Koharu and her companions planned to make a base just beyond the tunnel to the wasp nest as part of their plan. It was a lot of work to clear the surrounding brush, down trees, and create a clear space ten yards long. Once that was done, Sinon and Lux made a foundation with their Stoneworking skill, then Lisbeth set down a simple wooden hut with the Carpentry skill.
When finished, it will be better called a bunker, because that's the current plan to handle the wasp nest. Wasps are a swarm-type enemy, and with possibly hundreds of them inside that cave, fighting them by conventional means (the one-at-a-time luring method) would not work. The tunnel itself favors the wasps more than the players, so if they were surrounded they'd be trapped.
So Sinon pulled something out of GGO's playbook -- a bunker.
Construction was relatively easy, thanks to Unital Ring allowing construction virtually anywhere and in seconds for simple designs. The real test is the bunker's durability against the wasp onslaught, but once again they won't be able to test their idea until the battle begins. Fortunately, the five girls won't be fighting alone: Friscoll should bring reinforcements back when he returns from Ruis na Rig. Koharu isn't sure if he can be trusted, but he knows Kirito, Leafa, and Jaymes. She's not sure what would happen if Friscoll betrays them, but she knows her partner doesn't take kindly to traitors.
So for now, she'll place her faith in Friscoll having the same goal as the rest of the Unital Ring players; reaching the center of the world first.
Right now, Silica and Lisbeth watch Misha the bear and Pina take a nap after being fed, a short break from their efforts. Koharu stands a couple feet away, wittling a stick she found and listening to her friends. "When Unital Ring's been beaten, this world will turn back into ALO and GGO again, right?"
"Um...I suppose so?"
Unital Ring is, more or less, a giant crossover limited time event. When the center is reached, the game -- hopefully -- will return everything to normal. Consequently, all of UR's NPCs and pets will cease to exist. Koharu cannot say she has much of an emotional tie to the Patter and Bashin as she did to the Dark Elves and humans of Old Aincrad, but for her friends who do, it will be a painful farewell. A farewell Koharu didn't get to make two years ago.
The artificial intelligence of UR's AI is only comparable to the NPCs of Sword Art: Origin, yet from her experiences, only Premiere and Tia as exceptional. But that's only due to player-NPC interactions, which the girls had a lot of. The AI of the Bashin, Patter, and the pets were complex with minimal interaction, similarly to special NPCs of SAO like Kizmel.
And one day, that will all end. Sounds cruel, but it happened once with SAO, it has happened many times with other Seed games, and it will happen with Unital Ring.
"Even if we're not the ones who beat the game, someone will..."
Lisbeth nods. "For now, we don't have any option other than heading for the goal."
"Yes. Let's do our best to beat this wasp nest."
Forty minutes later, while they were stockpiling resources in the bunket, Friscoll returned with others in tow. Behind him are other members of Team Kirito; Klein, Agil, Argo, and Leafa. After them are former members of the conscripted Mutasina's army, including Holgar and Dikkos, leaders of two of the four guilds that made that army. Zarion, Beeming, and others come from the game Insectsite, then three to four each of the Patter and Bashin. This group was more than twenty in total.
"This is more than we hoped for," Koharu admits as she and Silica walks to Leafa.
"I'm amazed you got this many! I know it's Saturday, but it's still early..."
"Well, that's the thing, He just went running all through Ruis na Ríg and rounded everyone up. Seems like he even picked up Bashin and Patter language at some point."
"Guy's gonna put me outta business," Argo spits with a scowl. She then smirks and continues, "I was the one who reached out to Zarion's group, though."
"Out of our group, only Agil, Argo, Asuna, Jaymes, and Kureha have any fluency in English." Agil, Kureha and Jaymes are Americans by birth and were raised there, so they're naturally fluent in English. The others picked up well enough to communicate. Koharu has never been in an environment in which learning anything beyond Japanese, and for now that remains the same. But if the three would speak English as naturally as they do Japanese are going to be absent at times, someone has to pick up that slack.
"Hey, girl, these fluffies are saying they know about the giant hornets we're about to fight." That was Zarion the rhinoceros beetle, and he gestures to the trio of Patter with him. Koharu recognizes the leader as Chett, a female Patter who had a heroic role the other day against the Life Harvester. Her heroism isn't present today, replaced by a downcast expression. The two others with her, Chinoki and Chilph, bear similar looks. The Patter are weirdly unhappy about being here.
Thanks to grinding her foreign language skill in UR, Koharu can hear Chett's words clearly, "Silica, are you really going to fight the big green wasps?"
