Ronin rolled to the side as a wasp came in. A move that he likely wouldn’t try again since it required him to drop the five-foot long kanabo. There were six helicopter-sized wasps in the group that had flown down to engage him, and they were quick. He’d shot three of them, and one of the ladybugs. That had reduced their numbers, but made his rifle useless, until he had a chance to reload. The remaining wasps were making diving attacks, while the second ladybug hemmed him in and restricted his movement. He knew the giant bugs were engineered as part of the terraforming package, along with the crystal trees. So, it didn’t surprise him too much when the two main critters on the tree worked together so well.
There were the aphids, whose only job was to be eaten. The ladybugs, who were well armored and slow. Then the wasps, who were extremely fast and agile, and packed a real powerful sting. The aphids were fed on by both larger species, and the ladybugs and wasps had an ongoing war that kept their populations under control. Until someone disturbed the tree that is, then they’d follow some built in code and work together to end the threat.
Ronin couldn’t fault the tactics; in fact, he was taking notes. If he hadn’t been able to kill the other ladybug before it reached him, the pair of them would have tied him down while the wasps pumped him full of venom. He could already see teams of five, consisting of two bugbears and three wood elves or goblin scouts. Hemming in an enemy and raining death from a distance. His fantasies were cut off when the ladybug darted forward in a short burst of speed and snapped its mandibles at him. Thankfully, he’d seen the tactic just minutes before and was able to dodge backward in a, more or less, controlled fall, which brought him back into contact with his club.
Grabbing the weapon, he sprinted away from the ladybug, who despite its quick dashing attacks, wasn’t very fast over a distance. Once he’d made a little space between him and the group’s tank, Ronin looked at the sky. Just in time to dodge as another wasp dove at him, stinger extended. Having learned his lesson last time, Ronin didn’t roll away, instead he jumped to the side, swinging the kanabo as he went. The wasps were fast and incredibly agile, but they weren’t very sturdy. So, when his kanabo connected with the nearest wing, it broke under the blow.
Ronin turned to face the charging ladybug as the newly crippled wasp went into an uncontrolled spin and slipped out of sight over the edge of the branch. That was four down, two wasps remained, and the beetle. Who, Ronin was about to end. Raising his club up over his head, he leapt forward, bringing the weapon down on the ladybug’s head with as much power as he could bring to bear. The sickening crunch as the weapon broke carapace, and the slurping sound as the orange slime inside was churned would have made Ronin sick if he hadn’t done this several times before. Now, he didn’t even bother shaking his weapon off as he pulled it free and went right into an upward swing, hoping to catch a diving wasp in a surprise counterattack.
The wasps liked to achieve a minimum height advantage before they dived. So, Ronin had been able to get a basic idea of how long in-between each diving attack he had, to get ready for the next one. This time, he’d gotten pretty close. Not hitting the wasp with a clean hit, but still catching the extended stinger and knocking the wasp off course, so that it crashed directly into Ronin, instead of just over his head.
The impact drove Ronin clean off his feet, and into a gap in the crystal tree’s thickly barked trunk. From a distance, the bark didn’t look any rougher than the apple or cherry tree the monstrosity resembled. When climbing on it, however, the smallest depressions in the bark were large enough to drive his truck through. This made climbing both more difficult and easier, since he had plenty of hand holds, but it was more like climbing up and down rough bark hills. They’d been fighting on the uppermost portion of the bark, and when they’d collided, the pair tumbled into a house sized valley in the surface. The shift in terrain highly favored Ronin, as the wasp fought from the air.
Fighting for breath after the fall took the wind from his lungs, Ronin struggled to capitalize on his enemy’s momentary distraction. The wasp’s stinger had been deflected away, and for the time being at least, it hadn’t gotten its wings back under control. Digging his fingers into the wasp’s abdomen, Ronin repeated his feat from training with the ladybug, and burrowed his way into the giant insect’s body. It was disgusting, but when his enemy was the size of a helicopter and he was squashed between it and the solid surface of the tree, what else was he going to do? It wasn’t like there was anything vital for him to attack from this angle. That just left inflicting as much damage as possible, and hoping it was enough to put the beast down.
