Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire - Chapter 247

Chapter 247: Under Spirit Emperor’s protection
Anad lowered his head even more.

‘Yes… The savages that live in Upper Grazhamich are planning to attack our kingdom again. My son heard it with his own ears when he went to the city to trade. There will be war, and recruiters will come to gather the king’s tribute in people… But we already have too few able-bodied men left! Krisha will become a village of women, children and old men! Oh, Spirit Emperor, I don’t want my only son to go to war. I’m already blessed that you spared him your wrath…’

When I leaned forward to see Anad’s face better, I caught a shine of a tear in the corner of his eye.

I pursed my lips in sympathy. Things like these were never easy…

And notably, if the Krisha village dies out because recruiters forcefully enlisted everybody in it, we will be left without our best place to trade!

Other human settlements were too far away to trade with them at our current infrastructure level.

‘Nobody dares to lay hands at those under my protection. Those who are blind enough to go against me and my subjects will become blind forever,’ I declared to Anad. ‘Fear not, human—nobody from your village will be taken anywhere.’

He raised his head and his mandible-jaws clicked nervously.

‘But Your Majesty! If the royal recruiters are harmed, the blame will fall on us… Will you protect us from the wrath of the law-makers, too?’

‘You and your family will be safe, as long as this village obeys my orders; this is all you must know, Anad Shach.’

‘Yes, yes, of course! I’m so sorry, Spirit Emperor, I didn’t mean to offend you with the questions. Thank you for protecting us yet again!’

Anad bowed his head, and would’ve probably bowed to the ground himself, if I wasn’t sitting on his shoulder; instead he was just giving me cautious glances from the very corner of his eyes.

‘Thank me, yes; but you will pay for this boon of protection just like you paid for our gold. But not with iron—there will be a different price this time.’

‘A price? I… I will pay, of course. What do you need, Your Majesty? Bronze? Blood?’

‘No. Give us bags of seeds you plant in your fields and in your gardens. Bring them deep in the forest, where my messenger will lead you.’

I had a passing thought to ask Anad to send someone to plant these seeds, too. However, this would make every bee in the area extremely unhappy, including the unevolved ones. I didn’t want anyone to lose their lives by stinging a human needlessly.

Of course, I didn’t want humans to end their trade relations with the Bee Empire, too.

Anad, meanwhile, bowed his head again.

‘What a strange request—but of course, your ways are those of spirits; humans couldn’t understand them, and I shouldn’t have even tried! I will do as you say, Your Majesty.’

And I would do as I said.

***

Later, when I went back to Explanatory’s research camp, I told her about what I gathered from Anad and ordered her to keep listening for more information.

But this was just the first part.

Almost as soon as Anad explained his problem to me, I came up with a way to solve it that won’t bring harm to his village or to the Bee Empire.

We just needed to scare the recruiters away with a “curse”.

The “curse” would just be our telepaths projecting nasty things on people’s head on repeat until they decided they have gone mad. Among those nasty things will be instructions to turn back and go away from where they were going.

I instructed Explanatory to post patrols along the way which led toward other human settlements, and even let her reserve one of our three dragons just for this.

If any recruiters came to the Krisha village, Anad will be told to tell them about a terrible curse that befell it. And that it’s contagious or something.

But I doubted the recruiters will last this long. Especially for the sake of some remote village in the pillar mountain forest.

***

Anad fulfilled his promise and brought us two small bags of seeds (small compared to him, of course; they were a couple dozen meters each).

From his thoughts and Explanatory’s earlier research on humans (Beehounds have been watching humans do a lot of things, and recently they were planting seeds, too), we knew the basics of how to plant each seed.

The rest was simple enough.

The Empire’s workers have found places where all other trees have been cut down already, but still fertile enough for short grass to grow. Many of these places were near the Empire’s sub-hives.

Each seed (and they were the size of a bee’s torso!) was placed in holes in the ground. The depth depended on a type of seed. We had two, and I guessed they were peas and wheat, or something similar. Although plants were a part of the Game of Evolution, the system didn’t help me identify them, and refused to explain why…

People from Krisha got all other food from gathering and hunting in the forest; until recently, when they started trading with us.

Now the Bee Empire was about to get the boons of agriculture! In… a few months, when these tree-sized plants will grow and bloom.

And they would—in just a few days, I got reports of the first tree sprouts growing from the ground. Meanwhile, our Hunters worked hard to fill the Empire’s food stores, and were succeeding.

About this time, I also got reports that my telepaths successfully scared a group of people away from the Krisha village.

Then the week of good news ended, and I was hit with the bad ones.

“Father, we are getting more and more reports of flies appearing inside our borders, despite all our efforts to kill them. And worse… They began eating the trees our aphids feed on!”