With three people in their improvised camp, Regina felt like she could finally relax a little. They split night watches so everyone got some sleep. It was summer (probably), so the nights were pretty short, anyway, but she felt much better rested.

Max showed Tim around and explained everything they were doing. The younger Warrior tended to be quiet, but took to it with enthusiasm, and with Max’s help he quickly got himself a shield similar to Max's. He’d been very helpful in dealing with the remains of the bird monster, too.

Today, the two Warriors were gone on their first hunt together while Regina stayed back to watch the camp. She looked out into the forest periodically, but they were too far for her to hear. She could always check in on their status through that psychic hive connection, but that didn’t seem necessary.

Regina sighed and stretched, before she glanced at her eggs. She’d laid two of them, both Drone Workers. Since they already had three combat-capable people, she didn’t think that was too much of a risk. They’d even managed to fight off a higher-level monster, even if Max had gotten injured. He wouldn’t be able to rely on his Skill now, though.

The eggs looked mostly the same as the Warrior eggs, although the coloring was a little different. It tended to be spottier, like blotches of paint rather than a swirling gradient of color. They had started at the same size and seemed to grow at about the same rate, though, which she took as a good sign.

Her mana regeneration was drained even more than before, probably because there were two eggs. It was slightly more than half as fast as it had been with one egg, though. Maybe that was because she’d leveled up. Even if she couldn’t see her stats, the System might still give her points in Int or Wis, or whatever governed how her mana worked.

Regina would have liked the chance to practice more. Unfortunately, with her mana regen that slow, she couldn’t afford to cast many spells. She did notice that Magic Missile had gotten slightly easier, though. She’d tried as best she could to investigate how the Spell worked, how her mana acted and reacted to her and how best to shape it. She’d gotten a better feel for it, but she knew she was still far from making her own spells.

She stood up and paced up and down a few steps. The forest around her was quiet and couldn’t hold her attention. There wasn’t much of a breeze and her nose would warn her if any monster got too close. She glanced around her camp. She’d always had something to do, virtually every minute since she woke up in that vault. Boredom was novel. They didn’t have any books to read, but maybe later she could play simple board games with Max and Tim.

After an hour of sitting around and twiddling her thumbs, the two warriors finally returned. Regina stood up and watched a little anxiously as they came closer.

“Tim got his first level!” Max called, grinning.

The younger Drone Warrior was carrying two Spiky Squirrels. He set them down and nodded at her, also smiling.

“Great,” Regina responded. She glanced at Max. “How is your shoulder?”

Max shrugged. “Healing, I think. I made sure to be careful.”

They’d discovered, to her relief, that he didn’t appear to need any treatment. Instead, his wound was slowly closing and the shell around it regrowing. Looking at it now, it already seemed a lot better than just after he got the injury. It might be gone completely in a few days or weeks.

“So, let’s see your new stats.” Regina turned back to the other warrior, smiling.

Tim Drone Warrior Level: 2 Mana: N/A Con: 10 Str: 11 Dex: 9 End: 9 Int: 13 Wis: 9

As expected. She nodded. Tim had a lower Int than Max, although it still seemed pretty high for a Warrior. He was probably going to get increases in Str and Con, too.

“It offered me my first Class Skill, my Queen. I was thinking I could get the Warrior’s Charge one,” he said hesitantly.

“Sure,” Regina agreed. “You can do that.”

Tim stared into space for a few seconds, clearly selecting his Skill. Regina turned to watch Max, who was carefully handling the two squirrels with only his right arms. Tim quickly joined in.

“After you’re done, please add what you’ve seen today to the map.” She pointed at a wooden plank she’d drawn on with burnt sticks. Her first, crude map, which she’d drawn into the dirt, hadn’t survived the recent rains. They’d take this one with them into their shelter if necessary.

“Of course, my Queen,” Max answered. “We didn’t see anything really new, though. Should we build another shelter?”

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Regina smiled, pleased that he’d had the same thought. “Yes, I think that would be wise. Ours isn’t made for three people, and our hive is growing.”

“I’ll do my best with the construction, my Queen,” Tim said.

Regina nodded, then got up and started gathering wood to get started. She suspected that she had the highest Dex score among them, which, admittedly, wouldn’t take much. With the experience they had from the first shelter, she was determined to make the next one better.

They had more than enough mud to plaster onto walls, but finding sticks large and straight enough to build the skeleton for the shelter was tricky. Regina went along the forest’s edge, trying to go where they hadn’t gathered wood before. After a while, she noted that she’d come pretty close to the vault where she’d woken up. Was that only a week ago?

Regina set down the bundle of sticks she’d gathered so far and stretched. She glanced at the rocky hill. Even knowing it was unlikely, she couldn’t quite shake the uneasy thought that there might be cameras watching from there.

