An hour passed. Two. A third. When an estimated four hours finally passed, the sense of pressure I felt through the Link decreased. Although I had already noted how different the bees were, I couldn’t help but be surprised by their slight differences. They had each taken completely different amounts of Mind and time to grow, and some found it easier than others. Ben had quickly used his Mind to develop an Ability to help him explore, but Belle had taken all the way until the four-hour mark.
“Can I go explore now? Lemme go!” Ben shouted. He had gotten super antsy being stuck inside the trunk.
“Remember Ben. Stay out of sight, be careful about being followed, and for the love of god, be quiet while you’re sneaking around.” Beatrice and I had been drilling this mantra into Ben for the past few hours. I needed knowledge about the vultures asap, so most of my focus was being poured into that.
“Yup! Weeeeeee-“Ben yelled while zipping out of the tree. It was good that his screams were purely in his head, or he would be the worst spy imaginable. As morbid as it felt, I was sort of glad that his wing hadn’t healed completely. Using his Mind to fly around was far quieter than the telltale buzzing of our species.
I sighed. I had wished that Ben, in particular, would be able to evolve into some exploration or observation subtype, but no.
[Abilities:
Big Look (Lv.1) Venomous Stinger Pollination Beeswax]
The only thing Ben had acquired was an Ability with an incredibly vague and nonsensical name. I was absolutely not upset about the small change, far from it.
Especially when I studied the Ability’s details.
[Big Look:
Level 1
Acquired by: Gotta explore. Better use this awesome power to explore!
You like to see new things. You like to see new things so much that you need to see them more. Use Mind to deeply observe the world around you and share your sight with extreme precision.
Level up: See even more!
]
Did I completely understand the Ability? Nope. Did it seem useful? Oh, hell yeah. I dedicated a portion of my attention to connect my vision to Ben’s. He was rapidly moving farther away, and I could sense that unless I increased the Link further, it would become tough to maintain a strong connection. Nevertheless, Ben’s new Ability let me see the world with shocking clarity.
I could see the ground close by, Ben apparently flying low. The gray sky felt deep rather than dull, a complex mixture of monochrome colors. Each burned tree stood out, a different kind of forest that lacked greens and browns. The occasional vulture flew overhead, some dipping to feast on an unfortunate corpse.
Shaking my head, I pulled myself back to the tree. As impressive as it was to see from Ben’s eyes, there was too much to do. Even with {Compartmentalization}, it was tough to divide attention between the world in front of me and the jarring sights of Ben’s world. I’d have to check in with him periodically instead.
“How soon can you get started on the nest, Bess?” I turned my attention to the big bee. She had the least relative success with Mind, which honestly surprised me. I remembered her opening the hole in the tree to attach the food storage with Mind, so I had assumed she was already reasonably competent at manipulating the strange psychic powers as she wished.
Instead, as Beatrice had dutifully recorded, she could barely manage the least increased Mind compared to the rest. Her minimum Link was also now the lowest at a mere 0.0006%.
“I’ll start now,” she grunted. On the surface, she felt mostly the same, but I could feel shame radiating off her Mind. Looking at her status, I saw nothing different from a regular worker bee.
I could sympathize with Bess, even if I didn’t know exactly what she was going through. Sure, I could just read her mind if I wanted. The Link gave me that much control. But I had specifically tried to stay out of the private thoughts of the bees, and this situation was no different. I could only hope this whole situation would be a learning experience for the builder.
“I believe this should be a good location,” Beatrice said, “it is right next to the food storage entrance and is quite spacious.”
“Yup, looks good.” Bess and Beatrice measured and investigated the chosen spot. It was nice to see them getting along. I was worried Beatrice would be Bess’s mortal enemy, considering how much she disapproved of her casualness. I wasn’t sure whether Beatrice was sympathetic to Bess’ lack of talent with Mind or if she just appreciated the builder’s passion for improving the hive, but the two actually got along reassuringly well.
“What do I make the nest out of?”
“Ooh! How about wax!” Belle suddenly butt in. I had no strong opinions on the matter, but Bess noticeably frowned.
“I’d need a lot of wax for the nest. We need the food for the warrior’s birth, not stuff like wax.”
