Kai watched the person that had interrupted her work through the hive map. Since Brian had been growing together with the hive, she was now able to see life footage of the point of view of any hive member, which made the tool that much more convenient in her opinion. The quality wasn’t quite up there and everything was a bit blurry, but it still let her observe the stranger.
It, no, he was humanoid in stature, but definitely not a human, at least not in Kai’s books. The most noticeable difference between a human and the man was that humans did not have scales, fur and a freaking lizard tail. She sadly couldn’t tell much more about him beyond that, his muscular body and broad shoulders. Even that the man had scales was something she only knew because Brian had taken note of it in its threat assessment.
[Unknown]
Level: ~10
Stats: stat potential per level unknown, but likely to be close to [worker]; ~1000 stat points
Abilities: unknown, moderate stealth and scouting proficiency, skill [Sense mana], moderate possibility for magic capabilities
Equipment: leather armor of good quality, 2 daggers of unknown quality and material, suspicious bag that slowly absorbs ambient mana
Threat level: High, confrontation will likely result in high number of casualties
Note: Unknown has scales underneath his armor and clothes, seems to be searching for something, wary but not overly hostile
Kai was relieved that the man was not too strong for them. His appearance was making things a lot more difficult for her and her daughters.
Sure, he was a sapient, at least going by his equipment and that meant civilization could not be too far away. It was a chance for the hive to rapidly advance their technology, but the chance came at a cost and could very well backfire on them.
She would have to join the local politics and she would have to play the game from a severely disadvantaged position. There was no way she could force anything through for the time being. She didn’t have the power to back up her demands and neither did she have any allies, her hive would be at the mercy of the local powers.
As such it was important that Kai handled the current situation in the right way. She would not kill the man, that only invited disaster, but she had to make sure to give them a good first impression. The hive had to show them that they weren’t hostile while also making a show of force to make sure the other party knew that they would fight back.
There were also a few other things she could use to her advantage like her mysterious arrival, but she would rather not use that. There was only this hive so acting like there were more would not be more than a bluff.
Kai sighed as she watched the humanoid investigate a group of bushes that had been half harvested.
Preferably, they would be able to keep the man with them for a few weeks or even months to get more time to prefer, but she had the distinct feeling that wouldn’t help them.
She closed the map and walked out of her room with Anna in tow to make some preparations. They would need a room for the guy, it was better to treat him well in her opinion and they wouldn’t take anything from him.
Well, Kai planned to take away his stuff for the time he stayed. There was a certain suspicious bag she wanted to take a look at, but the man would get all his stuff back.
Anyway, he had to stay whether he wanted to or not. Dusk was approaching and with it the moths would come so he had to choose between them and the hive.
She knew that without having to look at the sun, because Brian had been able to measure the length of a day with the daily quests and the hive mind was now able to tell the time with an error margin of about 10 minutes, though that had something to do with the days of this planet being around 36 hours long.
While keeping track of the man’s progress, Kai went to the training ground that she hadn’t been visiting much over the last week and gathered 6 of her daughters together. She let them know what was going on before she returned with them to the hive where they dressed each other.
Anna helped her into her dress and eyed her judgingly. “You should stop growing, mother. The dress is already too small for you and I have to climb on your tail to reach your head!”
Kai fumbled around in an embarrassed manner. “But-”
Her daughter raised a brow and crossed her arms. “But?”
Kai’s cheeks warmed up, the blush hidden by the fur. “My tail! It’s not big enough for two eggs yet and it always feels so empty when I…” Ever since she had started growing, laying eggs had started to lack something, had started to lack the pressure that made the process feel so incredibly good and she was becoming needy.
She trailed off and avoided looking at her daughter, but noticed the cheeky grin on Anna’s face. “You did that on purpose!”
Anna just shrugged, not bothering to deny it and walked outside where she waited with the other six. Kai followed her, with her upper arms on her hips while she tried to cross the growing pair in front of her chest, though they were still a bit too short for that. “It seems like we haven’t trained enough this week, haven’t we?!”
Her daughter shuddered a bit, knowing full well what that meant and earned herself a few amused looks by the others. “But my queen, I don’t think-”
Kai interrupted her and smiled sweetly. “Nope, this time you can’t talk your way out of this my dear.”
Anna looked to her sisters, searching for some assistance, but found none and deflated slightly in defeat. Then they started on their trip to get to that humanoid.
