Chapter 5: Chapter 5

Somewhat reluctantly Kai summoned her status screen again and looked at the section with her skills. Her reluctance was short lived though, because two of the skills sounded awesome. She prodded the system for some more information on them.

Hive knowledge

Every member of your species is connected through a tether of mana that forms something akin to a brain in the center of said tether and every member has to spend a very small portion of their mana to maintain the formation. Through that tether knowledge of members of your species is collected and then stored in the mana brain. The mana brain itself is part of your hive and will constantly try to improve on things.

Hive members have restricted access to the knowledge depending on their tier.

Kai carefully read through the skill description. It was basically like having wikipedia constantly available for her, though others of her species wouldn’t be able to profit as much as her.

The brain on the other side excited Kai. It wouldn’t do much for now, but could be incredibly strong in the long term. She just had to be careful not to be too disappointed when it worked on something unimportant. The brain would likely work on random stuff and work a bit like a research function in a strategy game, just with unlimited possibilities.

Now the only problem she had was that she had no idea how to access it and couldn’t feel it. Kai guessed there had to be more members than the queen and her child wasn’t developed enough yet.

She looked at her egg. She was going to be a mother in some time and she had no idea what to do. Would she even be able to feed her child?

Kai hadn’t thought about that before laying the egg and could see problems arising now. To distract herself she looked at her next skill.

Map of the sovereign

Utilizing the mana tether of your species a map of every place your hive members have visited will be created for you. The map will be updated every time a member of the hive visits a place again. You can decide if and how much you want to share this feature with your hive.

Kai’s inner strategist grinned evilly. This map opened so many possibilities, especially because of her drones. Should they be small Kai could use them for espionage with what you could basically call a video feed.

She thought about the sharing function a bit. Sharing everything with her hive would be a small boon, but Kai decided it was ultimately too dangerous. There was magic out there, so who knew if others couldn’t access her map with that.

Giving them a minimap of their surroundings like in a video game would be incredible and help her people to never get lost in already scouted regions.

Kai of course would make exceptions for people who would need it, like traders or generals. Speaking of generals, if she could somehow manage to use the mana tether to issue commands from afar and combined this with the map would improve the Antanoids tactical capabilities by a lot.

Kai leaned back until she laid on her tail. Doing this was really comfortable and she lost herself in her own fantasies of epic battles and adventures. 

She slowly got tired. It had been a weird day and an exhausting one at that, physically and emotionally. A bit absentmindedly she looked at her last skill.

Accelerated incubation

Once an egg has developed enough to form a mana tether your mana regeneration will be used to reduce the hatching time severely.

What a boring skill, Kai thought, already half asleep. She looked up at the violet sky through a small opening in her hideout and slowly drifted into sleep, plagued by worries about her safety and what was to come.

Her sleep was restless and she had nightmares of giant man eating insects and fantasy creatures that hunted her through a dark forest.

At some point a soothing presence entered the back of her mind and Kai finally calmed down. Her dreams changed to computer games and gigantic empires.

—

When Kai woke up it was darker than before. Not night dark, but as if the sun couldn’t decide whether to dawn or to set. There was also a smell in the air that she had never smelled before, but if Kai had to describe it it smelled like family.

Kai looked around groggily and noticed that her egg was missing. She immediately went on full alert and tried to find out what had happened. To her surprise she got an answer, though it didn’t say more than hatched.

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Kai’s thought process stopped for a second. Then she realized that it had to be the knowledge skill that gave her that answer. She searched for anything different in her mind than yesterday and found the tether. It was like a soothing presence in her mind that told her she wasn’t alone, but right now it was fragile.

Kai followed the tether and discovered something that felt like a library. With her consciousness she walked through it and chose a random sortiment of information. It was titled the queen's childhood and she realized that everything about her childhood was there. There was even information about a holiday trip she couldn’t actively remember anymore.

A bit embarrassed by the discovery that everyone of her hive would be able to read about these things she focused back on reality.

With the tether she should be able to open a map. Kai searched around for a bit until she realized that the map was already open, just really small and at the edge of her vision. 

She focused on it and tried to move it to the center of her view. Then she zoomed in a bit. Doing that was a lot easier, because it was similar to how maps worked on smartphones.

The map showed everything Kai had seen yesterday and her child was depicted to be some thirty meters away a bit around the tree.

Curious about what the worker was up to, Kai began to drag herself out of her hidyhole. That the worker was doing anything at all indicated that it could already think and Kai was a bit anxious how this meeting would end.

Once outside she stood up and began to walk towards the worker. She still had to drag her tail behind herself on the ground, but it weighed a bit less than yesterday. Kai wondered if she would be able to lift it up once her strength had risen enough, but that was a concern for later.

She rounded the stupidly large tree and laid her eyes on the worker. It had a lot of similarities to herself. The worker had brownish white fur and the same antenna and large eyes as Kai. It also had a tail like her, but with a size comparable to four fists it was much smaller than hers. The worker had less chitin armor than Kai and looked rather feminin compared to a human. It also looked like it had already washed itself.

Kai looked down at herself. Really the worker was only missing the chitin armor that seemed to be more for her style like the armor that held her furred breasts like a bra.

The worker noticed Kai and stopped eying the tree. It hurriedly ran over to her and fell on one knee before her, supporting its body with the fist on the same side of the knee. The worker's voice was as feminin as its body so Kai decided it was a female. “My Queen.”

Kai blinked at that. Uhh, this was much too weird for her taste, wasn’t she the mother?

Kai cleared her throat. “Uhm, could you stand up please?”

The worker stood up. “As you wish my Queen.”

The formality annoyed Kai. That wasn’t how she wanted to be treated by her children and that also wasn’t how she wanted to treat them. She sighed. “Could you please stop treating me like some queen. I am your mother and want to be treated as such. Also stop, calling me queen.”

The worker looked at her for a few long seconds before it answered like some machine. “Yes Lady Antana.”

Kai sighed. Her child wasn’t even a day old, so no matter how much it already knew it would not have a personality. She moved towards the worker and hugged her for a long moment. Then she put her hands on her daughter's shoulders and looked at her in the large black eyes. “I will name you Anna.” She couldn’t bring herself to say my child, because it was a bit too awkward for her.

Anna nodded. Her face was still unreadable for Kai, but she hoped that would change.

Kai still hadn’t seen the egg around, so she guessed her daughter had eaten it, though she tried not to think too much about that.

Now she only needed something to do, but Kai had no idea where she should start. Anna on the other hand had clearly been up to something, so Kai might as well ask. “Would you mind telling me what you have been doing at the tree?”

Anna nodded. “I was trying to ascertain if this is a good location to build a hive. That hole is not a place to live in for someone like you, Lady Antana.”

Kai was about to ask what conclusion Anna came to, but her daughter continued herself. “If I may voice my opinion, I believe we should start building a hive in a different tree. This one seems to be a bit old and might not be as stable as the others.”

Kai blinked. Built the hive in a tree?

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