Lyn spent the next day cutting into the only maple tree in the forest, something that probably could only grow because of the blessings of the fairy grove it grew in. After a long and hard day, she was finally able to dig deep enough to get at the sweet sweet sap within it. It may be no nectar, but it will do as a substitute.

The only problem now was the pollen, or at least it should be. After both hives were decimated, the need for more nectar and pollen decreased alongside their size. So using what they have now was more than enough, and the sap from the tree would only be an added bonus to their food stores. Making sure that no one would go hungry.

But that still didn’t mean they didn’t need more pollen, or that the sap would last forever. Pollen was very important for bees and zappers, for it provided the protein necessary for a strong body and immune system. More importantly, without pollen, they could not produce any more larvae, as pollen was necessary for their growth.

But even if their food situation looks good, that doesn't mean that it might not be a problem in the future. So with that in mind, Lyn ordered her followers to gather some fruit and bring them back to the hive. Once they arrived with the fruit, Lyn then ordered her sister, and the young queen, and her aid to come to see her.

“Alright, now that you are all, I want to show you something.” Lyn began, pointing to the gathered fruit. “These are edible, so why doesn't anyone here eat them?” she said, now crossing her arms.

“Ummm. sister? We are zappers, we don’t eat fruit, only honey.” Lyn’s sister said, confused.

“Same goes for us.” the young queen added, equally confused.

“Wrong!” Lyn shouted, surprising them both. “If this fruit were to be broken open, then would it be edible?” now eyeing them down.

“Err- yes?” the sister said, a little worried.

“I mean sure? But our bees can't break through the skin of fruits, so it's a moot point.” the young queen said.

“And that’s where you are wrong again,” Lyn said, taking her spear and skewering the fruit, allowing the juices to drip slowly to the floor. “For too long bees and zappers have only relied on nectar, when sap and fruits can help. It only requires an insect-kin like ourselves to put in the work, and then we can fix our food problem,” she said proudly.

“That’s why I brought these.” pulling out a few spears from her soul realm. “Who knew this place had an armory right? Anyway, you will open up holes in the fruit, then take a few knives I found and cut them into fine pieces, afterward we will work together to turn them into mush. This mush should be able to feed our followers in place of honey. Though we still will have to find a pollen substitute.” Lyn admitted

“Are you out of your mind!” the aid exclaimed in horror. “You want to put our queens to work! You're insane!”

“NO! You are insane! Insane for killing each other when an easy solution was right in front of you! All it required on your parts was a little work, and you could have avoided all that bloodshed!” Lyn shouted back angrily.

The aid still seemed angry, but kept her mouth shut. Though the young queen and the sister had a more thoughtful look.

“Where did you learn this?” the young queen said, generally curious. Lyn’s sister herself seemed to be wanting an answer, amazed by her older sister's wisdom.

“Err-” then Lyn went into a flashback of the bee documentary she watched so long ago. “I’m… just a genius?” she said, vowing to keep her secret to the grave.

The young queen looked impressed while Lyn's little sister seemed to have sparkles in her eye as her admiration showed, making Lyn feel a little guilty.

“More importantly, now that we have fixed our food problems for the foreseeable future, how's the recruitment going?” Lyn asked, trying to change the subject.

“It’s going well.” the aid grunted. “For some reason, your fame has spread, though it has more to do with rumors of your supposed dancing skill than actual combat skill. Though I suppose that’s better than nothing. If we were to put all our numbers together, plus all those who have joined, we should near somewhere around four hundred.”

Lyn felt her chest swell with pride, it still was a far cry from her previous hives numbers, but it was steadily growing. Now if only they could start giving birth, that would be helpful. Unfortunately for her and everyone else here, they needed at least some sperm for that, and she was saving herself for her master. On top of that was the lack of pollen and the fact it would take a few months for an egg to mature into a proper worker. Speaking of eggs.

“None of you have any sperm, right? So you can’t get your womb to start working on eggs right? But are there any leftover eggs from our Mothers?” Lyn asked candidly

“We have about a little over a hundred eggs, we are keeping them in a hibernative state until we know we have a surplus of pollen.” Lyn’s sister said sadly, just the thought of having so few eggs lying around made her feel down.

“We ourselves only have around three hundred…” the young queen said in a depressed tone.

“Well… I guess that’s better than nothing…” Lyn said, a little sad about how far they have fallen. But she shook such depressing thoughts out of her head. “More importantly, since we insect-kin become more like omnivores, we should make it a policy to from now on not to eat any of the food that only our workers can eat. Not at least until we have a surplus of honey. Otherwise, it's just us being greedy. Understood?” she asked, but her tone of voice broke no argument.

