About 2 days had passed, in the meantime the new headquarters and infirmary had been built, all the work was going super fast with the recent increase in skilled labor, my farmers would take another 5 days to hatch, and my carpenters plus 4, and at that moment I was waiting for something I have been waiting for a long time.
My beacons.
They would finally emerge, two days ago they started to weave their cocoon, and only today did it look like they would emerge.
Its cocoons were a bit gray in color and it was very soft, unlike the tough cocoons of the other drones.
After waiting excitedly for a few moments, 2 small bees, much smaller than a worker, came out of the large cocoons, which was already a break from expectations.
These bees were also extremely unusual; they had black and gray colors, defying the colony's standard yellow, enormous antennae compared to their small bodies, a stingless bee abdomen, and small eyes and they didn't have wings.
[Status] Name: N/D Species: Solitary honeybee Level: 1 Class: Beacon Mana: 2,4 Life: 0.5 Str: 0.1 Def: 0.2 Sp: 0.1 Int: 24.2 Wis: 23.5 + Information
[Skills]
{Link Break} lv 1
Breaks the mental link with an active member of the link permanently or for a limited time, when breaking the link the target loses connection with all members of the hive
{Maternal Connection} - locked
{Telepathic Network} Lv 1
you are capable of establishing a telepathic network with your's hive mates, allowing for instantaneous communication and information sharing.
{Memory Sharing} - Lv 1
You have the ability to share memories and experiences with your's fellow hive mates, allowing for the collective accumulation of knowledge and wisdom within the hive.
{Unshakeble Will}
{Universal signal} Lv 1
Your mental presence serves as a beacon for all members of the colony, allowing them to guide themselves to your position no matter the distance.
[Traces]
[Collective feelings]
You are able to feel everything that the members of your colony feel, experiencing their pain and joy firsthand.
'Damn? These guys are weak as a sheet of paper...'
'-We forgive for being so weak.'
'No! That's not what I meant... You have your advantages! It's just.... Wait a minute?! Are you talking inside my head!? Ugh, I'm not going to be able to have a any kind of privacy anymore, not even with my thoughts?!'
'-We can't help but hear your thoughts, but we can ignore them if you wish.'
'-Yes, but we wanted to be able to help you if possible, doing something that can be useful for you.'
The whole room was silent, everyone was confused with the reason why I was just looking at the beacons and they were looking at me, but we were having a conversation away from each other's ears.
'What can you guys do with yours Skills?'
'-We can avoid mental attacks, or extend the links range.'
'-For example, if an enemy trie to use a worker as a 'bridge' to attack us, or you, we could break the link with that member and prevent a direct attack on you, or we could "numb" the link for a limited time to prevent him from be used.'
'-We can also 'connect' several members in our 'channel' allowing them to communicate more easily, regardless of class, or natural link control abilities.'
'That sounds incredible, could you try to make that connection?'
'-Yeah! Just a minute...'
Soon as we finished talking mentally, the beacons lowered their heads and their antennas began to emit a golden glow, I could feel some kind of 'wave' passing through us, but I couldn't see nothing, after a few moments my link with everyone lit up.
Before it seemed like I had dozens of strings that went towards a dark infinity space, those strings connected me to my children, but I couldn't see them or establish a stabel contact directly with them, but when the beacons made that connection, it seemed like the whole dark room of my mind had been lit up, I could see the strings connecting to little colored clouds, each of these 'clouds' was one of my children and soon I could feel as if our bond was becoming 'stable'. But before I could do anything, the link was broken, the room returned to a dark numble place, and I could no longer see the clouds.
"What happened?! I felt like my link had been yanked!" One of the nurses sayed
"Me too! But it went by so quickly..." Other one sayed too
The workers began to discuss what had just happened, but I wasn't thinking about that now, I wanted to know what went wrong.
'What happened? Why did the link go down?'
