Chapter 67: Chapter 65: Preparations, Plans and Personal Questions

Regina felt like she hadn’t really appreciated the scale involved in her own little hive, a group of just a few dozen at best, dealing with a proper, nation-sized state like the elves. Granted, a very small one by the standards of her memories, even historically, since it was basically just a city-state. But the elves still outclassed her in terms of firepower, infrastructure and information gathering.

She had started to realize their strength when they fought together with her drones down below, and in the aftermath. Anuis especially had been enlightening. For all her helpful and generally nice demeanor, the woman was amazing with a sword. In a way that would probably be terrifying if you were on the other side. It was even more impressive because Regina knew that swordfighting wasn’t really the focus of her Class, but she’d still managed to defeat a dedicated Swordsman in, like, one move. I guess those long lifespans are good for something. How old was she, anyway? Enais was eight hundred, and she might not have been able to have children past a certain point, but Regina didn’t know how aging worked for them.

Anyway, Regina decided that she didn’t regret allying with the elves, instead of the humans, at all. Not that they’d even officially agreed to an alliance, but that did seem to be how things had developed. She still resolved to be mindful of the fact that she didn’t have any official hold over them.

In some ways, cleaning up after the battle in the tunnels took longer than it did in the first place. Regina paced up above, having too much restless energy to sit still. She hadn’t liked sitting back and letting others fight for her, but her ability to coordinate them had obviously been more important, and she’d probably have to get used to the feeling, anyway. They’d gathered the bodies and equipment of the humans, worked out and implemented a method to distribute the latter, and healed anyone who needed it. The deliberations and preparations after that had taken even longer.

No one had actually confirmed it, but Regina was pretty sure Anuis had been given some artifact or other method of communicating with the city. Several times, she’d excused herself with the justification of having to run things by her superiors or get permission, and generally come back a few hours later with some new idea, requirement or adjustment.

At the moment, Regina stood before the wooden wall of the hut she slept in and hesitated. She was blocking the path a little bit, so passing drones had to veer around her, but she barely noticed. Instead, she looked at the scratches in the wood. She’d taken to putting these claw marks in the wood, one for each morning she spent in this forest. They had already spread slightly over the plank in neat little rows.

One of them was marked with a rough circle around it. The day she’d made the truce agreement with the local humans. Regina glanced from it to the last scratch she’d edged into the wood. Twenty-eight days.

She mentally went over the last few weeks, considering the progress she’d made after the negotiation. The pattern of escalating incidents and violence. She stood there for a few minutes, until a notification from the System brought her back to her surroundings.

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