Chapter 158
Maple and Pain continued to explore the dense jungle.
“Maple...”
“Did you say something?”
“No... Nothing.”
Pain looked up at the sky.
The deep green leaves were covering it, but those leaves moved even when Pain was still.
This was because Pain was riding on top of monster Maple’s back.
Maple was moving through the trees, but looked like she was having a hard time.
“Maple, to the left. There was nothing on the right.”
“Understood.”
Maple walked in a way that made it look like she would attack at any moment.
Sometimes she would climb a tree trunk and move from tree to tree.
Pain was able to hang onto Maple without much trouble, and so Maple’s somewhat strange movements were not an issue.
And so their exploration continued smoothly.
“It’s a monster! I will kill it!”
As Maple said, a monster was coming right at them.
The thing that approached them was a tree-like monster called a treant.
Pain had seen these monsters before.
They were the ones that had been able to deal him the little damage that he had taken.
“Maple, they will attack with moves that pierce you at the feet...”
“What? You said what?”
Before Pain could finish talking, the area in front of Maple had turned into a sea of fire.
As this was a game, the trees did not burn, but it was nothing so mild that the tree-like monsters could survive.
The treants turned into charcoal and the items dropped on the ground.
“Uh...nevermind. We should pick up the items.”
“Ah, right.”
Maple’s monster hand picked up the items, and they disappeared.
Pain squinted his eyes and looked up at the sky. The trees were still in the way, and he could not see it.
They were attacked several times after that, but Maple trampled and blew them all away.
As he was able to leave all of the fighting to Maple, Pain put his power to a different use.
“Maple, stop. I can hear something.”
Pain had attention to spare for their surroundings, and so he noticed it easily.
The thing that he could faintly hear was the buzzing of wings.
“Should we go?”
/p>
“Yeah.”
As being discreet made no sense for Maple, they moved in the vague direction of the wings. And what they found, was a giant beehive in the top of a tree. There was something that looked like a black belt flying around it.
The sounds of wings were coming from that belt, and the two were able to guess what it was that twisted in the sky.
“I see. Well, what should we do?”
“I can lure them over and protect you?”
“It’s not so easy...well, maybe it is...”
Pain thought for a second, then decided not to think.
Maple considered that there was an HP limitation and that her partner was Pain, and decided that she would not use ‘Dedicated Affection.’
“Alright, I’m going!”
Maple jumped out into the clearing that was right under the beehive. When she was about 4 meters away from the hive, a giant bee appeared in front of her.
It had a beautiful crown on its head.
It had the aura of a real queen bee.
“It looks stronger than the bee I fought a long time ago?”
As Maple wondered about this, the queen bee let out a noise.
The black belt, which was a horde of bees, started to shoot down at Maple like a giant arrow.
The bees were flying at an incredible speed as they crashed into Maple. Of course, all of them bounced off.
“‘Provoke’! Come at me!”
The queen bee gave order after order. The bees would attack one point, then surround her, then attack her from the side. But all of the attacks bounced off of Maple, and the dizzy bees could only wait for their next order.
“... ‘Holy Rain.’’”
Pain pulled out his sword and mumbled. Then his sword started to glow white.
Pain swung this sword, and the light shot off as if the covering was being flung forward.
It stopped at five meters, in other words, above the clearing where Maple was, and then burst into a rain of light.
It hit the bees that were distracted by Maple and blew them away.
Pain had just turned into a machine that used area attacks on the bees that were attacking Maple.
“What am I...even doing now...”
Pain mumbled as he saw Maple’s monster body repel the bee stings.
This was not a sight you would see every day.
And after 20 minutes, nearly all of the bees were dead, and Pain went out into the clearing where Maple was.
“You’re unharmed...of course, you are.”
“Pain, the queen bee is coming down!”
Pain and Maple looked up.
As Maple said, the queen bee was slowly descending.
“I’ll cut it down in one hit.”
Pain pushed everything to the back of his mind and held his sword ready.
“Alright, here we go!”
Maple moved her arms and legs and directed her head upwards.
The queen bee was very brave to descend into this land of death, or perhaps she was just very stupid.