The wasp’s exoskeleton proved to be much weaker than the ladybugs. It was almost too easy to tear apart once he’d gotten inside. After he’d killed the wasp, Ronin found himself wedged into the crack in the bark, the heavy wasp keeping him pinned down as he was drenched with the yellow goop that was the creature’s blood. Struggling inefficiently for a few seconds, Ronin reached his limit and just burrowed his way through the wasp, climbing from its body and now close enough to the top of the crevice to easily climb out.
Instead of going right back on the attack, Ronin crouched low, keeping his head out of sight. Wiping his hands clean as best he could, he pulled the PCP .25 from its holster. Checking his grip twice to make sure it wouldn’t slip from his bug gut covered fingers, Ronin leapt out, searching the sky for the final wasp. Unfortunately, his count was off, and he was caught completely off guard at a fresh ladybug’s dashing charge. He’d been captured by the mandibles before he could even think to dodge.
Ronin was ok with that this time, since with the car sized beetle’s bulk blocking him from the sky, he didn’t have to worry about the wasp for a few seconds. He wasn’t sure if the small gun would penetrate the thick red armor of the ladybug, so Ronin bypassed it entirely. Shoving his hand into the creature’s mouth, while the mandibles tried to crush his own armor. Ronin pulled the trigger five times in quick succession. Emptying half the small, air powered pistol’s ammunition right into the beetle’s soft interior.
The creature was dead, it just didn’t know it yet as it thrashed around, trying to rid itself of the pain. Ronin was thrown clear, and as he hit the ground he continued to roll, until he was lying prone on his back facing the sky. The wasp was already mid-dive, stinger extended directly towards his chest. Raising the pistol once more, Ronin fired off the last five shots, aiming as best he could from this position. He wasn’t sure how many times he’d missed, but at least one round must have connected, because the wasp lost control of its flight, pitching forward into a tumble. Ronin only had time for a silent curse, as the second wasp in as many minutes slammed into him at full speed. Only this time, there was no convenient valley to fall into.
He took the impact full on, feeling like the windshield on his armored truck, as the massive bug splattered on and all around him. The force behind the hit was intense, and he could feel his own exoskeleton creaking under the pressure. Thankfully, it had been a wasp, and not a ladybug, because the heavily armored beetle wouldn’t have broken so easily. Ronin would have been the one splattered instead. Feeling like this was becoming a bad habit, Ronin dug his way out of the splattered internals of the exploded wasp. He dropped his helmet, to catch his breath, and see what was going on around him. Since the clear carapace he’d constructed for eyeholes had been smeared liberally with yellow goo.
The coast was clear, for now. Ronin wanted to just take a minute to catch his breath and relax. He’d been going for hours, and the sun was already setting to the west. Making it difficult to see due to the glare. He couldn’t stop though; he was too high in the tree. Ladybug and wasp encounters were becoming more frequent, and he wasn’t certain, but he thought he’d seen a group of wasps flying out of a hole in the tree’s trunk, perhaps three hundred yards up. If he’d found a hive, then his kill score would skyrocket, since he could kill more of them by limiting the space the wasps had to maneuver.
With a groan, Ronin forced himself to his feet, and moved around the battlefield, picking up his weapons and collecting the crystals from his fallen foe’s heads. He still didn’t know what they were, but he’d read enough books about beast cores, to at least have an idea, and he didn’t want to miss out on any opportunity if he was even close to the mark.
Picking up his rifle, Ronin unscrewed the air tank that served as the gun’s buttstock and screwed it into the compressor he’d taken from his bag. A low hum filled the air as the compressor forced air into the cylinder. The PCP, or Pre-Charged Pneumatics were essentially super-charged pellet guns. The PCP 1.0 held enough air for fifteen shots, so technically, he could reload the weapon three times in between fills, but he’d learned his lesson about that mentality a long time ago, and refilled the tanks and reloaded the weapons to full capacity at every opportunity.
