“THE BABY! WHERE'S THE BABY?!”

Waking up to horrified shrieking kinda sucked.

“CHILL OUT, QUEEN.”

The context of Queen’s rude awakening took a moment to register. I snapped my vision towards the colorless, burst form of the egg.

Oh no. There was no way I was laying another egg so soon.

Activating float and willing myself up quickly, I shot out of the tree trunk and scanned the area. I saw no sign of the baby bee.

“The Link Enno, the Link!”

Link? Oh, right!

I focused on my Link to the bee, trying to figure out where it was. I felt a pulse nearby, coming from the stack of corpses I had gathered the day (?) before. Bingo.

The wind aggravated my wounds as I shot down, screeching to a halt near the corpses.

“Do not panic, Mother.”

I whirled at the sound, coming face to face with a little flying bee.

“I was simply famished and had to properly organize the food,” the bee said, a hint of femininity in its voice. Her voice. Wait, was it- she speaking into my head telepathically?

My eyes were glued onto the waiting child. She was thinner than I expected, her abdomen rigid and slender with bold black and yellow stripes. Overall she wasn’t even half my size. Furry black hair covered the middle of her body, strangely with a bright red line in the middle of her chest. Her wings buzzed behind her, flying as nature presumably intended, but she hovered upright in a weirdly humanoid way. Most striking was probably her head. Her compound eyes seemed smaller than they should have been, and her two antennae curved in a peculiar way, giving the impression that she was wearing glasses.

“Mother? Are you alright?” Her words shook me out of my stupor. What exactly was I supposed to say to this girl?

“Uh. Hey. What’s up?” I could feel Queen facepalming as the little bee cocked her head.

“Mother, I believe the ashes of this forest are up.”

This was going to be wonderful.

_______________________

[Name: (Unnamed)]

[Age: 1 day]

[Subtype: Simple Worker]

[Status: Healthy]

[Abilities:

* Venomous Stinger

* Pollination

* Beeswax

]

[Mind: 2nd Degree]

[Tapped Mind: 0% / 95%]

[Mind Locks:

* Life (5%)

]

I really needed a name for her. The little bee sat ramrod still as I inspected her status, a benefit of the Link.

We had settled in at the trunk as I tried to learn more about the little bee’s personality. She seemed strangely unsure, as if she were a baby. Well, I guess she kind of was.

“What should I call you…?”

Little bee seemed taken aback.

“Myself? I do not require a name, Mother. I am simply a lowly worker of the hive. Speaking of, where is the hive?”

“But giving you a name would make talking so much easier. Hmm… How about Beatrice?”

The second I decided on the name, I felt a rush, Beatrice, Queen, and myself groaning at the uncomfortable sensation. It passed after only a moment. Was that the feeling of the System’s pun-based humor infecting and breaking me?

“The hell?”

“Enno, what have you done? We do not have names. We are nameless creatures.”

“Then why do we even have the name in the menu?” I responded. I felt for Beatrice through the Link, and she seemed the same. No changes to her menu or anything.

“I am grateful, Mother. I am Beatrice, your loyal worker. The world shall know our names.”

“Uh, sure. The world is your oyster, Beatrice. Or hive. Ha.” I tried joking. I hadn’t really joked with someone in… well, years, so my attempt was probably pretty poor.

“M-Mother! I will do my best to make you proud!” She exclaimed out of nowhere. What exactly had I gotten myself into? Beatrice suddenly seemed more confident, more sure of herself. And really freaking happy. Had I affected her personality by naming her somehow?

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“The first order of business is recreating the hive. I can infer that we no longer have one, so another must be created from scratch,” Beatrice was suddenly on a roll, hands behind her back. Was she some kind of secretary or what?

“In order to recreate the hive, we need food and workers. Meat will suffice, though other materials would be preferable. I will begin gathering as much food as possible. How many eggs can you lay at a time, Mother?”

Huuuuuh?

“Er, why do you ask?”

