After the meeting things became a lot more active in the hive. The others didn’t mind the bad weather as much as Kai and having a goal seemed to motivate them a lot. Kai had to admit that she should have made goals in the same way before, but now that she could see the result she surely wouldn’t forget about it in the future.
Sadly the weather didn’t change over the next few days and Kai had to go out. While staying inside all day was nice, it got really boring and frustrating if the only thing you could do was train your magic.
Outside of her room Kai mostly trained her movement together with Anna and they started to incorporate attacks into their training. The mana brain had already begun improving some of their stances too.
The two hunters joined the queen sometimes and some of the others watched now and then. They were mostly busy with their own tasks however and never stayed for a long time.
Tiffany and her girls started to construct a gentle sloped ramp next to the tree trunk that would lead to the second floor. There would be three of these ramps around the tree once the hive was that large and a lot of smaller once in between.
The large ramps could be reached through the main roads. These were big enough for two cars to drive side by side and considering that this was all for residential purposes and not built with wheel traffic in mind this should be enough.
The group of workers also started to fill in the space between the rooms, but the process there was rather slow, because the focus was more on building more rooms and the ramps at the moment.
Erika and Ember had their first crafting success after two days, but had to use fire in the crafting process. Kai didn’t mind that as they had enough fruits for now and the tools were more important.
She could already tell that it wouldn’t stay this way and they needed to start farming soon though, because the area around them couldn’t sustain too many Antanoid.
The tools her two daughters had crafted were a knife and a hammer. They had used the fire to melt down resin that they had collected from a particular bush. The molten resin was a good glue substitute and they had used it to attach a stone the size of a fist to the leg bone of one of the ponies.
The stone was harder than most of the other stones and they used to work on the weaker stones to create blades for knives, axes and other things. Now that it had a handle they could work more precisely than before and somewhat safer too.
The knife was crafted the same way and Ember had immediately started to skin the animals. They had noticed that the hive had no way to store things however and Ember had to stop and instead started to craft large baskets with dried grass.
Things continued like this for another 4 days and the hive grew by another 3 workers and one hunter in that time.
On the 8th day after the meeting the weather finally cleared up. It would still take some time for the river to calm down again and the hive members had to walk to one of the smaller streams to bathe themselves during that time, but they were all thankful for the clear sky.
Right now Kai stood in front of the hive and looked at the changes. They had a room for every person and added another storage and drone room, which brought them up to 21 rooms.
A net of side streets had been built on the ground, creating a city plan for the future. Every side street would have its own ramp and in between smaller ramps for the drones were planned.
The ramp to the second floor was finished and the first room there was already in construction. The construction crew were doing their best and they had even started to add simple decorations to the walls on the first floor.
There was not a single edge or pointed corner in the whole hive. The round style gave the hive a soft and slumbering feeling?
Kai wasn’t sure how to describe it. It was soft, yet not friendly and stood in stark contrast to the surroundings. The absence of edges created that foreboding feeling that told you something was not how it looked.
It was a really unique style and Kai would call it futuristic as a human and maybe even alien. She liked the overall look of it more than what she had grown up with however so she didn’t really care.
Kai was proud of it. They had pretty much established themselves and could live like that if they had to, not that they planned to stop here.
She opened her drone manager and selected the four oldest drones. The drones had pretty much reached the edge of what they could scout in half a day and had to go beyond that now. Kai sent them scouting west with the goal of reaching the end of the forest of titans. The four most experienced of the drones would hopefully not get into trouble.
She closed the map again and rolled her shoulders with a sigh. Things wouldn’t even go half as well without Brian. Kai had hugely underestimated what the hive mind could already do at the beginning of their journey and it was only going to get better.
Today she had to test out something she had not expected Brian to improve or rather invent for a very long time. It had created a spell based on Kai’s training with mana and had taught it to every drone.
The spell empowered your next attack and you could cast it inside your body so you could call it a body strengthening technique. The skill was labeled as a spell inside the hive archive because it only lasted for a single attack, but that really wasn’t the point here.
It was a freaking spell!
Magic, excitement and fantasy!
Kai turned to Anna with a grin. “Let’s go and test out the latest invention!”
Her daughter stepped next to her and smiled. “As you wish, my lady.”
