The Battle For Honey.

The structural layout of the inner sanctum was a colossal, cylindrical cavern. The ceiling was so towering that checking the vertical constraints required a significant head-tilt, and completely packing the entirety of the far wall was a dense matrix of hexagonal cells fitted seamlessly against one another. While the vast majority of the apertures were currently vacant, a few select nodes were visibly stuffed to the brim with a thick, dense mass.

And dominating the absolute center of the airspace—

Hovering in mid-air while running a cold, supercilious audit on our positions, was a comprehensively massive insect, measuring roughly three meters in length.

Its chassis featured a vivid warning pattern of black and yellow, anchored by six elongated legs spiked with sharp, jagged protrusions. Reaching down from its inverted-triangular head was a pair of comprehensively over-thickened mandibles. While its base visual design was practically a flawless copy of a standard military hornet, its abdominal mass was anomalously colossal. The protruding venomous stinger looked large enough to easily rival a heavy timber log in diameter.

The unmitigated pressure of the wing beats vibrated through the atmosphere, showering over my frame as a thunderous hum that caused me to freeze, my respiratory functions temporarily stalling. However, the exact fraction of a second a chorus of familiar voices reached my ears, my system rapidly stabilized.

“Ah~! Sensei finally made landfall! Sensei, over here, over here!” Mia cheered.

“You took your sweet time getting back, brat! Get your ass over here and join the vanguard already!” Heimo barked.

“Oh! It’s Sensei-sama!”

“W-With this link secured, our success metrics are guaranteed to hit victory threshold!”

Even if you pump your morale metrics that high, this is the absolute first time my database has ever processed an alpha insect model of this caliber… I thought, sweat breaking across my skin.

While standard military hornets were a common monster demographic I had systematically liquidated across endless farming loops back in the game, my memory possessed absolute zero data regarding a colossal subterranean colony hive of this architecture, let alone a giant queen variant model.

Running a rapid sweep of the perimeter, my scanning arrays caught a heavy iron portcullis locked down tight along a section of the stone wall. I had desperately hoped my structural calculations would miss the mark, but this vicious alpha hornet was verified as the certified area boss without a shadow of a doubt.

However, the geographical layout beyond the iron bars didn’t lead down to a standard exit staircase; instead, it opened into a sealed chamber. Evaluating that constraint, there was an exceptionally high probability that the tenth floor enforced the exact same special rules as the original game code. If that theorem held solid, then this random spike in the baseline difficulty parameters made perfect mechanical sense.

“What’s your current tactical assessment, Chief?”

Sprinting into their perimeter, I rapidly peer-checked the structural status of our allied units. Given that this deployment was flagged as an absolute all-out war campaign, a massive cohort of surface civilians had been integrated into our roster.

First, anchoring the absolute frontline, the youth alliance had deployed a wall formation, masterfully bracing themselves behind a long row of colossal turtle shells. This defensive paradigm was a home-brewed tactical innovation they had formulated completely independent of my guidance, polished through consecutive crab and turtle hunting loops on the sixth floor. Their underlying logic was perfectly simple: if your dexterity stats are too low to execute complex evasive maneuvers, you simply absorb the incoming kinetic payload using a massive stamina pool backed by ironclad shields.

Nesting safely behind that tortoise-shell vanguard was a back-line artillery detachment, comprised of five human archers—including Ethan-san—and three tailoring-contingent mages, including Mia. Furthermore, our support matrix included the Chief and his wife acting as dedicated healing units, alongside Heimo, who was currently radiating an aura that looked exactly like an enraged bear cub. Finally, we had the goblin archery squad led by Gob-chi—whom Paula had successfully transported down—and Yoru’s fairy reconnaissance platoon.

Based on a quick tactical audit, our entire force was clustered tightly at a single coordinate, desperately locked in a high-intensity stalemate against the Queen Hornet.

“We have been eagerly awaiting your landfall, Nino-sama. Yes, as you can see, our current lines are being systematically pushed back. Our unit lacks the proper offensive parameters to execute a forward shift…” Dirk reported, his brow furrowed.

“Those flying bastards are continuously multiplying out of nowhere! Damn it, talk about running a totally broken, underhanded tactic!” Heimo roared.

Following the vector of the smith’s outstretched finger, my eyes caught a section of the wall where a fresh wave of military hornets was right in the middle of a spawn loop. Sliding clumsily out from the hexagonal apertures, the Queen’s royal guard immediately vibrated their wings to execute a high-velocity charge straight toward our shield wall.

Clang! Clang! A barrage of launched venomous stingers deflected off the turtle carapaces, unleashing a rapid succession of metallic clangs through the cavern.

Bypassing the shield threshold without losing a single frame of momentum, a secondary wave of hornets attempted to vault over our lines, only to be instantly showered by a dense volley of arrows from our archers and goblins, crashing heavily onto the earth. Simultaneously, a wave of flying crimson fireballs intersected with their flight paths, incinerating their wings and forcing several more specimens to plummet to the ground.