“With more workers, we can quickly gather and convert food into hive material. A few thousand may be good to start.”

Excuuuuuse me? A few thousand? No way, Jose, I say hives are overrated!

“Maybe we should start smaller. Please?” I pleaded. Beatrice tried not to let the shock appear on her face, comically evident from my point of view.

“Smaller…? Oh! Of course! That is why you are the queen, Mother! Absolutely brilliant.”

Exactly. Wait, what?

“I will begin preparations. I will not disappoint you, Mother!” Beatrice said excitedly, zipping out of the hive before I could say a word. Again, what the hell had I gotten myself into?

I could barely see the skinny form of Beatrice vanishing through the dead trees. Well. The whole point of making kids was to get a better grasp of Mind, so that was exactly what I would do.

I floated over to the river and dipped myself into it, a sort of meditation that calmed my wounds and heart. Thankfully it still hadn’t rained, so the river was still reasonably clean.

Mind had been bothering me for a while now. I had been able to use the mysterious stat called Mind as psychic powers. Flying around, making things float, and even crushing living things were all possible with Mind. How exactly did that work?

I mean, even now, I could feel Beatrice through the psychic link, almost hearing her muttering about meat and genius.

I wasn’t an expert on psychic abilities, considering they didn’t exist in my world. What precisely am I doing with this stat to do the things I’ve done?

These questions might be inconsequential or redundant, but I thought they were essential for one reason.

This forest.

Whatever the humans had done to the forest didn’t make sense with my perception of psychic abilities. What was up with the giant crystals jutting out from the ground? The perpetual gloomy fog in the sky? The utter lack of rain?

Sure, pyrokinesis was a thing in my idea of psychic powers, but how strong would someone’s Mind have to be for this level of destruction? Giant creatures and seemingly strong monsters had been incinerated systematically and suddenly, nothing like a forest fire.

Seeing what humans were capable of made me think I was limiting my Mind’s power with my preconceived notions of psychic abilities.

I knew for a fact these had to be connected to Mind. The entire System of this world revolved around it. Abilities can seemingly only be acquired through Mind, Mind Locks were an incredibly powerful tool, and so on. This world’s system lacked numerical stats, classes, and other features typical of game-like systems.

I can’t even level up for killing things, dammit!

The road to power was paved with Mind. I needed an overhaul in my imagination if I wanted to use Mind to its fullest potential. My most powerful tool as a bee would be my hive, but Mind should be just as if not even more powerful. Speaking of…

“Queen, I have a question,” I whispered. This wouldn’t be easy. “I need you to tell me more about your life before I showed up. Didn’t the queen of your hive use Mind?”

The pain in Queen’s humming was palpable, a depressing mixture of nostalgia and trauma.

“I… will do my best to remember. Before you appeared, my memories were hazy. They feel…or they felt unimportant, I suppose.”

Odd.

“As for my mother, no. In hindsight, she only used her Mind to manage the hive. Every child was linked to her, and there were thousands of us. I do not believe she had the capacity to use Mind for other frivolous things.”

“What about Degree? Were you always 10th Degree, or was that ’cause of me?” I asked. Degree was one of the few things the menu bothered to mention, so I assumed it was important. Probably like a level of your Mind.

“That… Yes, I was always 10th-degree Mind. I believe all queens of my species are so as to accommodate as many children as possible.”

Queen’s humming sounded unsure. It was fair to assume her knowledge or honesty on the subject wasn’t totally there, but for now, pushing wouldn’t give me the answers I needed.

So. Even if Queen wasn’t always a 10th-Degree Mind, queen bees most likely did start with a high Mind degree for the purposes Queen mentioned. So then, why did they limit themselves to only using Mind for the hive? Were there benefits I didn’t know about?

I then remembered Combined Minds.

