“How are you holding up, Beryl?”

“Mother… I failed you. I would be healthy if I wasn’t injured! Then I would have been able to apprehend the humans….”

Well sure, genius. The humans would’ve won if they hadn’t lost too.

“It’s good that you’re so full of energy, but your body isn’t looking too good.”

“Ah. I suppose I may be mortally wounded. But my failure….”

At the very least, it seemed like her life wasn’t in immediate danger. I did wonder about how she would fare in the future ’cause I wasn’t sure she would be able to fight effectively without real recovery.

Beryl had sustained the worst injuries out of the surviving bees. It made sense, considering she had fought against the entire team of humans (plus penguin) by herself. She was supremely lucky that she lived, in my estimation. Her arms had been mangled, and large gashes were open all over her body. One of her antennae had even been crumpled, probably from one of the penguin’s mighty slaps.

“Well, unfortunately, I’ll have to force you to sit tight. Until you’re healed, I can’t allow you to fight or defend the hive.”

Beryl looked devastated at my words. Poor girl. She had a single opportunity to defend the hive and this was the result. At best, this could be considered a harsh lesson learned. Her rashness had cost her. But at worst… She might never fight again.

“I don’t want to alarm you, but I want to be honest. Your injuries are bad. Like, really bad. It might be difficult for you to fight ever again.”

A moment of thought gave me another idea, though.

“Actually, considering the mechanics of this world… If you really develop your Mind, you could still defend the hive, I suppose.”

“Understood! I will not rest until I am once again capable of defending the hive!”

Uh. Hip hip hooray and all that, I guess? She seemed really determined about that. Well, I would leave her to recover. There was plenty to do.

In fact, there was almost too much to do. The brief period of rest after the war was officially over. And, of course, I had spent most of that time stressing about stuff anyways rather than taking a break.

Well now things were moving again. As per Beatrice, I had quite the list. Figuring out a way to communicate with the humans, shoring up the hive’s defenses, further optimizing each team’s tasks, teaching new bees, and of course, hatching new bees. And those were just the things Beatrice considered to be top priority. There were more micro elements I was interested in, like making sure Bess came into her own as a leader and maintaining the hive’s family-friendly feeling.

In my opinion, I wanted to prioritize human communication above all else. They were connected to so many things and could teach me so much about the outside world. And, of course, communication would allow me to find out a way to prevent conflict between us.

Speaking of, I had somehow found myself floating in front of the humans’ dirt ball. Hm.

“Be at the ready, Bedivere. I’m going to open the ball for a moment.”

Bedivere, who was posted nearby, nodded. I had some ideas for communicating with the humans, but nothing that would work in our limited time.

The first idea was the penguin. I could understand the penguin perfectly, so at least that was one-way communication. However, the penguin wasn’t an effective way for me to communicate back to them. So, I was going to draw.

With a thought, the dirt ball opened, spitting out the penguin and the leader-type girl, closing in the next instant. Oof. They weren’t looking too hot. It had only been a day, mostly less, and the prisoners were looking rough. Matted fur, messy hair, and of course covered in dirt.

This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it.

Surprisingly, the Leader didn’t make any sudden moves or leap into action, instead opting to kneel with her head down. Even more surprisingly, the penguin followed suit.

“Kento. Degru maruo tu.”

Man, why even bother talking to me? You already know I don’t understand your damn language!

“Penguin! What’d she say?”

A flash of indignance appeared in the penguin’s eye, but it quickly disappeared. Oh boy. Now they’re going to hold a grudge against me for beating the hell out of them and imprisoning them indefinitely in a ball of dirt.

Maybe a bit of anger was warranted. Oh whatever.

“Pardon. Master Yelah said, ‘Please. Have mercy on us.’”

Ah geez. Well, at least the penguin could give me their names, though that did me little good. On another note, a small detail I noticed was that the Leader had said fewer words than in the penguin’s translation, which meant that there wasn’t a 1-1 translation, and all that was to say that this would be goddamn annoying.

“Yeah yeah, whatever. I’m gonna draw some stuff, so try to convey what they mean to… Yelah.”

First, I mentally picked up a stick to draw Yelah’s name on the ground. She didn’t seem to understand, which meant we had different writing systems as well. The next few hours were just experimentation. Writing things, drawing things, smacking my stick into the ground. It was shockingly frustrating to communicate with people who essentially shared no knowledge with me. Eventually, I got Yelah to understand what her name was, but it would be an exercise in insanity to try and teach her my entire language and writing system. I just wasn’t a great teacher, not even mentioning our limited time.

