Chapter 141. Forbidden Forest. Part 4. Agreement.
From behind the fabric emerged a small, humanoid magical creature in yellow and black stripes. She had a bee-like face, with two large growths on her head that met at the top, and a wide mouth below lined with sharp fangs. On her back were two pairs of wings like a dragonfly's. Her arms and legs followed bee-like patterns but were broadly human in proportion. The overall impression was completed by a broad chest with two black markings in the center.
The moment he saw her, a breath of relief escaped him. His usual expression returned.
Just stepped into the fifth rank. Evolved quite recently, by the look of it. That means the gap between us isn't so wide. My own strength is roughly at the peak of Magister rank. Even so, it's remarkable that a creature this powerful can exist here, where the ambient magic is dozens of times less than in the Magical Jungle. I badly underestimated the outside world. If she managed to reach this level, it wouldn't be surprising to find another creature like her somewhere else in the world.
"Why the silence? Has fear stolen your voice entirely?" she drawled with the same playful note. Still, the Bee Queen didn't take her eyes off the intruder for a moment. Something about him struck her as strange. The fact that he had caught her stinger made her even warier.
"No, forgive me. I was just thinking." He shook his head and answered calmly, pocketing the stinger. It would make an excellent throwing weapon, easily capable of penetrating even an Archmage's barrier, since it had broken through his passive Protego without difficulty. He looked at the bees surrounding him, then looked back at her. "You're right, I should have asked first. In my defense, I only didn't want to interrupt your work."
"Even so, you should have asked the Queen," she said coldly, though with a faint laugh.
"I'll remember that. So, will you allow me to take a little?" He dropped the concealment charms that had masked not only his body and his sounds, but his magic as well. He didn't miss how her finger trembled. Her earlier confidence evaporated in an instant.
Magical creatures were far more sensitive to the presence of magic than ordinary people. In the bee's perception, the small flame she had observed around the intruder had just become a conflagration of magical energy that consumed her entire hive. For the first time since her evolution, someone's magic had eclipsed her own. Deep within her, fear began to take root. Not for herself, but for the hive. If a battle began here, it would not last even a few minutes. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of her subjects would die. She could not allow that.
"And what would you offer in return?" Though her voice sounded ordinary enough, the playfulness and arrogance had vanished from it completely. In their place was a nervousness she fought to conceal. I cannot show weakness. If he sees it, it is the end for the colony.
"What about flowers from a place that has dozens of times more magic than here?" Pretending not to have noticed anything, Severus suggested. He pulled out a flower that resembled a rose in shape but was deep ginger in color.
This ingredient was typically used in potions to treat frost-based curses. But he had several thousand of them in his wallet. He had purchased a substantial quantity at a market in Brazil, and Nelly had collected more in the Magical Jungle, in Ent territory.
The moment the Queen saw it and felt the enormous concentration of magic within it, her black eyes lit up. She launched herself off the balcony and flew directly to him, without lowering her guard in the slightest.
Twenty-five times more magic than in ordinary flowers. And of such purity. The magical creature's thoughts raced as she touched the bud with one finger. If I could obtain more of these, I could grow stronger again within a few decades.
"One flower, ten milliliters of honey." The man's voice carried a trace of amusement, pulling her from her thoughts.
"Ten milliliters? What is that?" she asked, reining in her irritation.
"In the jar you destroyed, there were three liters. One liter is one thousand milliliters. I imagine you can calculate the rest yourself."
"Three hundred flowers for that small amount?" The bee looked at him with open disbelief. She suspected a trick, because the price was far too low for a plant containing so much pure magic.
It really is a "small" amount. He thought with a wry smile, recalling the prices in his old world for those same ten grams.
He even felt a momentary pang of conscience about such an unequal exchange. The pang made a genuine effort to take hold. It didn't get far. It was quietly strangled by a gleefully snickering toad that sat back afterward with folded paws and a satisfied squint.
"At that rate, you could take a hundred such jars. But could you bring even more flowers?" She looked at him with barely concealed eagerness. This was her chance to grow stronger, and she intended to seize it. Over the past thirty years since her last evolution, her development had stalled almost completely.
"I can bring six hundred every month."
"Done!" She summoned two bees and turned them so their backs faced her. "You can place them on these two."
"Good. But I have other varieties as well."
"Show me!" She looked at him with an expression that bordered on hunger, demanding and excited at once. Severus's left eye twitched a few times, but he obliged her. He began drawing out every variety of flower he had gathered in the Magic Jungles.
After more than an hour, Severus left the hive in mixed spirits. On one hand, he was pleased to walk away with forty liters of honey for next to nothing. On the other, he felt vaguely as though he had deceived a child and taken its sweets. If this honey reached the open market, a small jar alone would fetch several hundred thousand Galleons without difficulty.
But of course, he had no intention of simply selling it. He wanted to extract every possible advantage from it. When the time came to bring it to light, Severus intended to be the only person in possession of a means capable of granting an ordinary person the gift of magic, albeit not with absolute certainty. If a genuine war between Muggles and mages ever came to pass, he could stop it in its tracks and profit enormously by selling the honey to those who needed it most. By that point, he had no doubt that he would have surpassed even his former self. Such a war was unlikely within this millennium, since Muggle technology had not yet advanced far enough to detect mages reliably. But within the next hundred years, he was quite certain it would come. The Muggles were advancing at a remarkable pace.
Until that time, he intended to use the honey solely to draw promising mages to his side. If the war came regardless, his voice would carry weight only if people stood behind him.
Though Severus had considered offering the Sunlight Bee Queen the opportunity to relocate her hive to his own territory, he decided to wait. They had only just met, and there wasn't a shred of trust between them. She would almost certainly refuse, and might even grow suspicious. Patience was the right approach. Now that he knew her level of strength, he had no concerns about their safety. There was hardly a creature in this forest more powerful than her, as she herself had indicated. He could afford to wait five or even ten years for a degree of trust to develop between them.
He set aside his deliberations, and they moved on. The next destination was the heart of the Forbidden Forest, where the White Lotus was said to grow, assuming it had not been destroyed, consumed, or simply died away over the past thousand years. A great deal of time had passed. But even if it could not be found, Severus would not be greatly troubled. Like the Acromantula venom, it was a secondary objective. The primary purpose of this excursion had always been to map the forest in preparation for a crisis like the one in the Magical Jungle. Finding the Sunlight Bees had already made the entire trip worthwhile.
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Chapters on Patreon progress: Currently at;
1. Harry Potter: Satan? Nah, Just My Family Crest = CHAPTER 257
2.Marvel: Cosmic Forger of Infinity = CHAPTER 179
3.Harry Potter: Beyond Good and Evil in the Wizarding World = CHAPTER 258
4.Harry Potter: Reborn as Draco Black = CHAPTER 106
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