Chapter 512: A special tree

My Advisers were shocked to find out that we were now making an alliance with trees. And it was supposed to be as equal as our alliance with humans! (Which meant not very equal, but they wouldn’t even get the idea of shaking hands with TREES like with their peers.)

But as usual, they accepted my word as the law and worked hard to prepare everything to make this alliance happen.

Since the usnea trees were losing the war against the deer, the Bee Empire’s time to gather and send this army was limited. However, we definitely had at least several months to strike the deer in the back. Perhaps more if the next genes Usnea will evolve for their species will prove more effective than the ones before that.

Crossing the mountains with an army of not cold-immune bees was near impossible, even if it was a geographically more direct way. The expedition would travel on ships, human-made ships.

Ships were also faster than crossing such harsh terrain as mountains. By my estimate, it would take a month for the army to gather and reach its destination.

A single ship could carry several mobile forts, each with up to a hundred thousand bees. Just a dozen ships could carry an army that could devastate even the rapidly replenishing populace of the smooth-back deer.

These bees won’t be able to sustain themselves for long without supply lines or a good local source of food, but I believed that the deer will provide enough of it.

Most of the army will be poison-immune Beemarines, who will be able to eat the deer meat even if it turns out to be poisonous. The rest of the bees will be able to feed themselves on fish, local insects, seeds of the usnea trees and so on.

Blue-eyed Commandos will come with the army to personally scan the genes and stats of the deer, because I won’t be with this army, even as a projection. It will be on the other end of this continent—way too far for me to reach with my projection!

It meant that it would also be impossible to reach with bees’ telepathy. To keep communications open between the Hive Supremo and the expediting army, Workharder and I prepared a schedule of logistic ships.

These will be transport ships that will carry supplies (especially ones impossible to forage for, like ammunition) to the expedition army. Each ship will have a group of telepathic signalers on it.

The schedule these ships travelled on would ensure that four or five of them would be in transit from the Bee Empire to the expedition army, at somewhat equal distances from each other. This way, the line of ships will create a telepathic chain with plenty of space to spare in case a ship gets caught in a storm or stops for any other reason.

I thought this was pretty smart. All my Advisers fully agreed.

Then again, they were terribly biased.

***

While the expedition army was preparing to set out and gathering at the harbour they would travel from, the anti-tree army was doing the opposite, it was created from.

It was planting trees!

While drowning usnea trees helped kill the deer, it also killed the usnea trees, which Usnea wasn’t happy about… Thus, to stop the floods, I gave the anti-tree armies the order to plant the trees in the regions where they had melted the snow previously.

This put a (metaphorical this time) dam on the floods, diminishing them considerably and allowing the usnea trees in the region to regrow as quickly as they always did.

This meant that the regions were also quickly repopulated by the smooth-back deer, but I just did what Usnea asked for.

They did their part of the deal as well. My people reported that the usnea trees on our side of the mountains suddenly stopped making seeds. They flowered for a while, then these flowers waned and fell off, only for new ones to grow in their place.

“It must be because the Usnea God used their powers to render all these trees sterile. This is just a guess, of course, but they still grow their flowers to reproduce… Only to fail at fertilising them,” I commented on that to the Empire Council. “These flowers don’t even produce nectar, since they evolved without a need for pollinators. Just leave them alone, they are utterly useless. Or gather them as fuel for campfires, it doesn’t matter.”

This turn of events meant that after the floods were stopped, the anti-tree army could finally return to the Bee Empire. I gave orders to leave several small garrisons to make sure Usnea won’t suddenly go back on their promises and restore fertility to their trees, but the main part of the army could either return to their original jobs or…

Or join the expedition army, since this is where they were most needed. There were plenty of deer travelling among the plains covered in the usnea trees, and these deer also needed killing.

***

With all these things for me to manage, two weeks passed in the blink of an eye.

Then, I had another thing to manage on my plate.

“Father, I’ve received a report from the ice wall that was marked as ‘urgent’ by its sender,” Attendant Helping-Hands said, entering my office.

This made me perk up with alarm and put away the pencil I used to make marks in documents in front of me.

“What? Did it break?”

Helping-Hands looked a little bashful.

“Not this urgent, Father. Not yet, at least. The Lieutenant gardener who sent it says that one of the living trees in their part of the wall suddenly grew even larger than an usnea tree’s usual size and grew out spikes. Then… She swears that she heard the tree’s thoughts, even though it was impossible.”

I raised my eyebrows.

It WAS impossible.

In all cases except for one.

“Alright. I will send an astral projection to this tree at once! Where did it grow?”

This had to be the champion of the usnea trees Usnea had mentioned!