Aurum - Year 3       {2 Weeks later}

 

I wanted to go to the kobolds and talk to Onix, the problem with that was that i don't trust him, and i received the disapproval of every member of the hive. I'm the queen, and my orders should be absolute, but they still have some kind of "basic survival instincts" that I can't suppress without really trying hard to suppress them with my skills.

If I tried to put us in a very absurd situation, all of they would start to panic, and I would have to use [Maternal Connection] to silence everyone, and honestly. I don't like using that skill.

Using [Maternal Connection] is like turning my children into a bunch of robots, they didn't feel fear, anger, or sadness. But they also won't feel joy, pleasure or happiness. They become my "Dolls", and it's really scary, suppressing someone's personality until their ideas and basic principles can no longer be heard, it is... Disgusting.

But i'am also a hypocrite, even if I didn't use [Maternal Connection] voluntarily, i always keep it active in a peacefully way. Keeping everyone together and connected through the link that could not be extinguished.

The only exception would be Ciel, i could still feel, and influence Ciel, even though he is no longer inside the [Link]. My influence over him is almost null, and I feel as if Ciel was a complete and full individual, and we as a hive were a bunch of clones with connected minds.

Technically, I don't have children, just clones. After all, the boys don't have a "father", they were made exclusively with the help of the system and spending SP. But even so, they are totally different from me.

When you look at a class like the [Workers] you would never know who is who, they are all identical, so the system really saved on templaites and made all members with the same [Class] identical to each other.

But this only happened for new members, if 2 soldiers evolved, both to [Guards] you could see small differences on them, like armor in different patterns, or a bigger or smaller mane. But all members born with the same [Class] were just identical copies of each other.

And what does it matter? I don't know, I'm a "home mom" and it felt like I was confined to my own house for who knows how long, as a non-combatant, I do better in that kind of scenario. And honestly there was nothing boring here, it was like living in a city. There were little shops, which were just stalls where everyone distributed free utensils to each other, some restaurants, cafes, pastry shops, theaters, a coliseum, a damn gym!! A community swimming pool, a 2 public washroom, 3 laundries, and dozens of rooms for clubs to carry out their activities.

Not to mention the gardens, the squares, the LIBRARY, and even a damn yoga class.

3 years ago I was thinking about living in the middle of the woods like a survialist and just keep my self alive, and now I have an entire city to myself, everything here was made for my childrens to use, but I had unique rooms that were considered "royal property". Rooms where only the cleaning club and royal guards could enter without asking permission. Everyone else had to gain Steve's approval to even move through these areas.

And that included my bedroom, a beautification room, my office (where I created spells), the conference room, and a massage room!

I've never had a massage room, do you have any idea how much it costs to even pay for a massage? And now here I am! With an entire civilization doing everything and more to please me.

And I didn't know how to feel about it, sometimes I wanted to go out and have a look outside. But I could do everything through the soldiers, I could smell, hear, taste, even feel their feelings and see everything through their eyes, as if I were really there in person.

So why the fuck would anyone leave the bottom of an entire city where everything you want is simply brought to you? I feel like a teenager who feels confined inside her parents house. But as an adult I know that when we actually leave our parents house, the only thing we desperately want is to go back to being a child where the biggest worry we had was getting a low grade in school.

So I ended up accepting it, only rich people go after problems, I was very well comfortable and safe. Like a little baby who was very loved by a rich family. So why take the risk of getting slapped in the face soon as i step a foot outside my house?

And I also had other projects in mind that required a lot of attention.

"This shit isn't getting any easier..."

---

 

"I believe we should focus on expanding farms, this will be a long-term investment, and will help stabilize the hive's food production" Yan said.

"This problem is a serious matter, low quality food reduces the general quality of work in the hive, poorly fed troops cannot perform their duties efficiently." Steve said.

"If we invest our time and resources into the magic club, we can create a device capable of speeding up the crops we already have! With Mom's help and the magic club's engagement, it's only a matter of time before we find the missing piece to make the catalyst crystals completely stable!" Max said very confidently.

"The problem is that it may take you days, even months to discover this 'missing piece', by then the damage may be irreversible." Yan said.

"The alchemy club can provide large amounts of [Green Potion] that can accelerate plant growth, the problem with this is that the overall quality of the final product will plummet, which can be very bad." Jasper said.

"That can't happen! If the overall quality of the food drops it will leave the troops weak!" Ray insisted.

"That's right, weak troops don't work well, sleep well, think well, or do anything efficiently! Food is the beginning of the hive's well-being!" Jay added.

We had invited some members who were not official members of the inner circle, such as Jay and Ray and also Jasper e Buck, Jay and Ray as the masters of the cooking club had a great importance on the subject of "food", and if they said that an option chosen was not viable, then it really wasn't viable. Jasper, as leader of the alchemy club, knew better than anyone about the hive's stock, if there was any item that could help us in this situation, Jasper would know.

