At first there were just flowers, but then Disaster brought a massive orange scale. It was large enough that I could hide fully behind it, and I feared to imagine what it belonged to.
Regardless, Things-Things was ecstatic, and Disaster was rewarded with extra treats.
After this, there were more scales of various colors and sizes, several smooth rocks (each too big to even transport), and a couple of bones which could serve as tube beds if someone hollowed them out.
For good stuff (scales) dragons were rewarded a lot, and for bad stuff (rocks and bones) they were rewarded a little bit.
A week wasn’t enough to train the right bringing habits in the dragon trio, but I was patient.
I was also sure that if I moved the feeding spot to another place, the dragons would follow. But by now I kept flying between the siege camp and Hive Supremo, despite how tiresome it was.
And then, Bloodimina hit me with news, smiling toothily at me.
"Father, our Warriors didn’t see a single hornet for an entire day. I’ve sent scouts to investigate, and they claim that they don’t see a single hornet at all!"
"Huh? You mean, not a single *alive* hornet?"
Bloodimina shook her head.
"No… Just no hornets at all. But they saw blood, and some torn pieces lying around near the entrance—the farthest they dared to look. It looks like the hornets have eaten each other to escape starvation! I want to send more scouts to investigate the nest fully—do you give a permit?"
I grimaced at the mental image Bloodimina just gave me.
"You didn’t have to describe the details… Ah, but if the hornets ate each other, there could still be some living ones. Wait for a couple more days—nothing will happen here in the meantime."
Bloodimina looked disappointed, but saluted anyway.
"Yes, Father!"
In these two days, the Warriors had to kill a couple more weak hornets who tried to flee from their nest.
Afterward, I let a hundred Beemarines enter the cave where hornets have built their nest. Just a hundred—the place wasn’t big enough for a massive fight, anyway.
They returned soon enough, looking disappointed.
"All the beasts are dead—most of them killed each other. Or hammers have barely tasted their blood. The vile creatures devoured even their young. But there’s no danger!"
<Congratulations! You’ve conquered 8478 sq. kilometers of new territory!>
This definitely increased my development points a little.
Cheered up even more, I smiled at the reporting Lieutenant Beemarine.
"That’s good news! Hammerwork—where’s Hammerwork?"
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"Here, Father! So, we can finally build stuff?" She looked very eager. "Will someone else feed the freeloaders now?"
"Scourge, Disaster and Woe aren’t freeloaders! The scales they bring will make amazing armor!" I huffed. "And don’t tell me we’d get much more scales if we killed them. Maybe one of the dragons is a girl! Maybe she will lay eggs and we will have baby dragons!"
Hammerwork grimaced in disgust.
"Eeew, father! They reproduce, too?"
I chortled.
"Of course! Where else do they come from?"
"Well… from the sky, of course." Hammerwork waved her hand in the distance. "All the dragons are out there, and if we just kill them one by one, eventually, they will stop coming."
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I shook my head.
"Incredible, just incredible! Well, I’m *not* teaching *bees* about birds and the bees! Just start cleaning this place up. The siege camp isn’t needed anymore—we can live in the new nest! And in the meantime, I’m going to see how much gold we have here!"
Like that, I took a digging stick and, safe from any hornets, flew to the hill they dug their nest in. Since it was only several dozen meters tall, it was too small to call a mountain.
Where the incline was especially sharp, one could easily see layers of rock. In other places, I had to order my bees to remove the upper layer of soil and grass first.
My findings were as exciting as I hoped!
Coal was lying so close to the surface, I just had to hit my digging stick once or twice to get several chunks! And there was a wide, thick layer of it—I expected we might need years to dig through it all.
And gold. There was gold!
Most of the gold exposed to air was inside the walls of the hornets’ nest. Whatever natural event or a burrowing beast dug this cave out eventually, it exposed the gold veins in the surrounding stone.
There were a few glimpses of gold outside the cave, but very few in comparison.
I had no idea how far this gold went, but it looked like a solid amount, and although my bees were still cleaning and building up the hornets’ nest into a livable camp, I immediately ordered some gold to be excavated.
By the next morning, I had an entire bag of dirty gold chunks! A third of them were pure gold nuggets, while the rest appeared to be ore.
Around me, half of our army was readying for its triumphant return, while Foragers moved the shining gold and coal into smaller bags for carrying.
Other bees—Warriors that will become guards and border patrols, just workers—came to see us off. Smiles glowed on my daughters’ and granddaughters’ faces, and I laughed out of pure joy.
"I’m rich! No, *we* are rich! The empire will be rich in metals and coal! Thank you all for your hard efforts and sacrifices to make it done!"
The bees erupted in cheers, too.
"Yeaah!"
"The Empire will be great!"
"For the Empire!"
"Rich, rich, rich!" Bloodimina chanted like a war march. "We are heroes, we are conquerors!"
I spun toward her.
"Hey, you don’t even know what ’rich’ means!"
"’Rich’, meaning ’full of a certain thing’. For example, this hill is rich in coal, gold, and until recently—dead hornets," Explanatory said.
She stood too far for me to ruffle their hair before they could dodge and hide behind other bees.
I huffed and folded my arms over my chest.
"You won today, girls… But I will soon return! Keep taming the dragons and study their speech!"
I was about to make *research prototypes*!