As it turned out, their trust was well-placed. Regina waited in silence for a few minutes, while the humans talked. Immediately after they seemed to finish, Baron Neralt turned around and headed back to the village.

Regina felt a bit relieved. It wouldn’t have been too hard to capture him again, even with a fight against the human knights, probably. She was still glad this meeting, at least, didn’t invite violence.

Regina had kept her promise and didn’t listen in on them, mostly because she didn’t find a way to do it safely enough. She didn’t know what Skills the knights might have. Still, she couldn’t help but feel a bit curious what they’d said. It was probably nothing outside what she’d expect them to talk about given the situation, though, judging by their expressions.

Regina smiled and stepped forward a bit. “I hope that was satisfactory.”

The leader of the knights nodded politely. “Indeed, thank you for your forbearance, Hive Queen.”

“Of course. Let me know if you have any further requests.”

Regina glanced around and frowned a little. They seemed pretty reserved. She had the impression the knights didn’t have the authority to make any decisions about the situation, or didn’t want to act and potentially make a mistake, or get blamed for something. That was probably to be expected. They did seem a little less hostile after talking to the baron, going by their body language, unless that was just wishful thinking.

“We will carry your messages to the marquis,” the leader said with an air of finality.

Regina suppressed a sigh. She’d hoped for more, to get at least a bit more of an impression to work with, but that would have to do.

The knight gave them a brief nod, then turned his horse around. The rest followed.

Regina watched them ride off for a few seconds, before she turned. She wondered who would come to visit next. She expected Janis or Kiara again, or at least a diplomatic envoy. They would have longer to travel, presumably. Although, even having looked at a few maps, Regina didn’t have a good sense of how quickly one covered any set distance in this world.

“Well.” She smiled at the others. “Let’s get to work.”

She walked off with Max and the group scattered, everyone returning to their duties. Regina returned her focus to the present moment and went back to the defenses they were preparing. She spent the next few hours conjuring a few different kinds of material between letting her mana recharge. They couldn’t hope to cover the complete perimeter of the village with detailed preparations, so it was better to focus on portable stuff. That was without considering one of their biggest advantages, though: the castle in the river, which they had also taken. It would make for a great defensive base, just as it was constructed to be.

Regina spent most of the next day in the castle. She discovered, to her relief, that the damage wasn’t as bad as it had looked like at first. The walls were all still mostly intact and structurally sound. The gate would need to be reinforced and there were quite a few repairs necessary, but everything was feasible. It helped that they had the aid of an elf with an earth manipulation ability, and they even got some advice from a stonemason and builder. Regina didn’t know what he was doing as a soldier, but she figured that either the elvish army made very sure to have access to a diverse skillset, or their longer lifetimes allowed the elves to get proficient at other trades and still switch to a military career easily.

As soon as she could, she climbed the castle’s keep, the central tower, to look at the landscape below. After she reached the highest level she could go, Regina realized she’d been stupid. Carefully, she took off and folded her tunic, then stretched out her wings. It took her a minute to find a good spot to launch from, but then she soared into the air and immediately banked to the side to get onto the roof of the tower. The landing was rougher than she’d have liked, rattling her bones and making her almost fall on her face.

She straightened up and glanced around. The stone roof was mostly level, circled by low battlements. There should be an access from below, but it was presumably blocked. The tower was circular, which she vaguely remembered should have meant it was constructed in a later period than other castles, but things here didn’t line up with what she knew about the middle ages all that closely. I’m pretty sure they didn’t have any actual monsters and elves, at least. She snorted to herself.

Regina sat down and watched the horizon, focusing on sensing her mana and practicing with it. She stayed there until it had recovered quite a bit, then reluctantly got up and flew back down to keep working on the main reason they were here.