“I have a special wax Ability now; I’m sure I could make it work,” Belle argued back. A fierce staring contest took place. I backed away, not wanting to get caught up in the spat. The sudden rivalry between these two already ran deeper than expected. Where Beatrice had the occasional frustration with Bess’ language, Belle and Bess just didn’t see eye-to-eye.
Ever since the vulture incident, Belle and Bess had become more combative.
I wondered if it started with Bess’s comment about Belle and Beck staying inside during the fight. It seemed like the obvious starting point to me, but something just didn’t feel right about that explanation. What exactly was I missing?
The two whirled, coming face to face with Beatrice. Good thing I had backed away!
“Beatrice! Settle this!” the two of them growled.
“Watch your tone, the both of you,” both newbees instantly deflated at Beatrice’s icy words, “Your arguing is highly inefficient. After the battle, I took stock of our food stores and have determined that we have food to spare.”
I grimaced. Thankfully there was plenty of cooked meat in the storage, mostly courtesy of Bella, but I vividly remembered Beatrice’s excitement at the state of the two vulture corpses. ‘More food to feed!’ and all that, but there was no way I was eating raw carrion-eating birds, no matter how much they tasted like chicken. At least let me keep one creature comfort!
In any case, Belle triumphantly smirked at the news, but such smugness wouldn’t last.
“That said, we should by no means waste food frivolously. Even if you have a powerful wax-making Ability, it likely still requires copious amounts of material. The nest will be a combination of forest materials and wax to conserve food stores, at least in part.”
A solid compromise. I nudged Beatrice and told her to make wax from the raw animals first. Then there would be more barbecue for me!
“Brilliant idea, Mother! As usual, your wisdom knows no bounds.”
Wha. No, there was no way. I refused to believe there was something genius about making the wax out of raw animals instead of cooked ones! She had to be bluffing or something.
“If my knowledge is correct, the meat that has been burned would have suffered very high temperatures, and we know that it has been dried out to a degree. Meat in such a state may last slightly longer than the raw animals in terms of decomposition.”
Oh. Well, that made sense. Hold on, wasn’t this totally unfair? That was my knowledge she was using! Why didn’t I think of that sooner if that was my knowledge?
I cursed the gods of this world for making Beatrice smarter than me, even though most of her knowledge came from me. While I silently suffered, Queen giggling in the background, the two bee builders got to work on the nest.
The remaining two didn’t move. Bella seemed aimless but otherwise cheerful. Her experiments with Mind had bore fruit, and now all she had to do was wait for the warrior to be born so she could safely gather huge piles of food.
Beck, on the other hand, was still. Beck was such an oddball. I peeked into their menu to see what they had been up to with Mind and nearly did a spit take. If that was even something I could do anymore.
[Name: Beck]
[Age: 1 day]
[Subtype: Speaker]
[Status: Healthy]
[Abilities:
Express (Lv. 1) Venomous Stinger Speaker’s Voice (Lv. 1) Basic Link]
[Mind: 2nd Degree]
[Tapped Mind: 0% / 65%]
[Mind Locks:
Life (5%) Quiet Observation (10%) Monitor (20%)]
Huh? What? What the goddamn?! Beck was worse than Beatrice by a mile! A new subtype? Three Abilities? Two Locks?!
“Beck. Care to tell me about your growth?”
Beck’s melodious voice flowed into my head. They explained that they wanted to be able to speak but that such a capability wasn’t super helpful to the hive. Beck wanted to spread the greatness of the hive across the world with words, something they saw as beautiful artistry, but was upset that such a dream could not help with the war.
That is, until they realized they could help with the war.
Despite the long distance, they used a significant portion of their Mind to contact Ben and maintain a strong connection with him. Beck reasoned that if that task were offloaded onto themself, I could divert my focus elsewhere.
I stared at the skinny bee.
What the hell? That was way too well thought out and detailed! For someone who supposedly loved to talk, I did think it was strange that Beck talked the least out of any of the new five. So all their attention had been planning for this moment? Crazy.
“Is dedicating such a large amount of Mind to these tasks efficient?” I only had one concern with Beck’s plan. Everything seemed well-planned, and they had grown immensely with the increased Link, but 35% of their Mind already being locked away seemed extreme.
