After we left Marro, I had to ask. “So, where are we going?”

“That way.” Well, I guess that is more info than we had before.

“Okay, anything else we should know?”

“Not really.” Yeah, I figured as much.

We ended up traveling the same way as always, though Zarewthem was willing to join the watch crew, so we are now rotating members every night.

The next day, when we found a group of orcs, Zarewthem asked. “May I defeat them? I wish to show you my power.”

“That sounds like a good idea, go ahead." The Hero accepts.

“This shall be quick.” Good, I’ve been curious as to how strong he was.

He walked towards the orcs, two warriors and an archer, and let out a roar, the mana in it showing that it was a taunt. As the warriors charged, all Zarewthem did was move his head to the side so that the arrow, instead of hitting his face, grazed his thick, surprisingly soft, fur.

When the first warrior arrived with a swing of his club, Zarewthem dodged to the left while swiping with his claws, leaving a nasty, bone deep gash. As that orc dropped its weapon with a scream, the other orc thrust its spear at Zarewthem. He dodged to the side while still continuing to advance forward. The orc reacted by swinging its spear, but Zarewthem just ducked under it and clawed the orc’s leg. When the orc collapsed, Zarewthem lunged at its throat and bit down. The archer, now having a clear shot, fired. Zarewthem covered his face with his arm to block the arrow while using his hind leg to claw the first orc, that was trying to ambush him, across its stomach and chest.

Zarewthem finished ripping the spear orc’s neck apart and then charged at the archer, moving far faster than any of our party could, even with buffs. The archer could only fire one more ineffective arrow before Zarewthem tackled it to the ground and started to bite its throat.

He finished that orc before the last orc could charge over. He then pounced onto the final orc and started clawing its face. It only took a few swipes before its face was no longer recognizable. The last thing he did was ‘flex’ his paws and jaw, removing the blood on them in a similar way to warriors that swing their weapon to remove the blood.

Zarewthem then walked over and asked. “How was that?”

“Would you do the honors, Elizabeth?”

“Okay.” I respond as I organize my thoughts. “So, physically, you are probably a bit stronger than Melly, while being much faster. Your defenses are also better than Melly’s even when she is using my linked buff. You have an excellent battle sense and understanding of your body. Your combat skills are efficient and practical, and you are proficient at predicting your opponent’s next move. Finally, I believe that you are a rare metal aligned spirit, hence why your attacks and defense were so powerful.”

“Impressive, Miss Saintess, how’d you figure it out?”

“After the battle, the way you cleaned off the blood reminded me of how Melly and the Hero remove the blood from their weapons, so combining that with how you fought and the shine of your claws gave me that conclusion.”

“Haha! That is correct! I knew joining you would be worth it!” Zarewthem laughed.

“Good job, Eli.” Melly patted my shoulder. “Your analyses are as good as always.”

“Indeed.” Hansen added.

“Most impressive.” Gregory said.

______

And so, we traveled like this for a few more days. Zarewthem would also occasionally help. Sadly my buffs don’t work on spirits as they are beings made from mana. I can kinda heal them though, with a spell made to repair your mana veins.

I managed to learn a few new spells as well. Sadly, progress is slow because I can’t just cast any of them, and it hurts whenever I try to anyway. Haa, I have to spend time modifying them to actually be compatible with me. At least I’m getting better at it.

Today was more of the same at first, but then we started to notice the occasional destroyed tree. Odd, but nothing to really worry about, especially with how spread out they were, meaning they weren’t all destroyed in a big battle.

At least, that’s what I thought, before noticing that they were becoming more and more common.

“Sulfur?” Zarewthem asked. Seeing our confusion, he continued. “I can smell sulfur, probably coming from where we are heading.”

After continuing for a bit, Rapunzel said. “I see something. It appears to be a bug around the size of a cat.”

“A bug, sulfur, and these destroyed trees, is it orange?” Hansen asks.

“Yes, it has glowing orange markings.”

“It should be a blast bug then. Its nest should be nearby.”

“Blast bugs, blast bugs.” I thought. “Those exploded, didn’t they?” I ask.