While they had been talking, Brian had started to use one of the drones to lure the unknown man to one of the larger fields of bushes about half an hour to the east of the hive and moved some of the other drones to vicinity too, it had to keep them out of the range of [Sense mana] though.
The group of 8 idly chatted amongst themselves during their walk, but stopped when they got close to the humanoid. None of the six daughters who had been training had a class yet, one of them was trying to get something interesting though.
She was one of the more combat geared daughters Kai had and was trying to become a [hive guard]. The girl also had the option to become a [hive warrior], but she wanted to protect the hive and not leave it to fight.
Kai was fine with that. She let her daughters choose for themselves and she knew that they would need some kind of fighting force sooner rather than later, not that she liked the thought of sending her daughters into dangerous situations.
No matter what, she would always try to solve violence with the swarm. It was a bit hypocritical, but she was okay with losing them, they were expendable afterall and her daughters were not.
Led by the aspiring guard the six girls that escorted her made their way through the bushes and to the clearing where the man was currently. He hadn’t done much except analyzing his opponents yet so Kai was optimistic they could get this over with without a fight.
She followed a few meters behind her escort with Anna slightly in front of her, trying not to curse the bushes for being scratchy bastards and entered the clearing. The man had been eyeing her daughters, but his attention immediately snapped to her when she appeared and the two stared at each other for a while.
Now really seeing him, Kai could tell that he seemed to be a halfblood of two humanoid species. One had to be some kind of feline race and the other something similar to the lizard-kin she knew from fantasy games.
She couldn’t tell for all of the man’s body, but his feline looking head and lizard tail were mostly covered with scales. There were a few spots with fur in between that looked a bit out of place and somewhat destroyed his exotic appearance. It was exotic to Kai at least, for all she knew he might be nothing special.
The guy slowly lowered his arms and interrupted the silence, speaking in a very thick accent. “Greeting Miss and good night to you. I come in peace.”
Kai was so shocked to hear him speak English, she nearly didn’t listen to what he said. She had a lot of questions, wanting to know how and what was going on, but for now she was grateful they could communicate. Being aware that he could understand English, she would have to make it a point that she and her daughters spoke German however so he couldn’t understand them.
There was one thing that puzzled her though. She looked to the sky and at the slowly sinking sun and cocked her head, her daughters having the exact same reaction. It was clearly still day, so why wish a good night?
Kai watched the person that had interrupted her work through the hive map. Since Brian had been growing together with the hive, she was now able to see life footage of the point of view of any hive member, which made the tool that much more convenient in her opinion. The quality wasn’t quite up there and everything was a bit blurry, but it still let her observe the stranger.
It, no, he was humanoid in stature, but definitely not a human, at least not in Kai’s books. The most noticeable difference between a human and the man was that humans did not have scales, fur and a freaking lizard tail. She sadly couldn’t tell much more about him beyond that, his muscular body and broad shoulders. Even that the man had scales was something she only knew because Brian had taken note of it in its threat assessment.
[Unknown]
Level: ~10
Stats: stat potential per level unknown, but likely to be close to [worker]; ~1000 stat points
Abilities: unknown, moderate stealth and scouting proficiency, skill [Sense mana], moderate possibility for magic capabilities
Equipment: leather armor of good quality, 2 daggers of unknown quality and material, suspicious bag that slowly absorbs ambient mana
Threat level: High, confrontation will likely result in high number of casualties
Note: Unknown has scales underneath his armor and clothes, seems to be searching for something, wary but not overly hostile
Kai was relieved that the man was not too strong for them. His appearance was making things a lot more difficult for her and her daughters.
Sure, he was a sapient, at least going by his equipment and that meant civilization could not be too far away. It was a chance for the hive to rapidly advance their technology, but the chance came at a cost and could very well backfire on them.
She would have to join the local politics and she would have to play the game from a severely disadvantaged position. There was no way she could force anything through for the time being. She didn’t have the power to back up her demands and neither did she have any allies, her hive would be at the mercy of the local powers.
As such it was important that Kai handled the current situation in the right way. She would not kill the man, that only invited disaster, but she had to make sure to give them a good first impression. The hive had to show them that they weren’t hostile while also making a show of force to make sure the other party knew that they would fight back.
There were also a few other things she could use to her advantage like her mysterious arrival, but she would rather not use that. There was only this hive so acting like there were more would not be more than a bluff.
Kai sighed as she watched the humanoid investigate a group of bushes that had been half harvested.
Preferably, they would be able to keep the man with them for a few weeks or even months to get more time to prefer, but she had the distinct feeling that wouldn’t help them.
