The Unexpected Dogfight Erupts.

While the honeybee waggle dance used to notify hive mates of floral coordinates is common knowledge, bees also utilize another famous communication matrix: the broadcasting of information-chemical substances, widely classified as pheromones.

It was highly anticipated that the hornet’s stinger had been heavily infused with a localized alarm pheromone. Because of that chemical marker, it had systematically summoned a massive, enraged army of its hive mates.

Hearing the thunderous, high-volume hum of an infinite number of wings vibrating right behind our backs, our unit desperately raced back along our initial navigation path.

Leading the charge were Yoru and Kuu, who had executed a flawless opening dash sequence. Calculating their behavioral programming, they seemed to think we were playing a casual game of tag, as a chorus of tiny, muffled giggles carried back from their coordinates.

Right behind them, our two Blue Slimes bounded forward to maintain their tracking parameters, closely followed by Ethan-san and Paula, who were both cruising across the terrain with exceptional, weightless speed. Mia was hot on their heels; for a dedicated mage-type unit, her sprint metrics were surprisingly elite.

And bringing up the absolute rear, struggling along in a state of utter distress, was me.

I exerted every ounce of my physical stamina to avoid being left behind, but the spatial gap separating my frame from the rest of the platoon expanded exponentially within a few seconds. Right as my anxiety parameters were spiking toward panic, my body suddenly vaulted clean off the soil.

Thoroughly blindsided by the shift, I twisted my neck to run a quick diagnostic loop and verified that our Sword-Tail Dragonfly had masterfully snared the back of my robe, hoisting my frame into the air. Maintaining its acceleration as it stabilized its flight vectors, Ken-chan the dragonfly bridged the gap to rejoin the lead pack in a single heartbeat.

“Phew… My immense gratitude to you, Paula.”

“Please, do not fret over it, My Lord. An adjustment of this caliber is an effortless calculation.”

“The swarm’s velocity parameter is exceptionally high; their vanguard will breach our perimeter very shortly,” Ethan-san noted calmly while maintaining his stride. “Executing a standard escape loop via foot transit will yield a non-serving success metric.”

“Whoa-waah~! They are comprehensively furious out there~!” Mia shrieked.

Given that the three of them were fully capable of carrying on a detailed conversation while running at maximum velocity, their stamina pools clearly possessed a comfortable safety margin, but outrunning airborne insects was a mathematically impossible equation. That said, halting our advance to welcome an engagement against an army of that volume was a completely non-viable strategy.

“Alright, let’s recalibrate our navigational vector. Paula, redirect our movement profile straight toward the east!”

“Understood, My Lord.”

The Sword-Tail Dragonfly cradling my frame dialed up its velocity metrics even further, tilting its mass hard to the left to execute the turn. Tracing the shift with their eyes, Yoru and Kuu’s faces lit up with excitement, and they rapidly pivoted to follow our new coordinates.

Blitzing across the river threshold, our party bypassed the southern ascent staircase entirely, charting a sweeping arc that led straight toward the absolute center of the tenth floor.

Verifying via my rear tracking arrays that the hornet swarm had adjusted its pursuit vector to maintain lock on us, I reached into my interface, fished out the harvested hornet stinger from earlier, and tossed the asset to Ethan-san, who was running a slight lag behind our aerial unit.

“I need you to inject that payload straight into those specific coordinates!” I yelled, pointing toward the open water.

“Ah, I see! A brilliant tactical extraction!”

Even while maintaining his maximum running speed, the Treant hunter displayed exceptional manual dexterity, flawlessly binding the stinger to his arrowhead with high-durability twine. Raising his bow, he loosed the shaft from his string in a single smooth motion, bypassing a tedious aiming sequence to let the arrow arc gracefully through the air.

Tracing a parabolic curve across the airspace, the shaft hit its designated target coordinates, triggering a soft, echoing splash. As localized ripples diffused across the surface metrics of the lake, the toxic pheromone coating the arrow smoothly dissolved into the water.

Answering the chemical signature, several hornets instantly broke formation, redirecting their flight paths to descend straight toward the coordinates where the shaft had submerged.

However, those exact coordinates fell squarely within the permanent sovereign territory of the Sword-Tail Dragonflies.

The resident dragonflies had already been humming their wings in a state of high alertness due to an unannounced arrow invading their waters, and the exact fraction of a second they flagged these new, chaotic intruders, their AI designated them as the absolute perpetrators, launching a ruthless counter-offensive.

Their rigid, transparent wings were so heavily reinforced that simply executing a high-velocity hover-turn generated an immense kinetic hazard. Rocketing straight into the small cluster of hornets that had recklessly breached their perimeter, the dragonflies unleashed an unmitigated bisection frenzy.

