Aurum - Year 3       

 

As queen I must think about the good of my people, if I abandon the kobolds now, I will end up, obtained a lot of useful information for an exorbitant price. But if I continue to help them I would need to be prepared to suppress the kobolds and prevent an uprising against the hive.

While everyone looked at me just waiting, I tried to think of a use for the kobols, other than a way to keep them "Subordinate" to me. I like kobolds, and I want to protect them, but nothing stops me from one day being the one to be afraid of kobolds, and that can't happen.

"...The kobolds can do things that we as a hive cannot! Because they are a normal and common species in this world, we could use them in the future to contact other species! In addition to using their manpower! Kobolds are excellent hunters and trackers. If we could use them as our guards, we could focus solely on expanding the hive and magical research!" That was my plan, it seemed very risky, but I wasn't willing to break my promises.

The boys started thinking about my counter-proposal, and the first to speak was Steve.

"...It might even work. But nothing stops us from doing all this ourselves. We can come into contact with other species by ourselves, and I don't know if there is a need to come into contact with other species, we are tall enough. And we don't we can trust outsiders.” Said Steve while pondering the diplomatic possibilities.

"The kobolds can be good trackers, but they fail a lot when it comes to stealth, it would be easy to detect them coming, unlike my group which can blend into the surrounding nature and disappear completely." Trevis said a little upset.

"They could function as guards I think. If they lived around the tower, which is very dangerous. Besides the fact that they are not part of the [Link], which makes them prone to betrayal. Nothing would stop them from one day leaving our enemies enter our perimeter for a little riches." Trouble said as he tasted a small sugar crystal.

What the boys said was basically, "It doesn't matter what they do, we can do better!" Maybe it's true, boys have specific [Classes] that make them excellent in certain areas, but I doubt that we are the "Perfect Species". If only I could learn more from the kobolds, about the world, magic, society and culture. I could prepare for future encounters with other groups.

I'm sure that if a bunch of malnourished kobolds can get here, then a group armed to the teeth and prepared to kill everything in their path can too.

'Damn! Think, think. Make yourself useful for something you shit brain.'

'The boys have no sense of responsibility towards other species, so it's up to me to make the first contact. To solve the problem, what would I need? Manpower? Resources? No... None of this will solve my problem in the short term, I need something definitive. What is the root of the problem? The extremist hive culture? The apparent uselessness of kobolds? Or simply a lack of resources? It could be a little bit of everything... But the most important thing is the glaring lack of resources, without food we won't survive, but food isn't the only resource we lack, we need easy XP, which is almost impossible to get these days , So what? Do I start asking for "kobold" sacrifices for the kobolds? No, no, that's too much for me. So how can I earn a lot of XP quickly and safely?'

As I thought I could feel my head hurting and the hive feeling a little uncomfortable, it was as if my personal thoughts were a nuisance to the hive.

'Energy!! I need life energy, if I can create a source of life energy I could not only end the food crisis, but also focus on research in the area of golememia and sorcery, this way I could create expendable pawns that will not put people at risk the boys' lives, if I can create a reproduction and growth spell for animal life, I could also boost the snail farm and guarantee a peaceful source of XP.'

While everyone was waiting, I suddenly slapped the table and shouted excitedly, "I know what we're going to do!"

Without letting the boys get impressed, I started to pump out my recent thoughts to them, and before long everyone closed their eyes and started to analyze the new idea.

"Hmmm... This is all substantial... It contains a lot of what ifs", nothing that is definitive. Do you have any way of creating a new source of life mana?" Steve asked, visibly disappointed with my "genius idea".

"No... But I have plans! I have spells like [Life Drain] that can do the job!"

Hans just set his cup aside and crossed his arms before saying "Really? And who will serve as the source of "juice" for the spell? The kobolds look like tempting volunteers." Hans said, already irritated.

"UGh... 1 week, okay? Give me 1 week and I promise I'll think of a viable solution."

The boys just looked at each other and sighed, while everyone was getting ready to leave, Trevis just looked at me and started to speak dryly.

