Queen Bitey was annoyed. How did she let Tree talk her into this? Everything the Tree touched was a disaster. He gathered resources everyday, but didn’t keep track of anything. He spent resources on all sorts of stupid things. Filtered mana water? What even was that?

How did he measure anything? “Tree!” She called out. “How do you measure your strength?”

“What do you mean?” Tree replied.

“How do you know how strong you are? How do you compare to everyone else? How much mana can you use per day?” Bitey asked the annoying Tree.

“Uh.” Tree replied. He was silent for a while. “I don’t actually know. I just queue up actions. I think about what needs to be done and it just sort of happens. When I get tired I know I have run out of energy.”

“That is decidedly unhelpful.” Queen Bitey was irritated some more. “How do you plan?”

“I don’t really plan.” Tree replied. “I just kind of make it up as I go along.”

“I have noticed.” Queen Bitey responded. “Now go away. I have to figure something out for this mess.” Queen Bitey gestured towards the table. “How do I make adjustments to the table? I want it to show different values.”

“I’ll call Monte.” Tree replied. “He’s really good at making things.”

“You do that.” Queen Bitey replied.

Queen Bitey got to work. First was cataloging Tree’s production capacity. Bitey decided to use the mana berry as the baseline consumption of mana.

Tree could make between 1400 mana berries and 4000 mana berries a day. It seemed the output of solar mana varied. Alright, the energy used to make a mana berry would be called one mana berry. She could use fractions to determine amounts below the threshold.

No wonder Tree could do whatever he wanted. He was linked into an enormous network of energy. His main constraint seemed to be materials.

Khugar was in charge of digging. Her tunnels went everywhere. The mining debris went to the smelting pods. Tree broke down the tailings into their component parts. Then he used the base components to make whatever struck his fancy.

Queen Bitey was certain she could wring more efficiency from the system.

About this time Monte walked in. “How can I help you Queenie?” Monte asked.

“Glad you could make it.” Queen Bitey greeted the human. She was still on the fence about humans. She had vague feelings she should be more careful around the little pink monkeys. But now was not the time.

“I would like to change the displays in here.” Bitey said. “I want it to show different information.”

“It’s mostly tied into Tree’s root network.” Monte explained. “Everything it touches kind of gets reflected in here. It’s not a hundred percent.”

“Hmm. Only things the Tree touches?” Bitey thought aloud. “Does it have to be the Tree or can it be something linked to Tree?”

“Maybe.” Monte replied. “It was a pain to get Tree on the same page of this. It is able to display information about anything it comes in contact with. Unknown targets have minimal information. The dragonflies increase the visual acuity of the system. If you want more information, Tree has to absorb part of it.”

“How much needs to be absorbed?” Bitey asked.

“Not much.” Monte replied.

“What’s the smallest amount of the enemy can we acquire and still make it work?” Bitey asked.

“Can we use some sort of scout bug to bite the unknowns and get a basic readout of them?”

Monte nodded his head. “That sounds promising. A small biting bug. We have plenty of bugs to choose from. Tree would probably find that funny.”