Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire

"This is a part of the diplomacy thing, really. We will strike at the armed humans—those who already terrified all the others. This way, we will do two things at once!"

I demonstratively counted on fingers.

"First, we will earn the gratitude of other humans for dealing with their problems. Second, we will show that we are even stronger than these warriors—and they should be *even more* afraid of us."

I added a third finger.

"Finally, we will add some positive reinforcement. Earlier, some humans left us gifts—even if we couldn't pick them up, we will reward these humans with our attention. Leave them some sign to show that we noticed. That we are watching! This will encourage them to bring more gifts. When the research camp is established near the village, they can gather the gifts there."

I could tell that most of my Advisers found my idea dubious at best. Only Workharder and Worriesgone looked like they were actually considering it.

"Anyway, attacking all humans at once will be too hard to organize. We will need a lot of people to work in unison—otherwise, humans will wake up and our element of surprise will disappear. The smoother things will be executed, the smaller is the chance that instead of scaring them, we will just make humans angrier. And we don't know how much time we have to prepare."

Ambrosia frowned deeply.

"There's reason in your words, but this solution still doesn't feel safe enough for the Bee Empire. The dangers keep creeping on us…"

She sounded weary all out of a sudden—a crack in her normal regal and collected attitude. How much did she worry about the Empire on a regular basis? How many worries was she hiding from everyone, even from me? On top of the worries she *wasn't* hiding…

It made me feel even worse for worrying her myself. I silently reached out and took her hand in mine.

Amby squeezed it back for a moment and let go; in the next instant, the crack in composure was gone like it never happened.

"But no matter how many dangers we will meet, we will defeat them all," she added louder. "For the Empire!"

"Yes, Mother-Queen! For the Empire!" Bloodhero shouted.

"That's right! We can deal with anything!" Workharder joined her.

"For the Empire!" everybody else cheered, and even the Attendants waiting outside joined in.

I opened my mouth, too, and shouted louder than everybody else was going.

"FOR THE EMPIRE—and back to the business! Be quiet, the Council is in progress!"

When the slightly ashamed silence returned to the table, I added,

"We will proceed with this plan, unless someone has important objections. And we will move more soldiers toward sub-hives that stand closest to the human village, besides Hive Rich. We have enough food to feed them all, do we?"

The last I checked this morning, our stores of food and materials were still high. Incredibly high, honestly. All this human meat…

Ugh. Absurdly practical, still kinda human.

"Yes, Father," Workharder said. "There are much fewer flowers left in our territory, but this just leaves more Foragers free to expand aphid tunnels, as well as cut and preserve the giants' meat. Which we have enough of to feed the entire Empire! For a few days, at least. Not to mention we have hunters as well, and the prey is still plentiful."

"Good. And the transportation—"

"It's doing fine! The first load of metal and coal is already on its way here on the train, but food is better moved around quickly through the air, anyway, Father."

"Then let's make it happen, girls. There's no time to waste!"

***

Dragons could easily carry 30 bees on their wide backs, as long as these bees held on tightly enough. But these capricious beasts refused to accept over 15 bees at once out of discomfort—or even fewer, if they didn't feel like it.

They could also fly to the human village and back in only a couple of hours—their flight speed was incredible, and terrain and predators weren't a concern to them. But if the black dragons decided they had enough of flight, then nothing would make them fly anywhere but to their nests.

"The dragons consider helping us an easier way to find food than others, Father. And they can eat a *lot*—way more than what we were feeding them in the early stages of taming," I was explained by the new leader of the dragon language research team. "But when they sate themselves, they see no reason to keep helping us until they get hungry again. And if we don't feed them enough for their services, they will look for food elsewhere instead of helping us."

'At least they stayed reliable when it counted,' I thought.

Now their task was to carry as many squads of Beemarines to the village as possible, together with their camping supplies.

(Beemarines were chosen instead of Commandos, because they also had stealth training, but were tougher and had stronger stings.)

The Beehounds sent with the Beemarines to scout the village didn't see any preparations for an attack on us yet, but tensions were definitely rising. A woman was attacked and wounded by a bandit for leaving a gift for the bees on the outskirts of the village, which made villagers even angrier—but they still didn't have weapons, armor, and training to compete with the attackers.

We were really going to become heroes the way it went.

Dragons carried a hundred Beemarines on the first day, then declared a break; the second day went the same.

That was also when I got news that the bees sent together with Explanatory had successfully established a research camp to study human language. It was hidden from them in a small cave, and Explanatory was already gathering first notes.

The way things went, in a day or two, we could begin what I called Operation Eye for an Eye. But before that, another timer ticked down to its zero.

The first generation of bees with the 'Chaotic Evolution' gene has emerged from their brood cells, and this was something I *had* to witness!