"Care to share with the rest of the class now?" Beth asked the wolf with a disgruntled look on her face.

  "Yeah, we got it," Blood said, turning and walking down the tunnel.

  "We got what, Blood?" Beth asked icily.

  "What Laselle wanted," the wolf replied, still carrying her odd burden.

  "OK, cool, not sure how you know that, but can I also ask what you're carrying?" Beth asked.

  "Let's get back on the ship, first," Blood responded, leading them the two miles back to where they could deploy the airship before boarding with her prize still in hand. They walked up to the bridge, where Blood carefully set the object on the floor next to her before sitting in the pilot's seat and turning it to face them.

  "Okay. Answers," Beth demanded.

  "They're bees," Blood started, Beth rolling her eyes at that. "They were beasts, and they shouldn't have been sapient, but they could communicate with me. It was something about my blood and power over it. They wanted me to do them some favors and, in exchange, they would give me some stuff. The favors weren't bad, so I said yes."

  "And what are those favors?" asked Beth skeptically.

  "Help with this, mainly," Blood growled, picking up the object.

  "And that is what, exactly?" Beth asked.

  "An egg," Blood answered. "Or, I guess, a larva? The queens had had a special egg that they wanted to raise with great care, but they couldn't because they didn't have the right stuff. They would never be able to raise the daughter the way they wanted, the way she should be, inside there. So, they wanted to try to send her out, and right at that time, we showed up. So, they asked me to take her out and help raise her, and they would give me a bunch of stuff for doing it."

  "Okay, I'm kinda following, but what was with that thing where they stung you? Are you alright?" Beth asked.

  "They gave her power to help enhance her body and change her blood," Sera interjected. "I can't really tell what happened, but I feel like Blood's body is different. It also smells like her blood itself is different."

  "Yeah, she's right," Blood said. Seeing Beth's flat look, she explained further, "They increased the strength of my blood, which will help in a bunch of things, including even my humanization. That also makes my body stronger overall, and will help me with increasing my strength in the future."

  "And they didn't hurt you?" Sera asked to make sure.

  "I'm fine," Blood said with a shrug.

  "And what else?" Beth asked.

  Blood made the other items appear, tossing the book to Beth and saying, "This book is what Laselle wanted."

  "Really? Another book?" Beth asked, looking at the large book in her hands with raised eyebrows.

  "I get you don't know how to read, but that elf lady does," Blood growled out sarcastically.

  "I think those bee stings went right to your empty head," Beth replied off-handedly, turning the book over to examine the back cover as well. The whole book was close to the size of her torso and nearly as thick. The cover was made from some kind of red hide or material that felt like treated leather and was entirely blank other than a single word on what Beth assumed was the front. The pages reminded her of the pages of a bible or some other book that had very thin and light pages, though the pages were obviously rather large. Opening the book, she wasn't particularly surprised to find she couldn’t read anything inside, as the language was definitely not Universal Standard.

  "I don't recognize that," Sera said before she could ask, shaking her head.

  "Well, I have no idea, but if it's what Laselle wanted, then we just need to give it to her," Beth said with a shrug, storing the book in her necklace.

  "This is some kind of amazing honey," Blood then continued, pointing at the big block of honeycomb. "Everything in it is good. Even if we just eat the honey, it'll be beneficial for us and we should save the comb, but the queens did ask me to feed some to the new queen."

  "Is that what's in the dodecahedron thingy?" Beth asked, pointing to the clear crystal with the mysterious substance in chambers inside.

  "No, that's Royal Golden Blood Bee Jelly," Blood replied. "It's way better, and probably more valuable, than their honey. I have to feed at least half of it to the new queen, but we could use the rest."

  "Okay, I see. What about the block of…something?" Beth asked finally, pointing to the white block that practically glowed just reflecting the bridge lights.

  "It's white mana gold," Blood answered.

  "Fucking lizard ancestors," Sera swore.

  The author's narrative has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon.

  "Valuable?" Beth asked.

  "Extremely," Sera answered, head bobbing up and down rapidly. "It's worth its weight not just in gold but in mithril. You're talking about several orichalcum coins worth of the material right there. It's not a whole lot stronger than really, really good mana steel, but it has such insane mana conductivity that smiths, enchanters, and even alchemists would sell you their life for a fist-sized chunk."

