Regina decided that she hated the feeling of tiering up. Or not-quite-Evolution, or whatever you wanted to call it. It was like ants crawled through her veins, or rather the channels her mana used in her body. And her new wings were cool and all, but their growth had subtly thrown off her balance.

Although that might also have something to do with her new height. According to Max, she’d grown a few centimeters and looked older by about half a year at least if you converted it to human terms. She could now pass for sixteen, if she was human. Regina herself found that a bit hard to judge, especially since Max and the others also kept growing, and more quickly than her, if you didn’t count this growth spurt.

The uncomfortable feeling lasted for a while, before it faded and her mana seemed to settle down again. Regina had also gotten used to her new physique, somewhat. A few more days and she would be completely comfortable with it, she was sure.

For now, she wanted to try out her new wings again. She’d slept poorly this night and wasted more time in the morning than she’d planned, and now the sun was already pretty high in the sky. At least that gave her a lot of visibility. Regina climbed up to the roof of one of the houses again, the same one she’d perched on a few times. She stepped to the edge, then took a deep breath when she looked down. She extended her wings, grimacing a little at the still unfamiliar feeling of plates on her back shifting.

Gathering her willpower, Regina jumped forward and beat her wings. They caught the air and sent her upwards. She flapped hard again, rising out of the fall before she had the chance to get too close to the ground. She couldn’t help but grin excitedly as she rose into the air, the houses under her shrinking. Glancing down, she saw a few drones pause what they were doing and look up. Uh oh, Max doesn’t look happy.

Regina chuckled to herself and leaned into a turn. She decided to corkscrew upwards in wide circles. Luckily, growing out her wings had apparently also given her an instinctive understanding of how to fly. She could vaguely tell there were different air currents at different temperatures, although she wasn’t very good at using them purposefully. Still, it was enough for her to get by and stay in the air. She wouldn’t want to try flying in some tight confined spaces, at least not yet, but she could go where she wanted in the open. So, it’s probably better not to try flying under the forest canopy yet.

Regina turned around once she’d reached a comfortable height and looked over the scenery below her. There were a few birds and flying monsters around, but luckily, none of them bothered her. She could see quite far from here. There was the old elven outpost, which she’d already intended to take over soon, if they didn’t object. There was the river, which you could follow into Cernlia and to the fort and village. She also saw the ground rising upwards toward the west, approaching the mountains. A lot of details were still hidden by the crowns of the trees.

Regina hesitated for a moment, before she turned herself towards the deeper forest and put on more speed. She kept relatively close to the trees’ canopy, but high enough up not to be surprised by any ambushes.

It didn’t take long for her to reach the old outpost. She had to search for it a bit, since it was pretty well camouflaged from here, but then landed on the upper wooden platform. Regina glanced around and watched as a few squirrels scurried off into the trees. A few smaller monsters seemed to do the same. She didn’t see any larger or stronger ones around.

So, she closed her eyes and focused on her Infected minion for a moment. Dark was in the forest. He’d reached a high enough level already that the bird didn’t have to worry too much about random attacks, so she was comfortable sending him further from the hive. He was already in the direction leading to the elven city, and she ordered him to fly further towards there.

Regina took off again. She felt more comfortable circling in the air above than sitting in the fancy treehouse, with respect to avoiding attacks. At least in the air, she could see them coming. It also helped her to evaluate and train her endurance when it came to flying. She could already tell that she would need a bit of conditioning to be able to fly longer distances easily.

Luckily, Dark was both fitter and probably faster at flying than her, and it didn’t take him long to approach the city of Ariedel. Regina landed again, since she didn’t yet trust her ability to stay up in the air with the focus of her attention elsewhere.

She was closer to the city now than if she’d stayed in the hive’s camp, but she was still pretty sure her range had grown. Experimentally, she had Dark fly in a wide arc around the city. He got over halfway around it before she lost the ability to communicate with him. And even better, he actually returned to her zone of control like he was supposed to. She was pretty sure he couldn’t really flee from her, but it was still nice to get confirmation that the bird monster seemed to be okay with his situation.

Regina slowly had him get closer to the core of the city, although she remained careful and had him stay away from people or anything that looked enchanted. Who knew if the elves had means to detect bound monsters or the like.

Luckily, Dark’s innate stealth ability helped. This was the first time she’d seen him use it full on, maybe because he’d gained a few levels recently. Dark seemed to be swallowed by a bundle of shadow, until his presence was barely detectable. It was a bit hard to see from the viewpoint of his own eyes, but she had the impression that anyone looking at him flying above would only see the blue of the sky reflected.

Regina took a good look at the city, now that she could. It looked both familiar and strange. Familiar because this was the first city she’d seen in this life, and it did resemble those in her memory in many respects. Strange because this was a city of elves built mostly out of trees, and apparently living wood. It also didn’t show any evidence of advanced technology. No electrical lights or solar panels or charging stations for vehicles, let alone cars themselves. The shops obviously sold handcrafted wares instead of mass-produced goods, and there were eateries with kitchens inside or even in the streets instead of VR cafés. Regina took it all in, and tried to figure out what she could about its inhabitants.

But after a while, she had to admit she was getting nowhere. This might tell her a bit about the daily lives of the city’s citizens and their technological level, but it wasn’t helping her get a better idea of their political or military status. So, she reluctantly told Dark to leave. No point in taking needless risks.

