“…and that is precisely how much food we have, how long it will last, and how much I think you could eat for the purpose of the warrior’s creation.”
Wow, thanks Beatrice, what an incredibly convenient and detailed explanation about our food stores! I’m so glad I have such an in-depth source of critical information!
Now for the more complicated and far less interesting question of how much Mind I could use. To be safe, the best idea I could come up with was to eat the max amount of food Beatrice had calculated and try to figure out the Mind question after.
“Alright, let’s get down to business.”
Bess and Belle worked around me as Bella brought me food. Beatrice seemed to be looking at something in thin air and was quietly muttering. And me?
I was eating. Which is surprisingly boring.
In my old life, I had no shortage of stuff to entertain myself with while eating. Such was the modern world. On the other hand, I hadn’t had much of an opportunity to be bored here. I had suffered life-threatening injuries, starved, and been preoccupied with the hive’s beginnings.
Now I had nothing to do.
Well, not nothing. I couldn’t predict how much Mind to use for the warrior before I had eaten my fill, but there was still plenty to study. Out of the food storage floated a metal spike.
The souvenirs I had collected from the forest had been buried along with the food and now sat together in the hollow dirt ball. In any case, the metal spike was puzzling to me.
In Queen’s flashback, there were three notable uses of Mind. The crystals and electricity, the metal spikes, and the fire. So far, I hadn’t experienced any capabilities of Mind that could ‘create’ stuff out of thin air. And yet, the metal spikes and crystals still littered the forest. But the spikes caught my attention for another reason.
The material.
Before me floated a solid metal spike a little less than half a meter long. The obvious question: Why on Earth (or wherever we are) would you waste metal on a random spike?
Humans in this world definitely had metalworking capabilities if the metallic-looking armor and guns were anything to go by. Now, I was by no means an expert in material sciences, so I had no clue precisely what metal the spikes or tools were made of. Their gray color made me think of iron or stained steel. But even if they weren’t the same type of metal, I found it hard to believe they would waste this material.
I didn’t know if these people had an infinite metal source, but leaving the spikes all over the forest seemed pretty wasteful. I could come to a few conclusions.
I found it unlikely that the humans were wasteful of their resources. Don’t get me wrong, that is absolutely a very human trait. But something within me just couldn’t accept that. It might be irrational, but it felt like the most unlikely and weirdly annoying explanation until I was proven wrong.
Another explanation could be the type of metal. Were the spikes iron? Steel? Or were they some sort of fantasy metal? I had no way of knowing. They were likely not something rare or valuable, or else the humans would definitely recover them. In that case, maybe they weren’t metal at all but some common fantasy material that was similar to metal.
And then there was the most unlikely and compelling explanation: A human spontaneously conjured metal spikes with nothing more than Mind.
Unfortunately, I had not seen a shred of evidence supporting the idea that Mind could create matter. Even the egg-making Ability used Mind as a blueprint, but needed physical mass from food.
Actually, that was an interesting thought. What if the Mind user had an ability that made a blueprint of metal spikes, then used metal to make the weapons?
Obviously, that made little sense to me. Why would you conjure metal spikes? If you needed the metal to make more spikes, then why leave them behind? In all honesty, not a single explanation I could come up with made any sense. The crystals were even more damning.
I didn’t bother removing the crystal chunk from storage. I already knew the stuff was multicolored and glowed when electrified. The flashback clearly depicted the Mind user using electricity from the crystal as a weapon. In that case, the important thing about them was their conductivity.
And yet, skyscraper size crystals had suddenly appeared all over the forest. It seemed unlikely that the humans would be lugging tons of crystal material around to form the spires. There was something I still had to learn about matter and Mind, and humans were the clue. Until I could ask them directly, it seemed unlikely that I would figure out the inner workings by myself.
Regardless, I had made some progress in my research. While I didn’t figure out a concrete way to actually use Mind, the possibilities these objects implied made it clear that there was significant room for growth moving forward. For now, though, the best way to use these remnants would be to find alternative uses for the objects.