“That is correct. When their fluid sack is damaged, the explosive fluid inside often detonates, making these a challenging foe to deal with.” Gregory explained. “The sulfur is probably coming from a nearby hot spring that they have nested next to.”

“What’s with the trees then?” Melly asks.

“Blast bugs use their fluid to burn through the trees so that they can eat them.”

“So how do you know where their sack is?” I ask.

“Experience.” Hansen said.

“Experience?” I ask.

“Trial and error. Even if you know where it is, people often still detonate it anyway, so you need to figure out your own way to attack it that fits your style.” He explained.

“I see.” I looked at our party. Only Melly and the Hero were truly melee attackers. Hansen is probably going to be purely support, other than maybe a few useful summons like Zarewthem, since it’s wasteful to just sacrifice spirits en masse. The Hero though, I just don’t think he would have any problems.

I walked over to Melly and put my hand on her shoulder. “It’s okay, I’ll support you.” I say out of pity.

“What? Oh! Oh no. That’s…” She looks over at the Hero. “Yeah, just me huh. This is going to suck.” Melly sighs as she accepts her fate.

“Oh, just a reminder, but we need their fluids, so try not to detonate them." The Hero says, opening a separate bag to reveal several special barrels.

“This was your surprise.” I sighed.

“Surprise!”

“Haa, how fun. This is going to suck.” How long is this going to take? Considering the size of the bugs, we’ll probably need hundreds per barrel, and there are several barrels. Luckily, I don’t have to be the one to kill the bugs. Unluckily, that means I’m going to spend a ton of time harvesting them. Haa, hopefully I don’t explode as well.

“What are we going to do about that bug then?” Rapunzel asks.

“You try to deal with it, we’ll try to lure more out when we’re closer. Also, the sack is basically in the ‘neck’ of the bug." The Hero advised.

“Okay.” She responded before shooting an arrow that was soon followed by an explosion, one a fair bit bigger than I expected. I’m now quite worried about accidentally detonating the barrels. Haa, that would definitely kill us all instantly. Oh, poor Melly, it’s gonna be like the troll again.

“This is going to be a waste of arrows. Eli, could I have a mana regeneration buff when we properly start fighting? I want to use mana arrows instead.” Ah, my mana regeneration buff, sadly it barely works on myself. While the increase is fairly minor, and next to nothing in comparison to a mana potion, it still helps.

“Sure. Just be mindful that it consumes your stamina.” I reminded.

As we traveled closer to the nest, we practiced on any bugs we found. The results: Rapunzel still mostly detonates them, but it’s becoming less common.

Gregory found that freezing them worked really well, never detonating, but is currently training with his other elements.

Hansen could only support, though the bat did stop the bugs from moving.

Zarewthem always detonates them, so he’ll only help if he needs to tank.

The Hero, of course, was flawless. He is even killing them in a way that helps us harvest them.

And lastly, there was Melly. She was struggling. I’ve tried various buffs, but no one buff was enough, so I’ll have to use a few when we start fighting for real. At least she is getting better, albeit slowly.

Honestly, if we were going for maximum efficiency, we’d have only Gregory and the Hero fighting, but we do need to become stronger in order to fight the demon lord. So everyone, except for Hansen as we can’t really train the spirits like this and he grows stronger differently, is trying their best to get used to fighting the bugs.

And that includes me, in a way. I am spending my time carefully harvesting the bugs that Hansen’s spirits bring me. While I’m currently very slow, I am at least improving, so eventually I’ll be able to harvest at a reasonable pace. Though, oddly enough, my healing and support magic are slightly improving. I think it’s because I now have some hands-on experience with bodies. Something to experiment with in the future.

As we were getting closer to the nest, the Hero stopped us. “Let’s stay around this distance for now. We can always get closer once we are more proficient with slaying them. In the meantime, I’ll start to lure some over so we can practice more.”

“Thanks, I’m going to need it.” Melly said.

