“Guns?”

“Yup. Guns.”

“Um. Okay?”

No, of course Queen wouldn’t understand the magnitude of this discovery, but there was no mistaking those shiny exploding sticks for anything else. Guns. A hallmark of modern warfare and human evolution. The invention of the gun changed my world forever, so what did that mean for this world?

“Queen, is this a medieval fantasy world?”

“As usual, I have no idea what those words mean.”

This was a big problem. If this world had guns, it might not be the medieval fantasyland I had anticipated, despite being a magical bee monster with magical squirrel monster things and literal magic crystals and fire and shit.

Now, a more modern world itself wasn’t exactly a problem. Well, maybe it was.

The main issue was knowledge.

The ‘transported to another world’ stories I had experience with were high fantasy ones. I knew the genre had expanded dramatically since my own experience with it, but the ones I had read were all medieval fantasy worlds. Though my exact knowledge had deteriorated, I had at least felt some degree of confidence in my ability to navigate a distantly familiar situation.

A modern world was another story.

Considering the humans in Queen’s memory seemed to be wearing some kind of metal armor, I assumed this world wasn’t quite as modern as my own. Maybe closer to the 1600s style or a few centuries earlier than that. Of course, I had no idea exactly how sophisticated these guns were, so any guesses would be shaky at best. Queen’s memory just showed them as metal rods whose ends exploded.

And with the unknown potential of Mind, who knows? Maybe these guns have existed in this world for ages, made possible with some crazy mind power.

I tried to push these musings to the back of my mind. As interesting and terrifying as the revelation was, it was not immediately helpful. I wanted Queen’s knowledge so I could make Mind more powerful to ensure my immediate survival. Grudgingly, I turned my thoughts to the hive.

After seeing those memories, the reality of the hive’s importance only grew more apparent. Each new piece of information shattered my delusions that I could eternally avoid expanding into a large hive for survival.

Humans are weak alone. This was true on Earth, and it was true here. As much as I hated to admit it, I needed others to survive. All the comforts and innovations of my old human society came about because humans strengthened each other. Bees used numbers to make the whole stronger, but humans used numbers to make each human stronger.

This was a unique position. I could do both. I would make the hive stronger and each bee stronger, using the strengths of both species. I would be prepared for anything this mysterious world could throw at me.

“Mother, there is an urgent matter we must discuss. If possible, could you meet me at the food pile?” Beatrice’s voice unexpectedly echoed in my head.

I sighed, slowly floating out of the tree.

For now, I would have to take full advantage of what I had.

___________

“...Excuse me?”

“Yes, the number of scavengers seems to have increased. Considering both this discovery and the eventual rotting of the corpses, food will become an issue much more quickly than expected.”

Beatrice laid out her report with her way-too-good posture. This was unpleasant information for several reasons.

Food would indeed become an issue in terms of the mass barbecue, but the bodies of scavengers would do in a pinch.

For the hive, not for me.

This was disastrous for me. I didn’t want to eat uncooked squirrel meat!

Of course, the fact that more scavengers were showing up was in itself a problem. Besides my personal strength, our hive still hadn’t even gotten started. I was hopeful that I could get a head-start over any competition by building a hive and army before the forest attracted attention, but I suppose it was not to be.

“Hm, so the five new workers should probably be entirely focused on gathering….” I muttered. We needed to amass food as quickly as possible.

“That is quite brave of you, Mother.”

Huh? Brave? Making the bees do work was brave somehow?

“Ah, yes. And why exactly is that so brave? Care to explain?” I asked.

My options were either to seem like an idiot to Beatrice or worry my ass off about her unknown expectations. Better to seem stupid and use Beatrice’s apparently giant brain to my advantage.

She looked at me strangely for a moment before pounding her, uh, fist into her, ah, hand.

“Oho! I see. Very well, Mother, I shall take this simple test.”

I was just asking her a question. How had she interpreted it?!

