Puking sucks.

I’ve mentioned it before, but I still can’t believe

how closely other worlds and puking went together. The worst part?

I wasn’t the only one.

It was gross to watch Belle make wax. I was not an expert on bees, but if they made wax on Earth the same way Belle did, then ew. It started with weird flakes being shaken off her abdomen, which she then mashed together and chewed. To make matters worse, the wax she was hurking up was super gross-looking, soft beads stained red and gray. Wasn’t beeswax supposed to be a pleasant yellow?

Of course, I wasn’t one to talk.

Observing Belle’s gross process was nothing compared to my own situation. Once I had begun adding the mass to the warrior’s egg, I applied as much as possible.

Then I kept applying it. And applying it. And applying it.

In other words, I was puking up mystery matter for the better part of several hours straight.

Who designed this ass-backward process? Nothing about it made sense! Thankfully, it eventually ended, and my reward was a massive orange egg.

Seriously, the thing was huge! It was so big that the wax cell Bess constructed had to be remade for the egg to fit. At the end of the process, a single wax cell containing an egg almost as big as Bess herself sat in the tree trunk.

“Any clue how long it’ll take now that the process is over?”

“Unfortunately not. I am sure it will take significantly longer than a day.”

“Hopefully, it’ll not be too long. Beatrice’s egg actually took much less than a day, I think. Maybe 12 hours.”

Was it a mistake to use so much Mind on this egg? Probably. Which meant that every aspect of the hive’s defense would fall onto me for the foreseeable future. Making multiple smaller warriors would be possible, but only if I ate food meant for the hivelings.

Ack!

I stumbled as alarms started blaring in my head. Beck?!

“What’s going on here, Beck?!” The skinny bee was flailing around and yelling into everyone’s heads, causing the beginning of a panic.

“ENOUGH!” Beatrice’s shout froze the entire hive.

“Beck. Calmly explain what has caused you to panic.”

Beck rattled off an explanation about what Ben had seen. A massive army of vultures. A fairly close proximity. The Vulch.

Wait. The what now?

Beck’s panic resurfaced as they explained what Ben had seen before fleeing. One of the vultures had known about Ben’s hiding place and quietly observed him somehow, without Ben noticing. Even with his enhanced sight, Ben didn’t see the Vulch, and only when Beck had begun to feel something foreign in their Mind did they notice the danger. Hold on.

“What about Ben? Is he safe? Is he alright?”

Thankfully, Beck confirmed Ben was safe and coming back as quickly as possible, but the vulture swarm had begun moving around, so he had to be a bit more sneaky on the return trip.

Alright, great. Time to freak out!

Where to even begin? The vultures were a worse threat than I thought, and that was saying something. If hundreds of them were allied together and they had a few intelligent leaders, then antagonizing them would be exceptionally stupid. Not only that, but they were less than a day’s travel away. It was good Ben was safe, but what if the mysterious Vulch was still watching him?

What the hell could I do?

“This is an extreme emergency scenario. There is… Mother, a word?”

No. Sorry, Beatrice. In a situation like this, we need to do everything to survive.

“Listen, everyone. You might not be warriors, but you can still fight. You have your stingers and your Minds. We’re up against an impossible enemy, but thankfully that gives me an idea.”

Against an impossibly powerful foe like this, there was one powerful solution.

“Here’s what we have to do. I’m strong, but facing hundreds of vultures simultaneously would be risky. We need to thin their numbers.”

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Yup. Guerrilla warfare. I tried to send the bees a mental image of what I meant. Beatrice could explain all this to Ben later.

“We need to use every advantage we have. We can pick off small groups of vultures discreetly, and then once their army has shrunk enough, I can nuke the ones that are left.”

Hey, that wasn’t too bad! It was a pretty basic concept, but if it worked, then that would be great!

“Brilliant Mother! It stupefies me that you could solve so many issues at once.”

“Whoa, what else does that solve?”

