Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire

In a month, I became sure that we passed spring and moved to summer. Sun was hotter than usual, humans were gathering the first harvest from their fields of trees that spanned beyond the horizon, and the Bee Empire was unfurling like one of the many summer flowers.

And like I predicted, the newly trained heralds had plenty of stories to tell in the amphitheaters built all over the Bee Empire. Stories about our expansions, new hives, and many technological achievements.

Bloodhero constantly trained more Warriors to guard and expand our borders.

(Although there were few truly dangerous opponents around the forest anymore, predators like wasps and ants still had to be dealt with. In fact, Bloodhero complained that flies became way too numerous lately, and so bold that they began trying to steal or lay eggs into the prey of our Hunters.)

Workharder's people kept establishing more hives, building railroads between them and sending many trains forth, trying to connect every hive with a railroad. It became especially important now, when trees in the Land Supremo grew rarer by the day.

But now that most young bees in Hive Supremo were morphotyped into Beemarines or Beehounds, it made more sense to move resource gathering to outer hives and build industry in Hive Supremo instead.

Thanks to the iron pickaxes, we could finally mine through Supremo pillar mountain itself and expand the hive cave! The looming threat of overpopulation was avoided—the pillar mountain was huge enough to fit billions of bees.

With Researchina's girls, a day wasn't a day well-spent without at least one steam explosion and someone being carried off to a hospital.

At least they had more success in exploring weaving and glass-making—we began trading rough glass beads with humans for iron bits instead of gold. By now, humans were growing cautiously used to bees, and we finally had the first advancements in learning their language.

Our Craftsmen also began producing first glass bottles and glass panes for windows, but they were cloudy and fragile—not even close to the glass I was used to, or even the glass made by humans.

At least our beads were shiny, even if making them large enough for trade was an ordeal in itself and required literal tons of coal being burned.

In the time left free from healing the steam-related traumas, Tabletina's Physicians did bloody and gruesome experiments on flies. The Bee Empire's soldiers have captured plenty of flies, living and alive, so she had all the specimens she needed.

(When I first asked why Bloodhero started capturing living flies in the first place, she told me they made great training dummies for training soldiers, and they were incredibly easy to lure somewhere and capture. I praised her for ingenuity and made a mental note to not walk anywhere near Warrior training grounds.)

Tabletina's experiments showed that, first, wings could still bleed and feel pain. Second, my tier 5 wings were so fast not just thanks to their shape, but thanks to the powerful muscles attached to them, which other bees lacked.

So we couldn't augment every bee with faster wings. But Tabletina learned how to make prosthetic wings from bone and wood for bees whose wings were damaged in battles or accidents. Thanks to her, hundreds of bees could fly again, even if not as fast as before.

After that, Tabletina moved to experiments with wooden leg and arm prosthetics for flies. So far, all of them died from inflammation in their wounds before any prosthesis could get tested properly.

Besides annoying flies and resource depletion, the Bee Empire experienced a surprisingly peaceful period. Even the Oracles couldn't say much about it.

They often warned the Council about minor threats like predator attacks, bad storms or relatively large outbreaks of illnesses (nothing as serious as the mite infestation, not even close). However, three times out of four, nothing happened in the first place, or happened but not with us.

Near the end of this month, Undecided told me this:

"This is why we aren't sure about anything, even our names, Father. We are trying, but… I don't know if we ever will. But at least we help sometimes, right? I wish we could tell more precisely. All we know is that there are threats looming just ahead, but they are all so… varied!"

"We will be ready. Thanks to you and other Oracles, in no small way," I told her, smiling. "It's better to be over-prepared than caught unawares, so I'd rather you warn me about things even if you are unsure, than if you stay silent and we might miss anything."

"Alright, Father! I will."

"But first, tell me—that vague danger, will it come from the flies? Will flies suddenly evolve into evil flies and try to kill us, or something?"

Undecided thought about it for a long minute, then shook her head.

"No. They are just annoying."

"So they are, so they are… Thank you."

Now my fears were put to rest. I was convinced that the onslaught of flies was a consequence of the war, anyway—despite all our attempts to stop the pests from laying eggs in dead humans.

If things didn't change, in a month or two we might reach development level 9.

And before that, I was given more good news.

"Father, the dragons have finally begun laying their eggs! Even our black dragons try to, I was told. In the last few days, their thoughts have been all about finding mates and they demand shiny items instead of food as their rewards," Bloodhero announced in her personal report. "And the scouts have discovered several nests where eggs already lie, although many of them belong to land-beasts and not dragons. What should we do about them?"

This was the opportunity I was waiting for.

"We need to find and hatch as many eggs as possible. Dragons are hot-blooded, but feathered lizards are not… Yes, this is my next order. We are going on a grand eggs-pedition, which won't stop until we try to tame everybody we can. And I will lead this expedition personally!"