Beck suddenly went on a colorful tirade about my great Mind, and that to achieve even a fraction of what I was capable of, they had no choice but to use vast amounts of their weak, pathetic Mind.
Ooookay. Were these bees becoming more fanatical or what? Hold on a minute. Was it a coincidence that the bees that had been most talented with Mind and who had used the most Mind power to grow were the most fanatical? Beck and Beatrice were lightyears ahead of the other bees when it came to Mind, after all.
Nah, couldn’t be.
Now, all I had to do was wait. Maybe I could stall a bit longer before laying another egg?
Nope!
“Mother, a cell has been created. That should be sufficient for the powerful warrior.”
I flinched at the words. It had barely been a few minutes!
“I instructed Bess and Belle to create only what is necessary for the new warrior first. Now you can create the warrior as soon as possible!”
Wow. Great job, Beatrice. I’m so glad at how efficient and reasonable you are.
I had no choice either way. Before I could clamber up to the food storage entrance, Bella stopped me.
“You just relax, Mama! I’ll bring food right to you!”
“Mama…? What…?”
Beatrice looked shocked by the nickname. You and me both. These motherly nicknames were getting out of hand. But forget about that. Breakfast in bed! I might have even been excited if I was being fed something more appetizing than gamey burned animal corpses.
I sat on a comfy bed of leaves Bess had improved and waited for the chow. If this was a glimpse of the future, I could get used to the life of a queen. Eating, relaxing, making… eggs.
“Here we go! The first course!”
Bella dumped a sizable chunk of meat in front of me. It also had a sizable bite taken out of it. Hmm, I wonder what happened to it? Would Bella, the bee with meat juice dripping down her chin, have any idea? Surely not.
Might as well get started.
Thankfully I could eat and plan out how strong to make this warrior simultaneously.
So far, the most intensive egg I’ve created was a simple worker with 1% Mind. The minimum amount to make that simple worker egg was 0.5%, but using 1% didn’t mean their strength was doubled. For one thing, that would be insane. Using any more would result in creatures of absolutely abnormal power.
For another, there was the punishment.
When I didn’t have a hive or at least whatever aspect was needed to create better birthing conditions, the egg-creating Ability had a 1.5 times Mind penalty. So the minimum to create a simple worker was actually 0.75%, and as a result, using 1% was not as big an improvement as it typically could have been.
So then, how much should I use for this warrior?
“Is there a difference between making workers versus warriors?”
“No, there shouldn’t be a difference besides the Mind cost.”
In that case, I could probably use as much Mind as possible since my only limiting factor was the amount of food needed to make the egg.
“Do not forget about time.”
Shit. I hadn’t been thinking of time as a resource. Our time was ultimately limited, and the warrior would take time to hatch. The longer it took to hatch, the longer it would take to start gathering food and strengthening the hive.
“If I were to start allocating Mind to make the egg, would you be able to tell how long it would take or how much food would be needed?” Queen had mostly accurately been predicting how long the hatching would take, so maybe she had some instinct that told her.
“Perhaps. However, if you were to create an egg as extreme as I know you are imagining, then my prediction would likely be wholly inaccurate.”
Guilty as charged.
Even if it took an insane amount of food, I couldn’t help but think about how powerful I could make the warrior if I used every scrap of my remaining Mind. Using something like 80% to make the warrior would eclipse the potential shown by even Beatrice, most likely. The only thing I had used anywhere near that much Mind to do was to vaporize a couple enemies.
“Not only would it be interesting, but it would also be incredibly idiotic.”
Yeah, yeah. It took around a day for Beatrice to hatch and barely longer for the other 5. Using so much Mind could mean the warrior would take days, maybe weeks, to hatch. I doubted we had that much time in the bank. Not even mentioning the potential food requirements. On the other hand, making a warrior that was too weak would also be a waste of time and resources.
“Beatrice. I will need exact details on how much food we have and how long we can survive with it.” Food would be my guide. All I needed was to eat the maximum amount of food I could and figure out the allotted Mind from there. Rationing wouldn’t be ideal, but all's fair in war and war.
For now, though, I glumly continued eating charred mystery meat.
