Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire - Chapter 251

Chapter 251: A surprise inspection
I had to give her credit where credit was due—Ambrosia didn’t just give me an honor guard (my regular bodyguards), she made an entire legend for me and my squad.

According to it, we were Physician Bees from Hive Supremo, sent with a health inspection. The details of which were entirely up to us, so we will have full freedom of flying around and pestering people for a day.

This was how long Ambrosia agreed to cover for my absence. Except for her, a few select Attendants and the Empire Council, nobody knew about my leave.

Next morning, I put on my disguise, left the Royal Chambers so early that the hive was still asleep. Only a few bees saw me, and their reactions were so different from the usual!

Instead of looking at me with joy and awe, smiling, waving and expressing their adoration, they… They paid me no mind at all.

It felt amazing.

My group flew directly to a remote sub-hive of Clay-Hole. Ordinary bees took a few hours to reach this place, but I only needed half an hour.

Clay-Hole was just a month old, but most of its population were immigrants from other sub-hives, so they were second generation, anyway.

The hive’s main export was raw clay, but it also gathered some other resources from nearby forests. More importantly, it was a waypoint on the way toward human settlements.

The entire place was built right next to a railroad, in a large cave underneath a tall, rocky hill. It was the sort of hive that was under a regular threat of flooding, so tall earth mounds near the entrance protected it.

The hive’s guards gave my group a glance and let us enter. We were, obviously, citizens of the Bee Empire—since we were bees and wore clothing.

From the moment I flew inside Clay-Hole, I looked around with great curiosity. The building plans for this hive and many others were looked at and approved by me, but it was very different to look at them being brought to life.

‘The underground architecture seems solid. Researchina’s girls didn’t spend so much time on improving it for nothing,’ I thought, looking at the place.

The original cave had rocky floors and ceiling, but there were many places with soft earth that let water in. Now they were covered in wood for structural integrity and wax for water isolation.

Between the floor and ceiling were dozens of rows of sleeping and brood cells. Separately from them, built horizontally, were utilitarian buildings.

Compared to the architecture of Hive Supremo, which was built upon itself where there was space, this place was much more orderly.

‘Such a tiny hive compared to ours… So few people here,’ Destroyer thought, loudly enough for me to hear.

I smiled. Yes, it was tiny, too. Its total population was a tenth of Hive Supremo’s.

“Squad, let’s find the local hospital so we could get assigned living cells and food. We have this day, and I want to experience the life of a local bee.”

I was glad to see that despite the hive’s size, the hospital here was clean, orderly, and had at least a hundred Physicians and Nurses at work. At first glance, my orders about health inspections were fulfilled.

However, then I raised my antennae higher in the air and felt the smell.

The smell in Hive Supremo’s hospital was a mix of usual scents of illnesses and traumas with smells of various herbs and ointments that Physicians used to treat them, as well as primitive lye soap.

This place smelled mostly like illness.

“Hm? Who are you, sisters?” A Nurse Bee carrying a few empty wooden buckets stopped us at the entrance. She tilted her head and waved her antennae, trying to identify us, then shook her head. “I don’t know you. Were you sent from another hive?”

‘Destroyer, you speak!’ I told telepathically. My manly voice would immediately give me out if I were to talk, even if I tried to squeak like a girl.

That was why Destroyer had a pendant with Sergeant Physician symbols, while I was just a common Physician at her side.

Destroyer stepped forward and gave a military salute.

“Yes, we were, Nurse. Direct us to the Chief Physician of this place for our instructions and cell assignment.”

I regretted everything. Destroyer still spoke like a soldier!

But the Nurse Bee—a bee who was too old to gain boons of the dominant genes, it seemed—had 75 intelligence.

She just nodded and smiled.

“This is good. We need more hands. Come on, I will show you the way!” The Nurse waved at us and flew deeper into the hospital, past the beds with sick and wounded. She didn’t stop talking. “What hive are you from? Is it bigger than ours? Oh, but you look so tough—are you from Hive Supremo itself?”

Destroyer actually tried to answer at first, but before a word could leave her mouth, the chatty Nurse already moved to the next question, until finally reaching the Chief Physician’s office and barging right in.

“Chief, Chief! Please, you got new ones!” the Nurse shouted toward a stern-looking Physician, then smiled at us again. “Well, I still have work to do. But we will talk later!”

When she left, I exhaled with relief.

The Chief Physician was a much more no-nonsense woman. And a first-generation bee—one of my daughters.

“You are here to assist and inspect health, you say?” she looked us over, pausing at me… then moved past. My disguise was *really* working well. “Well, we always have people we need to inspect. I can direct some of them to you. And I will make sure you have somewhere to sleep.”

On that note, we were left more or less on our own, and was how my inspection truly began.

‘I don’t like how this hospital smells,’ I declared to my squad. Telepathically, of course. ‘Since I’m here anyway, I will start my inspection from this place. But you will help, too. Fly around the hive, find more differences from Hive Supremo and tell them to me!’