“The Queen is pinnacle-tier, and the Generals are high-tier.” Coin reported.

“Good, the only damage I will receive will be the impact when they hit me.” Miles said and held the sword in front of himself. His armor was akin to cheat as long as no Frenzy-Rank monster appeared.

The azure wind started to coil around the sword like a dragon ready to devour its enemies. Miles’s red eyes shone with azure light, and the pupils contracted to their limit keenly looked at the formation. Before, he wasn’t proficient with the sword at all. Thus, he could only blindly attack. But now that he was better at it, he could use the sword as a limb, at least barely. He could form plans as well.

His brain churned like an ancient machine with his eyes moving from right to left, up and down. He calculated the flight path of the wasps and their formation based on his experience. He looked at the four generals and smiled.

“As if I would target you.”

They were just decoys. Even though they were bigger and stronger than regular wasps, what made collective hives scary was their linked minds. Even after all generals died, they would still act together. Unlike humans, they weren’t taking orders from a mouth, but from the hive mind, they formed.

He started to dash towards the formation. He had calculated his movements and acted decisively with a swing of his sword. The Wasps did not hold still but surrounded him from all sides. A human would be full of holes in a few seconds, but all Miles felt were the impacts all over his body. His blood churned a little, but he could still keep standing.

His wrist moved with an unexpected curve and the sword stabbed towards one of the generals. But it was a feint, as it neared the beast, his wrist made an impossible curve, and the sword aimed at the Queen in the middle. Miles did it to get out of the barricade, keeping him from the queen. To his surprise, one of the minion wasps stood in front of his target to protect the chief of the wasp army.

“That is devoted to you. But it will not change a shit!” Miles shouted and charged the sword with the wind. Now faster and sharper, it cut through the wasp, like a hot knife through butter, reaching before the Queen. Its soldier's sacrifice saved it a second, allowing the Queen wasp to move aside. With its nigh-invincible skin, the mid-tier sword wasn’t able to damage the Queen.

With the gust of wind, the sword sent it out of its flight zone. But it did not hurt the Queen wasp at all.

“Why aren’t they closing in?” Miles asked and continued to fight. Even though they were surrounding him, the flock of wasps was attacking and retreating orderly. They never closed on him together. ‘Such masterful guerilla tactics!’

“Maybe you should give them a feint.” Coin suggested.

Miles nodded his head and opened a part of his armor, small enough to let a sting fit.

One of the general wasps noticed the opening and buzzed feverishly. Two soldier wasps closed in on Miles with the gap as their goal.

Miles was fighting with a stalling team in front while two were closing in from the rear. When they dived butt first, Miles hurled the enemies at the foreground then attacked the two behind him. He killed two of them with the wind charged sword in one swing.

In the meantime, using wasps as curtains, he self-injured his side, where a hole in the armor is seen. Blood gushed out from the side of his torso, and the cave filled with the smell of iron.

Miles cursed out loud and attacked more recklessly. The general wasps danced in the air with joy when they saw their now berserk enemy. ‘The venom must have gotten into his system.’ they all thought.

Miles’s attacks got weaker and weaker. In the end, he fell to the ground weakly. He fell on his side, where blood was still gushing out.

The general wasps buzzed and danced in the air and then ordered two soldier wasps to probe their prey. They attacked butt first, but the armor their intruder wore deflected their attacks. Nonetheless, the motionless Miles gave them courage. They charged at him as a pimp on the verge of dying, without mercy.

The general wasps buzzed again, and this time all the wasps attacked together. A giant sting formed by combining fifty-odd wasps, aiming at Miles's spine. The impact would injure him even with the armor.

When all the wasps were above him, and about the clash, blue bolts of lightning danced on the maroon armor. It crackled in the silent cave and created a harmonious air with wasps dancing with a diving motion. When the needle was about to hit its target, the lightning gushed out from the armor and painted the cave with the color blue. Fifty odd wasps burned to charcoal and fell to the ground one by one. Their exterior was black, and their eyes went lifeless.

“BUZZZZ!”

The queen was buzzed in rage and attacked Miles with its giant needle. It got mad with its children dying in front of it and wanted nothing more than to tear the man into pieces to wash its brethren with their murderer's blood.

However, for Miles, a single angry wasp was too easy to handle. He waited for the Queen wasp to arrive in front of him and grabbed its sting. With a downward stab, Miles pinned the giant she-wasp to the ground through her eyes.

“Phew, that was close,” Miles said and started to cut open the dead wasps’ brains to loot them from their orbs. One by one, he fished them out and took a look.

“I must have gotten too lucky lately! How can’t I get a single arrow from fifty-odd wasps?” Miles sighed and looked at the bunch of orbs on the ground. He then placed them in his backpack.

Miles then looked at the wiggling queen, trying to get free of the sword. It got madder when it saw the human cutting open its children’s head to take out their orbs, but it couldn’t get free of the weapon.

Miles walked to it and said, “If you wanted to die so badly, why didn’t you say earlier?”

Miles pulled out the dagger alloy orb from his bag. He stabbed the dagger at the wasp's soft eye, killing it in a matter of seconds.

“I hope it has the arrow orb.” Miles said and crossed his finger. When he took out the blooded orb from the queen wasp’s brain, he exclaimed with surprise. It was golden yellow, and there was a black arrow swimming inside the orb.

“Finally an Arrow Orb! I hope it has a Psychic element!” Miles said happily.

“Sorry to break it to you, but it is a piercing element.” Coin said.

“Oh. I was too unlucky today.” Miles sighed and asked Coin to charge the orb.

The orb turned into a golden liquid with black impurities, then formed an arrow in Miles's hand. Its tip was shining with brilliant light. Miles touched its tip, and his finger got cut as soon as he touched it. “It is sharp alright.”

After he was done with the wasps, he looked at the Queen and remembered what his father told him. He took out cooking apparatuses he brought out to give it a shot and created a fire. After that, he cut off the wasp's head and wings. He stabbed the sword from its neck to its bottom and placed it on the fire.

“After Invasion, animals on Earth either perished or mutated, so humanity only fed on monsters resembling cows, lambs or birds. But I didn’t know other monsters could or should be eaten too. I wonder how they taste.”

Miles wasn’t sure of its taste and effects, but he trusted in his father. To this date, he never bothered to bring dead bodies of monsters he hunted because he thought them to be uneatable, but he was clearly wrong.

After not long, the wasp was cooked. Miles grabbed the handle of the sword and took a deep breath.

“Here goes nothing!”

He took a bite from the oil dripping torso of the wasp and chewed with a painful expression. In the next second, he exclaimed in surprise.

“DELICIOUS!”

Miles wolfed on the body without taking a break. He ate half of the body in a minute and felt full. “I didn’t know other monster meats would be this delicious.” Miles said and looked at the other half of the monster with a reluctant expression. “It is as if meat is marinated with honey. Such a sweet taste!”

He wanted to eat more, but he felt full.

'I will just eat it while discovering the cave.' Miles held the roasted wasp like a giant kebab and nibbled on it from time to time as he walked to the humanoid silhouette he saw with his heat vision.