  "Holy shit," said Beth, looking back from Sera to the block. "Well, put that away and keep it safe. We don't need any money at the moment, so stuff like that we'll save, either for a rainy day or for Sera and I to use."

  "We can't use something like that before Grandmaster," Sera said, shaking her head slowly as she thought about the requirements to work the material.

  "Okay, so, back to town first thing, and then we'll see where we're at," said Beth.

  They had a flight of a couple hours, and Blood piloted them the whole time while keeping the bee queen larva sitting beside her on the deck. Beth might have been concerned about the larva's safety, but it wasn't going to go flying around unless the ship systems failed. The chunk of honeycomb-looking material the larva was embedded in was also rather large and study, so she wasn't too concerned about the baby inside getting too much of a shock. She did have a thought while looking at the larva and turned to Sera, figuring she would know if any of the three of them would.

  "Sera," she said, getting the tall girl's attention at the tactical station.

  "Yes, love?" Sera replied immediately, standing and walking over to Beth before reaching down and wrapping an arm around her shoulders.

  Beth pulled Sera into her lap before continuing, "I was wondering, if you knew, about that larva?"

  "I don't really know much about bees or insects overall," Sera replied, sitting in Beth's lap crossways.

  "I was more wondering, though maybe it's a dumb question, but it will be, uh, sapient, right?" Beth asked. She noted Blood's ears flicking even though the wolf didn't turn around.

  "Yes, that's the whole point," Sera said with a grin. "That's a reason eggs and stuff from dungeons are so valuable. They're really rare finds, even rarer rewards, but whenever you find one in any kind of instance, you'll have a companion from it."

  "So, wait, if it's a companion, will I have Blood as a companion, and then Blood will have her as a companion?" Beth asked, brow scrunched and frowning slightly.

  "Yeah, you can have up to four companions or other bonds at once, so it would only be a concern for filling Blood's bond slots," Sera explained. "You and Blood can also willingly give up your bond, though there's no point really for that. Not right now, anyway."

  "It is nice," Beth said, grinning at Blood, though the wolf hadn't turned. "Especially stuff where we were counted as one person."

  "Yeah, uh, I hate to break it to you, but you only get that benefit with companions before your first rebirth," Sera said slowly.

  "What?! Really?" Beth asked, exclaiming in dismay.

  "Yeah, uh, that's a benefit you get when somebody in the bond is before their first rebirth. It's basically new Wayfarer protection, giving them a small helping hand to help them level. It lets them still get rewards and stuff but not count for dungeon limits or things like that," Sera explained, rolling her eyes at Beth's despondent look.

  "I don't intend to sever our bond," Beth said, shaking her head.

  "Me neither," Blood confirmed over her shoulder.

  "So, yes, Blood will be offered a companion bond with this person when they, uh, hatch?" Sera said, a bit unsure at the end. "And then she'll have two of her bond slots occupied."

  "And what other kinds of bonds are there? Because you're saying companion bonds but also talking about bond slots like there are more," Beth asked.

  "Companion bonds are the most common by far," Sera replied. "There are a couple other kinds, including soul bonds, though those are very tricky and might not be what you think. They're something binding two beings together in a specific way, usually from some kind of complex magic contract. I don't know much about them or other kinds of bonds other than you shouldn't just randomly agree to them. Companion bonds are fine because they're basically entirely beneficial, but other bonds you need to be very careful about."

  "Well, that's good to know. I tend to just go in head first a lot of time…I might have agreed to something more easily than I should if I didn't know that. I mean, all I knew about was companion bonds, and those are good, so aren't other bonds good? That's what I would think," Beth said.

  "Yeah, that's a problem," Sera said with a little sigh. "Just because one type of thing is good, doesn't mean the other types are. You gotta make sure you know what you're doing before agreeing to something."

  "I understand," Beth said simply, giving Sera a squeeze, the dragon girl leaning her head against Beth's.

