CHAPTER 490: EVERYBODY NEEDS YOU FIGHTING THERE

And the Empire Council gathered, and we spent three entire days making plans and organising everything together. Agent Whisper reminded me that humans (lacking a more convenient way to store food for prolonged periods, such as honey) had a peculiar invention useful for our current purpose—ice cellars.

They weren’t commonplace in the tropical climate, but rich people living closer to the mountains or the ocean (where Vardish culture was more prevalent) had them. These cellars were ordinary food cellars, but filled with packed snow or ice to store food in.

It was the perfect testing ground for cold resistance genes, and it gave me an idea to take some ice from the mountains, put it on a train, and carry it all over the Bee Empire for bees to test themselves on it.

Every bee born in a brood with a ’Chaotic Evolution I’ gene and which didn’t find in herself any other chaotically evolved gene needed to go through the chilling test.

Those who experienced no discomfort from the cold were immediately drafted into anti-tree woodcutter squads and sent toward the mountains.

There, other workers built forts which served as logistical bases and also training grounds for the anti-tree woodcutter squads, where they would learn how to find and destroy the ice-hole trees.

After all, the bees drafted into them came from all kinds of backgrounds, and were so desperate and short-staffed for cold-resistant bees, that nobody was exempt!

Even those who had traumas could be given Tabletina’s new prosthetics from ice-hole wood and return to action...

To cheer up all the bees who were pulled away from their (often beloved) jobs, I spoke about it over the radio—outside of my usually scheduled talks.

I told them about the situation honestly.

"A great danger is upon us. Freezing trees are coming from the mountains. It was on the news already—we stopped their onslaught and burned them with acid. But this isn’t the end—thousands of them are hiding in the mountains. And if we don’t kill them there, they will return with even more forces. This means that today, the Bee Empire, your father and your mother, your sisters and your friends, even your favourite pet beasts—all of them need you fighting there!"

Of course, after this threat will be over, the cold-immune bees will be free to return to their previous jobs. I knew that we would have enough of them among Warrior Bees to deal with small threats in the mountains or other cold places.

My daughters and progeny, being the dutiful, precious and wonderful girls they were, took their new duty with stoicism and pride. They weren’t happy that they were pulled away from their sub-hives and work like that, but they were ready to sacrifice their lives for the Empire, much less some comfort.

The first tests quickly found thousands of cold-resistant bees, and this number grew every day. It wasn’t surprising.

The base chance for a bee to develop a chaotic gene was 5%. Morphotyped bees didn’t have the ’Chaotic Evolution’ gene in them, so they were exempt. In the central regions of the Bee Empire, most bees had a morphotype, but the farther away from it, the more baseline bees there were.

The ratio of morphotyped and baseline bees in the Empire was currently somewhere around one to one. But our population was... just really immense!

The count was going on billions. If even 1% of 5% got the cold immunity, it still meant that there were millions of cold-immune bees in the Empire.

(The mountains, however, were so vast that it would take no less than a few million to even start advancing into the ice-hole trees there.)

Steady streams of people travelled to the anti-tree forts at the same time as supplies of new equipment for them. For the anti-tree operations, our smithies were making the best steel axes and travel supplies.

Humans couldn’t help there directly, and their role in defeating the ice-hole trees was largely over. They returned to their usual work of farming, mining and carrying things all over the Empire.

Like I predicted, the testing (and everything after it) was a strain on our resources. It was already bad when the plants we farmed began to suddenly mutate and poison us, and the ice-hole trees cut our food stocks even more.

I ordered that we stop our expansion completely until the mountains were cleared. I also hope that when this happens, we’d be able to set our sights directly on the lands on the other side of the continent.

***

A month later, the first anti-tree army of 100 thousand people was ready to set out.

Up in the mountains, these brave bees, former Cleaners, Builders, Researchers, Warriors and others (but currently all Warriors for the title strength, endurance and agility bonuses), would have to depend only on themselves and their equipment: protective clothing, wooden goggles for eye protection from the snow glare, sharp axes and climbing equipment.

Harsh winds would try to blow them off-course, and there won’t be much prey to hunt despite some animals evolving to survive in cold environments.

But their worst enemy was going to be altitude.

The mountains went so far up that the air became thin. So thin that even dragons couldn’t stay there for long. The ice-hole trees didn’t grow there either, but they approached this altitude pretty closely.

But they mostly grew downhill. In the last months, they have reached our border cordons again! The bees were forced to shoot down flying seeds day and night, and anti-tree soldiers had practice in flying up to trees and cutting them down.

The freezing aura that killed any other creature in seconds did nothing at all against the cold-immune bees! And what was even better, the ice-hole trees didn’t grow faster in their presence. The trees’ deadly power was completely lost on them, while the axes were as effective as ever.

And this was giving me a powerful hope that my anti-tree army would bring me a decisive victory!