Highly Reliable Allies.

“Well then, it’s all up to you.”

Ethan-san gave a short nod in response to my words. Bow in hand, he began walking soundlessly toward the lake.

He gradually lowered his posture, cautiously closing the distance to his quarry. The exact fraction of a second he reached the thick grass flanking the lakeshore, the hunter’s form dissolved entirely into the environment.

His back, which had been perfectly visible just a moment ago, blended so flawlessly into the undergrowth that distinguishing his silhouette from the foliage was now an absolute failure threshold. No matter how many times I witnessed it, his mastery of absolute stealth was spectacular.

Back in the database of Draclo 2, units of the Treant race enjoyed a massive evasion buff when stationed on forest or grassland tiles. Seeing it manifested in reality made the underlying mechanical logic perfectly making sense.

Fascinating as it was, I shifted my focus back to the lake’s surface, tracking the giant Sword-Tail Dragonflies as they patrolled the airspace in random, sweeping flight vectors. Their massive compound eyes were continuously rotating to run uncoordinated checks across various quadrants; the exact fraction of a second a unit executed a clumsy movement, their arrays would guaranteed flag a target.

As I watched the field while holding my breath, an arrow suddenly sliced through the air from a gap in the brush, completely silent. It was launched from a coordinate and at a timing that completely defied my internal calculations.

Tracing a gentle parabola, the shaft cruised elegantly through the gaps separating the buzzing insects, burying itself thump straight into the back of a single dragonfly.

Its tracking metrics instantly registering that an engagement had been initiated against its frame, the monster aggressively pivoted its body toward the shoreline. However, while the surrounding dragonflies vibrated their wings to hover in place, their behavioral loops underwent zero major changes.

Because dragonflies are blessed with massive compound eyes, their visual field spans a complete 360-degree matrix. However, because their massive wings present a physical obstruction right on their back flank, that exact rear quadrant functions as an absolute blind spot.

In other words, Ethan-san’s opening volley had masterfully captured the single, blink-and-you-miss-it split second where the surrounding dragonflies had turned their backs to his intended target—an exceptionally high-caliber feat of archery.

The struck Sword-Tail Dragonfly abandoned the lake airspace, accelerating along a straight vector toward the shore. However, its tracking arrays hadn’t targeted the individual who had actually loosed the shaft; instead, it was racing straight toward our coordinates, where we were standing in plain sight as spectators. It possessed absolutely zero data indicating Ethan-san was hiding in the brush. His stealth parameters were truly terrifying.

As a mandatory tactical reminder, the effects of our Monster Repellent are strictly conditional on our unit remaining completely passive. Once a monster has been assaulted and slips into an absolute state of feral rage, the chemical shield flatly refuses to process.

Faced with the giant dragonfly charging along a locked vector, our vanguard braced for impact as we rapidly checked off our coordination cues.

“Alright, it’s closing in. Is everyone’s readiness locked down?”

“Yes. Leave the processing to me, My Lord.”

“Ah, wait, I’m cleared to fire anytime~!”

“Prepare yourself~!”

“Kyuu~!”

Stepping smoothly out to anchor the frontline was Paula, her whip clutched firmly in her hand. Fluidly contorting her frame, she snapped her black leather lash through the air, drawing a perfect arc right before the eyes of the oncoming dragonfly.

— Active Ability: .

As if slamming face-first into an absolute invisible wall, the high-velocity insect came to an immediate, dead stop right in mid-air. Bypassing its sensory stall without wasting a single millisecond of runtime, Paula aggressively unleashed her primary taming payload.

— Active Spell: .

Confronted by the raw, dominant force pouring into its internal matrix to rewrite its allegiance, the Sword-Tail Dragonfly violently ground its mandibles and vibrated its wings to deploy a counter-resistance loop.

Mia and I watched the struggle, completely freezing our respiratory functions from the sheer tension. Meanwhile, Yoru and Kuu planted their hands firmly on their hips, cutely shaking their rear ends from side to side to cheer Paula on. While the display was exceptionally adorable, it systematically demolished every single ounce of strategic tension in the air.

The tamer and the dragonfly remained locked in a high-intensity psychological stalemate for a brief chunk of time. However, the exact fraction of a second Paula’s coiled whip snapped forward to deliver a crushing blow squarely across the monster’s face, the contest reached an immediate, anti-climactic resolution.

Dropping its head in absolute submission, the giant dragonfly flattened its frame against the earth, its wings sprawled wide across the soil.

Letting out a soft, controlled breath, Paula calmly approached her new thrall, extracting Ethan-san’s arrow from its back in a single smooth motion. The dragonfly hummed its transparent wings in a joyous, vibrating bzzz-bzzz cadence. Yep, its loyalty metrics had already reached absolute maximization.

“Incredible~! You did it, Pau-sama!”

“Spectacular~!”

“Kyuu~!”

