บท 75: Chapter 75: Crisis

After confirming the identity of the flower at the center of the field, Bridge was also on board to go back to the field.

However, they could not enter the field carelessly. They needed to come up with a plan.

The fact that the field is still intact and those flowers are still there led Kain to correctly guess that all other adventurers had probably died and become compost for the flower garden.

The fact that multiple beast tamers died in that area may play a role in why exactly there were so many spiritual plants growing there.

While those strong enough to easily kill the Vespirae were also probably not interested in a bunch of black-iron quality spiritual plants. Even the Celestiviolets, since they'd probably have the means to purchase better ones.

Most likely more Vespirae were guarding the field, and using those flowers to produce honey.

To effectively come up with a plan of action, they first needed to figure out how many enemies they were dealing with.

They had already killed one female guard wasp, and considering that the guards are usually the same level in strength as the queen, a red-grade queen should only have one more guarding her.

If they were to try and enter the field, it may not even try to attack them in fear of leaving the queen without protection.

Therefore, they decided to enter the field again once they had restored their spiritual power to see if the last guard would be lured out once they had restored their spiritual power.

However, unlike Bridge, Lady and himself who could passively restore their spiritual power, Bea would need some help to absorb spiritual power. Thankfully, the process of refilling spiritual power is not as aggressive as condensing additional spiritual power.

Therefore, Kain allowed Bea to infect him while ordering her to not get greedy. 'Just passively absorb the spiritual power in my body without doing any damage'

Then Kain went into the Planetarium to speed up the rate of his recovery.

Unfortunately, by the time everyone had their spiritual power recovered, it was already getting dark. They didn't feel confident about being able to fight it with limited vision.

Therefore, they all decided to go to sleep after a quick meal. However, due to the intense battle during the day, this time Princess stood guard while Lady rested in the star space.

The next day, after everyone woke up and ate, they left the Night Mares tied up at their campsite while they crept towards the field of flowers again.

They didn't see anything in the field. However, yesterday they also didn't see the Vespirae before it attacked. Clearly with its wind attribute it could fly towards them from a point beyond their vision extremely quickly. Instead, they planned to obscure the vision of anything that may be looking at the field.

Kain produced a thick cloud over the clearing before he, Bridge and Lady slowly crept toward the location of the Celestiviolets.

Phew

They all breathed a sigh of relief at reaching the flowers without any sign of an attacker.

Slowly, Kain knelt down to begin digging out the flowers from the root while Bridge removed a preservation box from the storage space. This was a must-have item for anyone going into the wilderness.

After all, even if you weren't looking for a spiritual plant, anyone would kick themselves if they were unprepared in the event that they did run into a rare spiritual plant.

The preservation container would ensure that the flowers remained fresh and didn't lose any of their beneficial properties with time. After all, most space rings did not have a preservation ability, those that did would be an astronomical price.

The flowers could stay in there for over a decade and look as though they were just picked. That way they didn't need to worry about keeping them fresh for their siblings when the next one's affinity ceremony won't be for at least 3 more years.

After digging up all 6 flowers, Kain glanced at the rest of the flowers tempted to dig up more. However, he ultimately decided to not push his luck and to quickly leave before their presence was noticed.

Taking care to be as quiet as possible, they slowly crept out of the field. Right when they were about to exit…

Bzzzzz

Whimper

"Lady!"

Suddenly, a stinger came through the mist and stabbed into Lady's hind leg.

Kain immediately covered Bridge's mouth before dragging him from his initial position.

Just in time too, because another stinger came flying from a different direction than the other stinger flew from.

'There's more than one! How is that possible? Are there 2 queens?'

Kain quickly chose to exhaust half of his remaining spiritual power to make the mist around them more dense. They were just about to leave the field and in a moment of laxness at feeling as though they had gotten away with their heist, he had let his control of the mist slip for a moment. That short moment of laxness was probably when they spotted Lady who was in the lead. It was his fault.

He leaned next to Bridge's ear while keeping a tight hold of his mouth to avoid him making any more screams.

"They are locating us by sound." He whispered. "Stay silent and recall Lady before another round of stingers is fired. I think there may be more than one."

Bridge nodded with tears in his eyes. When he sensed that he had calmed down, he let go of his mouth. He also heard no more noises from Lady, so he assumed Bridge had followed his instructions.

When the wasps had entered the mist, Bea's splits had infected them. Unfortunately, similar to yesterday she wasn't able to exert much of an effect. However, that's not why he had still sent Bea.

He planned to use the information relayed by the splits to keep track of their position in the mist and avoid another sneak attack.

However, it was easier said than done. Bea was relaying constant changes in their position as they searched the field. They were extremely fast, and it wouldn't be long until they located Kain and the others.