"Where are you taking me? Migu, answer me this instant!" The little brain fussed in my arms.

"Be quiet! If even one of those bat roaches locks onto us, we're toast!" I replied.

"Toast? I don't know what that is, but it sounds bad!"

Hm, so he's from a pre-toast era. Wait, did such an era ever even exist? No, 'cause like, everyone knows about bread, right? It's like the number one thing to make regardless of where or when you come from. It's just an extra step in the toaster. Ah, but maybe they didn't have toasters. Yeah, that could be the case.

"Never mind toast for now. I'm taking us to the second floor for some firepower." I explained, sticking close to rock formations, walls and bushes as I ran through the third floor, "Your job is to tell me if we're under attack."

"O-Okay? Well, we're not, so just keep moving."

We can't leave the Shrine without making sure those bat roaches won't pose an issue later, so we're gonna need to commit a mild amount of tomfoolery in the form of a mass extinction event. At first I thought all hope was lost because the beds were gone, but I just so happened to remember that the second floor is littered with traps galore!

"Hey, not that way!" Energy suddenly stopped me, "A bunch of them are crowded in that direction."

"Good to know." I nodded, taking the long way around, "You think that's where their hive is?"

"Possibly, I feel like there's at least a hundred of them just in there." He suddenly jolted, "Gah!"

"What's wrong?!"

"S-Something huge..." He grunted, "There's a bat roach bigger than any of the other ones in there. Might be their queen, I'm not sure."

A queen. So, does their hive function like a bee nest? If that's the case, that'd explain why they reproduce so fast. Dammit, why are the ickiest creatures in the world the most plentiful? I hate insects of all kinds, chimeric in nature or otherwise! I should note this path down in my head. When it's time to attack, I should at least remember where to go.

"Back when I was here with Vastoria..." He recollected, "We fought something of a similar size. It was a large bat roach, stronger and tougher than the rest at least a dozen times over."

"And you're saying this is the same case?" I raised an Eyebrow.

"Worse, much much worse." He sounded worried, "If this is the queen, then what we fought earlier was the king."

I don't understand. Shouldn't it be the other way around? Ah, he must be talking about chess terms, I guess. Nah, actually scratch that. I refuse to believe he knows what chess is but has never heard of toasted bread. That still blows my mind, how could you not know what toast it!? It's my favorite thing in the world!

"Wait, but then if our theory is correct, doesn't that mean we only have to kill the queen bat roach to ensure they stop reproducing?" I raised an Eyebrow.

"Insects elect a new queen when the old one dies." He explained, "Some species can even forcefully change their gender to fit their new matriarchal role."

"I'm not even gonna ask how you know that..."

"Isn't this common knowledge?"

I absolutely cannot fathom how this man thinks gender bending insects are considered common knowledge. I know I'm being annoying here with the toast talk, but are you seriously expecting me to believe he knows such irrelevant trivia and has never once tried to cook a slice of bread twice in a row?

"Wait, something's wrong. I sense a sudden blockade in front of us." He warned.

"No, it's alright. That's just the stairs leading to the second floor." I reassured him, "You can't exactly see that without Eyes, though."

Surprisingly, it seems his senses work as a sort of myopia now that he's just a brain. He can "feel" and easily discern the sensations of me touching him, as well as the stuff near him, but the further out the thing he's focusing on is, the less precision he has over correctly guessing what it is. Then again, we're lucky that the only threats looming in this floor are the bat roaches, so the moment he feels something fast moving in the distance, he knows what it is without hesitation.

"Made it safely to the staircase!" I announced, gently patting the top of his brain, "Good work out there."

"I get you think that feels nice for me or whatever, but I'm only getting messages sent to me through the nerves that detail what you're doing." He sighed, "In other words, you might as well just say "Pat Pat" instead of actually doing it."

"So you're the type who likes to get verbally pampered as well as physically?" I joked, "There there, good little fossil."

"You damned brat, that's not what I meant!" He fussed in my embrace, "And stop calling me old!"

Ah, so he knows that a fossil is something old but doesn't know what toas-Nah, I'll stop. I already see there's no hope for him, so I guess I'll just have to cut my losses for now.

If you discover this tale on Amazon, be aware that it has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. Please report it.

"One day, if we get the chance to..." I said as I limped slowly but surely up the stairs, "I'd like to eat some toast with you."

"Eh? Where did that come from?" He sounded confused.

"Just saying, I think you'd really enjoy it." I smiled.

I could tell from his silence that he really wasn't in the mood for wholesome breadtalk, but something about the air around him did seem to relax just a tiny bit. I guess at the end of the day, these moments of reprieve really are everything a person could ask for.

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***

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"Migu, I'll remind you again just for safety." He warned, "For the duration of our stay on this floor, I'm useless. My senses can't detect traps."

"I wouldn't exactly go so far as to call you useless. After all, I would've been knee-deep in the bat roach hive had you not warned me to turn around when you did."

"Regardless, you will have to watch out for traps on your own." He added, "Watch your step, don't touch the walls or ceiling, and evade any tripwires you might come across."