Both of the queens nodded. “Good, now let me teach you how to use a spear and knife. You to aid, everyone is going to work for the improvement of the hive.” Lyn said, making the aid grumble but she went and picked up a spear anyway.

Afterward, Lyn spent the next few hours teaching the young queens how to wield a spear and how to use a knife, both in defense of themselves and on how to procure food and process it for consumption for themselves and the hive.

After all was said and done, Lyn set them to do a few tasks on their own while she took a break from teaching and went to her war room where she and her scouts made a makeshift map of all the areas that they found spiders in. and it wasn’t looking too good, the spiders had spread out far and wide, worse, they were slowly expanding ever onward right in their direction.

There was no way such a small force could take on such a large number of spiders, even she, no matter how strong, couldn’t do it. Shaking her head she tried to brainstorm any ideas or thoughts on what could be done about this crazy situation.

“Perhaps we could try to keep them at bay? Slowly build up our forces as we whittle them slowly? No… there's just too many, and everything is covered in webbing, even if by some miracle we could exchange a one-to-one attrition ratio, it still would favor the spiders until we got our worker production up and running.” feeling a small headache coming on.

“And would we even be able to keep them away for that long? There must be tens of thousands of spiders there, what are they even doing over here? This is definitely not normally where spiders like to nest, especially not in such large numbers, spider matriarch or no.” Then it felt like a lightning bolt went through her head.

“Could it be that they are also fleeing this wasp horde? That young queen did say that the spiders came after they arrived… but the angle… no… it could be possible… which means, do we actually want to get rid of them? If they are a buffer to this wasp horde, then keeping them there for as long as possible would probably be for the better but…” Lyn then shook her head, confused on what to do.

If it was true that the spiders actually contained a greater threat, it still wouldn’t do much for them, they would be forced to flee or be eaten anyway eventually. So no matter what action they chose, it still would be one she wouldn’t like. “If only there was a way to safely put a stop to the spider spread… perhaps… their matriarch!” as the crazy thought went through her head.

But only a few seconds later she dismissed it. No matter how strong she had gotten fighting a spider matriarch was pretty close to suicide, after all, she had no clue want kind of spider it was, for all she knew, it was the size of a house! Or extremely poisonous to the touch!

Frustrated, she left the war room to get some fresh air, perhaps even do any other scouting run by the spider territory.

Flying in that direction, her thoughts were not really into it, more preoccupied with other problems and frustrations. She fixed so many problems, but this one was really getting to her. If she could not fix this spider problem, it would remain a long-term problem, worse, she really didn’t have a lot of time on her hands. At most, if she were lucky, she had at max a month before she had to leave with her master.

“Oh master… may you bless me and give me the guidance necessary to fix these problems.” giving a silent prayer to Van. “perhaps a few more offerings to him will help give me the inspiration I need?” she thought as she flew through the wilderness.

But such thoughts slowly died down as she got closer to spider territory, not wanting to be distracted, she made sure to pay attention to her surroundings lest she get ambushed by a spider.

Spreading her senses to the maximum, she got very close and even entered spider territory. Narrowly avoiding a few cobwebs along the way, whipping out her spear and preparing to fight for her life at a moment's notice.

Some might call her foolish for doing something like this, but she had done this before and knew full well her capabilities, picking off a few spiders here and there when necessary. She did this now, focusing her attention to any movement or life that might be hiding. Which was kinda funny for her.

For so long spiders were like the boogeyman of the bug world. But now that she had some training, thanks in part to Ren, she could sense when there was something trying to stalk or sneak up on her. Better yet, even if they thought they were hiding, her new abilities to sense nearby life and her arua that can protect her from most harm made those stupid spiders who thought themselves so smart. Dead when they sprung their own traps.

Which was what she was here to do. Admittedly, she hated killing, even the spiders. But should they attack her… well… that was another story entirely… in fact…

Lyn whirled around and stabbed through some webbing so thick, she couldn’t even see through it, sending a massive electric volt through her spear. The spider shrieked in surprise and pain before the lightning fried its insides and it wound up dead. Lyn taking its now dispersed mana into herself.

