The Bee Dungeon

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.

Available Rooms:

- Flower Meadow (Type: Nature, Field)

- Apiary (Type: Bee, Resource, Settlement)

“Um, Apiary, please.”

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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.

Well, it was all very interesting, but Belissar still had no idea what he was doing or why. So, he ended up putting the Apiary where it had first appeared, in between the Flower Meadow and the core room. He figured that if his bees were going to set up there, he’d rather have their hives further away from the gateway. He even considered putting them off to the side and trying to keep them out of harm’s way entirely...but during the failed purification attempt the monster had attacked the door to the core room, and then bits of Hunger spread across all of the Tower and the core room.

Even an untrained peasant like Belissar could tell that was a bad thing. So, he figured the core room should probably be as far away from the gateway as possible.

He did, however, move the door to the core room to the far-left side of the Apiary, while he put the hives to the right. He still didn’t want them in the direct path of the monsters if he could help it. He heaved a sigh.

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“Ok, I think that’s it...”

Once he signaled he was done, he felt the warmth inside the Tower stir once more. The doorway to the Flower Meadow shifted, now showing the Apiary. Once the Tower calmed down, he stepped through.

For a moment, he simply stared at the sight before him. He was standing in another clearing surrounded by walls of trees with two doors on either end. Another statue of the God of Bees now stood next to the door leading to the core room. The Apiary itself filled the clearing ahead of him. The little house he saw in the core’s vision was now a full-sized dwelling standing before him, a house about the same size as his own had been. He could see the basket hives in the yard to the right of it. He...frowned at that sight. They were the traditional beehouse that generally involved destroying the entire hive to gather honey.

He did not like that method, and he and the old beekeeper had worked hard developing their own beehouses to avoid such violent waste. He would have to build some once he had the chance. But this would suffice for now, he wasn’t as concerned about gathering the honey when the bees themselves could move it for him. Besides, it wasn’t like he had to pay tribute to the Tower Lord this year, seeing as his village burned to the ground and all. And that the Tower Lord’s son had been the one to do it, nearly killing him in the process.

Belissar also remembered that, technically, he was the local Tower Lord now. Well, for whatever locale this tower was in, that was. He didn’t imagine there were many villages in an area that was covered by the Hunger until very recently.

Shaking his head, he walked into the house. It was furnished with some basic furniture, though it was largely empty otherwise. Belissar nodded as he noted a storage area with a lot of jars for honey. He then found a bedroom, with a very simple mattress and sheet.

On a whim, he lay down on it. It...wasn’t as comfortable as his bed back home had been, but it was worlds better than trying to lay down in the original core room had been.

Belissar yawned as he had that thought. He closed his eyes for a but a moment...

Belissar slowly opened his eyes as the sun filtered through the window and lit his face. He rose and stretched his arms. He stood up and walked over to the window.

He blinked.

Those...were not his beehouses, but rather, a bunch of basket hives. Belissar had a brief moment of panic before his mind full woke up, and he remembered the events of the past few days.

“Right. I don’t live in the village anymore. And...I’m a Tower Lord now, or something. And this is the Tower.”

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...