"The power is decent enough, I suppose. About the same as when the hornets used it."
Rei muttered to himself after watching the effect of Set's Acid Breath.
Acid Breath—true to its name, it was a breath attack that released acid in a mist form. However, its power was only on par with what the hornets had displayed.
When the hornets had used it, multiple individuals had fired simultaneously, and the synergy between them had made it fairly potent.
But with Acid Breath freshly learned at Level 1, it naturally lacked that kind of punch.
(Well, the power issue should resolve itself as the level goes up, so I probably don't need to worry too much. Though I do wonder just how many enemies out there could actually provide this Acid Breath skill.)
Beast Magic carried the tremendous advantage of letting the user easily acquire skills used by other monsters.
But at the same time, it was equally true that at low levels like Level 1, many skills weren't particularly practical.
Of course, since any skill's usefulness ultimately depended on how it was wielded, virtually none were completely worthless.
"Set, we're done checking the skill, so now we need to find the Queen Bee. Searching from the sky would be fastest, but we'd risk being attacked by flying monsters. I'd rather avoid that, so I want to search from the ground. Can you track these hornets' nest with Sense of Smell Enhancement?"
"Gruu? ...Grururururu."
At Rei's words, Set hesitated briefly, then brought its face close to the two hornet corpses Rei hadn't yet stored away—carcasses already drained of their magic stones.
Naturally, with their torsos torn open, the stench drifting from them was that of blood.
Even so, Set carefully sniffed the hornets' scent... then sniffed the surrounding air.
The problem was that hornets traveled through the air.
A monster walking on the ground left its scent directly on the surface it touched. Flying hornets, by contrast, left traces that the wind could easily scatter.
Making that trail trackable came down to luck, in a sense—or perhaps to Set's sense of smell enhanced by the Sense of Smell Enhancement skill.
"Think you can follow the scent, Set?"
"Grururu!"
Set purred in a way that clearly said, "I've got this!"
That confidence was unmistakable, and it was undeniably reassuring for Rei.
Given the circumstances, there was also a chance other monsters might discover them while they searched for the nest.
...Though for Rei and Set, who wanted to gather as many magic stones as possible, that wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
Still, a lot had happened today, and they were tired.
Honestly, Rei would have preferred to defeat the queen and call it a day.
"A queen bee commanding hornets that size. Depending on what we find, I can't rule out the possibility that it's an A-Rank Monster. Two A-Rank Monsters in one day, huh?"
The thought brought a twinge of weariness, but all things considered, it wasn't a bad prospect at all.
If they could take down two A-Rank Monsters today, they wouldn't need to push themselves hunting more on the remaining days. They could simply focus on finding monsters for the sake of Beast Magic.
Viewed in that light, Rei felt the mental fatigue from the Giant Wolf battle ease at least somewhat.
...If someone asked an adventurer in Gilm—and one skilled enough to defeat an A-Rank Monster, at that—whether they'd want to fight two A-Rank Monsters in a single day, the answer would probably be "Are you an idiot?" Or they'd assume it was a joke and not take the question seriously.
At the very least, those who would willingly do such a thing were a very small minority.
The fact that they weren't entirely nonexistent, though, was probably par for the course in Gilm, a city that drew adventurers from all over.
The rumor that skilled adventurers tended to be eccentrics wasn't entirely baseless.
"Alright, let's go. ...Still, something about the word 'queen' gives me a bad feeling."
What came to mind at that moment wasn't a queen bee, but the Queen Dragonias.
It had been the first fight since reincarnating in Elgin where Rei had pushed his mana to the absolute limit, so the memory was bound to be seared into his mind.
At the very least, there was no question it had been an extraordinarily troublesome opponent.
So much so that it could easily have been an S-Rank Monster, let alone A-Rank.
(Well, I doubt something like the Dragonias Queen is just out here somewhere. ...This is the Forest of Magic, though, so "just out here somewhere" doesn't really apply.)
Precisely because it was the Forest of Magic, it wouldn't be surprising to find something on the level of the Dragonias Queen.
After all, the Black Snake—which had completely evaded Rei and Set's awareness—had been living right near the entrance to the Forest of Magic as though it were the most natural thing in the world.
"Set, when we say 'queen,' it could be a dangerous opponent like the Dragonias Queen. Stay alert while searching."
"Gruu!"
Set purred in response, as if to say, "Leave it to me!"
Seeing Set's confident demeanor, Rei decided he probably didn't need to worry that much and lightened his mood.
What helped him think that way was the fundamental difference between the hornets and the Dragonias.
The hornets, at roughly fifty centimeters long, were certainly not weak.
A Low-Rank Adventurer who fought one would more likely end up dead than not.
But at around C-Rank, an adventurer could win against a hornet one-on-one.
Compare that to the Dragonias, which even the Centaurs couldn't defeat without attacking in groups.
Given the gap in strength, it would probably take about ten hornets to bring down a single Dragonias.
Possibly more.
By that logic, the hornet queen shouldn't be as dangerous as the Dragonias Queen.
It was partly self-persuasion, but Rei reasoned along those lines as he pressed deeper into the Forest of Magic with Set leading the way.
