The Bee Dungeon

Belissar blinked as he watched the bees utterly destroy the minor purification shade with every ranged attack they could throw at it. He guessed…they were trying what would happen when they fought with their full strength? Or so he believed…until he felt the great celebration passing through the hive of hives. That had him confused. Sure, the bees always celebrated every victory…but why did a minor purification cause this much elation when the previous ones didn’t?
Fortunately, Belissar didn’t have to wonder, since he was partially connected to the hivelink. He took a bit of a closer look…
Belissar had to catch himself as he very nearly gasped. The bees were so elated…because he had trusted them with a purification while he was away? He knew that they wanted him to trust and rely on them, but even now the depths of their feelings surprised him.
He almost teared up…if he hadn’t managed to remember where he was.
“Signatory Belissar, you seem to be deep in thought. Do you have something to say on the matter?”
Belissar glanced over at Duchess Bereginna…as Niobee sent him a tower message.
“Yes, actually. I should send a representative from my Tower so that they can make sure the negotiations don’t mess with my existing agreements with them. It’d take a lot of time if the diplomats had to wait until reporting back to us before we noticed and then had to go back and renegotiate all over.”
Something he had already experienced in both his negotiations with the sigmaka and the fair folk, the negotiations could really drag on if the representatives had to keep going back and forth each day to decide anything. Inwardly, he thanked Niobee for keeping track of the conversation while he was watching the bees. She happily danced on his head in response.
Forgemaster Ughlarer scowled and crossed his arms.
“The pixies and the Circle have both already requested representatives, and I don’t suppose
Nenavann interjected before Queen Vanieskon bothered responding.
“If that’s the case, I am fine with letting signatory Belissar’s representative function as the Circle’s observer as well. That should be acceptable, then?”
Forgemaster Ughlarer huffed but nodded.
“Fine, then. Let’s get on with the rest of it.”
Belissar glanced at Nenavann, who smiled back at him, then refocused on the conversation. He made a little smile of his own. If trusting the bees with the Tower made them this happy, then that is what he would do. And so, the best thing he could do in response was to take care of his own battle to the best of his ability.
The Firstborn was not the only bee resolved to achieve greater heights after the bee army’s stunning victory. The entire hive of hives returned to their work with a renewed vigor. And that included the Fourth of the Fifth’s First Daughter, the first Thermal Mining Queen.
After all, she had new, amazing and incredible work to do!
The King gave her a new kind of metal that was truly amazing and incredible! It was light enough for a worker to carry, yet stronger than any other metal she knew of, a perfect material for building hives! And it drank mana like a hungry egg, growing even stronger!
Of course, the flip side to that was that it was incredibly hard to break into pieces, equally difficult to process into metal wax, and could drink up mana from honey and bee bread stored nearby, lowering their quality until it was full. The Fourth of the Fifth’s First Daughter knew instinctively that her hive was simply too small to utilize this material in full. She only processed a tiny amount so her hive could practice doing so, but otherwise would have to wait until she grew.
Fortunately, that wouldn’t be a problem anymore, thanks to the other amazing and incredible boon the King had given her! These Metal mana flowers were the best ever in her opinion! They gathered up the metals from the ground and stone and spread them throughout their nectar and pollen! Her workers didn’t have to spend lots and lots of time chewing on the rocks anymore, they could just forage the Metal mana flowers and get nectar, pollen, and metal all at the same time! It was amazing, incredible!
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And the hive of hives let her monopolize all of them! They said the nectar and pollen tasted weird and was bad for digestion. The Fourth of the Fifth’s First Daughter knew they were just making sure she didn’t feel bad, though! How could nectar and pollen filled with the delectable taste of metal taste bad? How did the rest of the hive of hives even digest the nectar and pollen of other flowers without supplementing their diet with metal? How did they build hives without metal to hold them up? It was a mystery to her
But she trusted that all the older and wiser queens of the hive of hives wouldn’t give her all these flowers if it would starve their hives, so she happily sent her workers to forage from them all! The flowers had spread their roots across all the metal nodes and mixed the metals together, even little bits of the amazing, incredible metal! It was great for her since the honeypots could easily separate the metals within the nectar and pollen, so one trip by the workers gave her hive access to everything they needed! And it was even easier for the honeypots since the metals were already mixed with the honeys in liquid form!
