The next morning Van woke up to a pleasant feeling between his legs. He gently pushed Luna away and got up, waking up Lyn and Amie to get ready for the rest of the day.

“Mmm… five more minutes.” Lyn barely got out as she snuggled him.

But after some poking and prodding, he was able to get her awake alongside Amie and the group changed and prepared for the day.

“Jeez Van!” Lyn said as she tried to walk. “You really did a number on me. You were like a completely different person!” she said in a teasing manner.

Van blushed a little. “Sorry about that. I… changed a bit…” now feeling a bit down.

“But you're still my Van,” Lyn said. “And you changed a lot less than you think.” smiling gently.

“...thanks,” Van said, appreciating her trying to make him feel better and returning the smile. But it slowly waned as his mind kicked into gear and the thoughts of work started to pile up. “But we should start thinking about what we're going to do next…” he said with a sigh. “Like… about what happened to your zappers…” uncomfortable about broaching this subject.

Lyn shook her head sadly. “Amie already told me.”

“It gets worse…” Van said, bringing up the courage to say what's next. “I can’t access my soul realm for the next few months, maybe longer. Which means… you won’t be able to get any reinforcements for a while. Or put in or take out anything.”

Lyn’s eyes widened. “was that what that feeling was…” she thought to herself, thinking about a strange feeling she had a few days ago. “How? Was it when you were attacked? How could you lose access to your own soul realm?” she said, a little panicked and genuinely curious.

Van told her everything to the best of his knowledge, leaving nothing out.

“This… this is worse than I thought… Why didn’t you tell me before we came to your tent! You only…” she went silent as she realized that other than a few people, not many knew that Van lost access to his soul realm. And with good reason, if it were to leak… well… Van had no enemies in the forest, but it still wasn’t something you blabbed about.

“Sorry…” Van said, watching Lyn’s expression turn sour.

Lyn looked Van in the eyes. “I’m not angry at you!” she quickly tried to say. “Sorry, I didn’t mean for that to show on my face. I just… I’m just sick and tired of everything going wrong! Can’t I just get a fucking break!?” she complained.

Van nodded, fully understanding where she’s coming from. “Preach it.”

Lyn began to rant. “I mean, everything's going great! Then it goes to shit! Then when you think you salvaged something and made it better again, it goes to shit again! And you lose so much along the way, that even when you get a little back it doesn’t make much of a difference! And this goes on and on! I mean I… I…” she deflated. “I’m so fucking tired of it. This wasn’t supposed to be so hard, you know...”

“I admit it… when I started this whole thing… I was just winging it… just going with the flow… I knew that the wasp horde had to be stopped but… should I have ever interfered? Maybe then so many people wouldn’t have died…” Lyn said in a defeated and tired tone.

Van was a little shocked. He never saw the upbeat and somewhat silly Lyn so… serious… or self-reflective… It was somewhat scary and disheartening to see.

Van walked up and pulled Lyn into a hug. Just grabbing her fully and squeezing her gently into him. “Everything is going to be alright. Your Lyn, and there's nothing you can’t do. ‘You're’ the one that saved my life. If it hadn’t been for you, I would have been either dead or kidnapped when Karen raped me.”

He then pulled his head away to look her in the eyes. “You went from a zapper, into a storm fairy. From a storm fairy, into a queen that is respected and loved by your followers. From a queen into a high queen that has many vassals that trust you with their lives and look to you for leadership. You are everything I wish I could be…”

“More importantly you are the one who always remains confident no matter how dire things get. Ready and willing to make any bad situation into a joke.” he chuckled a little at that as he remembered a few things. “You give me confidence and love. Just like Luna does. To make me want to be better.”

Luna perked up at her name and smiled from where she was laying down.

“And if I can look at everything I’ve been through and still have the willpower to continue on in the face of adversity. Then so can you. Hells… you are the reason I want to stay despite everything that's happened. I could never leave you alone here in the forest after all.” gently brushing her hair.

“Oh Van…” Lyn said, bringing up her own hand to caress his cheek. “You’ve become…” She then pinched his cheeks a bit roughly and stretched it, much to his surprise. “Quite the romancer. If I’m not careful, your harem will be too big and there won’t be any room for me!” she joked, messing with him. And making him blush.

“Jeez, cut that out. I was trying to come across as the loving husband here,” he complained.

Lyn giggled. “And you were perfect at that,” she said. “...thanks.” leaning forward and giving him a gentle kiss.

“your welcome…” he said after they pulled away.