Despite getting somewhat used to it, it still felt hard taking a life or putting herself in danger like that. But ignoring her own conscience, she pushed forward, ignoring the now dead spider that fell and got stuck on its own webbing. Growing disgusted when a few other nearby spiders left their hiding spots for the fresh kill. “Another problem with killing spiders, they eat their own kind. Killing them will just give them another source of food for their numbers, alongside any of our dead we can't retrieve should we go in full force…” she mumbled to herself.

“But then again… even for spiders… such fragrant cannibalization isn’t like them. They must be desperate for food…” Lyn shivered at that thought, for not only did she not like the idea of desperate spiders doing anything for a meal. But it also made her think that she might be right that they were just fleeing another threat that she didn’t want to deal with.

She flew ever deeper, killing a few spiders that got too close or posed a danger, using this opportunity to test herself and train, making herself stronger in case she had to fight against a greater foe. But after a little over half an hour of this, she was about to call it a day, the mental strain was already getting to her.

But just as she was about to leave she heard a muffled sound, almost like a cry for help. Pausing, and a little suspicious, she looked around for what could have made that sound, wondering if this was some sort of new spider ploy, trying to get her guard down. The muffled sound came again, and this time Lyn spread her sense as far as they could go, straining them, trying to detect any form of life around her.

Slowly, she crept up the source of the sound, keeping her eyes, ears, and senses sharp, just in case of a trap. Flaring her aura a little to cover her body to defend at a moment's notice, Lyn slowly moved into view of what had grabbed her attention.

A giant cocoon-like thing was hanging off the ground in the air, lifted by a single thread. It wobbled and shook and muffled yells of panic and sobbing could be heard from within. It was surrounded by other cocoons, but they all seemed to have become empty…

Lyn then sensed a life, still struggling inside the cocoon. Desperate to get out. Not bothering to waste any more time, she lifted her spear to strike and free the captive, only for her to jump several feet backwards as a spider literally dropped from right above her.

The ugly thing was massive, almost as big as her. And it clicked its fangs angrily as it used its webbing to sling itself back up in an eerily graceful motion that felt disgusting to watch on a spider. It then tried to fling some of the webbing at her, trying to tie her up.

Lyn wasn’t having any of that disgusting stuff anywhere near her. So she dodged up and left and charged at the spider, trying to get close so that she could sink her spear into its disgusting body.

But for all its size, it moved easily away, clearly having some experience with dealing with food that fought back. It started to spew large wide-area webbings, knowing full well that there was little room for Lyn to dodge in such a constrained environment. Forcing Lyn to go higher and higher to try to avoid the webbing.

But she flew too high and got stuck on some webbing above her. She couldn't see it because she was too busy dodging the webbing fired by the spider below her. The spider cheered when it saw her get stuck on the webbing, and fired a few more shots at her to really glob her up.

Lyn struggled as it became more difficult to move, the spider quickly closing in on its new prey. Happy that what it first thought might prove a little of a challenge was so easily taken care of. After all, nothing could beat experience, and clearly, this little prey didn’t have as much as it thought it did. Moving up to its prey, it prepared to sink its teeth in to paralyze it.

Lyn smiled, for though she hated the webbing all over her, she was actually covered by a small layer of her own aura which kept the webbing from actually sticking to her body. She had planned this, and in all honesty, thought her acting to be pretty bad. But apparently, it was good enough for this spider. So the second it got close, she sent an all-around surge of aura, knocking back the spider and making it fall to the ground.

She then fell like a meteorite, onto the fallen spider and sunk her spear through its body. “Bet you didn’t think I could use arua did ya?” she said with an evil grin. And if you were surprised by that, this next part is going to be shocking.” she then spent all her remaining electricity to fry the stupid spider that got webbing on her clothes. Not stopping until the thing stopped moving and twitching.

“Sorry,” she said, pulling out her spear. “I could have played with you a little longer before acting like you beat me, but this isn’t a video game and I have a damsel in distress to rescue.”

With that down and a swagger to her steps, she flew towards the hanging cocoon that went silent over the course of the battle. Opening it up with a knife, she gasped to see a fairy with green wings trapped inside. The fairy seemingly had fainted somewhere along the way, her eyes half glazed and listless. Her body looked like she hadn’t eaten anything in over a week.

Taking good care to carefully lift her out, Lyn gently put her into a princess carry and decided that she should get this poor soul back home as quickly as possible. Hoping that that aid knew something about healing or that they might find some potions in one of the many storage rooms left over by the original builders of Shiny Leaf.

With that in mind, Lyn flew as fast as she possibly could straight back home. Hoping that it wasn’t too late for the poor girl in her arms.