Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire-Chapter 433: The time had come for a genocide
And the time had come for the genocide of the hornets!
The past six months were a peaceful time, which let us develop immensely. Although the scientific secrets of radio technologies and rubber still stayed hidden from the Researcher Bees, there were countless advancements in our areas.
The Bee Empire had long moved past the Medieval Age and was approaching something that reminded me of modernity. It was a very rushed advancement—a lot of necessary inventions were in their most basic form, and the hives and manufactures looked crude compared to the modern buildings of Earth.
But this was *my* land, and I was proud of it. And also, it worked.
During these months, I almost forgot about the vision of the Goddess of Hornets, especially since hornets had been exterminated in our territories a long time ago.
The armies of the Bee Empire were drawing plans for invading the territories of the former (and now completely fallen into anarchy) Hatha Kingdom. Scouts were sent into this area to pinpoint the areas to conquer and the areas to burn to cinders.
Millions of Warrior Bees were preparing to march on a crusade, but... it took time to actually free them from other tasks first.
There was always someone to exterminate closer to home. Our borders were constantly attacked from outside, and the recently added human territories needed an immense amount of fortresses to make sure locusts and other insects didn’t eat all the crops.
But now the Bee Empire had enough soldiers to crusade while staying protected, and the troops we had got combat experience defending the Bee Empire.
The grandest army in history had gathered to execute complete and final revenge on our old enemies. It wasn’t the largest army I could gather, but it had the best possible quality.
The core of it was 2 million Beemarines, whose incredibly tough skin made them almost invincible. They not only had their stingers and good old hammers to fight, they also had improved bolt-action rifles.
Although these Beemarines couldn’t spit out burning napalm, they still had more than enough weapons to kill even the toughest of wild beasts.
With them were various support staff, including 5 thousand human exterminators.
All of these people were members of the Blood Brotherhood, which meant that they would be immune to whatever illnesses might hide in the wilderness (and I was sure there were going to be tons of them). They could fight and carried flammable fuel with them, but their main purpose was to carry supplies for themselves and the bee army.
Together, this army was going to cleanse and build outposts first in the former Hatha territories, then all over the continent—even traveling around the mountains over the sea.
And it was led by the best crusader in my memory: Beemarine Malevolence. I gave her some of my blood, and she became invincible, like all other Beemarines in her army.
This seemingly doubled her fierceness and stubbornness. I was sure that she wouldn’t stop crusading until every last murder hornet was dead.
And I wished her luck in that.
***
While the army was still close to Hive Supremo, my astral projection ability allowed me to watch its march with my own mind’s eye. When they took their first step into the wild and hostile territories, they were still within my range.
This meant that I could be a witness to these important moments.
The army marched in a tight formation, following an abandoned human road. Even the horse-pulled carts of humans were surrounded by Blood Brothers on foot. Hundreds of thousands of bees sat on them, resting their wings, while others swarmed around.
The procession moved slowly: the human-sized carts could crush entire trees under their stone wheels, but traveled slowly over the soft and muddy ground of the old road.
At first, they met no resistance and almost no life. Even the trees and living mountains looked unusually barren. Both bees and humans looked at this in concern—in our territories, the plant life was much more... alive.
When I transported my projection to Malevolence, who was flying in the front part of the army, I saw her looking around with great suspicion.
Her scouts were reporting to her that there were no signs of danger ahead, but this only made her frown more.
’It looks like over the past years, the insects had time to eat a lot of plants, Malevolence,’ I telepathically said to her. ’Then they probably began starving and dying out. Same as the larger creatures that fed on these insects. A food chain collapse—I was expecting this to happen much sooner, honestly.’
’Father!’ Malevolence thought with a start. ’Father. I still think this lack of enemies means that we must search for them twice as hard! The fewer survivors there are, the harder it is to find them.’
’True. Keep up with this spirit, my girl!’ I encouraged her.
If I had arms in this state, I’d pat Malevolence’s head. But she still looked twice as eager for action than a moment before.
For a while, things continued in peace. Although I noticed several wild dragons and beasts, all of them scurried away in fear at the sight of so many humans (and bees).
Even insects didn’t dare to approach us yet, at least not en masse. Those who were dumb enough to try were immediately shot with Beemarine stingers or their muskets.
I wondered if there were really so many hornets in the wild for the Bee Empire to worry about despite the reports of the scouts. After watching the marching army for a while, I grew bored, and my mind began to wander.
My astral projection followed my thoughts, traveling to various places over the Bee Empire. I checked on the research laboratories where several bees in face masks were working with nasty-smelling chemicals, on a manufactory where another Queen-class mecha was being built, and several other places.
When my mind wandered back to Malevolence’s army two hours later, it was thrown right into a massive fight!
