Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire - Chapter 52

Chapter 52: Finally, some good fucking food
〔Cooking〕

Brainpower requirement: 90

Resilience: +0,2 per 1 thousand populace.

1 unit of food feeds 10% more people.

〔〕〔〕〔〕

What a useful and delicious technology. Implementing it became my next project.

Of course, I could teach random bees myself, and then wait until they share this vital knowledge with their peers…

But it was ineffective.

Why do that, when our hive *almost* had a school?

I filled a jug with fried meat skewers and flew to the part of the hive where Ambrosia was lecturing future Teacher Bees. To my delight, Pollenia was at her side.

It was wrong to have favorites among my daughters, but… She was my favorite. She was just like her mother!

I beamed at my delightful girls, Queen and Worker Bees both.

“Hey, everybody! Look what I have! This is for you, Polly,” I offered her a skewer.

She sniffed it cautiously, then tore it out of my hands and bit in.

“Hey, you are supposed to say ‘thank you’! Don’t be so impolite.”

Pollenia flashed me with a grumpy glare.

“I don’t know what politeness is, Father,” she said, waving her antennae over the skewer. “If you want to lecture me, first explain what about. Like Mother does.”

My shoulders dropped.

She was right, but also—what was with my daughters being so full of rebellious spirit?

“Thank you, Nectus,” Ambrosia said, taking a skewer from me. “See, Pollenia? Now Nectus knows that I’m grateful for the food he brought. This will improve his morale, which will make him work harder for some time. Hm. Is this meat? It smells unlike anything I’ve seen… but delicious.”

After some consideration, Ambrosia bit into her meat skewer.

“Mmm! This is really good! Thank you again, Nectus.”

Following her example, Pollenia began to eat, too. Ambrosia’s students, who didn’t have the meat digestion gene, looked at us with vaguely disgusted faces.

“Amby, don’t talk about me like I’m some virtual pet! But, ahem, yes,” I stood prouder. “Delicious cooked meat! I want you to teach future bees how to cook, too. Everybody should know this. Or at least… the bees that cook? Who makes all that disgusting bee bread?”

“Usually Cleaning Bees and Nurse Bees… Whoever is available inside the hive. Is it complicated?”

“Not at all! But you need fire. And… And I want to teach you to make *actual* pollen bread, too! Anything will be more palatable than the stuff full of saliva…”

I grimaced.

Ambrosia looked at the patiently waiting students, then at me.

“I want to know how to make more of that stuff!” Pollenia exclaimed.

“Fine. Everybody, today’s math lesson is on hold until we learn how to cook.”

***

The express lesson on cooking comprised two recipes: cooked meat, with or without skewers, and pollen flatbread.

The latter was just pollen mixed with water and baked on a heated stone. The result was some of the blandest and toughest breads I’ve eaten in my life, second only to a cookie that was left on a table for two weeks…

I compensated for the taste by putting some honey on the bread.

“I wish we had containers that won’t melt when put on fire. Then we’d be able to boil water and make porridge…”

Ambrosia bit into my experimental bread and chewed thoughtfully.

“Meat was tastier. But this seems fine.”

Her students were also trying my bread and giving their opinions.

“It’s good!”

“Tough… But I like that it’s warm.”

“I want to try making some, too!”

It didn’t take long for Ambrosia’s students to repeat my simple recipes. They even began improving on them already.

All in all, I only took a few hours from Ambrosia’s lessons.

Then, I called my Military Adviser. As soon as she entered the Council Chamber, I threw a wax tablet at her.

She reflexively dodged, and it fell to the ground. Those danger-averse reflexes were showing themselves.

“Father?” the Military Adviser asked. “What are you doing?”

“This is called throwing. I bet you can repeat it with weapons.”

“Huh? Oh! OH!” Her eyes lit up. “How brilliant! Why didn’t we think about this ourselves?”

“I don’t know. But I recommend you teach your subordinates how to pick up rocks from the ground and throw them at enemies.”

“Yes, Father! This instant!”

***

On the next day, I was congratulated twice.

<Congratulations! You’ve implemented a ‘Cooking’ technology in your colony. You gain 4 development points.>

<Congratulations! You’ve implemented a ‘Throwing’ technology in your colony. You gain 1 development points.>

〔Your colony〕

〔Wellness〕: 84 %

〔Population〕: 39 thousand

〔Development level〕: 3

〔Development points〕: 120 / 200

〔Species〕: Common Honey Bee

〔Attributes〕

> Workpower: 169

> Military: 51

> Brainpower: 179

> Logistics: 35

> Resilience: 72

〔Resources〕:

> Food: 1735 units

> Building materials: 75 units

〔Colony Council〕

〔Military Adviser〕: increases total military by 10%. (B1374)

〔Science Adviser〕: adds 10% of total workpower to brainpower. (B581)

〔Industry Adviser〕: increases total workpower by 10%. (B601)

〔Economics Adviser〕: adds 10% of total workpower to military. (B339)

〔Culture Adviser〕: increases all total attributes and wellness by 3%. (Ambrosia)

〔Technologies〕

Dance Communication, Hive Building, Food Preservation, Forager Posts, Rank-Based Hierarchy, Primitive Containers, Border Patrols, Primitive String, Fire, Candles, Primitive Spiked Armor, Primitive Medicine, Primitive Clothing, Stone Weapons and Tools, Work Camps, Cooking, Throwing

〔〕〔〕〔〕

Throwing boosted my military, and cooking boosted my resilience, and all together I was getting closer and closer to development level 4.

And yet…

〔Remaining lifespan〕: 49 d

I couldn’t stop feeling anxious!

Was I imagining it, or were my knees complaining recently?

Was that a new wrinkle on my skin? My reflection in the water was too blurry to say.

To distract myself, I focused fully on helping my hive run smoothly. Especially workers at the future work camp, which were left far from their Queen and needed a morale boost now and then.

***

Two days of barely contained anxiety later…

<Congratulations! You’ve implemented a ‘Work Camps’ technology in your colony. You gain 5 development points.>

<Congratulations! You’ve implemented a ‘Literacy’ technology in your colony. You gain 10 development points.>

The work camp boosted my logistics by a good 30 points! Normally, this would’ve boosted my development points, but it apparently just negated the logistical penalty for working remotely. A penalty which I just found about…

Sometimes, the technologies just weren’t explained clearly.

Literacy, meanwhile, had no effect at all because it was limited to Ambrosia’s school.

But it would spread quickly. And while it did, I was going to work on step three of the Project Great Flood.

“Economics Adviser B339… Get your digging sticks—we are going to flood those insects!”