Chapter 42: Chapter 42

After their victory over the moth Artemis and her group slowly retreated into the sidestreet to the others. They had been actively fighting the whole time and needed to rest before they would be able to man the second wall.

Kai ran over to them, worriedly checking if every girl was alright even if she knew through their hive connection that they were fine. When she reached Artemis she hugged her tightly. “Are you okay dear? Is everything alright?!”

Artemis tried to free herself from the crushing embrace, but wasn’t quite able to overpower her mother and had to give up. “I’m okay, your majesty. There is no need to worry that much.” She only had a few scratches and one of her antennae had a small kink, but that had already happened multiple times during her training so she knew that it would be back to normal in a few hours.

Kai took her daughter by the shoulders and looked her sternly in the eyes. “Why did you have to do such a thing? It was way too risky and you could have easily whittled the thing down with the glaives!”

Artemis sighed softly before she assumed her usual business face again. “My queen, I did it for training purposes. These beasts do not pose any notable danger despite their large size and their sharp mandibles.”

She looked at Kai judgingly. “Have you not checked their mana presence, your majesty?”

Uhh, that was awkward, because Kai had no idea what Artemis meant by mana presence. Just because she had the rights to view all the hive knowledge and was even tapped into the constant stream of information, she didn’t know everything. At times some things just slipped past her notice and she imagined that would only get worse the more daughters she had, no matter how much her stats advanced.

There was no hiding her lack of knowledge so Kai was honest to Artemis. “Artemis, I have no idea what you are speaking about. It looks like I missed that information somehow, I am sorry.”

Her daughter waved her away and took a step back before she knelt down on one knee. “It is no problem, my queen. Rather it is my fault for not briefing you, I should have known that you are too busy to catch everything that is going on.”

Kai sighed and gestured for Artemis to get back up again. “It’s not your fault Artemis, how could you have known?”

“The briefings are a good idea however. We should do that from now on, at least once every week and for important matters even more often.”

She nodded to herself before she smiled kindly towards Artemis. “Still, it is good that you are well. Now, please explain what you meant with mana presence.”

The two of them walked over to Kai’s resting spot and sat down while Artemis explained what she called mana presence. “So, every living being and maybe even non-living beings - who knows - have their own mana signature.”

Kai nodded, already knowing that much. “Both, receiving stats and leveling up are processes that infuse the being with more mana, strengthening it or in case of a level up improving the very essence of the being so it can hold more stats.”

Again Kai nodded. The system had explained that to her in the beginning, though it had been a bit more crude than Artemis’ version. “Well, since both processes involve putting more mana into a being that means that its mana signature gets brighter.”

This also made sense. Their [sense mana] skill was similar to heat vision. The more mana somewhere was, the brighter and clearer the surroundings became and vice versa. There had to be regions with a higher natural mana density though and that would mean that the whole region would be bright. Maybe you saw the mana differences in relation to the mana density of a region, much like someone gets accustomed to the light of the sun after they came out of a dark cave. It was something they would have to look out for in the future.

Artemis made herself comfortable on a pillow, but had to wait for a moment before she could continue because the moths trying to get past the first wall were making a ruckus. “I had wondered if you could use this knowledge to estimate the strength of a creature so during my training and hunting sessions I looked out for any differences in the mana signature built of my prey.”

It was a good thought and idea since knowing the enemy's strength in a fight was valuable information. “So after a while I noticed differences in the brightness of a beings mana signature and tried to figure out if I could tell what brightness was level and what stat.”

Artemis pointed at herself and then Anna. “What I found out was that levels increase the brightness of the edge of the signature and stats what is inside. You can compare me and Anna for example. She has more stats than me, but with level 2 I’m a level higher than her.”

Kai did as suggested and indeed, the edge of Artemis’ mana signature was brighter than Anna’s by a very small margin. It was really subtle though and if she didn’t focus hard on this she couldn’t tell the difference.

Kai looked proudly at Artemis. “That’s an incredible discovery dear! You should have come boasting after learning that!”

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Artemis looked away in embarrassment and cleared her throat. “Anyway, since I checked the moths mana signatures I could tell that those that entered the tunnels were all somewhere around level 3 to 5 with only a few more stats than us. The higher leveled and likely more experienced moths all stayed outside of the tunnels.”

So only the stupid ones entered the tunnels that were basically traps for the beasts, that was good to know.

Artemis gulped loudly. “Now, you should compare one of the moths signatures to the one of the dragon thingy, your majesty. Brian has saved a picture of the beast for threat analysis, I believe.”

Kai nodded, that was a good idea. She opened a picture with her own mana signature and one with a moth first. Her signature had a constant brightness without differences between stats and levels and was noticeably brighter than the one of the moth. That was interesting.

Next she opened the image of the large lizard thing and winced. It had a mana signature that was a lot brighter than hers, it was like comparing dying embers to a roaring fire. Underneath the picture was a text box.

[Threat assessment: earth dragon?]

Level: 30-80?

Stats: at least full level 25 (stat amount per level unknown)

Abilities: unknown, ability to use magic likely

Current threat: Undefeatable, Calamity

Notes: seems to be very territorial so confrontation should be avoidable

Kai read through the prompt and holy fucking shit was that thing a monster. She very much agreed with Brian, there was no way they could beat that beast. Let’s say it got the same amount of stats as Kai with every level then it would have 425 strength minimum. Since stats increased something by a percent each that would mean that freakin lizard was 68 times stronger than when it had been born. How do you even injure something like that?!

Back then it could have just blasted Artemis away as if the girl was nothing more than a fly so only losing a drone was a very fortunate outcome retrospectively.

Artemis seemed to catch onto Kai’s mood and nodded. “That’s the strength I have to reach for a rematch.”

Kai shuddered, that was insane. Wanting to fight the thing was totally stupid.

She glanced at Artemis and her will to restrict her daughter melted away when she saw her determined expression.

Kai sighed to herself. She might be the mother of them all, but she shouldn’t dictate all of their life choices or else how would they develop and advance?

She was their mother and would worry of course, but she should support them properly instead of prohibiting everything so they would be prepared for their adversary.

Kai leaned back and closed her eyes, listening to the slashing of the glaives, the snapping of the moths and the occasional chitter of a swarm drone. Her daughters were only talking in hushed voices, the most communication happening at the second wall were Tiffany was directing the others to properly build everything.

Kai sank further down, resting her back on her tail and somewhat relaxed. She was mentally exhausted by all the excitement and stress of the night and just wanted for it to stop. The amusement of Anna wafted by her antenna and before she could really do or say anything Kai drifted off into a restless sleep.

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