The exact dynamic fraction of a second a silver flash sliced through the airspace, the hornets’ physical structures were systematically pulverized and blown to pieces. Following the disruption, the dragonflies swung their sword-like abdomens in a sweeping follow-up sequence, slicing any surviving hornets clean in half in a single frame.

To state the unvarnished reality, the hornets were brutally liquidated under a completely false frameup—yet their death programming dictated that they broadcast a massive, cataclysmic payload of alarm pheromones upon deletion.

The undulating cloud of hornets that had been relentlessly pursuing our party executed a rapid, high-velocity pivot, steering their entire collective mass straight toward the lake shore.

The hornet swarm numbered roughly fifty units. Conversely, the active database of Sword-Tail Dragonflies within the immediate sector logged just under twenty specimens.

While the hornets commanded a numeric advantage that breached a two-to-one ratio, the cataclysmic discrepancy in their baseline stats systematically erased that variable and turned the battle into an absolute slaughter. The hornets’ tracking parameters were completely incapable of processing the flight velocity of the dragonflies, which are universally celebrated as the absolute apex tier of aerial insect models.

Confronted by the dragonflies zooming across the airspace along three-dimensional vectors, the hornets’ population metrics plummeted toward absolute zero in a matter of minutes. They desperately attempted to deploy a coordinated barrage of <Poison Needle> missiles, but because the dragonflies’ speed metrics were so thoroughly optimized, the projectiles failed to graze a single wing. Honestly, evaluating the structural durability of the dragonflies’ glass-like frames, even a direct hit would have yielded zero meaningful damage ticks.

The entire dogfight reached a definitive conclusion in under a few minutes.

The vast majority of the hornet swarm had been transformed into shattered wreckage scattered across the lake’s surface, while the final few survivors were masterfully pinned from behind by the dragonflies’ talons, their head segments being aggressively munched on by the apex predators.

While the insect ambush had initially triggered a massive spike in my anger parameters, watching them being eaten alive made it impossible not to process a slight trace of biological sympathy for the pests.

“Whoa~! The dragonflies are comprehensively overpowered, aren’t they?!” Mia gasped, her eyes wide with awe.

“Spectacular~!”

“Kyuu~!”

“When the physical mass discrepancy between two models is that colossal, the outcome is a hard-coded mathematical certainty,” I explained, letting out a massive, relieved sigh as we checked ourselves into a verified safe zone well away from the conflict. “Besides, comparing a hornet’s baseline flight parameters to a dragonfly’s aerodynamics, the system enforces close to a two-fold performance gap from the start.”

For a tactical strategy formulated entirely on a sudden whim, the final yield had exceeded my boldest calculations. Furthermore, the underlying mechanics of this interaction could easily be applied to engineer a barrage of high-value farming loops moving forward.

Right… I should definitely run a few more diagnostic checks to map out the behavioral algorithms of these insect classes, I mused.

“At any rate, the smartest calculation is that everyone returned to our network with zero casualties.”

“No, that assessment is incomplete, My Lord. Kindly let me audit your structural status; how are your pain metrics managing?”

Paula stepped into my personal space, her features laced with deep concern as she extracted a pristine silk-woven bandage from her gear. I hastily waved my hands in a defensive gesture to dismiss her anxieties.

“Please, don’t worry about it, Paula. My system already processed a Mid-Tier Rejuvenation Draft; the bleeding has hit absolute stoppage, and the wound is strictly venting a minor, dull ache.”

“I am comprehensively sorry. My tracking loops failed to—”

“Reflecting on a performance bottleneck is an excellent protocol, but over-allocating your cognitive runtime to guilt will tank your future operational efficiency. The final outcome resulted in zero cataclysmic damage, so please refrain from executing a self-reprimand cycle.”

“ ……Understood, My Lord.“

While she vocalized her compliance, her internal emotional metrics clearly hadn’t stabilized yet. Reflecting on our interactions throughout the day, I realized her behavioral data had featured a few highly atypical pauses and unprovoked micro-stares. It was highly anticipated that because she had been detached from my immediate coordinates for a consecutive week, her psychological drive to prove her high-value utility to my profile had undergone an intense escalation.

Ensuring that the rest of the platoon suffered from zero hidden status anomalies, I executed a highly theatrical stretch and turned my frame back toward the staircase landing.

“Alright! Exhausting our stamina pools to escape a bug swarm has left me thoroughly drained. Let’s wrap up our deployment a bit ahead of schedule today.”