"Yes. We must pass through the place where the wasp nest is if we want to go deeper into the forest."
Something clicks in Koharu's head. Maybe she's done a couple of too many vital quests in her Sword Art Online days, but she figures something critical is up. "Is something wrong, Chett? About the wasps?"
"When I was a child, my nana told me that long, long ago, it was terrifying green wasps that drove the Patter off the plains..."
When Chett finished her tale, she was in tears, and Koharu's own cheeks were wet and stained.
Long ago, the Patter occupied a city in the mountains north of the Giyoru Savanna. Their lives were prosperous and in peace for years until one day it all fell apart.
The mountain crumbled, and from the rumble escaped a swarm of green wasps, bigger than the Patter hace ever seen. Fighting and hiding from the wasps was futile as the Patter were killed in astronomical numbers until they abandoned the city for the Giyoru Savanna, only for the dinosaurs there to push them to the Great Wall of Gaiyu. From then on, the Patter lived a life of fear of the amphibians within the cavern, waiting for the promised day in which they reach a land to the far east. That day was a dream until Sinon and Crimson Squad met them.
Though they've reached the promised land, the ancient enemy is present too. For the Patter, this has to be the worse case of irony. Their despair is evident...but things are different now.
"In that case, Chett, this is the perfect opportunity," Sinon says.
"Opportunity? For what?"
"For avenging your ancestors. I suppose they might be a different swarm from the ones that destroyed your city, but they're clearly still the same species. Plus, if we figure out how to vanquish them, we might have a chance to take back your city one day. Assuming there's still a nest there."
"Take back our city..." Chett looks to Chinoki and Chilph, her ears perking up. Her dark countenance brighthens up as she faces the group and says, "Our ancestors were driven out by the green wasps, but they fought bravely. They learned the wasps' weakness, and the elder told that secret to his children, who told their children, and so on. I am the child of Chignook, our current elder. I know the weakness."
As a murmur spreads through the group as the Patter-literate translates to the illiterate, Koharu lowers her brow and approaches Chett and her followers. Ever since Friscoll told them about how the world is separated through checkpoints and she compared it to the usual sequence of SAO's, Koharu knew the order of events were done wrong, which Asuka Empire and Apocalytic Date's groups must've accomplished to some degree. They should've talked to NPCs in the Stiss Ruins, which would lead them to the Patter at the Great Wall of Gaiyu. That would follow a series of quests that would take them here. But since Jaymes and Sinon got to the Patter first, that skipped the natural progression of ALO players' trial in the opening part of Unital Ring.
"Chett, what is the weakness of the wasps?"
"Lobelia flowers."
"Lobelia flowers..." Sinon repeats with a sense of unfamiliarity.
"Lobelia?" Silica, Koharu, Lisbeth, and Lux all cry out in unison.
"Wait, you know it?"
Lux nods, her face as grim as Koharu, the other girls, and the adult males — if not more fearful. "It's...a ingredient material for level-5 paralysis and poison. You wouldn't know of it, Sinon, because it isn't an ingredient in ALO. It's..." Lux pause to swallow her hesitation, then continues, "It's an flower from Sword Art Online, and many members of Laughing Coffin used it to add those attributes to their weapons. Especially him."
She eyes Koharu on her final words, not that Koharu couldn't figure who Lux was identifying. Her "killer," Annihilator, had poison and paralysis weapons like any other member of the orange guild, but his methods with them were...disgustingly unique.
Asking Chett for more information about the flowers, the Patter tolds them that the flowers are found at the base of old, dead trees. Because no such trees exist in the Giyoru Savanna's arid environment, the Patter could gather them from there. But the Great Zelletelio Forest would have such trees, and furthermore, they wouldn't crumble to pieces as they would in the savanna.
Chett and her companions have never seen the flowers in person, but thanks to prior experience, Koharu, Lux, Argo, Lisbeth, Silica, Klein, and Agil have, so they led the search. Agil would be the first to find the violet-blue flowers, and Dikkos would nearly succumb to the flower's innate poison properties by touching the twisted stem with his bare hand. Thankfully Argo had a antidote made by Asuna on hand to save him.
With everyone seeing what the lobelia looks like and the associated danger, the group splintered off in groups of three or four to gather more. then reassembled at the area outside the wasps' nest at about three o'clock. Klein set up a large stew pot. A hearth was built, the flowers and water were placed inside, and a fire got started.
While that went on, Koharu stands at the opening that leads to the interior of the nest. She stares toward the other end of the tunnel, her mind running through possible scenarios on how to effectively win this raid. After Agil and Klein, she has the most experience on raiding and avoiding death in these raids. The only problem is that Klein and Agil were guild leaders in SAO, so when it comes to leadership in this situation, they totally trump her.