I was nearly done with the food. Probably a good idea to table the musings about the mysterious weapons until the end of the war. I had slammed my head against the strange objects since I first saw them, but without knowledge of the outside world, all my guesses were moot. They were also probably wasting energy.
“Alright, let’s see how much Mind I can use….”
[Tapped Mind: 0% / 82.3775%]
I had a little over 80% Mind to use at the absolute maximum.
[Create Egg:
Level 2
Acquired by: Birth
Using mass and Mind, create an egg that will hatch into a member of your species.
Subtype Options:
Simple Worker: A drone with no unique capabilities. (Min Mind Tap: 0.5%) Simple Warrior: A drone built for combat. (Min Mind Tap: 0.75%) Construction Drone: A specialized unit designed for construction (Min Mind Tap: 1%) Gathering Drone: A specialized unit designed for gathering materials (Min Mind Tap: 1%)
Level up: Unlock 2 subtype options
]
There was only one warrior type to choose from. I got to mathing. The workers that used extra Mind to create used 1% each, so 5% total. Considering the penalty that made the worker minimum 0.75%, each worker used 1.5 times the amount of the original minimum. I had eaten enough food to feel like I could make an egg with more Mind than all five workers. One issue was the question of scale. There was no real way to tell how much Mind caused, for example, double the power.
Unless, of course, double the Mind meant double the power. And if that was the case, hoo boy. That meant, without the penalty, 1.5% would make the warrior twice as strong as a normal one. And where did things go from there? Would 3% be twice as strong as 1.5%? An exponential increase? No way. Maybe it was additive instead, so a much smaller increase. In the end, all that didn’t really matter. Those were the only ways I could think to calculate how much food to use. At minimum, I could use 5%. At least in that case, I knew I had more than enough food to make the egg.
Argh! There were just too many variables! I didn’t know how much Mind I could use. I didn’t know how the amount of Mind would affect the hatching time. I didn’t know… anything.
“Do I take the risk? Do I play it safe? Fuck, what would playing it safe even be?”
“I cannot help you with this one. Every option feels good in different ways to me.”
Damn. All that was left to do was to eyeball the percentage. I focused on the Ability, activating it. I began slowly increasing the Mind percentage, going no lower than 10%. 15%. 20. 30. 50. I reached 75% before an ache appeared at the back of my head. Was 75% the maximum I could manage with this amount of food? Conveniently 100 times the minimum? How thoughtful. I hesitated. None of my other Abilities caused pain or discomfort, so the ache was concerning. Do I go lower? Wing it at 75?
I decided. My stomach churned as an egg created by 75% of my Mind began to form, waiting to receive the mass. This was seriously going to be abysmal.
________
Look at that rock! Ooh, look at that tree! Wow, look at that dead squirrel!
This forest was full of awesome things to see! I bet I’ll never get tired of looking at this place! It was so gray, so black, so gray! The sky was so colorful, and the trees were so different! The crystals were the best. I thought the sky was colorful, but these big things were so pretty! My favorite was when they made neato lights sometimes!
For now, momamama wanted me to look at the vultures. Hey, there’s a couple! Look at ’em go, eating that dead squirrel. But only two? Mamalama thought there were a ton around somewhere. Wherever they’re hiding, I’ll look at ’em!
I avoided the vultures and kept moving. I just wanna fly for real, geez. Thinking about moving around is real cool, but it’s way cooler to move and think about moving even more. These dang vultures! Stupid bird brain, hurting my wing like that!
Urgh. My wing was whatever. I wanted to help momaroo, but I was the one that got hurt instead…
Focus… Enemy…
Whoah! Was that Beckalecka?! I’d recognize that weirdo voice anywhere!
Hey, good idea, Beck buddy. Look for vultures, not for problems. I was occasionally seeing one or two vultures but nothing huge. I asked Beck about the hive. What was mamama up to? Was she still spinning that stick around? She was so funny.
Screeching…
Whoa! Good call, Beckarino! I like looking, so listening ain’t my thing. I dashed to a tree and hid inside. Mommay did say not to be seen!
My new Ability made it easy to see outside the tree. The trees and crystals had distracted me from seeing it, but a giant black cloud was outside the tree.