  Blood piloted them back to the city, setting down a little way outside the gates and walking in with them, still carrying the larva in her arms. Apparently, without an extremely specialized tool or very powerful skill, living beings couldn't be put inside spatial storage. Obviously, Beth's gate power was an exception to this, but they didn't want to chuck the future queen in there alone since Blood said the other queens had told her the larva was about to awaken. She set the larva down on the large table in the middle of the U-shaped couch when they were back in the room in the CRA Hall before the three went to shower and bathe.

  "So, do we, uh, need to do anything for the larva?" Beth asked as they sat in the bath.

  "Just feed her once she's hatched," Blood said with a shrug.

  "We could inject some mana and lifeforce into the larva, but I don't know much about that," Sera said.

  "How would we do that?" Beth asked.

  "We'd need an item from an Enchanter," Sera explained. "Some kind of formation or box with runes carved throughout it. There're things like that that let you try to improve an egg or unborn beast by giving it more mana, vitality, etc."

  "I don't know where we'd even get something like that," Beth said.

  "Yeah, probably no point looking now, depending on how long we had," Sera said. "If we had a couple weeks, we could easily get something and use it enough to make a difference."

  "We've got no more than three days, max," said Blood. "And that was from the time we left that secret Trial. It's probably, I don't know, two days? If that? I can kinda sense it through my connection to blood that the larva also shares."

  "Yeah, no point," Sera said, shaking her head.

  "Well, let's dry off and get some food and just watch it. We got done a lot quicker than I thought, thanks to Blood. We can wait a few days to turn the stuff in to Laselle," Beth said, urging the other two out of the bath.

  "We can just use my gate to level it," Beth continued as they prepared some food after drying off.

  "We can do that, but can you set the gate low enough?" Sera asked.

  "Oh, that's a good point," Beth said with a frown. "That's kinda a pain. Maybe we should just go back to Laselle right after she hatches and then find somewhere where it's easier to find and fight lower-level beasts."

  "Yeah, we should go to a low mana density world and try there. A lot easier to control the environment in a place like that. She'll likely be pretty strong even from the beginning, and we can help her kill some stuff at level one hundred in your gate after a bit, maybe even once she's level fifty," Sera said.

  They finished cooking and took all the food to the couch to eat so they would easily be able to watch over their new companion. Beth immediately noticed the larva was actively moving around in the honeycomb, just visible through the layers of jelly surrounding it. It hadn't been doing that before, and as they ate, its movements increased in frequency and strength. After a little bit, Beth could see that it was clearly consuming the remaining bits of jelly and honey within its…well, she wasn't sure what the term for it was other than honeycomb, but she thought that might only include parts of the hive without larvae. They finished eating and cleaned up and watched as the movement and eating reached their end.

  "I think your two days was a bit on the long side," said Beth with a small laugh as the occupant started trying to break free of the comb.

  "Should we help her?" Blood asked, looking between the comb and the others.

  "No, let her break out herself. It shouldn't matter much either way, but it should be a bit better if she works her own way out," Sera said. As soon as she was done speaking, the bee emerged.

  The creature that pulled herself out of the comb was already as big as both of Beth's fists together, if not a little bigger. The bee, in truth, had a look a bit more like a slightly fat wasp rather than a bee, with a long and what would be fairly sleek body for a bee with a pattern of alternating dark red and golden rings. She had wings that were rather large for her size, if Beth could judge, and looked directly at Blood with her large, multi-faceted eyes as she crawled across the table towards her.

  "I got, and accepted, the bond request," Blood explain, leaning forward to carefully pick the bee up.

  "I would worry about us raising a kid, but considering how fast Blood matured, I'm not that worried," Beth said.

  "Another special thing about sapient beasts born from eggs or such, or gifted by the Path. They mature both extremely quickly, and even faster based on leveling up," Sera explained.

  "I take it sapient beasts born of people mature the 'normal' way?" Beth asked as she watched the bee easily crawl up to Blood's shoulder.

  "Yes. It was like that for me as well," Sera answered. "I had a, well, regular would be a bit of a stretch, but a sorta normal childhood."

  "Interesting," said Beth. Looking at Blood, she asked, "Does she have a name, or will you name her."

  "The queens said her name is something that would translate to Nephianna," Blood said.

  "Cool. We can just call her Neph," said Beth. "Let's rest for a minute and then we'll head out."