Although I have many questions that I want answered, I know one thing.

I need to stop wasting my time.

Upon testing out my abilities, I realize that I was only as uncoordinated as I was when I was escaping because I was in a stressful situation.

Upon testing out my movement, I realize that it would only take a couple of hours of practice to get used to controlling as many bodies as I have.

Now onto the bigger issue, how do I survive?

I try to remember if I know how bees are supposed to live.

I look around with a small group of bees that I split off from the main group so that I can use them to explore the forest in hopes of finding a bee colony that I can find to use as a blueprint for my new home.

30 minutes later…

I had no luck, although I searched far and wide, there are no bee colonies in the area.

Also, I managed to scout out most of the forest, as it turns out there are many inhabitants, none of which acknowledged my existence or paid attention to me, but it was nice to see that I’m not alone here.

One of these types of creatures look like small green humanoid beings that are walking through the forest in a pace faster than my own, almost as though they are hiding something.

They all appear to move into a similar direction of a cave system too intricate to explore as of right now.

Other creatures appear to be large blobs in various colors, the first one I saw was consuming a tree branch, kinda freaky.

Of course, it’s not like there was no action going on with my non-scouting bees.

I was able to find out something interesting about one of my bees, it is larger than the rest of them and through some… experimentation I was able to find out that I can make it create something that looks kind of gross, but valuable.

I don’t know if these things are important, but I think they might be, I’ll keep them around since my instincts tell me to protect them.

I seem to remember that the bees who are larger and create these gross things are important, but I don’t know what for.

Maybe they are better fighters because they are larger, but I don’t want to risk it, so I’ll be leaving this one with the gross things. Since it creates things that feel valuable, I feel as though I should call it the queen bee.

I also built a nest of some kind in the treetop of the tree I was in.

Although the nest is mostly made of dirt held together by hopes and dreams, it is good enough to stay in for now.

All is going well when I hear that voice again.

“There you are! I knew you had to be around here somewhere.”

It’s the old man wearing the robe again, I still have bad memories of how he killed a lot of my bees when I escaped his prison.

“You’re a pretty elusive creature, you know that?” he says to me.

I don’t understand what does this guy want from me? Why can’t he just leave me alone?

He continues “I know what you’re capable of, I will stop you before you can destroy everything!”

What is he talking about? If he wants to kill me, why monologue?

I try to communicate with him by flying around in a coordinated but non-threatening way.

“I’m not falling for that!” he says while approaching.

I want to flee but I cannot abandon the small gross things that my queen bee has created, so I decide to stand my ground, or, I guess, stand my air.

The man produces a potion, like the ones in the room, out of nowhere.

He throws it at my swarm, and it produces a weird green gas of some kind.

However, the gas does little to affect my bodies.

“Damnit, I knew I got the wrong one!” he continues, talking to himself.

I decide to stay back with my main body of bees and only confront him with a small handful of bees in case he’s trying to trick me.

Suddenly, someone yells at the man from afar.

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“Frank, are you poisoning the forest animals again?” says the annoyed voice.

I look over and see a young woman who appears to know the old man.

I can’t make out a lot of details about her from afar, but I can tell that she’s much shorter than the man and really annoyed, as though this happens a lot.

“No” the old man, who appears to be named Frank, says “I’m saving the world!”

“Sure, you are” the woman replies,

“Just like that one time you supposedly revealed that your next-door neighbor is the prophecy’s hero, right?” the woman says as she’s approaching.

“That’s because he is! The prophecy calls for a young man with the expertise of all four kinds of magic to take out the swarm, I know he’s fit for the role because I see the potential in him that you don’t.” Frank replies

“He doesn’t even know magic, by the way, are you seriously not gonna tell me why you’re still brewing illegal potions to poison the forest? You promised me you’ll stop. Are you ‘saving the world’ from the local deer or something?” she says in further annoyance.

“No” he says, pointing at one of my bees “THIS is actually THE swarm that the prophecy is talking about, I was the powerful magician it mentioned, and I created it because I knew someone would have to create it eventually, it simply escaped.”

“You always think so highly of yourself”, the woman replies, “Maybe you need to stop thinking that you are powerful enough to create a strong hive mind, you’re not even a magician, you’re an alchemist.”

I realize that these two aren’t getting anywhere so I decide to chase the old man away from my home by stinging him.

“Ouch! Are you seeing this? It’s obvious that these bees are out to get me!”

