The Sylv Hive Queen is sitting nicely in her nesting place on the sofa. A few minutes ago, Erik brought a blanket and wrapped it around the queen on the sofa, therefore giving it the image of a nest. Sylvia is very happy with the current situation. She is fed regularly, can grow in a safe environment and soon her first egg will hatch. She takes the blanket Erik brought her as a sign of acceptance and rewards it with a satisfied purr. The hive queen also noticed that Mark accepts her egg a bit more than before, which visibly relaxes her.

Soon it is time for lunch. This time no meat is included and nothing special happens. The daily routine begins to normalize and Sylvia's presence is beginning to be considered normal. The only exclusion is Mark again, who is not ready to lower his defense. He remains suspicious but does not show this openly to keep the family peace. His wife Elise already agreed to one of his security measures and now they had some anesthetic powder in case they need it.

After lunch Sylvia let herself be carried back to the sofa, where she left the egg in the blanket. While waiting she continues to learn more words. A couple of hours later the first cracks appear on the egg and the first hive drone hatches. It's still very small with a length of about 9cm and needs some time to mature. With enough biomass, the drone’s development will be insanely fast and can be completed in another four days.

Sylvia is in the company of Elise to get some language lessons. Right before the first cracks appear on the egg, the hive queen notices that something has changed. She becomes silent and focuses on the egg, which also caught Elise’s interest. This allows both to observe the spectacle in detail right from the beginning. “It’s happening!”, shouts Elise, calling over Erik in the process.

The new drone slowly peeled away the shell of the egg and thus opened an opportunity for Erik to arrive. Some seconds later the drone made a big enough opening and crawled outside. Sylvia instinctively reached out with her synaptic sense and established a connection to the new drone. The Sylv queen does this subconsciously without actively thinking about it. With this new addition, she isn’t alone in the hive mind anymore, which just now started to earn its name.

Through the synaptic connection, the hive queen can feel the presence of the drone right next to her. She can experience whatever the hive drone experiences. Right now, she could look through the drone at herself and her company. Sylvia can feel what the drone feels and vice versa. This allows the drone to draw from Sylvia's knowledge about the situation and stay calm.

Elise notices that Sylvia is unnaturally quiet and suspects that it could relate to the birth of the new drone in front of them. In response, she chants the necessary words for her True Sight spell to take a better look at the situation. This allows her to see the string of mana connecting the hive drone to Sylvia. The connection looks really delicate and quite complex, comparable to the mana flow from high-tier magic spells, which she has only seen once before. Elise notes that this connection is not a spell, because Sylvia clearly had not spoken any chant. On the other hand, it is also not like magic objects, which simply require a certain amount of mana. This is something completely different she hasn’t seen so far.

Erik is the first one who brakes the silence after the drone appeared, “It looks so creepy! Like a big spider. What can it do?”. Sylvia responds in the usual way, that this is a worker unit to which only she can speak. To demonstrate her statement, she commands the drone to move one time around herself. After some initial struggle, the drone manages to crawl around her hive queen as ordered. This visibly impresses Erik, who applauds and tries to encourage Sylvia to give the drone even more commands. Elise on the other hand decides to watch the spectacle for now and not intervene. Sylvia doesn’t have any complains and complies with Erik's request.

After some time, Elise decided to call her husband over to see the newly hatched drone. Mark is working on a sword in his smithy when his wife enters. While he gets the news, he continues to sharpen the sword before him. He replies that he will come over and take a look as soon as he is finished with this sword. Elise walks back to the house and decides to start preparations for dinner a little bit early.

Soon Mark follows his wife to the house and goes over to Erik and Sylvia, who are playing with the newly hatched hive drone together. Mark watches the drone closely and tries to figure out the threat it could pose. Some seconds later he judges that it doesn’t have any especially dangerous features and therefore should be a Sylv non-combat unit. He therefore decides to accept it for now, but he would continue to check on it every day just in case.

At dinner, the drone is brought to Geber in the stable and could eat there. Sylvia had no problem with this setup and is happy that her drone also got free food. The dinner passed peacefully and nothing noteworthy happened after that.

The next couple of days until the hive drone was fully grown were relaxed. Sylvia managed to get one new Strain from the meat of a Spine shooter, a medium-sized creature, which can defend itself by shooting a big number of small spines at enemies. The trait the Strain grants is the ability to shoot needle spines in form of a ranged attack. The hive queen decided to implement the “Needle spines ranged attack” in the ranged hive warrior preset. She is still far from creating a hive warrior, but she likes to prepare for the future.

Sylvia also improved her language skills a lot and is now able to hold proper conversations most of the time. She still needs to rely on some gestures here and there and her pronunciation, as well as grammar is a bit off, but the family understood what she wants to say. The Sylv queen also learned to walk properly in this short time frame, which is another surprise to everyone. Slowly however, all get used to the fast progress Sylvia is showing.

It is not long until the parents had planned to send their son to school. He will be five years old in a few months and Sylvia will surely have caught up with him in his development by then. The problem is that the Hive Queen is not human and this is clearly visible. She would never be accepted by a normal school. This is a dilemma that they unanimously decided to simply postpone. Who knows what will change by then and it will then certainly be possible to find a solution.

After more than a week, Elise has already accepted Sylvia as part of the family. Erik is also happy about his new playmate and only Mark continues to keep his distance. As a father, he feels responsible for his son's safety and cannot accept Sylvia just like that. It will take some time before this might change. In the meantime, the Sylv queen did not lay any more eggs and concentrated fully on her development. She considers it very important to communicate well with her new family and is actually very happy with the current situation.

Here is a little Overview thus far:

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Sylvia's Hive (Early phase)

Hive Queen (Sylvia: Completed 1 out of 5 growth phases)

Growth effects: Basic hive connection, full mental capacities, egg laying, walking

Status: Ready to start next growth phase

Knowledge learned: Basic human communication (Western language)

Number of drones: 1

Acquired Strains:

Rapid Regeneration (Allows to regrow lost limbs with enough time and nutrients)

Lesser Improved Strength (Improves strength by a small margin)

Needle spines ranged attack (A ranged attack focused against lightly armored or unarmored targets)

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The Hive's first drone is fully grown and named by Erik. She is called Spinny, because in his mind she closely resembles a spider. He has started to spend more and more time with Sylvia and sometimes takes part in her lessons. Due to the location of the house in the middle of a dense forest full of dangerous creatures, Erik is not allowed to go too far from the house and rarely sees other children his age when he sometimes is allowed to accompany his parents to town. To compensate, Elise is very often at home and never on mission for more than a day, during which time her husband fills in for her.