The next few days passed without any major excitement. Regina kept considering and second-guessing her decisions about the eggs in development, how many and which types she should allow herself. She still felt like she needed her mana, but in the long term, she needed to keep her drones’ numbers up. At least she could comfortably sustain batches of over a dozen at a time by now, and a single egg barely affected her mana regeneration. Of course, with a Wis score of 20, that was probably to be expected.

Regina Hive Queen Level: 25 Mana: 786/1645 Hive: 29/113, 2 Swarm: 67/440, 5 Con: 13 Str: 12 Dex: 14 End: 14 Int: 21 Wis: 20

Regina frowned a little to herself as she read through her status once again. She still didn’t have nearly as many drones as she could have. Probably because she had leveled relatively quickly. Plus, her War Drones kept dying in fights. She’d lost more of them in this most recent battle than ever before, in absolute numbers. Of course, she also had more now. Besides that, while her mana pool was okay - and apparently quite large for her level, judging by what she’d heard from the elves - it still had a lot of room to grow. It was probably capped somewhere, as well, but she didn’t think she’d ever really been close to bumping against that limit.

Just one more thing to work on, for the future, she told herself. If the humans left her in peace for a few days, or better, weeks, she could grow her Swarm into a real force to be reckoned with. Though she wasn’t looking forward to the actual process. It hadn’t really bothered her so far, at least not like that, but with this such high numbers, making eggs got a bit bothersome, and inconvenient.

She was still excited when the last two sapient drones hatched. Regina had moved her eggs to an unoccupied building inside the perimeter of the castle that was still solid and almost entirely undamaged, hiding them from sight, at least from any casual observer. She sensed the shift in her mana that signaled drones hatching and went to have a look.

The new Drone Attendants were both female. But what captured Regina’s attention was that they looked to both have wings. Their general build was relatively similar to hers, though the color looked a bit duller and more uniform and they were smaller. Taking a closer look, the wings also seemed a bit different. From the looks of it, she didn’t know if they could already fly.

Regina opened her mouth to welcome them, then paused. Unconsciously, she started to frown. As her mental stat points and experience grew, she’d gotten better and better at sensing mana. It was telling her now that the two drones in front of her had it. Not like the others, although she was pretty sure they were also linked to her, but more like she had sensed it from Janis and other casters. After a moment, Regina started to grin.

“Welcome to life, young ones!” she told them. “I’m Regina, and the other drones around here are part of my hive, like you.”

While they familiarized themselves with their surroundings and Max talked to them, Regina thought about names. Once she had settled on them, she quickly took at look at their status sheets.

Via Drone Attendant Level: 1 Mana: 150/150 Con: 7 Str: 6 Dex: 10 End: 8 Int: 15 Wis: 14

Via’s sister, Ira, had the same stat distribution, and also 150 mana. Regina nodded to herself. That definitely seemed like a mage type, or at least the first Template that could use magic. Her drones had always had high Int stats, but she hadn’t seen any higher than 15 so far, and their Wis was also high.

“Do you know any Spells?” she asked them.

Ira cocked her head slightly to the side. “I’m afraid not, Mother.”

“You could teach them, Regina. I’m sure they’ll learn quickly, and it will benefit the hive a lot, my Queen,” Max said, putting slight emphasis on the last two words. Ira nodded.

“Of course.” Regina smiled. “That’ll let me see how easy the spells I know are for other people to learn, too. Not that my own drones are probably a good marker for the other people around.” She shook her head.

“We’ll help you any way we can, my Queen,” Ira said. “That’s why we’re here, I think.”

Via nodded. “I have some … strange instincts. It’s a little hard to be sure of anything, but I’m pretty sure of that.”

“Good,” Regina told them. “You’re the first of this Template, and I don’t know what it’s meant for. It’s good if you can listen to your instincts and figure stuff out.”

She quickly checked her own mana again.

Mana: 843/1685

It sounded like she had gotten an increase to her mana pool with their hatching, even though they had mana of their own. That went counter to her hypothesis that she might be siphoning the mana out of her drones. Then again, that would make it hard for any drone to have mana, but they clearly could. Something like it might still be true, she just didn’t have nearly enough data or insight to figure it out.

