Chapter 561: Their march will not be stopped
Eloquence shook her head.
"This might complicate things, Grand Commander. By the time our message reaches him, this technology will spread much wider than it is known now. Eliminating it will be possible, but it would require a lot of effort and more human deaths. With how low this continent’s population already is, I think Father would prefer us to keep more humans alive. Isn’t it said that conquering more humans will also bring forth the next Great Celebration of Gene Picking?"
Malevolence let out a breath. She knew that Agent Eloquence was speaking words of truth. This connection between the Bee Empire’s power and humans was another reason that humans were to be kept mostly alive, despite her opinion of them.
The usnea trees were spreading over the Ashida continent faster than the bee sub-hives. While Ramwill was taking over Ferwall, Malevolence’s forces had built several more of them, planting more usnea fields and giving Jellybee Queens even more work in laying eggs and organising Nurse Bees.
At this point, her non-military forces were stretched thin, and Malevolence knew that no new sub-hives would be built at least for the next month. The usnea trees will always spread faster than the Bee Empire, which worked well in preparing the grounds for it. But this also meant that the usnea trees will reach many villages and towns ahead of bees, threatening them with hunger and freezing.
When there were too many usnea trees, the climate of an entire region could change drastically, and powerful storms often appeared as a result. They would slow down the creation of bee infrastructure even more.
If these humans caught by the usnea trees weren’t given help with taming them, they would surely die off.
Although this action would make humans more independent in the future, in the name of the next Gene Picking Celebration...
"Let the humans keep this technology and help spread it ahead of the usnea trees and the hunger they cause. Together with the worship of bees, of course. I take full responsibility for this decision," Malevolence said. "If the humans decide to revolt with this knowledge, we will just bring them swift death ourselves."
"Wonderful!" Eloquence said cheerfully. "I will leverage this technology well, don’t doubt. The continent will be ours!"
***
Eloquence didn’t lie—the worship of bees spread rapidly over the region. Malevolence thought that since Eloquence had the human ruler in her hands, she would just make him force the other humans to obey, but she worked much more softly.
"Humans are not like bees, Grand Commander. They only follow their rulers into something they don’t want to do when the rulers are either too scary to disobey or give the humans something they want," Eloquence had explained.
Since the humans foolishly didn’t want to worship bees, and Ramwill wasn’t scary enough, Eloquence directed him to act more cunningly.
Now his people would give out free food to those who came to the temples of Mother-Nature to listen to preachers, while asking for a new "tax" money from those who openly worshipped the old gods.
Ramwill’s people, together with Eloquence’s bees, also travelled into farther regions, preaching about Mother-Nature and telling people about her great gift—usnea trees—and how to treat it.
In this new faith, Mother-Nature was a figure whose image was crafted based on Empress Ambrosia’s. Although originally there was only Mother-Nature, Eloquence added the Sun Father to the mix to represent Father.
Meanwhile, Malevolence founded ten sub-hives in total and fully furnished them with the basics. New generations of bees were already learning how to make work, while the Jellybee Queens gradually increased the speed of their egg-laying.
These sub-hives were built in the middle of massive usnea tree fields. Although they provided the bees with food and protection, they put the entire area—already cold because of the high altitude—into a zone of eternal winter.
At first, when Malevolence began to spread her colony’s infrastructure, this cold became a serious problem!
Humans couldn’t work in it, but they weren’t necessary for building, anyway. What was much worse is that water, food and wax inside the hives were freezing, making a lot of ordinary things like crafting or simply eating impossible.
Not to mention this cold threatened to kill all the eggs that the Queens would lay. Morphotyped bees had cold immunity, but eggs weren’t morphotyped!
Malevolence knew that it was impossible to avoid the cold fully. For a time, she could do it, but eventually there would be just too many usnea trees.
So instead, she gave orders to keep the usnea trees at a certain distance from the hives and to add extra thermal insulation and heating to them.
Now every hive was covered in thick fur hides or woolly cloth (taken from humans), and had new ventilation holes for all the smoke that was coming out! Day and night, wood-fueled heaters were heating the air.
There was always enough wood, thanks to all the usnea trees that were cut for warmth. In all senses.
So after this hurdle, the bees continued to grow Malevolence’s colony. When the reinforcements arrived by the end of the month, Malevolence was proud to show them the results of her and her people’s work.
There were ten fully functioning sub-hives, although their permanent population was fairly small, and a lot of infrastructure to support them. There were basic schools and archives, small manufactures and forges that were using materials gathered by humans, and many other things any sub-hive needed to work better.
And then, this colony got all the things they needed and even more.
In his infinite wisdom—and infinite faith in Malevolence—he sent fewer soldiers and more Builders, Teachers, Researchers and Nurses. All the bees who were necessary to make the sub-hives feel like a proper part of the Bee Empire.
There were more Jellybee Queens, too!
And Father had approved of Malevolence’s decisions to let humans use scythes.
Malevolence’s colony began spreading farther and farther. Her Builder Bees laid the first stone in the first mecha factory on this continent.
In a few months, their march will not be stopped.