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BD - POBee 312.1 - Bee the Captain!
🕑 Added 2025-08-27 20:05:02 +0000 UTCThe Firstborn watched as a monster bee captain spread her mana out to the assembled digging and blinding bees. The Firstborn couldn’t help some trepidation. A base monster bee captain, with no attributes of her own, would now have to lead the bees into the dark of the Dirt Tunnels.
But it couldn’t be helped. The Fourth of the Fifth and her digging hive was stretched thin as it is. She was simultaneously responsible for producing the hive of hives’ only source of Ground-mana honey, scouting the Underway in the Beyond, and producing digging soldiers to fight in the Dirt Tunnels. She also raised a daughter queen with the Third of the Sixth, the thermal mining queen, who was of great interest to King and the evil one. She simply did not have the resources to produce every type of bee available. She needed gardeners and honeypots to scale up her production, communers to keep track of her scouts, and to raise a force that could fight where the main soldier bee army could not. It had taken all of her surplus honey just to evolve one digging monster bee assassin…and given that said bee had completed purifications all on her own, the Firstborn could not find any fault with that choice.
As a result, the Fourth of the Fifth raised no captains of her own at this stage. The First of the Sixth’s First Daughter, the blinding queen, on the other hand, was still relatively young within the hive of hives, so was only just producing enough soldier bees to form some squads, so she had not raised captains either. And so, the soldier bee army was forced to deploy a captain that could not see in the dark.
But that was the ultimate point of this. This was a deployment the soldier bee army would not have risked under any other circumstances. There was every chance that it would fail and that was why the Firstborn was prepared to step in. It was important that the soldier bee army tried things it wasn’t sure would work, for that was how they would find new ways they never imagined before. If the Firstborn’s predecessor, the First of the First, hadn’t flown to her doom, then the First Third of the First would not have known to try a different tactic. If the Firstborn hadn’t defied her instincts to fight personally, she never would have evolved.
So, the Firstborn trusted in the soldiers of the hive of hives and simply followed at a safe distance as the formation deployed, a digging worker riding on her back to guide her through the dark of the tunnels.
It was then that she received her first shock. The monster bee captain…was flying along with no trouble whatsoever. The Firstborn could not help but take a closer look…and saw the captain’s mana linked with the digging and blinding soldiers under her command. Her antennae twitched rapidly…for how could this be? Even the monster bee queens, with the innate ability to connect with and command their kin, had trouble commanding the soldiers of other hives, so how could a captain connect so smoothly?
The Firstborn observed more closely and then saw the mana of the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter…no, the mana of the hive of hives, wrap around the captain and soldiers’ mana and help bind them together. The Firstborn stood still in contemplation…they of the army had not considered this. The hive of hives made real…it was more than just an idea now. It was here, binding the soldier bee army truly into one hive, one army. And as such…a base monster bee captain could now see in the dark, because the soldiers she led could.
The First of the Second’s idea had already born fruit and taught them much about how the army could grow…and the purification hadn’t even begun.
“Ok everyone, here it comes!”
At the King’s command, the real test began. The Firstborn refocused, even new revelations of the hive of hives had to wait for the battle. They expected the fight to be easy, but that did not mean she could let her guard down. It would be the worst possible outcome to subject the King to bee losses in a battle they should win handily.
The Firstborn watched, taking advantage of the new hive link herself to perceive the world around her as the digging worker on her back did. Feeling, rather than seeing, as the worker sent out pulses of mana that returned to tell her what was ahead. Feeling the blinding bees hover overhead as the digging bees burrowed into the dirt and waited for the enemy to form.
It was one of the smaller wolf shades again, a fortunate outcome. The bee army was still refining its tactics for dealing with the ants, they had never been outnumbered before and were still working on that contingency. The wolf shade, on the other hand, was the most well-known foe, well within their capabilities and a perfect test for a captain-led battle. The Firstborn thus did not react to the appearance of the intruder, leaving it all to the captain and the soldiers. She did, however, extend her senses as a queen towards the captain, attempting to watch through the captain’s eyes and mana. Thanks to the hive link, she was able to do so without distracting the captain from her task.
