Chapter 117: Chapter 113: Celebrations and Payment

As the year neared its end, the Starlit Hive gathered for their first real holiday celebration, independent of the human village or anyone else. Christmas of 3085 was picturesque, the fields and trees covered in a blanket of snow, the sky sending down a light snowfall that slowly faded away to let the sun gaze down, and even the monsters seemed to be hunkering down during the cold season.

Regina had decided to gather most of the drones at one of the new outposts further north from their main base, closer to Forest’s Haunt and their old base in the forest. That allowed more drones to join in, even though calling the outpost still undeveloped would have been too generous. But with so many drones around, they got it into reasonable shape for a celebration pretty quickly.

She didn’t throw caution to the wind, of course. On December 24, she spent most of the day scouting her territory and its surroundings with increased patrols of Winged Drones to make sure that they would not be caught by surprise by anything, before the hive threw a party on Christmas Eve.

Looking out over the gathering in the evening, with almost all of the sapient drones and even most of the Swarm Drones present around the main camp, Regina took a moment to marvel at how her hive had developed. Sure, she was still a long way off from the Hive limits the System gave her, but her hive was still very young. She’d hatched all of these drones in only a few months.

Of course, over a thousand Swarm Drones presented a bit of a logistical challenge, even if Regina hadn’t decided to give them Christmas gifts in the form of food. That was the tradition for pets, anyway, right? She mostly did the same for the sapient drones. There was no way she could get over a hundred individual gifts, so extra food and time off along with celebrations, party games and such had to be enough.

Regina sighed and glanced at her status sheet once more.

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