“Ahem,” Amie said as she watched the two.

Van and Lyn smiled at each other and opened their arms allowing Amie in, which she promptly did. The both of them then gave her a kiss each and a nice hug.

“Oh! Oh! Me next! Me next!” Luna said, getting up and joining in. To which Lyn and Van gave her the same treatment, much to her joy.

After parting and some joking around, they finally decided to sit down and discuss their next steps at the nearby table in the tent.

“So… Lyn… What are you going to do? I, for example, am going to take it slow. I have to rebuild and repair and so much more. It will be a while before I do anything extraneous.” Leaning back in his chair and wondering what Lyn would say.

“Well… I honestly haven’t thought much about it. There really isn’t much of anything I can do other than go back to the front lines. At least this time I will be stronger than before and maybe make a bigger difference… but I’m still just one person, and there are others stronger than me. And I can’t fight an army by myself…” she said, letting her thoughts out into the open to see what everyone else thought.

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Van frowned. “While I don’t like the thought of you going out back into that war of yours… I know I… can’t really stop you when you set your mind on something… So at least please tell me you have some sort of plan or idea, and maybe at least a suggestion of whatever I could do to help?”

“Thanks but…” she hesitated. “Maybe… you can make more insect-kin? I know it may be much to ask, considering I don’t even know how many mana cores you used on me and it probably was a lot. But…”

“Done,” Van said with a nod. “Whatever little help I can provide, I’ll give it. You have my word.”

Lyn smiled. “Thank you, but… perhaps we should first talk about who you're going to evolve? We lost a lot of zappers and bees… and all the ones with Amie died… the ones left are the few still on the front lines, and we really can’t take them away. Even a few hundred, while small in the grand scheme of things. Can make or break a battle… if only we can get more…” she said, thinking deeply on the matter.

“Oh! Oh! Me! Pick me!” Luna said, waving her hand. “I can make you more! Lots and lots of more!”

Lyn looked at her with a quirked eye.

Luna then explained.

Lyn then looked wide-eyed towards Van. “can she really produce eggs of a different species if she just has some blood!?” she asked incredulously.

Van nodded. “She already made half a dozen goblin eggs. I don’t even know how she did it, or how she did it so quickly. But she did it, all in one day.”

Lyn looked flabbergasted by such a thing. Then slowly shook her head as she thought about it. “Even if that’s true… It still will take some time for the eggs to hatch, mature, and be trained to fight. All of which will take months if not a whole year. Time we simply do not have.”

“Nah ah…” Luna said with a smile. “We got the green juice now. We make the eggies grow up real fast!” she finished with a giggle.

Van’s brow furrowed in confusion, then widened in shock. “How do you know that?” he asked, turning to her.

Now it was Lyn who was confused. “What does she mean?” she asked. Van explained about the goblin soup and biomass. “Oh… I’m so sorry you had to do that…” Empathizing with what Van probably had to go through.

“Thanks. But…” Van wanted to turn back to ask Luna again once more how she knew something when she was in her tent ever since she had changed. But he decided to leave that for later. “...thanks. It wasn’t a pretty thing to do, but it had to be done.”

Lyn nodded.

“Anyway… even if we can use the biomass to increase the rate of growth for the eggs. And by some miracle make them grow in only a few days, they still would have to take a few months to mature and to train. Don’t get me wrong, it still would cut downtime considerably, but it still wouldn’t be enough.” Van said, rubbing his chin.

“Perhaps we are looking at this from the wrong angle?” Amie interjected. “Maybe what we need to do is not figure out how quickly we can replenish our troops. But how can we make the troops we have better and give more than they are worth? Perhaps by giving them better equipment?”

Lyn and Van perked up at that. “Maybe…” Van said in thought. “But that would still require resources we simply do not have, not to mention it will still take some time… and from what little I know… most of your forces are made up of actual insects and not insect-kin, and you don’t have a lot of insect-kin to begin with and any you do have probably already have armor and weapons.”

“That's true…” Lyn said. “Even with the newly made insect-kin you gave us, we were quickly able to give hand-me-downs and other gear to get them ready. If anything, we had more problems with training them to use the stuff than with finding stuff for them to wear. Even if the knowledge gets implanted to you as you evolve. That doesn’t mean you fully understand how to use your hands or your legs…”

“Perhaps allies?” Van said after Lyn finished. “Surely you have some people who are still on the fence that you can recruit? Maybe you can make a difference there?”

