Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire-Chapter 178: Intermediate Human Exterminator

The shock turned into alarm and pain as the arrows hit their mark.

Although my ballista bees weren't the most experienced, and my ballistas didn't have the best quality, with the target of the human size of this world, it was almost impossible to miss.

The volley of arrows passed in an arch over my head and hit the torch-bearer almost at the end of their range.

Most of them got stuck in his clothing, but there were enough arrows that struck his face or the hand he raised to protect it. Some fell off, but several dozen arrows stayed stuck in the flesh. Compared to the giant, they looked like toothpicks, but this had to hurt.

Especially since all these arrows were tipped with venomous stingers.

Together, the shots dealt 11 damage, bringing the man's health to 〔84/95〕. And the venom was spreading.

Immediately after, he yelped in pain and dropped his giant torch to clutch the wounded places—although he quickly realized his mistake and held the wounded hand out.

Meanwhile, my squad had to fly away from the blazing torch, which almost fell on our heads! By pure accident it got close enough that its heat seared my skin and, I was ready to swear, singed off my eyebrows.

This was the closest humans got to killing me so far!

The torch landed on the bare ground below, but kept burning, now safely away from anyone. In their alcoves, the ballista bees were already preparing the next volley.

Above us, the torch-bearer was contorting in this interesting brand of agony, where he could only scream (by this point, I felt like I was going deaf from the giants' voices) and convulse. He couldn't clutch his wounds, and the pain prevented him from even trying to pull out the arrows.

All around the arrow wounds, the man's green chitin began inflaming and turning brownish. Since a lot of these ballista arrows were made from murder hornets' stingers, being hit by them…

Murder hornets had some of the most painful stings in the world. Perhaps second or even first place! Our ballista arrows didn't carry its full might, but even a bit of that was a *lot*.

(The research on which sting was the most painful was very limited because only the most insane people let so many insects sting them for science.)

I winced in sympathy.

"I kinda feel bad for him…"

"Don't be, Father!" Destroyer replied. "The enemies of the Bee Empire don't deserve painless death!"

"Oh yeah, I can always rely on you to cheer me up whenever I remember that our enemies are just as sentient as we are."

"I'm happy to serve, Father!"

I smiled, or maybe grimaced—it felt like that—and looked at the other humans.

The sight of their friend falling to the arrows was the last drop for some of them.

With shouts of panic, four men turned around and ran, ignoring all the bees that were stuck to their clothing—and it was a wonder they didn't drop their nets. One of them lost his footing on the next step and fell; since his health was already in the lower half, I doubted he would get up in time to live.

The other three were swiftly getting away. Perhaps the bees that stuck to them could've killed or crippled them enough for others to finish the job. However, I knew they wouldn't—yesterday I gave Bloodimina strict orders to not kill anyone who tried to escape.

Out of sympathy, yes, but also for practical reasons. For humans to fear the Bee Empire, *someone* had to tell them how fearsome we were.

The rest of humans were either too crippled by pain to do more than crawl, or kept fighting in reckless abandon.

However, by now, the fight was basically over.

A second volley of arrows hit the closest torch-bearer, while the second one was attacked from the back; other humans were even more defenseless.

In a few minutes, all seven were dead.

Immediately, the wind of the "Titan Slayer" title got from under my wings; instead, the system assaulted me with notifications.

<Congratulations, for killing 5 humans you got a new achievement: "Amateur Human Exterminator"! Your reward: "Titan Slayer" title upgrade.>

〔Titan Slayer〕: +20%->30% to all base attributes when in battle against an opponent at least 100 times your size. The allies in your line of sight gain +10%->15% to all base attributes.

<Congratulations, for killing 5 you got a new achievement: "Intermediate Human Exterminator"! Your reward: "DNA Shuffling" special ability.>

〔DNA Shuffling: allows re-rolling your gene options once per development level.〕

'Damn, my jokes about a blowjob from the Bitch Goddess don't sound so insane anymore! She actually got me rerolls?!' I was excited for about half a second, then remembered a crucial detail. 'Shit, rerolls are useless anyway when my luck sucks, and it's still a while until the development level 8. At least I have a solid title upgrade in case I need to fight more humans.'

I switched back to my regular "Grand Strategist" one and gestured to my bodyguards.

"Come on! Time to celebrate and count our losses."

***

Bloodimina reported to me back in our command center—the Hive Rich's Council Chamber. The rest of the Council was here too, listening eagerly.

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"By a quick estimate, we lost around 120 Beemarines, Father. Most of them were crushed by accident when the giants thrashed in pain." Bloodimina was smiling victoriously. "The bodies we could gather are already being prepared for a funeral dance ceremony. But overall, this was an easy victory! They didn't know what stung them."

"Yeah, they didn't." I chuckled. "Our Beemarines died as heroes fighting for the Empire, and we will honor their memory. What about the wounded?"

"There are a few dozen, mostly with bruises or broken bones," Regalia's Chief Physician said. "We can fix that."

"And we are ready for the mass dismantling operation. The workers were freed beforehand," Hammerwork added.

"One more thing, Father," Bloodimina said. "The full headcount of missing bees is still in progress. However, some soldiers reported seeing several bees caught in the nets of escaping humans. It's possible that they were kidnapped."

"What?!"