We then spent the next few hours training against the bugs. The explosions were becoming less common, albeit slowly, and I was getting more bodies to practice on. I even figured out that I could use patient analysis on corpses. Since a better understanding will help me improve faster, I’ve even started to occasionally use it on living bugs, even if it’s quite disorientating. So, I’m slowly figuring out what makes them detonate, which I've been reporting to help everyone train. Sadly I only figured that out towards the end of the day, so the help has only been minor so far.

This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

“Let’s stop for today." The Hero said. “Let’s head back a ways to set up camp. Also, since we are going to be here a while, we might as well just keep the camp set up. Tomorrow we’ll train for a bit, and if I deem that we are proficient enough, we can start farming for real.” Farming?

Anyway, the end results of today’s training are: Rapunzel fails around twice per ten shots.

Gregory has around a fifty-fifty chance with most elements, with fire being the worst, having only succeeded a single time, with that bug having already used its fluid.

Melly only succeeds less than a third of the time. Hey, at least she is getting much better at resisting the explosion…

While we still aren’t ready to ‘farm,’ it seems that we’re close. Actually raiding the nest though? That is well beyond us. Apparently even high-level elites struggle with these sorts of nests, so we probably won’t ever be able to clear it to use the hot spring. That’s too bad.

The next day, after we finished our breakfast, we continued training. Also, my use of patient analysis is starting to show results, increasing the efficiency of our training.

At around noon, the Hero said, “After we take a break, why don’t we try to properly hunt them, to see how it goes.” He suggests.

“Haa, I’ll try, but don’t expect much.” Melly accepts. She can succeed around half of the time currently. But, that’s without her being loaded with buffs, so this shouldn’t be too bad for her.

“Yeah, that sounds fine.” Rapunzel also agreed. She currently only fails on occasion.

“Shall I start using frost magic, or should I keep my elements varied?” Gregory asks.

“When there are extra bodies to harvest, vary your attacks, otherwise use frost to keep up the harvest efficiency.” The Hero responds.

“Understood.”

“Don’t worry Melly, I’ll buff you up so you don’t need to worry about anything.”

“Thanks Eli.”

After our break, we traveled closer to the nest. The Hero then found a lone bug and hit its back with his hand. After a bit, the bug vomited all of its fluid, leaving it defenseless. He then tied it up onto a pole. “Elizabeth, make sure to keep this bug healed. It’s releasing pheromones that will attract more here.”

“Okay, I’ll make sure to watch over it.”

“Good, I’ll go out and lure some over for now. I’ll be back soon.”

He then left. During our wait, only a handful of bugs arrived, so we didn’t have any problems. Then, the Hero returned.

Followed by TWENTY bugs!

As I was about to panically buff up Melly, Gregory’s spell froze most of them.

Oh yeah, these bugs aren’t actually strong, just really annoying. I mean, being surrounded inside their nest is quite lethal, but we shouldn’t have too many issues on the surface. Especially this far away.

“Gregory." The Hero called, “While that would be fine normally, we are currently trying to train, so please keep the area spells to a minimum.” He asked.

“My apologies, I shall not make the same mistake in our upcoming battles.” Gregory responded.

“Good! Now, Melly, why don’t you try to kill the rest?” The Hero suggested.

“Got it.” She only had to fight five. Honestly, other than their explosive tendencies, they really weren’t much of a threat. I still buffed her defense anyway, just to be safe.

She managed to kill the first two fine, but when she hit the third one, it sadly detonated. That normally wouldn’t be much of an issue, but these bugs were in a group. As such, when one blows up, all of the ones next to it also blow up, and the ones next to those, and so on. As I heal Melly, I truly understand why clearing the nest is nearly impossible.

“That’s the primary reason why blast bugs are so dangerous, they detonate even each other. So, never let down your guard and always take them seriously.”

“Thanks, would have been nice to know that earlier.” Melly complained.

“Then you wouldn’t have taken them as seriously as you should. Now, you will definitely make sure not to let them group up too much.”

“Haa, I guess you’re right. That doesn’t make it much better though.”

“It does motivate you to get better though. Few things inspire people to perform well better than every miss causing you to explode.” He says with an amused smile.

