Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire - Chapter 248

Chapter 248: Rapid evolution
I scowled upon hearing this.

Workharder, who brought me the report, glared at a wall behind my back.

Now flies have evolved, too. Was this an intentional attack at bees’ food base, or were they just using the opportunity to expand?

Flies could reproduce very quickly, so if the gods of local species of flies put genes in just one champion of flies, in a few months, the entire area will be full of them.

They reproduced even faster than bees.

“If we don’t deal with them now, they will turn into an army of locusts,” I said, pulling on my hair. “Workharder, how bad is it?”

She stood from her seat and walked to the Council Chamber wall map.

“Let me show on the map, Father. Just yesterday, I was told about large encounters here, here, here and there… All with the tree-eating. The bees have killed all the flies they’ve met, but these encounters weren’t even close to each other! I don’t understand where they could’ve come from in these numbers…”

Workharder pointed out several more points, explaining about the amount of flies killed over the last few days: there were thousands.

Soon, it clicked in my mind.

The flies must’ve come from outside of our borders. Now they were just expanding. And our border patrols were numerous, but weren’t a literal wall.

Asking Bloodhero confirmed it. The border patrols were dealing with quite a few flies lately, and this number was only growing since last month—so gradually that we only noticed when the patrols failed to stop the pests.

Scouts from outside the Bee Empire’s borders have also confirmed that there were a lot of flies there.

“We must strengthen our borders against them,” I declared. “We had larger border patrols to fight off big beasts, but if we can split them into smaller ones, we could fight off more of the pests. And we will put more soldiers on it, too, as well as build more fortification camps to lighten the load of the patrols.”

A quick estimate of the plan showed that we only had the necessary amount of soldiers if we reduced the size of armies that conquered and cleared territories for the Empire’s expansion.

“But we *need* expanding, Father,” Workharder said. “There are more resources outside the Empire than inside of it, and we *need* resources.”

“We need to keep what we have, too. Bloodhero, train more soldiers to replace those who will be moved to patrols. We can spare some Workers to the military.”

“It will be done, Father.”

I looked at the wax tablets in front of me, calculating in my head how this will actually hit the Empire’s resources.

Not gravely, but it would slow down most other projects. Priorities will be shifted yet again. Archivists will have to deal with cumbersome wax tablets for a while longer, because the mass manufacturing of paper was too low on the list of priorities.

‘This is just the beginning,’ I heard a loud thought. When I blinked and turned around, I saw Undecided staring intently on the wall map. ‘”This just never…” Ah, what was the rest of the thing he said? Now I missed it. Maybe my sisters heard?..’

She suddenly noticed my attention and jolted.

“Father?” Undecided asking, tilting her head to the side. “Have you heard my thoughts? I’m sorry, if there was anything certain, I’d tell you!”

I shook my head.

“It really is just the beginning, and I don’t need to be an Oracle to know it. That’s why we are working so hard to deal with all the threats that pop up.”

***

The stronger borders fended off flies, but outside them, they continued to spread. It was concerning—they really became like locusts, flying in droves to trees on the ground and on the tops of pillar mountains, eating everything they could chew and laying rows upon rows of eggs.

All within a couple of weeks.

They gathered into swarms that the scouts estimated must’ve contained dozens of thousands of these creatures, and I feared a massive invasion.

However, dragons and larger insects still found the flies an easy prey. They ate them almost as quickly as flies ate trees.

The ecosystem sorted itself out, and I breathed out a sign of relief.

Things were developing. The seeds we planted began giving the first sprouts. In our hatchery, the first few reptile eggs have successfully lived to term.

Now we had two dozen adorable feathered lizard babies. None of them were evolved, and my telepaths were hard at work training them. Baby lizards weren’t much more trainable than adult ones, but there was still a lot of progress.

Perhaps in a few months they would carry carts and trains. Or we will find other uses for them. Just keeping them for meat and hides was already a use.

But bad news came together with the good ones.

“There are more and more illnesses appearing in the Empire, Father,” Tabletina reported. “The amount increased drastically over the last three weeks, and half of them have entirely new symptoms of combinations of such. In fact, the symptoms are so new that I’m unsure *how many* illnesses there are.”

I asked, already dreading the answer:

“Is this another pandemic?”

Tabletina shook her head, and my shoulders slumped in relief.

“We have three times more sick people than usual, but it doesn’t affect productivity to the point where Workharder would complain. Only 50% more bees than average died from new illnesses. However… I remember your explanation about ‘bacteria’ that cause illnesses, and that they are living creatures. Could the new illnesses result from their evolution?”

My eyes widened.

“Of course. Of course it is, Tabletina. The bacteria evolve the fastest of all species! This tendency will only increase, if anything… Shit.”

This was another problem that was small now, but had to be stopped fast, or we were goners. I wondered how fast we could invent penicillin.

‘Wait… If bees are sick, what about everything else? How many creatures are going to die off from the bacteria and viruses?’