Of course! If all my numbers were halved because of the increased efficiency bonus from Combined Mind, then it made much more sense. Creating something as ‘inconsequential’ as a simple worker would take double the amount of Mind, that is, 1%. And Queen wanted to lay something like 100 eggs. Getting even close to that would completely exhaust a typical queen’s Mind, not to mention the Link. 0.001% per simple worker would add up between the lower-tier subtypes and higher tiers.

With a maniacal grin, I began to laugh. The laughing sounds were ugly, clicking noises, but I didn’t care. I laughed and laughed until shaking began to hurt my wounds.

I really had been given an incredible advantage. I could simultaneously make a gigantic hive AND use powerful psychic abilities. With that many layers between me and the rest of this wacky world, I’d never have a need to worry.

“Mother, I am being chased by squirrels!”

I was snapped out of my reverie by a matter-of-fact cry for help. Welp. I guess I still had work to do before I could make my anti-rest of the world shell.

__________________

__________________

Mother was truly an extraordinary being. From the moment I was born, her radiant visage hovered in the air without a care, the sheer power of her Mind pressing down upon me.

Guided by my instincts, I knew what to do. Gather food. Grow the hive. Protect the queen.

Mother shattered my reality.

Everything she did threw my instinctive actions for a loop. Her care for me, a single lowly worker of the hive, was difficult to comprehend. She named me!

No longer was I a faceless worker, a drone in service to my instinct. I was Beatrice, Mother’s assistant in bringing the world she imagined to life.

Even then, I thought I knew how to make the world our hive. Our numbers needed to be bolstered, and an army created quickly and cheaply. Yet Mother proved me wrong once again. In a stroke of genius, she suggested fewer children would be preferable. Of course! If each child were as closely cared for as me, each one would be stronger, more capable. Imagine, a hive with named bees! The transformation of the world into our hive may be somewhat slower, but the chances of success would rise dramatically!

In either case, food was the most pressing matter. The only source of food was charred meat, which would suffice. And yet, how was I to acquire all the sustenance? I had eaten from the decent pile of food Mother had gathered herself, and she did so with terrible injuries. How did she do it?

Her panicked search for me clued me in on her methods.

Her flight was strange, wings unused. However, due to her powerful Mind, I figured it out. The power of her Mind radiated off her, and through my connection to her, I could feel a pressure when she flew.

She was using her Mind to fly!

It was yet another example of Mother’s ingenuity and prowess. Using the power of Mind to move the meat was far more straightforward and allowed me to do the work of a dozen or more workers.

Not to say there weren’t impediments to my efforts.

Within the corpses, there were sometimes creatures, and upon seeing them, the word ‘squirrel’ popped into my head, presumably from knowledge attained through Mother’s Link.

As I gathered food, these ‘squirrels’ chased me, trying to regain their spoils.

Too bad! This food is now the property of the hive!

The squirrels did not seem to accept my perfectly logical reasoning and continued their pursuit. Eventually, a crowd of at least fifteen creatures was stampeding after me, so I decided to ask mother for assistance.

“Mother, I am being chased by squirrels!”

I could see Mother snap to attention and mentally sigh, broken out of the inner conversation she tended to have, another quirk of hers, along with a twig she kept twirling around. As I approached at high speed, tugging food and squirrels in my wake, an incredible pressure weighed upon my Mind.

Mother’s exerted strength shook my very core, and a glance at the squirrels showed they were even more frightened. A wave of power rolled off Mother as all fifteen squirrels were slowly lifted into the air, an invisible grip upon their throats. Then their necks snapped.

As quickly as it had started, it was over. I could only stare in awe. These squirrels had fairly tough hides and even more wild Minds. Defeating them all would have required a team of warriors, at least, I reckoned. I had hoped Mother would scare them away with her presence. Never could I have dreamed that she would instantly kill the threatening gang of monsters.

Mother’s regal form once again entered my vision. My heart and Mind pounded with excitement, and I decided. I would do everything in my power to place Mother at the top of this world and crush anyone in our path. She would become the queen of this world!

“Beatrice. Explain yourself this instant young lady!”

Oh dear.