Buck was the leader of the farmers and was a [Druid Planter], a class that allowed him to "enchant" seeds, making plants of the highest quality grow even in wastelands.

"What if we cut the supplements we send to the kobolds? Almost 60% of our production goes to them, we are basically taking the food out of our mouths and putting it in theirs!" Miles said.

"This would make our already existing relationship with them turn into a bad relationship, if we cut off the supplement that keeps them alive, and people started to die of hungry, everyone would start pointing fingers at us." Steve said.

"Only about 30% of honey production is directed to them, the rest of they suplements comes from farms and hunting, but this 30% would certainly help a lot in stabilizing the hive." Jay said.

"Hunff.... We have no way to increase the amount of hunting, we are already fighting with everything we encounter, small animals and weak creatures are moving further and further away from the tower, and we have no way to hunt larger creatures without moderately large risks. " Hans said.

"Ah! That's great! We came to solve a problem and we already have other problems to deal with" Ken snorted.

"If you allow me, brothers, we at the gardening club cannot expand the farms to more external areas without the protection of more soldiers, I cannot risk the integrity of my group." Buck said.

"This is a big problem, and ours options are very limited, we can ask mom to produce food with [Create Food] but then she would be stuck in that role for who knows how long." Steve said.

"It's not like she has much else to do, but we need to find a long-term solution, not something that will last a few weeks until we need to get together to find other solution again." Ken said.

"...Can't we try a little bit of everything? Raise some more farmers, send more troops after wildflowers, and ask Mom to make food?" Carl said.

"I don't know, we need a plan to cut this problem from the roots, something completely new and more efficient than a bunch of fields of plants."

"What if we used one of the empty towers as a vertical garden?" Hans asked.

"What?" Everyone said at once.

Hans was surprisingly silent the entire meeting, he was even drinking a cup of tea, in the past he would be more tense every time we had a problem, but after Hans evolution, he became more... Wise I think. He stopped thinking about problems and started thinking about solutions, and even if Hans was nervous, angry or upset you would never be able to tell from his facial expressions, firstly because he kept a static expression the whole time, and secondly because he had a large closed helmet that could not be removed.

"T-This might w-work, creating a v-vertical platforms a-and then fill them with f-farmers nutritional soil.... We can put s-some workers to serve a-as artificial light and plant s-some [Tears of the sky] among the f-flowers to keep them moist." Levi pondered.

"Wouldn't that take a lot of time? And how is making a vertical garden is going to help?" Ken asked.

"The vertical garden would be completely focused on a single place, which would help with maintenance, so we would need fewer farmers, we can create perforated layers between the floors so that all the excess water from the upper layers feeds the lower layers, saving workers and farmers time. And we can use Jasper's potions to speed up the growth of the seeds until they become young seedlings, and then Mom could use an area spell to make everything grow faster. If Max's strange project works out, he can concentrate the "catalyst crystal" in a single point, accelerating the growth of as many plants as possible, the only problem for me would be the light, as we don't have magic lamps or any worthy substitute, we would need to continue with the workers, so the vertical farm will require a large number of workers working on it at least 8 hours a day every day." Hans explained.

Hans had a lot of knowledge, and I didn't know exactly why, but after I asked him, I discovered that every time a member of the hive evolves they have the right to go through the mental "library" I have, once again. It's just a quick visit, but they manage to gain more and more knowledge as they evolve, and Hans seemed to have picked up a lot of useful things.

"Damn! You really have a solid plan, this could work, we would have to dedicate lots and lots of builders to finish this quickly as possible, but if it really works we can guarantee the safety of the food much more easily, without external farms we can invest more soldiers in other regions." Steve said.

"Yes, we could also separate the sections more easily by dedicating some floors to specific types of flowers, we could also plant some mushrooms, moss and foliage plants in between to strengthen the overall health of the farm and save a lot of time at harvest time. The only problem is that we would need to remove everything and nourish the soil for a new plantation at least once a year, only then would we be able to maintain the nutrients in the land." Buck said.

"Jasper, wouldn't you have any fertilizer? Something that nourishes the land, instead of making the plants grow? That way we could fertilize the farms more easily and quickly." Steve asked.

"No... But I'll put this on the alchemy club's priority list, if Buck can send some farmers to me I can try to imitate the fertilizer they produce." Jasper said.

"Sure, I'll send 2 farmers for you later" Buck said.

"Do you think the construction club can modify a tower in a week levi?" Steve asked.

"U-uh, a w-week?! T-this s-schedule is v-very t-tight, b-but if I p-pause some p-projects and r-recruit more w-workers, I sh-should be able to m-maintain the q-quality of the c-construction and d-do everything that was r-requested." Levi said very nervously as he wrote several things in a small notebook made with silk leaves and tree bark.

