feeling of regret welled up within her as she thought of the night from before, they would not be able to see the night sky again, nor listen to the breeze, their journey would end he-

BIZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZZ

A resounding buzz rang through the lair, it rattled the eardrums of both Lyra and the last drone who turned to his head toward the queen only to see a bolt sticking out of its waist, causing the drones instincts to scream at it to go protect the queen

Lyra was surprised as well but as she had been falling off the dead drone she couldn’t spare the time to remove her sight from the living one, thus when she saw the momentary gap of focus she instantly used it to jump slightly right of the stinger, grazing her fur just enough for some blood to come out, other than that she didn’t suffer any form of poison

The drone, noticing it missed its chance, tried to make the best of the situation by turning its stinger to toward the Lyra, but that was the worst move it could have made, owing to its rage, as Lyra was already by the stingers side, making impossible to move it back and pierce before she bit the living hell out of the mad bee, which she did

“Nice job not taking your eyes off it, we would have been goner if you did”

Approached the hero of the day, Yu, with a taunting smile on his face, he really wanted to give the wolf the same taste of its medicine, which she indeed hated if her scrunched up face was any indicator

“Well I’ll gloat later, the guy that crashed into the wall is getting back up, and that queen is still alive”

The drone managed to slow down enough not to suffer much damage from the crash, but it still left it verbal, and Lyra made short work of it before they headed toward the screeching queen

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Upon getting close enough Yu noticed that the queen hadn’t taken any action other than screeching and glaring at them with its large five eyes

‘Why is it not moving? Even if it can’t fight it can at least run’

“Be careful, it might have something up its sleeve”

Yu sharpened his sight and so did Lyra, they wanted to know what the queen had hidden for them

The two opposing partied kept glaring each other down, before an unexpected development occurred…

“Ha hahaha, never mind, this thing isn’t just not dangerous, its particle useless”

Lyra looked at Yu as if he was mad, he was laughing while they were running out of time, did he not know that hundreds of bees were flying outside, waiting to barge in any second now

“Hmm don’t worry I took care of the bees outside, we got some time, enough for this massive thing to die of poison, so just stay back and wait”

The reason for Yu’s confidence was the fact the he recognized the queen, this was the infamous Wax Womb, a rare and special type of queen bee, while it isn’t the rarest, in which case you could still find some being raised by bee keepers, they were still rare in the wild

Why you ask? Well that is because the queen is a useless sack of eggs that can’t move until the day dies when a new queen bee emerges to take its place

-Wax Womb, Insect Branch, Bee Sub-Branch, Silver-Gold Rank

“An interesting creature, it is clearly laying eggs, but it actually developed a womb to use to nurture special eggs that would hatch a certain variant, if left be I think it would have made tens of those drones, though tens aren’t much if they were just Bronze Rank”

Yu headed back and got a few bolts as he mumbled to himself, shot them at the queen and waited

It took a bit of time but the silver rank queen was finely dead three minutes later, Lyra could finish her off fast but Yu didn’t want to risk it, he only read the basics of this creature before and nothing more, the creature was almost immobile but maybe it had something to protect itself

‘I don’t recognize the drones though, well it can’t be helped, I read more than thirteen thousand creature names but that still doesn’t cover even half of the beasts in Silver and Bronze Rank’

Turning his attention back to the dead queen Yu started to open her womb sack up, he need to kill the eggs too lest the cause problems later on

But the sight that greeted him upon slashing the sack open was nothing like what he had in mind

There was only one egg inside the womb, it was of golden color, with a shining hue around it, it seemed nothing like an egg that would house those black drones, even the creature sleeping within looked a lot more delicate and slim than those murder bees

A grim look was plastered across Yu’s face, the fact that this egg was here meant one thing

‘There are two Wax Wombs queens’

That could be the only explanation, the drones came from a Wax Womb queen, and this one was a new one that rose after the previse queen died

‘No wonder this queen looked a lot smaller than the book said, plus this one was growing a queen bee inside it, a lot of time would be needed for it to actually hatch’

A Wax Womb queen bee could grow only one variant inside its womb and it was usually either worker bees or drones, then there were those who would grow a single bee, the queen bee, who would replace them on the day of their hatching, for they would tear their way out of their mother’s womb, killing her and taking their position as the rightful queens

‘This queen bee probably became one through normal ways of feeding royal jelly when the former queen bee was making the drones, it was either sent away, or escaped some sort of attack’

Queen bees would usually be eggs that were selected by the worker bees and nurtured by placing them in a sealed cell and covering them with a lid that they could chew off when they hatched, they would also be fed Royal Jelly exclusively unlike other eggs who only got to taste it once, this made the bee develop it sexual attribute to it can mass produce fertilized eggs after mating

“Either way I need to decide what to do with the egg fast, I can either take it with me or kill it”

He thought hard about it, if he took it that means he had to take tons of Royal Jelly with him, which would still not be enough, and head to take constant care of it in his travels or else even if it did hatch it wouldn’t make much of a beast if it wasn’t nurtured well during infancy

‘Hmm, well I’ll try, I won’t lose much if I do, if it turns out bad I would only lose the amount of money I would have gained selling the Royal Jelly’

With his mind made up he started to cut the egg out, then he wrapped it with some of the special wax from the womb, he wrapped it to his back and headed with the wolf to the entrance to prepare for a long and arduous final battle…. That never happened

Indeed, when they had arrived they had seen burned corps upon burned corpses of bees blocking the entrance, one could tell they barged in regardless of their lives, which fed the fire more and more resulting in the horrendous scene in front of them

“It must have been the queen’s death throes that did this”

Lyra nodded grimly at Yu’s comment, they should be happy now with victory in hand, but seeing living creatures throwing their lives to the wind as if they were possessed gave them a little fright

“Let’s make haste, we must collect everything before anyone comes after the fire, we can’t let the mercenaries know we cut off their new business”

They moved the corpses out and dealt with a few straggling bees then wen top their camp and used the jars Yu had for poison to store as much honey as possible, while the Royal Jelly was kept for the queen bee’s consumption, after taking looting a bit of the corpse’s martials they headed toward Calico city, leaving behind the mercenaries that arrived at the scene cursing with tears