“Thank you for trusting in my capability to grasp your glorious plans enough to allow me to explain,” she turned to the bees and folded her hands behind her, “Mother devised a way for us to remain safe, buy time for the warrior to hatch, obtain an abundant food source, and gain control over a significant territory all at once.”

She looked at me apologetically. “Unfortunately, those were the only things I could deduce. I am unsure what ‘nuke’ means besides vague ideas of destruction. I am sorry for my inadequacy.”

…‘Kay.

I give up. Beatrice can be the queen now.

“Dumbass. She had better ideas than you overall, but they were improvements to what you introduced. Her competence is a blessing. Trust me, having subordinates with no actual competence and only blind loyalty is not worth it.”

“Yeah? What about competence and blind loyalty?”

“I think that would be an incredibly unfair advantage.”

Touche. Either way, the main strategy remained the same.

“I’m impressed, Beatrice. I actually hadn’t thought of killing that many birds with one stone.”

“Oh, are we using stones?”

I really needed to find a comedy bee subtype.

_______

A pair of dark shapes circled high above. They hesitantly floated downwards before settling near a corpse. Unfortunately for them, this particular corpse differed slightly from the ones littering the burned forest.

Before they could even take a sniff, their necks snapped and they fell down, dead.

I didn’t feel bad about killing the vultures at all. I hadn’t thought about it too much, but I was beginning to realize just how lucky I was. The past few days had been a whirlwind of death. I had racked up a pretty impressive kill count in the last few hours alone.

What exactly about this gruesome situation was so lucky? That would have to be my weapon.

I had never killed anyone or anything before. If it had to run in and swing a sword or stab a vulture with a knife, I could imagine the closeness would be traumatizing. Instead, I had the capability to do nothing more than give it a moment of thought.

Nothing could be luckier.

The hive was in an emergency alert scenario, after all. If I involuntarily had some traumatic reaction or mental breakdown, I would endanger the hive.

The workers were less predictable.

Since they didn’t have combat instincts, I had to teach them in the way of the warrior. And by that, I mean I gave them spikes to shoot at the birds.

Initially, I was excited for the workers to dart in and out, stinging the vultures to death. I immediately realized that this made little sense. The time it would take to wound or poison the vultures to death would be way too long. If Mind was my best weapon, then surely the same could apply to the workers, right?

A couple of embarrassing incidents mostly proved me wrong.

I had tried instructing them to use their Mind to snap the vultures’ necks for quick kills, but only a couple of them managed to do so.

Beatrice did it easily but could only kill one at a time. Interestingly, she seemed disgusted by the action, but instead of the trauma or guilt I expected, she was upset that she had to interact with the creatures with her exposed Mind. At least I knew Beatrice could mercilessly kill if needed.

Great.

Bess’s attempt seemed promising. She had managed to kill a vulture by snapping its neck, but she struggled a bit. I assumed it was because her Mind wasn’t powerful enough to do the task quickly, but apparently, that was wrong. She said it was because she was… clumsy.

Clumsy. With psychic powers. Psychic powers she used to carefully create intricate holes and precisely measured hexagonal wax cells. Sure, why not?

At least Beck didn’t do anything to shock me. Beck had been staying to keep an eye on the tree while the rest of us were out hunting. At the very least, we knew that Beck had the best capability to contact us.

Neither Bella nor Belle managed to kill a single vulture. They didn’t even get close, failing to do much more than ruffle a vulture’s feathers. They didn’t have much of an explanation, but it didn’t bother me too much. As long as they brought value, there was no reason to overburden them unnecessarily.

Ben, on the other hand…

Ben had also failed to kill a vulture, but not because he couldn’t. He got fucking distracted, excitedly flying over to study some random bug. That one was a bit awkward. The vulture that had been on the brink of death only moments before looked around frantically, choking and blinking its beady, watery eyes. It was up to me to finish the job, and it had stared right at me before I finished it off.

I think that last part was why I began thinking of my lucky situation.