'-W-We're sorry, the two of us aren't enough to maintain contact with the entire colony, we had to break contact soon as it was established, otherwise we would have collapsed...'
Shit! When I find a solution to the link problem, I end up discovering that I don't have enough manpower to keep it up!
'Could you two keep in touch with a smaller group?'
'-Yes! It's possible, maybe 10-15 for each of us.'
'Then connect with my delegation, the older workers, and the Hans and Trouble groups, and Trevis.'
'-There would still be too many members...'
'So just Hans and Trouble, you can leave the group members out.'
'-We will try!'
This time the 'room' was not fully illuminated, but small points received illumination, as if they were on spotlights, and I could clearly tell who these members that I was connected were.
'Hello? Can you hear me?'
'-Mother! Did you learn how to use the link?!' - Hans
'No... That's one of the skills of the new [Beacons]'
'-Wow, this is still amazing! It will be very useful to be able to speak to you directly!' - Matt
'-We can also speak more clearly among ourselves!' - Steve
If you spot this tale on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
'-So this is what it's like to use the link... interesting.' - Trevis
'-That's so cool! It would be very useful if we could connect with my men, so we could coordinate better during a fight.' - Trouble
'-Our power is limited, this is the maximum we can do in our current state, no more members.' - Beacon #1
'-That's enough, I'll be able to monitor our mother more easily, which is more than enough for me.' - Hans
'Oh fuck! My head turned into discord chat?! There's no way to turn this shit off?!'
'Oh shit?! Did everyone hear that?!'
'-You know Hans, I was thinking about-.......' - Trouble
'-No mom. We can disconnect anyone from the link whenever we want.' - Beacon #2
'I thought they heard what I said...'
'-No. Everything they or you say goes through us first, if you want, we can turn your thoughts into just your thoughts.' Beacon #1
'But you guys still hearing everything!'
'-We are a part of you, an 'extension', we don't care about your thoughts, they are just information to be processed, just like everyone's thoughts.'
'So they're like mental secretaries? I don't know if I'll get used to it...'
'-Yes, we can act as your 'mental secretaries', but if you wish we can remain silent at all times and not intervene in your thoughts.'
'Can you just help me once in a while please? I don't feel comfortable knowing that you are here all the time...'
'-Of course mom, let's minimize our presence much as possible.'
"Okay! Everyone, these guys are the beacons, you already understand their function, call some soldiers to help them move."
"Immediately!"
After a while we all left the room, the beacons were carried by 2 soldiers and taken to the soldiers headquarters, and i was escorted back to my personal room.
When I got back to my room I decided to read the pile of letters sent by the colony members, they all wrote things that were a little silly, but they were still cute.
They were like children's cards, they had cute drawings, some told nonsense stories, others talked about their days, some sent drawings about me or telling a story, they sent questions and said generic love letter things, like "you're incredible" or 'I love you'.
'Hehe, what a horrible thing, but whoever did this must have put a lot of love into it... Suddenly this thing about being a mother hit me really hard now...'
Now i was looking at a rough drawing of what looked like me with some hearts and happy faces. The work wasn't even remotely pretty, but it carried a lot of meaning, and it made me feel special. I don't know how to describe it, it was like looking at a poorly done doodle and feeling happy, it was strange, but it still softened your heart.
I ended up getting other notes, some had motivating phrases, and cute drawings, some said how much they loved me and how important I was to them and others simply talked about themselves, until I came to one that made me freeze.
Mommy, we lov you veryy much! I hop you ar hapy with ourr hard wurk I know sometims we can be a nuicnce for you I apologiz if we arent what you wantd We realy wat to impruv and trn into somthing that you can lov, until then Plese dont give up on us.
This letter contained a cute and sincere message, but its weight was astronomical, my conceptions and criticisms were rooted in the heads of each of my children, to the point that they thought I hated them or felt some kind of repulse on them.
I didn't hate them, I may have been repulsed by all this colony idea at first, but it was a long time ago, I didn't know how much my actions, words and thoughts could impact in my children's psychology.
