The Bee Dungeon
Author: Icalos
Chapter 311 - Bee-ware of Wasps?
With the Abyssal Trench now ready to crush anything that stepped inside of it, Belissar moved onto the monster nightshade summoner. He checked the spawner in different rooms, they could be place in nearly any room save the orchards and dirt tunnels. He could even put one in the Lava Field to his surprise, though he would have had to place it far away from any of the lava rivers. The spawner didn’t increase or decrease in cost in any of the rooms either, so Belissar could pick and choose where to place them.
Both Tarwantrad and the Tower’s monster preview indicated they could move around, so Belissar decided to place their spawner in a safe location in the Apiary. He and Niobee headed over there, with Niobee letting the Apiary bees know they’d be getting new roommates. The First of the Fifth immediately promised she’d look after the new monsters.
The spawner itself took the form of a bush covered in purple flowers. Belissar placed it near the resource flower nodes for now. The foraging worker bees nearby began to hover towards him and the flowers once he confirmed the placement…
Until they heard a new kind of angry buzzing. Wasps crawled out of the leaves and began flying around the bush. Belissar immediately stirred up his mana, prepared to react if they went after the bees…but these were fortunately not the wasps he knew from his time as a beekeeper. They were much smaller and black with occasional splashes of red rather than yellow and black. Belissar calmed down and observed them with his tower sight…and found they were made of pure mana and not even real wasps to begin with. They ignored the bees, even as some of the more courageous workers hovered closer. These workers flew right by the mana wasps and landed on the flowers…only to take off immediately and lose all interest in the spawner. It turned out the flowers weren’t real either.
However, at that point the bush began to rustle and some of the flowers began to move. Out stepped one of the plants, its branches and stems tangled up with themselves to form a small human-shaped body. It had roots for legs, branches for arms, leaves for clothing, and flowers as its hair. Its face was a featureless tangle of thin branches, but with two holes for its eyes with dim purple lights in each.
It blinked and looked around, pausing when it saw Belissar. It then saluted to him, releasing pheromones and mana that the Tower translated as a request for orders. Belissar smiled down at it.
“Hello, and welcome to the Tower. First question…how do you feel about bees visiting your flowers?”
The nightshade summoner’s eyes narrowed into a smile and it began waving its arms up and down. It glanced around and saw the worker bees hovering nearby, then angled its head to point the flowers in their direction. The curious workers flew down to land on the flowers…and promptly began to gather pollen and nectar from them. Belissar grinned. He had considered the monster nightshade summoners as a defender more than as a flower…but now that he watched the bees forage he couldn’t help but wonder what sort of honey its nectar could produce. Or…if the bees could cross-pollinate the monster flowers to evolve new ones entirely. In fact, Tarwantrad had already confirmed that could happen, hadn’t she?
In fact, this whole sequence of events had Belissar thinking he should expand his monster flowers further. If the flowers that provided honey for bee evolutions were also monsters that were cross-pollinated in turn, then the types of monsters available for his Tower would expand dramatically. And it just so happened that Belissar already had access to another monster flower spawner he hadn’t placed yet.
He had been hoping Frelis could teach the other gardeners to evolve venomous slime roses and so save him the mana needed for a spawner. However, progress had been slow, not for lack of trying by the bees but simply by the sheer amount of tasks the gardeners currently had. They were monitoring every flower in the Tower, attempting to plant new ones, cross-pollinating the flowers in the Tower, checking out flowers in Tarwantrad’s dungeon, trying to plant flowers from Tarwantrad’s dungeon that would grow well in his, and then trying to cross-pollinate all of those flowers along with his. And, on top of all of that, they were still working for their hives, gathering nectar and pollen for their sisters to turn into honey and bee bread.
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So, perhaps it would be best just to place a spawner, get more venomous slime roses immediately, and save the gardeners a task. After all, it’s not like he didn’t have the mana…
Belissar stiffened. Apparently, he might
. Between the one hundred and fifty mana he spent on the Abyssal Trench and mana storm combo and the sixty mana he had just spent on the monster nightshade summoner spawner, his available mana had all but dried up. Fortunately, he double checked the venomous slime rose spawner cost, at ten mana he could still afford it. He wouldn’t be able to afford much else, but he could go ahead with the plan.
First, though, it would probably be best to have Frelis and her slime rose on hand to welcome the new monsters. Belissar looked for Frelis…and found her busy at work coordinating bees flying in and out of the Apothecary’s Hut. Belissar decided he’d wait for her to finish up…or, if she remained busy the entire day, to ask her for some time tomorrow so as not to interrupt her work.
In the meantime, Belissar considered his dungeon and what he might do with the last bits of available mana. His experiments were progressing, if slowly. The Flower Meadow with cold mana flowers in universal pots was steadily growing chillier, the Dirt Tunnels with the water stones was growing wetter…
Belissar froze. Wait…if he wanted to flood a room with water…didn’t he
discover a way to do so much more quickly than water stones? Belissar moved the Abyssal Trench to the second floor, connecting it to the Dirt Tunnels he was trying to flood with an entrance in the highest tunnel in the room. He made sure the Dirt Tunnels’ entrances to other rooms were sealed…and then he unsealed the entrance to the Abyssal Trench.