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“The matter of safety is at stake. For one thing, as competition for food shall be fierce, our stockpile will have to be defended against intruders. For another, the workers may not be capable of defending themselves if faced with danger. The responsibility would then fall to you, and you would have to split your attention between an unguarded food stockpile and our scattered forces. This could be amended if a defensible hive were constructed as quickly as possible or weak warriors were created in a rush, but you choose to take on the responsibilities all on your own.”

Oh.

I must have had a weird look on my face because Beatrice noticeably deflated. What the hell? I’m the one that should be looking that sad!

“Was that answer not acceptable, Mother? I apologize, but I cannot think of other risks at the moment,” Beatrice moaned. Why did she seem genuinely distressed? Was it something I said?

“It’s alright. I just didn’t expect that many risks….”

“Understood. I will do better at analyzing our situation in the future.”

That wasn’t- Aw, whatever. Beatrice seemed satisfied, and if she was going to make my life easier, I wouldn’t complain.

In any case, the news was alarming. I wasn’t overly worried about the strength of the scavengers. The squirrels and even the vulture weren’t very powerful, and I just needed to figure out the right amount of Mind to use to snap their necks or something.

However, that was against one, maybe a handful of creatures at a time. Would I be able to concentrate on dozens, hundreds of squirrels at once?

Once again, I questioned the limits of Mind.

I had recently used it to almost instantly kill a bunch of squirrels. I had to concentrate, but it was a quick bump where Tapped Mind went from 0 to less than 10 and back to 0 very quickly. It seemed overpowered.

But then there was the aftermath of the Mister Squirrel incident.

I hadn’t used enough Mind at that moment to instantly kill Mister Squirrel, so he resisted somehow. A creature I could kill with barely 1.5% of my power had nearly destroyed me just by resisting. If I made a mistake and incorrectly predicted how much Mind to use against something, I could be in trouble.

Of course, exhaustion would play a part.

The nature of my being tired was insanely inconsistent. I got tired from making eggs and getting countered in a Mind battle, but I could also kill dozens of creatures without breaking a sweat.

Beatrice waited patiently. Right. We had to act before the sudden influx of scavengers flooded our part of the forest. Our proximity to water would cause fierce competition, too.

“Beatrice,” I said, determination setting in, “Enough research and thinking. It’s time to act.”

__________

Darkness and warmth surrounded us. The only light came from a hole in the giant tree trunk and the five eggs on the verge of hatching.

Beatrice and I had no choice but to make a rudimentary shelter. I had tried sharpening some sticks to put in the ground to keep scavengers away from our food, but I underestimated how brittle burned sticks could be.

Or how bad I was at sharpening sticks.

At some point, I gave up and just buried the food. After this chore was taken care of, I would experiment with better protective measures using Mind. Yeah, it was gross, but for now, we needed to care for the eggs and prepare for them to hatch.

I think Queen’s influence was starting to affect me even more.

An egg twitched.

“Mother! Mother! Mot-”

“Shush, Beatrice.”

Why was Beatrice so excited? She had practically been born yesterday, was watching an egg hatch really that amazing? The anticipation was mounting. I was less excited and more freaking out. One new face was one thing. Five at once?

How was I even supposed to handle that?

When I first laid them, I was a bit more open to the idea of having an army of bees, but seeing Beatrice, now I wasn’t so sure. She had such an individual personality, such a sense of uniqueness. She felt like a person I had to interact with.

And now I had made five more.

“Here they come! Yaaay, welcome, babies!” Queen shouted, the first egg cracking as she did so.

The eggs cracked and opened one by one to reveal five disgusting little blobs.

“Wow, that is seriously gross,” I blurted out.

“How DARE you?!”

Was I wrong, though? I was expecting five more Beatrices, not a bunch of slimy grubs.

“Ah, it feels like just yesterday I clambered out of my own egg….”

Before I could comment on the irony of Beatrice’s remark, the blobby grubs began to spasm. Queen’s disturbed humming told me this… wasn’t normal. A pulsing feeling emanated from the blobs, a feeling I recognized as the Kin Link.

