Maxim P.O.V

"Thanks, we'll join you in a bit but we have wounded on our hands."

Captain Zhang nodded 

"Understandable, well, I'm sure you know where to find us. Pack it up!"

He started giving orders to his men who started to get in the car, he himself got into the driver's seat and stepped on the gas. The car sped off into the dense forest as Maxim and his team were left in shock at what just happened.

Simon was the first to talk.

"Sir, I think we should get back now. I'm pretty sure that Ben is really fucked up right now"

"Damn, we got to go!"

Maxim still had adrenaline pumping through him from the whole incident. The wasps had been relentless in their chase and they had wasted lot's of ammo on taking them down since they were fast moving targets as well as being quite small.

The group headed back towards the now deserted battlefield that was littered with corpses of the wasps, hundreds of them having been scattered everywhere but there was a straight line of corpses that was caused by Ben and Maxim when they were luring them away from the machine gunner group.

It looked like Ben was doing quite a good job before he got stabbed by a stinger.

"Alright, you guys are going to help organize a better defense in case of another attack. I'm going back to base to see what the fuck happened to Ben."

Maxim instructed both James and Simon back to Fayetteville to deal with the incident. The wasps had more than likely been after the residents that lived there, so it made sense that all the citizens who saw the wasps coming instantly locked their doors and blockaded them with whatever furniture they could get their hands on.

James scratched his head as he saw the mess that a few bees that only took five people to take town had caused.

"Sir, if we don't have a permanent way of dealing with these monsters then I'm sure things will only go downhill from here on out. Soldiers have told me that the citizens trust in us have started to die out, we need to think of something fast!"

Maxim nodded before sighing.

"Just...deal with them, I'm gonna see what's wrong with Ben. Also, get the hotels open we've got a lot of guests coming in, hopefully they can solve some of the problems because we for sure can't"

"Yes sir"

James and Simon headed back into Fayetteville as the residents started to open their doors once again since they heard that the shooting had stopped. None of the citizens had any injuries since they had acted quite fast during the event, though, the soldiers that were fending off the wasps didn't look to hot and probably needed to be taken back to the hospital as well. 

Maxim pulled his radio out.

"Guys, we're gonna need those adventurers. Tell them to get over here"

---

Flander P.O.V

"Sylvia, wake up!"

Flander and Sylvia both slept like logs as soon as they finished eating. The food that they had gotten was better than anything they had eaten before, ever since they left their village.

This was obviously a given since they were taken straight from the royal kitchens but it was still a shock for the both of them since they had been eating nothing but scraps of meat and the occasional fruit or vegetable. To them, the soldiers were being excessively generous to a couple of nobodies that had just arrived seeking fortune.

Then, after that, they didn't do much other than fall onto their beds and passed out instantly. Being an adventurer was really, REALLY tiring. Especially when you constantly had to fight hand to hand combat with monsters that had greater physical abilities than you. The bedding, to them, was just as good as what they imagined the royal palaces bed's would be like.

And they just slept,

and slept,

and slept,

until Flanders eyes snapped open.

He rubbed his eyes as he got up from the best rest he had gotten in the past few years, the cold hadn't managed to penetrate any part of the building and the interior of the building was even warmer than the outside.

probably some type of magic, maybe Sylvia could ask about it later

Knock

Knock

Knock

"Excuse me, we need both of you right now there's been an incident."

A man knocked on the door as Flander had just sat upright on his bed. He glanced at Sylvia, who was still very much asleep.

"Sylvia wake up!"

He tried shaking her awake to no avail, she wasn't budging in the slightest. All she did was groan and pull the sheets over herself and turn towards the other side.

Well, isn't this just great!

"Do you need both of us?"

"One of you will be enough, we just need someone who knows monsters"

"Alright, I'll be out in a minute"

Flander heard the footsteps of the man on the other side of the door leaving before he got up and started putting on his leather armor. The armor itself was quite poorly made but that was all that he could afford when considering their financial situation. 

Since they were living below the poverty line, they had to pinch every penny that they could. This meant no fancy stuff, so Flander was left with an apprentices leather armor and his father's old sword which had dulled after such a long period of time of use, so he was basically swinging around a glorified club and hoping it would kill everything.

There was a reason he wasn't on any monster hunting missions.

Despite this, he still had a plethora of knowledge that he had gotten (eavesdropped) from other adventurers so he was still confident that he could help with whatever was going on.

Alright, let's go

He opened the weird door handle and quietly closed the door behind him before heading down the flight of stairs. Looking out from one of the windows, he could see that the soldiers were scrambling around in a panic, which definitely spelled bad news for him.

Flander finally reached the bottom of the stairs, where one of the soldiers was waiting for him. When he saw him come down, he immediately motioned for Flander to follow him and headed out the door.

"We've had an incident. A bunch of those wasps attacked one of our civilian populations and we need to see why they did it"

As they were walking, he saw someone get hauled out of one of the magical contraptions and into the healing facility that he was taken to last night. The man was panting and had a large cut on his arm, he looked like he was half conscious because other than the heavy breathing he wasn't moving at all.

