Lilly and Ray stand on a branch a few meters away from the giant hornets' nest.

“There doesn’t seem to be any guards.”, Lilly states.

“Alright, lets get in there.”, Ray says as he scoops Lilly up into a princess carry, making her blush and flies the 2 of them over to one of the many entrances inside the hornets' nest.

They had raided a giant venom-hornets' nest before, but it wasn’t this big before. As they land in, the 2 of them begin to sneak through the winding passages of the hornets' nest, careful to not make any unnecessary noise and looking out for hornets.

It didn't take very long before they found one that was zooming down the winding path, clearly heading out on its expedition, Ray pulled out his mana blade and swung it down wards slicing the hornet in half. After that, Lilly carefully separated the stinger from the body and put it in her bag.

“Thats 10 nuggets.”, she said.

They continued to follow the winding path that went up, down, left, right and all over the place, killing the occasional hornets that flew down their path, storing their stingers.

And then they stumbled across it, the entrance to the hornets' nest, it was a huge open ovoid space that had pods all around the walls. As the 2 of them looked around the giant space and looked upwards they saw what looked like a branch stretching from one side of the ovoid to the other. And what was perched onto of it was a giant hornet, with 2 giant stingers and 2 pairs of wings. It was the queen. Suddenly a hornet appeared in front of them, it opened its mouth and let out an estranged screech, alerting all the other hornets to the intruders. There had to be about a hundred of them...

Ray smiled, they had turned a very easy quest, into a worthy warm up.

Lilly drew her bow and arrow, and a bolt of lightning flew and struck the hornet, the bolt arrow flying straight through it and frying the giant bug as it went, causing it to the floor dead.

“We’ll kill them all and the harvest their stingers at the end.”, Ray instructed.

“Right, I’ll stay here and cover you like I did last time as you fly about and kill them.”.

“What a perfect plan.”, Ray said as he jumped straight down out of the hole in the wall, his feet catching fire and propelling him upwards, mana blade in hand. Ready for the slaughter to begin.

Ray flew through the air and blade pointed forwards, and pierces through a hornet, dodging its stinger and throwing it downwards. Then, from behind him, a hornet descends through air, stinger ready to strike, but a bolt of lightning passes through it causing it to fall out of the sky. Dead. Ray turns to Lilly and puts his thumbs up, Lilly returns the signal, however, her eyes widen in shock.

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“BEHIND YOU!”, She screams.

As Ray turns around, he is met by the giant queen hornet that collides with him and smashes him against the wall.

“RAY!”, Lilly screams.

She aims her bow at the queen, but a swarm of hornets block her view, she knows her arrows will pass through them and strike the queen, but she’s scared of unnecessarily hurting Ray. She wished she had brought sylphie with her now, as she would have been able to scatter these hornets easily, however she doubted she’d need her today and let her rest back in her room. She kisses her teeth. She doesn’t need to worry about Ray. He’s strong. She just needs to focus on the task at hand. She draws her bow; the arrow turning into lightning and shoots it. She had used the arrow rain technique which usually shoots out one arrow and hundreds of small sharp bits of mana along with it. However, with her lightning bow those small shards of mana turned into smaller bolts of lightning. The many beams of lightning shot out at the hornets, some falling others evading.

However, a brave hornet made it through the many lightning beams and was charging towards Lilly with immense speed. With no time to draw another shot, she pulled out a long, jagged dagger.

“I’m not just a one trick pony, even I’ve been training.”, She shouts.

As the hornet rushes in with its stinger, Lilly steps backwards, leg raised well above her head and steps down with a mighty stomp, forcing the stinger down and piercing the floor. She then raised her dagger in the air, engulfed in her mana and stabbed downwards, into the head of the hornet, blood splattering from its head, it fell to the ground dead.

“Who’s next?”, she said, as she stepped on the hornets' dead body and drew her bow.

Meanwhile, Ray, placed his hands on the hornet queens head, an explosive flame charging through his hands.

“Repel.”, Ray said smiling.

An explosive force left his hands, sending the hornet queen flying and smashing into the other side of the giant nest.

“Well, that was surprising.”, Ray thought to himself.

The hornet queen moved so fast and so silently it was on him before he even realised. Ray once again ignited his mana blade and charged towards the queen, who had recovered and was rocketing towards him like a silent missile.

As they got close spun and sliced at the hornet queen, however it had no effect whatsoever. As they passed each other, Ray turned around and smiled.

“Your different to the others, your exoskeletons much tougher.”.

The queen replied with a loud screech.

Ray pumped more and more flame aura into his mana blade the colour slowly turning white. Ray points his blade towards the queen.

“Let's see that tough exoskeleton of yours bypass my semi-perfect flames.”, he said smiling.

The hornet queen screeched bloody murder at Ray, her 2 stingers stretching out like snakes and pointing towards Ray, her wings growing and becoming longer and stronger, her head stretching and long sharp fangs perturbing from a gaping mouth. The hornet queen now looked more like the depiction of a dragon then the actual dragons in this world.

“BRING IT ON!”, Ray shouts as the 2 fly at each other.