Water once again burst through the entrance, smashing right through the floor of the tunnel and pouring into the tunnel below it. Belissar grinned and then removed the water stone node in the room, earning himself back another ten mana. With any luck, he’d also have a new room sooner rather than later.
With that settled, he considered his remaining experiments. The Lava Field was still draining into the Dirt Tunnels, though he could already see the lava hardening into rock along the edges of the tunnels, so that experiment seemed to be going well. What was going less well was…the Death room. The combined karnuq, spiderkin, butcher bee, and bloodsucking bee hunters were doing such a good job of thoroughly consuming their prey that Death mana didn’t seem to be accumulating. Belissar still couldn’t place underworld phlox in the room, confirming that there wasn’t enough death mana for them to grow.
Belissar decided it’d be worth following Hesfalle’s advice and creating a second Death room, that way he could just let the current room be for hunting instead. Fortunately, that would be cheap enough to afford, another Flower Meadow would only cost only five mana and then it would only take another five to enable rabbits there. The question, rather, was which bees to place in the room? Someone would need to hunt the rabbits, preferably someone who wouldn’t eat everything they killed so the corpses and Death mana could accumulate. Then, there needed to be bees present as the Death mana accumulated so that they could gradually adapt along with the room.
But that was a question Belissar didn’t need to answer alone.
“Hey Niobee, could you ask the hive of hives if there’s any bees that want to try moving to a Death room? They’ll have to hunt rabbits a lot, and then they’ll have to try and adapt to Death mana. They might even have to fight undead…the room will probably become dangerous over time. Ah, and we should leave the butcher and bloodsucking bees stay in their current room, so probably one of the monster bee queens?”
“Ok!”
While Niobee discussed it with the hive of hives, Belissar began setting up the room. He placed the new Flower Meadow on the fifth floor next to the hunting Flower Meadow, figuring all the hunters there could help catch any extra rabbits if the bees in the new Death experiment room couldn’t handle them all. Then, he enabled mana flowers in the room generally while also placing one mana flower node in the room, both to ensure the bees that lived there would have enough to eat and to see if the mana flowers would adapt to the Death mana. He also placed the usual shortcut to link the room to the Orchard’s shortcut wall. He waited to enable rabbits though, wanting bees to move in and get settled before they had to start hunting.
All that, along with the mana he got back from the water stones in the flooding Dirt Tunnels, left him with thirty-two available mana remaining, still enough to enable rabbits in the room and afford a venomous slime bee spawner. Now, all he needed were the bees…
“King! Second Third of the First said will move into new room! Has lots of soldiers to hunt!”
Belissar smiled. Now, they were ready to try this Death mana room thing once again…
Both Tarwantrad and the Tower’s monster preview indicated they could move around, so Belissar decided to place their spawner in a safe location in the Apiary. He and Niobee headed over there, with Niobee letting the Apiary bees know they’d be getting new roommates. The First of the Fifth immediately promised she’d look after the new monsters.
The spawner itself took the form of a bush covered in purple flowers. Belissar placed it near the resource flower nodes for now. The foraging worker bees nearby began to hover towards him and the flowers once he confirmed the placement…
Until they heard a new kind of angry buzzing. Wasps crawled out of the leaves and began flying around the bush. Belissar immediately stirred up his mana, prepared to react if they went after the bees…but these were fortunately not the wasps he knew from his time as a beekeeper. They were much smaller and black with occasional splashes of red rather than yellow and black. Belissar calmed down and observed them with his tower sight…and found they were made of pure mana and not even real wasps to begin with. They ignored the bees, even as some of the more courageous workers hovered closer. These workers flew right by the mana wasps and landed on the flowers…only to take off immediately and lose all interest in the spawner. It turned out the flowers weren’t real either.
However, at that point the bush began to rustle and some of the flowers began to move. Out stepped one of the plants, its branches and stems tangled up with themselves to form a small human-shaped body. It had roots for legs, branches for arms, leaves for clothing, and flowers as its hair. Its face was a featureless tangle of thin branches, but with two holes for its eyes with dim purple lights in each.
It blinked and looked around, pausing when it saw Belissar. It then saluted to him, releasing pheromones and mana that the Tower translated as a request for orders. Belissar smiled down at it.
“Hello, and welcome to the Tower. First question…how do you feel about bees visiting your flowers?”
The nightshade summoner’s eyes narrowed into a smile and it began waving its arms up and down. It glanced around and saw the worker bees hovering nearby, then angled its head to point the flowers in their direction. The curious workers flew down to land on the flowers…and promptly began to gather pollen and nectar from them. Belissar grinned. He had considered the monster nightshade summoners as a defender more than as a flower…but now that he watched the bees forage he couldn’t help but wonder what sort of honey its nectar could produce. Or…if the bees could cross-pollinate the monster flowers to evolve new ones entirely. In fact, Tarwantrad had already confirmed that could happen, hadn’t she?
