CHAPTER 477: THEY SUCK

The crystals of snow melted, turning the rest of the avalanche into a brown slush. As more and more ground opened, I heard some clicking cheers from the humans watching this. There were smiles on the faces of the fire-breathing Warrior Bees, too.

But then these smiles turned into gasps.

From the sludge were sprouting dozens of gnarled saplings, which already grew their first needle-covered branches. With each second, they grew half a centimetre—it was incredible, never-seen-before speed! This speed was even higher than what I’ve witnessed from the ice-hole trees before...

Rime covered the dirt sludge near the growing trees. It spread farther and farther away to the edges of the melted area. Closer to the lit bonfires, the rime slowed down, but didn’t stop.

The fires began to flicker and grow dimmer instead! It was like the warmth was being sapped from them, too—no, not "as if"!

Although the bonfires didn’t go out fully, they were becoming weaker and weaker with every passing second, while the tree saplings grew more and more.

If this continued, the trees would reach their full height within ten minutes or even less.

’Abort order, abort burning!’ I messaged the bees watching this happen. ’This is your Father speaking—extinguish the bonfires immediately and retreat to a safe distance!’

The bees jolted, agitated by my voice, but acted swiftly. Someone must’ve passed my order to the humans, because they moved too, using their shovels to put sludge over the bonfires.

The Queen-class mechas that accompanied this group of workers helped by using the shovel-like caps on their lower pairs of arms. These mechas were much later models than the Nectus II mecha, and moved much more smoothly.

They were still slower than humans, but thanks to the powerful engines in their tails and hydraulic "muscles", these mechas were much more powerful and pushed massive piles of sludge on the fires with ease.

In just a few minutes, all the bonfires were put out, and with each one, the speed of the ice-hole trees’ growth slowed more and more. Still, by the time all bonfires were out, the trees reached half the height of a Queen-class mecha.

The taller they grew, the wider became the deadly zone from which they sucked cold, and the farther any of the Empire’s workers had to stay. When it outgrew the melted area, it became hard to distinguish visually, except for the way people stayed at a distance from it.

And of course, even after the fires were out and the sludge around them turned into a frozen mix of dirt and ice, the trees were still growing fast enough that I could see it.

By my estimation, their growth speed right now was twice as high as it was on the trees in the mountains.

This... this was awful. A total bullshit.

’These trees HAVE to have limit-broken genes. I thought they had a limit-broken heat resistance, but perhaps it’s something else. And I will never know, since I can’t see them with the system!’

I shook off my frustration for a moment and focused on Workharder. In the blink of an eye, my mental projection appeared next to her.

My Economics Adviser was sitting in a cabin of a mecha, looking outside through the glass front panel. Only Queen MK-3 models and later had glass "faces" instead of the open front or a defensive visor.

While the mecha’s head pilot directed it to shovel the snow, Workharder was sitting in a corner, talking telepathically to bees all over the area. Although this wasn’t her direct responsibility, Workharder chose to lead the emergency forces personally "to show them how to work properly," as she had said.

From this mecha, she could’ve even shown herself to people and given a speech if there was a need.

’Workharder, it’s plan B! These ice-holes really suck all the heat, even from fire!’

She jolted without turning away from the view outside. Workharder couldn’t see astral projections, of course.

’Father—yes, I got the report. I’ve already prepared the orders; they will be executed shortly. At least it’s just a small grove of trees...’

’Don’t be so optimistic, Workharder. I bet the other trees just didn’t get tall enough to show from the avalanche! But they just might by the time we could reach them,’ I replied. ’Without fire, this will take much longer.’

’Longer, but not forever. We will persevere, Father, don’t doubt us!’

I sighed inwardly.

I didn’t doubt my girls, but plan B was not plan A for a reason.

Since I suspected that the ice-hole trees might be immune to fire, the emergency forces were prepared with ordinary woodcutting instruments as well. For mechas, those were giant circular saws, for humans—just axes.

By my estimate, if people didn’t stay near an ice-hole tree for longer than to give it one cut at a time, then they wouldn’t die from its proximity.

Perhaps if it were a sapling, things would go more easily.

But either way, cutting the ice-hole trees the normal way would be not only hard, but also dangerous. Worse, it might not work. However, we had no other choice.

At least right now.

Plan C was still not ready... A week was not enough to prepare it.

’Just do it, Workharder. This is our best chance! There aren’t many trees yet... And I doubt this will last for long.’

’Yes, Father!’

I teleported away again to watch.

All over the fallen avalanche, the emergency forces received my order and moved again. The Warrior Bees, not ready for the cold, withdrew to their mobile camps; humans picked up their axes, and mechas began a procedure of switching hand-attached tools.

In a dozen minutes, the first humans with axes approached the grown grove of the ice-hole trees. By then, they’ve grown far above bees’ height.

Each human wore half a dozen layers of clothing for warmth, with only eyes visible under all the shawls. They raised their axes at the trees...