Beatrice woke to the sight of a strange... 'Oh come on! Are you kidding me Ian!? Have you been killing dragons or something!? Are you killing dragons while I'm making freaking honeycomb!?'

  The again strange Ian was removing some kind of silver wooden plates from his thorax, they were covered in intricate carvings that looked charred. But weren't the Silverwood trees fireproof? Ian himself wasn't much larger than before, but his carapace was thicker, almost to the point where it would be inconvenient. And he looked more... Regal? Not like a king or queen, more like a noble knight. Functional, but deadly. His wings were unusually long for a honeybee, and it made him look sleeker. Comparing a normal drone to him was like comparing a news helicopter to an apache attack helicopter.

  'Good thing bees don't salivate... I meant good thing bees don't saturate.' she lied to herself. 'Well, so much for Ian not tiering up before you... That's right! I'm supposed to be angry.'

  "Hey Ian. What were you up to last night?" She asked sweetly. She really didn't want to act like a jealous girlfriend, but that was the easiest way to use the skill at the moment.

  Ian flinched and started shuddering like he was trying to resist something. Then he stopped shuddering and spoke. "I was fighting monsters." He muttered.

  "Really? You've been running around at night and fighting monsters behind my back? You didn't think of telling me? You wanted to risk your life without telling me and leave me all alone, is that it?" She really didn't want to act like a jealous girlfriend... Probably.

  There was silence as they stood there, until Beatrice threw up her little bee claws in frustration and walked over to her honeycomb. She popped open one of the capped ones and filled her honey stomach. 'Hmm, the honey is starting to crystalize. Wait, crystals can be pretty sharp. I'll come back to that later.'

  She tappity-tap stomped over to Ian (bee claws weren't suited to stomping) and stood there for a full minute, Ian looking uncomfortable. "I forgive you, so don't do it again. We're going hunting now." Beatrice said without much expression, since forcing herself to act rationally meant suppressing her emotions hard.

  "Okay." Ian said.

  "Stop it with the stoic-warrior-suffering-in-silence persona and act normal dammit. We're friends, so stop making this so annoying. Now, lead the way to something I can kill."

  "My apologies Beatrice. I'm just a little tired today." Ian said tiredly.

  "Then sleep at night you goof! I'll promise to stay home during your hunts so you can hunt during the day if you promise to get enough sleep. I don't want to worry about you falling asleep mid-battle on top of everything else." Beatrice said sharply, forcing herself to calm down again.

  "I'll do as you say dear Beatrice. Thank you for worrying about me." Ian said fondly, but still tiredly. And he took to the air with a deep thrumming buzz, Beatrice close behind.

  The trip wasn't interesting, but it was productive. Beatrice killed nearly a dozen tier three monsters, stuffing their lungs with honey. Beatrice didn't need to refill on honey, since she could float the gross murder honey next to them as they flew.

  At one point Beatrice was attacked by a tier four dragonfly of all things, but Ian appeared between Beatrice and the dragonfly, a silver lance suddenly in his claws. And with an unnatural burst of speed, Ian skewered the dragonfly from its head and deep into it's abdomen. 'Maybe he isn't in danger when he hunts.' Beatrice thought. Ian's lance disappeared, the dragonfly's corpse falling to the ground.

  The only real gains of the day were levels, but Beatrice was happy with the progress. And her stat gains were substantial, raking in twenty with every level-up thanks to her race's rank and the reincarnator bonus.

  Name: Beatrice

  Race: Juvenile Silverwood Honeybee Queen of Sweetness Level 13 Tier 2

  Strength:35

  Agility:75

  Endurance:35

  Vitality:35

  Intelligence:105

  Wisdom:107

  Charisma:125

  Beatrice and Ian took a break the next day at Beatrice's insistence. Ian couldn't argue with her as she repeatedly quoted him word for word about the importance of rest and the dangers of overwork. So they spent the day making little dice and a rolling cup out of wood and playing a few games Beatrice remembered from her last life.

  Beatrice managed to get Ian to share the details of his highest level fight, which was against a Greater Forest Drake. And she even managed not to yell at him about it. Progress. She wasn't the kind of person who yelled at people in her last life, so it was hard to get used the spikes in emotion whenever Ian was involved...

  After playing games, they sat around doing nothing, Beatrice making use of her Novice Soothing Buzzing (F) skill to help them both relax.

  "That's a lovely skill. I haven't been able to relax for..." Ian looked at Beatrice. "... A few weeks."

  "Oh hush. Don't test the limits of the skill by trying my patience." Beatrice said drowsily. She wished she had eyelids, so she could close them. Imagining a bee with eyelids made her shake with suppressed laughter and shudder at how weird and creepy that would've looked.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  "I'm sorry for being such a pain Ian. I'm really proud of how strong you've grown, especially in such a short time. When I'm mad at you, it's not because I hate or even dislike you. I'm just worried about you." Beatrice felt like she was only able to speak calmly thanks to her skill. She should really work on advancing it.

  Ian didn't say anything, so they just sat there. Until Beatrice's calm betrayed her. "Also you look se... great."

  ...

  'No more words, embrace the silence. Empty your mind.'

  Beatrice and Ian spent the next day gathering nectar, flying to and from different patches of flowers while Beatrice analyzed the nectars and stored them in different sections of honeycomb based on their alchemical properties. Healing over there, antitoxin over here, mana recovery in those, until she had a nice diverse collection of nectars to work with.

