On the shore of the Swamp, a black mass of Stinger Bees crawled out of the collapsed beehive, beating their restless wings. They were clearly furious beyond measure.
They searched everywhere for the culprit who had destroyed their hive.
After circling the tree once, their gazes finally fell upon the Digger Beetle colony that had just woken up in confusion beneath the roots.
What Demonic Beast besides these beetles could have attacked the hive?
"Buzz buzz!"
The enraged Stinger Bee swarm seemed to have lost its minds. They hovered in a dark cloud around the oak tree, spraying venomous stingers at the ground beneath it.
Digger Beetles:?
Before they could figure out why their neighbors were angry, the stingers came pouring down over their heads and faces.
This immediately enraged the beetle colony, who had a bad temper after waking up. They stretched out their six limbs and shakily crawled up from underground through the rain of stingers.
The scene was like a pitch-black order of knights charging fearlessly at invading dragons. The dense rumble of countless feet sent the Mud Swamp Worms and Moss Monsters scattering in all directions.
A great battle was on the verge of erupting.
Boom!
The tremendous crash was like a raging gale and a tsunami. Knights and dragons collided, then retreated like a receding tide before regrouping and charging again. The two forces clashed and tore at each other again and again, turning the battlefield into a boiling furnace.
Of course, the battle beneath the tree was obviously nowhere near that dramatic. Chen Yu had merely imagined all of it.
If he had to put it plainly, the Stinger Bees and beetles were more like villagers brawling at the entrance of a village. One punched, the other punched back. It looked terrifying, but neither side even suffered a scratch.
Seja, meanwhile, was seeing a Demonic Beast war on such a scale for the first time. She was far more absorbed than he was, her eyes wide open, unwilling to blink even once.
Only when Stinger Bees flew over her head did she shrink back into the Swamp.
Just as Chen Yu thought the battle would reach another stalemate like before, with both sides pretending nothing had happened afterward...
The situation on the battlefield changed in the blink of an eye. The Stinger Bees suddenly gained the upper hand.
It was a new tactic!
The Stinger Bees had used a new tactic.
They no longer fixated on using their stingers. Instead, they took advantage of their numbers, pinning beetles beneath them one after another and beating their wings furiously, intending to smother their opponents to death with body heat.
At that moment, the temperature within every ball of bees rose rapidly. The beetles tried to escape, but their movements were too slow, and they could never shake off the Stinger Bees swarming around them.
And whenever a beetle tried to flap its shell-wings and flee, Stinger Bees would viciously stab their tail stingers into its breathing holes.
The poisoned beetles struggled, then gradually fell still.
At last, casualties appeared in the war between the two sides.
The beetles suffered a crushing defeat. In the end, they were no match for the long-established overlords of this patch beneath the tree.
"Seja, get ready to move."
Chen Yu had no intention of watching the Stinger Bees win so easily. He silently recited the formula for the Lesser Arrow Technique.
"Oh, okay!"
Seja gripped the Oak Staff in her hand tightly. The stance she took looked less like she was casting a spell and more like she was about to smash apart every enemy that came near.
"Not bad momentum."
Chen Yu slowly rose from the water's surface and aimed at one of the bee balls, the Lesser Arrow Technique ready to fire.
Seja was still warily watching the Stinger Bees flying around everywhere when the movement before Chen Yu drew her attention.
She saw a water arrow slowly condense and stretch, like a fully drawn bow. With a sharp whoosh, it shot out at high speed.
Bang!
A thunderclap exploded on level ground.
The bee ball burst apart. Torn Stinger Bee limbs and juices splattered everywhere, while the beetle inside was blasted several meters away. It staggered to its feet and stood there blankly, as though the explosion had stunned it senseless.
"Ah?"
Ancestral Spirits above, what was that?
It was not just Seja who was stunned. Even the Stinger Bees and beetles on the battlefield were dumbfounded by the commotion. Then they saw a Slime clad in pitch-black armor swim ashore.
The aura of a warrior threatened the surrounding Demonic Beasts. Some beetles even silently backed away in fear, trying to hide beneath the tree again.
