Chapter 10: Chapter 10

Kai looked at her egg to make sure it was okay and noticed the swarm drone sitting next to it. The little one was likely guarding it, which put a smile on Kai’s face.

The drone had also put all of its harvest on the same spot next to the egg, forming a small hill of fruits, vegetables and small dead animals. It was a bit disgusting in her opinion and she would need to figure out how to manage her swarm drones.

Actually Kai could do so right now. She didn’t think about it long, because she already knew what she wanted.

Kai fully connected with the mana brain and told it to create something akin to an RTS (Real time strategy) screen for her map together with an extra menu for managing the swarm drones. The micro management would then be done by the mana brain and Kai hoped that the power it got through the tether of the swarm drones would be enough for that.

She opened her map and zoomed out as far as she could. It stopped once a small country would fit on it and most of it was covered by cute comic clouds.

At the top of the map she now had the option to access the swarm manager or the RTS map. Kai tried out the RTS map and only got a red message that there were currently no battles available. The mana brain was likely using the calculating power for something else as long as that option wasn’t needed, which was fine with her.

Kai tried out the swarm manager and a few options appeared at the left edge of the map. She could choose an amount of drones and give them orders. It was also possible to designate storage areas for the drones that collected things. Sadly Kai needed rooms for that, so Anna would have to build a bit more before she could do that.

There was also a third option about idle drones, which included her only drone right now. She could tell the mana brain what to do with idle drones and chose scouting and scavenging as priorities for now.

A new option appeared, where she could divide her map into different zones. Kai created a large hexagonal zone with her hive in the center. The zone had pretty much the whole map inside it, which was intended by Kai for future purposes. She dubbed the zone as a federal hive and then sectioned it into smaller hexagonal zones, the city hives.

After she had done that her drone scurried away and began to scout the zone around the first hive.

Satisfied with her work Kai focused on the scavenging options. She was pretty sure that they only existed because her knowledge was hive knowledge now, otherwise she couldn’t explain the nature friendly scavenging option. Doing so wouldn’t influence the ecosystem too much and guaranteed future harvests.

She could also set the drones to harvest literally everything, creating a wasteland and honestly, Kai was much more fond of the first option. She had the chance to learn from humanities mistakes and could try to do things carefully from the very beginning.

Kai still wanted to play computer games again, so there was no way she would not try to get technology back, she just hoped she would live long enough for that. She had no idea how long it would take to get to her standards and couldn’t tell how mana would influence that.

Kai closed the map and relaxed. She would just have to do her best, so she could look back on her life proudly and cart and board games might do it too.

Time flew by as Kai sat there and watched her egg and Anna. The swarm drone was coming back now and then with new harvests before it returned to scout. Kai just hoped it rested and slept of its own accord.

After maybe four hours the moths flew over the hive again and it slowly started to get brighter again. The day definitely was a lot longer on this planet. 

During the dawn Kai got a glimpse of the sun. It was yellow, the same as the one you could see from earth, but it looked to be either larger or nearer to this planet than the sun was to earth.

A soft mumbling from behind her took Kai out of her musings and she turned around. Anna was sitting upright in her bed and blinked her large eyes. She stretched and yawned, giving Kai a view of her species mouth for the first time.

She had known about the small and quite cute looking mandibles, but Kai hadn’t noticed she had two rows of pointed teeth. She also hadn’t been aware of the length of her tongue, but having seen Anna’s right now she couldn’t help herself and stretch it out as far as possible. Kai guessed she got to maybe 15 cm out of her mouth, which was a bit longer than half of her forearm. She stared at her tongue, wondering about the muscles that were needed to hold it in the air.

A second yawn of Anna took Kai back to reality and she hurriedly put her tongue back in her mouth. Then she walked over to Anna and hugged her. “Good morning.”

Anna smiled sleepily and hugged her back. “Good morning my Lady. Did anything happen while I was asleep?”

Kai shook her head. “Nope. The hell moths were up and about again, but that was it.”

She helped her daughter get up. “Oh and I created a management system for the swarm drones with the mana brain, but I don’t think you have access to that as a worker.” 

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Kai felt a bit bad about that, but she hadn’t found a method to give a single person more permissions as of yet. It might also be better that way or others would try to woo her into getting more permissions.

Anna’s gaze unfocused for a second and she shook her head. “I can’t get access to it, but I still have the minimap.”

She took Kai’s hand and smiled at her. “Don’t worry about it my lady. I don’t want any special privileges, I want to achieve everything through my own actions!”

Kai smiled at that, what a determined daughter she had.

Anna’s belly rumbled loudly and Kai grinned at her. “I believe it is time to eat something, our drone has collected a lot of stuff already.”

Anna nodded and they walked out of the hive to the mound of food stuff next to the egg. Anna rummaged through it for a bit and began to sort the fruits and vegetables into two piles. One pile for the safe to eat stuff and the other for things she wasn’t sure about. The herbology skill seemed to help her identify some of the vegetables and fruits.

Kai sighed a bit when she looked at the selection. There was nobody around who knew how to light a fire in the wilderness so it would be raw fruits for a while for her. If Anna wanted to eat raw meat Kai wouldn’t be happy about it, but she wouldn’t stop her daughter.

She took one of the fruits that looked like a large green cherry and bit into it. A pretty sour taste entered her mouth and Kai had to grimace. She hadn’t expected the fruit to be sour and was surprised by it. The taste wasn’t bad, but Kai wouldn’t call it a favorite. She was more of a sweet or salty kind of person.

Anna also began to eat her share and the pile of fruits they knew were safe slowly disappeared.

Kai sighed again. “Some real food would be nice.”

Anna looked at her curiously. “Does it taste that much better if you prepare it beforehand?”

Kai nodded. “Yes, simply roasting meat makes it better and if you have salt too it becomes even better.”

Anna gazed thoughtful into the forest. “Should I try to make a fire?”

Kai shook her head. “Not now. Having shelter and some defense is more important right now. There is also nothing growing around here that has more than small thin branches, making and maintaining a fire with that is going to be a pain in the ass.”

She leaned back on her tail. “We should search for a source of wood first. These gigantic trees don’t count, I have no idea how you would cut such a thing down.”

Anna turned towards Kai again. “Alright, if that is the case then I am going to build this room up to standard size.”

Kai looked at Anna questioningly. “There is a standard size? Also how do you know what you have to do?”

Anna scratched her head. “I am just building after my instincts to be honest and it seems to work quite well. There is no standard size, I just want to build it to a size that would fit a person like you my lady.”

Kai looked away a bit embarrassed. “You don’t have to do that, you know?”

Anna waved her away as if she had said something unimaginable. “Of course I have to! Your well being is my well being and the well being of all Antanoid.”

Kai sighed. “So long as you don’t go overboard too much okay. But I don’t want to live that much more comfortably as the average Antanoid, even in the future or else I might forget what needs to be improved.”

Anna didn’t answer and Kai eyed her suspiciously. Anna just smiled at her, bowed and then turned around to continue building. Kai would have to make sure she didn’t get pampered by her children too much.