She’d revised her earlier opinion about whether or not this was her world. There was actually a moon, which looked like she expected the moon to appear, it just wasn’t always visible due to terrain obstructions, clouds and the fact that it was summer. The gravity and atmosphere was also the same. Even the flora and fauna didn’t exactly scream ‘alien’, apart from the monsters.

She hesitated, then grabbed her sticks again and turned to head back towards the designated shelter. There was little point in constantly checking that spot when nothing changed. She’d have to get her answers another way. Maybe, once the Workers were hatched, she’d travel down the river a bit, see where it led her.

She went on a small detour on the way back to pass by the river and check it out again with an eye to how well you might traverse it. It was pretty thin and she was uncertain if it was deep enough to allow boats to use it. The current would also be a problem if you wanted to go upstream.

She eyed the banks of the river as she walked parallel to it, occasionally getting a good look through a hole in the canopy of the trees. The river had swelled a little, but it was still in no danger of flooding. There was a herd of deer drinking from it farther down the river, but she left them alone.

Then she stopped as a splashing sound reached her. Regina froze and turned to look upriver. There was a bend in the stream above her, so she couldn’t see far. She leaned forward and squinted. Was that - yes, a dark shape was coming down the river.

She dropped her sticks and jumped behind a tree. After a moment of frozen hesitation, she slowly crept forward until she reached a good spot, where she could look at the river but was still hidden by some dark branches.

It was a boat. An honest to goodness, wooden, artificially made boat. It looked pretty large to Regina, but she didn’t know much about boats. It didn’t have a sail, but did have a pair of oars. There were three people on board. She squinted and tried to get a closer look.

When she did, she might have dropped the sticks if she hadn’t already. The people all wore rough clothing in earthy colors, looking like someone dressing up for a medieval-themed event. Two were men with swords on their hips, shields and axes lying in the boat. The last, a woman, had a bow slung across her back. She wore her blond hair up in a braid, which gave Regina a clear look at her pointy ears. When the woman turned after a few seconds, she saw that she had a sharp, graceful face that you could easily describe as ‘elfin’.

Regina leaned back against her tree as the boat wound its way down the river. An elf. Medieval fighters and an honest-to-goodness elf. This really is a fantasy world, isn’t it?

She shook her head. She knew she shouldn’t make assumptions. Three people did not a population make. Still, it made her hesitate to reveal herself.

If she had the drones with her, a strong hive backing her up, that would be a different story. But if these three attacked her, she wasn’t confident in her chances. She did look like a monster, and it was impossible to know what sort of experience they might have with her species.

She hesitated, warring with indecision, until the sounds of the boat started to fade. She peeked beyond the canopy again to see the boat swiftly float downriver, effectively making her choice for her.

Regina stared after it for a moment, before she shook herself and went to pick up the wood she’d gathered. She started drudging back to camp, feeling like it had gotten heavier all of a sudden.

“Hey, I think we figured out a way to make the next shelter a little larger,” Max said when she returned and dropped the sticks. He looked excited, but then paused when he saw her. “Is everything alright, my Queen?”

“Sure,” Regina said. She sat down on a convenient log.

After a moment of staring at the sticks and realizing that she hadn’t even started thinking about building the shelter, she sighed and leaned back. She decided she might as well talk about it. “I saw people,” she said.

Max and Tim both started, turning to look at her expectantly.

She quickly explained what she’d seen, and her decision not to attempt to contact them. There was a moment of silence after she’d finished.

Max chewed on his lip. “I think that was smart,” he said. “Rushing in unprepared just because we wanted to meet actual humans would have been a bad idea.”

“Your safety is more important,” Tim agreed.

Max just looked at her for a moment. “Are you alright, Regina? It can’t have been easy.”

Regina shrugged. “I don’t know.” She stared into the fire.

She told herself it was stupid to get depressed because of this, but that didn’t make it any easier. Previously, she hadn’t really thought about what being in the body of a Hive Queen with human memories meant. Not in that context. Now that she’d actually seen other humans, the fact that she was a monster, at least outwardly, suddenly gained a whole new weight.

“What are we going to do?” Tim asked. “We’re probably going to run into them or people like them eventually.”

Regina shook her head and stood up. “We prepare,” she said. She forced herself to smile slightly. “We need to get enough strength that we can hold our own and don’t need to be afraid of a random group of travelers, then we go looking for civilization.”

“Who knows, they might actually welcome us with open arms,” Max said. He caught their looks and shrugged. “Hey, it’s possible. We don’t need to just assume they’ll be hostile.”

“Hmm.” Regina frowned thoughtfully. “You’re right. We’re obviously a sapient species, at least in part. There definitely could be dealings and exchange between them and the local humans or elves.”

But she couldn’t quite bring herself to believe it would be so easy. Oh, he had a good point and she was definitely eager to find out what the locals knew about her people.

At the same time, when she considered the urges and instincts she’d felt from her Hive Queen side, especially before Max hatched, they seemed a little dubious.