But everyone's looking at her to lead them through the fight with the wasps. She's never lead a raid like Kirito, Asuna, or Jaymes have, and considering the risks involved, this might be out of her element.
But she knows she has to do this. She just need to figure it out. She'll take it one step at a time.
Fighting in the nest or the tunnel is a disadvantage to the players, so they'll have to draw the wasps out to the open. Either that, or somehow use the poison against the wasps. That means going into the nest again...ughh. She has to go outside her comfort zone here with the wasps...and she has a bad feeling she isn't going to like the upcoming battle.
After all, there's a certain rule to RPGs: if there's a certain enemy type, chances are there's a big bad boss version of it. The kobolds of Aincrad's first floor had Illfang; the bulls of the second floor the three minotaurs; the katana-wielding mobs of the tenth had Kagachi the Samurai Lord. There's a high chance that, inside that nest, is the queen of the wasps.
Unlike bosses in ALO, they won't get a second run upon defeat; unlike bosses in SAO, they won't have a test run to gather information or have any other knowledge prior to the fight.
The sweet scent of the cooking petals draws her attention away from the nest. Most of Team Kirito are encircling Chett and the boiling pot. Tuning in, she hears Sinon murmur, "...If we can make this poison, then other groups could, too...like Mutasina's forces,"
"The PKers used plenty of poisons in SAO, too," Klein notes. "If this really is a level-5 poison, it's pretty scary that you can craft it already at this point..."
"We gotta develop an antidote to this stuff quick, too," Argo states.
"Lobelia poison is scary, but it's not scary."
With that declaration from Chett, Lisbeth asks, "Wh-what does that mean?"
"Thirty minutes after it is finished, this poison's color and smell will leach out. Then it becomes water again."
Whatever plans are in Koharu's head ignites into ash. If that poison's efficacy is only a half-hour, they won't have long to start the fight and finish it. They didn't have the numbers for a large-scale raid, but if they did, it would be impractical to use the poison.
"Chett," she calls from the tunnel's entrance. "When will the poison be ready?"
The Patter leans partially over the pot. "Once all the flowers have melted. .. Probably five minutes."
Head nodding, Koharu clears her throat and issues her first commands. "Then we shall get started. Liz, Silica, Sinon, you help Chett with preparing the poison. Argo, guys, everyone else, let's plan this out. We'll treat this not as a raid in ALO or any other game you may have played; we're treating this as if we're in SAO."
As the rest of the ensemble gathered, Koharu counted about twenty-six heads. In total, they're larger than the raiding parties that took on the fifth floor's Fuscus the Vacant Colossus and about equal to the group that took on the forty-seventh's Leia the Legion Butterfly. Both were ragtag groups put together to prevent a war between guilds, and Koharu, Agil, Argo, and Klein participated in each one.
"What do you mean by treating this like we're in SAO?" Holgar asks.
"In Unital Ring, we only have one life. As a survivor of SAO and one of those on the frontlines, I don't wish to lose a life here. That is the most important part of our plan."
"But — and no offense — why are you in charge of this, and not one of you guys? You are SAO survivors too?"
Agil chuckles and folds his big arms. "True, and us men have similar amounts of experience as the young lady on the frontlines. Klein and I are also former guild leaders from that game, and he still is. Koharu, as far as I know, doesn't have leadership skills. But..." Agil turns to Koharu, gracing her with a smile. "I owe her my life. Klein owes her his life. All of us here who survived owe our lives to her. It was her and her party that spearheaded us through the first nine floors. It was her and her partner that solved many mysteries that continued our survival. Those two...nay, those four are more or less the reason I am here now. She may not have the qualities that made the Black Swordsman, the Flash, or the Crimson Warrior, but I will follow the Kindred Assassin just as faithfully."
"Agil..."
"I second that," Klein announces. "After all, she's not the kid we once aimed to support back then. We may have been alive longer and know how tough life can be out there. I once told her not to underestimate what us grownups can handle... But she's all grown now."
"Klein..."
"So you're gonna listen to what she has to say, because we only get one good shot at this. And, quite frankly, this is going to be good to rub in Kirito, Asuna, and Jaymes' face. Isn't that right, Ko?"
She shouldn't be thinking about that particularly, but if they succeed — no, when they succeed, she'll consider imagining her partner's shocked face when it is told that she lead the raid. For now, all they can do is their best while Jaymes and the others do theirs. "Ahem. That's that, and this is this. But thanks, you guys. If there are no further comments, let's work up a plan...and quickly."