Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire

Upon return to the human village, Malevolence sent more scouts to explore the venomous trees and see if it was possible to get rid of them without dealing with the territorial beasts within.

They soon returned with a negative answer. Although small groups of bees could approach the poisonous forest close enough to spit fire at it, the trees in it grew close to water or directly near it. They were too wet to burn.

The only ways to destroy them were cutting them down by hand or growing usnea trees on top of them. The former would certainly alarm the tree-guarding beasts, but the latter…

The latter gave Malevolence an idea.

Since the beasts were most likely immune to venom, steel and fire were the next good weapons against them. And fire was also a great fuel for usnea trees…

Malevolence gathered with her close officers in a temporary command room and explained to them her ideas.

"We will use a two-pronged strategy. A group of Beemarines will move directly to the guarding beast and distract it by setting its hair on fire. At the same time, another group of bees will plant usnea tree seeds around the poisoned forest. The first group will use fire breathing and their rifles and try to chase the beast into the usnea trees, so they can use it to grow faster. After this, the usnea trees will take care of the rest of the poisoned forest, and we will only need to send humans to cut the water-based part of it."

Malevolence's Chiefs all listened to her intently and nodded. They had no objections and only had questions related to their duties, such as which platoon of soldiers would go where, and how the usnea tree seeds would be carried to the destination.

Only the local Chief Agent Eloquence—the same bee who asked Malevolence for help on behalf of humans earlier—had something to object.

"Grand Commander Malevolence, but if you plant usnea trees out there, they will start spreading around uncontrollably. None of the plants around is cold-immune. The usnea trees will take over them and go all the way to the human settlement, which might put the villagers in danger!" Eloquence said.

Malevolence tilted her head a little.

"And?"

Eloquence stared back at her.

Silence reigned for several long seconds, during which all other officers went so quiet that one could forget they were even there.

"If you don't care about the villagers, Grand Commander, why are you even bothering trying to destroy the poisonous forest?"

Malevolence huffed. Moments like this were why she preferred talking with other Warriors instead of people like Agents, who liked to talk more than anything. Somehow, these people also ended up not able to understand her simple, straightforward thoughts!

"You misunderstood, Agent. I intend to save these people. But they won't be saved to stay in this village, anyway. Those who can work will join the expedition force, and those who can't will live at Camp Bay until the situation on the continent stabilises. There's no point in letting them live in their village, surrounded by places that could easily breed the next beast or illness that will kill them."

Eloquence's shoulders fell. A moment later, she bowed her head.

"Oh. Sorry, Grand Commander. I thought badly of you, but I should've remembered that no matter what, you are my sister and we both follow Father's ideals and goals!" She paused. "It's just what I heard about you…"

Malevolence scowled. She put a pair of hands on her hips and folded the other over her chest.

"Agents! You spend your time exchanging way too many rumours, even when on another continent from the Bee Empire? And then these rumours end up making you work worse?"

Only when Malevolence saw that Eloquence was properly ashamed of her actions did she feel content.

"The discipline here is terrible. Clearly, this place had too few Beemarine Warriors for a long time," Malevolence declared. "I hope that you will change for the better quickly, because I don't want to deal with this alongside the beasts we have to fight. Tell this to your subordinates, Agent Eloquence."

"Yes, Grand Commander. I will do better!"

***

Later that day, a strike team of a hundred thousand bees—there was no need for more—travelled to the poisonous forest and executed Malevolence's plan.

It went splendidly—the beast-guardian was too clumsy to even reach the Beemarines that poured fire on it from above, and the tree-planting teams were safe to finish their tasks.

Although the beast, mad from pain and fear, had trampled plenty of usnea saplings, soon enough the heat drain from the rest of them slowed it down. At the same time, the usnea saplings became usnea trees large enough that even the beast's food couldn't crush them fully.

This beast was large and tough. Perhaps it even had some cold resistance. But even it couldn't fight hundreds of usnea trees purposefully planted around it. It reflexively tried to avoid the cold and ended up slowly freezing to death in a ring of usnea trees.

Tomorrow, they were going to spread their seeds around without extra help from the bees.

Before that, a team of woodcutters came to the river and pulled the poisonous trees from the water. Soon, the water in it was going to clear. At least partially.

In the meantime, Eloquence obeyed Malevolence's orders and split the villagers into work-able and everybody else.

"They don't want to leave their homes, and some were extremely hard to convince… But it helped that their new dwelling is very close. And that it will be safer than this one. Many of these villagers have died in the past not from poison, but from wild beasts," Agent Eloquence reported.

"What tools and other work equipment do they have available?" Malevolence asked instead of commenting on the villagers' hopes and dreams.

There wasn't much, it turned out. At least Malevolence had some spare human equipment on ships.

With it, these humans were going to help her reach the next large goal Malevolence set for her army…