The cheers were short lived. As the body of the 2-legged creature went into the ground like the bear, another wave of energy flooded through the hive and once again the hive began to know things it hadn’t before. The knowledge came with a big problem; the hive has no idea what most of it means!

Thus started the regulative discussion/argument conference of the hive!

“Human? That must be what the 2-legged creature was called.”

“What’s this class thing the human has? A hunter?”

“The human was hunting the bear so…maybe this class thing is what the human is good at.”

“That’s as good of a guess as any. Armor?”

“The bear wasn’t wearing any so all these should belong to the human too.”

“But what does all these means? Leather armor- chest; pants- leggings; boots- shoes…what’s all these for? The bear doesn’t have any of this!”

“Don’t forget his “job”. What’s a “Leatherworker”?”

“This is getting us nowhere!”

“True. Let’s focus on what we know then.”

“We know nothing!”

“…what about these skills then? Both the dear and human got them.”

“They got different ones though.”

“Okay. The bear got enhanced strength, intimidation, tough hide, survival, charging, and swipe. The human got archery, sword, tracking, farsight, taming, leatherworking, skinning, woodcraft, animal knowledge and crafting knowledge.”

“The human got more skills.”

“But that still doesn’t help us because we don’t know what any of these skills do!”

“Actually we do”

“We do?”

“Yes. Bear, you charged the human just now right? After that, you swiped him. You must have been using the bear’s skills.”

“Who is bear?”

“You are”

“No, I/we are not a bear.”

“You were the bear against the human. That makes you “Bear”.”

“That’s nonsense. We are a hive. I/we are a nature spirit. I/we are not bear.”

“…okay. You-Who-Are-Not-Bear, did you use charge and swipe just now?”  

“…yes”

“That must be what skills are. They are special actions or abilities the creatures are allowed to do.”

“…I think that sounds about right. Till we get more information, let’s go with that. What else we have?”

“Weapons? Bow, arrows, short sword, and skinning knife; must be from the human also.”

“Something called currency; what’s the Gold–Silver–Copper Standard?”

“Let’s put that under “unknown” right now. What else?”

“The human also got something called “languages”. He got 2; Common and something called Kangilian.”

“This is just confusing. How do we know any of this in the first place?”

“Both the bear and the human died in the tunnel…maybe that’s how we know. We got their knowledge.”

“Again; this is getting us nowhere. What’s good is knowledge when we don’t understand what we know?”

“Yeah, we need someone to explain all these. If only we have a helpful information-giving fairy…”

“What’s a fairy?”

“According to the human, it is some sort of small flying animal that can flying and talk. The human hunt it sometimes.”

“That’s stupid. Why should a fairy help us?”

“Yeah. And why a fairy? Why not some other creatures that can talk?”  

Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

“We can’t talk. Uh…can we talk?”

“That’s…actually a good…”

“Focus on the problem at hand please! Our survival may depend on it.”

The hive was confused by all the new information it got and had no use for most of them but at least it now understood that the new knowledge it had comes from the creatures that died near it. When some creature died within the hive’s influence, the hive gained some knowledge from the creature. With that understanding, the next question the hive had was the distance of it’s influence.

Unfortunately, the first thing the hive discovered was how short it can push its’ senses. The hive’s small room was at the end of a short tunnel. The hive pushed its’ senses out of the tunnel and saw that the tunnel led out of a mountain that it identified as “The Big Keg”. Forest and river spirits within the hive then said they sensed the presence of a forest and a river nearby but the hive was unable to see them. 

The hive was only able to sense the immediate area just outside the entrance of the tunnel. Anytime it tried to extend beyond that, its’ sensory just shut down. Its’ range was pretty poor. Still, it now had an idea of its surroundings so that just leave the problem of how to avoid future danger.

The hive did not know the answer but it knew it had been lucky. It could, and should, have been dead. The hive began to discuss how to avoid a similar scenario. After another discussion/argument conference, the first solution that came to the hive was to simply seal up the tunnel.

Earth spirits within the hive moved the earth and sealed up the entrance. However when it did that, several spirits within the hive slowly went dormant. The hive quickly understood the problem. If it closed its’ access to the outside world, the hive would lose several kinds of spirits within it like the nature spirit that powered the bear. Some of the spirits within it needed a route to the outside to function.

The hive experimented on the problem and discovered that it could move the stone slab it was floating on. With closure of the tunnel out of the question, the other option was to move further away from the entrance of the cave. When earth spirits within the hive offered to dig further into the mountain, everyone agreed. The earth spirits within the hive began digging a tunnel from the back of the hive’s room and it was during this time the hive discovered yet another problem.

The more it digs, the less the hive was able to focus. In a way, it made sense to the hive. The more energy you spent, the less you have. The problem was the hive had no idea what it had to do to replace the energy it was spending digging the tunnel. When it spent energy to create the bear, the energy spent was replaced by the death of the human. Even with the energy spent then, the hive currently still had a surplus of energy due to the death of the bear and the human. But what could it do when it used them up? It had no idea.

That was until fate once again intervened.