An hour passed. Two. A third. When an estimated four hours finally passed, the sense of pressure I felt through the Link decreased. Although I had already noted how different the bees were, I couldn’t help but be surprised by their slight differences. They had each taken completely different amounts of Mind and time to grow, and some found it easier than others. Ben had quickly used his Mind to develop an Ability to help him explore, but Belle had taken all the way until the four-hour mark.
“Can I go explore now? Lemme go!” Ben shouted. He had gotten super antsy being stuck inside the trunk.
“Remember Ben. Stay out of sight, be careful about being followed, and for the love of god, be quiet while you’re sneaking around.” Beatrice and I had been drilling this mantra into Ben for the past few hours. I needed knowledge about the vultures asap, so most of my focus was being poured into that.
“Yup! Weeeeeee-“Ben yelled while zipping out of the tree. It was good that his screams were purely in his head, or he would be the worst spy imaginable. As morbid as it felt, I was sort of glad that his wing hadn’t healed completely. Using his Mind to fly around was far quieter than the telltale buzzing of our species.
I sighed. I had wished that Ben, in particular, would be able to evolve into some exploration or observation subtype, but no.
[Abilities:
Big Look (Lv.1) Venomous Stinger Pollination Beeswax]
The only thing Ben had acquired was an Ability with an incredibly vague and nonsensical name. I was absolutely not upset about the small change, far from it.
Especially when I studied the Ability’s details.
[Big Look:
Level 1
Acquired by: Gotta explore. Better use this awesome power to explore!
You like to see new things. You like to see new things so much that you need to see them more. Use Mind to deeply observe the world around you and share your sight with extreme precision.
Level up: See even more!
]
Did I completely understand the Ability? Nope. Did it seem useful? Oh, hell yeah. I dedicated a portion of my attention to connect my vision to Ben’s. He was rapidly moving farther away, and I could sense that unless I increased the Link further, it would become tough to maintain a strong connection. Nevertheless, Ben’s new Ability let me see the world with shocking clarity.
I could see the ground close by, Ben apparently flying low. The gray sky felt deep rather than dull, a complex mixture of monochrome colors. Each burned tree stood out, a different kind of forest that lacked greens and browns. The occasional vulture flew overhead, some dipping to feast on an unfortunate corpse.
Shaking my head, I pulled myself back to the tree. As impressive as it was to see from Ben’s eyes, there was too much to do. Even with {Compartmentalization}, it was tough to divide attention between the world in front of me and the jarring sights of Ben’s world. I’d have to check in with him periodically instead.
“How soon can you get started on the nest, Bess?” I turned my attention to the big bee. She had the least relative success with Mind, which honestly surprised me. I remembered her opening the hole in the tree to attach the food storage with Mind, so I had assumed she was already reasonably competent at manipulating the strange psychic powers as she wished.
Instead, as Beatrice had dutifully recorded, she could barely manage the least increased Mind compared to the rest. Her minimum Link was also now the lowest at a mere 0.0006%.
“I’ll start now,” she grunted. On the surface, she felt mostly the same, but I could feel shame radiating off her Mind. Looking at her status, I saw nothing different from a regular worker bee.
I could sympathize with Bess, even if I didn’t know exactly what she was going through. Sure, I could just read her mind if I wanted. The Link gave me that much control. But I had specifically tried to stay out of the private thoughts of the bees, and this situation was no different. I could only hope this whole situation would be a learning experience for the builder.
“I believe this should be a good location,” Beatrice said, “it is right next to the food storage entrance and is quite spacious.”
“Yup, looks good.” Bess and Beatrice measured and investigated the chosen spot. It was nice to see them getting along. I was worried Beatrice would be Bess’s mortal enemy, considering how much she disapproved of her casualness. I wasn’t sure whether Beatrice was sympathetic to Bess’ lack of talent with Mind or if she just appreciated the builder’s passion for improving the hive, but the two actually got along reassuringly well.
“What do I make the nest out of?”
“Ooh! How about wax!” Belle suddenly butt in. I had no strong opinions on the matter, but Bess noticeably frowned.
“I’d need a lot of wax for the nest. We need the food for the warrior’s birth, not stuff like wax.”
