So the moment has finally come.
'Appraisal of the Finjigoat's Status failed.' 'Appraisal of the Finjigoat's Status failed.' 'Appraisal of the Finjigoat's Status failed.' 'Appraisal of the Finjigoat's Status failed.' 'Appraisal of the High Finjigoat's Status failed.' A single bee squad was flying in the sky above me.
The atmosphere was clearly different from their usual cautious hovering. They had definitely marked me as an enemy and were ready to fight.
The nest's height had reached about halfway to the target point.
Once they got that close, the bees' behavior had started to shift little by little, and it seemed they had finally reached the point where they could no longer leave me be.
That said, it was still just one squad.
Were they underestimating me, or was this a scouting force sent ahead to test the waters?
Either way, don't even think you can beat me with a single squad when I've built a nest.
I hefted the Spider Morningstar.
The nest was constructed in a web-like lattice pattern, but there were gaps wide enough to swing the Spider Morningstar through from the inside. Even so, those gaps weren't nearly large enough for bees with bodies roughly two and a half meters long to squeeze through.
They couldn't break through the web, but I could attack freely from inside it.
Well, they could always fly away at any time, so I guess it was a stalemate.
Two Level 5s charged in.
Hmph.
Even if two of them crashed in at the same time, my nest didn't budge.
My Spider Silk skill was at Level 8. Even at low levels, my threads boasted incredible durability, and as my level had risen, that toughness had only been honed further.
Sure enough, the two bees slammed into the nest's surface and got their bodies caught in the unyielding threads.
Despite charging at considerable speed with those massive bodies, my nest hadn't taken any damage at all. Literally, not a single vibration.
The threads strung throughout my nest possessed absurd durability, plus a rubber-like elasticity that absorbed impacts. When subjected to a certain amount of force, the threads would stretch and dissipate the shock.
The bees' ramming attacks didn't even reach that threshold.
That was all they had.
Their attack power was so low that I could tank it with raw durability alone, without even needing to dissipate the shock.
It wasn't that the bees' ramming attacks were weak, mind you. From my observations, these bees were actually quite formidable. Among the Monsters the bees brought back, some were even the likes of those giant snakes.
One-sided attacks from the air, poison stinger strikes, attacks powered by their imposing physiques — any one of them would normally be a serious threat. Being airborne meant most attacks couldn't reach them, and they could land preemptive strikes with impunity.
That was probably why they were weak against anti-air attacks. My Spider Morningstar hitting every single shot was likely because they simply weren't accustomed to that level of vigilance.
So yeah, in a normal fight, the bees were a pretty tough enemy.
But only in a normal fight.
My trump card, My Home, was anything but normal.
Abnormal defensive power. Abnormal restraining power. Abnormal siege capability.
The bees had probably never seen tactics like this before.
After all, I was wielding the ultimate trump card of spiders — operated by a human mind.
I left the two bees that had rammed the nest and gotten themselves stuck where they were.
Turning toward the remaining three, who still hadn't grasped the situation, I hurled the Spider Morningstar.
The leader bee couldn't dodge and took the hit dead-on.
If you're going to aim for something, you go for the head first.
With it stuck fast, I used centrifugal force and the momentum of the fall to slam the leader bee's body downward against the nest.
Leader eliminated.
The remaining two were frozen in place, at a loss for what to do now that their leader had been taken out.
Nice targets.
I finished off the higher-level one first with the Spider Morningstar.
Then, the last remaining bee finally snapped back to its senses, but what it did after that was pathetic. Whether it was going for a desperate gambit or not, I couldn't tell, but it charged straight at me.
Hadn't it seen what happened to the other two?
Well, that reckless attack obviously wasn't going to reach me. The final bee crashed helplessly into the nest and stopped moving.
That was anticlimactic.
These bees had been so terrifying when they were descending on me, but once I had my nest set up, they were completely helpless.
Given that the nest didn't even shudder from their ramming, no matter how many came, they'd never be able to reach me. That much was proven by the nest's defensive power.
In games, when your defense is high enough, even attacks from trash mobs wouldn't deal any damage. That was exactly the relationship between my nest and the bees.
I had imagined their attacks would deal enough damage to at least require some patching up, even if they couldn't break through.
Hundreds more bees were still swarming in the sky above.
At first, I had been terrified by the sheer overwhelming numbers. But once it was clear they could never breach the nest, the situation changed entirely.
Even if there were a hundred of them, even a thousand — as long as they couldn't break through the nest, those stingers would never reach me.
This meant my chances of escape were finally looking really good.
I set about putting down the bees I'd captured, feeling pretty good about myself.