Amie shook her head. “We already recruited everyone who can join. What few holdouts will be soon forced to make a decision. Remember? The entire freaking forest is going to war. Can’t really have neutral parties in something this big. Even those who play at being neutral in some way or another help a side.”

“What about choke points? Make it so that the enemy is forced down a narrow path that can make it easier on you trading one or two soldiers for dozens of theirs?” Van asked.

Now it was Lyn who shook her head. “That won’t work in this kind of war. It's not like it's on a flat grid. It's more like three-dimensional warfare. Most insects can crawl and climb over almost any obstacle. Then there are flying insects and burrowing insects. There's literally not a direction that isn’t safe unless you make a mana barrier. And those are hard to make and given enough time, any army will push through them.”

“Not to mention,” Amie added. “Mana barriers are very costly to make. And even if by some miracle we found a place where we can make a choke point. It probably wouldn’t be for long. And where we might kill thousands for a few in one place, the enemy would have probably done so too somewhere else. Also, we are dealing in armies in the tens of millions, just killing a few thousand more isn’t going to cut it.”

Silence then prevailed in the room as everyone went into deep thought as they came to grips with what was just said and the realities of how bad things have become.

“Perhaps… if people were willing to pay… I can rank or evolve a few of your allies…?” Van asked, looking between Lyn and Amie then settling on Amie. “I heard your mother was a queen. Maybe she has a few trusted people who could use a power boost?”

Lyn and Amie paused in thought about that. “Hmm… it’s not a bad idea… and It will help prove to your mother all my claims…” Lyn said looking towards Amie.

“Not to mention… Now that I think about it… there may be a few holdouts who might choose our side if we offered them something like this…” Amie thought out loud. “It also could help us buy some time until we figure out a better solution…”

“Time where we can afford to take a few of our own zappers from the front lines and get them ranked up. And maybe for Van’s soul realm to heal enough that we can get access to our people. Maybe even take Luna up on her offer of using biomass to quickly grow a few for later use.” Lyn said thoughtfully.

“Maybe even get paid for it properly…” Van added. “Imagine the number of resources and funds we can get by offering such a service…” then hesitated. “But we will have to make sure we only offer it to people we can trust. Otherwise, there might be some who will try to abuse this gift and try to… maybe… steal me…” he said, feeling a bit like a narcissist for saying something like that out loud. But by the way, Lyn and Amie were nodding, perhaps it was a warranted worry.

“So… does that mean we have a plan?” Van asked the group.

“I think we do…” Amie said. “I’ll get in touch with a few contacts of mine and see what I can set up. Ask around for those who would be desperate for a rank up or evolution, both ally and enemy alike, maybe get a few new people on our side.”

“I’ll spread the word to a few trusted friends I made, maybe give them a freebie to show everyone it's true while at the same time increasing our overall fighting power,” Lyn said.

“And maybe get some money…? These things aren't cheap, you know. And they are time-consuming.” now worried at the costs.

Amie smiled towards Van. “Yes Van, don’t worry, you will get paid handsomely.

“Good… just also make sure they can’t come back to stalk or spy on me too. I would appreciate it.” Van said with a smile back.

“If any try… I’ll end them…” Lyn said very protectively.

Amie clapped her hand with a wide smile on her face. “Looks like we have our plan! We will offer Van’s services in evolving and ranking up people, all the while making connections and boatloads of cash!”

Van hesitated. “What’s to stop someone from doing the same thing? Surely I’m not the only one that can rank people up?”

“No, but you are the only one who can do it so easily. You may not realize it, but from what I learned, it doesn't cost you as much, you're easily faster than the best around, and it's not as painful. And finally, you can easily turn insects into insect-kin. That’s a whole hell of a lot harder than you think. That easily makes you worth your weight in royal jelly!” Amie said proudly.

“It's supposed to hurt?” Lyn asked.

“Royal jelly?” Van questioned.

“Doesn't matter!” Amie said, getting upbringing her hand forward. “Who’s with me to turn this war around, win it, and make lots of money!”

Lyn got up. “I am!” she said, bringing her hand and placing it on top of Amie’s.

Van chuckled. “So am I.” he said doing the same.

Then Luna brought her hand to the group out of nowhere with a giggle. “Goooooo me!” she cheered, raising her hand up high. The group chuckled and played along.

“Gooooooo Luna!” they said, much to Luna’s delight.

Though their joy was somewhat bittersweet considering the condition Luna was in. But now that that was done, it was time to get to work. And they had a lot of things to prepare for…