The Bee Dungeon

Chapter 28: To Bee Favored

Minor Purification completed! Please select a reward:

- +50 DP

- +10 Max Mana

- Dirt Trail Minor Room Feature

Belissar nodded as he looked things over. He didn’t need long to make his choice this time.

+10 Max Mana selected.

Max mana increased by 10 to 210!

At the end of the day, Belissar felt mana was pretty important. More mana meant more spawners, more traps, and more resource nodes. That meant more hives, more flowers for them to gather from, and more defenses to keep them safe. Even if he got something with DP, he’d probably need mana to actually implement it. Besides, he was gaining DP each day, if extremely slowly, while his mana stayed the same.

A new room feature was interesting...but dirt trails didn’t seem that impactful. After all, his bees could fly, so he and the shades were the only things walking around the Tower. Well, there was the wounded soldier, but she stood guard by her hive most of the time and so wasn’t making long trips in the first place.

With that settled and a celebratory dance by the bees underway, the second minor purification came to a close.

The First of the Fifth danced and buzzed as she climbed through her hive. Things were finally looking up again.

She...would admit (if only after significant prompting by her workers) that she was not at her best recently. The truth had unfortunately been undeniable. The King considered the Flower Meadow queens to be on par with those of the Apiary and cared for them as deeply as any other. They had not been exiled, and proximity to the King’s abode was not the defining metric of his favor.

So, she had been...distracted by the idea that her daily tribute to the King’s meals was not proof of any special favor. Or the unspeakable idea that her tributes of honey might even be considered less vital than the defense of the King’s realm. After all, when word of the next invasion came, the King put aside all other tasks to secure the defense. Would that not then mean that the most favored queens in his sight...were those who contributed most to that defense?

The First of the Fifth...may have consumed more honey than usual as that thought passed through her mind.

But now, all was returning to as it should be.

The true wisdom of the King’s gifts had been revealed, and it was the First of the Fifth who uncovered their purpose. She was uncompromising in the quality of her honey. She separated the honey from different sources: different flowers, different workers, even different times. She categorized and evaluated each so that only the finest of her hive’s labor would be offered to the King. So, when the King had gifted them with new flowers with exotic properties, it had only been natural for the First of the Fifth to separate, concentrate, and categorize these as well. In doing so, she was the one who discovered that the properties of honey could be changed dramatically based on their source. By the wisdom of the King and the ceaseless efforts of her and her offspring, they turned honey from a meal into a weapon.

And when she saw the King carry that weapon to one of his chasms, she knew that he had come up with another grand plan. And she knew that she now had the opportunity to be a part of it. The key part of it, even, for none of the Flower Meadow hives could produce the surplus of honey her hive could.

So, her hive had worked tirelessly. They produced as much of the mad honey as they could and carried it to each of the chasms her King had dug.

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And then the invasion came, and the First of the Fifth saw the completion of the King’s design. Her scouts reported how her honey had struck the critical blow and brought the enemy to its knees. It may have been the soldiers of the Flower Meadow who had danced with the invader, but it had been her honey that it laid it low and left it defenseless before the King. He had struck it down, with her help, and without a single sacrifice by the queens of the Flower Meadow. She could now contribute to defense as much as they...nay, more, even, for she did not need to spend a single life to do so.

The First of the Fifth had been ecstatic. The King had thanked her and her workers personally for their efforts. The whole hive had celebrated for longer than they would care to admit.

But it could not be helped, for they knew they were once again the favored ones above all others.

Still, the First of the Fifth was not content to rest upon that achievement. She may have been favored, but she was a bee still. She knew that even a favored worker that ceased to produce would not remain so, therefore she and her children pressed on, searching for new ways they could aid their King and bring his designs to fruition.

And this time, she had an idea as to his purposes.

As her workers had produced the specialized honey from the new plants, the First of the Fifth noticed a curious phenomenon. As she inspected the honey, she found that the mana her workers imbued into it resonated with certain compounds from the plants. She theorized that this was why those honey types differed so dramatically from the norm.

She arrived at her destination, where cells of mad honey and healing herb honey lay open. She looked within and found the pupae resting there, some with a slight green and blue tint, others with a slight purple tint. She could see their heads and bodies take shape, gaining more color by the day. Her antenna twitched in satisfaction. Her newest children were growing well, and soon would hatch.

Monster bee larva did not merely feed upon honey. They absorbed the mana from within it and used it to stimulate the growth of their own. It was why mana flowers were so valuable to them, as otherwise the worker bees needed to imbue that mana into the honey themselves. So, when the First of the Fifth saw the mana in the new honey types resonating with the various compounds contained within, she could not help but wonder what might result if she raised a worker fed purely with one of those honey types? Would they grow as normal? Would they fail to grow at all?

Or perhaps...they would grow differently. As differently as the honey they fed upon?

It took a bit of time. These workers had not grown in a single day as normal, which had worried the First of the Fifth. But as time went on, they grew and developed at their own pace, so the queen let them be, waiting to see if they would eventually hatch.

And now, her patience was rewarded.

She noticed one of the them begin to twitch, and thrash about. It tore through the thin cocoon covering its cell and then climbed out. The bee shook about and buzzed its wings, beating them for the first time. Its antenna twitched as it glanced around for the first time. The First of the Fifth stepped forward, gently brushing her antenna against her child’s. The worker froze at first, then danced before her queen.

The First of the Fifth noted with pleasure that this bee was far different from the others. Her shape and size were the same, but she had bluish-green stripes where a normal bee would have yellow. The First of the Fifth could also feel the new worker’s mana, of a different quality than all the others’. She noted the worker’s stinger, thinner than normal and without barbs.

And, most importantly of all, this worker was still hers. The worker’s mana was different but registered as part of her hive, the same as of her children. The new worker stood before her, eagerly awaiting her assignment as any good worker would. The other workers nearby began to brush along her as they would any other of their siblings, and the new worker soon joined them in their work. She began to tend to the others of her generation that had yet to be born.

And then, the First of the Fifth noticed something different. The new worker flared her mana as she walked over each of the cells, in a way the queen had not seen her workers do before. Eventually, she stopped on one, one that seemed to be growing more slowly than the rest.

The First of the Fifth froze as the new worker lifted her abdomen and extended her stinger. The First of the Fifth then moved to intervene, but she was too late. The new worker stabbed down into the cell...but gently, and precisely, and did not pierce the larva within. She released a cloud of bluish-green liquid from her stinger...and contrary to the queen’s fears, the larva did not thrash about in response. No, rather, the First of the Fifth felt the new larva’s mana begin to settle down...and grow stronger.

She watched in silence as the new worker then moved on to the next cell, using her mana to check the larva within. Slowly, the queen’s wings began to buzz.

She had succeeded. She had born a brand new type of bee, all on her own. The Flower Meadow queens may have birthed the first soldiers, but those were a gift from the King. They could not lay claim to an achievement such as this. The First of the Fifth would not only receive from the King, she would participate in his work and give something to him. She would participate in his grand designs more than anyone else.

For that is what it meant to be the favored queen.

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