“Roger~! Whew, my hunger parameters are hitting a critical low!” Mia cheered.

“Empty tummy~!”

“Kyuu~!”

As Mia and the others launched into their usual boisterous banter, Paula offered a stiff, hesitant nod to match their energy. Seizing the window, I casually injected a secondary objective into the queue.

“Before we execute our return transit, I highly desire to secure a single specimen from the sheep demographic. Could you assist me with the subjugation loop, Paula?”

Our intended target from the Curved-Horn Sheep cluster was flawlessly logged by Ethan-san’s superior tracking within a few moments. He noted that the specimen’s horns possessed compressed dimensions compared to the standard alpha models, though the physical distance was far too great for my ordinary human vision to calculate the variance.

Vaulting into the upper airspace with exceptional power, Ken-chan the dragonfly swooped down upon the scattering flock, masterfully snatching up the designated sheep in a single smooth motion.

…Wow. With a dragonfly thrall in our roster, our future sheep-harvesting loops are going to be an absolute breeze, I realized.

The sheep bleated frantically, venting a high-volume chorus of desperate baa-baas, but anchored within the ironclad grip of the dragonfly’s talons, its escape probability was absolute zero. The exact fraction of a second its frame touched the soil and its limbs began to flail, Paula seamlessly injected her <Subjugation> matrix, completely neutralizing its aggression parameters.

Once the creature settled into an absolute passive state, I dropped onto my knees right beside its flank, gently soothing its belly to lock down its comfort metrics. Perfect. The environmental conditions align perfectly with my blueprint.

Reaching into my interface, I retrieved a colossal crab-shell plate and positioned the asset directly beneath its udder, before utilizing my memory of surface dairy data to execute an experimental milking motion on its teats. After a few trial iterations, a brilliant white stream suddenly erupted from the tip with exceptional velocity, splashing into the shell.

“Whoa! Look at that, it’s actually working!”

“Spectacular~!”

“Kyuu~!”

Milking sequence: successfully verified complete.

Back in the baseline database of Draclo 2, sheep milk functioned as a textbook staple item for various crafting recipes, yet for some cryptic reason, the system blocked the asset from appearing in a harvest log when processing a deceased carcass. This underlying constraint was the exact reason why I had formulated the hypothesis that running the collection loop on a live, tamed specimen was a mandatory requirement.

Dipping my finger into the liquid to run a quick sensory check, the flavor profile was incredibly rich, boasting a smooth, velvety sweetness that tasted absolutely magnificent. While real-world goat and sheep milk historically carries a sharp, gamey aroma that challenges standard palates, this dungeon iteration was flawlessly optimized for universal human consumption metrics.

Yoru and Kuu approached the coordinates, their noses twitching rapidly as they tracked the scent profile, so I allowed them to sample the harvest.

In a single heartbeat, the two little entities underwent an immediate transformation, their eyes flashing with absolute fixation as they aggressively latched onto my arms, demanding a massive increase in their milk allocation.

“Hold your horses, don’t rush the queue. See? I’m processing the next batch for you right now.”

As I milked another high-velocity stream into the dish, the beast-girl and the bird-girl immediately began bumping their heads together, launching a fierce, adorable scramble to monopolize the prize. Yep, the item’s popularity metrics were thoroughly maximized.

“Ehh~?! That looks like an incredibly fun minigame! Let me have a turn, let me do it~!”

Mia aggressively demanded to be integrated into the loop, so I reassigned the milking parameters to her profile. Unable to maintain their patience until the shell filled, Yoru and Kuu simply bypassed the interface entirely, latching their mouths directly onto the remaining teats to vacuum the milk straight from the source.

Stepping back a few paces to afford them proper clearance, I drifted over to stand right beside Paula, who had been blankly tracking their boisterous scramble with a detached expression. Ensuring my tone carried zero artificial weight, I finally delivered my formal message of appreciation.

“I realized my system hadn’t officially logged a proper thank-you yet. My immense gratitude for rewriting my trajectory and saving my frame during our retreat earlier. Furthermore, outfitting our roster with this sheep has maximized everyone’s happiness parameters. Having your presence anchored to this unit optimizes our survival metrics beyond all calculation, Paula. Thank you for being here.”

Faced with my sudden, unprompted declaration, the beautiful woman of the demon-kin race widened her eyes in genuine astonishment.

“Um… if your programming permits, I highly desire that your frame remains permanently anchored right by my side to assist our operations down to the absolute depths of this journey…”

“Yes, My Lord. With absolute devotion,” Paula purred, her features melting into a radiant, beautiful smile as she softly layered her hand directly over mine.