Chapter 553: A river of fruits
The campaign advanced in accordance with Malevolence’s plan.
Part of her human forces—Naregan-born people with green chitin who couldn’t hide among locals—carried Malevolence’s army stealthily into the mountains.
Even this close to the capital city, avoiding the army patrols was simple enough thanks to the bee scouts. Especially because all Vardish humans avoided moving too far away from their fields and roads.
The land there was untamed, wild, and full of dangerous creatures. A lot of them were plants so venomous that just brushing against them would make a human convulse in pain.
This was how Malevolence lost a few people, but each such encounter was catalogued, and the scouts guided humans through a safe path.
As for the humans who could disguise themselves as mercenaries, they have entered the city and spread around together with Agents, to convert people to a "correct" faith.
The city was an illness-riddled place, despite some quarantine measures—every entering person was checked for signs of sicknesses—and many healers were working inside. The Wildmen didn’t want to go inside much, fearing sickness.
Although previously Malevolence was using her vaccines sparingly, after she got reports from the scouts that entered Ferwall, she decided that it was pointless to continue doing it. Malevolence gave an order to immunise everybody who was going into the city.
The Wildmen already knew how well the immunising injections worked—some of them had fallen sick before and were given them—so these injections improved their willingness to serve Malevolence immensely. Other humans needed even less encouragement.
Of course, the guards on the entrance gates couldn’t find any signs of sickness on them, and they were let inside.
While mercenaries exchanged bandit heads for coins and former farmers searched for jobs, Ramwill and the Wildmen got access to what they wanted so much—alcohol, beds and female humans.
At first, Malevolence wanted to forbid them from indulging in recreation before the work was done, but Eloquence convinced her to wait a little and see.
It was a surprisingly good idea.
The good health of Wildmen was noticeable by locals, and they weren’t afraid to tell their drinking companions and mates that it was given to them by Mother-Nature’s "little helpers" and how nice it was to worship her.
The fame of Mother-Nature and the bees was spreading like another illness in the plague-riddled poor areas of Ferwall!
Meanwhile, other humans followed Agents’ directions to spread this faith in higher circles—as far as they could reach, at least.
It took another week for Malevolence’s own forces to reach one of the places her scouts found for the future sub-hive, and two more days for humans and bees together to build the frame of it.
Her soldiers, with more help from humans, cleared the area of insects, larger beasts and as many plants as they could. The humans even cut down a few nearby living mountains, because there were too many creatures that liked to live on their "branches".
The sub-hive was named Hive Aboveall, and Jellybee Queens immediately began laying eggs in its brood cells. They were so happy to finally have an opportunity to do it that they even agreed to lay eggs in the same hive!
Malevolence promised them that there would be more hives built later, but this would take more time. There weren’t enough workers at the time to maintain the work of more than one sub-hive; first, the bee population had to increase.
Even this was going to be hard. Malevolence brought with her an army, first of all. Some bees could act as Nurses and Teachers and other peaceful professions, but they were few. Barely enough for one sub-hive.
Malevolence already sent Father a request to bring more, but it was going to be carried for a long time—first by a dragon rider, then probably by a ship.
At the time, she made do.
After the sub-hive was built, a lot of previous army support workers moved to become semi-permanent workers there. The army didn’t need all of them now, though.
They have established border patrols and begun planting the usnea trees.
The area was already cold for humans to be in, but they could warm themselves up with clothing and fire. But after the usnea trees began growing, the place was rapidly becoming unlivable.
This was just a start, Malevolence knew. Life was going to become harder and harder for humans as usnea trees spread. But they had to get used to it.
For a start, Malevolence ordered to clear an area from usnea trees and let the humans build a village there. They and some bees would make sure the usnea trees didn’t grow in their living spaces and eat usnea tree fruits as usual.
In just five days, there were entire forests of usnea trees planted on places cleared from other plants, or right on top of the existing ones.
As they grew, usnea trees froze to death everything around them. In this region, some species had immunity to cold and survived even there, but bees could always kill them themselves.
At first, all the fruits that weren’t gathered for planting were used as food by bees or humans, but when there were enough usnea trees, Malevolence gave an order to move to the next stage of the campaign.
Hive Aboveall was built in only ten minutes’ flight time near a large river that passed near Ferwall as it descended the mountains. This let bees from the hive easily gather water, but Malevolence chose this place not for the water’s sake.
By her order, humans carried gigantic baskets of usnea tree fruits and emptied them into the river.
Usnea tree fruits were white and large, with thick flesh and lots of tiny seeds inside; despite their weight, if thrown in water, they bounced on the surface instead of sinking. The chill coming from them was almost nonexistent.
Now, thousands of usnea tree fruits were flowing down the river to spread their fruits over the continent, and there were thousands more on their way...