While the tank charged, he reloaded both his weapons, checking them over for damage. A cracked airline would be all it took to render the weapons inoperable. Once the first tank finished refilling, he swapped out for the smaller gun’s tank and topped it off as well. With everything checked and repacked, he took a few drinks from his canteen. Something he’d been holding off doing since he’d seen Elyria’s reaction to it. Surprisingly enough, it tasted surprisingly good. It wasn’t quite as sweet as the enhanced nutrient fluid, but it still had a minty, refreshing flavor.
Putting the canteen away, Ronin stood. He could feel a refreshing wave flowing through his body from the drink and was ready to continue the climb. Looking up, he spotted Elyria flying circles overhead. Close to her, was a lionid woman, riding on the green collared gryphon. With a grin, he waved up at them, before turning around and heading back to the main trunk of the crystal tree. The branch he was on was wide enough to fit the entire village of Valley’s pass on it, and he was excited to see just how much of the tree had been hollowed out to accommodate the wasp hive.
Reaching the main trunk, Ronin searched for one of the many low spots in the bark. They were like valleys or tunnels that he could climb up to avoid the sight of the wasps. They were often filled with aphids, feeding on the trunk, or ladybugs and their larvae eating the aphids, but he had a better chance of reaching the hive unseen if he made his way up out of view. With a flex of new muscles, Ronin snapped his helmet closed again, the white goat hide now dyed a bright yellow orange, as he started the three-hundred-yard climb.
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Naturally, he couldn’t make it completely unmolested. A ladybug larva was busily eating the smaller aphids above him. The bug was about as long as an adult ladybug, but it was black with orange spots instead of red with black spots and was lacking the thick shell and wings that an adult sported. The tradeoff was that they moved much faster. They were so different from their adult versions in fact, that if Elyria hadn’t spent several hours schooling him about bugs of all types and how they reproduced and molted or pupated or whatever, Ronin wouldn’t have believed they were the same species at all.
Thankfully, there was only the one he saw, and instead of wasting time fighting the creature on the vertical surface, Ronin pulled out his PCP .25 pistol and shot the larva once in the head. It was a shame he couldn’t collect the beast core, or bug crystal… bug core? Since the larva fell away from the wall and dropped to the branch below after he’d shot it, he didn’t want to take the time to loot every corpse. Especially since he didn’t even know if the crystals had any value.
Wading through the massive group of feeding aphids, he considered taking a few minutes to wipe them out. Wanting to reach the hive, he settled for knocking them from the wall as he passed them, but not going out of his way to do so. That small action still resulted in several dozen dead aphids before his climb ended at an opening into the tree, surrounded by a woody parchment, or paper that felt waxy to the touch, but still quite sturdy.
Lifting his head over the lip, he looked inside. Elyria had explained how these creatures made their nests, so he understood how the hive had formed. The wasps had chewed into the tree trunk, taking the chewed wood debris, and mixing it with their saliva to create the waxy parchment that filled the entrance. Somehow knowing, took much of the mystery and excitement out of it for him, but Ronin wasn’t on an adventure, or at least he kept telling himself that.
Hoisting himself over the lip and onto the hive entrance’s floor. Ronin pulled out the PCP .25, slipping in an extra bullet to top it off. He would venture into the hive until it got narrower before he found a place to hide. Then, he’d just shoot the wasps as they swarmed around him. Nodding to himself, he snuck his way deeper into the hive and found a crack in the waxy wall, which led deeper into the tree’s trunk. It was large enough to walk into, but much too small for any of the giant wasps to crawl in. Happy with his choice, Ronin settled in and waited for a group of wasps to fly by.
It didn’t take long, a group of six flew into the hive and right past his hiding place. With a smile of anticipation, Ronin sighted in on the lead wasp’s head and pulled the trigger… What happened next would likely be on his list of eternally remembered mistakes. He was sure Elyria at least, would never let him live it down, because he’d heard the term ‘kicked the hornet’s nest’ before as a child. It was a saying that indicated he’d done something wrong. Ronin just didn’t understand how unbelievably crazy they really were, when their home was invaded.