“I have a special wax Ability now; I’m sure I could make it work,” Belle argued back. A fierce staring contest took place. I backed away, not wanting to get caught up in the spat. The sudden rivalry between these two already ran deeper than expected. Where Beatrice had the occasional frustration with Bess’ language, Belle and Bess just didn’t see eye-to-eye.
Ever since the vulture incident, Belle and Bess had become more combative.
I wondered if it started with Bess’s comment about Belle and Beck staying inside during the fight. It seemed like the obvious starting point to me, but something just didn’t feel right about that explanation. What exactly was I missing?
The two whirled, coming face to face with Beatrice. Good thing I had backed away!
“Beatrice! Settle this!” the two of them growled.
“Watch your tone, the both of you,” both newbees instantly deflated at Beatrice’s icy words, “Your arguing is highly inefficient. After the battle, I took stock of our food stores and have determined that we have food to spare.”
I grimaced. Thankfully there was plenty of cooked meat in the storage, mostly courtesy of Bella, but I vividly remembered Beatrice’s excitement at the state of the two vulture corpses. ‘More food to feed!’ and all that, but there was no way I was eating raw carrion-eating birds, no matter how much they tasted like chicken. At least let me keep one creature comfort!
In any case, Belle triumphantly smirked at the news, but such smugness wouldn’t last.
“That said, we should by no means waste food frivolously. Even if you have a powerful wax-making Ability, it likely still requires copious amounts of material. The nest will be a combination of forest materials and wax to conserve food stores, at least in part.”
A solid compromise. I nudged Beatrice and told her to make wax from the raw animals first. Then there would be more barbecue for me!
“Brilliant idea, Mother! As usual, your wisdom knows no bounds.”
Wha. No, there was no way. I refused to believe there was something genius about making the wax out of raw animals instead of cooked ones! She had to be bluffing or something.
“If my knowledge is correct, the meat that has been burned would have suffered very high temperatures, and we know that it has been dried out to a degree. Meat in such a state may last slightly longer than the raw animals in terms of decomposition.”
Oh. Well, that made sense. Hold on, wasn’t this totally unfair? That was my knowledge she was using! Why didn’t I think of that sooner if that was my knowledge?
I cursed the gods of this world for making Beatrice smarter than me, even though most of her knowledge came from me. While I silently suffered, Queen giggling in the background, the two bee builders got to work on the nest.
The remaining two didn’t move. Bella seemed aimless but otherwise cheerful. Her experiments with Mind had bore fruit, and now all she had to do was wait for the warrior to be born so she could safely gather huge piles of food.
Beck, on the other hand, was still. Beck was such an oddball. I peeked into their menu to see what they had been up to with Mind and nearly did a spit take. If that was even something I could do anymore.
[Name: Beck]
[Age: 1 day]
[Subtype: Speaker]
[Status: Healthy]
[Abilities:
Express (Lv. 1) Venomous Stinger Speaker’s Voice (Lv. 1) Basic Link]
[Mind: 2nd Degree]
[Tapped Mind: 0% / 65%]
[Mind Locks:
Life (5%) Quiet Observation (10%) Monitor (20%)]
Huh? What? What the goddamn?! Beck was worse than Beatrice by a mile! A new subtype? Three Abilities? Two Locks?!
“Beck. Care to tell me about your growth?”
Beck’s melodious voice flowed into my head. They explained that they wanted to be able to speak but that such a capability wasn’t super helpful to the hive. Beck wanted to spread the greatness of the hive across the world with words, something they saw as beautiful artistry, but was upset that such a dream could not help with the war.
That is, until they realized they could help with the war.
Despite the long distance, they used a significant portion of their Mind to contact Ben and maintain a strong connection with him. Beck reasoned that if that task were offloaded onto themself, I could divert my focus elsewhere.
I stared at the skinny bee.
What the hell? That was way too well thought out and detailed! For someone who supposedly loved to talk, I did think it was strange that Beck talked the least out of any of the new five. So all their attention had been planning for this moment? Crazy.
“Is dedicating such a large amount of Mind to these tasks efficient?” I only had one concern with Beck’s plan. Everything seemed well-planned, and they had grown immensely with the increased Link, but 35% of their Mind already being locked away seemed extreme.
