--- Elena ---

I spent three days killing and devouring monsters without eating or sleeping and I had to admit, even at my level, I was getting really tired of it. It was two in the afternoon when I heard Dred talk in my mind, “I’m finished on my side and will return now. Should I go straight to you or do you want to meet up somewhere else?”

“Just come to me,” I replied. Even if he could teleport through hundreds of kilometers, it’d still take at least an hour for him to return to my side.

Hmm, what should I do in the meantime? I guess I’ll find those three brothers.

I wiped off my daggers and then teleported straight into the city. Since I infected them with my bacteria, I knew exactly where to find them. Everything and everyone had tiny life forms such as bacteria on their surface and skin, so nobody would notice something like my bacteria, it was just one among many.

As I entered the city, interesting news reached my ears. It wasn’t hard to notice that something bad was going on since everyone was talking about the same thing.

“Hey, hey, have you heard? The elves actually robbed the mines of our kingdoms! Even if it doesn’t mean much to our kings, this is clear provocation!”

“Yeah, I’ve heard of it. My sister works as a servant in the palace and she told me that our kings held a meeting. Every noble family attended once they heard of this. I wonder what sort of decision will the rulers make.”

“Do you think it could lead to war?”

“I’m not sure, but I don’t think our rulers would attack because of something like this, especially not without investigating the matter. The elves’ rulers are at the ninth rank as well and I’m pretty sure they wouldn’t want to get into a life-threatening war… unless they advanced past the level of our kings,” the man said with a grave face.

“That shouldn’t be possible,” the other replied. A smile formed on my face as their guesses reached my ears. People at the ninth realm were surely prideful, but that didn’t mean that they were stupid. They wouldn’t jump at the elves just because of a provocative letter because they surely knew how powerful the leaders of the elves were, even if I didn’t.

I wouldn’t attack someone at the same level of strength as me just because of a provocative letter either, even least so if they once had the ability to force me into enslavement... It was likely that the truth would be revealed soon about this matter and everyone would realise that the robbery wasn’t done by the elves, but it’d be enough to make some ruckus and cause an internal strife as well. People would start guessing who was the one who stole it, after all.

Since Liz and Skeiron lived in a noble mansion, they could easily find out what happened at the conference if Skeiron asked his father. All I had to do was wait for their report and for Dred to arrive. Originally, I wasn’t interested in the Warton brothers, but seeing the oldest one look at me so strangely, I decided to make use of them. They didn’t seem to be bad people and they looked quite young despite being at this level, so most likely they were talented.

If I made them my pawns, maybe I could earn a few useful servants. But naturally, I didn’t wish to give them my blood. Since it couldn’t be helped, we had to make a hierarchy in my hive and so, the servants at Audrey’s level were first ranked, their blood servants were second-ranked, and the second-ranked blood servants’ servants were third-ranked. The Warton brothers would be nothing more than third-ranked blood servants.

Maybe I should think of fancier names…

“Hey, Audrey. How are you doing?” I contacted her as I stopped walking on the streets and took a sudden turn to the right. In front of me was an alleyway where Liz awaited me.

"Master," she bowed deeply. Raising my hand, I greeted her and told her to wait a moment since Audrey replied.

“Elena? We’ve checked out the Dwarf Mountain and there is a huge cluster of tunnels and caverns beneath the mountains. There are many cities and powerful dwarves down there as well and naturally, we’ve seen many weapons. I imagine you’d want to check it out in the future. If you used Synthesis on these weapons, your daggers would become of much better quality.”

“Sounds good,” I replied.

“We’re on our way towards the Skeleton Hill, but it’s probably going to take a few days to reach it. Cor is doing fine, Jake has talked with him not long ago,” she added.

“Oh, good then. Dred will have to give a visit to the demons as well in the future, but he should become a bit stronger. Demons respect only the strong, after all. Even if he was a Devil God, they probably wouldn’t bother with him if he was weaker than their average. Right, on the way, could you check out the demons’ levels as well?” I asked.

“Of course. Anything else you wanted?”

“Oh, right, I almost forgot. I didn't contact you to report to me, actually. I just thought about naming the hierarchical levels of our hive,” I said.

“What? Isn’t it fine? It’s point on, right now,” she asked, visibly not understanding the difference. Fancy names were necessary sometimes! Well, Dred didn’t want to go for fancy names either, but I wanted something else.

“Jake! What do you say?” I asked for help.

“Me? I think we should name them,” as expected of him, he agreed with me. Dred and Audrey were too serious sometimes… boring people.

“See? Your lover isn’t as boring as you. Now then, let’s come up with something,” I said. At this point, Audrey didn’t even pay heed to my words.

“The third-ranked servants could be called Pawns since they’re not as important, right? Maybe Shadow Pawns?”

“Uh- please, just go with the first instead. Don’t be so cringe-worthy,” Audrey grunted.

"Why pretend? You liked playing when you were still a human! I bet you loved fancy names!" I said.

"Dream on. I liked them in the games I played, but this is reality and those were games. The two are different. I prefer to refer to things in a way that makes them simple to understand to anyone," she replied.

“Whatever, we shall refer to them as Pawns!” I agreed and decided to ignore her for now. “As for the dark scars, we gave them that name when they were still weak and were healing the 'scars' of their pasts. I’m pretty sure they’re happy as they are now, so that’s not an appropriate name for them either,” I added and after a bit of thinking, I continued.

“What if from now on, we referred to the second-ranked blood servants, the dark scars, as Blood Descendants? They’re like the ripples of my will! They work with perfect efficiency to deliver my will and deal with my obstacles! They’re also relatively close to me since they’re like my children and I’ve seen them grow up. And your level could be referred to as Overlords since you all inherited our blood directly and are second in command only to us.”

“Overlords? Haha, I can’t help but like that name,” Jake laughed. “But does this mean that you plan to make more blood servants of our level? I mean, you didn’t give a name to our tier before,” he asked.

“Uhm, I don’t have anything like that planned. Only if I find someone truly talented and worthy,” I replied seriously this time. Surely, I could pretend that I was friends with everyone among our blood servants, but that wouldn’t be correct. Although I wouldn’t want to lose either of them and would do my all to help them in their time of need, both as their friend and master, they’d never look at me and Dred as simple friends, not even the ‘overlords’.

Considering that the size of my little army was growing continuously as even the descendants started to make pawns here and there, whenever they needed it, I realised I had to build a strong hierarchy and divide them into tiers. Some blood servants, especially the descendants and the pawns, started to feel uncomfortable around me because of my friendliness which didn’t do any good for them.

They revered me as if I was their goddess and Dred as if he was their god and they couldn’t accept to speak with us casually. That being the case, it was better to draw a clear line of authority for my fanatic servants because that seemed to make them happy… though it saddened me a bit.

All it took was a thought for me to send a message to every blood servant related to this matter. Our connected soul realm was indeed a special but very useful one. Soon I received good opinions regarding the group names, but considering their fanatic mindset, I was pretty sure they’d have felt happy with anything I ‘gave’ them, be it an item or even their names.

"Wonderful names, Master!" Liz said aloud, bringing me back to reality.

"I'm glad you like it," I smiled back. "Now then, let's see how you proceed with the Greywing family."

It took years for me to finally accept that no matter how much I wanted it, I couldn't be just their friends.

This was my way of life, this had to be my way of life, after all…

I was the queen of the hive.