Okay okay okay, no need to panic. I panicked and dumped all my focus into the party of troops that were less than a freaking day from the hive.

Before me was quite the scene. All of the bees were hiding behind trees and rocks, out of sight of any humans. Meanwhile, our humans and Dip were casually talking to a group of ten heavily armed humans.

Okay, maybe a bit of panic.

“Yes, we were careless. Vlugh especially did some dumb shit and ended up like this. Can you believe he became Mind Collapsed? Dumbass.”

“Ha! Tasuku Vlugh! Yelah, nihayewi atowo no sifi?”

Ha! Classic Vlugh. Sure you don’t wanna join us, Yelah?

“Ha, thanks, but no thanks. If I leave, who’ll take care of these chumps?”

Well, this translation feature sure was nice, but it was somewhat… laggy. Since it had to be processed by the humans, perhaps? In any case, thankfully, there didn’t seem to be any suspiciousness as of yet, and neither Yelah nor any of the other humans had made an attempt to betray us. Not that they could.

Even so, I tried to be careful. I wanted to check if mercenaries had a coded language they could use, maybe verbally or with physical motions, but I also wanted to focus on this interaction. If my fears were realized, then this group was on a straight path toward us, thanks to the City Lord or something similar. If it came to it, we at least had an advantage, but these guys were pros. Pros with lots and lots of guns. I had to somehow steer them away from us.

The huge dude that rivaled Grehn in sheer musculature guffawed, turning away from Yelah.

Anyways, we best be going. Lord’s expecting news soon as possible. Have fun dragging those idiots back to town!

“No! Yelah, you need to steer them away.”

“Seriously, queen? What am I supposed to tell these guys? We might seem chummy, but they’d happily beat the shit out of us to get paid.”

“Try your best.”

“Ahem, hold on, Toh. There’s no point going out there. We didn’t find nothin. No sign of the vultures or anything. No point in wasting time.”

Hm? That so?

“Yup. City Lord’s gonna be pissed. Well, at least we might get paid.”

A good ruse, Yelah. But I’m not risking shit. You saw that scroll; Lord’s desperate. I’ll go find out the real deal. Or, of course, we could beat it outta ya!

“Shit, I told you this would go south, queen.”

“It’s okay. Your plan is a good one; I can see what you’re trying to do. If it comes to it, we can protect you. Protect Rette and Vlugh. So keep going.”

“Hm. A tempting offer. ‘Course, it’s all the same. There really isn’t anything to see. By the time you figure that out, we’ll already be sitting pretty with our paycheck. You think the City Lord will pay you guys to confirm that there’s nothing there?”

You’re assuming he’ll even pay you guys.

“Well, he might or he might not. It’s fine either way. Escort missions can pay even more.”

Hold on. Escort?

“Hm? Well, sure. Stands to reason, no? He’d want to see with his own eyes that there’s nothing. Why would he trust a bunch of mercenaries, even ones as reputable as us?”

That gave the big guy Toh pause. It was a great ruse, even if it was hinging on some things. Mainly that Toh wouldn’t outright kill Yelah and her crew for fun. As they were, they certainly wouldn’t be able to take on such a large group. Hopefully, we had perfectly maneuvered him into wanting to reach Yiwi with the news first, then immediately go babysitting with the City Lord.

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Hmph. I see. You get to Yiwi with the news, and the Lord desperately requests for you guys to bring him into the forest. Assuming we don’t overtake ya and assuming he doesn’t want to wait for a second opinion to save some cash.

You’re playing dangerously here, Yelah. Lots of assumptions. Lots of trust.

“Trust? In who, you? Of course I would have trust in a fellow professional, especially one as highly regarded as yourself, Toh. Honestly, with Yoho spying on us for you guys at Yemonto Co., I’m surprised you didn’t come sooner. That’s how professional you are. Besides, you’d never overtake us. After all, Dip snuck away ages ago.”

At that, the whole enemy crew whirled around, looking a for a penguin that was nowhere in sight.

“You know Dip can read and write. Our findings are basically reported already.”

For a moment, I really thought Yelah was about to bite it. That stunt was pulled off so well even I almost didn’t catch it. Of course, I did, because my bees had helped Dip get as out of sight as possible. I breathed a sigh of relief when Toh just laughed.

Good! You’re getting good, pup! I thought it was strange that Yoho was advocating so heavily for you to be brought in as a leader, but he’s got a sharp eye!

Fine then, you win. Gang, we’re splitting up! You two, go confirm Yelah’s findings. Tonk, go stop that bird. Best if we get paid twice. I’ll go on ahead to report, and the rest of you can limp back to town with Yelah and her group.

Okay! This was practically best case scenario. I counted my lucky stars that this wasn’t a world of kill or bee killed like so many seemed to be. Well, at least human society wasn’t like that. Anything different, and this whole thing could’ve gone very, very wrong.

Now we only had two concerns. First was the pair that was going to be coming near the hive, and second was that our bees would no longer be able to travel to Yiwi in sight of the human party.

The second thing? Mostly whatever. I had complete trust in my bees to be able to stay out of sight. The only thing was that Beckham would probably have to be a bit too close for comfort so that he could effectively act as a Mind relay to the Linker Bees.

