“Belial, Behemoth, Belphegora, and Beelzebub. Please have mercy.”

“Whadda ya mean, Mom? We’re your bodyguards! You don’t have to beg for our mercy.”

“Ah, Beelzebub. Yes. I do.”

I felt sorry for this world. I was already on the path to being some sort of Demon King (or Queen), but this was taking things to a whole ‘nother level. The cliche personal knights named after some of the most famous and terrible demons from my world. Maybe I had misnamed Bedivere; instead of the round table full of noble knights, like his name might imply, he was going to be in charge of demon bees.

“If you lot are going to be this rowdy, can you do it away from the hive’s center?”

Belle had a point. Even if there weren’t eggs in the nursery anymore, there was plenty going on that would be disturbed by these wackos. Speaking of…

“I’ll take them to a clearing away from here. Just to let you know, Belle, I’ll probably be making more eggs later tonight after I get some food in me.”

“Ooh,” her eyes lit up, “Why not do so right away? Expanding the hive is always a treat.”

She took a pointed look towards the again-bickering warriors, “Yes. Always.”

“Not yet. I’m somewhat tired from my… ordeal. Later.”

I gathered up the warriors and left the hive behind. Ahhhh, the sun. Dim though it was through the clouds, it was pretty nice to feel the heat and breeze of the great outdoors. What, like, a couple weeks had passed? And yet the surroundings seemed mostly the same. The only place that was starting to see some revival was near the banks of the river.

If only that were enough. The ashy water of the river was exactly what the forest needed, but it just wasn’t enough. Or spread around enough. I knew the desperation life had for water well enough.

“Maybe we could help things along….”

Bees were, like, nature superheroes, right? Pollination and such things. No pollen made that particular job of ours hard, but maybe there were other ways we could help the environment. We weren’t ordinary bees, after all. If the rain wouldn’t return, maybe we could be the ones to spread some water around.

“That’s it! I’m gonna fuck you up, Beel!”

“HA! Try it, bitch!”

Loud thuds and chuckling and whimpers echoed behind me. These four would be a serious handful. And they were supposed to be like my personal bodyguards led by Bedivere?

When Belial’s insecticide eyes started to duplicate themselves and Beelzebub’s antennae began to dimly glow, I decided I would rather not destroy the forest I was currently planning on saving.

“Can you give it a rest? Wait until there’s a wide open space to beat the hell out of each other.”

Beelzebub’s gigantic smile was perfectly contrasted by Belial’s grimace, and Belphegora’s chuckles turned into full-blown laughs. I’d have to figure out some way to keep these four busy in a way that lets them blow off steam. Maybe forcing Bedivere not to interact with them was a mistake…

Speaking of, Bedivere seemed to be taking his punishment to heart. As far as I could tell, he was heading to the exact opposite side of the hive from where we were. How exaggerated. Well, I had stipulated that he could only interact with these four during training. And training with Bedivere would surely be a great way for them to get tuckered out.

I’d just have Bedivere train with them all the time. It was a bit of a loophole in my own rule, but it did solve some issues. Was my reaction… was it exaggerated? Maybe. I wouldn’t overturn my original decision yet, but after my little memory dive, everything felt even less clear than before.

Oh, joy. Maybe I could be even less confident in my decision-making.

Once we reached a decent clearing in the forest of broken trees, I gave the four warriors the okay to cut loose. Almost immediately, of course, Belial started beating down on Beelzebub. Unfortunately, the de-facto leader of the squad was apparently some sort of monster because the noble boy’s attacks didn’t seem to leave as much as a scratch. Behemoth, to her credit, was trying her best to separate the two, and Belphegora… fell asleep. The three active warriors were a sight to behold.

Hm. I wonder what their gimmicks might be? They were all quite powerful, but the amount of Mind allocated to their eggs, along with Bedivere’s Ability, implied to me that they would have some sort of unique capabilities. Other warriors didn’t seem to have the strange features they did, Bedivere being an exception. Even in his case, Bedivere was basically a normal warrior with a big stinger.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

These four, though? Belial was tough, but his physical strength seemed lacking. For all intents and purposes, he seemed quite normal. Well, besides the fact that eyes occasionally opened up on his head. Behemoth wasn’t showcasing anything unusual besides her size, strength, and durability.

Beelzebub was definitely on the freaky side of things.

She was strong, fast, durable, and scarily calculating. Even as I watched them fight, the analysis of Belial’s movements was secondary information coming through her Link. Instead, she was calmly trying to figure out what she could do to utterly decimate the guy and dishearten Behemoth at the same time. Freaky.

Well, they had just been born. I was sure they’d begin coming into their own with Bedivere’s guidance.

Now. Although I felt tired and sad, I needed to make up for lost time. Days away from the hive, but from what I was gathering from the Kin Link, nothing monumental had happened. Well, there was one strange thing.

Independence.

Without their queen, the hive seemed to have been a bit lost. Or they should have been if nature were in charge. In this case, nature’s authority was basically dirt in the face of Beatrice’s ceaseless quest for efficiency. She had taken my policies to heart and allowed each bee to flaunt its unique strengths to bolster the hive, but bees didn’t work like that.

In short, they had taken the idea a bit seriously. To the degree that stark factions had begun to sprout up.

Hm.

The structure in the hive currently revolved around budding factions, led by the original workers and made up of few members. Calling the groups’ factions’ was a bit generous, but from my perspective, that was exactly the path things were heading down. Bess controlled the largest group in the hive, but only one of her underlings could act independently. Belle, in the meanwhile, controlled a small but powerful group consisting of intelligent, talented, and varied members. And that was just those two.