The first wasp died without too much fuss, the second one followed right along, but by the third, the entire tree seemed to quiver in fear with the beating of wasp wings. They swarmed down from above, filling the entrance and searching wildly for whoever had invaded their home. Now, Ronin had watched the battle for undercity. He thought he knew what a swarm looked like. The batlins, however, didn’t hold a candle to the wasps. They flew so tightly packed and in such tight circles that it was impossible to see between them. It was like looking out into a wall of bodies, so thick he could no longer see daylight.
With a gulp, he debated whether he should try and hide or stick to his original plan and shoot them from hiding. Doing some quick mental math let him know there was no way he had enough bullets to down this many wasps. So, deciding discretion was the better part of valor, he hunkered down to wait out the storm… right up until he was noticed that is. Before he had the chance to blink, the small opening that was big enough to park a car in, was surrounded by angry insects, who were already chewing away at the edges of the hole. Ronin’s heart sank as he watched the wood being chewed away at a speed, he didn’t think even possible, and knew the decision had been made for him.
Panicked, he fired all ten shots from his pistol without taking the time to aim properly. The swarm was so thick that he was sure he’d still killed several wasps, but not all the ones chewing at his hiding spot. Taking a breath, he reloaded the weapon. Doing his best to aim with his shaking hands, he fired again. One round after another, each trigger pull, resulting in a wasp’s death. Their bodies choked the crack, and for a moment, he had a reprieve. Until they were dragged away by their comrades, who eagerly took their place.
Reloading again, Ronin fired another ten rounds. The tenth bullet barely did any damage since the tank was now empty. He cursed himself for a fool to not bring one of the PCP .25 carbines along. It wasn’t much larger than the pistol and he could likely have fit it into his equipment harness. The small longarm that he’d equipped Karr’s squad with held one hundred rounds and was a semi-automatic design. That would have been one hundred wasps dead before he’d even needed to reload. Of course, there were more than one hundred of them out there.
Removing the tank, he hooked a hose directly from the compressor to the pistol. That would allow him to avoid recharging the tank. It also slowed down fire speed for a second and a half between shots as the gun built up the necessary pressure to fire, but it would have to do. Ronin only had two hundred rounds for the handgun on him anyway, and hopefully he’d come up with a way out of here before he ran through them all.
The minutes passed with agonizing slowness. He’d shoot the pistol, kill a wasp, and wait the eternity and a half for it to repressurize before shooting again. Each wasp wouldn’t be in position long enough to do much damage, but the small nibbles to the opening were adding up. Ronin had contemplated switching to his kanabo to bash their heads open instead, knowing he could do that much faster. The limbs that reached ever further into the widening hole dissuaded him from that course of action. It would only take one mistake to be pulled out into that swarm and he’d be dead. He just held on as best he could, fighting to maintain his calm over the deafening buzzing of thousands of wings.
He couldn’t hear anything, not even his own breathing or the many curses that escaped his mouth as he fought for his life. Nothing but the angry buzzing, until a monstrous roar rent the air, so loud the wasps went quiet for a split second. They continued to swarm the next moment, their wings and clattering jaws creating a deafening cacophony, but Ronin thought their numbers had thinned somewhat. Not exactly sure what that roar signified, Ronin continued to fire his small caliber weapon at the wasps, hoping desperately that Leo hadn’t attacked the hive from outside. Without cover, there was no way he’d avoid getting stung.
Ronin had gotten stung during training. It wasn’t an experience he ever wanted to repeat. The wasp’s stingers were sharp. They had to be, to pierce the thick ladybug armor, and the venom was potent too. It had eaten into his muscles so quickly, that if he hadn’t downed an entire bottle of his nanite healing potion right away, he probably wouldn’t have made it. Thankfully, that time had been in the simulated test world, Jade had been able to fix him up, for a fee, and he’d gotten right back into the fighting. That wouldn’t be an option out here, in the real world. Getting stung might not be a death sentence normally, but trapped in the hive like he was… it would be bad.