Then the two went over to the training area.
Kai had of course already looked at the way the magic was done and it was hella complicated. At first she had thought it was just a single sphere, but when she had looked inside of it a world of math had shown itself.
It had taken Kai some time to get behind the workings. Simplified, the center of the spell was the center of a coordinate system and you had to designate the target area for the spell as well as the power it had. The mana would then rush to the area, using the most efficient path and the next time this area exerted force on something non friendly it would amplify the force depending on the amount of mana you had invested. The non friendly part was important, because without it you would likely end up hurting yourself.
The interesting part about this for Kai however was that it should be possible to strengthen the weapon you are using with the spell too. The spell would lose a lot of power during this, because it had to move through something different than your body and as far as the hive knew that was pretty difficult, but the possibility was there nonetheless.
Kai positioned herself in front of one of the silk dummies and readied a punch.
Now, there was no way she would be able to replicate the spell herself, but the drones had shown her she didn’t need to. All she had to do was open her connection to Brian more and the hive mind would work together with her, especially because she was above it in rank. Kai would still try to do it herself in the future if her connection should be blocked somehow one day.
She felt for the mana tether in the back of her mind and removed the blockade she had put in front of it. Kai was immediately assaulted with a large amount of information and had to grimace.
As the highest ranked member of the hive the amount of information she received about the hive activities was staggering. It was easier to deal with it now that her level and stats had risen, but it still disoriented her.
Kai had tried to change what she received once, but hadn’t been able to. She wasn’t sure why and could only guess that it was to prevent the hive brain from secretly working against her. The only thing she could do was get used to it.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was just something more she had to work on.
Kai opened her eyes again and casted the spell with Brian. Her mana formed the spell and rushed towards her fist. Then Kai punched the dummy as hard as possible.
Her hand created a deep dent in the silk pillar and the thing curved away from her before it came loose from the silk floor with a loud ripping sound.
Kai watched as the thing flew away a few meters and continued to roll a few more. Maybe using all her mana for the first time hadn’t been the best idea.
She turned to Anna and tried to look as innocent as possible. “Whoopsie?”
After the meeting things became a lot more active in the hive. The others didn’t mind the bad weather as much as Kai and having a goal seemed to motivate them a lot. Kai had to admit that she should have made goals in the same way before, but now that she could see the result she surely wouldn’t forget about it in the future.
Sadly the weather didn’t change over the next few days and Kai had to go out. While staying inside all day was nice, it got really boring and frustrating if the only thing you could do was train your magic.
Outside of her room Kai mostly trained her movement together with Anna and they started to incorporate attacks into their training. The mana brain had already begun improving some of their stances too.
The two hunters joined the queen sometimes and some of the others watched now and then. They were mostly busy with their own tasks however and never stayed for a long time.
Tiffany and her girls started to construct a gentle sloped ramp next to the tree trunk that would lead to the second floor. There would be three of these ramps around the tree once the hive was that large and a lot of smaller once in between.
The large ramps could be reached through the main roads. These were big enough for two cars to drive side by side and considering that this was all for residential purposes and not built with wheel traffic in mind this should be enough.
The group of workers also started to fill in the space between the rooms, but the process there was rather slow, because the focus was more on building more rooms and the ramps at the moment.
Erika and Ember had their first crafting success after two days, but had to use fire in the crafting process. Kai didn’t mind that as they had enough fruits for now and the tools were more important.
She could already tell that it wouldn’t stay this way and they needed to start farming soon though, because the area around them couldn’t sustain too many Antanoid.
The tools her two daughters had crafted were a knife and a hammer. They had used the fire to melt down resin that they had collected from a particular bush. The molten resin was a good glue substitute and they had used it to attach a stone the size of a fist to the leg bone of one of the ponies.
The stone was harder than most of the other stones and they used to work on the weaker stones to create blades for knives, axes and other things. Now that it had a handle they could work more precisely than before and somewhat safer too.
The knife was crafted the same way and Ember had immediately started to skin the animals. They had noticed that the hive had no way to store things however and Ember had to stop and instead started to craft large baskets with dried grass.
Things continued like this for another 4 days and the hive grew by another 3 workers and one hunter in that time.
