Chapter 109: 24th Floor: Do You Want the Pigs? Or the Hornets?
Translator: RaidenTL
Chapter 109: 24th Floor: Do You Want the Pigs? Or the Hornets?
I couldn't just stand by and watch. I had to move before they attacked the pigs.
"Everyone, get over here!!"
I jumped down from the altar to save the crowned king first. He had tripped while fleeing and was simply waiting for death, but I quickly closed the distance and ran my spear through a hornet just as it was about to slit the pig's throat.
"Oiiink…! Huh? S-Savior!"
"Ooh… Our savior!!"
"That's right! We have a savior!"
The scattered pigs began to gather again.
But the hornets weren't about to just stand by and watch.
Vwoooooooooom!!
The air trembled with a sound like the roar of motorcycle engines as they flew in from all directions.
The pigs who hadn't yet regrouped were assaulted.
Some were pierced by stingers,
Some had their heads snipped clean off by mandibular pincers,
And others were snatched, dragged into the air, and dropped to their deaths.
Before the lumbering Pukteu tribe could even regroup, they were nearly wiped out.
'These damn pigs are way too weak.'
The power gap was overwhelming.
Even armed, the pigs couldn't land a solid hit on the fast-moving giant hornets. And even when they did, their blows barely scratched the tough carapaces.
Outnumbered and outmatched, they were being hunted down like prey.
'Okay, this is a little challenging.'
Even I couldn't just charge in recklessly.
It was all I could do just to protect the pig king.
After seeing me kill a hornet in a single thrust, they started ignoring me and relentlessly targeting the other pigs.
'Damn it, I need an AoE skill… I should've learned Holy Arrow when I had the chance.'
It cost 500 million, right? It was so expensive that I kept putting it off. Too late to regret it now.
It felt a little pathetic, swinging my spear around in a trial I could've cleared with a single Fireball.
"Is there a place to take shelter?"
"Oiiiiiink…! Help me, I don't want to die!!"
The pig king was in a complete panic, burying his head in the ground. A guard pig who was still somewhat composed gave me the information.
"There should be an emergency cave dug under the altar. Take refuge there… Kkuek!"
And then, while protecting the king behind me, his stomach was pierced by a stinger and he was dragged away into the swarm of hornets.
"Please, His Majesty the King..."
With that, he was gone. Everyone here, aside from myself and the pig king, was now dead.
Giant hornets swarmed all around us.
They had surrounded me and the king, who had somehow managed to dig himself halfway into the ground.
'Damn it, where the hell is that cave?'
And at that moment, the hornets charged all at once.
[Divine Power Release]
With the pig king between my legs, I released my divine power. The resulting shockwave sent hornets tumbling from the sky.
But it wasn't over yet.
The hornets pointed their stingers forward and charged again from all directions.
One-Third Second Style: Straight Thrust
Puk! Puk! Puk! Puk! Puk! Puk!!!
I moved my enhanced body with blinding speed, stabbing the hornets.
In an instant, hornets with holes punched through their torsos rained down once more.
"Oiiink...!!"
The pig king trembled in fear as the hornet corpses fell on top of him.
Anyone watching might call him a coward, but this was actually better. I was more at ease with him stuck in the ground like that than getting in my way by trying to fight clumsily.
Wheeeeeeeeng!!!
The hornets still hadn't given up. They continued to attack, rushing in madly from all directions.
But I met their charge, killing every giant hornet that came within range with my swift spear technique. The occasional grazing attack was blocked by my high defense stat.
Perhaps thinking that a simple charge was no longer effective, they formed a circle around us and slowly closed in.
Kugugugugugu...!!!
It felt like being in the eye of a tornado. A strong updraft kicked up a whirlwind of dust, blocking the sunlight and darkening our surroundings.
As if planning to crush us with sheer numbers and mass, they packed together tightly. They surrounded us, maintaining a perfectly uniform speed and formation without the slightest deviation.
From all around came the sound of engines, like speeding motorcycles.
The hornets' formation grew tighter and their rotation speed increased.
And when it reached its limit, their attack began.
The encirclement surrounding us rapidly contracted as they extended their stingers toward me. The rapidly spinning stingers became a vortex of blades, threatening to shred me, but...
"Are you guys slow learners?"
They probably clustered together thinking that was the full power of my Divine Power Release, but unfortunately for them, I have a massive amount of divine power—more than anyone—and I can control it.
[Grand Divine Power Release]
Once again, I detonated the divine power throughout my body. The amount was half of my total divine power—an incredible figure of nearly 2000.
Thanks to my training in controlling divine power, it had become more precise and powerful than before. A huge explosion erupted, and their tornado was instantly swept away by the blast.
For a moment, the whole world was dyed pink.
