Chapter 42: Most wasps are female(02).
It was already hot enough to sweat and keep me awake, and outside, the loud buzzing of wasps could be heard.
'Damn, are these creatures louder at night than during the day?'
I knew that during the day, the noise of the training center drowned out their buzzing, making it seem less, and at night, everything was quieter, so it sounded louder.
Yet, this increased noise at night kept me from sleeping, causing my irritation and stress to boil over to the point of fury.
How frustrated must I have been to try to stimulate myself to feed Mollang but ended up so annoyed that I couldn't even manage that?
They say too much fatigue and excitement can actually prevent arousal, and that's exactly the situation I was in.
'Whew... Whew... Calm down. It's just a creature...'
It's not trying to annoy me on purpose; it's just active at night... So... So...
"It's just a creature... Do they even know what they're doing?"
Being angry at a creature was meaningless for a higher organism like a human. What would those little vermin know?
How could such trivial creatures understand that a human can't sleep?
Could such insignificant beings know that I haven't slept for days, leaving me too exhausted to feed Mollang?
"I'll burn these damned creatures to death! Aaargh! I'll kill all the wasps!"
Unable to hold back, I grabbed my mana saber and flamethrower potion and ran outside.
I knew it was foolish, but if I didn't slash and burn them, I felt like I would explode from frustration, so immediately after getting outside, I searched for the buzzing wasps, my eyes bloodshot from three days without sleep.
I chased the continuing sound of flapping wings in an area without night guards, ready to grind all the wasps with the flamethrower potion in my left hand and the mana saber in my right.
There were wasps there.
'Why are these wasps so big?'
Plus, the silhouettes in the dark were not merely those of wasps; they almost looked like humans with limbs distinctly outlined.
Black and amber mixed furry tails, and the distinctive sleek yet transparent wings of a wasp.
Eyes black but shimmering like jewels were set in them, and faces that seemed enlarged as if wasps were magnified.
At the sight of the giant wasp's face, I was so mentally shocked that my response slowed, and in that moment, the wasp woman struck me first.
The sting of the tail flew at me.
The moment I was stung, I felt burning pain, different from being stung by a small wasp, as my body stiffened with an intense burning sensation.
It was different from Arachne's venom.
If the venom I had experienced before from Arachne dissolved human innards to convert them into nourishment and then into vigor, this venom was purely a combat paralytic.
Instantly, my tongue stiffened, and I struggled to breathe, ridiculously overpowered by a single giant wasp.
As I lay there, paralyzed, the wasp woman lifted her wasp-like face while holding her chin.
'Why a perfectly human face...'
The helmet covering her head looked exactly like a wasp, but inside it was a human-like face with eyes divided into multiple facets, shimmering insect-like.
From a distance, those eyes might look beautifully jeweled...
Woken by the sound of wasp wings, which I hate the most, I had just had a deep sleep for the first time in a long while.
But my tongue wouldn't move.
It felt as if someone had forcibly tied up just my tongue, making it difficult to even breathe, and as I tried to push myself up using the wall, my hand touched a wall that felt dry and crackled.
'This isn't the training center wall... What is this?'
It felt just like touching a beehive with bare hands.
As I came to, I realized I was sleeping inside a hexagonally shaped cave.
The hexagonal cave was just large enough for a person to lie down, making it difficult to turn around, but I managed to flexibly move and slowly crawled out of the cave in a low crouch.
The smell of beeswax, pollen, and the distinctive insectoid scent of wasps drifted in.
There were many hexagonal caves around; some were empty, some had wasps entering, and some had larvae.
And a few caves had wasps bringing in parts of giant spiders to feed the larvae, and some had wasps resting inside.
'That's right, now that I think about it...'
I started to get a rough estimate of the flying wasps.
On average, they were about one-third the size of an average man, these giant wasps.
Another wasp appeared, with a harder carapace and bigger body, and the noise from its wings was louder; its tail had a long sting, clearly meant for battle.
About twice the size of the giant wasps, roughly 60% the size of a person.
'A person...? No, not quite a person...'
Beings like the wasp woman who captured me.
Girls who were half-human, half-wasp, flying around with human bodies, tails, and wings came into view.
Their height... for flying, was a bit smaller than a human's, but still about the size of a slightly short girl.
'Now that I think about it, I've heard something before...'
It was a story from a collection of risqué tales among nobles that Jake had brought, about a man who was captured by giant wasps and forced to mate with a queen wasp.
And then, supposedly, a minotaur-like half-human, half-wasp was born, a sort of ridiculous myth.
'At least... I'm armed.'
My tongue was still numb, but my body had no major issues moving.
The mana saber was still securely attached to my wrist, and although I didn't have the flamethrower potion, it wouldn't have been usable here anyway.
'If I set fire to this beehive, I'd burn along with it.'
So it's fortunate that I at least have the mana saber to protect myself.
And considering these were wasps comparable in size to humans, there was no chance my mana saber would miss its target, which gave me more confidence than when facing smaller wasps.
'Uh, something's coming.'
I saw a shadow approaching, so I ducked my head and hid my presence.
Given the cramped structure of the cave, unless someone passed directly through this cave entrance, they wouldn't easily notice I was awake.
The sound of wasp wings was close by.
It was quieter than the loud battle-ready wasp woman I heard yesterday, but still loud since it was nearby, not just passing by but doing something in the next room which made me restless.
'Could it be, have they noticed I'm awake and are secretly gathering allies or targeting me?'
I couldn't hide forever, holding my breath.
The enemy filled this entire beehive, and I needed to escape quickly.
Judging that I needed to assess the current situation nearby, I carefully peeked out of the cave to check the state of the adjacent room.
And as I peered out, I almost inhaled sharply and made a sound, but I forcefully bit the beehive wall to keep quiet.
'What are they doing?'
A honeybee girl with fluffy fur on her body was holding a piece of meat and munching on it in her mouth.
After a while, she chewed the meat sufficiently to make it easier to digest and then fed it to a white girl inside the beehive through a kiss.
'No... Oh... this is quite something...'
The white girl seemed like the larvae of this beehive, and the honeybee girl appeared to be feeding her the food she brought, but seeing it performed by beings with human forms stirred something in me.
As I watched the food move from the honeybee girl's mouth to the throat of the larvae girl, I swallowed my saliva and held my breath, while the honeybee girl detached her mouth from the white girl's.
Their lips stretched with saliva, and the honeybee girl prepared to take more meat to her mouth again.
Just then, the honeybee girl accidentally dropped the meat from her hand, and it rolled into my cave.
The sound of the honeybee girl's wings getting closer made me close my eyes tightly, ready to slash her in one swift move and calculate a route to escape by breaking through the cave entrance if necessary.
But the honeybee girl didn't notice me or make warning gestures with her wings, call for help, or prepare to sting me with her cute stinger.
She just seemed to have discovered something, picked up the piece of meat that had fallen inside the cave, and chewed it...
She crawled into the cramped cave, approaching me.
By not showing her most threatening rear end, it seemed she wasn't displaying aggression, and the honeybee girl then crawled up to me and grasped my face with her hands.
She pressed her sticky lips to mine and began to feed me directly.