"I understand that you want to stick to your morals, mother. After all, a promise is a debt, but there is a big difference between being generous, and being stupid. And you are being stupid. You never allied with the kobolds because you saw a hidden potential in them, you just felt sorry for them, why? I don't know. But you felt sorry for them, and that's why you started filling them with resources that could be used by the hive, you are the queen mother, and I have no desire. questioning and contradicting your choices, but this is something that my instincts reject in every way. You are not doing a good deal, by providing so much food and resources to them from the beginning, you generated the expectation that we could always take care of them for nothing, and when you started receiving sacrifices, instead of demanding more sacrifices to continue receiving resources, you provided more food for few sacrifices. I understand that you want to honor your words and follow your "morals", but what about us? Are we less valuable than kobolds?" Trevis said without delay.

"Trevis! Shut up!" Steve said in one of his rare temper tantrums.

I was totally surprised by this bombshell, was that how I was seen? How is the incompetent and ridiculous queen? I care about the boys, I really do, I'm doing everything I can to keep them all alive and safe, but it's never enough.

I'm not good enough.

"What-"

"I care about you, my boys! But I don't believe that a route where we "kill those who are not useful" is acceptable! If one day a member of the hive ends up being invalided, would we just discard him as trash? Regardless of whether he is our own family and a member who helped with the growth of the hive?!"

"The kobolds are not family, nor do they collaborate in any meaningful way. But as I've said before, I would sacrifice hive members if it meant the hive's survival, and I would start with the weakest and most irrelevant members." Hans said naturally.

"Hans! Stop it! Don't you care about your own brothers?!"

"Of course I care! My purpose and existence are based on keeping everyone safe and alive, but if to save a thousand members I need to sacrifice 1 single member, I wouldn't hesitate.

This part of Hans always irritated me, a beautiful and majestic knight, protector of the people and kind older brother, and yet he wouldn't hesitate to let his own brothers die if necessary.

"How can that be right?! Tell Steve something!"

Everyone was tense, the calm atmosphere of tea time had long since died, and all that was left was chaos and conflict, once again.

"....I wouldn't kill anyone directly... But I think if the food reserves run out, I would send the weakest members of the hive to die outside the tower. I'm sure most would leave voluntarily just to avoid the death of the hive." Steve said.

I was horrified by this idea, nowadays Aurum was a "city", made of towers, the whole city was built inside these towers and separated into floors, but if several and several members started to commit mass suicide for "the future of the hive", then all that would be left would be a ghost town.

The city that was once full of life and bustling would become a sad and lifeless desert, the happy and calming music that plays non-stop would be replaced by a disturbing silence, and the rooms that were full of bees hugging and cuddling together , would become a place where only sad memories reside.

The image is disturbing, and the worst part is that there would be a hole inside me that I could no longer fill.

"I would never let us get to that point!"

The boys seemed happy with my words, and they seemed to believe me. They need to believe in me, I am the queen, and there is no way to disagree with me.

But even I'm not sure of my own words.

---

 

I'm a bad queen, I don't know how to rule with an iron fist like Hans, or stick to logic and efficiency like Steve, I just know how to be myself, which doesn't seem to be good enough for the hive.

My decision to continue helping the kobolds felt wrong in every way, I'm sacrificing the prosperity of the hive and our future to feel good about myself.

Nobody wants blood on their hands, people who say "I would abandon dead weight without any remorse", don't understand the feeling that is left behind, the idea of letting someone die voluntarily just because you decided that it is no longer worth taking care of that person.

Are there situations where I would abandon kobolds? Yes. We all have our limits.

If I were starving, literally languishing because of the kobolds, I wouldn't think twice before cutting ties, if they killed my babies I would abandon them too, and if they started stealing our resources I would also abandon them without thinking.

But they didn't do anything, they are just trying to survive in a hostile and lifeless environment, they are doing their best to stay upright and protect their children from harm.