On the 8th day after the meeting the weather finally cleared up. It would still take some time for the river to calm down again and the hive members had to walk to one of the smaller streams to bathe themselves during that time, but they were all thankful for the clear sky.
Right now Kai stood in front of the hive and looked at the changes. They had a room for every person and added another storage and drone room, which brought them up to 21 rooms.
A net of side streets had been built on the ground, creating a city plan for the future. Every side street would have its own ramp and in between smaller ramps for the drones were planned.
The ramp to the second floor was finished and the first room there was already in construction. The construction crew were doing their best and they had even started to add simple decorations to the walls on the first floor.
There was not a single edge or pointed corner in the whole hive. The round style gave the hive a soft and slumbering feeling?
Kai wasn’t sure how to describe it. It was soft, yet not friendly and stood in stark contrast to the surroundings. The absence of edges created that foreboding feeling that told you something was not how it looked.
It was a really unique style and Kai would call it futuristic as a human and maybe even alien. She liked the overall look of it more than what she had grown up with however so she didn’t really care.
Kai was proud of it. They had pretty much established themselves and could live like that if they had to, not that they planned to stop here.
She opened her drone manager and selected the four oldest drones. The drones had pretty much reached the edge of what they could scout in half a day and had to go beyond that now. Kai sent them scouting west with the goal of reaching the end of the forest of titans. The four most experienced of the drones would hopefully not get into trouble.
She closed the map again and rolled her shoulders with a sigh. Things wouldn’t even go half as well without Brian. Kai had hugely underestimated what the hive mind could already do at the beginning of their journey and it was only going to get better.
Today she had to test out something she had not expected Brian to improve or rather invent for a very long time. It had created a spell based on Kai’s training with mana and had taught it to every drone.
The spell empowered your next attack and you could cast it inside your body so you could call it a body strengthening technique. The skill was labeled as a spell inside the hive archive because it only lasted for a single attack, but that really wasn’t the point here.
It was a freaking spell!
Magic, excitement and fantasy!
Kai turned to Anna with a grin. “Let’s go and test out the latest invention!”
Her daughter stepped next to her and smiled. “As you wish, my lady.”
Then the two went over to the training area.
Kai had of course already looked at the way the magic was done and it was hella complicated. At first she had thought it was just a single sphere, but when she had looked inside of it a world of math had shown itself.
It had taken Kai some time to get behind the workings. Simplified, the center of the spell was the center of a coordinate system and you had to designate the target area for the spell as well as the power it had. The mana would then rush to the area, using the most efficient path and the next time this area exerted force on something non friendly it would amplify the force depending on the amount of mana you had invested. The non friendly part was important, because without it you would likely end up hurting yourself.
The interesting part about this for Kai however was that it should be possible to strengthen the weapon you are using with the spell too. The spell would lose a lot of power during this, because it had to move through something different than your body and as far as the hive knew that was pretty difficult, but the possibility was there nonetheless.
Kai positioned herself in front of one of the silk dummies and readied a punch.
Now, there was no way she would be able to replicate the spell herself, but the drones had shown her she didn’t need to. All she had to do was open her connection to Brian more and the hive mind would work together with her, especially because she was above it in rank. Kai would still try to do it herself in the future if her connection should be blocked somehow one day.
She felt for the mana tether in the back of her mind and removed the blockade she had put in front of it. Kai was immediately assaulted with a large amount of information and had to grimace.
As the highest ranked member of the hive the amount of information she received about the hive activities was staggering. It was easier to deal with it now that her level and stats had risen, but it still disoriented her.
Kai had tried to change what she received once, but hadn’t been able to. She wasn’t sure why and could only guess that it was to prevent the hive brain from secretly working against her. The only thing she could do was get used to it.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. It was just something more she had to work on.
Kai opened her eyes again and casted the spell with Brian. Her mana formed the spell and rushed towards her fist. Then Kai punched the dummy as hard as possible.
Her hand created a deep dent in the silk pillar and the thing curved away from her before it came loose from the silk floor with a loud ripping sound.
Kai watched as the thing flew away a few meters and continued to roll a few more. Maybe using all her mana for the first time hadn’t been the best idea.
She turned to Anna and tried to look as innocent as possible. “Whoopsie?”