“Maybe it’s because you poisoned them?” the woman replies, “That is usually enough to make bees mad.”

The woman continues “Also if you really believe that these bees are the swarm, why do you think that you could take them out? Didn’t you just say that it’s only your neighbor who can take them out because of the prophecy?” she says with a smug expression.

The man is undeterred, determined to attack me despite the words of the woman.

The woman’s smug face falters for a moment in the old man’s defiance.

“I’m going to tell the guards about your illegal lab if you don’t come home with me.” She threatens.

“No! You have no idea what you’re doing, you can’t stop me from killing this dumb hive mind!”

Although his words are hurtful, he’s not really making a good case for himself, it’s obvious the woman doesn’t believe him.

Maybe if I can convince her that I’m not a hive mind, she’ll make him go away faster.

I try to fly around with my bodies in a chaotic manner, trying to make it look as though I’m a normal swarm of bees.

However, as it turns out, I’m still not completely used to flying with so many bodies at once so I only manage to fly around with a few dozen of my bees before a lot of them crash into the ground while the woman is watching me.

“… That’s weird, these bees just flew out of the treetop all at once and immediately dropped onto the floor.” The woman says.

I can’t help but wonder, did I just blow my cover for no reason?

The woman approaches one of my bodies as I try to play dead.

The woman looks at one of my bodies again, clearly suspicious of me before continuing

“Hey Frank, I think your poison worked, let’s get out of here.” The woman says quickly to make him get out of here.

Frank tries to talk back again but is eventually convinced to go with the woman because she threatens to report him to the guards again.

However, he still yells “This isn’t over hive mind, I will destroy you” into the tree that my bees flew out of.

Once Frank stops paying attention to me, I see the woman looking back at me suspiciously.

Once I’m sure that they are gone I decide to move again, unsure what to make of the conversation that I just heard.

What were they talking about regarding a prophecy?

Was my existence predicted? After all, they said something about a swarm that needs to be taken out by Frank’s neighbor or something like that.

If so, does that mean I will be the one to wreak havoc on the world?

It feels like it can’t be true since I was already in mortal danger way back when I fled Frank’s lab, and if I’m dead, I obviously cannot be eliminated by this person they talked about, meaning the prophecy is false.

What does it all mean?

The only explanation I can come up with is that the prophecy must be talking about a different swarm.

I go back to the treetop to make more of the gross things that I was making earlier.

While this entire thing was going on, I was also exploring with my explorer bees, I now have a rough estimate of how large the forest is, although it wasn’t that exciting since nothing noteworthy happened to my explorers.

Eventually, after a few more hours of exploring and building a home for myself in the treetop, some of the gross things are undergoing a change.

I notice a new body has entered my consciousness, seemingly inside the gross thing.

This is it, this is how I can create more bees!

The gross things are just eggs of some kind.

I try to free the one with one of my bodies that is available, but I must have been too excited because I lost my feeling in the new body when I opened its gross container.

When I looked inside, I saw a smaller bee who’s not moving.

Well, lesson learned, don’t try to rush hatching.

Luckily, there are many more eggs that I can experiment with, through some testing I realize that hatching them with no outside intervention leads to the best results.

A lot of my newly gained bees are now alive and working on expanding my home.

Maybe I should try to split into many more groups so each of them can specialize on certain tasks.

I already have a scouting group in the forest, so I guess I’ll call them something similar to that.

I’ll also build another group to explore the city, one to explore a weird looking cave that one of the small green humanoid figures walked into and another group to keep an eye on Frank.

However, I must first build up a larger home and get more bees, overwise this isn’t gonna work.

After a few more hours of building my home and getting more bees I’ve finally done it, I built a small base of operations out of dirt that I can now use to create more bees.

After some shuffling, I’ve managed to make enough bees for each of my groups.

I’ve decided to give each of my groups a nickname, so I don’t lose track of them. The group that will explore my surroundings in the forest will be called the forest scouts, they are already dispersed and exploring the area, so I don’t need to make them go anywhere to start off.

I also have a group at my home that will collect food in case any of my other groups run out of food or are starving, this one will be the Queens Guards.

The ones that are going to explore the city will be called the city gang.

The ones in the weird cave will be the cavin’ boys.

I will now describe what each of my groups are doing one after another, I’ll do more hive building with the queen guard group.

Each of my groups will now separate simultaneously, but I will describe what they are doing one after another so it’s easier to follow.

I think it is fitting if I first talk about what I’m doing with the city gang.