Chapter 551: Electric everything
’Yet unstudied effects?’ I shivered. ’What if they are negative? What if you will suffer from them?’
’We didn’t experience anything negative long-term so far, so it’s just a theory. Perhaps when we approach the true Sound more closely, this will change,’ Precio-Us replied. ’In the meantime, we can use the Sound to telepathically attack other creatures. Tests show that it completely stuns all but the most intelligent creatures who hear it. With it, we can make even the most ferocious beasts vulnerable to our attacks. We could even stun the beasts for so long that they die from thirst and exposure. We can make many creatures at once hear the Sound... Thousands of them.’
This sounded great—especially with the astounding range that the limit broken telepathy had. This could be a weapon of mass destruction.
It would look suspicious to any divine observer if entire groups of creatures died from nothing, but if psychic attacks like these were combined with attacks of ordinary bees, even our worst enemies could be defeated easily.
’But only you know The Sound, Precio-Us,’ I pointed out. ’Can you teach it to others?’
’Other hive minds—yes, we are sure we can.’
I clapped my hands together.
’Alright! Then I will make another hive mind your... helper. You teach them how to produce The Sound, and they will help you study it. If the need arises to use The Sound in the military, one of you could do it. In the meantime... Just be careful with it, if this is even possible.’
The Precio-Us bee smiled.
’Of course, Father. We know that you care for us, even if it’s hard for your singular mind to care about so many daughters.’
I narrowed my eyes. Did they just call me narrow-minded?
These bratty hive minds!
They didn’t even feel ashamed when they realised how they sounded—only happy. Which made me smile back, despite everything.
The hive mind adapted well to being a bee.
***
Soon after this, I received a telepathic missive from a ship that was travelling from the Ashida continent.
They were still in the ocean, but they approached the Bee Empire close enough to join with the nearest telepathic chain and tell me the latest news from Malevolence’s army.
This army had much faster progress than I expected. She really wasn’t wasting any time—if her plans succeeded, half of the continent would be ours within months!
I couldn’t waste this opportunity. I gave orders to prepare a large amount of reinforcements for Malevolence, focused specifically on spreading the usnea trees around.
This was a force that mostly consisted of bees.
There was a group of elite assassin forces that could kill whatever the usnea trees couldn’t deal with, but they were only a small part of the overall group.
The main part was Builders and Researchers specialising in engineering. With them were several Queen-class mechas of advanced models that worked much faster than humans and were stronger.
This force would build infrastructure on the land cleared by Malevolence so that a proper colony of the Bee Empire could be built on the foreign soil.
It would take time for them all to arrive on the Ashida continent. Perhaps the first transoceanic plane flight will happen sooner.
Either way, I was determined to give Malevolence all the support I could. Thankfully, the situation in the Bee Empire was perfect for it!
The war on the other half of the continent was almost won with the efforts of bees in killing the smooth-back deer and planting the usnea trees. Soon, I planned to start building sub-hives there, too. If all bees in them were cold-immune, the eternal winter that was reigning there, thanks to the massive forests of the usnea trees, would not be harmful.
Perhaps they will even make use of it by using ice as a cheap building material. At the very least, they will have infinite food thanks to the usnea tree nectar and fruits.
The industrial power of the Bee Empire was also growing faster and faster. Every day, more electrical tools were implemented in its sub-hives and factories. Electric smelters were only the first step—now there were electric water pumps, electric conveyor belts and more.
There were also more utilities in the sub-hives. Work on putting piping and electric cables in every sub-hive began all over the Bee Empire. Some of these technologies—mostly piping—were shared with humans, too, so that they could improve their hygiene and reduce the rate of illnesses even more than before.
As long as there were cables carrying the electric power over the country and power stations redirecting all this electricity without anything blowing up, all kinds of electric tools were easy to implement.
Most of the time, just replacing the motor element with an electric motor was enough. Electric cargo elevators, electric lighting, electric everything! At least where mechanics weren’t enough.
There was no need for overblown electric toilets. For now.
This was going so far that Workharder began to worry that we would run out of electricity generated by the hydroelectric stations near the mountains.
I wasn’t worried, because I knew for sure we would. Not all of these hydroelectric stations were even producing a good amount of electricity in the first place, especially after the excess of water on top of the river dams dried out.
All over the Bee Empire, coal power plants were already being built.
Coal was an abundant and easy-to-extract source of energy. All you needed to turn it into electricity was to heat some water with it and make steam rotate a turbine in an electric generator.
All for a tiny downside of producing some smoke that will disperse anyway. Who cared about some smoke?
What? Global warming?
I could think about it in twenty years, after my remaining lifespan runs out!
For now, I thought only about how hard it would be to launch a satellite into space and thus create a radio connection between this continent and Ashida.
(Very hard.)