On the way back, the bird didn’t fly in a straight line. Regina debated giving him a nudge to head straight back home, but refrained from it. He probably knew about things she didn’t, like the territories of stronger bird monsters that he should avoid. So she just watched with one eye, trying to keep some of her attention on her own surroundings to look out for monsters, while he flew northeast and then started turning towards the hive.

Then she noticed something in her view from the bird and focused more on it. She nudged Dark, getting him to stay where he was, or rather, start circling. That also made him get a bit higher, which helped her get a view of everything.

She supposed she should have expected it. There was a war going on, after all, with the elves here in the forest one of the main participants. Still, she was a bit startled to see what was clearly signs of fighting. Maybe because she could actually see it even from up here. She might have expected the fighting to vanish beneath the trees, but she could see flashes of light, the occasional large-scale alteration of the terrain like a small piece of the forest being frozen, and even a few vaguely humanoid shapes moving. I guess the use of magic and Class Skills isn’t exactly subtle. Most of the time.

Regina frowned to herself as she localized the combat she saw in relation to the city, the border of the forest and the river. It was closer to the former than she’d expected. Suddenly feeling a bit less assured, she withdrew from Dark’s mind further and took to the air again herself, heading back to the hive.

Regina landed on the roof of the hut with a thump, stumbling a bit as she caught her balance. She tried to fold in her wings, but didn’t quite manage it, again, although it was better than last time. They were mostly out of the way, at least. Regina sighed and resigned herself to asking Mia or one of the others for help again. Or maybe it would be less embarrassing with a Swarm Drone, though then she might have to take direct control.

Regina shook her head and focused back on Dark. The bird was still flying back towards the hive, this time on a pretty straight trajectory. It would still be a while until he arrived, although Regina recognized the view of the forest from above, so she had a pretty good idea of his position. Then she paused as she noticed something yet again. This time, she didn’t need him to wait or get closer to get a better view. It still made her frown.

The humans had sent fewer teams into the forest over the last few weeks. The reasons were probably something to do with the state of the war that Regina didn’t know much about. It was clear that they had tried to keep pressure on the elves to stop them from committing all their forces to the front against Nerlia, or something like that. In any case, she saw a group of humans now, a pretty large one. At least a dozen people. The equipment most of them wore reminded her of the Delvers they’d met in the village during the monster horde.

Regina cursed under her breath and jumped down to the ground, extending her wings again to slow herself down. Best to assume that the Delvers were looking for their missing members. Even if they hadn’t found out they were missing already, they would soon. They’d probably go into the tunnels, look through the cave system. Well, it wasn’t exactly a hospitable environment and there were monsters in the tunnels. At least there was a chance they wouldn’t connect it to hostile action, to her hive.

Regina snorted to herself. Who am I kidding? These are racist bigots. Or speciesist, whatever. Xenophobic. They are definitely going to suspect us, or the elves. Which probably wouldn’t be much better. Especially since we are closer. And there might be monsters, but that many people disappearing without leaving any remains is on another level, anyway.

“I need to send a message to the elves,” Regina concluded aloud.

“My Queen?” Max asked. He’d appeared almost as soon as she’d come down.

Judging by the frown on his face, he wasn’t happy about her little trip. But Regina ignored that for now. She had bigger things to worry about. So, she quickly told Max everything she had seen through Dark’s eyes.

When she was done, his frown had only deepened. “A large party of Delvers?” he repeated.

Regina nodded, glancing towards the hut where they’d put their human prisoner. They’d fought eight Delvers in all. Two parties of four, presumably.

“How do we get a message to the elves?” Max asked, clearly referencing what he’d heard her say earlier.

Regina sighed. “I could write down a letter and get Dark to deliver it. Well, it might not be easy to arrange that, but it should work. I can conjure paper and ink now, at least, even if those are hard. But it might be better to send a drone. That way, we could actually talk to them.”

“It’s going to take time, though,” Max pointed out. He still looked concerned. “Even assuming whoever you send doesn’t run into any monsters or have to detour around a strong one’s territory, travel will take more than a day. Even if they really push themselves.”

“I’d send Tim, considering he’s talked to them before and could enter the city,” Regina said. “But then we wouldn’t have him here for the time it takes, either. Crap. You’re right, this is a problem.”

“We probably have some time until the Delvers move on us, if they are going to.”

“Sure, but assuming that the elves are going to react, that will take some time, too.” Regina sighed and tugged on her mandibles, considering it.

“Alright,” she finally said. “I’ll send Dark with a message. I can probably use a feather from him as a writing implement or something. It’s not going to look nice, but whatever. Then I might even be able to drop the message without revealing him, or at least making it obvious that I have a monster minion in the hive. We’ll just have to see what happens.”

Regina nodded to herself, then pulled up her status sheet again and glanced at it.

She had gotten three stat points for reaching level 20. That might mean that her strongest ones, Int and Wis, had both gotten a bonus point while her normal level-up stat point was allocated to Dex. Her Swarm limit had risen to 100, which was about what she’d expected given previous levels. Ten times its starting value at level 10. Her hive had grown in number and was still growing, but it still wasn’t as big as she’d like.

It would just have to do for now.