I must admit, I see myself a little in them, I think what things would be like for me and the hive, if fate were a little more cruel to me, and I remember the kobolds, abandoned by their own kind, forced to enter a land of no one just to have a place to call home, and forced to watch their family die from hunger, disease and war, one by one.

I feel sorry for them, but is this right? "Pity" is something very strong and dangerous, if you feel sorry for a wolf, and care for him with all your strength, what stops the wolf from killing you as soon as he regains his strength? Could it be the "morals" of the wolf? He wouldn't attack you because he "owes you"?

Sometimes I feel bad for thinking so little of the kobolds, even when all they do is just try to survive and honor our "agreement", the hive seems to be taking root deeper and deeper into me every day, to a point where I can't say if I've always been like this, or if it's the hive's fault that "anesthetizes" my sympathy.

I can imagine a future where we and the kobolds live in harmony, a mutual and honest collaboration, something completely consensual and truthful. But then my mind starts to think of worst possible scenarios, where we would all be killed and stolen by kobolds, versions where we would be turned into "Cattle", and maybe even slaves.

Maybe it's [Concerned Player's] fault, but I can't help but think it's the hive's fault that my thoughts towards kobolds are so pessimistic.

In my room i started  to play with some magic again, more than ever I need power. Power to overcome a food crisis, and power to make other species submit to me.

Summoning an [Echo of Life], I go through my list of mental spells, and start thinking about the idea of the plant-growing magic lamps that Max is working on.

Then I bind the echo to the [Wild Growth] spell and give it an order. "Go to the vertical garden, and make all the plants there grow"

Soon the small lime green jellyfish began to float towards a wall, and passed through it as if it didn't exist. Giving a mental order to a guard I tell him to follow her, and soon I can see her arriving at the vertical garden.

As soon as she entered the garden she began to shake violently and exploded in a cloud of lime green energy, as soon as the energy came into contact with the plants, everything began to grow quickly and uncontrollably everywhere, and after about 3 minutes there were many plants blooming, and some that only grew leaves.

"5/10 I would say, if I used the spell myself, I could create a plant with dozens of flowers, and with as few leaves as possible, the echo just created a bunch of plants that grow randomly, so you can't I used it with maximum efficiency, and it still cost me 20 mana points..."

It was a surprise to see that the jellyfish knew where the "vertical garden" was, but it can't use magic with the same mastery as me, just a more "wild" version of the spell.

'Wait a second'

Invoking another echo, this time I linked it to the [Life Drain] spell, a spell that was little used due to its difficulty in handling and low efficiency.

Soon the jellyfish turned a dirty beige color, and created what looked like needles around its tentacles. The little thing cost me 24.2 mana points, but if it really worked like I think it will, this could be very worth it.

"Bring me a wappo! A big, healthy one!" As soon as I said that, 2 guards quickly left, and after a few moments they returned with an armed and restrained Wappo.

They just threw him in the middle of the room, and Wappo didn't understand what was happening. And without thinking much, I just gave the order to the echo

"Drain him."

Soon the small echo floated delicately to the Wappo, and in the blink of an eye he threw himself onto it and stuck like the alien from the movie Alien. The echo then attached its needles to the Wappo and began to slowly fill with a very familiar golden energy.

As the Wappo withered and withered, the echo grew and grew larger and larger, until it was large enough to detach itself from the Wappo like a tick, leaving behind a wappo on the verge of death.

The echo then just sat there floating in the air, but as soon as I gave it the command to come towards me, the thing slowly moved towards me until it arrived in front of me.

Reaching into the golden energy-filled interior of the echo, I realize that it is truly pure life energy.

"This is incredible!! Can I absorb this energy?"

Trying to "catch" the life energy inside the echo, I can't do anything other than look like an idiot trying to grab something that isn't there, but then I get the idea to make the echo discharge.

"Give me your energy!" As soon as I said those words, the echo floated directly to me and simply entered my body like a ghost, the feeling was horrible, and it gave me chills all over my body, which were followed by a sudden wave of life energy. 