Set's pace was by no means fast.
Moving while using the Sense of Smell Enhancement skill inevitably slowed it down.
Still, that was better than rushing and losing the scent trail entirely.
(That said, the hornets are flying. The longer we take, the more the wind scatters the scent, so ideally we should hurry at least a little.)
So he thought, but rushing Set here would accomplish nothing.
If anything, pressuring Set carelessly could cause it to lose the trail.
Better to let Set focus on tracking while Rei served as its escort.
After pushing on for a while, Set suddenly purred.
But it wasn't the sound of having found the queen's nest—it was a warning.
Reading Set's reaction, Rei readied his Death Scythe and Twilight Spear... and then the buzzing he'd heard earlier reached his ears again.
"Judging by that sound, it's hornets again. That's a bit troublesome. Or should I be glad we might be close to the nest?"
Even as he muttered, Rei struck first, hurling the Twilight Spear toward the source of the sound.
He hadn't pinpointed the enemy's exact location, but given the situation, it was better to attack preemptively.
He used the Twilight Spear rather than a disposable spear because, when throwing blind, he wanted something he could recall to his hand immediately if it missed.
The released Twilight Spear snapped branches between the hornets—or pierced clean through them—before skewering the torso of a hornet lurking behind.
And it didn't lose any momentum after piercing just one; it skewered several hornets in a single throw.
Struck by the preemptive attack, the hornets likely shifted into a combat state.
Multiple buzzing sounds bore down on Rei and Set's position.
"Hmph!"
Rei hurled the Twilight Spear once more toward the oncoming sound.
The hornets could move swiftly through the air, but even they couldn't dodge the Twilight Spear's throw. Again, several were killed in one strike.
"Grurururururu!"
Set activated its Ice Arrow skill, and roughly fifty shafts of ice materialized in midair.
The hornets still weren't visible, but Set unleashed the full volley without hesitation.
Rei's Twilight Spear was undeniably powerful, but at the end of the day, it was a single projectile.
...Though since piercing one hornet didn't diminish its force, it could indeed skewer several at once.
Unlike that single spear strike, however, Set's Ice Arrow numbered fifty.
Having reached Level 5, each arrow carried tremendous power—not quite at the Twilight Spear's level, but devastating nonetheless.
And all fifty were loosed simultaneously.
It was an attack that could only be described as area suppression.
"Gigigi-gigigigigi!"
Amid those shrieks, many hornets were pierced through their bodies and dropped to the ground.
No—the ones that managed to let out cries, screams even, were the lucky ones.
The less fortunate had their heads outright shattered by the ice arrows.
(Looking at it like this, Ice Arrow really is an incredibly versatile skill.)
Among all of Set's skills, only Water Ball, Poison Claw, Ice Arrow, Optical Camouflage, and Power Crush had surpassed Level 5.
Of those, Poison Claw and Power Crush were for close combat, Optical Camouflage was a support skill for invisibility, and only Water Ball and Ice Arrow offered ranged attacks.
Water Ball could launch water spheres roughly a meter in diameter—high attack power per ball, but only four of them. The ability to maneuver them somewhat freely in midair was a significant advantage, though.
Compared to that, fifty ice arrows was an overwhelmingly powerful offensive option.
"In the end, I barely had to do anything."
True to Rei's disappointed murmur, the swarm of approaching hornets had been completely annihilated by the ice arrows.
He had thrown the Twilight Spear, sure, but that was the extent of his contribution.
If asked who killed more, Set or himself, the answer was obvious without a second thought.
"Grurururu!"
At Rei's words, Set let out a happy cry, as if to say, "Aren't I amazing?"
Since its amazingness was beyond question, Rei stroked Set's head to its heart's content.
"You were incredible, Set. You showed me exactly what you're capable of. You really are reliable."
Wasn't this what they called being praised to death?
The thought crossed his mind for a moment, but it was a fact that Set had been genuinely impressive.
Of course, even without Ice Arrow, Rei could have defeated all the hornets himself.
Even so, Set's swift attack deserved praise, not complaint.
Once he finished praising Set, Rei began collecting the hornet corpses.
Unfortunately, since every defeated monster was the same type of hornet, there were no new magic stones to obtain.
"I'd actually like to praise you a bit more, Set. But given the situation, we need to prioritize finding the queen first. I'll give you a proper reward after we take her down."
"Gruuru?"
At Rei's words, Set purred with a complicated expression—disappointed, yet expectant.
For Set, being praised by Rei was clearly an incredibly joyful thing.
That was why it wanted more praise, but it could still accept Rei's reasoning that the queen came first.
And so, Rei and Set resumed their search for the Queen Bee—more precisely, its nest.
What was fortunate this time was that they had just defeated another batch of hornets moments ago.
The scent of the freshly killed hornets had been scattered by the wind, but it allowed them to trace back where the new swarm had come from.
Reading that from Set's behavior, Rei smiled. The swarm that had just attacked them had actually been a blessing in disguise.
That said, the hornets hadn't flown in a straight line from their nest, so Rei and Set still had to wind their way through the Forest of Magic to some extent.
After pushing through the trees for about twenty minutes... Set finally found the hornets' nest.