Path of the Hive Queen

The next few days passed in a blur of work. The hive expanded again, getting new members, building a new hut and finally making some decent progress on the palisade around their budding village. Regina also decided to resume the tunnel project, which Tia seemed happy about.

After her latest pair of Warriors hatched, who she named Ted and Tad, Regina decided to add one more Warrior and one Scout to their number. By this point, the development of the sapient drone eggs had been out of sync with the War Drones, but she didn’t exactly have so many that she was in danger of losing track. They were also coming back into alignment, with the latest group of Swarm Drones she had prepared hatching on the same day as the sapient drones.

Regina waited until they were all hatched, sighing to herself as she finally felt the everpresent drain on her mana fade. With her rising Wisdom stat or maybe just growing experience, she had become more sensitive to these kinds of things, able to sense them more clearly. The feeling of her mana regeneration being impaired didn’t really bother her, as such, although she preferred having all of it available to her. The latest batch of Swarm Drones included two Production Drones this time, since she’d decided she could try to experiment with them or at least get started on getting a few to higher levels. After she’d sent them to their duties, she hung around near the last eggs.

Once they finally hatched, Regina found herself once more trying to come up with names. The Scout seemed to be be male again, while the Warrior felt like another female.

“Alf and Eva,” she finally decided. She smiled at them. “Welcome to our hive. We still don’t have a name for it, sorry. I’m Regina. The big guy over there is Max, he should be able to help you get started.”

“Of course, Mother, thank you,” Eva replied.

Max let out a barely-disguised sigh and shot her a disgruntled look before he stepped forward. Regina tried not to smile as she listened to him greet the two hatchlings before they moved off.

While she had the chance, she used her mana to create a few things the workers had asked for, mostly metal nails and such. Hinges were a bit tricky, but she managed to make shapes you could probably put together into working ones.

Regina then moved into the now empty hut and called up the System Screen. She’d decided to make one big batch of War Drones now, ten at a time. At only two days of development for their eggs, they really could replenish and increase their numbers quickly. Already, she’d be able to make up for the ones killed by the Brazen Blades, and more besides.

Once she was finished with that, Regina stepped out of the hut, blinked against the sunlight and stretched. Then she froze as she saw another System notification window appearing before her eyes.

Regina smiled. Her smile widened even more at seeing the next Screen the System had for her.

Well, finally. It felt like ages since she’d seen one of these messages.

Regina glanced at it, then decided not to rush her decision and instead moved into the hive towards the central fireplace, looking around and considering what they needed as well as what she already had.

In the information Tim and Bea had brought back from the elven city, mostly in their memory, there had been no mention of Conjuration magic. They had apparently run across some information or mention of other types of magic, including elemental manipulation spells. That implied that conjuration was rare. The fact that the local economy didn’t seem to have a major inflation problem and there weren’t old weapons lying around everywhere seemed to support that assumption. Regina didn’t know why she had been offered the choice, especially so early, but it might have something to do with her species or Class.

Her healing spell was another major factor. Regina felt confident she could level it up by herself, if that was possible. Or get other ones, if not. She’d already gotten it on her own, and it wasn’t like she’d exhausted her knowledge of medicine.

What she didn’t have yet, but might be useful, were buffing spells like (she assumed) Physical Augmentation or Haste. The problem was that she didn’t know much about them. It was possible they would only work on the caster. Although what Tim and Bea had said about magic made that seem unlikely. Still, they might be single-target spells. On the other hand, boosting her drones could help a lot in a fight.

Then there were the elemental spells. Regina was definitely tempted by them. Besides combat utility, something like Earth Manipulation could help a lot with building structures and defenses for her hive. Though, to be fair, it wasn’t like she needed magic for that.

She sat down at her usual spot and frowned at the screen. Then Regina tried to focus on one of the choices she had made before, Lesser Basic Conjuration. After a moment, the letters almost seemed to tremble slightly, and she felt a faint sense of pressure in her mana. Then the characters appeared to rise out of the screen’s plane a little, like one of those effects where you saw words cast in relief, and they rearranged themselves until they read Basic Conjuration.

Well, she would have preferred something like Greater Conjuration, but that was still good. Regina shifted her focus and tried to do the same with the other spells she had. Most of them didn’t really react, although she felt as if Firebolt trembled a little, like maybe it was upgradeable, but not for her, or not yet. Or, since Basic Heal sounds upgradeable, too, maybe it just means I’m close to meeting the requirements.

She took a few more seconds to consider it, but in the end her curiosity was too strong. Regina had never upgraded a spell before, and she told herself that seeing how the process worked out was important, at least once. So she focused back on the first one, then reached out and tapped on the words.

The screen dissolved and she felt another shift in her mana. It made her gasp, a feeling like small sparks traveling all through her body, though not exactly painful. She felt something shift, almost in her head, but not quite. The new and improved Spell settled into her.

Regina stood up, glancing around, then held out her hand. To begin with, she tried doing what she had previously and conjured a piece of metal in a triangular shape, like a rough arrowhead.