However, the precise fraction of a second the Queen Hornet vibrated her massive wings, a secondary reinforcement loop triggered, generating another cluster of nearly ten hornets straight from the wall cells. Scrambling effortlessly over the shattered carcasses of their fallen hive mates, they launched a relentless charge against our coordinates without a single millisecond of hesitation.

“Another wave?! Give me a damn break already!”

Swinging his iron halberd with intense force to knock a hornet clean out of the air, the beast-kin youth let out an enraged roar.

I see. Managing the endless influx of adds is consuming one hundred percent of their operational bandwidth, I calculated. This mechanic undoubtedly mirrored the programming logic of the Boss Wererat; as long as specific environmental variables remained unaddressed, the alpha model could systematically call forth infinite numbers of minions to flood the field.

Meanwhile, running a high-intensity engagement against the true area boss herself were Yoru and Kuu.

Kuu was actively zipping across the upper airspace, masterfully mapping out a sequence of high-velocity aerial kicks. Utilizing the Blue Slime mattress as a high-powered trampoline, Yoru executed a succession of spectacular vertical leaps, repeatedly driving her claws deep into the Queen Hornet’s abdomen.

As far as raw damage output was concerned, the kids were steadily whittling down her health pool. A network of gruesome lacerations had already compromised the Queen’s chassis, causing a steady stream of biological fluid to drip onto the soil.

However, the exact fraction of a second the Queen ground her massive mandibles together, a small platoon of military hornets glided down from the upper tiers of the wall. Visibly adhering to their front legs was a thick, pasty white compound.

The instantaneous moment they smeared that fluid across her frame, a terrifying cellular regeneration loop triggered, flawlessly knitting the Queen Hornet’s deep wounds back together before our very eyes. Her structural integrity completely restored to maximum parameters, the boss ground her mandibles once more with intense hostility.

Answering her behavioral cue, a jet-black cloud resembling a toxic mist erupted from the colossal stinger anchoring her abdomen. Catching the rapid transition via their tracking sensors, the two kids frantically executed an emergency backward leap to clear the danger zone.

“Ah~! Not again~! That is an absolute cheat code, it’s so unfair!” Mia shrieked.

“My Lord, what exactly is the nature of that anomalous mist?…” Paula asked, her stance tensing.

“Don’t tell me those loops are specialized variations of <Poison Needle> and <Sweet Nectar>?… No, based on the baseline game database, those skills shouldn’t manifest a performance profile of this caliber,” I muttered, gritting my teeth.

Back in the standard database, the default capability a military hornet unlocks upon crossing the Level 10 threshold is <Poison Needle>—a basic skill that fires its stinger as a projectile. Upon scaling to Level 20, they integrate <Sweet Nectar>, an exceptionally convenient utility trait designed to run a self-targeted health restoration loop.

Evaluating the current field data, it was highly anticipated that the jet-black mist represented a wide-area AoE dispersal modification mapped onto the toxic properties of <Poison Needle>. Furthermore, the mechanism that had instantaneously erased her physical damage parameters was undoubtedly a highly amplified, top-tier iteration of <Sweet Nectar>.

To apply a specialized taxonomic label to the asset, that compound was strictly Premium Queen’s Nectar—Royal Jelly.

By deploying an automated wide-area <Toxic Mist> layer to insulate her coordinates, the Queen could flawlessly safeguard her frame, and even if an elite unit successfully bypassed the shield to inflict damage ticks, her systems could effortlessly overwrite the penalty using <Queen’s Nectar>. While she locked down the battlefield using that grueling stall loop, the infinite spawn metrics of her minions would systematically overwhelm our platoon’s stamina parameters.

Furthermore, calculating the external operational variables, the hornets currently engaged in the culling war against the Great-Eyed Moths outside would guaranteed intercept her distress signals and return to the nest very shortly.

If this engagement dragged out for consecutive chunks of runtime, our probability of hitting an absolute failure threshold scaled to a hard hundred percent.

“Damn it… for an alpha unit’s unique traits to undergo an escalation of this magnitude… this is an exceptionally tedious bottleneck to calculate,” I muttered under my breath.

The unprompted murmur involuntarily slipping from my lips, the faces of the surface volunteers turned comprehensively pale all at once. Ah, I blundered. I completely omitted from my calculations that the vast majority of these citizens have absolute zero data loops tracking a legitimate, high-tier area boss encounter, I realized.

Then again, navigating a tactical pinch of this caliber was a loop my system had already successfully verified and processed across endless campaigns; there was absolutely zero requirement to succumb to panic.

Offering a calm shake of my head, I took a massive, controlled breath, expanding my lungs before slowly venting the air back into the cavern.

Locking my posture into a stance of absolute certainty, I delivered my definitive command to the platoon.

“Deactivate your anxiety parameters. Our success metrics are fully secured; victory is entirely within our parameters. Leave the processing to me.”