Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire - Chapter 261

Chapter 261: Sickness eat sickness world
I straightened proudly and waved my hands around as I shared my thought with Tabletina and Ambrosia.

“I was thinking too much about the Bee Empire and too little about the grand picture. Of course, bees and humans have pissed off a bunch of gods, and they might have a vendetta against me… But we are still a tiny part of the grand universe. I bet each god still has plenty of other enemies. And in evolution, there’s always a competition.”

By the hard-thinking frowns on the faces of my listeners, I knew they didn’t catch up with my conclusion yet.

“The different species of viruses and bacteria compete with each other, too. This competition slows down their progress in infecting us, bees. They are too busy fighting each other in battles we can’t see to make us sick.” I paused. “Well, this is my theory. But this is the reason we only had a *limited* and *bearable* amount of evolved beast attacks, isn’t it?”

The flies, which were breeding in alarming numbers, were eaten by hordes of dragons. The dragons fought each other and were attacked by land ambush predators… And so on and so forth.

Although there were attacks on the Bee Empire as well, none of them were systematic enough to cause alarm.

Ambrosia nodded thoughtfully.

“So we have reached a new balance of power, Necty? Is this what you mean?”

“Yes. At least, we are in a balance of power *for now*.” My earlier elation disappeared like it was never there. “With this intense competition, if we slow down our development even for a moment, someone or something will destroy us. My recent sickness was just one example of it. I let myself be physically weak for a moment, and many girls paid for it.”

I got even sadder when thinking about all the bees I must’ve infected. By now, I was almost sure that me and my inspections of sub-hives brought this sickness to Hive Supremo. Out of all the bees who caught the same thing, 11 were my bodyguard Beemarines, including Destroyer.

Right now, they were slowly but surely recovering. I was sure that their improved regeneration was helping in that a lot. But for them, the sickness went much worse than for me, since their immunity was weaker.

As for other bees who caught this (still nameless) flu, nobody died *yet*, but 13 girls had a really grim prognosis. Bad enough that I considered saying “fuck it” and donating some blood despite everyone’s protests.

I knew even the sick girls in question would have protested if they were awake enough to do it.

“We’ve dealt with everything that rapidly evolved against us so far. We will deal with everything else,” Ambrosia said, raising her chin in self-assurance.

She had a stalwart faith either in myself, or in the Bee Empire as a whole. It was written in her gaze and heard in her thoughts.

‘Others might want to destroy us, but we will destroy them. Failure is not an option.’

I envied her determination.

***

Ever since my telepaths have successfully driven away royal recruiters from his village, Anad Shach owed me. Because I said so, and because I was ready to remind him if he wanted to forget.

Thankfully, there was no need.

My girls did everything themselves. Explanatory and her subordinates got my order (through a messenger; I was too far from her in Hive Supremo to send it telepathically, even with my incredibly boosted range), then gave it to Anad Shach, who complied without thinking twice.

He gave his cousin some money and a horse-driven cart, then sent him to buy some things in the city—and also secretly bring two hundred young and fast Beehounds there.

By the time they will return, I planned to be ready to send a newer, telepathic generation of Beehounds, whose larvae were currently growing in Hive Supremo’s brood cells.

Meanwhile, the rest of the Empire worked on other things.

Researchina declared, badly hiding her pride, that the first stable prototype of a steam engine was being installed on a test train (not the First Train in case the engine exploded after all).

Tabletina, with help from Researchina and me, was exploring the technology of distillation of chemical components from plants—in other words, separating the pure and useful stuff from everything else plants had.

Her plant cures were getting better and better, although they still required a lot of tests to complete. Tests which could only be done on bees, and which often ended with someone getting poisoned.

But there was never an end of volunteers who wanted to help the Empire, even in this way. Especially when sisters and comrades of these girls might’ve died or became crippled by one of many sicknesses that were ravaging the Bee Empire.

The food crisis was also kept in check. Although the lack of new flowers in our territory was concerning, the scouts found a new source of sweet carbohydrates that even unevolved bees could easily digest.

Some pillar mountains (which were this world’s version of Earth trees, as far as I could tell) began growing fruits.

Each of them was at least several bees in size, although there were many different kinds of different sizes. Maybe some of them were even berries. To get them, the bees often had to fight off dragons, but it was worth the effort—even a relatively small fruit had more juice than a dozen flowers had nectar.

To support the unevolved hives, my girls were cutting the fruits off their branches and transporting them on flying sleds. While being protected by soldiers and Foremen, of course.

This was another drain on our manpower, but the unevolved hives were still standing, and new Drones still were raised in them, so the drain was worth it.

In short… we really got used to the new era of fast evolution, where competition between species became three times as intense as usual.

And then, the first of Beehounds send to human settlements, together with several Researchers from Explanatory’s team, came to Hive Supremo with precious information about humankind of this world