She closed the map and walked out of her room with Anna in tow to make some preparations. They would need a room for the guy, it was better to treat him well in her opinion and they wouldn’t take anything from him.
Well, Kai planned to take away his stuff for the time he stayed. There was a certain suspicious bag she wanted to take a look at, but the man would get all his stuff back.
Anyway, he had to stay whether he wanted to or not. Dusk was approaching and with it the moths would come so he had to choose between them and the hive.
She knew that without having to look at the sun, because Brian had been able to measure the length of a day with the daily quests and the hive mind was now able to tell the time with an error margin of about 10 minutes, though that had something to do with the days of this planet being around 36 hours long.
While keeping track of the man’s progress, Kai went to the training ground that she hadn’t been visiting much over the last week and gathered 6 of her daughters together. She let them know what was going on before she returned with them to the hive where they dressed each other.
Anna helped her into her dress and eyed her judgingly. “You should stop growing, mother. The dress is already too small for you and I have to climb on your tail to reach your head!”
Kai fumbled around in an embarrassed manner. “But-”
Her daughter raised a brow and crossed her arms. “But?”
Kai’s cheeks warmed up, the blush hidden by the fur. “My tail! It’s not big enough for two eggs yet and it always feels so empty when I…” Ever since she had started growing, laying eggs had started to lack something, had started to lack the pressure that made the process feel so incredibly good and she was becoming needy.
She trailed off and avoided looking at her daughter, but noticed the cheeky grin on Anna’s face. “You did that on purpose!”
Anna just shrugged, not bothering to deny it and walked outside where she waited with the other six. Kai followed her, with her upper arms on her hips while she tried to cross the growing pair in front of her chest, though they were still a bit too short for that. “It seems like we haven’t trained enough this week, haven’t we?!”
Her daughter shuddered a bit, knowing full well what that meant and earned herself a few amused looks by the others. “But my queen, I don’t think-”
Kai interrupted her and smiled sweetly. “Nope, this time you can’t talk your way out of this my dear.”
Anna looked to her sisters, searching for some assistance, but found none and deflated slightly in defeat. Then they started on their trip to get to that humanoid.
While they had been talking, Brian had started to use one of the drones to lure the unknown man to one of the larger fields of bushes about half an hour to the east of the hive and moved some of the other drones to vicinity too, it had to keep them out of the range of [Sense mana] though.
The group of 8 idly chatted amongst themselves during their walk, but stopped when they got close to the humanoid. None of the six daughters who had been training had a class yet, one of them was trying to get something interesting though.
She was one of the more combat geared daughters Kai had and was trying to become a [hive guard]. The girl also had the option to become a [hive warrior], but she wanted to protect the hive and not leave it to fight.
Kai was fine with that. She let her daughters choose for themselves and she knew that they would need some kind of fighting force sooner rather than later, not that she liked the thought of sending her daughters into dangerous situations.
No matter what, she would always try to solve violence with the swarm. It was a bit hypocritical, but she was okay with losing them, they were expendable afterall and her daughters were not.
Led by the aspiring guard the six girls that escorted her made their way through the bushes and to the clearing where the man was currently. He hadn’t done much except analyzing his opponents yet so Kai was optimistic they could get this over with without a fight.
She followed a few meters behind her escort with Anna slightly in front of her, trying not to curse the bushes for being scratchy bastards and entered the clearing. The man had been eyeing her daughters, but his attention immediately snapped to her when she appeared and the two stared at each other for a while.
Now really seeing him, Kai could tell that he seemed to be a halfblood of two humanoid species. One had to be some kind of feline race and the other something similar to the lizard-kin she knew from fantasy games.
She couldn’t tell for all of the man’s body, but his feline looking head and lizard tail were mostly covered with scales. There were a few spots with fur in between that looked a bit out of place and somewhat destroyed his exotic appearance. It was exotic to Kai at least, for all she knew he might be nothing special.
The guy slowly lowered his arms and interrupted the silence, speaking in a very thick accent. “Greeting Miss and good night to you. I come in peace.”
Kai was so shocked to hear him speak English, she nearly didn’t listen to what he said. She had a lot of questions, wanting to know how and what was going on, but for now she was grateful they could communicate. Being aware that he could understand English, she would have to make it a point that she and her daughters spoke German however so he couldn’t understand them.
There was one thing that puzzled her though. She looked to the sky and at the slowly sinking sun and cocked her head, her daughters having the exact same reaction. It was clearly still day, so why wish a good night?
