Nidoqueen continued to go through the corpses of Beedrill. There were 29 to be exact. It took her about 5 minutes to collect them all.
At the same time, Madam walked over to one of the Rhydon corpses. "Silas, come over here and help me get this horn off." Silas walked over but he was confused. "How can we have the strength to do that? I think it is better to wait for Nidoqueen to do it."
"Just come over here and help me. Remember when you said you would follow my instructions? Just push or pull it in the same direction I am going in." Without saying another word, Silas followed her instructions and after about a minute, the horn surprisingly shook free.
"See, this is why you listen to your elders. When a pokemon from the Rhyhorn family dies, most of the energy that in its body converges to the horn. So it is usually a simple task to remove the horns but it can still take a little while as you have seen."
With this explanation, Silas understood her intentions. So they went on to remove the horns from the other 2 corpses. As they were finishing with the last horn, the sound of familiar buzzing filled the air. "Shit, not again. Silas, we have to hurry and get ready to go."
They tried to get away but it was too late. As if sensing their presence, a few Beedrill had appeared using the move Agility. They screeched angrily. Seeing humans around the corpses of their fallen brethren, they associated the massacre with Silas and Madam.
The problem was that where they appeared was the safe direction they just came from, leaving the only escape route to be where the other Beedrill would be coming from.
These clever pokemon had quickly encircled them.
When Silas scanned the Beedrill, he sighed in relief, the strongest one was at level 63 which was something Madam could handle. "Silas, I see you have good senses but do not let them fool you. Just because this individual's strength isn't overwhelming, we cannot forget about their sheer numbers. There could be a lot more at the same level." Hearing this, Silas trembled at the thought. Despite conquering his fear of Beedrill, there were still times where he had an involuntary reaction.
"Let's take the initiative, we will die if we don't fight back now. Nidoqueen and Arcanine, use Fire Blast." Both pokemon shot giant bursts of flames at the Beedrill. The 3 Beedrill all dodged the first round of attacks but Nidoqueen and Arcanine coordinated their attacks on 1 of them, leading to a direct hit. Arcanine and Dragonair used their Extremespeed to instantly defeat the other 2 with combined attacks.
The other Beedrill had finally arrived. There were 30 of them and when Silas scanned, he was shocked. They were all between level 55 and 60. With these numbers, they would easily be overwhelmed, the situation wasn't much better than earlier.
"Let's go, we can't stay here anymore." Madam returned all her pokemon to their balls except for Arcanine and Dragonair. With Silas and Madam riding him, Arcanine took off and rushed past the defeated Beedrill.
The furious Beedrill swarm chased relentlessly but they just couldn't keep up with Arcanine's speed except for a few of them. "Madam, let's take advantage of Arcanine's speed to get away. We just need to trick them. Have Arcanine use its top speed and let's hide in the cave Nidoqueen made, then when they go past it, we can return the way we came without opposition." Madam pondered this idea briefly before agreeing.
"Arcanine, full speed ahead. We will stop at the earlier cave." A few minutes later, they arrived and had Nidoqueen quickly open and close the entrance with Earth Power. After a few minutes, the sound of loud buzzing was right outside the entrance. Luckily, the Beedrill kept moving past them.
About a minute later, they exited the cave on Arcanine's back running at full speed. As planned, there was little opposition. A few of the lower leveled Beedrill were still at the site of the corpses but Arcanine made quick work of them with a Fire Spin attack. They were trapped in the vortex and couldn't escape in the short term.
They managed to return to the area housing the hive. "Madam, why are we here? I thought the goal was to escape, not give ourselves to the hive willingly." Madam shook her head. "Your tactics are lacking. The Beedrill would never think that we are staying right under their noses. Sometimes the safest place is where there's perceived danger. Also, fortune favors the bold."
Silas carefully thought about what Madam said and it made some sense. As with the previous cave, Nidoqueen carved one out for them using her Earth Power.
"We can rest here for now. I want to have Nidoqueen absorb these Poison Cores." Silas readily agreed. Any increase in power would guarantee their safety that much more.
They could effectively kill 2 birds with 1 stone. They needed to wait out the angry Beedrill and Nidoqueen needed time to absorb and assimilate the poison type energy.
While they waited for Nidoqueen to finish absorbing the numerous cores, Silas and Madam discussed their gameplan.
"Should those Beedrill attack again, we will need to flee to water." The underground river was a viable escape route. The previous time, they got lucky but they had to consider where it led and what Pokémon might be living underwater.
"Madam, I want to see if I can catch a female Combee. Vespiquen is such a powerful and imposing pokemon." Madam looked at Silas with a little madness in her eyes as she spoke in a quiet but extremely threatening tone. "Have you not had enough? I nearly died but you still haven't had your fill. I can have Nidoqueen hit you with a few Poison Jabs since you clearly want to die of poisoning. Fortune favors the bold, not the dumb. Learn the difference."
Being berated like that left Silas feeling awkward so he simply apologized. He knew she was 100% correct. It was a foolish move to prioritize capturing pokemon in this dangerous situation.
"We have to be smart. There could be an opportunity but our safety comes first. Beedrill here are hyper aggressive pokemon. We saw how they started a fight with another tribe earlier. I am confident that it won't end there." Silas gave a thoughtful look before responding. "Since Rhyperior left but some other Beedrill came back, we can assume the Beedrill won the battle. I am betting on Rhyperior coming back to even the score."
"Now you are finally using your head! Yes that chaos will be our opportunity to get past the area and yes maybe get you a Combee." Silas' mood immediately improved when he heard this. Madam rarely gave praise so it meant something when she did. .
Silas and Madam waited in the small cave for another 4 hours. All of Madam's pokemon were in top shape again. They hadn't suffered serious injuries, just fatigue mainly so recovery was only a matter of time. The ground began to shake like before. Silas and Madam smiled at each other knowingly. The moment they were waiting for had finally arrived.
The shaking was much more violent than before showing there were many pokemon underground converging to the same location. The sounds of a battle breaking out were heard.
After 15 minutes of fighting, several explosions went off and with that came many tremors. Nidoqueen had to employ Earth Power to stabilize their cave and prevent it from collapsing on them.
Madam had Jolteon go scout out the situation. With its speed and smaller size, it was the perfect scout. After a few minutes, Jolteon came back and shook his head, conveying it was not yet time to act.
After another 30 minutes of battle, the ground began to shake again like when the Rhyperior first appeared. "Are the Rhyperior and Rhydon fleeing?" Madam placed her hands on the ground and closed her eyes as if focusing on something. "Yes, this might be our shot. I can feel buzzing underground. The swarm followed them through the dug holes."
They carefully exited the cave and stepped into the tunnel. Then they ran to the large hive cave entrance minutes away. The scene was chaotic. There were about double the amount of Beedrill corpses from the first fight and a similar amount of Combee corpses. There were 7 Rhydon corpses and a Rhyperior corpse. This one wasn't the leader, it was much smaller than the one they had encountered.
Aside from the corpses there were still over 100 Beedrill and Combee in the air. They quickly noticed the intruders and having just experienced a serious battle, they attacked aggressively. Silas could feel the intense blood lust of the pokemon. The good news was that most of the pokemon present were in the intermediate and pseudo advanced tier.
There were only a handful of pseudo elite Beedrill at level 63-65 which was manageable for Madam. They still had to be extremely careful as the stronger pokemon could return at any time and despite the lower levels, there were still 100 pokemon present. This represented a powerful fighting force.