IDWTBTHQ Chapter 78 - Hive Sweet Hive

The sun was shining bright in the sky, melting down the last remnants of snow from the now green fields mottled with flowers while countless birds flocked in the sky, seemingly celebrating the end of the winter with their singing.

There was, however, a place that was untouched by the arrival of spring. A long strip of land, about 15 kilometers long and 8 kilometers wide, was entirely covered in a gray, translucent substance which encroached everything, drowning the vegetation under a living, all-devouring blanket and turning what had once been a bucolic countryside into an alien and disturbing landscape.

To Marcus, however, this view inspired nothing but a deep sense of contentment, to the point that he actually went for some sightseeing whenever he was feeling a little down and needed to cheer himself up. Flying on top of his Wyvern Drone, he could see his lands as clearly as an incredibly detailed map, and though the chilly air made him shiver even under his coat he could feel his mood improve considerably.

For the first time ever since he was born in this world he felt safe and at home.

His Hive had grown to the point that he didn't need to fear his neighbours anymore, as he had the military might to easily overwhelm the goblins —and probably even the forces of Brettholz, though he really wished he would never need to do that. What had started as a bunch of Broodmother eggs and a few hundreds surviving drones from the battle against the goblins had become a Hive of slightly less than thirty thousand drones, each of them an improved model that vastly outperformed the previous generations.

7,821 Worker Drones were currently the most active, as he could see them walking back and forth from the borders of his territories in order to collect mold-wax. Sure, picking up the stuff closer to their base would have been easier, but without being regularly trimmed the mold-wax would have expanded well past the borders of the Vex territories —hell, at the rate it had been growing it would have already engulfed half of the province of Brettholz. However, the upside of this abnormal growth rate was that his drones didn't risk starving any time soon, even if their numbers grew to three times their current ones.

Then there were 11,115 Warrior Drones, 6,321 Flyers, 988 Heavies and about four thousand other miscellaneous drones, but most of those forces were currently in hibernation, a trick which had spontaneously popped inside of Marcus' mind a few months before, when he had worried about how to feed his troops during the winter. Apparently, as his instincts had suggested to him, Vex drones could be given the command to go into hibernation and if they were surrounded by a cocoon of mold-wax they could remain in that state almost indefinitely. The Vex Queen was kinda irked that his instincts hadn’t informed him of this ability sooner, though admittedly he couldn’t have used it before, since in the forest he needed all of his drones on active duty. That seemed to be a trend with his instinctual knowledge, to withhold information from him until he could actually make use of it —he hadn’t been aware of the Broodmothers either until he had gathered enough supplies to actually feed one, for example— and as far as he was concerned, that was a huge pain in the ass. After all, knowing about his abilities beforehand would help him plan ahead. But as things were now, he couldn’t pry whatever secrets the Vex part of his mind was holding no matter how hard he tried, so he’d have to just proceed as usual and hope that nothing vital was being hidden from him.

Besides, he had more urgent things to think about. Even without an active threat, he was busy managing his territories, trying to learn how to control his aura (this thought made him grimace a bit) and, most importantly, increasing the number of drones in order to prepare for the alleged orc army that would soon invade Brettholz.

Luckily, the last part was actually going on pretty fine.

There were now ten active Broodmothers in the Hive, plus another one that still had to fully develop, and each of them was able to lay about 50 eggs per day, though until recently the Vex Queen had kept the production well under that limit in order to allow the mold-wax to grow. As things were now, the thirty thousand drones were just the tip of the iceberg, as he also had thousands of eggs waiting to hatch and five hundreds more were produced every day. Given another few months, he could very  well have hundreds of thousands of drones at his service, which would probably be enough to easily deal with any threat that the forest would throw at him.

As the wind was getting stronger and colder, Marcus decided to return to his home, and mentally ordered the Wyvern Drone to go back. As the huge creature steered in the air, another part of the Vex territories became visible, and the Hive Queen saw something that never failed to make him feel proud.

In his previous life, Marcus had been studying to become a civil engineer. He never got really far in his studies, since he often had to take sabbatic years in order to work and pay off his tuition, but nonetheless he had always liked building stuff, and it had come as a surprise that he had found the opportunity to indulge in his old dream career in this new world.

