Chapter 14: A Home to Bee

Chapter 14: A Home to Bee

The first thing Belissar did was check his Tower’s mana.

Mana: 164/200

It was a lot more than he expected. Not only had he gained another two hundred mana to work with, but the Blessing of Bees also reduced the cost of his existing monster bee queen spawners. A quick check of their information revealed their upkeep had gone down from twenty down to ten, a reduction by half. And given that he had spent most of the mana he previously had on those spawners, that freed up a massive amount for him now.

With plenty to spare, he proceeded to place the Apiary, walking back over to the core room to do so. He stepped inside the newly decorated room and took a moment to look around. He knelt down and felt the wax on the floor and nodded. It was much less unnerving than the sort of but also kind of not floor that was there before, or the endless white space everywhere he looked...as long as he ignored the black tendrils of the Hunger still lingering on some of the walls...

He then walked over the core and got to work. Or tried to. He furrowed his brow and crossed his arms as he stared at the core.

“Ok. So...how exactly do I add a new room?”

The first one had just sort of...added itself, after all. But fortunately, the core reacted to his intention. The image inside it zoomed out, showing an angled top-down view of the Flower Meadow, as well as the core room.

Current rooms: 1/2. Add room?

Belissar blinked a few times.

“Um, yes?”

Available Rooms:

- Flower Meadow (Type: Nature, Field)

- Apiary (Type: Bee, Resource, Settlement)

“Um, Apiary, please.”

A transparent room now appeared before his eyes. It featured a small farmhouse in a small field surrounded by flowers and a handful of trees, like miniature version of the Flower Meadow. In a fenced yard in front of the house were a handful of tree trunks, each with a basket beehive on top. There were three rows of three beehives each.

Belissar found he could adjust various features of the room as with the Flower Meadow, but he couldn’t change the number of beehives at the moment. He went ahead and moved them behind the farmhouse, to give them as much protection as he could. Beyond that, he didn’t have anything he wanted to change.

Once he thought that, the view zoomed out again. A transparent image of the room now appeared in between the Flower Meadow and the core room. Belissar found he could move the room around the Flower Meadow. He could put the Apiary in-between it and the core room, between it and the gateway, or off to one of the sides. He could also rotate the rooms and move the doors along their walls as he pleased.

He inhaled sharply as his mind processed the words coming out of his very own mouth. Then he shook his head and walked out of the room.

He had not intended to sleep, as it had seemed that his body remained in good condition regardless. However, it seemed that his mind was not entirely free from exhaustion and, well, he had certainly had a lot to think about recently. He furrowed his brow and checked the dungeon status again...but fortunately, he couldn’t find any “purification attempt” timers. It seemed his little unplanned nap wouldn’t hurt him, for now.

Sighing at his own inability to focus, he tried to recall what he was doing when he fell asleep. He nodded as it came to him.

“Right, traps, or something.”

His vision floated out of his body to view the room as a hole. He found he could also move his sight to the Flower Meadow if he wanted. He went ahead a placed a couple more pit traps, as well as some of the new sticky honey traps, little holes that would spray out a bunch of the sticky honey when something passed in front of them. He found he could, in fact, place them inside of the pit traps and did so.

He also found that while he couldn’t put pit traps, or any traps, right in front of either the gateway or the core room, he could put them in front of the door between the flower meadow and the apiary, so he did that. He let out a sigh of relief. If he had to face another monster, it now couldn’t reach the apiary without stepping on a trap, so he wouldn’t have to lure it with either his bees or his body. All he needed to do was make sure there was a fire set up by the Apiary entrance and he would be good to go.

With the traps in place, it was time to address the spawners.

First of all, he focused on the monster bee queen spawners he had in place and tried to move them through the rooms. He found there was no issue in doing that, and so he moved all four of them into the apiary, placing them in the small field around the hives. He then considered what else to place...

Mana: 121/200

The Apiary itself cost him five mana, while the pit traps and sticky honey traps cost one mana a piece. He had made...nineteen of them, if he recalled correctly, which came out to...

Belissar soon ran out of fingers. With nothing to write on, he stepped outside of the farmhouse, and found some dirt to scratch marks into.

...thirty-eight mana. He...didn’t really know if that was a lot or not. And with the mana he had left he could make...

...a lot more spawners. But how many should he make? And also...should he make more of the monster bee queen spawners, or should he add in some monster bee soldier spawners? The monster bee queens could supposedly spawn monster bee soldiers on their own, but maybe it might be better to get some directly, and right away?

Belissar had no idea.

And then, a swirl of the Tower’s heat caught his attention and he nodded. With the sun now rising in the sky, it was about time for the monster bee queen spawners to activate. He guessed he could decide after getting the newcomers acclimated.

He definitely wasn’t just pushing off the decision...