The storm lasted through the night and into the next day, so it wasn’t until after dawn that the hive really started to deal with the aftermath of the attack. Not that Regina would call it much of an attack, really.

Apparently, she’d missed some results of the fighting while her attention was turned to other things, so she’d been a bit surprised to realize that there was minor damage to the hive’s main buildings. It looked like the gnomes had gotten some attacks off, and, more often than not, missed their real targets. The damage was nothing major or difficult to repair, though, and Ina was already on it with a small swarm of drafted War Drones and some Workers.

Regina let everyone sort things out without poking her nose into matters too much, and instead took stock of the hive and adjusted her plans for the hive’s growth. They might need more Production Drones than she’d first thought, and it might be worth putting up dedicated ‘farming bases’ devoted to growing food.

She also kept a closer watch on the Winged Drones she had near the Confederation, watching for any troop movements or other unusual activity. She didn’t find much, though. It looked like the gnomes would need a bit of time to deal with their loss and start reacting, or to try something new.

Usually, she’d be tempted to push in that situation, but they hadn’t exactly lost many fighters, and they were probably beefing up their own security already.

Regina snorted to herself as she realized that they still hadn’t sent an official declaration of war. Neither had her hive, of course. It wasn’t like there could be any doubt that there was a war between them, though. Maybe she should still go through with that formality, anyway? Worth discussing with the elves, Regina decided.

She had leveled up after the fight, presumably due to a windfall of Experience for her hive defeating several very high-level opponents. Not to mention that she’d also contributed to the fight herself. Actually, Regina felt a bit ambivalent about that. She kind of missed having the opportunity to fight, but it was clear that her role was becoming a more behind-the-scenes, leadership-focused one. Well, either way, she was looking forward to reaching level 45 and getting a new Ability.

In the meantime, Regina checked in with Ray. He was in frequent talks with Enais and a few other elves, building connections, making contacts and getting a feel for their movers and shakers and their political landscape. He was rising to the occasion quite well, in her opinion, and she made sure to let him know.

Enais didn’t seem surprised when Ray brought up the issue of an official war declaration, and told him she’d get back to them. Regina knew they were busy dealing with the situation and trying to organize what and how the Elvish Free State would support the hive, as well as finalizing sanctions against the Gnomish Confederation of the East, so Regina wouldn’t joggle her elbow.

Maybe you should ask or lean on the marquis to get his diplomatic support for us and against the gnomes, Ray suggested. I’m not sure if it would feasible for him to embargo trade with the gnomes, or if they even trade at all, but maybe it would be a good statement?

Regina paused and considered it for a moment. That’s probably a good idea. Thanks, Ray. If you’ll talk to Enais about it once she’s free, that should help. I think I’ll also bring it up with Kiara to see what she thinks. She smiled slightly. And maybe we can even get support from nations we’re not in direct contact with!

Ray seemed amused at that, but he agreed with her sentiment. Regina assured herself that everything was going fine on his end, before she turned her attention to other matters.

One of those was the defenses around their hive, especially the main base. Regina checked on their progress, reassuring herself that they had been drawn up as intended.

One of the first things they’d agreed on was to increase the actual fortifications around the hive. A simple palisade and ditch were fine in a situation in which you were pressed for time and just holding off a few monsters, or Delver adventurers, but they could do better.

Well, somewhat better. They still couldn’t do what she really wanted, but that was a given. Still, they would expand and adapt their tunnel network, creating the equivalent of a staggered ring of bunkers around the base. They’d build up some proper walls, with lookout and guard towers, and ‘artillery’ entrenchments. Regina knew enough to want earthwork berms and reinforcements, rather than just a wall of mortared stones, which should stand up better against real explosives. Ben agreed with her about that, anyway. Factoring in the need for overhead protection and fallback positions, it would require quite an effort on her hive’s part. Luckily, they had lots of Swarm Drones to help with the construction, and more of them on the way, both as reinforcements from other bases and new hatchlings.

They’d also extend the minefields, and probably move them back further to make room for the new defenses. Regina was a bit disgruntled at seeing such an easy, hard counter to them from the gnomes, but landmines would probably still be useful against a proper army of common soldiers. She wished they could get something better than simple pressure- or impact-detonated ones, but that was probably still a ways off.