Thanks to all this, her hive had finally started scaling up. She’d even be ready to raise queens and drones with the First of the Fifth’s Seventh Daughter like King and evil one wanted! Though, both she and First of the Fifth’s Seventh Daughter were waiting to evolve their drones first so they wouldn’t die and make King feel bad.
So, instead, she had to think of new ways to use her new surplus. Evolving gardeners, honeypots, and even a broodmother was a given, but all that would only give her even more surplus to work with! She also decided to try evolving a soldier or two to see if the bee army would want them, but one soldier didn’t eat up all the surplus.
She ultimately decided to try a new project! She crawled out of her hive, into the cavern that opened up to the Apiary above. There, at the bottom, her workers flew, bringing freshly made metal wax from the honeypots. There, they began to build a new hive…one that, hopefully, would move.
Yes, she was going to try and build a moving hive! She was really slow at it compared to the First of the Fifth’s Seventh Daughter, or even the First of the Fifth’s Fourth Daughter, but King and evil one were excited about her doing it for some reason, so she’d try it anyways! The First of the Fifth’s Fourth Daughter had even sent a communer to help, teaching her the King’s precise measurements so she could make sure the moving hive matched him!
Hopefully the King would like it! Then she could thank him for all these amazing, incredible things he had given her!
The Fourth of the Fifth’s First Daughter’s counterpart was also hard at work. The Third of the Sixth’s First Daughter had established herself as well. She had restrained her growth due to the relatively small amount of flowers in the Lava Field, as she didn’t want to take resources away from her queen mother. Fortunately, her queen mother’s gardeners had managed to cross-pollinate both the Fire mana flowers and the lava lotus flowers with bee balm and plant new, highly productive sources of nectar filled with Fire mana! Her queen mother insisted, then, that she use these resources to grow her hive, so she had!
And now that her hive had grown, it was time for her to find a job in the hive of hives. The main thing she could do that other bees couldn’t was…spread ash. All of her bees spread ash!
…well, at first, she didn’t know what to do with that. Her entire home was already covered in ash, so there was no need to spread it there. And soldiers spreading ash…would only get in the way of the rest of the soldier bee army, wouldn’t they? She initially found herself at a bit of a loss.
But now, two things had changed. First, the small King-things had spread mist in the Bog during the big invasion. This was a revelation both to the bee army as a whole and the Third of the Sixth’s First Daughter in particular, and since then interest in her hive’s ash spreading abilities had grown. She was trying to raise some soldiers and especially sprayers as a result, wondering what her sprayers might look like.
The other thing that had changed was that the gardeners scouting the flower one’s realm found that flowers grew better near volcanos…specifically because of the
spread around.
That news had shocked her to her core. All this time, she could have been helping the flowers all along? And they had never noticed because she built her hive in the Lava Field like her queen mother, which already had more ash then the flowers would ever need.
But the rest of the King’s realm did not.
And so, the Third of the Sixth’s First Daughter knew what she needed to do…and would start doing it today. She now hovered in front of the shortcut leading out of the Lava field. Before her hovered countless ash monster bee workers, spread out into wide formations across the sky. Every bee that she could spare from her own foraging…which, today, was all of them. She had discussed things with the hive of hives and the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter had arranged for a honey delivery from the Apiary bees. So, for today at least, she could commit her entire hive to task.
“Let’s help flowers!”
With that command, she flew into the shortcut. Her entire hive followed her, diving into the shortcut then zipping up and spreading out across the sky of the Orchard. A moment later, her entire hive began to buzz, beating their wings and shaking their bodies. Bits of ash wafted off of them and began to drift down upon the room below, like slow-falling grey rain. The Third of the Sixth’s First Daughter led her hive in a pass across the entire Orchard, then wheeled back…and headed for the wall of shortcuts. Today, she would ensure every flower in the King’s realm had all the ash it needed…and would make her contribution to the hive of hives’ victories as well. As all bees would.