The Bee Dungeon

Belissar stood before the Memorial. The wounded soldier with lightning stood before one of the others, who was standing on a bit of medicinal mana honeycomb. Medicinal workers hovered around while Belissar stirred up his mana as well. All the bees were looking at him. He took a deep breath and nodded.

A crackle filled the air as the wounded soldier’s lightning wings began to speed up, surge, and surround the rest of her body. A moment later, the lightning arced forward and out, striking the other soldier. The soldier began to convulse as lightning surged across her body.

Belissar quickly formed his own magic honey and brought his hand to the struck soldier’s face. Bits of lighting zapped his hand, causing sharp spikes of pain followed by numbness, but Belissar ignored it. The soldier slowly extended their proboscis and began to drink while the lightning soldier adjust the flow of the lightning, toning it down a bit.

The struck soldier flared her mana as she drank the magical honey. She rubbed her legs and remaining wings against the hairs of her body, trying to generate some static of her own. The lighting soldier backed off and let go of the lightning. That would make it easier for the struck soldier to take control of, but also meant that no one was currently managing the lightning surging across her.

Belissar held his breath as the soldier continued to convulse.

But then, Niobee landed by the soldier and began to dance. As she did, the Tower’s mana began to flow towards her. She then touched the soldier with an antenna and the mana flowed into the soldier. The soldier’s convulsing died down a bit.

The soldier’s mana flared as it was reinforced by both Belissar and Niobee. Her legs and wings moved faster as she began to generate lightning of her own.

And then…finally…the lighting across her body began to diminishing, instead pulling back and gathering to a point on her back. It slowly began to extended and curl.

Until it formed a pair of wings, just like the first wounded soldier.

“You did it!”

The soldier was exhausted but began a salute and then a happy dance with as much strength as she could muster. The medicinal bees then began to pour over her and directed her to drink the medicinal honey.

Belissar then turned to Niobee and the first lightning soldier.

“Nice work you too, thanks for helping out Niobee.”

“Yes! Bees always help King!”

Belissar shook his head.

“It’s me helping her this time.”

He then tilted his head.

“Niobee, does the soldier have name? Like the queens?”

Niobee’s antennae twitched a bit as she danced.

“No? Just called soldier. Why?”

Belissar rubbed his chin.

“Well, there’s more than one wounded soldier and more than one lightning soldier now, so I just thought it might get a bit confusing. Do bees not like names?”

Niobee danced the negative.

“Don’t mind!”

Well, to be fair, it wasn’t strictly necessary to name specific bees, as the Tower’s mana assisted there. Since he could direct his mana on a specific bee no matter where they were, the bees were never confused about who he was speaking to. And the bees themselves didn’t seem to care. Even the queen’s names were just their order of birth.

Still, after all this little soldier had been through and overcome, it felt wrong for her not to have some sort of name.

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“Would you mind if I gave you one? How about I call you Beero?”

Belissar…winced a bit even as the words left his mouth. Mashing bee and hero together wasn't exactly the most creative way to name her. But well…she was certainly a hero. She was wounded defending her home, but still fought even after being crippled, risking her life to save the Tower yet again. And then she overcame the shade’s lightning, and even now was crawling her way back to the fight.

Plus…Belissar never really had to name all that many things before.

The soldier bee, on the other hand, fell flat on the ground. But she quickly scrambled to her feet…and then began a salute dance. She continued repeating that dance over and over and over. It seemed the wounded soldier…or Beero, rather, liked the name. Belissar’s cheeks flushed a bit but he definitely couldn’t take it back now.

“I’m glad you like it, it is well deserved. You’ve done well, Beero.”

Her repeating salute dance continued until Belissar went to check on the new lighting bee. And the Shrine of Bees off to the side began to subtly shine…

Fortunately, the new lightning bee wasn’t permanently harmed, and the medicinal bees confirmed she would recover from the ordeal. And, well, the other wounded bees were practically scrambling over each other to be next. Belissar chuckled and shook his head.

“No need to rush, we’ll take care of all of you.”