"Was it that bad!?"

"yes"

The soldier had answered him quickly before they walked towards the contraption. This time, Flander knew how to open the doors and they got in without a word. 

Sitting in the front driver's seat was the man that James's superior, Maxim.

Without a word, he stepped on the gas the moment Flander and the soldier had gotten into the car and they sped off on the now well used path since there had been so many contraptions on the road, making it much easier to notice where they were going and not take a wrong turn.

He glanced back from the rearview mirror

"We didn't lose anyone, but I'm sure you saw Ben get hauled into the hospital looking half dead. There was a lot of weird shit going on in that battle so you're gonna have to help us with this or we've got nothing"

Flander nodded, but looked straight ahead as they started to drive past the forests and towards a town. The town had people walking about but also had an excess of soldiers that were shoveling the bodies of the many wasps that had littered the battlefield. 

"How..how many giant wasps did you kill!?"

Flander was completely in shock at the scale of the killing, the ground was covered with their bodies that had been destroyed with bullet holes everywhere. Parts of their stingers and legs and especially their heads had been completely blown off from the rest of their body. 

Giant wasps weren't large threats individually. Sure, they could kill one or two normal civilians but a professional adventurer could handle a few of them no problem. A few hundred of them was more than a small problem, it would have wiped out a smaller kingdom's economy from all the damage it would have done to both their structures and their citizens.

They all got out of the car and walked towards the bodies, Flander watched the soldiers haul the one's that were mostly intact to another large vehicle that had a huge box on it's back. They threw the bodies in before going back to find more, it was truly a massacre if there was only a single casualty on the U.S's side. 

They neared the forest area where there were even larger numbers of wasps there. However the thing that caught Flander's eye was the giant wasp that had it's head blown off.

"A queen wasp! That's a C+ rank monster, it would have taken 5 C rank adventurers alone to take it down if we forget about the hundreds of soldiers and drones it would have as well as her royal guards! What in the world..."

At this point, Flander was feeling kind of light headed from the constant surprises he was dealing with. 

What is going on anymore!

"So?"

Flander leaned down and looked at the queen. It was most definitely a queen wasp, something that would take the lives of many rookie adventurers that were foolish enough to mislabel it as a normal Giant Wasp. That was usually the last mistake they ever made in the world before meeting their end by a stinger.

"This is a queen wasp, not only that, it's the biggest one I've ever seen. They usually come out from places that spawn monsters, like dungeons.... which makes me think you have at least one dungeon in those forests"

"Dungeon?"

Flander was told that they weren't informed about much of this continent since they had come from somewhere else so maybe they didn't have dungeons there but dungeons to an adventurer were identical to their lifeline.

"A dungeon is a place that continuously spawns monsters without pause. For us adventurers, this is our lifeline since this place generates infinite profit for us. Many countries consider it a gold mine since monster parts could be sold for a large sum and can be used for making armor, weapons, potions, food, and other things that would be instantly bought up"

Maxim raised his eyebrow at this. He waved around at all the parts that they had gathered.

"So, all of this?"

Flander nodded slowly.

"They can all be sold, though unfortunately their states are less than ideal so you would probably have to sell less than the market price to get people to buy the average D rank wasp. However, for the queen and her guards...that's a whole different story. They'll be bought up regardless of their condition"

Maxim looked at the charred corpses of the wasps. The flamethrowers had certainly ruined them but he wasn't going to be ungrateful because if those guys hadn't toasted them then Maxim would probably be laying down right next to Ben in the hospital.

"However, I think that the adventurers guild would have the final say in this."

Maxim sighed. He knew that they had to get the adventurers guild in New Fort Bragg just because of incidences like these, they couldn't just rely on firepower alone to deal with monsters. It was both inefficient and a waste of ammo due to the constant threat of different types of monsters, some may even be bulletproof. 

Though he knew that they had enough weaponry to deal with all of them, they didn't have enough to last. They needed people who knew how to deal with these things and fast.

"The adventurers guild and merchant's guild are arriving in a few hours with all their representatives and their workers. We'll bring this incident up to them when we start the meeting. C'mon, let's go get you and your girlfriend some breakfast"

"yeah..Wait, she's not my girlfriend!"

"Whatever you say buddy"

---

So...wassup guys.

I've been gone for a while since I was pretty burned out, so I started a new story and it's been doing pretty good so far. You guys should check it out, though it probably isn't for this novels audience.

Moving onwards, I think the chapter lengths will be a bit shorter since I feel like writing so much isn't doing any justice when I could easily just split one chapter into two separate chapters and have a much more detailed and straightforward chapter.

This story won't be gone, I'll still update twice or three times a week, but I'm now balancing two novels on my plate.

Also, I'll be opening a patreon and kofi in a bit once I figure out how to let paypal accept my postal code so it would be greatly appreciated if you guys could donate even a dollar for my suffering schedule.

Anyways, see you guys next chapter!

W.O.V