 

 

"Fuck!! That was horrible!!" Receiving mana from the echoes was shit, it felt like they "fused" with me, dissolving into pure energy and basically "killing" themselves.

"27.4 mana points? That's a lot!... But taking into consideration that I spent 24.2 mana points to create the echo, then I only gained 3.2 mana points."

It's very inefficient, but I can see a use for it, if I could train the echoes to drain the wappos infinitely, and convert them into life energy, and then discharge that energy into the mana pool, then I would have a source of man of life other than me.

"This could work... It would just take smarter and high enough echoes of life... Will these vampire echoes dissipate over time? After all, they have unlimited energy as long they continue to parasitize something..."

These "vampire echoes" serve well as a source of life mana. But I needed something more powerful.

"I need to go back to researching more about my spells and skills, I have to find some solution!!"

Summoning another Life Echo, I make a big sweep through my list of mental spells, until I come across one called [Connect]. One among the dozens of spells that were created by [Wizards].

"What does it do?"

Taking a brief "read" of the mental "label" of the spell, I can see that this is a spell created to imitate [Link], a spell to connect 2 people, the problem was that this was useless for the hive, so it was filed and forgotten forever.

"Wait a second."

After downloading the spell, I cast it only to see that one of my nails has started to glow with a faint golden dot. By touching the echo with my finger, I can see it subtly changing from a golden hue to a softer yellow tone. .

Unexpectedly, this creates a new bridge in [Link] creating an imaginary "line" that connects me directly to the Echo.

'-UNIDENTIFIED INTRUDER ON THE LINK!" Radyo shouted shrilly through the link.

In a few seconds everything became chaos, and I could feel dozens of [beacons] and [archivists] trying to find the "invader" through the link, but they started to get desperate when they couldn't find him.

They could feel that there was "someone else" in the link, but it was like Ciel's case, only much weaker. They couldn't feel or detect it.

'Calm down! It was just me testing a communication spell!"

When I said that, the hive started to calm down, and when I sent the memories of what happened, everything started to return to normal before everyone went on with their lives as if they hadn't just had a bad time.

"What do I do with you now, little guy?"

The floating jellyfish looked the same as always, but now it could cast the [Connection] spell.

"Can I add people outside the link with this?"

It seems dangerous as hell, if kids already go crazy with the intrusion of an echo without their own consciousness, imagine connecting with an individual mind.

'Walk'

To do some tests I tried giving some mental commands, and to my surprise it worked beautifully, the water jellyfish followed my commands as if I had spoken them out loud.

Normally I need to give voice commands to the echoes, or concentrate really hard to give them a simple command, but this was as easy as thinking.

'Very useful for sure... But not like this... If I could add 2 spells to a single echo I could make better use of it...'

Determined not to give up, I start thinking about how to use this echo thing so I can give mental commands, until the idea of puppets comes to mind.

The puppets are nothing more than objects that you can control, the echoes are "spirits" that I can control, so all that's missing is a physical body.

Taking some seeds I had in the room, I start using [Wild Growth] to create a basic manikin shape, then when I finish creating something really weird and "rustic", I send the echo into the pile of roots .

Without much thought, the echo just entered the doll as I had ordered, disappearing in a cloud of light, it was still "active" as I could feel it through the link, but no matter how hard I tried, the thing wouldn't move no matter what.

"What's missing?! What do you need, a heart or something?!"

Heart? Core!

"BOYS!! Bring me Muck!!"

"Yes!!" The guards said.

Not long after, Muck was brought to me, so I made the Life Echo come out of the root statue and run towards Muck. So not wasting time, the echo entered Muck, which began to slowly vibrate until it began to deform in a strange way.

I could feel a thin line that connected us, like a type of link, but much weaker, and it was consuming my mana to stay active, but it was an insignificant amount.

Before long, little Muck started making sounds similar to the breaking of branches and cracking, then out of nowhere he stopped and turned back into a moss slug as if nothing had happened.

 

 

"MUCK?!"