"Perfect, then we will continue with this project. Thanks for the solution Hans." Steve said.

"It was nothing, if you give me permission, I need to train my squad for a fight against a squirrel, so I will leave first." Hans said as he stood up.

"Sure, no problem" Steve said.

"With this I declare the meeting to be over" Yan said.

---

 

I was in my throne room, around me there were several tanks of honey and some workers who were counting the gains.

As queen and mother of the hive, I felt obligated to help, so I paused my plans with magic and returned to the time when I produced food. The vertical garden was still being built and my presence was not yet necessary.

To tell you the truth, I don't even know if I'll be able to get into the vertical garden, if they create something big enough for me then it will only have a few floors, the plants could always be pruned to keep them low and save space, but I couldn't shrink to fit in, so I don't think I'll be able to get in there.

To do this, Max paused all projects and started studying catalyst crystals like crazy, the recent research on the "Magic Wand" and the catalyst liquid gave him several insights and he was aiming for a kind of "magic lamp".

Max's goal was to create a magical lamp that could both provide light and accelerate plant growth. To me this looked like Thaumcraft's magic lamps, it reminded me a lot of my youth playing Minecraft, and now Max was trying to re-create them in real life!

The problem with this was that I was the only supplier of catalyst crystals, and they weren't cheap. So Max couldn't keep testing until he got it right, he needed to try to make the best possible plan to create what he wanted.

What was really very difficult, it's like trying to learn to draw without a paper to draw, you can have the perfect and complete mental image of the final product, but without the necessary materials and a lot of experience you wouldn't be able to create the desired product.

"Poor Max, I need to give him some vacation after this."

I was just spitting large amounts of honey into tanks, and waiting for the workers to bring a new tank to fill. It still bothered me that we ate vomit, but it's one of those things you have to ignore, like how sausages are made.

"How's the production going boys?"

"Very well, we already have 3 tanks full! How much more do you think you can produce?" asked a worker.

We had a lot of workers here, but they weren't really workers, the members responsible for general tasks were various classes such as [Attendants] [Loaders] [Laborer] and [Assembler].

Other workers had evolved into things like [Builders] [Weavers] [Cooks] and [Nurses], so the general services group was really in need of new blood.

"I'm only down to 10 Mp, so not much, maybe half a tank?"

My [Create Food] skill was pretty cool, if I used raw materials I would get a big discount on creating food, but if I had absolutely no raw materials I could use Sp and Mp to create food out of nothing, which is actually very useful in a time of famine, Carl can do the same thing, but he is much worse than me. Carl can create Mp by eating, so it's not the most ingenious idea in the world to burn our food supply for Carl to produce food.

Carl is also the only one who can eat solid food without "side effects", but he still needs a lot of time to digest this solid food, which made me the only member of the hive capable of producing food out of thin air in a fast way.

"Then we'll be back for today! We'll be back tomorrow morning!" Said the worker.

"Ugh.. Of course, thanks for the hard work boys!"

Soon the honey tanks were removed and I was left alone with the guards, honestly I had nothing else to do now, I was low on mana, out of ideas, bored and it wasn't even 12 Am yet.

"What to do in this situation.... We still have mana pool reserves, but I don't want to use that mana unless it's an emergency, it's very difficult to fill that tank."

As I chewed some of the honey that was still in my mouth, I started thinking about what to do, and I thought about the [Crystallization] skill, the skill allowed me to transform things into crystals, so I could transform my enemy into a crystal statue? Okay, to create a small crystal fragment the size of my fingernail I spent about 20 mana points, but theoretically I could transform someone into a crystal statue.

'If I can even turn mana into crystals... Then why not food? What would I do with this? Honey flakes?'

Deciding to test it, I take some of the honey out of my mouth and use the remaining mana to crystallize the honey, and to my surprise I ended up creating something totaly unexpected.

 

 

"Holy shit! What a cool crystal, sticky... But cool! It can basically do the same thing Muck does, just using mana."

The crystal didn't look like anything special, it was crystallized honey, like a honey jewelry, so I couldn't think of a real use for these things.

'Wait a minute, I'm a crystal bee so...'

Throwing the crystal into my mouth and chewing it, I can feel it popping inside my mouth, like a gummy or something, and the flavor that comes out of it is incredible!! It has all the refined and tasty touches of high-quality honey, and at the same time it generates a small electrical 'discharge' in the mouth, leaving the tongue numb.

"This thing is delicious!"

Soon more members would evolve into [Crystal Bees] and if I could guarantee a lifetime supplement of these honey crystals the problem with hunger would end.

"The problem with them is that they are very expensive.... Well, mommy here deserves some sweets."