It was all the lurching, shuddering movements. It was the discomfiting buzzing sound made by their wings. It was their unsettling appearances. It was that every macabre member of the swarm was bigger than they had any right to be—the last one was the size of a truck, but at least that was a lone grotesquerie. It was that they were flies the size of giant duffel bags!
“The last sentence alone is gross enough!”
Yup. I’d never, not once, fought a fly. I’d always managed to run away and pin the disgusting task on someone else!
“Looking back on it, that one giant fly was the impetus for me earning my dubious reputation of teen boy bra maker. You were the foe who shot down my sex appeal! You’re gonna pay for that, you li—actually, never mind. You’re too gross! I’m outta here!”
I did not like giant flies. I did not like swarms of flies. And I especially did not like swarms of giant flies!
“Ewww! The buzzing alone is eww-worthy! I’m getting goosebumps! I’ll take bumpy tentacles, but I draw the line at goosebumpy arms!”
Never in my wildest dreams did I think I would be using it for this, but I found myself using the “Equilibrium Ear Cuff: Sense of Equilibrium Stabilization (major). Autosuggestion Nullification. Hearing Assistance. Sound Modulation. Slots seven items.” to turn down my sense of hearing. Ahhh. There went that infernal buzzing. Now that I could focus, I trotted back to the stairwell and set about building an enormous ice wall.
“There. I should be able to concentrate without that gross noi—nooo, just thinking about it destroys my concentration! Ew, ew, ew! The memory alone is too gross!”
The flies buzzed about in random, unpredictable patterns. At first, I tried to stay in the air myself and track them with my eyes, but it was too difficult. That’s when I employed Future Sight, handed the reigns to my funnels, and let them get to chasing and shooting down flies. The funnels trailed razor-sharp Magic Threads behind them, sewing a deadly web punctuated by a hail of bullets. I used Area Analyze to manipulate the funnels (while making a point to not watch the flies). Unfortunately, the level 42 variable flies were too strong to one-shot. The dogfight was wreaking havoc on my MP, but the last thing I wanted was to bust out the martial arts. I didn’t want to touch the darn things! And the bug splatter was even worse! I might have liked seeing girls with splatter all over their face, but I hated being on the receiving end of the equation!
This looked like it was going to take a while. While the funnels sorted it out, I plonked down some cushions I’d stolen—I mean, borrowed—from the Beast Kingdom’s throne room and had a nice little tea break with Sleeping Beauty and Slimey.
Sip sip sip. Ahhh.
I had a little agar jelly from the Beast Kingdom, so I diced that up and melted it over a flame. Good thing that agar was best in small doses, huh? I cut it up some more, mixed it with anko until it was transparent, and heated it over a low flame until I could see clear down to the bottom. Then I chilled it. Serves three.
“Ta-da. Yokan—that’s a kind of jelly dessert back where I come from—as a snack with our tea. The latest from Haruka Freelancing, Ltd. Try it; it’s good when it’s nice and fresh like this. I don’t think you guys have ever had anything like it before.”
“Thank you! Is good!”
Jiggle jiggle!
Good! It was a hit. Meanwhile, four of the funnels had set up a blockade around the stairs to stop a fly raid on the ice wall, and the other twenty were whizzing around madly, spraying bullets left and right. Looked like a good 70 percent of the flies were left.
Sip sip sip sip sip. Ahhh.
My ability to control the funnels and send them magic were both improving, and the latter, dramatically so. My Area Analyze abilities and range were improving, provided I focused hard. My accuracy was rising, my lag was dropping, my fine-control was fine-tuning by the day. My ability to touch a fly and not recoil…was making zero growth. Ew, ew, ew!
“Uggggh! This is a level of realistic detail that bodes ominously for underwear making. I guess I have three blindfolds now, but something tells me that won’t help one bit… Oh ho! Fly down! Go, extermination squad!”
Sip sip sip. Ahhhh.
“Looks like they’re done. Let’s pick up the spellstones and be on our way. The bug splatter should have vanished along with the corpses…I hope. I don’t relish the thought of squelching our way across a sticky floor.
…Sip sip?
We collected our (splatter-free) spellstones, opened the room to the hidden door, tossed the funnels inside, and closed it.
“Yup! ’Cause the biggest fly of all is in there! Skewer away, boys. And have fun, ’cause it’s gonna be a close-quarters fight.”
It may have been a level 42 Variable Giant Fly, but all it had was size. It wasn’t a hard fight—it wasn’t a Lord of the Flies or anything.
“Okay, fiiiine. I’ll put up with the gross factor just this once and see what it dropped. Ooh, and there’s a treasure chest.”
Thank you, broken luck stat!
“A ‘Germ Jar: Pathogenic germ fermentation’? Pass! I want to seal this away, but I can’t put it in my item bag. I have food in there! I don’t want to ferment my provisions! Or get mold poisoning! …Why did this world get so gross all of a sudden? Hmm… You know the idiots are so stupid they wouldn’t know what a cold was if they caught it. Think I could convince them to eat this and see if they can digest the toxic mold?”
Wiggle wiggle.
Come on, broken luck stat! Get it together! I sealed the jar tight and shoved it deep into my item bag. The mold wouldn’t even make a good weapon, because it was so easy for those kinds of weapons to backfire. I wanted to destroy it, but how? Burning it was asking for trouble. The idiots probably weren’t a good choice either… The nerds? Maybe they’d be so horrified they’d die on the spot. Wait. No, no, no! The last thing I wanted was some grotesque fusion of nerds and molds, a new single-celled organism biohazard on steroids!
The treasure chest coughed up a “Magi Elemental Bangle: Magic Conversion Rate Multiplier (large). MP Absorption (large). Four Elemental Magics. +DEF.” Now that was a good find, especially when we weren’t that deep in the dungeon! It would be just the thing for Sleeping Beauty. The buffs would help prevent her from running out of magic, and while she was a Holy magic main, it never hurt to have a buff in the other elements.
“I thought these monsters were annoyingly tough for such a shallow dungeon, but if we’re getting gear like this, I take back everything I said. Here ya go, Sleeping Beauty. Energy efficient and buffs your elemental magic. You don’t have a full set of gear yet, so outfitting you is gonna be our main goal, okay?”
“Thank you, so much… Is lovely! I will, treasure it.”
Sleeping Beauty was enchanted by the bangle’s pretty silver filigree. She bowed super, super low, but I just felt bad—I hadn’t added mithril to the Magi Elemental Bangle, so it was nothing compared to Dancer Girl and Miss Armor Rep’s equipment. Oh well. If she was happy, she was happy.
I would’ve put it first in line on my mithril priority list if it also boosted intelligence, but it didn’t. Still, Sleeping Beauty loved it, so that was reason enough for me to plan to add mithril tonight. It might not have been world’s best ring, but we had a glut of treasures. Why not prioritize the one she loved? She’d been separated from her body for centuries, and now that she was back in one piece, she deserved a little fun. …Maybe a lot of fun, if we included our nighttime activities. The flesh is willing, and so is the spirit…