The first thing? Slightly more concerning. I would say that our best option would be to do to those two what we did to Yelah. Of course, this time we could do so much more quickly and with no trouble at all. There were some minor logistical issues, like how we would get those two humans to Yiwi without disconnecting the Linker Bees, but that was a concern for a later time.

“Great job, Yelah. My bees will trail behind you guys. Make sure we aren’t noticed by the others. Remember: don’t try anything slick.”

That issue was taken care of, then. Wait.

Oh dammit. The three mercs Toh ordered to split up had done so quickly, the one he called Tonk going vaguely in the direction of Yiwi and the pair heading towards us. But Toh himself?

He was coming this way.

I wouldn’t have noticed if it weren’t for Ben’s insane eyesight. I suppose something about Toh made him nervous because he had been keeping an eye on him throughout the entire exchange and immediately noticed when he changed direction after splitting off the main group.

“Ben?”

“Yes, momaroo. The big guy is hiding and heading toward the hive. But it doesn’t matter! Not enough cover to hide from my awesome eyes! But he’s weird. Sometimes it feels like he’s disappearing from my awesome looking, so I’ve been looking at him a lot.”

Bennet and Benita were fawning over Ben’s awesomeness, so I left them to it. As for Toh? He was clearly more devious than I expected. Granted, it was just one more human coming towards us, and one we were prepared for. Even so, I decided it would be best to err on the side of caution. If he was willing to make a sneaky move like this, who knew what he was capable of?

“Yo Yelah, thought you should know. Toh changed directions and is heading towards the hive, sneaking behind the pair he sent.”

Yelah paled and glanced around at the other team of mercs, most of whom were fussing over Rette or chatting with Grehn. Of course, Grehn wasn’t exactly making a two-way conversation easy with his quiet responses.

“We really should’ve expected that. He’s a very experienced mercenary and definitely wouldn’t be taking risks. You said he was sneaking behind the other two?”

“Uh, yeah. Why?”

“In that case,” she cupped her chin, “he likely isn’t going to try and fight you outright. He’ll see what happens to his mercs and rush away with the info.”

Well, that was devious. Crushing the two mercs might need a bit more strategy in that case.

Was telling her really the best idea? Maybe Toh could have done it…. But those bees… Bedivere probably would have stopped him anyways…

Hmph. Nice one, Yelah. Granted, it might have been stressful if we hadn’t known what Toh was cooking up, but even if we didn’t figure it out by the time they arrived here, someone like Bedivere probably would’ve caught on, as she thought. It was good to know Yelah was still contemplating ways to undermine us. Well, good in the sense that she wasn’t a bumbling moron to that degree.

“Alright, Yelah, give me the details. What’s Toh able to do? Give me information about his capabilities and whatnot.”

“Hm. He’s mostly focused on stealth and information-gathering. I’m fairly certain he has a stealth-focused Ability. Naturally, he doesn’t use a gun. He does have knives hidden around his body. But as a rival merc, I don’t have the full details.”

As impressive as it sounded, there was plenty I was sure Yelah was leaving out. For one thing, Toh was huge. Like, seriously massive. He was around the same size as Grehn, and Grehn was a solid three times larger than I was. And I was almost half Yelah’s size! A guy like that being focused on stealth meant she was seriously underplaying how potent his stealth capabilities probably were.

And another thing. I was sure there was more to Toh. He was a leader of a large group, a role not often given to stealth-focused fighters. Or at least, I wasn’t used to it in the stories I read. The only question was whether Yelah knew and was hiding it from me or if she actually didn’t know.

Either way, we would have to be careful in handling him. Especially one thing Yelah happened to mention.

Information gathering.

In a world with mental powers, that sort of thing could be anything. It would be best not to reveal too much about our capabilities to a guy like that.

Hm? Stealth? Information gathering? Sneaky abilities and strategies? Oh shit. Toh was a freaking ninja! That would be cool to know more about. Now I really wanted to attach a Linker Bee and learn about that stuff.

Speaking of learning that stuff, I wanted to get back to what I was doing. I was somewhat thrown off by that Humanity Factor stuff. Hold on. Couldn’t I just ask?

“Yelah, I have one more question. What is Humanity Factor?”

“That? It’s just something humans have in their systems. Not really a big deal.”

“What does it do?”

“Nothing really. Just provides a very small efficiency boost to Mind. Why?”

I ignored her question. That was all? It made no sense. Why would it be hidden from me, then? Something that mundane doesn’t really warrant tight security. There must be something more to it, either that Yelah didn’t know or didn’t want to disclose.

I take back what I said about it being good that Yelah was trying to undermine me. How many times was I going to have to play ‘Is Yelah hiding something, or is she dumb?’ Too many times, probably.

Well, I had plenty to investigate. What did Yelah or the others know about Toh? What about Humanity Factor? Will Vlugh beat the Mind Collapse allegations? Find out next time-

Ahem. First, we should probably get ready. I could investigate that stuff and more while Beatrice made preparations.

“Beatrice, we’re going to be having some guests within the day. Let’s prepare a welcome party.”