“With this link secured, we can finally initiate our engineering phase… You truly optimize our operations every single time, Paula. Thank you.”

“To receive such high-volume praise from your lips is an immense honor, My Lord,” Paula responded, her features softening into a warm smile as she scooped up the two little beast-girls who had sprinted to her coordinates.

A secondary voice of validation echoed from behind her shoulder.

“A truly magnificent display of tamership, Paula-san.”

It was Ethan-san, who had seamlessly re-entered our perimeter without making a single sound. While Paula’s capacity to effortlessly rewrite a monster’s alignment was spectacular, Ethan-san’s ability to flawlessly isolate and extract a single target from a massive swarm was an equally elite contribution to our network.

“My gratitude to you as well, Ethan-san. Excellent work. Let’s pivot to our next milestone.”

Leaving the lakeside coordinates behind, our party guided its vector straight toward the downstream sector on the western side of the basin. At this specific location, the river’s width narrowed to a mere four to five meters, and because the dragonflies omitted this zone from their flight patterns, the area’s security parameters were perfectly safe. Furthermore, a decent cluster of optimal timber was naturally cultivating right along the riverbanks.

“Hmm… do the raw specifications of this tree align with your standards?”

“Yes, sir. Calculating the vertical scale, this specimen will easily bridge the gap,” Ethan-san verified.

Running a joint diagnostic with the Treant elder to audit the local flora, we systematically selected about ten trees that fit the structural profile. Following that milestone, it was time to field the active ability of our newly integrated thrall.

“Everyone, kindly execute a minor backward shift to clear the immediate perimeter,” Paula commanded.

“Roger~! Do your absolute best, Ken-chan!” Mia cheered.

“Understood~!”

“Kyuu.”

Whether the dragonfly—whom we had affectionately logged in our profiles under the nomenclature of “Ken-chan”—actually processed the girls’ morale support was a mystery, but it vaulted slightly into the upper airspace before executing a steep dive-bomb, aggressively smashing its sword-like abdomen straight against the trunk of the target tree.

A thunderous, echoing crash resonated through the sector as the monster’s biological blade buried itself deep into the thick bark.

“Whoa~! Is—Isn’t that damage metric completely insane?!” Mia shrieked.

“If our human frames took a physical hit of that caliber, our structural integrity would hit immediate bisection… pure instant death,” I muttered, a cold sweat breaking across my skin.

“Sinister~!”

“Kyuu~!”

Cradling the little hairball and featherball who had lunged into my arms, I snapped my focus back to the target coordinates right as the dragonfly initiated its secondary cleave sequence.

Another massive kinetic impact vibrated loops through the area, causing the tree—which possessed quite a substantial structural diameter—to violently rock back and forth. By the exact fraction of a second its third consecutive <Lethal Cleave> connected, the stubborn trunk finally hit its structural failure threshold.

The massive timber emitted a deep, splintering groan as it tilted and crashed heavily onto the earth, drawing an immediate, boisterous cheer from our platoon.

Stepping forward to run a collection loop on the downed asset, the branches and leaves immediately detached, raining onto the soil as the primary trunk vanished smoothly into my storage array.

Just as I had calculated, once a tree transitions into a fallen state, the database officially processes it as a lumber drop, allowing it to be seamlessly harvested into my inventory. I had previously pondered the underlying system constraint regarding why living flora is blocked from collection while its fruits or mushroom nodes can be digitized directly from the stem, but the precise programming parameters governing these distinctions remained a mystery.

At any rate, once our network successfully amassed the target inventory of ten logs, we surveyed the riverbank to pinpoint the absolute narrowest crossing point.

Standing at the water’s edge, I reached into my interface, deploying the first log to materialize exactly across our targeted coordinates. Verifying that the wood was securely anchored against both shores, I manifested a second log right beside it. Following the deployment, Ethan-san stepped in to wrap up the engineering phase, utilizing high-durability vines to tightly bind the timbers together into a rigid, unified structure.

We executed this exact infrastructure loop a total of three times.

Crossing over three distinct tributaries, a magnificent, perfectly functional log bridge matrix verified complete.

“Phew… we finally unlocked the path…” I sighed, wiping the sweat from my brow.

“Yes. With this milestone checked off, our unit is finally cleared to cross into the far bank of the river,” Paula noted.

“Mhm, mhm! Let’s maintain maximum momentum and march straight in~! But remember, we must keep our alertness metrics locked at maximum!” Mia declared.

“An excellent tactical directive, Mia,” I agreed.

Eight consecutive days of grueling runtime had elapsed since we initially made landfall on this stratum. At long last, our elite vanguard formally set foot inside the northern sector of Area Four.

However, we wouldn’t even log five full minutes of forward navigation before our unit was forced to execute a frantic, high-velocity retreat back across the bridge.

The primary cause underlying our immediate operational failure was the sudden manifestation of a colossal, suffocating swarm of giant hornets.