CHAPTER 482: DAY AND NIGHT

At the cordons, humans stood with large nets—the kind that they used to catch insects for cooking—and dragon riders flew in the sky. When the ice-hole tree seeds flew closer, their squad leaders gave an order—and they acted.

The nets were the most effective way of catching many seeds at once, so humans got the highest count of caught seeds. But dragon riders were also vital—their squads caught the trees that flew too high for humans to reach, or just slipped past the nets.

I saw a black dragon snap its jaws over a flying seed—the beast thought it might be tasty—and feared for a moment that the dragon might freeze.

But to my relief, in its thoughts I heard only a slight surprise at how cold the seed was, and even that passed quickly.

In other parts of the cordon, I saw that the nets used to catch seeds became covered in rime, but only after catching a few hundred seeds. An individual seed’s chilling aura was too weak to deal any harm.

Which was just wonderful!

Perhaps the story was different if the seeds were put into the ground or in water, but without outside sustenance, they simply died, even with warmth around them.

Like this, the Bee Empire’s forces continued to catch the countless seeds flying from the frozen forest. The first group of seeds were the most numerous, but the steam never stopped. When one tree’s flowers withered and fell, another bloomed to release its seeds soon.

Clearly, this was going to continue day and night without a break, forcing me to use forces that could’ve been burning the trees to block their advance into our territories.

Worse, I knew that a single seed that passed our cordons could mean a problem that would be much harder to deal with. An entire army of scouts was constantly watching the routes of tree seeds from high above, tracking any of them that bypassed the humans and the dragon orders and alerting them to these "stragglers".

In some cases, my people didn’t react in time to the seeds—there were too many of them, over a territory that was too massive, and shrouded in mist to boot—and they landed on the ground.

In this case, a seed began growing into a sprout, and then a tree, with incredible speed. Within minutes, only a human woodcutter would be able to kill it, and within an hour—only acid. Rime and frozen ground surrounded them in circles.

They were almost like metastases of a cancerous growth.

And yet again, there was little that could be done about it except fighting and persevering.

’We are holding the seeds back, Father,’ Workharder reported to me at noon. ’Some fly past the cordons, but they are killed before they can become dangerous. However, this is only possible because of our scouts. At night, the trees will continue to bloom and spread their seeds, while we will become blind and helpless. They will have free rein over our lands then! I suggest attacking them en masse while we still can and destroying their flowers.’

’No. We don’t have the resources for a move like that, Workharder, and you know it! Don’t worry, your father thought aaaaall about it. Researchina didn’t tell you?’

’What she was supposed to tell me about, and when she was supposed to do it? I was busy. She was busy, too.’

I couldn’t argue with that. Everybody was working hard the last couple of weeks. Those who weren’t directly preparing or fighting against the ice-hole trees were making sure that the Bee Empire didn’t fall apart and could still provide the resources this war needed.

’By this evening, the radars should reach your positions. Use them to locate and bring down the seeds. And light a lot of fires to see what you are doing—just away from the trees.’

’Radars?’ Workharder sounded sceptical. ’Father, I know that they have grown in precision by a lot since the last time I saw one of those. But they won’t exactly help my or Bloodhero’s forces to aim...’

’The Researchers from the radar crew will aim for you. Tell Bloodhero about it—her people have more experience in using radars. She will know how to place them better.’

’Alright. At the very least, the fires and light won’t let us down. We will hold on for this night, and I will make sure that the emergency forces have enough fuel to sustain them.’

’Yes. Speaking of, do you have enough resources in range? I think you should send some extras from farther regions closer to you beforehand. Otherwise, they might arrive too late even on trains.’

’I already calculated all the supplies perfectly well. There should be enough! But... I guess if you say so, Father, I will prepare some extras. I will just have to make sure they aren’t wasted—that would be a shame.’

Our telepathic conversation ended at that, leaving me to hope in silence that the radars will ACTUALLY be enough.

By this point, they had developed enough to be used for our border defence. Beemarines stationed there knew how to aim their rifles or where to search for the enemy based on the radar’s readings, but they mostly used it as a forewarning method against dragons.

At night, the border forces still relied mostly on sources of light and Beehound scouts with their sense of smell.

Another thing that would be a problem was the lack of electric power stations near the frozen forest. The radars will have to rely on coal- or oil-powered portable generators, which could malfunction more easily.

So although I didn’t show it to Workharder, I was worried. But regardless of my worries, the night fell anyway, and the ice-hole tree seeds were still flying.

On this day, we only cleared 1% of the frozen forest, because too many people were busy dealing with the seeds. I feared that over this night, our clearing progress might become negative.