With that piece of lovely advice, we continued fighting. I kept alternating what buffs I’d give Melly, causing her to perform better than expected. And, while we did figure out which buffs work the best, we decided to keep alternating as it works as some decent training.

Everyone else is performing quite well. Noticeably, while Gregory is still using frost magic fairly often, it is becoming more and more. The Hero is only occasionally luring in waves right now though, so once we finally get comfortable, things are gonna become far more difficult.

We take a break every hour or so, mainly because even keeping your concentration up for long periods of time is difficult, not to mention our mana and physical stamina. I’m sure the Hero would just say that was just more training though.

Everyone was pretty tired after dinner, though the Hero’s cooking never fails to keep our morale up. Also, Melly isn’t going to be keeping watch for the entire time we are here. She’s just going to be too exhausted.

My main worry is still that we might accidentally detonate a barrel though. I’m probably going to be nervous about that for as long as we have them, and honestly, I think that’s for the best. But man are they stressful. At least the Hero is the one holding onto them.

That night I had a harder time falling asleep than usual, but hopefully that doesn’t last too long.

The next morning we went straight into proper hunting, with the Hero capturing several bugs today.

“Are we ready for that many bugs?” I nervously ask.

“Don’t worry, multiple bugs don’t draw in more linearly. This many would probably only draw in around twice as many as yesterday. We’ll still rely on me luring more to keep the numbers up." The Hero answers.

“Haa, that’s good.”

“For now, but ideally we’d be fighting far more, I’d rather not be stuck here for weeks.”

“Ah, yeah, you’ve got a point.” I reluctantly agreed. “By the way, why do you need so many explosives?”

“It’s a surprise.” He says with his amused smile.

“An explosive one?” I joked.

“You know it.” He laughs.

Well, hopefully it’s better than fighting exploding bugs.

So, today went about the same as yesterday, with just a bit more intensity. While the ‘passive’ attraction of bugs barely increased, the Hero has started to lure in more and more bugs. Surprisingly, he never seemed to lure in too many at once, even if it sure felt like he did.

We also learned something new, which in hindsight shouldn’t have been a surprise, but we live and learn. So, when the bugs die, their body stays there until we move it. Obvious, I know, but the interesting thing is that those bodies still have explosive fluid in them, hence why we are hunting them. And it turns out that if you don’t clear out the bodies by the time one of the bugs detonates, all the nearby bodies will also explode. How fun! Not only do we need to kill them fast and cleanly, but we also need to transport them quickly.

We learned that lesson the hard way when Melly was fighting with a few bodies near her.

As I was harvesting, I suddenly heard a loud bang. When I turned to look, I panicked. “Melly!” She was covered in burns, surrounded by multiple new scorch marks. I quickly healed her as I called. “Retreat for now, Melly!”

After healing her, I asked, “What happened, Melly? Did you fail to separate the bugs before killing one?”

“No… there was only one left. Was that one a glutton or something?”

“Maybe. You should take a break for now, we can always kill more bugs later.” I sigh. At least the worst wounds were mainly concentrated on her skin. I’ve learned a lot about how dangerous explosions are for people, so I’m glad we’ve learned how to lessen their damage.

“Melly.” Rapunzel called. “There were a few bodies around where you were fighting that coincide with the new scorches.”

“Oh? Oh! That’s what happened, the bodies exploded! I see, they do still have the explosive fluid inside of them after all, so that was a possibility.” Melly sighs. “That makes things more difficult.”

“At least we’ve learnt this now, instead of later.” I sigh.

“I apologize, I presumed that you had known, so I did not advise you about that.” Gregory apologized.

“It’s fine, I’m more surprised that I didn’t realize that myself.” Melly said.

After that we doubled our efforts of clearing out the bodies. Sadly, that’s when we had a second incident.

After Melly killed some bugs, she shouted. “Here you go, Eli.” As she threw a bug towards me. That bug then exploded when it hit the ground.

“AHHH!” I screamed, before just sitting there, stunned.