And even if she did, it probably wouldn’t change things much in a practical sense. She was already getting a lot of mana, anyway.

Unfortunately, she couldn’t spend all of her time teaching the new girls magic. There was always more work to be done. With her hive growing, Regina had to spend more time making sure she was on top of things. They were organizing themselves pretty well without her, but she was still the leader. She especially needed to look over the defenses and preparations for combat they were making. She’d prefer to use them for demonstration purposes, but if an army made its way here, she also wanted to be ready. Although Regina had already decided to increase how many eggs she had in development and raise her Swarm’s numbers, even if that cut further into her mana.

She figured she’d gotten used to Max following her around a lot of the time, and having new people do it couldn’t be that bad. Maybe a change would even be nice. The two new Attendants did like to stick by her, as well. At this point, she was pretty sure they were supposed to be something like “queen’s attendants”. And with her hive potentially into the hundreds at this level and growing further, that made some sense.

They turned out to be surprisingly useful, though. The first time Regina decided to produce a large batch of Swarm Drones after their hatching, they followed her into the hut and made sure she was comfortable. The other drones had so far stayed away from her at these times, maybe because they’d felt she was a little uncomfortable with it. Via and Ira, on the other hand, took everything in stride. Via was taking the first eggs away before she was even finished, and Ira brought a bucket of water and helped her wash up.

Regina resolved to test their medical knowledge, teach them about it and see if they could learn her healing Spell, soon, but otherwise stayed silent about it.

It did make her feel better about the coming clutches of eggs she’d planned. She was coming to the decision to leave only a little mana reserved for spells and occasional conjuration, and focus on increasing her hive’s numbers. That would also be an investment for the future, since it would grow her mana pool, as well.

She ambled out into the outskirts of the village, heading towards the southwestern fields. Then she stopped as she heard a rumble coming towards her, and turned to see a mountain of dark fur barreling at her.

Regina laughed and stepped back, scratching the Mana Beast under the chin with one hand, then using her other one to pet it on the back and sides. The monster chuffed softly and shifted, making it easier.

“I see you’re warming up to me, Arcanis,” Regina said with undisguised amusement.

She personally thought the name wasn’t that good. She might not have even needed to ask her drones. But Tia’s suggestion had met with approval from the rest, and Regina hadn’t seen a reason to refuse. It was a pretty on-the-nose reference to the Infected minion’s type, at least if you had her language skills, but she supposed it could be worse.

Arcanis didn’t seem smart enough to understand Regina’s words, but she’d clearly sensed something from her, because the monster turned again and huffed. Regina smiled and intensified her petting for a few moments. Then Arcanis seemed to have had her fill of her attention and wandered on, approaching the Attendants, who were watching curiously.

Regina kept smiling, mostly because she saw that the Mana Beast had leveled up again. It looked like the Infected monsters benefited from the experience gain boost. Then she turned her gaze to the fields further on, and paused.

She saw one of the War Drones that was walking around, perhaps searching for some food or patrolling around its hive’s new territory on some instinct. She recognized this one. It had grown larger than its fellows, its shell seemed sturdier, and the blades longer and sharper. Regina called up its status sheet again with a thought.

War Drone Elite Level: 20 Mana: N/A Con: 13 Str: 13 Dex: 11 End: 13 Int: 6 Wis: 5

Its Class seemed to have upgraded automatically upon its Evolution. Maybe because it was not smart to make a (good?) decision by itself. Regina guessed that this would be the norm for most monsters, the non-sapient ones. She didn’t mind it, exactly.

Regina idly sent the drone a mental command and watched as it hurried off in the direction of the river, presumably trying to bring some fish in. She didn’t have high hopes for that endeavor, but it might be amusing to watch, as well as instructive. She still wanted to understand the minds of her drones, and the psychic link, better.