The Bee Dungeon

Chapter 8: So What'll It Bee?

Belissar then stood and rubbed his chin. He may have made a bold statement, but implementing it was another matter. At the end of the day, he was still a peasant whose grandest deeds were warding off hungry wild animals. Tower Lords using the gifts of the gods to battle the Hunger was a bit outside his expertise.

Eventually, he walked back to the core room. He decided to start where this all began, at the core. He placed his hand on the sphere once again...

Dungeon Status:

Rooms: 1/1

Floors: 1

Mana: 75/100

Available Monster Types: Monster Queen Bee

Available Room Types: Flower Meadow

Core Corruption: 37%

Dungeon Conduit: Unnamed Bee

One room feature selection available

Belissar hummed as he looked over his tower and the words appeared before his eyes once again. He noticed a new addition from the last time he checked and focused on it. As he did, the words shifted, spinning such that he could no longer read them. They then stopped, and re-arranged themselves:

Select Room Feature:

- Basic Resource Plants (Rarity: Common, Type: Nature, Resource)

- Pit Trap (Rarity: Common, Type: Ground, Trap)

- Thorned Roses (Rarity: Common, Type: Nature, Trap)

Belissar rubbed his chin. Room selection let him build a Flower Meadow within the Tower. Defender selection resulted in the monster bee queens appearing in that room, via a spawner he placed. So, he figured this choice would let him place whatever he chose within the room as well.

And all of this was to enable him to fight the Hunger, and the shades it would send to kill him. To purify the world, as a Tower Lord was commanded by the gods.

So, the question was...which of these would enable him and a few bee hives to kill that monster?

His life, the life of his bees including his friend, and the very existence of a Tower of the Gods hung on the answer.

Belissar turned his attention back to the original status, and the Flower Meadow. He wanted to see what else he could do with this Tower before he made his choice. He frowned at the monster bee queen spawner in the center of the room.

The spawner had been disabled when that shade had reached it. Well, it only spawned one monster bee queen a day, and she would need time to start a colony, so it didn’t matter much when the shade had torn through the Tower in a couple of minutes. But still, it was a mistake, if a small one, to have placed it right in between the gate to the Hunger and the door to the core room, right in the path the shade had taken. Another sign of how unprepared and unworthy Belissar was for this job.

“If only I could move it...”

The moment he thought that, the core shifted its view to center on the tree.

Move Monster Bee Queen Spawner?

Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

Belissar blinked.

“Oh.”

Apparently, he could move it. He agreed to the question. A faint outline of light surrounded the tree, and a transparent image of the tree rose from the tree. Belissar blinked and shook his head. The tree moved with his vision.

Belissar quickly willed the image to move. It flew across the meadow towards the door to the core room...and then halted. Try as he might, Belissar couldn’t move it any further beyond the door. The trees there seemed to form a solid wall. Belissar frowned and sighed. He couldn’t help but feel that a real Tower Lord would have known all of this already. But he didn’t, so he had no choice but to try things and see what worked.

He tried again in all the different directions, but the wall of trees remained solid. He decided to place the spawner by the door. If the shade reached there...then he had lost anyways.

But even if the spawner wasn’t as far away as he had hoped, it had demonstrated something to Belissar. He apparently could make some adjustments to the room, at least to the spawner. So, what else could he do?

He began to focus on different parts of the room, starting with the titular flowers...

Manage flower types? Available Types:

- Dandelion (Selected, Mana upkeep: 0)

Well, that was helpful. He tried the trees next.

Move tree?

...slightly more helpful. Maybe. But at the very least, he could move some of the trees towards the back of the room, by the spawner and the core room door. The queens could then build their hives further away from where the Hunger would attack.

Still, that wouldn’t help them actually slay the shade...

Belissar found he could add a few more trees, though there seemed to be a maximum number allowed. Guess they didn’t want him turning a Flower Meadow into a forest. Not that more trees would particularly help. He could also remove trees, but that would help even less than adding them.

He sighed. With nothing better to do, he focused on the dirt.

Adjust terrain height?

Belissar pursed his lips. Surprisingly, the dirt was the right choice, as that might actually be helpful. Getting higher up always helped against land-based predators...though he wasn’t sure if that helped against shades of the Hunger. Still, if he could make a wall, then maybe he wouldn’t have to fight it directly...

Maximum height reached

Belissar sighed. Of course. Of course he couldn’t raise it steeper than a gentle hill. This was a Flower Meadow, not a castle. For a gift from the gods that could create land and life out of thin air, there sure were a lot of limits. Maybe he should’ve picked one of the other options or something.

That or there was something he was missing that a real Tower Lord would have known.

Initial Purification attempt in 2 days, 23 hours, and 23 minutes...

But there was no time to wonder what a Tower Lord could do that he couldn’t. Time was ticking, and it was up to him to use it well. He sighed and let go of the core. He should at least tell his bee queen to set up her hive on one of the far trees now...

He paused.

He felt her salute, somehow. He shook his head. He wasn’t even in the same room as her, nor had he said anything. He had to have been imagining things.

But...just in case he wasn’t...he peeked back at the core.

The core now showed the queen bee, dancing a salute and then flying towards one of the far trees. He blinked again.

Ok, apparently, he could also talk to the bees with his mind now? And...somehow know their response?

He shook his head. He had no time to get surprised at every little thing a Tower of the Gods could do. He would just have to figure things out as he went. And since he apparently didn’t need to actually walk to the queen to talk to her, he had no reason to leave the core room anymore. He sighed and turned back to the core. He had its vision zip through the Flower Meadow once again, checking for anything else he could use while he tried to figure out how he would actually fight that shade, and which of the room features would help most with it.

He caught a glimpse of one of the ruined hives from before, with twigs sticking haphazardly out of the mess. He sighed as he was once again reminded how out of his depth he was. A real Tower Lord would certainly have used the first three days to prepare their defenses. Meanwhile, Belissar had been trying to build beehouses out of twigs. Beehouses he didn’t even need, since he could apparently just ask the monster bees to build their hives in the appropriate shape. His original little twig frames wouldn’t even have worked had the monster bees not tried to follow his instructions on their own...

Belissar paused and stared at the ruins of the hive.

And many thoughts in his mind began to twist and swirl. He thought of how he, a weak and unworthy peasant, could fight a monstrous creature. He thought of the bees trying to build their hives according to his shaky frames, clearly attempting to follow the commands he didn’t realize he could give them. He thought of his life before, and the various things he had made in his life as a beekeeper. He thought of what he had available in the Flower Meadow, and the list of room features he could now choose. The different thoughts in his head began to intersect...

“I think...I have an idea.”

Belissar was no Tower Lord, and he hadn’t the first clue of how to fight like one. But he was a beekeeper and a farmer. And maybe, just maybe, with the help of the bees...he might be able to fight as what he actually was.

In any case, time was ticking, and if he wanted to attempt what he was thinking, he would need all the time he could get. So, he brought up the list of room features once more, and made his choice...

He could only pray it would work.