“Argh! No! This symbol will mean ‘yes’ and this one will mean ‘no’! It’s not that hard!”

“Mother, I do not think-“

“C’mon Bedivere, she’s gotta get it! It’s a circle and an X for fucks sake!”

“I think part of the problem may be how your mental power is completely out of control.”

Hm? I suppose Yelah was looking pretty pale. What did it even mean for my mental power to be out of control? Because of my emotions? Honestly, I felt worse for the penguin; the poor guy was panting and looking pretty bad. Big fluffy bird.

“Fine then. That’s probably enough for today. Someone get them some food. I’m leaving.”

And with that, I tossed the pair back into the dirt ball. My order would be received, and the group would receive food to hopefully make them feel better after our communication session, so there was no need to continue that torture.

And so I headed back to the central hive for the day. Of all things, trying to poorly teach someone something was mentally exhausting, so all I wanted to do was eat and maybe throw up some eggs and have a relaxing evening.

Checking up on Beck and their squad, I saw they had some theories about possible solutions to our communication problem. Hm, how interesting. Beck’s two goons weren’t the only ones hanging around theorizing. Of all bees, Belphegora and one of Belle’s subordinates were along for the ride in there, having a heated argument about the validity of forcefully controlling Minds versus using Mind to control bodies like puppets.

Maybe I should have more regulation on the bees’ interactions. It may not be in the hive’s best interest or even be sensible in any way, but damn, would it give me some peace of mind.

“Have you lot figured anything out?”

Beck instantly responded. Apparently, even Beatrice had chimed in with some ideas of her own at some point. And as a result, an actually decent concept came about.

In essence, as Beck went on to explain, Links were our greatest strength as bees. However, such a power was mostly relegated to usefulness among other bees. The Links could be automatically created by the queen (that being myself), and through the queen, all bees would be connected in a hive mind. The Link allows for quick and easy communication, control, and coordination with minimal effort and cost.

As for other creatures? That was where things became complicated. All of the benefits previously mentioned went out the window entirely. Vulch’s hive mind was an interesting example. It likely did not come about naturally and, as a result, was limited in some way. If it were as interconnected as our own, Ben wouldn’t have been Vulch’s first introduction to our hive. Not by a long shot.

On the subject of Vulch, his containment and hold over my Mind might be something to study in terms of using the Link to control others. However, that wasn’t exactly what we needed. While something like Vulch’s mindscape would be perfect for communicating, it was highly limited. Vulch was vulnerable, and even if I could get around weaknesses like that with B-boxes, it would leave the one I communicated with in a bad spot.

Maybe a good idea for combat…

But to focus on the Link, Beck explained that forcibly creating a regular Kin Link with the humans would be the best way to achieve every one of our goals. Now the only issue was how to do such a thing. Beck was, to some degree, the resident Link expert, and they thought my idea of simply forming one was the right idea. So the actual issue was not, in fact, how to develop that Kin Link, but rather how to do so without alarming or alerting the humans.

That all made perfect sense to me. In theory, my brute-force method would work. It was just how damn stubborn those humans were. Once the Link actually got established, there wouldn’t be an issue, but how to make it…

And that was where Beatrice’s idea came in. She had told Beck and the crew about my Egg-Laying level-up options and presented the Linker Bee. Although we didn’t exactly know what these Linker Bees were, the obvious interpretation made them out to be creatures that could provide some function related to Links.

Apparently, Beatrice had brought this up because she was confused about the Linker Bees. Why and how had I unlocked something like that? After all, they were a Special Subtype rather than a regular Subtype. Meaning something I had done or encountered had introduced bees with a specialization in Links as a possible option.

In my opinion? The fight with the Vulch seemed as good an explanation as any. That whole situation had revolved around Links with the Vulch, and pushing through with a superior aptitude for Links had been the solution.

If the Linker Bee could somehow allow us to Link with the humans without them noticing, then the simple action of hatching an egg or five would resolve this entire situation instantly.

Beck stressed that such a method was insanely risky. The issues were numerous: I was limited to two Subtype choices, it wasn’t guaranteed that the Linker Bees would work, and countless other issues related to either of those.

Overall, it was something of a gamble. If I selected the Linker Bees alongside the Wax Drones, then I would at least need to try them out. If they didn’t work, what would I lose exactly? One of my subtype choices until the next level-up, for one thing. Some time for another.

Was it worth the risk? Possibly. Either way, it would take some time for Beck and the others to figure out a reliable Linking method. So it was either give the Linkers a try, during which Beck could try and figure out a method, or try to communicate with the humans as I had done today while Beck figured something out.

I certainly knew which option I was personally leaning towards.