The Bee Dungeon

Belissar first met with Chief Rohsuak. He informed her about the new plants and asked for Juosiutik’s help with the rest, and then requested that the karnuq send someone to check out the ruins. Chief Rohsuak agreed and Belissar went ahead and added new flower nodes for the new herbs in both the karnuq’s Flower Meadow and in the Apiary. He also enabled alfalfa spawning in the Apiary and each of the Flower Meadows, Orchards, and Fairy Groves in the Tower to start boosting soil fertility, requesting that the gardener bees check them out.

After that, he and Chief Rohsuak made their way over to the humans to consult with Sehfitis. The old man lowered his head as Belissar approached.

“Greetings, Tower Keeper, how may I serve you?”

Belissar took a deep breath.

“I wanted to know if you knew anything about how the Tower Lords arrange traps and defenses.”

His chest began to heat at the thought of following the Tower Lords methods, but he did his best to stay calm. The last few purifications as well as the humans’ attack had clearly demonstrated his traps were falling behind. Yes, the smaller shades from the daily purifications could fall into pits or get dowsed by sticky honey traps on occasion, but the big expansion shades he was most worried about ignored them at this point. He was considering if it was even worth the mana to keep the ones he had, much less to buy any more.

But he also knew that he knew very little about how Towers were run, and it was all too likely that he was missing something. While he was specifically not going to follow the Tower Lords’ example in most cases, trap usage was one area he could stomach it.

He turned to Chief Rohsuak.

“If you or the karnuq have any advice about traps and defenses, I’d like to hear it as well.”

“I am not privy to the specific details of Tower arrangement, Tower Keeper, but I did overhear the late Ruckanos as he…evaluated your Tower compared to his lessons. He noted that your traps are largely placed one by one so that it was easy to address them. He also noted the lack of monsters attacking around the traps.”

Belissar frowned but nodded. He tried to push away any thoughts of the Tower Lord’s son and focus on the words. Chief Rohsuak gave him a hand by speaking up.

“I would agree, Tower Keeper. Sacred Dens I encountered in the past often used multi-layered traps to surprise otherwise wary challengers. Monster and traps working together are also deadlier than either would be separately. Recall Metsaitti’s fight with the Tower Guard, where Metsaitti and your bees managed to push him into a Pit Trap.”

Belissar’s eyes widened as he nodded. That was a good point, the Pit Traps the humans had so easily bypassed in the Dirt Tunnels had claimed two of their numbers once they were distracted by the bees as well, including the Tower Guard who was otherwise giving them serious trouble. Even his very use of the Pit Traps had required the bees’ help to drive the shade into the trap. Perhaps it was not that his traps were falling behind, but that he was not using them correctly?

“So…multi-layered traps?”

Chief Rohsuak nodded.

“Set one trap, then set the next to trigger if the first is bypassed or disabled. For example, if you place one of your Sticky Honey Traps to spray up and over a Pit Trap, you might catch someone trying to jump over it.”

Belissar listened intently as Chief Rohsuak and Sehfitis offered some different ideas on how to improve his traps. As they suggested, he rearranged some of the Sticky Honey Traps in the Dirt Tunnels to spray over the Pit Traps and moved some of the beeswax candles to the first Pit Trap Tunnel. He spread a few more across the Dirt Tunnels that specifically would not use poisonous wax on Sehfitis’s suggestion, in order to make it harder for anyone to realize they were dangerous.

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In the battle meadow, Belissar moved one of the Pit Traps directly in front of the wooden platform placed about a third of the way into the room so that anyone rushing the platform might fall into the pit. One of the gardeners had apparently planted a bunch of thorny roses there as well, so that anyone trying to jump over the pit might land in the thorns. He also moved the gravilion flower over there as well, figuring that maybe it might make someone heavier unexpectedly and drop them into the pit.

Then, he placed a few pit traps and sticky honey traps in the new battle Fairy Grove, where he hoped the bushes and whatever mysterious effects the Fairy Grove might have would distract intruders from the traps. He asked Niobee to ask the gardeners to plant some roses and gravilion flowers there if they could.

Finally, he placed some shortcuts throughout the three battle rooms on the first floor, three per room, so that the bee army could flying in and out to attack intruders trying to navigate the rooms.

Mana: 118/1090

And just like that, nearly half of his mana was gone. But if it would strengthen his Tower’s defenses without putting more bees at risk, it would be a price well paid. Belissar would just have to wait and see how the new set-up would handle the shades.

Belissar watched as a new shade formed once more, and his heart sank to his stomach.

“Be careful, everyone. It’s another spiny shade.”

A spiky salamander appeared, smaller than the one from the expansion but still covered in those deadly spines. Chief Rohsuak gave him a pat on his shoulder.

“Not to worry, Tower Keeper. This time we are prepared.”

Belissar gave her a nod and then turned his attention to the karnuq hunters waiting at the front of the battle meadow. This time, they huge slabs of iron rather than the smaller wooden shields. Chief Rohsuak assured him they could block a spear thrust from Metsaitti, and so should protect the karnuq from a spiny salamander attack. He already asked Beero and her battlecaster squad to wait with them.

Belissar took a deep breath and tried to calm his fears as the salamander began its assault. It crawled down the first tunnel until it arrived at the first Pit Trap. It clung onto the side of the walls and crawled over it.

Belissar frowned. He had placed a Sticky Honey Trap on a small rock on the far side of the Pit, angled to spray up and over it. But it was aimed at the center of the pit for foes either jumping or flying over the pit. The salamander on the side of the walls didn’t manage to trigger it, and wouldn’t have been sprayed even if had.

The corrupting trail of Hunger left by the salamander disabled those two traps, so Belissar instead adjusted the next one along the path to the exit. He placed the Sticky Honey Trap over this pit on the side walls to spray over the pit horizontally. He then waited for the salamander to arrive.

The salamander once again tried to crawl on the side of the wall…and crawled right over the nozzle of the Sticky Honey Trap. The honey trap sprayed its cone of honey directly into the belly of the salamander, knocking it off the wall with a screech. The salamander fell back first down into the pit. The spines on its back pierced into the ground, causing it to flail about helplessly as its own defenses held it in place.

Belissar let out the breath he was holding.

“It’s caught in the second Pit Trap, everyone.”

Belissar was about to send Beero and her battlecasters to handle the shade when he stopped. He rubbed his chin and furrowed his brow for a moment before looking up, narrowing his eyes and clenching his fist.

“Digging squad, come with me. I want to try something.”

The growing number of digging soldiers flew around Belissar as he made his way to one of the shortcuts leading to the Dirt Tunnels. He walked to the Pit Trap in question, remaining at a safe distance from it, before stirring up his mana.

He cupped both of his hands together out in front of him. A honeycomb appeared over them, and then spell bees burst out of the cells of the comb.

“Kill it.”

At Belissar’s command, the spell bees flew towards the pit and filled the tunnel with angry buzzing. They dove stingers first down into the pit, the salamander screeching as the bees stung their ethereal stingers into its exposed belly. As each spell bee made contact with the shade, its body morphed into a larger stinger that jabbed deeper into the shade, continuing to pump harmful mana until it was spent.

The salamander thrashed and whipped its tail about, sending spines into the walls of the pit, but it could not free itself while coated in sticky honey, nor could it get an angle to attack the spell bees swarming into the pit. It let out a final cry and dispersed just as Belissar began to feel dizzy.

All hostiles defeated. Purification successful.

Belissar placed a hand on the tunnel wall to steady himself, but gripped his other hand into a fist as he smiled. He had just brought down a shade with his own magic.

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