The Bee Dungeon

Belissar grabbed his usual construction squad from the soldier bee army and headed over to the Orchard grove. He tasked them with ferrying the wood he needed for the beehouse up to the platform before climbing up himself. His ladder…wasn’t the most solid construction and he had a slip or two, but he managed to pull himself up safely. After only a breath moment to gather his breath and feel relatively solid wood beneath his feet, he got to work.

The two Orchard queens had already crawled out of their hives, curious as to his presence up in the canopy of the Grove. He smiled at them.

“What are you two called?”

The larger of the two answered immediately with a rapid dance.

“Fourth of the Seventh!”

The smaller was more hesitant, trembling as she stumbled over herself.

“F-First of the Fifth’s First Daughter, h-honored to speak with King.”

Belissar tried to give a reassuring smile to them.

“Fourth of the Seventh and First of the Fifth’s First Daughter, got it. I’m going to build a house for you two now, do you have any ideas on how it should look? Any features it should have?”

The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter began trembling so hard she couldn’t even dance anymore, and so didn’t say anything. But, to Belissar’s surprise, the Fourth of the Seventh began dancing immediately.

“King is best king! We share hive, so should be big! Going to raise more queens, so big for them too!”

The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter spun around to stare at the Fourth of the Seventh. However, Belissar was already nodding his head.

“Got it, hm, don’t think we have enough space up here for a full barracks but we’ll make the house as big as possible then. Anything else?”

The Fourth of the Seventh paced in a circle for a moment before responding.

“Nope! King’s hives are best!”

Belissar grinned and turned to the other queen.

“How about you? I want to make it the best it can be for you, so if you have any ideas please let me know.”

The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter resumed trembling but managed to get a dance out.

“N-None, sorry. King’s hives already best.”

Belissar chuckled at that.

“Ok then, I’ll get started. Let me know if you think of anything.”

“Ok, King is best king!”

“Y-Yes. King is best king!”

With that, Belissar got to work. He set out a wide area, planning to use up as much of the platform’s area as he felt safe. He made it short and wide, short enough he’d have to hunch over to stand inside. Between magical monster bees being less vulnerable to disease and parasites, his Tower sight that could see inside a beehouse without opening it, and this hive’s inaccessible location, he realized there was no real reason to build beehouses with human access in mind. As such, he built it from the inside out, since the entrances wouldn’t be human sized or shaped.

He made rows upon rows of large, square frames for their convenience. As with the Flower Meadow Bee Barracks, he didn’t put any interior walls or separation, since the two queens were building a joint hive already. The entrances would be large circular holes that would be small for an adult human but still quite large compared to even a soldier bee. He covered these with cloth sheets weighed down by wood tied to their bottoms, something that could be pushed aside by bees while keeping out the elements. He made smaller entrances purely for workers as well, even carving a hole in the bottom so the bees could fly straight towards the flowers at the bottom of the grove.

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It took most of the day, but with the help of the soldiers and a few soldiers of the Fourth of the Seventh’s own, he managed to finish. He looked over it and grinned. ꞦＡℕőBËȘ

And then his eyes widened and he frowned. He just realized that, normally, he would place a Beehive feature, assemble a beehouse next to it, and then merge the two together. And this time…he had forgotten to actually place the Beehive feature. He gulped.

“Hope this works…”

He tried to do so now, bringing up the Beehive feature and moving it over the beehouse…

Compatible feature detected. Upgrade to Beehive?

He let out a sigh of relief as instead of displaying a transparent beehive, his Tower sight instead illuminated the completed beehouse. It appeared he could also build the beehouse first and then upgrade it into a feature. That was convenient to learn, especially now.

He went ahead and did so.

New feature detected. New feature unlocked.

Wooden Platform is now available!

New feature detected. New feature unlocked.

Bee Apartment is now available!

Beehive upgraded to Bee Apartment.

Belissar’s eyes widened as the Tower’s mana began to flow into the new house. He knew this beehouse was a lot different from any other he had built, but he didn’t expect a new feature out of it, much less two. He quickly brought up the details on both.

Wooden Platform

Mana Upkeep: 1

An elevated platform made of wood. May hold features within its weight limit. Weight limit may be improved if supported by other features.

Bee Apartment

Mana Upkeep: 10 (5 due to Blessing of Bees)

Current Occupants: None

Current Product: Honeycomb

Base Production Rate: 3 honeycomb per 24 hours

A larger variant on Belissar’s Beehouse. Like with the smaller, changed product from honeycomb to honeycomb trays, improves maximum products stored to 3 per occupying queen, increased bee productivity, and increases bee happiness. This larger version may hold multiple queens and hives, each of which increases the honeycomb production and storage.

The wooden platform was pretty straightforward, to the point that Belissar wondered why it was a separate feature. On the other hand, he had seen simple dirt trails offered as a feature before, and this was much more complicated so he supposed it made sense. If nothing else, it would be extremely convenient if he wanted to build more elevated hives. He only wished he had it before having to build one from scratch.

The Bee Apartment, on the other hand, was his beehouse, but bigger. Which made sense, because that’s exactly what it was. He was pleased to see it still had the magic effects of the others. It was a bit more expensive in terms of mana, but it could also hold more queens, so as long as they got along maybe it was better than separate beehouses? He wasn’t sure, he’d have to write out the math to know for sure but he assumed it shouldn’t be worse, at the very least.

He was worried for a second about the higher mana cost than he expected, not to mention having to account for the unexpected Wooden Platform feature, so he double checked his mana.

Mana: 1/455

He exhaled his breath. He had just barely enough for the new features. But now he truly couldn’t do anything else until today’s purification.

Ultimately, though, new features and Tower mana were not the point of this. So, he turned to face the existing Orchard hive built in the branches. He found the two queens and their entire hive hovering behind him. He gave them a smile.

“Well, what do you think?”

He chuckled as he was subjected to countless “Amazing! Incredible!” dances all at once. He had to admit at this point he had expected and even looked forward to that reaction.

“I’m glad you like it, enjoy!”

Belissar began climbing down the ladder as the two hives swarmed over the Bee Apartment, inspecting every angle of it inside and out before the two queens began moving their joint hive inside.

And once he safely reached the ground, the words he was waiting for passed across his vision.

Mission: House All Bees completed!

Reward: Uncommon Monster Choice

His grin only grew. Not only had he built something he was proud of and made a home for each and every one of his bees, but now the God of Bees herself acknowledged his efforts. And what better reward could there be for building beehouses than more bees?

Belissar took a deep breath…and then he dismissed the message for now. He had decided that from now on, he wanted to consult with his bees before making any major choices. Possibly with Chief Rohsuak as well, although from their last conversation it seemed like it would be fine to make monster choices without her. The bees, however, would be directly impacted and may have strong opinions on what would help them most. And at this point, it was nearly time for the daily purification, after which the queens would gather anyways for the victory celebration. So, Belissar decided to wait until then to check what the choices would be.

It only took an intense amount of his willpower to do so. For once, Belissar couldn’t wait for the purification to arrive…

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