Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire

When Bloodimina sent a small detachment of ten thousand bees with rifles to scout the contested territories, she secretly worried this might not work out.

Creatures that lived there had sharp senses and eventually found out even the stealthiest Commando Bees, and there were too many of them for an ordinary strike team to fight their way through.

Bloodimina's plan was to go the opposite way—with shock and awe. The loud rifles would teach the beasts to flee in fear instead of running toward the noise of gunshots—it already worked well on insects near the camp. Even the dumbest of them reflexively ran away from noises that were so loud.

But in another place, things could still be different…

In the end, Bloodimina's worries were unfounded.

Just seven days later, the scouts returned with the first good news! Despite some people dying in battle, most of them returned with only flesh wounds, including the leader of the detachment.

"We cut through the beasts like a hot knife through wax with these rifles, Grand Commander!" she reported eagerly. "We shot them until they began running from us, and we shot them some more… Until we began running out of ammunition, but by then, we didn't have enough enemies left. And we found a path wide enough for the human army to pass through! We watched several giant beasts enter it and walk all the way through."

As soon as Bloodimina got this report, she sent several dragon riders to make a more detailed map of this path.

A few more days later, she and Gresch had it on their maps.

The path, which was made by large grass-eating beasts, was surrounded by a lot of lakes and ground so wet that anything too large just couldn't walk over it—and for the same reason, it was hard to find for anyone who couldn't fly, since they would more likely just walk into a marsh.

Vardish people had a few teams of defenders patrolling the area, but mostly left it alone, probably believing that Naregan soldiers would more likely drown in the marsh than walk through the place.

'We will prove these blue dogs wrong. Their arrogance will be their downfall!' Gresch declared. 'The soldiers spent too much time already sitting still. Let's move out as soon as possible!'

Bloodimina agreed.

This was a cursed place and way too far from their homes for any of her bees' comfort. All of them couldn't wait to return to their fortress-hives or even build their own new ones in the conquered territories! Not to waddle through these infected lands.

***

Traveling through the marches was more exhausting for both humans and bees than Bloodimina expected originally. Even when nobody was in the danger of drowning, this place and its inhabitants seemed intent on draining all juices out of people.

The Naregan army scared off most creatures that would have tried to attack bees, but instead attracted uncountable hordes of others, like mosquitoes and leeches.

At the same time, Bloodimina found parasites trying to infect *her* soldiers, too! Patrols sent away from the camp to scout for larger threats often returned with tiny mites on their tails.

Thankfully, those were quickly found when the soldiers visited Physicians for their combat wounds, and after this everybody was more on alert for parasites.

The worst part was that even after the parasite was gone, the bitten person often fell sick with something unrelated, anyway.

"These creatures carry a lot of illnesses," Chief Physician of the army explained to Bloodimina at this. "Father said so. They have a lot of immunity themselves so they can carry these illnesses and pass them over without becoming sick themselves. Actually, we are like that, too—except we don't touch as much nasty illness-carrying stuff as these cockroaches and flies…"

Of course, Bloodimina did her best to protect her army. And the human army, when she had resources and people to spare. This usually meant killing all insects in sight and burning their corpses, or at least throwing them as far away as possible.

Humans got used to covering themselves in thick, waxed cloth all over just to protect their thin chitin from drill-like needles of the mosquitoes that easily pierced it.

And with one of the supply carts, Father had sent them bees with some extra immunizing blood to share, although it wasn't enough for everyone—it never was.

Like that, they endured and advanced toward the Vardish positions. For the first time in a while, Bloodimina could send Father reports that she was advancing in her mission!

The pathetic Vardish defenses in the area were crushed by the united army like dust under their feet. A small fort with less than a thousand soldiers—it was nothing compared to Castle Soneraht. Its defenses still fought until their last breath.

Gresch approved this, stating that "at least they had some honor". Bloodimina thought they should've accepted the superiority of the Bee Empire and gave up, sparing her the waste of lives and ammunition.

Worse, the fort has sent warnings to the Vardish army stationed elsewhere, warning them about the united army's advance.

By then, Bloodimina's assassins were in position. Despite all their growing paranoia and defenses, important people in the Vardish command structure were falling one by one.

In just a few days, the united army was going to reach the main harbor of the Eastern Expanse Reach. Fresh reinforcements from the mainland Vardish Empire were definitely waiting for them there, but the city itself was barely fortified from the land.

Bloodimina wasn't worried about the battle. But as they walked, she had a different reason for concern.

Since they marched through the marshes, many soldiers in the Bee Empire army complained about their skin flaking and falling off in sores. At the same time, there were reports of the soldiers from the Naregan army suffering from their chitin flaking off.

Besides the sores, all the sick people had symptoms like cough, fevers and chills.

It was an illness that Bloodimina didn't expect to ever see again, especially on bees… The Flaying Flu!