Chapter 391: Heated Bee-bate |
Belissar’s smile only grew, as it was now time for the second choice.
“Let’s see what kind of bees we get.”
He brought up the choice as the bees replied with a happy salute dance.
Please select a monster:
- Monster Lava Bee (Rarity: Rare, Type: Fire, Ground, Bee)
- Fire-Eating Bee Queen (Rarity: Epic, Type: Fire, Bee)
- Beeswax Candle Golem (Rarity: Rare, Type: Fire, Bee, Construct)
Urubran’s eyes began shining.
“Belissar, let me tell you right now. Whichever of these you pick, I want them. Fire monsters, Fire flowers, Fire food, you name it and I’ll trade it.”
“Flowers, if you have any. For now though, let’s start…”
With that, Belissar read out the first monster’s description.
Monster Lava Bee
Vitality: Below Average
Strength: Average
Speed: Below Average
Magic: Minimal+
Defense: Above Average
Resistance: Minor
Special: Minor
Notable Skills: Lava Sting, Volcanic Fumes, Rock Shell, Lava Tube Digging
Evolves From: Monster Volcano Bee
Spawner Upkeep: 40 (20 with Blessing of Bees)
Description: This evolved volcano bee no longer merely adapts to volcanos but embraces them. The bee now feeds on lava and volcanic fumes and incorporates them into its own body. It develops a shell of volcanic rock for defense, while obsidian shards help its stinger pierce deep. Instead of venom, it injects toxic lava that both melts the targets’ interior while also filling it with toxic fumes. As a side effect of its digestive system, the lava bee also constantly releases toxic and acidic fumes around itself.
Lava bees are also excellent diggers and will use the hottest lava they can find to help them melt through solid rock. While this is normally used to build their burrows, lava bees may also conduct ambushes from below if they feel their homes are threatened. No ground is safe from these ambushes provided they have sufficiently hot lava available.
Lava bees will grow larger and stronger based on the availability, activity, and mana of volcanos and other sources of geothermal activity in their environment. Lava bees may also lay monster volcano bee eggs in addition to lava bee eggs, though they only do so if flower resources outweigh volcanic activity.
The lava bee’s preview didn’t even look like a living thing at first. The bee looked more like a statue carved out of black stone, with stripes of glowing red lava peeking out of the cracks in the stone. The preview this time showed the bee growing, starting at just the size of a usual worker bee before growing up to monster bee knight, or even bumblebee soldier sizes. The lava bee’s stinger was cover in a shiny black stone with many thin edges, looking more like a sword or a saw.
Urubran squeaked.
“That is perfect! Bees that feed on volcanos, Belissar, can you imagine what would happen if you let these bees feed in your new dragonvein room?! If they grew on dragonvein-empowered lava?!”
Belissar blinked. He had to admit…that sounded amazing. These bees would be a great addition to his lava rooms, dragonvein and otherwise. And if Urubran was right…perhaps these bees would evolve into something even more incredible.
The only potential downside was that these bees were not a brood mother or brood offspring, so they’d be separate from the usual monster bees. However, the God of Bees had recently assigned him missions regarding non-brood bees, so perhaps that wasn’t as much of a downside as he thought.
The hive of hives didn’t have too much to dance on this one. The Third of the Sixth was moderately interested in the idea of new Fire-type bees, but the rest of the hive of hives only reported that they’d make sure to take care of the new bees as best they could. As such, Belissar moved onto the next one.
Fire-Eater Bee Queen
Vitality: Minor
Strength: Minimal
Speed: Average
Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.
Magic: Average
Defense: Minimal
Resistance: Below Average
Special: Average
Notable Skills: Consume Fire, Fire Crystallization, Liquid Fire Sting, Flame Vitality, Brood Mother, Command Offspring
Spawner Upkeep: 60 (30 with Blessing of Bees)
Description: A monster bee species that has evolved to consume fire itself. These bees absorb the heat, energy, and mana of flames and condense them down into liquid fire, a potent and invaluable mystical resource. Other sources of heat, such as volcanic and geothermal activity and flowers with abundant Fire-mana, may also be used for this process if there are no open flames in the area.
The liquid fire sustains the bees and their hive, which is always wrapped in flames. Fire-Eater bees gain a boost to all stats, especially speed and vitality when either surrounded by fire or filled with liquid fire. Their stingers contain liquid fire as well and will set a target ablaze from the inside. If the liquid fire stings hit critical levels inside a target, they may also explosively combust.
This one is a queen capable of building a hive of fire-eater bees.
The preview itself was relatively similar to a burning bee queen, except that the fire-eater bee had an inner glow illuminating her chitin, as if she had a fire burning inside of her.
But Belissar didn’t observe the preview for long, for Urubran’s eyes burst into flames.
“Bees that make liquid fire?!”
Belissar tilted his head.
“I’m guessing that’s something special?”
Urubran marched over to Belissar, getting so close that Niobee buzzed at him.