No, not a cloud. A clearing with no trees was covered in black and red. The black was clearly different from the burns and ash. They were feathers.
Hundreds. No, thousands? I had never seen so many living things. Beck was complaining about the noise, but the wave of sights was what made me sick. So much movement. One or two colors all over the place. Some were flying, some were sleeping, some were eating.
Gulp.
This was way scarier than I thought it would be. Some of these things were as big as the stupid bird that hit me. I had to tell mama!
I couldn’t leave yet. Too many of the stupid birds were around. It was pure luck that I didn’t get caught flying around here. Plus, mommam said she wanted info. With my cool-looking and Beck’s ear-looking, we could get tons of info!
…
…
…
Boring…
Yeah! Beck was totally right! Sitting here looking at the bird brains was super boring! I had been sitting here for hours and nothing new had happened. Just a bunch of flying and sleeping and eating.
Well, there was one cool thing. Some of the bird brains were smart.
The biggest things mostly sat around and got fed by smaller vultures. They didn’t do much but look at the flock, but I could feel it.
They were using Mind for something.
The weird pressure was the same I felt when I thought of moving or when my buddies did cool stuff.
Wait… Wrong…
Hm? Wrong? Nah, I was right! Silly Be-
Leave… RUN!
Huh? What are you talking about, silly Beck.
I looked back at the vultures, shaking my head at Beckaroo’s silliness.
A single white eye stared straight into my Mind.
Oh shit.
Run!
I flew away as fast as I could think. Thanks to {Big Look}, I saw it.
The Vulch. One of the vultures was looking straight at my tree before I ran. Straight at me.
I took in as much info as I could. The Vulch was smaller, only as big as some of the weaker vultures. Scars lined its leathery face, a particularly nasty one over its right eye, causing the beady orb to look milky white. On the other hand, its feathers were black. No, they were so dark its body felt more like a hole that threatened to suck me in. My last seconds of seeing the Vulch before I was too far to see it were totally creepy. It didn’t move. It didn’t make a sound. It just stared at me.
I’m scared, Mommy.
“…and that is precisely how much food we have, how long it will last, and how much I think you could eat for the purpose of the warrior’s creation.”
Wow, thanks Beatrice, what an incredibly convenient and detailed explanation about our food stores! I’m so glad I have such an in-depth source of critical information!
Now for the more complicated and far less interesting question of how much Mind I could use. To be safe, the best idea I could come up with was to eat the max amount of food Beatrice had calculated and try to figure out the Mind question after.
“Alright, let’s get down to business.”
Bess and Belle worked around me as Bella brought me food. Beatrice seemed to be looking at something in thin air and was quietly muttering. And me?
I was eating. Which is surprisingly boring.
In my old life, I had no shortage of stuff to entertain myself with while eating. Such was the modern world. On the other hand, I hadn’t had much of an opportunity to be bored here. I had suffered life-threatening injuries, starved, and been preoccupied with the hive’s beginnings.
Now I had nothing to do.
Well, not nothing. I couldn’t predict how much Mind to use for the warrior before I had eaten my fill, but there was still plenty to study. Out of the food storage floated a metal spike.
The souvenirs I had collected from the forest had been buried along with the food and now sat together in the hollow dirt ball. In any case, the metal spike was puzzling to me.
In Queen’s flashback, there were three notable uses of Mind. The crystals and electricity, the metal spikes, and the fire. So far, I hadn’t experienced any capabilities of Mind that could ‘create’ stuff out of thin air. And yet, the metal spikes and crystals still littered the forest. But the spikes caught my attention for another reason.
The material.
Before me floated a solid metal spike a little less than half a meter long. The obvious question: Why on Earth (or wherever we are) would you waste metal on a random spike?
Humans in this world definitely had metalworking capabilities if the metallic-looking armor and guns were anything to go by. Now, I was by no means an expert in material sciences, so I had no clue precisely what metal the spikes or tools were made of. Their gray color made me think of iron or stained steel. But even if they weren’t the same type of metal, I found it hard to believe they would waste this material.