Well, the warning is certainly appreciated, since you can never be too careful. This time, however, my goal wasn't to just evade the traps, but to grab them for ourselves. If I want my plan to work, I'm gonna need to find an explosive trap, or at least a wide range one. Essentially, I'll place a bunch of them inside the nest and remotely set off the traps from a safe distance, hopefully killing all those bat roach bastards without even having to look at their ugly mugs once. In theory, the plan should be flawless, but it's the practice part that always makes things difficult.

"Hey, do you even know if it's possible to take them and use them somewhere else?" Energy asked.

"..."

"Wait, you weren't sure!?" He jolted.

"I'm like 80% sure." I reasoned, "Okay, 75% sure. Look, if it turns out we're unable to take them for ourselves, I'll just take us outside and we'll wait for Sheep to arrive."

"And if the bat roaches overflow the Shrine while we're waiting for him?" He asked, "What makes you so sure he'll return for us at all? And even if he does, how long will it take him? He has his wings, sure, but the rest of his body is completely broken."

And whose fault is that, dumbass? Sigh, but I guess you're not wrong. If we're gonna leave the Shrine, it has to be after we've successfully taken out all those bug heads. This is gonna be more annoying than I thought. Let's just hope these traps come-

"...off." I held the dart trap in my palm after simply pulling it out of the brickwork, "There's no way that worked!"

"Eh? It worked!?" He sounded elated, "Quick, show me, show me!"

Putting the dart trap close to his golden surface, he admired it with great glee. That's when I noticed a button on the top, so almost instinctively, I pressed it. This launched the poison dart loaded inside the tiny cube trap point blank at Energy's brain. Thankfully, it just dinked off of the gilded surface.

"..."

"....."

"...Awesome!" My face lit up, "So they CAN be activated manually! Hooray, no wiring required!"

"I see, so the darts are fed through the back when placed inside the wall..." Energy inspected the mechanism closely, "Well, we're not gonna be using the dart traps here anyways, so we don't need to worry about that."

That's right, we're looking for something with a bit more oomph to it. Something like a mine or dynamite would be the most convenient, but given how neither of us ever saw those two on this floor, chances are we'll have to settle for something lesser.

"Let's think about this..." I pondered, "So far, we've seen dart traps, guillotine traps, swinging axes, as well as some variations of spike traps. Could any of those theoretically be used to wipe out a large hive of those things?"

"Probably not." He figured, "But we need to find something to use. Maybe the guillotine is our best bet? After all, they're the only trap that doesn't require tripwires or pressure plates to automatically get triggered when something is under it. We could place it right in front of their hive and coax them out."

"That could work, but only if I could somehow transport it there." I shook my head, "The guillotine is embedded into the walls, and we'd need to somehow break it free before fitting the large thing through the tight spiral staircase. Not to mention cross practically half of the third floor just so we could bring it to the hive's entrance."

If he wasn't a brain, Energy could probably help me find a way to accomplish that even. Once again, we're stuck at an impasse, and it seems like we have nowhere to go. Forfeiting the Shrine over to the bat roaches will lead to them slowly flooding the surface, but it seems no matter what attempt we make to nip them in the bud, it always ends up falling through. This is going nowhere...

"Energy, let's leave the Shrine." I suggested.

"Giving up so soon?" He made the sound of his tongue clicking despite not having one.

"It's called a tactical retreat. Besides, now that we know the beds aren't here anymore, we really have no reason to even want to come back here."

"Are you even listening to what I've been telling you this entire time? This isn't about the beds, it's about the bat roaches overpopulating!"

We were at each other's throats for a while, both constantly trying to prove that they were in the right. I can understand his worries, but it's just impossible to expect us to do anything without even a plan of attack. Right now, we need Sheep's wings. If we can have him fly us around Heaven 2.0, we should be able to investigate the matter with the missing beds. At best, we'll all be repaired, and at worst the bat roaches won't be our problem for at least a while.

"Our primary goal is to get the gang back together." I sternly explained, "We need Sheep, Sab and Gale to come back. With a full party, we'll more than double our chances of success."

"...Do whatever you want." He resigned himself to his fate, "Not like I have the ability to stop you."

"Energy, don't be like that."

"Why not? It's the truth." He sighed, "I'm just a useless brain you can choose to throw away whenever you want. You got your revenge over what I did to Vastoria, and now my Heavenly Body is no more. Honestly, even death sounds like a better deal than this sorry state."

"I don't wanna hear it!" I shouted, "Quit being depressed! It's those very emotions of wanting to give up that manifest your downfall!"

"What do you care?"

"I do care! Vastoria's killer or not, you and I are family." I scowled, "And though I really despise that fact, I understand you didn't really wanna do what you did. Truth is, you got tricked by the Gods into killing her, so I don't consider you any different than the rest of our group."

"Migu..."

"So, quit whining!" I took him up the stairs leading up to the first floor, "If Vastoria was alive, she would say the same thing—the Gods killed her, not you. Now let's go get some fresh air."

Again, my words were met with nothing but demotivating silence, but this time the air around him felt heavy. He was sulking, trying to process what I had just told him, and understanding that he was forgiven.

"I don't remember if I had a family down there or not..." He inhaled deeply, "But I'm glad you're here now."

"Don't mention it, gramps."