In fact, this whole sequence of events had Belissar thinking he should expand his monster flowers further. If the flowers that provided honey for bee evolutions were also monsters that were cross-pollinated in turn, then the types of monsters available for his Tower would expand dramatically. And it just so happened that Belissar already had access to another monster flower spawner he hadn’t placed yet.
He had been hoping Frelis could teach the other gardeners to evolve venomous slime roses and so save him the mana needed for a spawner. However, progress had been slow, not for lack of trying by the bees but simply by the sheer amount of tasks the gardeners currently had. They were monitoring every flower in the Tower, attempting to plant new ones, cross-pollinating the flowers in the Tower, checking out flowers in Tarwantrad’s dungeon, trying to plant flowers from Tarwantrad’s dungeon that would grow well in his, and then trying to cross-pollinate all of those flowers along with his. And, on top of all of that, they were still working for their hives, gathering nectar and pollen for their sisters to turn into honey and bee bread.
NovelBin is the home of this novel. Visit there to read the original and support the author.
So, perhaps it would be best just to place a spawner, get more venomous slime roses immediately, and save the gardeners a task. After all, it’s not like he didn’t have the mana…
Belissar stiffened. Apparently, he might
. Between the one hundred and fifty mana he spent on the Abyssal Trench and mana storm combo and the sixty mana he had just spent on the monster nightshade summoner spawner, his available mana had all but dried up. Fortunately, he double checked the venomous slime rose spawner cost, at ten mana he could still afford it. He wouldn’t be able to afford much else, but he could go ahead with the plan.
First, though, it would probably be best to have Frelis and her slime rose on hand to welcome the new monsters. Belissar looked for Frelis…and found her busy at work coordinating bees flying in and out of the Apothecary’s Hut. Belissar decided he’d wait for her to finish up…or, if she remained busy the entire day, to ask her for some time tomorrow so as not to interrupt her work.
In the meantime, Belissar considered his dungeon and what he might do with the last bits of available mana. His experiments were progressing, if slowly. The Flower Meadow with cold mana flowers in universal pots was steadily growing chillier, the Dirt Tunnels with the water stones was growing wetter…
Belissar froze. Wait…if he wanted to flood a room with water…didn’t he
discover a way to do so much more quickly than water stones? Belissar moved the Abyssal Trench to the second floor, connecting it to the Dirt Tunnels he was trying to flood with an entrance in the highest tunnel in the room. He made sure the Dirt Tunnels’ entrances to other rooms were sealed…and then he unsealed the entrance to the Abyssal Trench.
Water once again burst through the entrance, smashing right through the floor of the tunnel and pouring into the tunnel below it. Belissar grinned and then removed the water stone node in the room, earning himself back another ten mana. With any luck, he’d also have a new room sooner rather than later.
With that settled, he considered his remaining experiments. The Lava Field was still draining into the Dirt Tunnels, though he could already see the lava hardening into rock along the edges of the tunnels, so that experiment seemed to be going well. What was going less well was…the Death room. The combined karnuq, spiderkin, butcher bee, and bloodsucking bee hunters were doing such a good job of thoroughly consuming their prey that Death mana didn’t seem to be accumulating. Belissar still couldn’t place underworld phlox in the room, confirming that there wasn’t enough death mana for them to grow.
Belissar decided it’d be worth following Hesfalle’s advice and creating a second Death room, that way he could just let the current room be for hunting instead. Fortunately, that would be cheap enough to afford, another Flower Meadow would only cost only five mana and then it would only take another five to enable rabbits there. The question, rather, was which bees to place in the room? Someone would need to hunt the rabbits, preferably someone who wouldn’t eat everything they killed so the corpses and Death mana could accumulate. Then, there needed to be bees present as the Death mana accumulated so that they could gradually adapt along with the room.
But that was a question Belissar didn’t need to answer alone.
“Hey Niobee, could you ask the hive of hives if there’s any bees that want to try moving to a Death room? They’ll have to hunt rabbits a lot, and then they’ll have to try and adapt to Death mana. They might even have to fight undead…the room will probably become dangerous over time. Ah, and we should leave the butcher and bloodsucking bees stay in their current room, so probably one of the monster bee queens?”
“Ok!”
While Niobee discussed it with the hive of hives, Belissar began setting up the room. He placed the new Flower Meadow on the fifth floor next to the hunting Flower Meadow, figuring all the hunters there could help catch any extra rabbits if the bees in the new Death experiment room couldn’t handle them all. Then, he enabled mana flowers in the room generally while also placing one mana flower node in the room, both to ensure the bees that lived there would have enough to eat and to see if the mana flowers would adapt to the Death mana. He also placed the usual shortcut to link the room to the Orchard’s shortcut wall. He waited to enable rabbits though, wanting bees to move in and get settled before they had to start hunting.
All that, along with the mana he got back from the water stones in the flooding Dirt Tunnels, left him with thirty-two available mana remaining, still enough to enable rabbits in the room and afford a venomous slime bee spawner. Now, all he needed were the bees…
“King! Second Third of the First said will move into new room! Has lots of soldiers to hunt!”
Belissar smiled. Now, they were ready to try this Death mana room thing once again…