"How many preservation containers are there in your storage space?"
"Only 10…one of which already contains the Celestiviolets."
Neither of them could have imagined that they'd run into so many spiritual plants.
The number of containers was not nearly enough to collect every single plant in the field.
They needed to be selective with what they chose to bring back.
Thankfully, the majority of the plants with the most beneficial effects, such as calming the mind, increasing the ease of absorbance for spiritual power and more, had already been sorted by the guards and inserted into the queen's throne.
Stripping the throne of the black-iron grade spiritual plants, they were put into a preservation box.
The red-grade plants were an issue though. After all, they were technically still spiritual creatures, and wouldn't die when uprooted like the white-grade ones. Therefore, they could not be put into the storage space which could only contain dead things.
Instead they removed several large satchels from the space and began to carefully place them in." Thankfully, they had the Night Mares to help them bring them back to the city. After cleaning out the throne, they had filled 3 preservation boxes and 4 satchels with spiritual plants.
They then looked at Princess and Lady having a field day licking the walls, the honey here was also incredibly valuable.
Kain released the queen and asked her to direct him to where the majority of the honey was stored. They followed behind her chubby body as it clumsy flew forward supported by tiny wings.
Quickly they reached a chamber composed of honeycomb and had a glistening thick liquid spilling down its walls. The honey appeared to be separated into distinct categories, likely dependent on the effects of the flowers they used to make it.
Kain then released the rest of the guards, now a lot more docile around him, and ordered them to begin collecting the honey honeycombs so that they could be taken into Bridge's space ring. Hopefully, his ring could hold it all.
However, the queen then mentioned that all of this honey could instead be brought to the new hive in his star space. Taking this as a much better option, Kain gave them permission to do so.
While they went about deconstructing the honeycomb walls of their old home, he and Bridge went outside.
They had 6 preservation boxes left, but the enormous field would likely require at least 20. Therefore, he and Bridge could only select the most valuable ones. They located more Celestiviolets which were put in the same container as the others. Now there were 19 in total, more than enough for all of their siblings. Each of them could even afford to take more than one.
They then began to rank the flowers in order of importance.
They disregarded all of the poisonous ones. Any white-grade poison would be useless at their level anyways. Instead, they focused on those that could increase the rate of spiritual power condensation, improve mental strength, heal, and slightly improve their physical constitution.
There were also some plants that slightly improved the sensitivity of spiritual creatures to an element, if they already possessed that element, to improve the ease with which they can learn new skills and improve the proficiency over their existing skills of that attribute. There were 5 of such plants, 3 for the fire attribute, and 2 for wind. The 2 for wind will be split between Bridge and Kain since they both now have contracts with a wind-attribute. Although Kain's contract is a secondary one.
They also stuffed the 3 red-grade spiritual plants into separate satchels each to avoid them hurting one another. They were not threatening once you were aware of their presence and trimmed the roots, vines and thorns that they used to launch attacks.
Satisfied with their collection. They filled up all of their remaining preservation containers and left behind a field with only poisonous, illumination, or other less useful effects.
They returned back to the hive to find high stacks of honeycomb ready to be transplanted to the new hive. The guards each gripping a stack of honeycombs and Kain recalled them. Likely because it was something they had produced, there was no resistance from the space.
Kain turned to the queen, the honeycomb that she held had a different appearance. It had more of a jelly consistency and was a deep auburn colour.
She expressed through their secondary contract that it was royal jelly, a necessary component if she ever hoped to evolve. Although she mentioned that she is unaware of the other conditions for their species' evolution.
Kain nodded. He already knew that it'd be difficult to evolve the queen, but at least he now knew one of the key components. Hopefully, he'd come up with more ideas while at college.
After collecting everything of value they headed back to their waiting Night Mares and loaded them with satchels filled with the Red-grade spiritual plants.
It had been a very eventful night, so Kain and Bridge decided to set up camp and sleep the rest of the night away.
Kain had thankfully been able to complete his second contract without anyone getting hurt, but it had still been a nerve-wracking process, every moment leaving him on edge.
However, there was one thing that Kain needed to do before going to sleep.
He needed to use the System to figure out the true identity of his second contract.
The queen was obviously not who he was directly contracted to, merely serving as a host for his contract. Yet, her life and the lives of all of the other wasps seem to strangely be in his contract's hands. When his contract was removed, their appearance of quickly moving towards death was very apparent.
Not to mention his contract was likely responsible for Bea's lack of effectiveness on the wasps and may even be responsible for why this queen unusually only produces female guards.