She did wonder how work like this might influence the Class choices and Evolutions that her hive’s drones would get. It might not do anything, but one could always hope. And she did have a feeling their Class, or Template, makeup might change a bit if the hive got a real technological revolution. Of course, that probably also depended on those who governed the System. And if the other gods, or most of them, agreed with Deirianon, that would be a whole other issue.

Regina really wished Alianais would just talk to her. She’d like to ask her some pointed questions about the gnomes’ claims and their history. Maybe she actually is ignoring me, but she probably just has other things to do. Regina sighed. I might have to visit an actual temple at some point after all.

She shook her head and got back to the defensive planning. It was a bit harder to decide what to do for all their outposts. What kind of fortifications did they need? Which ones should they focus on? Obviously, those closer to the gnomes should probably take priority, but the more extensive the defenses they planned, the more effort and time it would take. And they still hadn’t even fought regular gnomish soldiers in anything like a real battle, so they would probably need to reassess and revamp their measures a bit in the future.

Regina was thankful that she had such a large, ever-expanding workforce at her disposal. Swarm Drones might not be able to accomplish complex tasks on their own without supervision, but at least they didn’t complain, take days off, go on strike or demand worker representation in policy-making.

Then again, that might come back to bite her once the hive’s economy got off the ground and went beyond a medieval level. Swarm Drones didn’t exactly make for a good consumer base. And Regina wasn’t a fan of communism-style controlled economy on principle, but there was no point complaining about that now.

Either way, she vaguely remembered that about one to a few percent of a nation’s population could be taken to join its armed forces without causing severe strain to its economy. Actually, that number might even be high for a real standing military, although she supposed you could have militias, reservists or whatever. Either way, that was not really a problem for her, and she could have a much larger percentage of her hive’s numbers fighting. Besides, War Drones were born with natural weapons and could eat basically anything short of dirt or rock, while humanoid enemies would have to worry about feeding, equipping and training soldiers. And getting reserves literally just needed her to dedicate a bit of mana and wait a few days. Of course, that didn’t take into account the System and Classes. She assumed that most gnomes didn’t have soldier- or fighting-focused Classes, but were farmers, artisans, traders and things like that. On the other hand, the soldiers they did have would be stronger.

Regina sighed and closed her eyes for a moment, ordering her thoughts and trying to see the takeaway from those musings. Overall, she was quite sure that her hive would win in any war of attrition, but the gnomes did have a much higher population to start with. If they overwhelmed her with numbers or levels at the start, it might get dicey, especially if they found counters to the ‘advanced’ snippets of technology the hive had come up with.

She opened her eyes, then closed them again and focused on the scattered flocks of Winged Drones she had near the gnomes’ territory. She nudged them to move around, gathering in some larger units, setting up a small rotation for training lower-level members and a stream of reinforcements as new drones hatched to take up posts elsewhere. It would probably take a bit more preparation, but she was thinking about launching a few raids, burning some gnomish outposts around the mountains and maybe even getting close to a city or two. Anything to keep the gnomes off-balance and disrupt their own plans.

It would be her first aggressive move of the war, though, and she wasn’t quite sure that was the right choice for something like this. Maybe she should start off with more of a bang? Or bide her time a little longer? Regina added it to the list of things to discuss with her military leaders and allies, but making the preparations wouldn’t hurt in the meantime.

While she was at it, Regina also diverted some Winged Drones to the east. From her recent exchange of letters with Lyns and Kiara, she knew that the civil war wasn’t going well. Just another issue she didn’t need right now. But if they actually lost, they would open the way for the Cernlian government to invade her hive’s territories, so she supposed she ought to keep an eye on things at the very least.

She had even offered to increase the financial backing she sent to the marquis, and while he’d gratefully accepted more gold, Kiara had a point that that had basically reached the limit of its effectiveness. There was only so much money could do when you couldn’t find troops to hire and when food to buy was difficult to get. At this point, the only thing Lyns might be able to do was bribe Nerlia to leave them alone, and she had no idea how realistic a prospect that was.

This time, Regina pushed the range of her flying drones, sending them further than she’d usually dared to go before. Flying lower to the ground and working with the information she’d got from her allies, it was possible to trace the front lines of the war.

