"Hmm, one of the scouts died." Luncress frowned,municating with the queen bee to obtain the details.


    The queen bee reached a size of six metres, sporting gigantic mandibles that seemed too heavy for her head to carry, a pair of wings too small for her weight, a scorpion tail that was hard to control and mantic scythes that did more harm than good.


    She was the first sessful queen bee among the thousands that he had experimented with to mutate. Even though the queen bee was struggling to get her work done, she somehow managed.


    Though, it seemed everything was taking a huge toll on her body as day by day, her eggying capacity was dropping at an rming pace.


    ''A couple more months, and she would be incapable.'' Luncress thought, but didn''t seem worried, smiling as he looked at four eggs cared by the brood. They were all potential queen eggs. And as long as at least one of them hatched sessfully, he could continue with the experiment.


    After all, even though the current queen was having a hard timeying eggs, with the passing of every day, the newly hatched honey bees were adapting to the changes better.


    The defects of the harmful fusion were reducing. Even though the mutated traits vanished a little in response, they were more assimted into the biology of the honey bee.


    ''Of course, nature is epic. Over due course of time, everything would be corrected.'' This was the thought Luncress had abided by since young. And now, he felt that the words were more profound that he had thought.


    On his head, there were three splits of the patch of green that was his hair, split horizontally. The split was by a lock of jet-ck hair, forming a sharp enough contrast, disying that he had attained Stage 3 already.


    Currently in the Fornol Empire, six people had attained Stage 3, with more on the verge of attaining it.


    Of course, the Empress was a long way into Stage 3, seemingly like she would reach Stage 4 after a few months, given how her strength continued to grow with the passing of each day while she continued to grow younger.


    Her body brimmed with the vitality of a nt, gradually bringing her to the prime of her being as the Empress looked like she was in her early twenties now.


    Luncress too had grown a tad younger, but it was nothing inparison to the Empress.


    Thanks to his unique powers, he had been granted the title of Duke and granted arge estate closest to the capital where he moved in with his family.


    And as the Empress had stated, people of his bloodline too awakened to the same power as him. His wife had some other power though, same for his father.


    His mother though, had the same power as him, showing that it was her bloodline that had inherited this ability. This did cause some shift in the power dynamic of their family as the authority fell in the hands of his mother whose assumed position as the main family line while his father became the outsider that married into the newly established Duke''s house.


    Luncress had three children, two sons and one daughter, all three of which gained his power—Turman Lily!


    And each of them had erected a building that served as an experimentation facility. Luncress focused on the honey bee, naming the mutated ones as the Hoil Bee. The Hoil Bee were geared for war, intending to serve as the unit that would harm the Lerni Empire.


    "Send three more scouts to probe around that region. It might serve as a vital asset for our expansion in the future." Luncressmanded the aging queen bee, watching her ry the orders to three scout Hoil Bees that left the next immediately.


    The nest had been established by digging through a 900-metre-tall mountain. The Hoil Bees had used their mandibles to do the job, creating the foundation for their nest. They had riddled it with holes inside out,yering everything with their wax.


    Only a quarter of the mountain had been turned into a nest ad Luncress nned to turn its entirety into a nest for his Hoil Bees. That was his end goal, to produce an army of Hoil Bees capable of taking down an entire army on their own.


    And the best thing of all, as he continued to grow stronger, it was getting easier for him tomand the Hoil Bees to target themon popce.


    Rhizen''s restriction had plenty of loopholes to be taken advantage of. And, he had already discovered one.


    After all, the primary food required by the Hoil Bees were humans. Not just humans, but anything edible served the purpose as they attained the omnivorous nature from ants.


    And since humans were the greatest number of flesh creatures onnd, they directly became their primary source of nourishment.


    With this, when a Hoil Bee hunted a human, it wasn''t to abuse them, oppress them or anything of the sort, as dictated by Rhizen. They were simply relieving their hunger, which was entirely fine.


    As long as they only killed humans to relieve their hunger, it was fine. So, what Luncress did was simple. He sent out starving Hoil Bees to gather food, keeping them half satiated.<novelnext></novelnext>


    They deposited the remainder in the next and made subsequent trips. Of course, Luncress never targeted the humans from his domain or anyone from the Fornol Empire.


    He targeted the neighbouring kingdoms that had allied with the Lerni Empire and gained the power of the Horned Humans.


    As he was working on his research, watching a young Hoil Bee sport a lighter chitin armour that covered more of its body now, reducing its overall weight while giving it better protection.


    "Generation after generation, they are evolving." He smiled in response when suddenly, a figure rushed into the ce, shouting at the top of her lungs.


    "Dad! I hatched the queen!" Thedy sported a head of green hair just like him, bearing some resemnce as she was around seventeen years old. She was Hakhena, his youngest daughter.


    Hakhena had been interested in his profession since young and had been trained to be an expert swordsman, hoping to be enlisted into the royal guard in the future. And indeed, she had made into the list of those that would guard the Empress.


    She hadn''t taken up position because of her young age.


    Hakhena carried a tiny creature in her hands, one that was around twenty centimetres in size.


    Luncress stared at the creature, shocked, "That''s a…queen?"


    "Yep!" She grinned, stating smugly, "I''ve been working on some modifications myself. I used the same form as you, but I also added in a little something myself."


    "They are the same Hoil Bee as yours, but I''ll call them the fertiliser variant." She spoke.


    "Fertiliser variant?" Luncress asked in confusion.


    "I''ll show you." She said, bringing him to a corner as she nudged the queen, "Go on! Do your thing!"


    The queen was still young, so it wasn''t much active. But at her orders, it gently pped its wings and approached a flower jutting out of a shrub nearby, hovering before it as the queen gently sucked in some nectar.


    But strangely, the flower seemed to exhibit some changes immediately.


    Luncress blinked his eyes, unable to believe it as he asked, "Did the flow just…grow bigger?"


    "Yeah, the growth is mild, but the effects would be pronounced on arge scale." Hakhena grinned brightly, "With this, we''ll be able to grow the ntation bigger. With that, if the produced fruits are bigger and more nutritious, they''ll be a better source for feeding the younglings."


    "After all, the humans among our enemy kingdoms wouldn''t remain helpless and vulnerable for long. We need to enact sustainable measures. That''s why Luran and Lortwik have taken simr routes of development."


    Luran was the oldest of Luncress'' three children, aged 23, the next heir of their household. When Luncress was experimenting with the honey bees, Luran chanced upon some termites that had been eating up a tree.


    He became interested by them and worked on experimenting with them, focusing on their ability to build things by adding in such traits from other ant species.


    As the Fornol Empire had piged from various ces, they had a lot of records maintained regarding the exotic flora and fauna of such locations. And using their newfound authority as part of a Duke household, he ordered for nests of ants to be shipped back.


    And he used those to create a race called the Mudmite, consisting of fist-sized ant-like creatures that were able to build structures using soil. And surprisingly, they were sturdy enough, inferior only to stone structures.


    They had a better life than most wooden structures. And this was only the beginning. In the future, he would evolve to make them as efficient as possible, allowing them to create massive structures overnight that wouldst long under attacks from the Horned Humans.


    Finally, there was Lortwik, one that focused on birds that drunk on nectar, fusing in them traits of other birds to create a race called the Spageon. And their entire function was to act as a means of transport, boasting wingspans surpassing five metres, withrge enough bodies to carry at least two people at a time and able to travelrge distances.


    And with this, their newly established Duke household, the Turman Dukedom gained a lot of credibility in the Fornol Empire.