The captain extended her mana and the blinding squad around her dove without even a command. The shade growled as it heard the buzzing and prepared a breath attack. The captain’s mana pulsed lightly and the blinding bees scattered…but did not break off. No, under the captain’s instruction, they pressed on their attack.
Even the Firstborn worried that the captain might be acting recklessly at first, but then the captain’s mana pulsed again. At that moment, the digging soldiers burst from the ground, stinging from below. The shade yelped as a stinger stabbed one of its paws.
And then, before it could retaliate against the soldiers, the blinding bees struck. Because the captain had them press on the attack, they arrived to sting just as the shade redirected its attention below. Moreover, though scattering had thrown off their aim, the captain redirected them all back on target. Blinding soldiers now flew in from all around the shade instead of a single direction, stinging it all over, while the digging soldiers continued their attack from below.
The small shade was quickly overwhelmed and the battle proceeded without incident. The Firstborn was thus free to stare in shock. She had seen and felt it through the hive of hives…the captain was able to command soldier bees at a level even she could not as queen. The captain’s mana was imbued with its pheromones to carry commands quickly…and without the need to stop and dance. She could thus instantly convey complex orders even mid-dive.
The range of that ability was relatively short but that wasn’t a problem for a captain flying with the soldiers. In fact, the captain was perhaps even more advantaged in that she was not distracted by the rest of the hive. A queen was always aware of her entire hive, even mid-battle the Firstborn could feel some of her awareness rest with her brood back home, at least making sure they weren’t calling for help. The captain’s awareness, on the other hand, had focused entirely on the squads she was commanding. She gave them undivided attention like a queen could not.
And that, combined with her command ability, allowed her to coordinate two different squads from different hives in a more complex maneuver than the bee army had ever attempted before. In fact, no queen could or should have attempted such a thing. A queen had to keep her attention on the army as a whole, lest many squads suffer while she was focused on one.
But…what if they had captains lead the smaller formations while a queen kept watch over the entire battle? The Firstborn was enlightened. They hadn’t emphasized captains because the queens of the soldier bee army already led the soldiers personally so captains felt unnecessary…but that did not mean captains had nothing to offer. No, just like a gardener did not replace foraging workers but helped them do their job more effectively, so too could captains help the queens lead their battles.
And they never would have known it unless they let the captains lead a battle. The First of the Second had been right, it would have been an incredibly inefficient outcome had the Firstborn simply defeated the shade as usual. In fact, the Firstborn was now wondering what other methods they had available that they hadn’t realized simply because they hadn’t tried.
She resolved herself once more. After all, the Fourth of the Seventh never stopped innovating just because she revolutionized hive management or flew through the Beyond. The First of the Fifth never stopped seeking new and better ways to process honey just because she had produced the best honey within the hive of hives. The Third of the Sixth never stopped stoking her flames, even after joining the Hive of All Fire. The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter had never stopped trying to tie the hive of hives together, not even after being the first to form a joint hive with the Fourth of the Seventh. The Firstborn’s own soldier, Beero, hadn’t stopped even after sacrificing her own body to protect the hive of hives.
The soldier bee army thus could not be content merely with winning battles, as they had been. They had to continue to grow, continue to discover new ways of fighting. Only then could they match the efforts of their sisters in the hive of hives. Only then could they keep the hive of hives safe.
Author’s Note:
Ah, so captains were still useful all along. And the soldier bee army only just found out…i-it’s ok. T-The purifications until now were too strong for experimentation, so it doesn’t count as inefficiency that they didn’t try it until now. T-The Firstborn definitely has nothing to worry about!
cue nervous buzzing as the First of the Fifth looms in the distance, antennae twitching to the scent of suboptimally-allocated resources in the air
Anyways!
Will the soldier bee army optimally allocate their captains now? Are there any other options that have gone egregiously overlooked? Will the First of the Fifth find any inefficiency now that she’s connected to the Firstborn through the hive link? Tune in next time, to find out!
Comments
CataFlan
New here, starting today from this chapter onward!
Ark
I’d love to see the General’s reaction to the king’s brilliance that is Belissar’s Beehouse