Lyns’ forces had been pushed further east, although he’d hooked around to the south and even moved in a southwesterly direction. That cost him quite a bit of ground, but it also brought him back closer to the core of his territory, where his power was strongest. Ironically, the Lyns march itself hadn’t been touched much by the fighting so far, so it was still a source of much-needed supplies. It had always been one of the most heavily fortified regions, anyway, which probably helped.

Regina could see the armies of the Nerlian and Cernlian kings encamped, getting a look at the banners and flags flying from the occasional pole to confirm which was which. They hadn’t merged, for some reason. You’d think joining their forces would make them stronger, right? But the Nerlians were still closer to their own border, and the Cernlian royal camp was a sprawling mess.

Regina hesitated for a moment, then sent a few Winged Drones flying a bit closer. She was starting to get a suspicion about this situation, and it was probably worth trying to figure out if she was right.

Luckily, they seemed to be a bit preoccupied, or maybe their sentries just weren’t that alert. Maybe there was something to the thing about people never looking up. Anyway, Regina got the Winged Drones close enough to get a better idea of the camp and what was going on within, or at least a rough idea of their organization. She was pretty confident she saw what she needed to.

After a few minutes, Regina disengaged herself from those drones and ordered them to circle back, while she started breathing regularly and preparing herself. She drew on her magic and focused, starting a spell that was familiar by now.

It took a while, as always, and this time, it almost felt like she had to fight past a weird kind of static. She didn’t get a clear view, either. After a moment, Regina realized that Kiara wasn’t alone this time. Instead, she sat in a room somewhere talking to what looked like a group of noblemen. Regina watched them for a moment, but it was like having a bad phone connection, and her audio cut out occasionally. Either there were protections against scrying on the location or one of them carried something like that.

Regina sighed and settled in to wait. She kept the scrying connection going, despite the drain on her magic. She was good enough at it now that she was able to focus on other things at the same time, and she listened in to a meeting between Max and a few other warriors and checked on her Winged Drones again.

Then Kiara left the meeting and withdrew to a private room. She closed her eyes and Regina waited until she felt her magic reaching out to hers again, establishing the link.

“Hive Queen Regina,” Kiara bowed slightly.

Regina returned the gesture. “Lady Kiara, it is good to see you. I fear I need to take up some of your time again.”

“Of course, I’m at your disposal.” Kiara settled down on a richly decorated folding chair and took a sip from a cup of what was probably wine standing on a small table. “How can I help you?”

Right to business, then. They both had things to do. “There are several things we need to discuss,” Regina began. “But first, I may have some new information for you regarding your opponents’ camp. I sent some Winged Drones there and found some interesting patterns.”

Kiara leaned forward slightly. “We have been having trouble with getting eyes inside their camp, unfortunately. Their scrying protections are good and we don’t have any reliable spies,” she admitted.

Regina nodded. “You weren’t aware that they seem to be suffering from illness, then.”

Kiara sat up straighter. “Illness? How bad is it?”

“Probably pretty bad, but I’m not an expert on things like that,” Regina admitted. “They definitely reorganized their camp, and a lot of soldiers seem to be sick, from what I can tell. I’m not sure what kind of plague it is, but I’m pretty sure there is one.”

Kiara tapped her fingers on the table for a moment before she stopped. “We do have more healers than they do, partly because we can afford to pay them much better,” she said thoughtfully. “Especially in terms of high-level healer Classes. Their supplies are probably running low, too. It would explain why they haven’t been pushing our retreat more aggressively.”

“How much impact is an epidemic like this going to have?” Regina asked. She knew that in preindustrial armies, a lot of soldiers died to disease, more than to actual combat, but she wasn’t sure how that translated to a world with the System, Con and End stats and magical healing.

“It depends.” Kiara frowned thoughtfully. “It will primarily affect their low-level soldiers, conscripts and weak fighters. But even stronger people can be affected if they don’t have a focus on Constitution. Even if they get it under control, it will still be a major issue for them, however. That much I would be prepared to bet on.”

“Good.” Regina smiled with a bit of relief. “I’d advise being careful and making sure your own army follows strict hygiene regulations, then. But that sounds like it will be a relief to your forces.”

Kiara returned her smile, and the conversation moved on to other topics. Regina took a moment to be thankful that her hive had never had problems with illness, despite living in pretty close quarters.