The new Hive was the culmination of his efforts and knowledge. He had it built on the hill where the old stone quarry was and due to all the changes he had made the place was virtually unrecognizable from how it was before. First of all, he had his Drones dig a lot of tunnels and caves inside of the hill, creating a truly labyrinthine complex while also obtaining a lot of rock to use as building materials. Then on the surface he had used those stones, plus wood obtained from the forest, to build the foundations of many buildings, from storehouses to ramparts, and then he had them all coated in mold-wax. The result was a humongous structure that looked vaguely like a termite nest, with hundreds of mold-wax spires rising up to the sky while countless holes were opened in the ground itself. The quarry itself had become a plaza where at least two thousand warriors could easily gather, and it was protected by a three meters tall wall made of stone and mold-wax. In addition to this Marcus had his drones divert the course of a nearby river, creating a series of canals and moats around the hill that provided water to the Hive and would have worked as an additional obstacle against an invading army.

That said, there weren't any doors, nor gates or anything that could be closed, and these fortifications and defenses couldn't really stop a determined and numerous invader. However, that wasn't their purpose, as they were there only to restrict the movements and slow down a potential enemy army, while also forming a series of chokepoints that the defenders could hold. And while the attackers were kept at bay, the Vex could use a network of subterranean tunnels that the Digger Drones had prepared to attack them from behind. These tunnels spanned almost the entirety of Marcus' lands, and their exits were virtually invisible as they were covered by a layer of mold-wax, and the Vex could use them to move unseen to a number of strategic locations, thus giving them a huge advantage in maneuvering.

To anyone with enough tactical savviness, it would be clear that what Marcus had built was not a bastion to repel attacks, but rather a complex and lethal trap, meant to catch any invading army and inflict horrifying losses. The Vex Queen felt incredibly proud of his creation, though, to be honest, he suspected that the general design was more the result of his instincts rather than his knowledge. After all, this all felt like a trap meant to catch strong, overconfident prey, something which would really suit the predatory mentality of the Vex. However, not even this fact made him less happy about his accomplishments, and such was the confidence he has in the effectiveness of his new defenses that he almost felt let down by the fact that no one had tried to attack him already.

That said, Marcus thought as the Wyvern drone gently glided past the Hive, it was thanks to this peace that he had been able to achieve so much. Without having to constantly hide and fear for his life, the Vex Queen had been able to focus mostly on developing his Hive, getting it to its current size and strength. Besides, thanks to this respite, he had also been able to wait for the Broodmothers to develop naturally, and now he was able to leave the mass production of drones to them, so now he was finally free from that responsibility and didn’t have to spend most of his day squatting and popping out eggs. That said, he still made the occasional egg from day to day —though not nearly as many as before— mostly because he physically needed to and also because he wanted to experiment with the new DNA he got.

The Vex Queen's main motivator for this “research and development” activity was Golam. The taxidermist often came for a visit, always bringing new samples from weird and exotic creatures and a lot of bizarre ideas on what type of drones could be made, and some of his bottomless passion for projecting new drones had somehow rubbed off on Marcus. Besides, it would have been a shame to not make use of the new DNA that was provided so generously.

Thanks to this collaboration, many new types of drones had been born, though most of them were prototypes which still needed work and served little purpose beyond experimentation.The Flying Warrior for example seemed like a good idea on paper, but in practice it was nearly useless as it was too clumsy to fly properly and too weak and light to be an effective fighter on the ground.

However, in the midst of those failures and half-baked ideas there were also a few genuinely useful new drones, which warranted a mass production in the future.

The first of those successes was an improved version of the Spitter Drone. First he had incorporated the DNA of the Piraca and of a few other creatures in the original design, thus creating a hybrid that he had decided to call the Artillery Drone. These drones were much bigger than a Spitter and looked more similar to bloated lizards with extremely thick and muscular necks rather than frogs. They were also much more effective as a living artillery piece, having an effective range of 150 meters and a much greater reserve of acidic venom to use as ammo.

Another interesting creation was the Dreadnought Drone, a huge, hulking creature that resembled a mix between a beetle, a rhino and a pill bug. The Dreadnought was by far the biggest drone Marcus had ever made, being almost four meters tall and six meters long, with a colossal horn in the front and its body entirely protected by extremely thick chitin armor. The main purpose of this creature was to act as a living battering ram, since it was deceptively fast for its size and its sheer mass made it basically unstoppable once it gained enough momentum.