A moment later, the corpses of hornets burst by the shockwave and their green blood rained down from all directions. The altar was blown away without a trace, and even the surrounding trees were uprooted and sent flying, revealing the distant horizon.
"This is what you call wiping them out in one fell swoop."
In truth, it was a trash attack with dogshit efficiency, but a massive amount of divine power, nearly 2000, was a bomb in itself.
In the past, with this much mana, I could have dropped several nuclear-level meteors.
Of course, not all the hornets were dead yet.
The ones on the outskirts that took less damage were still writhing on the ground. I finished them off with my spear. A few flew into the sky and escaped.
"Phew… Is this area cleared for now?"
I wrung the green juice from my hair and pulled out the pig king buried between my legs.
"Excuse me? Wake up."
"Oiiink...!!! Oink!?"
He struggled at first as I forcibly pulled him to his feet by his side, but then he looked around and his eyes widened in horror.
"Oink? Ooh!! As expected of our Savior!!! Ahem, I seem to have shown you an unseemly side of myself."
'Does he automatically revert to a beastly pig when he's flustered?'
Just a moment ago he was every bit a pig, but now that he'd come to his senses, he was speaking like a person and standing up straight.
"Ah, it is late, but allow me to introduce myself. My name is Porkindick Boruzain. I am the king of the Mechakucha Kingdom. Thank you for answering our summons."
He extended his trotter as if for a handshake.
“Ah… yes. My name is Lee Do-hee.”
I extended my hand and shook the pig king's trotter.
“Now that this place is cleared, let's hurry down. The Kaliph tribe should not have appeared here. We need to figure out what happened."
At least he wasn't completely incompetent. He assessed the situation and quickly led the way down the mountain.
And in less than five minutes, we were able to grasp the situation.
“There, you should be able to see it now. Our kingdom… huh?”
After passing one mountain peak, a wide plain and the kingdom came into view.
And the kingdom was now…
“It's… completely destroyed?”
A jet-black swarm of hornets was laying waste to the Mechakucha Kingdom.
Pigs were being slaughtered in real-time everywhere, and the sows were being stripped of their clothes and raped by the hornets in mid-air.
‘What the hell is that?’
Focusing my vision to get a closer look, I saw the stinger sheaths peel back to reveal penis-shaped organs, which they were ramming into the sows' private parts. Some of them, when it didn't go in easily, even used their stingers to pierce an opening.
Blood and strange fluids poured out from what I assumed were the sows' genitals. Once a sow died, they carelessly tossed it aside and lifted another one into the air to attempt mating. Looking closely, it seemed they were inserting something like an egg inside the sow before discarding her.
I turned my eyes away from the shocking scene, the likes of which I'd never seen before in my life.
Thud…
From beside me, I heard the sound of the pig king collapsing.
“Aah… how can this be… my kingdom…”
I had nothing to say to him.
As I was waiting for him to recover from his grief,
Thump-thump-thump-thump-thump…
Hearing someone approach, I turned around to see about thirty armed Pukteu tribe pigs waddling towards us.
“Your Majesty!! You must evacuate immediately!”
"You are... the Royal Guard, are you not?"
“Let's retreat for now. Isn't there an underground cave at the altar?”
“My family… Ellua, Sanseru, Gamalko. Where are they all?”
“Your Majesty… they are all…”
“We are sorry…”
It seemed the pig king's family was all dead.
The pig king closed his eyes for a moment. Then he opened them again, as if he'd made a decision.
“I understand. Everyone, let's move to the emergency cave.”
“And this person is…”
“Ah, this is our Savior. Savior, please come with us for now.”
“Yes. Let's find a safe place first.”
And so, leaving the ruined kingdom behind us, we climbed back up the mountain.
*
“It was here?”
The emergency cave was supposedly under the altar. But the entrance had disappeared because of the Grand Divine Power Release I'd used earlier, so everyone was searching for it.
“Where is it?”
“W-well… it was definitely around here…”
Since it was my doing, I helped them clear the rubble to find the entrance.
And then,
“Oink?! H-here it is! I see a passage leading underground.”
“Alright, we're saved!”
Starting with the king, they went down one by one. The entrance was narrow, so it took quite a while for each person to enter.
"Savior...?"
"I'll go last."
There was a reason I insisted on going last.
'They're coming.'
As expected, this trial wasn't going to end that easily.
When I was first summoned, I was too distracted by the pigs' dance to notice properly, but now I could feel it clearly. I could feel the vibrations in the air from the beating of wings in the distance.
Just as almost all the pigs had entered the cave,
Vwoooooooooom!!!!
The hornets reappeared, filling the sky.
It wasn't just that their numbers had increased.
“Is that… the queen?”
A queen hornet, about five meters in size, appeared. Unusually, the queen's upper body and face looked like those of a beautiful human woman.
I was surprised by that, but then something even more surprising happened…
“Are you the savior of the Pukteu tribe?”