“Belissar, do you know how hard it is to solidify fire into anything material?! This isn’t liquid that contains fire, or liquid that’s flammable, or liquid that’s like fire. It’s fire made liquid! Alchemists and enchanters and all sorts of masters of the mystic arts spend centuries trying to learn how to do that! And these bees can just…do it naturally?! They’re born able to do it…they rely on it to build their hives?! Belissar, these bees would make you the envy of every single practitioner of Fire magics alive!”
Belissar just quietly nodded. He didn’t really understand, not really knowing what fire made liquid actually meant or what it was used for, but he could tell it was a big deal to Urubran. In fact, even Tarwantrad and Finnakynne were nodding along with Urubran’s words.
However, Urubran wasn’t the only one reacting strongly.
The Third of the Sixth stopped flying, slowly drifting down to the ground as she ceased all motion. She even stopped moving her abdomen to breathe. Only after a long moment did she slowly begin to tap out a dance.
“Can make honey…with fire?”
A moment later, she burst into flames and shot up into the sky.
“AMAZING! INCREDIBLE! WILL TRY!”
She zipped off into the distance, speeding towards the nearest shortcut until the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter sent her an especially powerful mana dance to remind her that they still had one more choice to evaluate. Chief Rohsuak chuckled at the whole affair.
“Hm, I think I know how to train the Third of the Sixth’s blessing now.”
Urubran slowly turned to stare at the literally burning bee racing her way back to the council, then slowly clutched his head.
“Am I…am I the least devoted disciple of Fire here? The Bee master has a dragonvein Fire room and now the bees are going to learn to make liquid fire before I do. They’re not even a century old!”
Tarwantrad decided to comfort him by crossing her arms and making a smug grin.
“Bees are amazing, Urubran!”
Urubran glanced at out of the corner of his eyes and made a wicked smile of his own.
“Says the Flower master who needed my help to get the Blessing of Bees.”
The two elves subsequently started bickering. Belissar glanced between them, wondering if he should do something, but Finnakynne flew up to him and shook her head.
“They do that a lot. You can ignore them, Beely.”
Belissar decided to take Finnakynne’s word for it and moved on to the final option.
Beeswax Candle Golem
Vitality: Above Average
Strength: Below Average
Speed: Below Average
Magic: Below Average
Defense: Minor
Resistance: Below Average
Special: Average
Notable Skills: Molten Wax, Fire Spray, Construct
Spawner Upkeep: 20 (10 with Blessing of Bees)
Description: A golem formed from beeswax and turned into a giant candle. Its wax body is constantly melting, making it weaker than a normal beeswax golem, but far more flexible. The beeswax golem’s melting wax can simply absorb physical attacks and reform itself, the golem can only truly be harmed by either destroying its core or by extinguishing its flames. While its attacks lack the raw strength of other golems, anything that comes into contact with its body will be coated in molten wax. This wax can either be left to cool and harden, restricting the opponent’s movements, or can be ignited by the golem as it is able to spray its flames in addition to physical attacks.
As a construct, its exact attributes and skills may be altered depending on design and materials used. Spawners can be provided with compatible materials to produce different variants. If wax producing Bee-type monsters are available, they will be able to construct Beeswax Candle Golems. A manually constructed beeswax candle golem must consume beeswax to replenish itself on occasion, the golem’s wax and fire may both gain special properties depending on the beeswax consumed.
This one looked like a beeswax golem, but its body was melting and it had a big fire on top of its head like a blazing set of hair.
Urubran suddenly paused his bickering with Tarwantrad to give his thoughts.
“Oh, that’s not bad. Still, a bee capable of controlling fire to the extent of making liquid fire can probably figure out how to make once of those. Or Tamosmed can, maybe. He’s supposed to be Golem-master now or something.”
After saying his piece, Urubran went back to bickering with Tarwantrad. Belissar glanced at Finnakynne, but she just gave him a smile and shrugged.
Left with his own council, Belissar checked with the bees. The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter had a dance for him.
“New mobile hives good, new bees good. But this time, choice has bees with no hive, hard for queens decide if good. King make choice?”
Belissar blinked before making a warm smile. The bees really were growing.
“I understand. Ok, I’ll make this one, then.”
So, this time, Belissar thought on his own and made his choice. The candle golems sounded good for fighting, but the bees were still working on making the regular beeswax golems. Besides, they also already had the stingless sprayers who could cover enemies in wax and the Third of the Sixth for setting things on fire. So, it came down between the lava bees and the fire-eaters. Both would be good additions…but one would be much harder to replicate than the other.
“Ok, since the Third of the Sixth is going to try and learn the liquid fire thing and we already have beeswax golems we can try to adjust, let’s go with the lava bees. They’re a new kind of bee we can’t raise ourselves and it will be good to have more bees for the Fire rooms.”
The bees all happily danced around.
“Ok!”
Belissar glanced over at Urubran, but he just gave a thumbs up while he and Tarwantrad recounted each other’s mistakes. Chief Rohsuak gave him an approving nod as well, so Belissar went ahead and confirmed the decision.
Monster Lava Bee spawner now available!