She nodded to herself. So far, so good. It felt a little easier to do, and didn’t seem to take as much mana. Such an improvement by itself would already be pretty good. Still, that wasn’t all she wanted.

Regina focused on a new project, going for something more ambitious. Previously, she’d had trouble with organic things, or anything with a more complex internal structure, whether that meant something consisting of several parts or overly complex molecules. It was why she usually used metal, beside that being the thing her hive lacked. But this time, she thought of something else. She focused on it to the exclusion of all else, the sounds and scents of her camp fading into the background. Basic Conjuration.

Then she held it in her hand. Regina grinned and used her other hand to touch the sheet of plastic. Well, sheet was overstating things. It was a piece only a bit bigger than her palm. Still, it had worked. Regina had thought about polyethylene, not that she knew much about plastics, and that seemed to be about what she got. She checked her mana.

25 units. A bit steep for that little material, but she would take it. It looked like Conjuration was going to remain a mana hog. Hopefully, she could get the resource requirement down with some practice. Since her mana pool was growing, and would only increase more along with her hive, she didn’t let it bother her.

Regina experimented a little more with it until her mana dropped below a hundred, which she wanted to keep in reserve. It turned out that besides having an easier time conjuring basic objects and an enhanced materials selection, she could also do more complex shapes. For example, she could let the arrowheads she created have a hole at the base so you could actually mount them on a wooden shaft more easily. Unfortunately, creating a more complicated mounting still seemed to be too much to ask for. But the spearheads and the like she could make, while still small, were a lot better than before. The warriors would be happy.

Thinking of the warriors, she moved on to the improvised training ground they used. It only took her a second to see that they were down to two of the captured monsters, neither of which seemed very inclined to play along. Regina sighed.

Max disengaged from a conversation with Ben and Dan and headed for her. “We’re still leveling up quickly,” he said.

She glanced at the others. “The thing with the monsters is still not working out like I thought, is it?”

“No, but we did still get some use out of the idea.” Max shook his head, then extended his blade-limbs in a stretching motion. “From what I’ve been able to gather, killing a monster does get you a little more Experience than simply winning against it, but we more than made up the difference.”

“But fighting them several times still gives diminishing returns?”

He nodded. “If not, everyone would probably be farming them like this. Although getting a monster out of the forest to some human city would take a lot of effort. Anyway, you’d probably get more XP if the monster changed and got stronger. And it might just be because they’re simple-minded. People clearly train against each other all the time and do get experience from sparring.” He grinned a bit ruefully. “Every time I spar against Tim, he seems to pull out a new trick.”

Regina chuckled. “Alright. Well, at least it was good practice in other ways. Just out of curiosity, how often do you win against Tim?”

“Well, we’re pretty evenly matched, honestly. Although I’d say I still win a little more often.”

“That’s just because you like to cheat!” Tim called, walking over to them. He smiled, then looked at Regina. “That wasn’t a serious complaint, by the way. Finding new ways to surprise your opponent is good training for real combat.”

Regina grinned. “I see I shouldn’t try to spar against either of you, then. At least not in public. It might be bad for morale if I got my ass kicked too easily.”

She rarely did real sparring, at least not when she went all-out. That would waste too much of her mana, which she needed for other things. Besides, as the Hive Queen, she should theoretically only have to fight for her own life as a last resort, not that that had worked out well so far. She also had a bit of an unfair advantage against her own drones, at least in theory. She’d concentrated on learning physical combat when she joined their training so far, both unarmed and with the variety of simple weapons the hive had.

“Of course,” Max said solemnly. “We couldn’t risk hurting the dignity of our queen.”

“Funny you should suddenly think so,” Regina retorted with a small smirk. “Please don’t stop being snarky, or where would I get my entertainment from?”

Max returned her grin, and even Tim smiled. That was about the most you could get out of him with banter.

“How are the others doing?” Regina finally asked.

They both glanced at the drones training on the field, then back to her. To her mild surprise, it was Tim who answered. “Quite well. I think we can safely say that either Ivy is just good or Harvesters are a little better suited to combat than Workers. The other Warriors are also shaping up nicely. I think a few of them might need a bit more intense training, extra focus on a few areas, but I’d go into battle with any of them.”

“Good,” Regina smiled. “Let’s hope we won’t have to fight too much until all of us have the chance for more training. And the War Drones?”

“Training with them is a bit different. More difficult than with sapient drones, arguably. But I think we’re doing alright.”

Regina nodded. “How so?”

“Well,” Max spoke up, “they still follow orders just as well with or without training, and teaching them anything like how to implement tactics by themselves is hard, but we can teach them new moves.”

“Alright. Then I’ll let you get back to it.”

Regina stayed and watched as the two boys returned to the field and the training continued. She was no expert, but she could tell that they had improved. They were drilling moves, something like improvised katas, as well as doing light sparring.

One thing that struck her was that Max really was bigger now, and so was Tim. Max would probably grow taller than her soon. Even Ben and Dan looked a bit older than the newest Warriors. Clearly, the drones aged more quickly than humans. She just hoped that this would simply let them reach their full size more quickly. She didn’t want to find out how limited their lifespans were like this.