They spent much of the rest of the day granting lighting to the wounded bees, until Beero’s lightning wings grew dim and thin. Belissar topped her up with mana until he, too, started to run low. His head ached and his body grew sore as he tried to squeeze out more mana. He went back to the farmhouse and brought back some regular mana honeycomb, which managed to restore his and Beero’s mana for a time…but apparently the fatigue mounted even so. Soon, the mana from the mana honeycomb wouldn’t even enter his body anymore, and trying to forcefully absorb it sent spikes of pain through his stomach and mind.

Niobee was fine, though, if a little exhausted.

Belissar sighed and his face fell as he turned to the remaining soldiers.

“I’m sorry, it looks like we’re out for today. But don’t worry, we’ll resume tomorrow, ok? We won’t stop until we get all of you.”

The wounded soldiers saluted and fell back.

Belissar could barely pay attention during that day’s purification, which was a bit dangerous. Fortunately, the bees handled it without issue and he turned in for the night. He went to welcome the fourth and final bumblebee queen, but his eyes widened as he arrived at the third floor Flower Meadow.

The meadow was buzzing with bumblebees leisurely flying from flower to flower. There had to be at least a hundred of them.

“How…is this possible?”

The monster bumblebees weren’t supposed to produce as many workers as the monster bees, right? Not to mention their workers flew slower than the monster bees as well, so they shouldn’t have been gathering as much nectar. And yet, in just a few days they had grown to colonies of this size?

But Belissar soon discovered the answer as the First of the Fifth flew into the room, followed by workers and soldiers carrying honeycomb. She paused as she saw him, then flew over and began saluting. Belissar smiled.

“Have you been helping out the new queens this whole time?”

She slowly danced the affirmative. Belissar’s smile grew.

“Thank you for taking care of them. Let me know if you need more flowers, you and the other Apiary queens are taking care of a lot of bees now, right?”

She froze for a second before breaking out into a happy dance, causing Belissar to chuckle. Soon, the bumblebees noticed the commotion and the three queens came out of their burrows to fly excitedly around both Belissar and the First of the Fifth.

Belissar grinned as wide as he could. Could this day get any better?

“Could this day get any worse?”

Tyhgak didn’t respond to his fellow spearwoman’s complaint, but he grunted his agreement. He grimaced as he thrust his spear forward, piercing through the shell of a giant beetle flying towards him. This beetle, like all the others they had slain, burst into an orange cloud. A cloud that made Tyhgak wretch.

Monster stink bugs were not his favorite thing to hunt. Not only were they filled to the brim with noxious gases, they also only appeared in fields of rot cap, an orange mushroom that smelled exactly as its name implied.

But, there was nothing for it. There was only a single Underway tunnel in this direction, so they had to pass through this way to scout the area. Besides, there were a handful of mushrooms and plants that only grew in rot cap fields that could be useful to Juosiutik…and perhaps the Sacred Den Master. It was just enough that it was generally worth fighting through the stink bugs that fed on them.

Barely.

The stink bugs themselves were hardly a threat, and so Metsaitti and the other veteran hunters were letting the youngest team, the group that Metsaitti had been challenging the dungeon with, handle the fight. The fact that anyone fighting the bugs would be subjected to the full strength smell of a digestive system specialized in rot cap definitely had nothing to do with it.

As Tyghak was wretching, another stink bug jumped towards him. But just then, something moved in the corner of his eye. Noiggakuq stepped forward and thrust with a dagger. A black stinger made of mana formed around the blade and shot out as she thrust, stabbing into the stink bug. Tyghak gulped.

“T-Thanks…”

And then Noiggakuq vomited.

“Ugh, their mana smells even worse…”

Then Tyghak’s eyes widened and he pushed Noiggakuq to the side with one hand, thrusting his spear forward with his other. A third stink bug tried to pounce on her while she was wretching. He barely managed to pierce through it.

Which, of course, bathed both him and Noiggakuq in another cloud of stink.

No, Tyghak decided was the answer as he wretched once more. No, this day could not, in fact, get any worse.

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