However the most successful type of drone so far was without a doubt the Wyvern Drone. This drone, based mostly on the genetic material and appearance of a wyvern, looked like a huge bat-like creature with a vaguely reptilian head, plus the horn and the chitin armor typical of the Vex, and it was absolutely huge, with a wingspan of over eighteen meters. The Wyvern Drone could not only fly at an impressive speed over huge distances, but it was also strong enough to effortlessly carry two adult humans on its back, and besides, riding one while it glided in the sky was simply amazing. The sensation of flying on a living thing was completely different from flying on a plane, and the feeling of freedom was unparalleled. Ever since his first, cautious flight on top of his first Wyvern, Marcus had taken a liking to it, to the point that patrolling his territories from above had become one of his favorite hobbies. But even most importantly it was an incredibly fast method of travel, as the Wyverns were capable of flying from Stonebarrow to Brettholz and back in barely three hours, while it would take at least half a day to make the same trip on horseback. Initially, the only drawback of this type of drone was that they couldn't be given any further order once outside of Marcus's telepathic range, thus limiting their use for anyone who wasn't the Hive Queen, but luckily he had come up with a way to circumvent this limitation. By programming the Wyverns to instinctively respond in specific ways to certain stimuli —like, for example, turning left when they were patted twice on the left side of their neck— he had been able to create a method for anyone who knew the right commands to ride the drones even without his presence. Golam himself had tested this method by flying to Brettholz while Marcus waited for him in Stonebarrow, and judging by the fact that the taxidermist had managed to come back in one piece, this method worked rather well.

But the real surprise had come later. As soon as the marquis had learned about this new, rideable drone type he had asked Marcus for some of them, apparently in order to improve his scouts' ability to patrol the forest. The Vex Queen had obliged of course, since it was in his own interest to help his allies, but what he had not expected was that the Wyvern Drones had gotten so popular that not even  a month after he had received requests for hundreds of them coming from all over the kingdom of Medelan and even from abroad, with numerous people willing to pay a conspicuous sum for a single specimen. Apparently, as he had been explained by Hoggs later, tameable creatures that could carry a person while flying were pretty rare and valuable in this world, and the Wyvern Drones not only fit the bill but were also much more reliable and docile than most flying animals.

The prospect of such a profit was really quite enticing, especially for someone like Marcus who really knew how it felt to be broke, and as a result he had decided to make a Broodmother to mass produce Wyvern Drones. Sadly, this Broodmother had still to mature fully, so for now the number of Wyvern Drones was limited to seven, with five working for the marquis and two staying with Marcus, just in case he and his friends in Stonebarrow needed to get away.

All in all, the future looked pretty promising for the Vex Queen. He had the means to gain a lot of money, he had a place he could call home, he had friends who kept him company and, last but not least, no one was currently trying to kill him. The only negative note was the threat of the future orc invasion, but even in that case Marcus believed that the forces he had gathered by now would have been able to deal with it.

Marcus sighed. It was quite a feat that he still managed to feel down despite all of this, but then again it was part of human nature to always see the glass half empty.

For all his successes, there was one thing that had steadily been getting worse, and that was Marcus' ability to control his telepathy. In the beginning, his lessons with Hoggs seemed to bear fruit, and he had been able to visit Brettholz at his leisure without the presence of the crowd bothering him too much.

However, that had changed in the last two months.

According to Hoggs for some reason his aura had increased considerably over the last few months, and as a result his telepathic ability had also gotten stronger. On the upside, the range of his telepathic link with his drones had increased to about thirty kilometers, but the downside was that he had lost any semblance of control over his abilities. Now not only he couldn't silence the presence of people around him but he also picked up some of their surface thoughts, something which —apart from being terribly distracting and uncomfortable— was apparently a big no-no for the local laws. And to top it all off, his own presence was now so overwhelming that just getting near Brettholz spooked all the animals in the city and made most people uncomfortable —though for some reason this didn't apply to Felix, Klara, Hoggs and Golam, probably because they had gotten used to it right now.

Because of this, Eisen had politely suggested that it was for the best if the Vex Queen refrained from visiting Brettholz until he managed to regain control of his telepathy. And, despite his best efforts, Marcus was simply unable to do so at the moment. His aura was so strong that whenever he tried to contain it he felt as if trying to stop a flood with his bare hands.

As a result, he had been confined inside of his territories for the last two months. It wasn't all that bad, since he had his friends to talk with  and his drones cared for his every need, but this whole situation still pissed him a lot since it made him feel like a prisoner, a sensation he absolutely loathed.

Luckily flying on the Wyvern drone and seeing his domains helped, as it cheered him up and distracted him from his predicament, which was the reason why Marcus took any occasion he could to leave Stonebarrow and go on patrol. Well, one of the reasons, at least...

While he was lost in his thoughts, the Wyvern Drone finally arrived above Stonebarrow, and slowly started to descend towards the village, flying in a descending spiral.

“Well, break time is over.” Marcus said to himself. “It's time to get back to work!”