They apologized to me, they apologized beacause they think that all of them are insufficient to me. They are apologizing for thinking that they are a bunch of... mistakes.
What kind of monster am I?
----------------------------------------
[Warning]
You earned 18 Xp from your soldier
[Warning]
You have leveled up to lvl 10
A few days had passed, since my accident, many soldiers had leved up, all had different classes, and some classes were unique.
We had many other spearmen like Hans and strickers like Trouble, the soldiers were easily influenced, so most prefer to follow the same path as their older brothers.
Plus we had some that became swordsmen, warriors, reapers, some tanks and 3 poisonous bees.
By the way, the soldier who evolved into a [Slaughter] and who joined Trouble's group was a specialized killer, he couldn't cause much damage or even had much health or resistance, but the cuts he caused took longer to heal, in addition to having a greater chance of becoming infected.
Honestly, I expected more from a class named [Slaughter], but he could be useful in his own way. If we were unable to kill a dangerous enemy we would still cause wounds that could kill him later, and even if the wounds didn't kill him he would think twice before returning.
This also caused me a big doubt, if we killed someone by slow poisoning, would we gain XP? If someone succumbed to wounds caused by us, days or months after a fight, would we still earn XP? How does the system classify these things?
The tanks were... Tanks, they had a lot of life and a lot of defense, they could go into a fight head-on and draw attention to themselves, but they were very slow, heavy and almost cannot cause any damage.
The most unusual were the venomous, which had low health, defense, and raw damage, but focused everything on agility and poisoning. They could apply stings with potent and deadly poisons, it was easy to kill a poisonous bee with their low stats, but for that you had to catch them first, and that was really difficult.
During all this I gained a lot of Xp, and I got Level 10, but to my sadness I didn't gain an evolution. In the meantime my first [Farmers] had begun to weave their cocoons, and the time for them to emerge was coming.
The workers began to build a super studio for the weavers, and in the middle of the process they came up with a project for a theater.
My kids really enjoyed all kinds of entertainment, the bards were living proof of that, they would often tease them to give little shows to everybody, they would present things like classical plays or something more modern, anything they could get out of my mind with [maternal connection] was used, they would sing songs, do theater, or just do some silly dances and Jokes, there was stuff from shakespeare and beethoven, Mozart to Ariana Grande.
They would simply use anything they have, and if they find any gaps in the stories or music they would just invent, the bards little shows became so popular among the members of the colony that a request to build a theater soon came to me.
I was still feeling bad for how the boys thinked I thought of them, so I allowed them to do whatever they wanted, even though I found it embarrassing to see bees singing songs from my high school days.
Trevis and the Scouts had... "retired" from their work for now, since there wasn't much else to discover without going too far from home, they now just hung around the region, collecting resources for the cooks to use in the kitchen.
The scouts had gained their "storehouse" which was not 100% theirs in fact, it was more just an extension in the kitchen for storage food resourse next to the cooks, a sort of stock of food.
The boys had started this theater project while working in the studio, and parallel to that they started putting up a big wall made of bricks around the whole base, but I had to ask them to stop it, we had no lights, and if this wax "dome" was made we would be in the dark, the boys accepted and focused solely on the theater, the studio and they normal functions.
Tailors became so popular that I had to limit their working hours to 8 hours a day, everyone wanted their services, whether to create cloth, ropes or comfortable mattresses.
And by the way, I got a great bedding set from the tailors, the set was simple and looked like it was made by amateurs, but it was still infinitely better than sleeping on piles of wax and leaves.
The tailors had cranes that could use needles and create simple seams, they could also create fabrics in a very different way. They would get together in groups of 3 or 4, then begin to produce spools of silk thread, then they would tie everything together in the arms of a single tailor and begin to braid the threads until they became fabric.
The fabric wasn't really high quality, and if it was held up to the sun you could see hundreds of little holes resulting from the poor quality manufacturing, but it was still fabric! Fabric made by bees.
