CHAPTER 492: AN EYE FOR... SOMEONE WITHOUT AN EYE

The room Tabletina brought me to was an ordinary medical ward. Those were fitted with from two to six beds, which both saved space and gave the recovering girls someone to chat with.

In this case, I heard the lively chatter of the ward’s patients even before I crossed the room’s threshold.

This ward had four beds, and all of them were taken by bees with brand-new ice-hole wood prosthetics. Two had replacement arms, one was sitting with a pair of wooden legs, and the last one had an eye covered by bandages—I was sure they hid a wooden eye.

At first glance, none of these prosthetics looked too special. They had the shape of ordinary limbs—no extra claws or armour built in—and the statuses of all these girls didn’t have anything unusual.

Upon seeing me and Tabletina enter, all of them gasped in shock and excitement. Although they were warned about our visit, they still devoured me with their eyes, but didn’t dare to speak up first.

I smiled and waved at them.

"Hi, girls! Please, don’t get too agitated... You are still patients who need to keep resting!"

"Actually, based on the results of today’s examination, they might be free to at least remove their bandages," said Tabletina, who closed the ward’s door behind her and stood next to me. "Which is a part of what I want to show Father. Please, assist me by doing what I say."

All four girls nodded obediently. Their respect for Tabletina was palpable.

"Well then, show me, Tabletina. I’m very curious if wooden eyes actually work."

Tabletina smiled—a bit too bloodthirstily for my taste—and turned to the bee with the eye prosthetic.

"They work well. Papercraft, let’s find out how much exactly."

"The last time we checked, the eye saw almost as well as my other one," Papercraft said. She waited obediently while Tabletina removed her bandage with the deftness of an experienced expert.

Soon, I saw the wooden eye itself. Its light blue colour contrasted sharply with the black of Papercraft’s other eye, but didn’t look too jarring.

Since bees didn’t have irises or pupils, the lack of them on the wooden eye wasn’t noticeable. But it was a shock to see how well the eye fit in its socket.

The skin around it was slightly puffy, but otherwise, I saw no signs that crude wood irritated the skull around it or caused allergic reactions.

Meanwhile, Papercraft turned her head around, blinking rapidly. Then she covered her healthy eye with her hand.

"Wow," she said. "Nothing changed!"

Tabletina smiled with satisfaction.

"This means the eye has fully integrated into your body. As far as I can tell, at least. I will send a Physician to test your eyesight later, but you can go without bandages for now. A Nurse Bee will bring you a warm towel to put on the eye instead."

Tabletina turned to me. "The ice-hole wood imitates even as intricate functions as eyesight if implanted in place of a lost organ. I have a theory that even inner organs could be replaced with it..."

I whistled.

People on Earth would kill for something like this. Especially considering how often people are born with faulty organs... But bees were all extremely healthy.

I didn’t know if this was some secret property of my system, or a blessing from the Goddess of Bees, or my genes were simply that good, but all my progeny were born free of illnesses caused by poor genetics.

Some still got dealt a bad hand and caught illnesses as larvae, which led to them being born with deformities, but they were few.

"Alright, this is great. But it doesn’t justify saving the ice-hole trees on their own."

"There’s also a confirmation of another theory I had. Holdina, show Father your arm," Tabletina said, walking to another bed.

This one belonged to a bee with a single arm, replaced starting at her shoulder. When I followed Tabletina closer to the girl, I saw that the replacement arm had a stranger design than I thought at first glance.

Although the general shape was that of an ordinary arm, its upper part had several shallow holes large enough to fit a finger in.

"Adviser Tabletina, Father," Holdina greeted us. "Do you want me to show what my arm can do?"

She raised and flexed it. The movements were jerky and slow, but their fact alone was impressive. Even after seeing a few people with ice-hole prosthetics, I was still shocked whenever I saw them move these things around.

"As you can see, Holdina isn’t a Beemarine; she’s an ordinary bee," Tabletina said. "But I placed a bit of Beemarine flesh into her prosthetics. Not just any Beemarine, but one of those who are immune to physical damage."

I frowned.

"How did you even get it? Their skin is impossible to cut!"

"Yes. It’s very problematic if they require any operations... Good thing that they don’t. As for this piece of flesh, the bee that donated it suffered a heavy acid burn that removed a part of her skin."

And the Beemarines’ immunity came from skin, which wasn’t immune to acid or fire, although it was resistant.

I nodded, admitting Tabletina’s wit.

"This arm developed with both Holdina’s body and a Beemarine’s flesh. And I discovered that the parts closest to Holdina began to take her properties, while the parts closest to the Beemarine flesh took Beemarine properties," Tabletina said. "It was incredibly easy to check by poking the wood with a needle."

"A *needle*?!"

"Only a little!" Tabletina hurriedly added. "It didn’t even hurt."

"It didn’t, Father!" Holdina confirmed hurriedly. "But parts of my wooden arm were so hard that a needle wouldn’t pierce it!"

Tabletina nodded and smiled proudly.

"You see, Father? This is... almost mimicry! By now, the arm prosthetics have fully consumed the Beemarine flesh I put in it. In another couple of weeks, Holdina will have an invincible arm. We could place invincible wooden armour on any bees who need it. Or we could..."