It was speaking to me.
“Eh...?”
“The Pukteu tribe is a lost cause anyway. So why don't you join us?”
‘What the hell is she talking about…?’
Even if I wanted to, I couldn't because of the mission...
Still, to buy some time for the pigs who hadn't entered the cave yet, I decided to hear her out.
The hornets were a race called the Kaliph.
They claimed to have been in a sort of symbiotic relationship(?) with the Pukteu tribe.
Although the Pukteu tribe may not have known it, the Kaliph tribe protected them from other predators in the area in exchange for eating the Pukteu pigs whenever they were hungry.
'So... they were just being farmed.'
But the situation had begun to change.
A while ago, a territorial dispute began with the invasion of wyverns.
So they increased their food supply, which made the Pukteu king feel threatened and perform the savior summoning ritual.
The Pukteu tribe's insistence on performing the summoning ritual drastically raised the danger level, which became the cause of this invasion. It also served the purpose of securing more numbers to defeat the wyverns.
"We have almost seized victory in our battle against the wyverns. However, our attacks cannot penetrate the Wyvern King's skin, so we cannot land the decisive blow. All you need to do is deliver the final blow to the Wyvern King."
‘Wait, you mean here?’
And just as I was thinking 'no way', a system message appeared.
Ding~
[Will you become the savior of the Kaliph tribe? Or will you remain the savior of the Pukteu tribe? The grade of the reward will change depending on your choice.]
A branching point.
These sometimes appear after the 50th floor. It's a trial where the difficulty and reward change based on your choice. I heard they occasionally appear on lower floors too, but this is the first time I've seen such a proposal in this life.
Hearing this, the Pukteu tribe pigs huddled together at the cave entrance, looking at me with sparkling, pleading eyes.
"Savior... please..."
“Savior, we beg you… please save us…”
I took a moment to organize my thoughts.
And in less than a second, I reached a conclusion.
‘Obviously the Pukteu tribe. It's clear that siding with the hornets is a B-rank difficulty trial, and siding with the pigs is an S-rank trial, right?’
I am Lee Do-hee.
A Dopamine Battle Sex Addict, and a hunter specializing in S-rank trials.
Some might say I'm always getting unfairly targeted, but I actually like it.
There probably aren't many people like me who wish they'd get unfairly targeted.
There was no need to give an answer.
I applied all my buffs up to the fourth stage, reinforced my body with divine power, and kicked off the ground, dashing forward.
I could see the human-like queen hornet's expression change to one of alarm.
“Sorry, but I like it better when the difficulty is high.”
The surrounding hornets charged, but it was too late. The ground cratered beneath me as the muscles in my legs compressed to their limit, and then—
Pwoong!!
My body shot into the air like a spring.
Puuuk!!
In the blink of an eye, I leaped up and drove my spear straight into the queen's head.
“Kkieeek!"
With a final shriek, the queen's head exploded and she died.
Unfortunately, the hornets didn't fall just because their queen did. Perhaps she was just a command unit, as the hornets began to attack us chaotically.
I ran to the narrow cave entrance and blocked the hornets. I fought them off, feeling the pigs' gazes full of respect from behind me.
And that was the beginning of the battle.
Starting with the hornets I killed at the cave entrance, I followed the Pukteu tribe's guidance and destroyed all the hornets' habitats.
Their stingers weren't very effective against me either. A well-aimed, powerful sting might have done something, but a casual jab only left a slight scratch.
Perhaps they were a species that had evolved for physical combat, as they didn't have any serious poison.
And so, for a week.
With a single spear, I exterminated the Kaliph tribe. They had no special units.
The queens had no combat ability, and they were a species with no strengths other than their numbers.
Moreover, they were weak on defense.
Forced to desperately protect the larvae in their nests, they couldn't even take advantage of their superiority in aerial combat.
The wyverns gratefully took care of the remnants I left behind.
But there was a problem.
'Why isn't the trial ending...?'
Thinking the wyverns might be the issue, I even got a promise from the Wyvern King himself to protect the Pukteu tribe, but the trial still didn't end.
I found the answer when I went to see the Pukteu tribe.
"There are... no females?"
"Haa... that's right. Our race... is finished."
The king calmly announced the end of his race.
The other pigs were all lying on the floor of the cave with devastated expressions. The atmosphere was as if they were all suffering from a collective depression.
'So that's why the trial didn't end. Because I haven't saved the Pukteu tribe....'
I sensed that I was fucked.
'This... I can't even get pregnant for them, can I?'
Setting aside whether interspecies pregnancy was even possible, because of that Semen-Dynamics-Conversion-whatever that Irene installed in my uterus, all sperm gets converted into divine power.
'But then why isn't it showing up as a failed trial?'
It seemed there was still some way to solve this.