Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire-Chapter 214: An ambush against a feint

Bloodhero felt a mix of joy and frustration—but only for a moment. Then she realized what the humans were actually doing.

"They aren't running!" she shouted. "They are going to attack another hive!"

Bloodhero closed her eyes, imagining the Empire's map. The nearest hive in the direction where humans went was Hive Under Rock, only half an hour of flight away.

Humans would cross this distance in minutes, especially if they kept moving with the current speed.

"Adviser Bloodhero, are we going to give chase?" one of the Chief Warriors under Bloodhero's command asked.

"Yes. If the soldiers still have enough stamina to fly, they should use it all! But we won't be going in a direct route. The humans won't run away from us as easily for the third time—we will strike them in the back and *make* them fight!"

"Yes, Adviser Bloodhero!"

The drummers didn't even need a special order to start the march. After barely catching a breath, the army flew again.

***

Hive Under Rock was named this way because it was made under a large stone hill. The hill was only a couple hundred meters tall—small compared to the sky-reaching pillar mountains—and the hive was built in a burrow underneath it.

Bees in Hive Under Rock dug many aphid tunnels, and the trees in the forest around the hive were visibly yellow and dying from aphid efforts. Now humans were trampling them, too. Bloodhero wondered how many tunnels underneath will collapse after today.

The Bloodhero's army arrived just in time to see the Hive Under Rock's defenders trying to not let the humans approach their hive.

Swarms of a thousand bees—not just soldiers, but clearly anyone who could sting—were buzzing around, trying to avoid fire of humans' torches and reach under their clothing. The ballistas placed on top of the Rock Hill were shooting volley after volley of arrows, hitting humans and bees alike in this mess.

This was a battle of the battles. Bees and humans were shouting, and the drums of Bloodhero's army drowned in the noise.

Just like Bloodhero wanted, her army approached humans from behind, and now was in a perfect position for a surprise attack!

She immediately began giving orders that her field messengers carried to respective Chief Warriors.

"Thousands from first to fourth will spread over the ground—try getting to humans through their shoes and bottom of their pants, where they don't look. Fifth thousand is a reserve force. The rest will attack them with fire! And try aiming for the head—they have hair there, like us, it will catch fire easier. And I know you are all tired, but there's no time to waste. We must push ourselves to the limit and take this opportunity. For the Empire!"

"For the Empire!" the bees next to Bloodhero cheered. Then, those farther away repeated the call, and then those who heard them, until it spread like a wave through the entire army.

This 𝓬ontent is taken from fгeewebnovёl.co𝙢.

Then, the sparks flew. The bees carried fire with them as hot embers in clay pots or as candles in candleholders. Now those with lit candles shared with fire with their fellows in squads until every Warrior Bee with a pot of tree resin also had a brightly burning candle or a tree branch.

Bloodhero, with her field messengers and reserve force, watched from a distance as the soldiers approached the humans. The bees from Hive Under Rock noticed them first—and immediately began fighting with twice the fury.

Then, the first human turned to see the bees at their back and shouted in alarm.

His fellows turned around, too—but too late. They were already surrounded by a swarm so large that even these giants had to think twice about just breaking through it.

And by then, the main attacking force was so close that only a brief charge was enough to put them on an attack distance!

From there, the soldiers began throwing pots of lit tree resin at humans.

The tree resin Researchina picked for this task was more liquid than average, smelled sweetly, was loved by aphids and ignored easily. As Researchina explained to the Council, the sweetness made the particular tree resin burn better.

When a clay pot full of the stuff hit a human, the resin splashed all over, with a lot of it soaking the ropes their clothing was woven from. Warriors threw the pots—already thin and fragile by design—hard enough that almost none were left whole afterward.

When several hundreds of pots were thrown in the same area, patches of clothing began soaked in tree resin—and then swiftly began burning!

In no time at all, bright flames spread over the head of one human and over the back of another. Their shouts were echoed by those of their friends (if humans even were able to have friends like bees).

The burning humans immediately tried to flap at the fire with their misshapen hands, the tree resin in their clothing made the fire hard to extinguish. And in the distraction their howls created, Warrior Bees set another human on fire!

"Great job. Let them burn!" Bloodhero shouted, although these bees were too far to hear her.

If things continued like that, the battle would be won with ease and minimal losses.

But it didn't.

One human—their leader, perhaps—shouted something that sounded like an order, and they all turned away from Hive Under Rock, focusing fully on Bloodhero's forces. Everybody except the leader himself.

While other humans crouched slightly—preparing to run again, Bloodhero realized with fury!—the leader raised his torch high.

It took her an instant to realize what this movement had to mean.

"He's going to throw the torch at Hive Under Rock—and then the rest will run!"

Bloodhero hoped that bees closer to the human will be able to distract him enough that he missed. She couldn't do anything about it herself, even give an order in time.

But there was a thing she *could* do.

"Reserve force! We move out to intercept the humans' retreat!"