The blob from the first egg twitched faster and faster, turning from a pale, colorless gray to sickly shades of black and yellow. In mere moments the blob stretched and hardened, icky skin replaced with furry hair and chitin. Its shape morphed into something more closely resembling Beatrice, albeit slightly thicker. Six lumps exploded into long arms, each more than twice as large as Beatrice’s. The transformation lasted less than a minute, and when it finished, a burly bee person sat before us.

“...What just happened?” Great question, Queen. I was just as confused.

The other four blobs quickly followed the first’s example, morphing from formless grubs into fully-developed bee people in moments.

Before long, five bees sat in front of us, looking around curiously.

There was the first one, a thick and burly bee with strong-looking arms and a comically small head. The second was tiny, even smaller than Beatrice. That one was somehow already trying to fly around the tree trunk and investigate its surroundings. The third was concerningly thin, with antennae as long as its entire body. The last two were nearly identical, and I could only tell them apart through my Link to them.

“Mother! Hungry!” The shouts of five little bees clattered around in my head. Yup. This was gonna suck.

“Beatrice, can you show the new guys the food?”

At my words, Beatrice snapped out of her reverie. She seemed purely excited, with no concern or confusion to be found.

“Of course! If you five would be so kind as to follow me, I will direct you towards food. I know how hungry you must be!”

They took off, patiently following Beatrice out of the tree and towards the underground food pile.

Now.

“Queen. What in the goddamn did I just witness.”

“For once, Enno, we are completely on the same page. That is NOT what I was expecting at all.”

Should I really be so confused? These were magic bees that came out of magic eggs that I made out of brain magic and vomit. At first, I had just been weirded out by the transformation, but Queen’s disgust and confusion were far more concerning.

“What were you expecting, exactly?”

“I… Well… Whenever my mother birthed children, their eggs would be similar to the ones we are now laying. When they hatch, those cute little grubs are the next stage of our lives. That is where the deviation occurred. It should take a few days of feeding and care for the children’s bodies to develop into uniform drones.”

My weird human bees had gone through the stages of life normally until the grub stage, then. Something caused their growth to accelerate rapidly. Not only that, but they were supposed to be uniform, and this batch of bees was anything but.

“You had never made eggs before?”

“No. It was not yet my responsibility.”

“Hm… and Beatrice’s quick maturity didn’t tip you off that something was wrong?”

“I was… excited.”

Great. I hadn’t given it much thought when I saw Beatrice fully formed after less than a day, mostly expecting to wave it away as ‘magic bee things.’ If it was unusual for Queen, that probably meant that there was something afoot.

“The obvious explanation is me. Something about our combined minds affects the growth and development of the bees we make.”

“Then the children are already corrupted from birth. The strangeness that is Beatrice cannot be fully prevented.”

‘Corrupted’ seemed like a harsh description. In other words, no matter how hard we tried, we would inevitably create an army of unique individuals rather than an organized beehive.

“Beatrice went full Beatrice after she both got named and received a boost from the Kin Link experiment. Skipping either of those two steps could prevent a full-on Beatrice-ening.” The Beatrice analogies got a little mixed up, but the point was clear. The bee children already had nearly full autonomy and individuality from birth; there was no preventing that. However, by withholding names and Mind, they probably wouldn’t become as strong-willed as Beatrice.

What a dilemma. On the one hand, I really didn’t want to have to deal with five more people so soon, especially considering I would never get a break from them. On the other hand, there were clear benefits. Beatrice might be a bit strange, but her potential contributions to making my life easier couldn’t be understated. If these five new guys became highly specialized workers with expertise in their craft, I might not need to overpopulate.

I decided on a course of action. I would name these five new bees but not change their Links, then experiment with more Mind Locks. Sure, scavengers were beginning to overrun this broken forest, and humans might show up at any second, but I still wasn’t in a desperate rush.

I waited for the five new children to return from their feast so I could name them, the distant screech of vultures barely registering through my brainstorm of names that start with Be-.