Another earth-shaking roar reached his ears. Sure enough, that was Leo Dawson’s lionid roar. Ronin hoped like hell that he was about to be saved. He hoped equally as hard that nobody would be hurt because of him and his bad decisions again. The swarm thinned out even more, enough that he thought he could risk using his kanabo. He knew he could achieve a faster kill rate with the heavy club, so he holstered the side arm and unclipped the spiked metal club from his back.
Moving to the opening, he started crushing wasp heads, as fast as he could swing. There was still no way he was getting out of the hive, but he didn’t let that deter him from trying. He was positive now, as the swarm thinned even further, that he was getting help from outside, and there was no way he’d let anyone else die for him while he just sat around and waited. As he swung, he was reminded of the honeycomb, and how he’d killed locusts, day in and day out, to keep them away from his people. That experience had been a little different though, he’d had K3 back then.
He missed the giant’s stalwart presence, and his giant shield, really could use that shield right now. The buckler he had strapped to his arm was the next best thing to useless. He laughed, despite himself. He’d done it again. Equipped himself with a weapons loadout that was woefully inadequate to his needs. At least he’d armed Karr and his squad better than he’d armed himself. They at least had larger guns, more ammo, and bigger shields.
The swarm had thinned out enough now that he could see daylight again. He strained his eyes in between swings, hoping to catch a glimpse of who, if anyone, was coming for him. Sure enough, after another minute or two of frantic killing, he caught sight of a figure moving through the crowd. It was Leo Dawson, and he was terrifying. Ronin was almost pulled from his hiding place, when he missed a swing because he was too busy staring, to aim.
He was violence incarnate. Moving so quickly through the swarm of wasps that none of them had time to sting him. His large golden furred body had been stained yellow with wasp gore, and he moved through them like he was dancing. Each step left a dead wasp behind him, each leap dropped another foe. Leo was using all four limb’s claws as his weapons, leaping from wasp to wasp, sometimes not touching the ground at all between kills as he tore through them like a buzz saw. His charge was so impressive that Ronin almost missed the double handful of lionids who raced in behind him.
Each of them moved like quick silver, lacking the mighty power that Leo possessed but not any of the grace. Ronin was sure, when he’d seen the suited lion man Leo had transformed into, standing there, free of weapons of any kind, that he now held the advantage. That belief was now fully dispelled. The man had killed more wasps in the last minute and a half than Ronin had since the encounter started. The numbers were only growing too.
Once the final lionid cleared the entrance, Ronin caught sight of his own people. Well, he saw K3 entering the hive, and drawing out his massive shield and his large hammer. No one else entered besides him, but the rain of wasps that began to fall around the giant for no apparent reason, let Ronin know they were there, supporting him from a distance.
Shaking his head to clear it of the shock he’d felt when the lion entered the hive, Ronin rushed out to meet his rescuers. They’d cleared enough of the swarm away from him that he felt confident he wouldn’t be overrun the moment he stepped outside. Determined not to fall any further behind Leo, he tore into the swarm himself, swinging his kanabo like a demon. Ronin was strong, and becoming more skilled with his weapon, but he was seeing firsthand what subjective centuries of hard-won battles could do for a person. Leo didn’t waste any moves at all, each twitch of his whiskers was carefully calculated to result in the death of an enemy, or he didn’t make the move. It was like watching a real hero battling, a thought that made Ronin’s mood sink, even further than getting himself and his people into this situation had already.
When Leo reached Ronin, he tried to talk to the older man. It was like the lionid hadn’t heard him at all though, because he didn’t even spare Ronin a glance. He passed right on by, followed by his pride, as they continued to kill the wasps. K3, finally back at his side, gave Ronin a brief nod, as he too continued to cut down the flying foes. He at least didn’t go further, only taking his place at Ronin’s side. With a sigh, Ronin decided he might as well follow Leo deeper inside. He’d be dead without assistance, and he wanted to see what else the lionid had up his sleeve.