Ropes were easier, they just braided the strands until they were thick and strong, then tied the ends and rolled the ropes.
To create my bedding set they dedicated themselves, first creating large pieces of fabric and then sewing it all together to create blankets for pillows and mattresses, they didn't have a "worthy" filler, so we used grass fibers, flower petals and other materials soft, the result was incredible, much better than the wax bed.
And with that they condemned themselves.
Everyone wanted a comfortable bed, pillows and rope for work, putting a heavy burden on the poor weavers.
Hans stayed in the front line, his methods were slow but safe, and with that he created a squad of "elites" who were very good at recognizing a danger, and finding ways to beat the enemy the quickest.
While Trouble ended up creating a squad of bloodthirsty warriors, their strategy for victory was "if it's still moving, just keep hitting", they were strong for sure, but they were a little.... Dumb. They could not think of strategies or follow complex orders, they could only do basic things like, hit, Stop, retreat and flee.
My beacons had proven very useful, they were basically a cell phone that you have in your head, they can remind you of things, connect you with someone, or send messages.
They did not have a restriction that required them to permanently connect with only one target at time, for example, they could connect with Hans, pick up the message he wants to send, disconnect from him, and connect to another member to pass the message across the hive.
They were like those 90s phone calls ladys, they had a limited number of possible calls, but they could keep connecting you with whoever you wanted to talk to.
They were also very good at analyzing the information I had in my mind, I had a lot of knowledge that was inside my head, but it was like a "corrupted file", it still had salvation, but it is very difficult to make it into something useful.
But these beacons could do it! They could take small fragments of knowledge, and "uncorrupt" it, then they wrote everything on wax plates and stored it on shelves, these guys were the burucratics of the hive. Because they were not strong they could not fight, and because of their Skills they should focus solely on making this link work better, but for them it was very annoying, they literally had to stand all day looking at a wall and inspecting the link.
So I gave them this job that I thought was very boring, and they just loved it. They did it very delicately and did their best to extract useful things. So far they've only gotten things like the password to my first cell phone, and my mother's maiden name, but they kept digging.
I didn't know what they thought of these human memories, but I ended up discovering that they didn't care, for them whether I was a human, a bird or a fish at some point in my life it was irrelevant, now I was their mother, and the Queen of the hive.
Yet they didn't tell anyone about this "theory" that I was once human, and not only possess memories of a human, but I don't think anyone would care, just as the beacons didn't. I had made it my "biggest secret" and they just shat at me, I didn't know if I felt like a clown or angry at being so belittled.
My laboratory had been closed, and entry became prohibited, I still didn't know if any of the things I worked with became poisonous when burned, so I turned the area close to the laboratory into a "forbidden zone", and no one went there.
And after all that, I was here, in my comfortable bed, playing one with a group of soldiers who had serious looks on their faces.
"I'm not going to lose this, I'd better give up now." said a soldier with a determined look
"Go dreaming, I'll make you buy a whole deck right away" said another soldier
"Hummm"
"Boys without quarreling, remember sportsmanship and camaraderie."
"All right..." said my personal swoder
"You better remember, because I won."
Soon as I say this I play my +4 card and leave everyone surprised, it was reasonably easy to win from the soldiers, they did not know how to bluff, so I could manipulate the game to my ideal conditions, such as playing a color card and choosing red, while in fact I had yellow, the boys assumed that I had a red card, and that I needed that color to win, they ended up changing the color, and with this and a little luck I got a hand of only wild cards.
"Damn it! You won again!"
"Why not take it easy with us!"
"He he he he, suckers! I won, you lost~ if I took it easy, you wouldn't get a real win, just a pity win!"
"Ugh.."
While I stood there making fun of the losers, I ended up receiving a mental notification that alerted me to the birth of the gardeners, I wanted to be there, so I left everyone behind and went to the nursery.