I didn’t know if these people had an infinite metal source, but leaving the spikes all over the forest seemed pretty wasteful. I could come to a few conclusions.
I found it unlikely that the humans were wasteful of their resources. Don’t get me wrong, that is absolutely a very human trait. But something within me just couldn’t accept that. It might be irrational, but it felt like the most unlikely and weirdly annoying explanation until I was proven wrong.
Another explanation could be the type of metal. Were the spikes iron? Steel? Or were they some sort of fantasy metal? I had no way of knowing. They were likely not something rare or valuable, or else the humans would definitely recover them. In that case, maybe they weren’t metal at all but some common fantasy material that was similar to metal.
And then there was the most unlikely and compelling explanation: A human spontaneously conjured metal spikes with nothing more than Mind.
Unfortunately, I had not seen a shred of evidence supporting the idea that Mind could create matter. Even the egg-making Ability used Mind as a blueprint, but needed physical mass from food.
Actually, that was an interesting thought. What if the Mind user had an ability that made a blueprint of metal spikes, then used metal to make the weapons?
Obviously, that made little sense to me. Why would you conjure metal spikes? If you needed the metal to make more spikes, then why leave them behind? In all honesty, not a single explanation I could come up with made any sense. The crystals were even more damning.
I didn’t bother removing the crystal chunk from storage. I already knew the stuff was multicolored and glowed when electrified. The flashback clearly depicted the Mind user using electricity from the crystal as a weapon. In that case, the important thing about them was their conductivity.
And yet, skyscraper size crystals had suddenly appeared all over the forest. It seemed unlikely that the humans would be lugging tons of crystal material around to form the spires. There was something I still had to learn about matter and Mind, and humans were the clue. Until I could ask them directly, it seemed unlikely that I would figure out the inner workings by myself.
Regardless, I had made some progress in my research. While I didn’t figure out a concrete way to actually use Mind, the possibilities these objects implied made it clear that there was significant room for growth moving forward. For now, though, the best way to use these remnants would be to find alternative uses for the objects.
I was nearly done with the food. Probably a good idea to table the musings about the mysterious weapons until the end of the war. I had slammed my head against the strange objects since I first saw them, but without knowledge of the outside world, all my guesses were moot. They were also probably wasting energy.
“Alright, let’s see how much Mind I can use….”
[Tapped Mind: 0% / 82.3775%]
I had a little over 80% Mind to use at the absolute maximum.
[Create Egg:
Level 2
Acquired by: Birth
Using mass and Mind, create an egg that will hatch into a member of your species.
Subtype Options:
Simple Worker: A drone with no unique capabilities. (Min Mind Tap: 0.5%) Simple Warrior: A drone built for combat. (Min Mind Tap: 0.75%) Construction Drone: A specialized unit designed for construction (Min Mind Tap: 1%) Gathering Drone: A specialized unit designed for gathering materials (Min Mind Tap: 1%)
Level up: Unlock 2 subtype options
]
There was only one warrior type to choose from. I got to mathing. The workers that used extra Mind to create used 1% each, so 5% total. Considering the penalty that made the worker minimum 0.75%, each worker used 1.5 times the amount of the original minimum. I had eaten enough food to feel like I could make an egg with more Mind than all five workers. One issue was the question of scale. There was no real way to tell how much Mind caused, for example, double the power.
Unless, of course, double the Mind meant double the power. And if that was the case, hoo boy. That meant, without the penalty, 1.5% would make the warrior twice as strong as a normal one. And where did things go from there? Would 3% be twice as strong as 1.5%? An exponential increase? No way. Maybe it was additive instead, so a much smaller increase. In the end, all that didn’t really matter. Those were the only ways I could think to calculate how much food to use. At minimum, I could use 5%. At least in that case, I knew I had more than enough food to make the egg.
Argh! There were just too many variables! I didn’t know how much Mind I could use. I didn’t know how the amount of Mind would affect the hatching time. I didn’t know… anything.
“Do I take the risk? Do I play it safe? Fuck, what would playing it safe even be?”
“I cannot help you with this one. Every option feels good in different ways to me.”
