CHAPTER 485: TURN THE TIDE AND MAKE IT ACIDIC

The frozen forest stood as it always had. Enshrouded in mist, its trees shook their branches covered in blue needles and white flowers, spreading their pollen and seeds all over the place.

Some seeds fell near grown trees, where they died on frozen slush, where they had no warmth or ground to grow from. But most were carried by wind away, away...

Where they entered the cloud of acidic gas, and withered even faster.

Meanwhile, the cloud spread to already grown trees. It burned their bark and made their needles fall off within minutes of exposure. Although I couldn’t see the acidic clouds themselves despite sending my astral projection right where they could be, I could see their effects.

Amazing effects!

An entire section of the forest stopped growing, which meant the trees’ deaths. There were no emergency workers nearby to see this and cheer, but the astral projections of scouts monitoring this section of the frozen forest were exchanging exciting thought-messages.

It took three hours for the gas squad to evaporate all the prepared acid and release it on the ice-hole trees. The wind, high above the forest, eagerly carried the gas right over the trees—all according to plan.

Not five percent of the forest was eliminated within a day! Countless seeds withered before they landed and were unable to sprout!

It was a total victory. And, despite my fears, no people were harmed. Only a small part of the ground not taken over by the ice-hole trees got doused in acid gas, and there were no citizens of the Bee Empire anywhere near it.

After this, I immediately gave my approval to continue with this plan.

With the extra forces brought by Workharder and Bloodhero from other areas of the Empire, the tide of war shifted entirely. Despite the constant onslaught of seeds from the ice-hole trees, despite all the seeds that bypassed our defence at night...

We were taking our land back with great speed, comparable only with the times before the ice-hole trees grew tall and tough.

Every day, more and more acid was delivered to the frozen forest alongside coal for heating it. More and more acid gas was created to join the ordinary mist.

After a week of evaporating acid, the changes in the atmosphere over the frozen forest became visible to the naked eye. The mist became denser and yellowish in colour.

I ordered everybody to stay away as much as possible, and for the most part, this was achieved. However, sometimes the cold wind pushed some of the acid gas back at the emergency cordons, or the workers near the acid barrels weren’t careful enough.

Then they could confirm that breathing acid gas, or just being in it, was harmful even for Beemarines. Despite their great resistance to damage, acid was leaving burns on their skin and thin scales covering it.

Thankfully, Beemarines could be in the gas clouds for several minutes without much harm. Other bees (and humans) suffered notable damage within a minute, especially their lungs. But thanks to the safety measures prepared by me and Researchina, the number of people harmed by the acid could be counted on the fingers of my four hands.

Of course, this meant that the woodcutters and snow-clearers couldn’t advance as fast as before into areas with dead trees. First, they had to make sure that the acid gas either dispersed or turned into liquid again.

This could only be done by Beemarines, who flew through the mist to check how acidic it was. Which was... One of the good reasons we had to find out how well Beemarines could withstand it.

But the ice-hole trees couldn’t grow in acid-covered areas, so this wasn’t a problem. Eventually, the clouds either dispersed or turned into rain, and the areas became clear both from them and the trees.

After a week of clearing the thickest ice-hole tree groves, the emergency forces had to slow down again. This time, because of the avalanche itself.

Deeper into the affected sites, the amount of debris on the ground, especially after the snow melted, made it impossible for humans or mechas to simply walk through. Every step became an acrobatic exercise, unless the ground was painstakingly cleared first and left to dry under the sun.

There was also another problem, which I predicted but chose to bear.

After the acid clouds cooled, they turned into liquid: mist, rain or just puddles. When an area of the frozen forest had no ice-hole trees to keep the forest FROZEN, the enormous mass of snow from the fallen avalanche, held together by said trees, would melt.

Together with the acid dissolved in it—not just these acid clouds, but all the acid poured on the ice-hole trees before—this water sank into the ground or poured into the nearest rivers.

What happened with it after this, but I had a heavy suspicion. Perhaps the fish in rivers were too tough to die from some very dilute acid, but what will happen after this water settles in our fertile fields?

I hoped there wasn’t enough acid in it to affect our harvests. Especially when most of the plants were rapidly evolving to be their deadliest selves.

Despite this slight ecological mishap, we were winning the war against the ice-hole trees. In three more weeks, almost all of them were mercilessly destroyed! Only a few small clusters remained—those that grew in areas too remote to be hit by acid, where people had to painstakingly bring and pour acid on them by hand.

This war took an incredible amount of effort, and even more effort was spent on clearing the sites destroyed by the avalanche. Several mines had to be rebuilt from scratch. The economic blow dealt to us by the avalanche delayed the expected date of full conquering of the continent by an entire year!

And I knew it would slow us down even more, because we had to destroy the rest of these trees that were still growing in the mountains.

But in the meantime, I had good news. Things-Things was pretty busy in the last month...