The next day starts and with it the production of Sylv hunters. A hunter is a small unit, about 20cm long after birth, which needs 4 days to hatch and another 6 days to fully mature. When fully matured the creature is 80cm long. It has only little chitinous armor to be faster and more flexible. The hunter is perfect for hunting smaller animals alone or bigger animals with the support of other hive creatures. It can also be used as a fast scouting unit in reconnaissance missions. The hunter can work autonomous and has a good memory to store orders, which allows it to operate alone several days without any connection to the hive mind.
The Spawning Grounds starts to produce 6 hunters at the same time. After they hatch it can produce more. When the living structure is fully matured it can produce 16 hunters at the same time, even with its reduced functionality, because of the unmatured drone origin. Sylv creatures produced from a living structure don’t hatch out of an egg, instead they hatch directly out of the structure when finished.
Sylvia decides to apply the Rapid Regeneration Strain to her hunters, increasing the biomass cost for production and the production time by half a day. The forest contains enough biomass that can be hunted, but the problem is to hunt it successfully. It can often happen that hunters come back injured. Therefore, the integration of this strain could prove to be very useful.
Not every Strain can be used on every creature. The drone can’t be equipped with any offensive Strains and the hunter can’t be equipped with a ranged attack Strain. Also, biomass cost and production time increase through the use of multiple Strains do stack, which means that it is quite inefficient to add many Strains to one creature.
While the hive is developing well, the Sylv queen continues her own studies. She found the bestiary with information about other species. Sylvia has not learned to read yet, but there are many pictures in the book, which she looks at with interest. She is fascinated by all the great meals she will have in the future, all the traits she could get from these creatures shown in the bestiary. Eventually she finds the entry about the Sylv race with a picture of their chitinous armor. She recognizes the unique pattern of the Sylv armor immediately and concludes that this book must have contained the information about her species, which her adoptive parents clearly knew. This means that the strange symbols she sees next to the pictures must convey some kind of information, as the picture alone is not enough. She already noticed that there is a system how these symbols are placed in the book.
She rushes over to Erik's room and asks him to confirm her theory, “Hey Erik, I found this interesting thing in the shelf.”, pointing at the book in her hands, “Its full with … this here”, she shows one of the pictures from the book, “I am really interested and want to know more about this part here”, pointing at the text next to the pictures, while fidgeting excited with her antennae. Erik thinks for a moment as he returns the curious look from Sylvia's big black eyes and answers, “The ‘Thing’ in your hands is a book. This book is mom’s bestiary! In it are pictures and text about all kinds of creatures. I once had my mom read to me from the book.”, reciting everything he knew in an attempt to impress Sylva with his knowledge.
The hive queen already knew how to respond in this kind of scenario, “Wow! You just know everything! You are so cool!”. She figured out that praising him in this manner is a good method to continue to receive as much information as possible in the future. Sylvia thought, “I have trained him well.”, while Erik proudly puffs out his chest and contentedly gathers in the praise.
With this new knowledge Sylvia has a new goal, learning to read on her own to extract written information in the future. Her entire swarm can later access her knowledge as long as the creature in question is connected to the Hive Mind. “To improve the hive queen is to improve the whole swarm”, Sylvia thinks with a smug face, while going back to her sofa in the living room in order to take a short nap. One hour later lunch time arrived. For lunch there is a vegetable soup with some bread.
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After lunch Sylvia continued her previous nap for two more hours and then tried to make sense of the text presented in the bestiary on her own. She is not very successful and decides to ask Elise for help later. But there is another thing she decides to learn. If she learns to read, she can also learn to write. This would complement each other well. The hive queen noticed that there are letters grouped together to form words. She doesn’t understand the words yet, but she can try to learn the letters. As a Sylv queen she has an enormous learning speed, which far exceeds that of humans. She is quite confident that she will be able to learn the alphabet until dinner.
Erik is bored and decides to search for his playmate Sylvia. He starts by going to the living room, where she usually sits around lunch time. As soon as he enters, he notices that she is sitting on the sofa with mom’s bestiary she has shown him earlier. “She must be interested in the pictures!”, concludes Erik mentally and moves closer to the sofa. When he got closer, he could see that Sylvia wasn’t looking at the pictures at all and was instead tracing the form of the letters in the book with her index finger. This sparked his curiosity and he asked, “Hey Sylvia, what are you doing?”
“I am learning how to replicate the symbols in the book.”, answers Sylvia. Erik is a bit confused and states, “You can’t write with your fingers!”. The hive queen agrees without stopping her actions and gives to consider that she doesn't want to write. She wants to learn how to form the letters the text is made of. Erik had not thought of that. He is silent for a moment and then just sits down next to her without a word. He can't start lagging behind Sylvia in knowledge. After all, he is the big brother who “just knows everything!”, thinking about what Sylvia said earlier to him.
“I would like to learn together with you!”, states Erik, earning a surprised expression from Sylvia. After a moment of consideration she agrees and makes more space for Erik, while moving the book in the middle between them. With Sylvia next to him and his pride as motivation, Erik begins learning the letters along with Sylvia. The hive queen notices quickly that her companion is not as fast as herself with learning the letters. She finds Erik's company enjoyable and doesn't want to make him look slow. Therefore, she sacrifices some efficiency to disguise her true progress by adding small mistakes.
In this situation they are later found by Mark, who then examines the situation more closely. He can hardly believe that Sylvia seems to have a positive influence on his son. He doesn’t want to interrupt and starts to prepare dinner. He only calls them over when everything is prepared. Elise isn’t back yet, so he keeps her portion warm in the cooking pot for later consumption. Elise’s mission sometimes takes longer as planned and she can’t guarantee that she is home in time.
The dinner consists of the same vegetable soup for lunch. He prepared enough for the whole day and just reheated the leftovers. It’s a good soup with lots of different vegetables. While eating dinner Mark praises the kids for learning on their own in their free time. He suggests that he or Elise could help them with their studies next time. This is exactly what the hive queen wanted, so she agrees happily. After dinner is finished Mark starts to take care of the dishes as usual.
The hive queen notices the gap in Mark's otherwise rather distanced attitude towards her person from the earlier talk and decides to use this chance. She follows Mark to the kitchen, carrying her empty bowl in an attempt to support him in his work. Erik is a bit startled but decides quickly to imitate Sylvias behavior. Mark, who did not expect this, is positively surprised and gratefully accepts the bowls. The kids continue to go back and forth, also collecting the empty cups and the slightly larger water jug.
After this event it is bedtime, Sylvia staying up a bit longer as usual. This time also Marks stays up a bit longer, waiting for his wife to come back home. They decide to sit together in the living room. This is the first time them being alone, having time to talk privately. After some seconds the Sylv queen starts, “I wanted to talk with you alone for some time. I thought about what I wanted to say beforehand. I noticed that you don’t like me, as the others do. I am very happy to live here and I am grateful for it. Can you explain what you don't like so I can work on it?”
This is the longest and most complex speech Sylvia has spoken so far. She has prepared this speech and looked up all the necessary words, as she knew that it is very important. After a moment of silence, Mark turns to Sylvia with a serious look and replies …