Actually, I kinda felt bad for Ben. I was initially upset about his actions, but Beck begged me to go easy on him, which was surprising. They did their best to describe the Vulch’s presence but insisted that merely seeing it could not do it justice. After all, it was only when Beck felt an invasion that they understood the danger.

In truth, I wasn’t overly concerned about the vultures as a whole. Things got easier once Beatrice suggested using the metal spikes scattered around the forest as weapons. Even the members who couldn’t snap necks could do something as simple as throwing a spike with their minds. Especially after seeing how easy it was to ambush small groups and lure the scavengers with corpses, their overwhelming numbers became a secondary concern.

The Vulch was different.

When Ben returned from his mission, I asked him to let me see his memory. Unfortunately, I had no idea how to do that, and the best I could do was observe his thoughts while asking him to do his best to remember the encounter. I made a note to figure out a way to actually read memories.

Seeing the Vulch in Ben’s thoughts didn’t trigger any alarms, but what worried me was the thing’s own actions. Sure, it controlled a massive vulture army, but that didn’t necessarily mean it was using Mind to do so. Now. Hiding from Ben’s Ability-enhanced vision? Probing the mental Link Beck made? Those were far more concerning applications of the power.

So far, the past few days have been relatively uneventful. Some ambushes, some eating, mostly waiting. We hadn’t encountered the Vulch once, and nobody except Ben had ever seen it in person. Even though this was good luck, I got more and more nervous the longer it stayed hidden.

Queen didn’t understand my worry. The Vulch was just another enemy, something worth blowing up. My fear was somewhat irrational; the thought of an animal capable of using a tool better than myself, a human, felt… odd. It just didn’t feel right.

Four bees emerged from nearby tree trunks. Belle and Beck had stayed home today, and the rest of us were out hunting. This arrangement had worked a few times without any issues, and it meant the hive was better defended.

“Was it just me, or did these things look scared?” Bess was right. The vultures had seemed more cautious than in previous ambushes.

“Our hunts are having results,” Beatrice said, ”Although I am concerned that this fear will make the hunts more difficult.”

“It might, but there is the mental advantage,” I responded, “At least some of the vultures are intelligent, and if they get scared, then this would be effective mental warfare. The stress won’t help them survive.”

“If only we had a mighty warrior at our disposal.”

“I told you, I was willing to take the risk and do things myself,” I grumbled at Queen. It was admittedly concerning that the warrior hadn’t hatched yet. Days had passed, and the giant orange egg hadn’t changed. Compared to the other bees, this was a considerable amount of time.

No matter. I was powerful. The vultures’ overwhelming numbers were being taken care of. The warrior was no longer an urgent necessity.

The forest suddenly exploded with shrieking.

Shit! The vultures had ambushed our ambush!

Hundreds of vultures swarmed through the sky, squawking and screeching, drowning out my thoughts. Or, well, they tried their best, but I had been on edge.

I commanded the workers to huddle together and shoot spikes into the swarm. Beatrice got tasked with defense. If any vultures got close, it was up to her to pop them. And me?

[Tapped Mind: 80%/82.3775%]

A couple dozen vultures dropped dead in an instant. Then another couple dozen. Then another.

I was a killing machine. Around twenty-six of the vultures dropped dead as soon as I imagined it, taking no more than 3% each. Since there was no limit to tapping Mind, another chunk of the swarm fell to the ground a few instants later.

Coupled with the occasional vulture shot down by the worker’s spikes, the swarm rapidly thinned. Even so, once the vultures’ panic subsided, they began to attack. A few of the beasts even spewed some sort of… acid spit at us, an obstacle I did my best to take care of. {Compartmentalization} was just too good. I could kill vultures and smack acid away at the same time.

Even better, I could more carefully pick out which vultures were the intelligent type and avoid hitting them with weak attacks.

I settled in. It was doubtful that we could escape such a huge army, so we had no choice but to hunker down and kill as many vultures as possible. Another piece of the vulture army fell, but the fluttering blanket in the sky only grew deeper and larger.

Welp. This could take a while.