“Eli? Are you okay?” Melly asked, waking me from my stupor. That’s when I realized what had happened.

“Hold on.” I say, as I sit down and start to pray. Ah, there’s nothing quite like nearly dying to motivate you to pray.

After praying, I managed to properly calm down. “By the Gods, Melly, that was unbelievably stupid!” Mostly, I mostly calmed down.

“I’m sorry!?” Melly said, more in confusion than anything.

“Haa! Do you really not understand what you almost did!” I swear I’m calmer now. That’s just how angry I was.

“Eli, you should calm down.” Rapunzel advised.

Well, that just made me more frustrated. But, she is right. “Haa.” I start taking deep breaths. Sadly, even just looking at Melly almost set me off again, so we decided that we should just retreat for now so I could actually calm down. As we left, I made sure to cast some spells on myself to help control my temper, before continuing my prayers as we walked.

Eventually I did manage to actually calm down. Probably. Man, all the tension from the past few days really just exploded, huh. “So, Melly.” I ask. “Do you know what you did wrong?”

“Um, I threw the bug wrong so it blew up?”

“Haa,” I don’t even want to say anything.

The Hero, noticing my struggles, spoke up. “Melly, you really are in the wrong here, and what you said was only a small part of it.”

“Okay, what was the real problem then?” She asks.

“You see, Elizabeth has been quite stressed over the past few days about the possibility of the barrels detonating, easily killing us all.” He explained.

“But that’s unlikely to happen.”

“Yes, these barrels are specifically designed and enchanted to reduce the chances of that happening. But, that does not mean that them exploding anyway isn’t possible.” He says while gesturing towards me. “Or, that such a possibility doesn’t stress her out immensely. She’s been worried about this for a while, fearing that one mistake could mean the end. Besides, her caution is part of the reason why we are fine.”

“Ah, I’m sorry, Eli, I didn’t realize how much this was bothering you.” Melly said while bowing.

“Yeah, it’s hard not to be worried when you are handling something that can instantly kill you.”

“And Elizabeth isn’t the only one worried, Hansen is too." The Hero continued.

“Indeed.” He says with a sigh. “I just didn’t have to worry as much because I trust Elizabeth.”

“Okay, I’ll be more careful, I don’t want to increase anyone’s stress.”

“We should take the rest of today off. We’ll continue tomorrow before taking the entire next day off. Sound good?" The Hero suggested. We agreed.

By the time we went hunting the next day, I had mostly calmed down. I did decide to pray much more often for the next few days to help relieve my stress, though. While the Gods don’t interact with the world very often, praying itself works similarly to a spell, helping to minorly relieve stress and fatigue while calming the mind. Sadly, praying multiple times a day does not actually repeat their effects.

As usual, our hunting kept getting more and more intense, but was otherwise the same. Eventually though, I heard the Hero talking to Hansen.

“Hey, Hansen, I was wondering if you could do me a favor?”

“What is it?”

“Could you use your summons to lure bugs over instead? I figure that they could do this more effectively.”

“Hmm, indeed, they might. I’ll send a few with you to learn what to do.”

“Thanks.”

So, when the Hero next went out to lure in more bugs, a diverse selection of Hansen’s summons followed. After a few waves, the summons apparently got confident so they went out to lure bugs on their own.

At first, they didn’t really accomplish anything, but as time went on, the summons were becoming more and more proficient. So, we started fighting more and more, before eventually I called out. “Hansen, maybe you should tell your summoned to slow down a bit, we’re starting to have difficulties.”

“Indeed.” He said. Shortly after, the pace finally became manageable.

“Thank you.”

We ended up finishing early as everyone was way more tired than usual. Thankfully tomorrow’s a break day, so we can finally relax a bit. We also decided to have Hansen’s summons keep watch on their own, as there should only be blast bugs anywhere nearby.

Surprisingly, I didn’t end up being very productive during our break, instead spending most of my time just chatting with everyone. I did at least successfully modify one preMilo spell to be compatible with Melly, so I’m starting to learn how the spells react to different people, but I'll have to modify it for more people to really understand anything.