"Buzz buzz!!"
A giant bee hidden within the collapsed hive let out a shriek. In an instant, every Stinger Bee abandoned the beetles and turned to surround Chen Yu.
Swamp Stealth!
Worried that he would be attacked, Seja could not help raising her staff and casting the spell.
Natural light flowed from the Oak Staff, then transformed into specks of light that merged into Chen Yu's body.
He felt as if Swamp water was surging beneath his feet and lifting him up. With a single thought, he shot away from where he stood, escaping the Stinger Bees' encirclement.
"Whoosh—!"
Several stingers shot from his gel, instantly striking the Stinger Bees closest to him.
"Take this—Myriad Swords Return to Origin!"
He continued gathering the scattered stingers around him. They flew wildly like they cost nothing at all.
Pitch-black corpses rained down from the sky, and the Stinger Bees suffered devastating losses.
But his target was not these scattered Stinger Bees. It was the Queen Bee inside the hive!
He crawled resolutely toward the hive. Empowered by Swamp Stealth, he moved at an astonishing speed, clearly frightening the one inside as well. She frantically organized the swarm into launching suicidal attacks.
"I'm coming!"
Seja gathered her courage and appeared. For some reason, she had an overwhelming urge to swing the beloved Oak Staff in her hand.
And in truth, that was exactly what she did.
That was right, she swung it just like a club.
She knocked down a large swath of Stinger Bees.
In the end, the Oak Staff failed to maintain its elegance and became a melee weapon after all.
The instant she saw Stinger Bees falling in sheets, it felt as though some switch deep inside Seja had been flipped. She actually felt incomparably exhilarated.
As though that was how a staff was meant to be used.
Even seeing her new staff stained with Demonic Beast juices no longer pained her quite as much.
Could it be that, like her sister, she had a warrior's bloodline?
The moment that thought arose, she saw swarms of Stinger Bees pouncing toward her. She immediately admitted defeat and shrank back into the Swamp.
On the other side, the swarm had been swept away by the swinging staff, buying Chen Yu an opportunity. He had already reached the Carrion Beehive, and the Lesser Arrow Technique was poised at the hive, its threat impossible to miss.
"Come out. Stop hiding."
The hive was silent for several seconds. Then a Queen Bee with an enormous tail was carried out by the Stinger Bees.
Before Chen Yu could use the Sound Transmission Technique, the Queen Bee tremblingly raised a piece of carrion over her head, seemingly showing submission.
Hm?
These Demonic Beasts were even smarter than he had imagined. They actually knew how to surrender on their own.
Still, it would indeed be a pity to wipe them out just like that.
There were not many as diligent at working as Stinger Bees. If he got rid of them, who would prepare his breakfast in the future?
Besides, with Stinger Bees guarding the oak tree, even wandering beasts or Demihumans would not dare approach. They were truly excellent guards for watching the home.
He raised his soft gel, accepted the carrion coronation, then pressed it onto the Queen Bee's head.
"From now on, me, boss. Understand?"
The Queen Bee nodded and prostrated herself on the ground, using her limbs to help clean the debris stuck to his gel.
"You, repair hive."
The Queen Bee froze for a moment, then seemed to understand. She directed the swarm to lower their guard and begin gathering the fragments that had fallen from the hive.
Seja came ashore.
"Is it over?"
Having just experienced a Demonic Beast war, the excitement on her face had not yet fully faded.
Looking at the chaotic patch beneath the tree, she had never imagined that wars between Demonic Beasts could be so brutal. Fortunately, they had defeated the overlords here.
If someone had told her before that a Slime could defeat a Stinger Bee swarm, even as a follower of Putu, she would have thought they were joking.
But after witnessing it with her own eyes, she accepted it as only natural.
Perhaps she had seen too many strange things since coming here and had simply grown used to them.
"There's still another neighbor here."
Chen Yu bounced as he turned around and looked beneath the tree.
The beetles hiding inside sensed his gaze and began trembling all over, as though they had seen some great demon king.
Before you continue