Reincarnated To Evolve My Bee Empire-Chapter 409: Over my dead body

The metal-eaters were strange creatures.

When I, Tabletina and a dozen assisting Physicians began an autopsy of one of these creatures, it took me a while to realize what they were just based on this one’s looks.

Admittedly, anything would look stranger and harder to recognize when it was splayed on a surgical table.

The metal-eater was around the size of a Worker Bee, and had a thin, slim, snake-like body covered in skin so pale I could see every blood vessel underneath. Its head ended with a disturbingly human-like face with a wide mouth full of flat, square teeth. The creature’s eyes were facetious and bulging, which made its nose look almost inexistent by comparison.

A part of the metal-eater’s skull was caved in, and a piece of metal debris was sticking out—but otherwise the body was only bruised in places. The rest of the bodies were in a much worse shape.

At first, I thought the metal eater had no limbs at all—like a worm. Then Tabletina—the leader of the current autopsy—ordered to turn the corpse around for examination. On the metal-eater stomach, I saw that there were three pairs of tiny palms with even tinier claws.

Then it clicked.

"It’s a caterpillar. Or a larva," I said, gesturing at the creature’s shape. "They are usually much fatter, but it has the general shape of one!"

Nearby, one of Tabletina’s assistants wrote my words down. The rest of her dozen watched from the edges of the surgical room, mostly observing and learning than being of any help.

Tabletina nodded, twirling a scalpel in her hand.

"I agree. We must examine the edibility of this creature meat, then. Hm... But not on this one—it had already started to rot." She poked the dead body with the dull end of her scalpel, then waved her antennae. "Yes. The scent is very distinct. Add to notes—the biology of the metal-eater doesn’t prevent the rotting of its body."

"Should it?" I asked, trying to keep my own antennae away from the corpse’s stench and failing.

"Some creatures rot slower than others—I found that it usually means that they have very potent venom in their meat. But this one isn’t one of those. Father, permission to cut it open?"

By now the assistants have written down all the descriptions, and I saw all I wanted to, as well.

"Go on. Do your best!"

With a flash of a smile, Tabletina raised four hands, each of which held a tool or another. They moved with speed, precision and synchrony that were awe-inspiring to watch, despite what Tabletina was doing.

She gutted the dead metal-eater almost like a fish, cutting its stomach open and pulling out its inner organs one by one for examination. Her assistants made sketches of them and brought relevant notes from the archives, while Tabletina tried to tell something about the metal-eater based on them.

"The heart is fifteen percent larger than average for a creature of this size. Add a note: likely has a lot of stamina."

"The intestines are forty percent larger than those of a bee’s. Hm... I assume this means the metal-eaters have good digestion. A *very* good one if they eat metal. Father, do you agree?"

I clicked my tongue.

"Probably. Herbivores usually have long intestines to get energy from the toughest and the least-digestible things... But check this one’s stomach, too. What is its stomach acid like?"

"A wonderful question, Father. Let’s carefully cut it open and see..."

Of course, by now the stomach acid had lost all of its potency because of rot and now was simply yet another foul-smelling liquid. But after Tabletina expertly cut the flesh-bag open, her pincers fished out several tiny pieces of something.

After her assistants cleaned them out and laid them out on another table, I saw the pieces were some copper parts, which must have been parts of Titania’s cabling.

"So they really just outright *ate* the cables. Didn’t chew them, *ate* them!" I shook my head in disbelief. "Digesting metal must be something the metal-eaters evolved recently. I wonder what left the corroded marks on the bites. Perhaps their saliva?"

"It’s possible, Father. But is it important now?" Tabletina smiled. "I want to find out how these creatures were so stealthy."

"That’s a great question... but what’s up with this smile?" I eyed Tabletina suspiciously.

"I’m just imagining what I would do to a metal-eater if we captured one alive," she told me in the most matter-of-fact tone possible. While I just stared at her, slightly flabbergasted, Tabletina continued, "A theory—the metal-eaters have color-changing skin for camouflage, but it lost its properties after the creature’s death. Perhaps if we study it closer, we can find something that confirms or rejects this theory."

I let out a breath.

"Yes. Let’s. Too bad we don’t have a microscope, or at least a magnifying glass..."

Our glass-making wasn’t refined enough to make lenses even enough to see through them. But our eyesight was already pretty sharp.

Tabletina cut off a piece of the metal-eater skin and brought it under the bright light coming from several candles and lanterns lit just for this.

In this light, which let us see things as clearly as we ever could with current technologies, both of us saw the tiny dark dots peppering the semi-translucent skin like pores.

"This really looks like camouflage. I remember reading about how it works for some creatures: they have special cells with dye in their skin and make it larger or smaller with a flex of their muscles," I said. "Octopuses do that. If the metal-eaters have a weak scent and camouflage like that, they could hide from us very well... But..."

"But, Father?" Tabletina asked, pulling her eyes away from greedily studying the piece of skin.

"But this is still far from stealthy enough to sneak *inside an active mecha*! No, these metal-eaters must have something else. A secret. A pheromone. Something!"

And the metal-eater was almost taunting me, offering the answers over its... stinky dead body. freeweɓnovel~cѳm

Ugh.