Chapter 73: Chapter 73

After confirming the details of the Flower Meadow beehouse, Belissar heard a pair of chimes.

New Mission Received: Construct new type of beehouse.

New Mission Received: House all queens.

He nodded as the God of Bees officially sanctioned his current efforts. He really had put that task aside for too long. But no longer. With nothing but the small, daily purifications on the horizon, he had nothing more urgent to deal with.

That did remind him, though, that he would need to resume those purifications soon. The Tower would even force him too if he put that off for too long, and he still felt it was important for his Tower to continue growing. He rubbed his chin and frowned, though. With the soldier bee army taking casualties so recently, he wasn’t sure if they were ready.

But then he had a thought. Why not just ask? He had all the Flower Meadow queens with him right now, so he might as well hear it from them. He took a moment to think of how to phrase the question in a way that wouldn’t just result in “Whatever King chooses!” responses.

“So, I have another question. How is the soldier bee army doing?”

The queens all went completely still at that, causing Belissar’s heart to race. That reaction was not what he had expected.

“Um, I mean, you lost a lot of bees lately, right? Is the army, um, recovering well?”

He was granting them the grandest reward immediately after their greatest failure. The Conduit’s words had proven correct. The Firstborn truly could not comprehend the depths of the King’s favor for even the least of his bees. But perhaps that was to be expected of the King who suffered not even a crippled soldier to die when he was able to save her.

But even that was not the greatest surprise of the day. The Firstborn had thought the moment she had been expecting had come when the King asked of the state of her army. She, and all her compatriots, had gone silent in shame. What could the state of the army be but abysmal? Yes, the queens had anticipated casualties and preemptively laid a new generation of soldier eggs, so the losses had been recovered almost immediately. But the army at its peak had failed utterly to stop the enemy. The army itself was revealed as flawed and incapable of its fundamental purpose. So, how was such an army doing? The answer could not be anything good.

And then, once again, the King defied all of her expectations. He specifically asked about the casualties. The Firstborn gave an answer, and then the King had made the declaration that rocked them all to the core.

He was starting up the purifications again. And he asked them to be ready.

Not only had the King forgiven them for their failures, but he was also still expecting them to continue their duties. He was not replacing them or moving them to other roles. He still trusted them to defend the hive of hives, even after their failures.

As the Conduit had assured her, the King was far more forgiving than any queen the Firstborn had ever known of. Even she would not have let one of her children continue a role they had failed in so utterly. They would have been reassigned if they were not exiled outright. Instead, the King was giving them another chance.

The Firstborn leapt into action and into the air, her wings beating as fast as they could as she shot into the air. She would not let this chance go to waste. She would not let her King down again.

She quickly conferred with the other queens to explain what she planned to do. They quickly agreed and then they all raced off to the skies above. Soon, they arrived at the place where their joint army trained. The soldier bees quickly ceased their maneuvers and gathered up before their queens, the mere sight of their mothers outside of the hive pulling their attention.

The Firstborn made the declaration.

“King giving another chance. We battle again today.”

The army nearly dropped out of the sky as the soldiers’ wings halted at the declaration. But the Firstborn gave them no chance to recover, as limited as her time was.

“Queens will fight too, today. Will command.”

Some of the soldier bees fell so far they landed upon the ground at that, before the objections began. But the Firstborn had none of it.

“Not all. Today, me alone. Other queens stay safe. Our job to raise army. If did well, won’t be hurt. If did poorly, another will replace. But no matter what, cannot fail again. Will not put King in danger again. Hive of hives bigger than one.”

The soldiers fell still at that. The soldiers of the other hives looked to their queens but all the Flower Meadow queens danced their assent and commanded them to follow the Firstborn’s lead for today’s battle.

This was the resolution of the Firstborn, as well as her assessment of their failures. Their army was deadly and disciplined…but it was slow to adapt. They trialed new tactics in response to their failures, but only ever after the fact. That was no longer enough. The soldier bees, as strong as they were, were still limited by their own instincts. When they saw the enemy ahead, they lost most of their thoughts save to defeat it. They had trouble adjusting to anything that occurred until they experienced it directly.

The Firstborn identified a potential solution from the past, ironically from the queens who had perished altogether. The queens of the First Dynasty of the First Spawner that came before her had led from the front. It was thanks to that that the Third Queen of the First Dynasty of the First Spawner, the first of her line, had pioneered the rotating squad attack that was now the cornerstone of the army’s tactics.

Monster bee queens had more intelligence and more flexibility than the average soldier or worker and were not as beholden to their instincts. Beyond that, they had an innate ability to command their children through the links in their mana. Orders that came from the queen would be received and responded to far more quickly than from a fellow soldier.

The Firstborn had experienced all of this herself in the latest purification. In the darkest moment, she had confronted the shade directly alongside her workers in a desperate final stand. And when the shade attempted to burn them all with its lightning, her greatest sensitivity to mana had caught wind of it, her experience had identified the potential threat, her flexibility had suppressed her instinct to attack the enemy without cease, and her abilities as the queen had passed her command to the workers in time. As a result, she and all of her workers had managed to avoid the enemy’s attack, something the soldier bee army had partially failed to do.