Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire-Chapter 317: The next steps

Our group, among all the Warriors and Commandos, had some Physicians to help the wounded. Although they mostly specialized on bees, they could at least tell whether the dragon had its bones broken or it was just a dislocation.

Sadly, for Woe it was the former. The break of his foot was a closed one and relatively clean, but still required a splint and help that bees physically could not put on the beast.

If any other tamed animal was in its place, it'd be probably easier to just kill it rather than give it medical attention at this point. But… Woe was one of the first!

Besides, I knew other black dragons will be vehemently against killing one of their own. They were smart enough to understand what's going on.

No, leaving Woe to die wasn't an option! Nor was it necessary.

"It's a great thing that Woe can still fly, at least," I declared. "Beastie… I know you are in pain, but you gotta fly a little farther. If Farini's letter has any weight, then his friend Tamsha should be able to help you."

I nodded to Woe's current dragon rider, then turned to a squad of Beehounds I've already picked for this mission.

"There should be our Agent Bees in the area—contact them if you can, get their can. Since you don't know them at all, you can't contact them telepathically—it will make things harder. But you know their regions of operation, at least. Even if you can't find them, bring Farini's letter to Tamsha and get Tamsha to help Woe. And to travel here to help us."

The Beehounds saluted in silence.

I hoped they will find the Agents. Although I ordered to teach everyone who went for this mission about the basics of human culture, they had very little time to study. Their approach was bound to be too blunt.

Of course, the squad didn't move out immediately. The dragons were tired, including woe. The bees were tired, too. Normally, I wouldn't ask anyone to travel until tomorrow—but with bone breaks, it was important to provide first aid sooner instead of later.

I didn't want Woe to have a permanently crippled foot, so I urged its squad to fly out after just an hour of rest, sending one more dragon with them to assist and to bring the news about Tamsha's recruitment back.

Tamsha's city was close enough for a dragon to reach before the sunset, but not close enough that my telepathy will be able to send messages to bees in it. I wouldn't get news about Woe and Tamsha before the other dragon returned with them.

Woe didn't even protest much about traveling again so soon after being explained that help waits there. Neither were the other dragons.

By then, Malevolence's scouts also returned, bringing good news of a rainwater lake nearby and some convenient holes in the ground close to it.

Bad news was that the amount of hostile and semi-hostile creatures on the way there was as large as where we landed.

We've already killed or scared away a lot of insects and small beasts in the area, but advancing farther out attracted more. And not advancing attracted more.

"The entire place is like that. It's like… everything tries to breed and breed and breed, Father," the scout said, gesturing vaguely in the air, then grimaced in disgust. "I was stealthy, but was still attacked several times. It's the same higher in the mountaintops, but with more dragons."

We fought our way to a place to camp for the night—thankfully we didn't need to fight through more than a few dozen wasps, small dragons and mantises that had more hunger than sense. The rest were already dead.

The dragons stayed with us. More of them than just one wanted to go with Woe, but food around and our dragon riders convinced them to rest with the bees.

Although I knew my group was tired, I ordered Malevolence to send out long-range scouts to search for the dodos. Our time to find them was still short.

Today's night was a blessedly clear one, with lots of light from the stars and the moon. This meant that the Beehounds had an easier time to navigate (although they could go blind using scent alone).

By morning, the first of them returned with news, tired but quietly pleased with themselves.

"My squad has discovered a nest high on a pillar mountain that must belong to 'dodos', Father. It's not very far. Even in the night we could see that the creatures inside have a strange-shaped snout just like you drew it. But it was guarded by a gigantic dragon that slept nearby. It looked like this…"

The Beemarine sketched silhouettes of both a dragon and a dodo in the dirt under our feet. The dragon looked like a lean, agile predator—possibly another hawk, like the one we had to fight yesterday.

The dodo chick, meanwhile, looked very much like an ordinary chick—helpless and tiny compared to its "parent". However, dodos were large birds—even a chick was, as the scout described it, the size of one and a half black dragons.

It was just like Dalmanrach warned—the dodos were soon going to grow into beasts too large to stay in their nests. But they couldn't fly down the mountain! Because they were *flightless* birds!

And they were already too big for the black dragons to carry them down.

'Damn. This is near impossible without someone of a human size to help.'

But if I waited for human forces to come there, the dodos would have time to grow even larger.

'We must secure all the dodo nests from predators and other threats and protect them until we can get someone to help us out,' I decided. 'Perhaps even the hawks that guard the nests can be persuaded with enough telepathy. Telepathy and…'

I smiled to myself.

'Yes. The trump card… Well, it's still experimental, so I'd rather not use it if just telepathy alone will work.'