Damn. All that was left to do was to eyeball the percentage. I focused on the Ability, activating it. I began slowly increasing the Mind percentage, going no lower than 10%. 15%. 20. 30. 50. I reached 75% before an ache appeared at the back of my head. Was 75% the maximum I could manage with this amount of food? Conveniently 100 times the minimum? How thoughtful. I hesitated. None of my other Abilities caused pain or discomfort, so the ache was concerning. Do I go lower? Wing it at 75?
I decided. My stomach churned as an egg created by 75% of my Mind began to form, waiting to receive the mass. This was seriously going to be abysmal.
________
Look at that rock! Ooh, look at that tree! Wow, look at that dead squirrel!
This forest was full of awesome things to see! I bet I’ll never get tired of looking at this place! It was so gray, so black, so gray! The sky was so colorful, and the trees were so different! The crystals were the best. I thought the sky was colorful, but these big things were so pretty! My favorite was when they made neato lights sometimes!
For now, momamama wanted me to look at the vultures. Hey, there’s a couple! Look at ’em go, eating that dead squirrel. But only two? Mamalama thought there were a ton around somewhere. Wherever they’re hiding, I’ll look at ’em!
I avoided the vultures and kept moving. I just wanna fly for real, geez. Thinking about moving around is real cool, but it’s way cooler to move and think about moving even more. These dang vultures! Stupid bird brain, hurting my wing like that!
Urgh. My wing was whatever. I wanted to help momaroo, but I was the one that got hurt instead…
Focus… Enemy…
Whoah! Was that Beckalecka?! I’d recognize that weirdo voice anywhere!
Hey, good idea, Beck buddy. Look for vultures, not for problems. I was occasionally seeing one or two vultures but nothing huge. I asked Beck about the hive. What was mamama up to? Was she still spinning that stick around? She was so funny.
Screeching…
Whoa! Good call, Beckarino! I like looking, so listening ain’t my thing. I dashed to a tree and hid inside. Mommay did say not to be seen!
My new Ability made it easy to see outside the tree. The trees and crystals had distracted me from seeing it, but a giant black cloud was outside the tree.
No, not a cloud. A clearing with no trees was covered in black and red. The black was clearly different from the burns and ash. They were feathers.
Hundreds. No, thousands? I had never seen so many living things. Beck was complaining about the noise, but the wave of sights was what made me sick. So much movement. One or two colors all over the place. Some were flying, some were sleeping, some were eating.
Gulp.
This was way scarier than I thought it would be. Some of these things were as big as the stupid bird that hit me. I had to tell mama!
I couldn’t leave yet. Too many of the stupid birds were around. It was pure luck that I didn’t get caught flying around here. Plus, mommam said she wanted info. With my cool-looking and Beck’s ear-looking, we could get tons of info!
…
…
…
Boring…
Yeah! Beck was totally right! Sitting here looking at the bird brains was super boring! I had been sitting here for hours and nothing new had happened. Just a bunch of flying and sleeping and eating.
Well, there was one cool thing. Some of the bird brains were smart.
The biggest things mostly sat around and got fed by smaller vultures. They didn’t do much but look at the flock, but I could feel it.
They were using Mind for something.
The weird pressure was the same I felt when I thought of moving or when my buddies did cool stuff.
Wait… Wrong…
Hm? Wrong? Nah, I was right! Silly Be-
Leave… RUN!
Huh? What are you talking about, silly Beck.
I looked back at the vultures, shaking my head at Beckaroo’s silliness.
A single white eye stared straight into my Mind.
Oh shit.
Run!
I flew away as fast as I could think. Thanks to {Big Look}, I saw it.
The Vulch. One of the vultures was looking straight at my tree before I ran. Straight at me.
I took in as much info as I could. The Vulch was smaller, only as big as some of the weaker vultures. Scars lined its leathery face, a particularly nasty one over its right eye, causing the beady orb to look milky white. On the other hand, its feathers were black. No, they were so dark its body felt more like a hole that threatened to suck me in. My last seconds of seeing the Vulch before I was too far to see it were totally creepy. It didn’t move. It didn’t make a sound. It just stared at me.
I’m scared, Mommy.