Beck suddenly went on a colorful tirade about my great Mind, and that to achieve even a fraction of what I was capable of, they had no choice but to use vast amounts of their weak, pathetic Mind.
Ooookay. Were these bees becoming more fanatical or what? Hold on a minute. Was it a coincidence that the bees that had been most talented with Mind and who had used the most Mind power to grow were the most fanatical? Beck and Beatrice were lightyears ahead of the other bees when it came to Mind, after all.
Nah, couldn’t be.
Now, all I had to do was wait. Maybe I could stall a bit longer before laying another egg?
Nope!
“Mother, a cell has been created. That should be sufficient for the powerful warrior.”
I flinched at the words. It had barely been a few minutes!
“I instructed Bess and Belle to create only what is necessary for the new warrior first. Now you can create the warrior as soon as possible!”
Wow. Great job, Beatrice. I’m so glad at how efficient and reasonable you are.
I had no choice either way. Before I could clamber up to the food storage entrance, Bella stopped me.
“You just relax, Mama! I’ll bring food right to you!”
“Mama…? What…?”
Beatrice looked shocked by the nickname. You and me both. These motherly nicknames were getting out of hand. But forget about that. Breakfast in bed! I might have even been excited if I was being fed something more appetizing than gamey burned animal corpses.
I sat on a comfy bed of leaves Bess had improved and waited for the chow. If this was a glimpse of the future, I could get used to the life of a queen. Eating, relaxing, making… eggs.
“Here we go! The first course!”
Bella dumped a sizable chunk of meat in front of me. It also had a sizable bite taken out of it. Hmm, I wonder what happened to it? Would Bella, the bee with meat juice dripping down her chin, have any idea? Surely not.
Might as well get started.
Thankfully I could eat and plan out how strong to make this warrior simultaneously.
So far, the most intensive egg I’ve created was a simple worker with 1% Mind. The minimum amount to make that simple worker egg was 0.5%, but using 1% didn’t mean their strength was doubled. For one thing, that would be insane. Using any more would result in creatures of absolutely abnormal power.
For another, there was the punishment.
When I didn’t have a hive or at least whatever aspect was needed to create better birthing conditions, the egg-creating Ability had a 1.5 times Mind penalty. So the minimum to create a simple worker was actually 0.75%, and as a result, using 1% was not as big an improvement as it typically could have been.
So then, how much should I use for this warrior?
“Is there a difference between making workers versus warriors?”
“No, there shouldn’t be a difference besides the Mind cost.”
In that case, I could probably use as much Mind as possible since my only limiting factor was the amount of food needed to make the egg.
“Do not forget about time.”
Shit. I hadn’t been thinking of time as a resource. Our time was ultimately limited, and the warrior would take time to hatch. The longer it took to hatch, the longer it would take to start gathering food and strengthening the hive.
“If I were to start allocating Mind to make the egg, would you be able to tell how long it would take or how much food would be needed?” Queen had mostly accurately been predicting how long the hatching would take, so maybe she had some instinct that told her.
“Perhaps. However, if you were to create an egg as extreme as I know you are imagining, then my prediction would likely be wholly inaccurate.”
Guilty as charged.
Even if it took an insane amount of food, I couldn’t help but think about how powerful I could make the warrior if I used every scrap of my remaining Mind. Using something like 80% to make the warrior would eclipse the potential shown by even Beatrice, most likely. The only thing I had used anywhere near that much Mind to do was to vaporize a couple enemies.
“Not only would it be interesting, but it would also be incredibly idiotic.”
Yeah, yeah. It took around a day for Beatrice to hatch and barely longer for the other 5. Using so much Mind could mean the warrior would take days, maybe weeks, to hatch. I doubted we had that much time in the bank. Not even mentioning the potential food requirements. On the other hand, making a warrior that was too weak would also be a waste of time and resources.
“Beatrice. I will need exact details on how much food we have and how long we can survive with it.” Food would be my guide. All I needed was to eat the maximum amount of food I could and figure out the allotted Mind from there. Rationing wouldn’t be ideal, but all's fair in war and war.
For now, though, I glumly continued eating charred mystery meat.