Admittedly, those two groups were the most divided considering the relationship issues between Bess and Belle, but still. The sparks were there. To some degree, I was okay with a sort of faction system, but it rubbed me the wrong way. Thankfully, these ‘factions’ were mostly in my own head; the bees still worked closely together and naturally intertwined their tasks without much effort.

The concern I had was about scale. If I greatly expanded the hive, would these factions begin to actually form? The possibility was certainly there. Were my methods flawed? Too human? Most likely. I didn’t know anything about being a bee. I should let Queen take over decision-making sometimes.

Well, what about outside the hive?

Beatrice’s map was… really nice? I remembered the simple yet effective mental map Beatrice had flaunted before, but this new version had opted for more detail and visual flair. It was by no means an artistic masterpiece, but it was interesting that Beatrice had begun to put so much care and effort into this map. Sorting through her thoughts, I found that the map’s updated appearance wasn’t even due to some efficiency thing. Huh. In fact, she seemed almost… ashamed about the amount of time she was spending on this thing.

I see. The map had become her passion. An escape. She was so dedicated to her work, but fiddling with the map’s appearance was a creative release for her. Something that she could do…imperfectly.

Aw. Cute!

The map itself had grown quite a bit. Ben had slowed down somewhat recently as he guided and taught his new partners, but no matter. What did matter was the blandness. Apparently I had crash-landed in the single most boring obliterated forest in existence because there wasn’t a single new thing Ben had discovered. No settlements, no new lifeforms, no new natural formations. Not a shred of evidence of humans or mossy creatures or whatever. In fact, the further Ben traveled, the more boring the surroundings became.

With one exception.

According to the handy-dandy little compass Beatrice had newly included, I could observe that an interesting pattern was emerging, especially towards the west. The further west the map went, the more highly concentrated the evidence of the human raiders became. More spikes, more ditches, more giant crystals. The relics seemed to stretch out almost in a cone, becoming less densely packed together the further east we observed.

The implication was clear: the path of destruction could lead us to the human settlement in the west. The raiders had barely veered on their warpath, so now I had a direction to aim for. It was reasonable to assume the humans had come through the forest directly from the human settlement, either from stopping there or something.

Now I just needed to figure out a way to go to the human settlement without endangering myself or leaving the hive behind.

“Mom! Where’s Bedivere? I wanna crush him in an arm wrestle!”

“It’s okay, Behemoth. You don’t need to arm-wrestle with mean little Beelzebub for my sake.”

“But… but… Belial… your arm…! Waaaaah...”

Scratch that. My health was already in constant danger.

__________

“Get away from me, beast.”

“Ha! I like you, Beryl! Arm wrestle me.”

“I recommend you refuse, Beryl. She is freakishly strong.”

“Flattery gets you nothing, Belial!”

For the first time in forever, I was having a nice family dinner. Though it was more chaotic than they had once been.

Man, I had been gone for a while. Beryl’s solitary meal punishment had already ended, so the only face missing was Bedivere. Per the wording of the punishments, he was theoretically allowed back, but he was voluntarily forgoing the privilege. Probably to avoid facing the new warriors.

“Fine. How about you?”

Beelzebub had been spending the evening under the not-so-starry skies challenging every bee in the hive to an arm wrestle, but nobody could really match her besides Behemoth. She and the four warriors were pretty popular with most of the warrior bees as fellow meatheads (or that was my interpretation). Beryl, in contrast, had a stony expression every time one of the four warriors crossed her vision. Was she upset that she had been punished for their sake?

Oh, wait. She was jealous.

Yup. No secret was safe from me anymore, and clear as day, I could feel Beryl’s intense envy towards the four warriors. Man, she was in a bad way. Everything about the four warriors just pissed her off. They were basically Bedivere’s favorites, even though they had never met, and they were strong. Like, really really strong.

Pretty silly. Beryl hadn’t been alive that long compared to these four, but she was already jealous of the younger bees’ strength. Imagine how the workers felt? What about Beatrice as the oldest?

“Yo Beelzebub,” the bee who loved flexing shouted at her, “What are you guys called? Like your little bodyguard group?”

Hey, great question, flex guy! I was getting tired of calling them ‘the four warriors’ and stuff like that. I gave the question a bit of thought. What could I call the group? Looking at their horns and thinking about their demonic namesakes, I was nervous. I didn’t want to be some devil bee, dammit. Maybe I could call them something noble or nice-sounding.

“I’ll tell ya what we are. We’re… the Hell Hornet Order! No wait. The Demon Drones! Evil Legion? The Evil Bee Devil Inferno Legion Order of Doom. Yup, that last one is perfect!”

“Beelzebub, you’re off the naming committee forever. A noble, legendary order of warriors? How about the Valkybees?”

She stared at me before breaking into her signature wild smile.

“OH! I get it! Like Valkyries. But bees! It’s ironic because we’re horrible and terrible, so we can mislead our enemies with a noble name. Before we skewer them!”

“We have to skewer people…? But… my stinger is small….”

Of course. Of. Course. Why did my absolutely incredible name have to be corrupted in this way? Maybe it was ironic, but the wordplay was so good. It was a great… pun. Shit.

Hell to that. I stuffed my face to take my mind off the degeneration my brain was continuously undergoing. Maybe this was actually a symptom of becoming a parent, like some sort of weird natural phenomenon. Well, it was too late to go back. The hive must grow, so more bees had to be born.

Luckily, the B-box System opened up a world of possibilities. I bet I could play around with it while making eggs at the same time. After dinner, I’d discuss things with Beatrice.

Making an emergency plan would be necessary. Didn’t want to get stuck in my own head again.