  The most interesting nectar was from a strangely shifting and changing flower sitting alone in a clearing, and her proboscis and skill told her it was mutagenic. But the skill also told her that drinking it straight would result in pain, disfigurement, and probably death. she ended up transporting that nectar in one of Ian's acorn shells, just in case. And she stuck a homemade wax stamp of a skull on the acorn.

  "Don't drink that one." She warned Ian, and started experimenting with alchemy. First she mixed a basic healing nectar in one cell, and a mana regeneration nectar in another and began the evaporation process.

  Her whole alchemy section took up barely a twentieth of the available storage, and she wrote the properties of each nectar and where they were stored on little wax slabs. Ian couldn't help since he didn't read English, but he was plenty busy with his carpentry.

  As the day was ending, Ian finished building a large wooden wall for the entrance of the hollow. The wall had a landing platform on the outside and a door frame large enough for Ian to fit through comfortably. He even added bark to the outside of the wall to make it harder to see. The only downside was the darkness, until Ian put up little glowing cubes carved with runes providing a warm yellow light. Beatrice tried ignored how ridiculously competent Ian was and to just keep working on her alchemy, but the mood lighting didn't help.

  The next day started with more alchemy.

  Beatrice did want to tier up, she really did. But honey. She mixed a few more kinds of nectar that she thought might work based on the information she got from her proboscis and the general knowledge from the honey alchemy skill. They weren't included in the alchemical recipes from her skill, but experimentation would tell her whether she was on the right track or not.

  And for the mutagenic nectar, Beatrice needed two things. Experimentation and a guinea pig she didn't care about. She commissioned some silver wood cups and mixing tools from Ian in order to experiment with the nectars she had a more limited supply of, like the mutagenic nectar.

  But Beatrice's most exciting project was a mix of nectar that she theorized would become an extra delicious and nutritious honey. Well it was exciting to her. Ian didn't share her excitement, which she didn't hold against him. What Ian did find interesting was a mix that might temporarily buff stats, and Beatrice had to stop him from trying it before it was made into honey.

  So now Beatrice felt obligated to stay and finish the honey she'd started, which took a few days. All the while Ian was going on hunting trips alone, making Beatrice wish she could grind her mandibles.

  During the dehydration process, it became clear that some of the nectars were failures. They either became boring normal honey or something else. One of the mixes became a light green honey that tasted like grass and had a slight glow to it that made it look radioactive, but all it did was improve plant growth. Another mix turned into a dark grey honey that burned her proboscis with it's corrosive properties. But the most exciting result was a mix of mutagenic nectar and a few nectars with stabilizing effects.

  Beatrice heard the crack of a small explosion and saw a puff of smoke rising from one of the wooden beakers she was using for her mutagenic experiments.

  Congratulations! You have created a new species of monster.

  Congratulations! Due to your achievements, you have acquired the title Honey Aberration Progenitor (B).

  Beatrice rushed over to the low table Ian made for her experimenting, and saw a glob of honey pouring over the side of the beaker and toppling it over. The glob then started crawling across the ground randomly, getting little bits of wood stuck inside its honey.

  Beatrice used honey manipulation to lift the glob into the air and put it into an acorn, capping it with wax to prevent the thing from escaping.

  'That was interesting.' Beatrice thought, trying hard not to channel her inner mad scientist. 'I'm getting the impression that mutagenic materials are too much for a novice alchemy skill. A honey aberration huh?' If the aberration was a monster, then that meant it could level up and evolve. Beatrice had a few evil ideas for the little blob.

  Beatrice claimed one of Ian's shelves for herself to store her hazardous materials, and now abominations. She was sure Ian wouldn't mind.

  Checking on her other new honeys, most of them were successful on some level. The stat buff honey was pretty good, increasing stats by five percent, and the healing honey and mana regen honey were fine according to her proboscis. Most of the experimental mixes were meh, but provided helpful data that Beatrice recorded on yet more little wax tablets. The tastes weren't anything special.

  'Hmm... What would be a good way to carry around some honey potions?' Beatrice began brainstorming. 'Ian could make little wooden bottles or vials, but the taste would be woody after a few hours. Glass is out of the question, how would bees even make glass? What about just wax?' She decided to try making wax containers and see how it went.

  Beatrice quickly figured out that making wax vials or bottles didn't work, and coating the inside of wooden containers worked fine but was difficult to do. Her last Idea was to make little wax capsules and fill them using her honey manipulation, the only potential downside being that they were a bit fragile. In a battle between tier fours or even tier threes would probably destroy any wax capsules nearby. Beatrice waited for Ian to return from a hunting trip to ask him for ideas.

  When Ian returned and Beatrice showed him what she was working on, he just walked over to a wax capsule and touched it. The capsule disappeared. She once again wished she had eyelids, so she could squint at him.

  "These capsules are superb Beatrice. One needs only to keep the capsules in storage, then apply a single capsule to one's mouth directly from storage as needed." Ian said, pulling the capsule out of nowhere and into his claw.

  "Do you have a magician skill Ian?"

  "No, magic isn't a priority for me. I focus almost exclusively on physical stats."

  "Not what I meant, but how did you do that?" Beatrice asked, pointing at the capsule in his hand.

  Ian reached back and unlatched a silver wood bracelet from a back leg. "I used this dimensional storage bracelet I made."

  "How the f... how'd you get that Ian?"

  "I carved it. You know I enjoy woodworking Beatrice." Ian said as though it were obvious.

  "You're a monster Ian."

  Ian looked confused. "Yes? You're a monster too dear Beatrice."

  "Would you please make me one?" Beatrice asked, careful not to use her Sweet Honeybee Dancing (C) skill by accident.

  "I'd be delighted to."