Chapter 399: Environmental Bee-silience |
Since they had done the expansion early, there was still time left in the day after picking the rewards. Belissar decided to implement some of the new rooms right away. At his current available mana of seventy-three, he could only afford two, though the Mystic Mine might give him some mana back if it had a discount for some of the minerals, particularly mithril. Maybe if he moved the mithril nodes there he could afford all three rooms?
Belissar thus added a Mystic Mine first, connecting it to the bees’ Dirt Tunnels room on the Apiary floor. That Dirt Tunnel’s entrance was a large, ceiling-less cavern that opened right up into the Apiary, designed to give the bees easy access to the flowers, mushrooms, and mineral nodes placed in the walls and floor of the cavern. Belissar added another hole at the bottom of that cavern that led to the Mystic Mine.
The Mystic Mine, like a Dirt Tunnels room, was a labyrinth of tunnels and cavern, though made of solid rock instead of dirt. Additionally, there were some manmade features as well: wooden beams formed frames and scaffolds to support the rock and give access to the upper walls of caverns, while light crystals were mounted on walls and ceilings to provide illumination. Additionally, there were several glowing and empty clefts carved into the walls. Belissar focused on one.
Mystic Mineral Node (Inactive: select mineral to activate)
Belissar focused and brought up the list of minerals for the node.
Available Mystic Minerals
- Mithril
- Mana-Imbued Iron
- Mana-Imbued Copper
- Mana-Imbued Silver…
The list continued on, giving mana-imbued versions of all the mundane minerals available to him. Belissar tilted his head, though, as no mana costs were listed. Out of curiosity, he went ahead and selected the first entry on the list, mithril.
He didn’t expect anything to happen, as he didn’t have enough mana for a mithril node. As such, he couldn’t help a gasp as he watched the empty cleft fill up with the glimmering silver of mithril, becoming a mithril vein. He double checked his mana…
Mana: 33/3160
…and it hadn’t changed. The Mystic Mine still only cost forty mana. The mystic mineral nodes that came with the room could be filled with mithril…for free. He would not only get a discount on mithril, he wouldn’t have to pay anything at all!
And there were five such nodes placed around the mine, four of which were still glowing and waiting for him to select their minerals. He could have five times the mithril he had now.
“Niobee…can you let the Fourth of the Fifth’s First Daughter know I’m going to move the mithril node down into the new room?”
“Ok!”
While Niobee danced on his head, Belissar tried to see if he could move the mystic mineral nodes within the mine. He was indeed able to, so he tried to move one of them to the entrance cavern for easy access.
He found, however, that he could not. The mineral nodes apparently couldn’t be placed within a certain distance of the entrance. Belissar was forced to leave the node in a tunnel as close to the entrance as he could place it. He then tried to move another node to the tunnel…and found that he couldn’t place it within a certain distance of either the first node or the entrance. He ended up having to space the nodes out in separate tunnels branching out from the entrance in different directions. He was, however, able to fill up all five nodes with mithril. Hopefully the increase in amount will balance out the longer foraging trip for the thermal mining bees…
He considered just replacing the Dirt Tunnels entirely, but he held off for now. The description of the Mystic Mine room hinted that it might be dangerous, so he left the flowers and mundane mineral nodes in the Dirt Tunnels until they had a chance to explore.
Belissar and Niobee then went to check out the Mystic Mine in-person, adding a shortcut to its entrance cavern in the process. The first thing Belissar noticed was the mana, when view with his mana sight the mines were even brighter than the Fairy Groves, the mana packed into the entrance cavern by the stone walls. The tunnels he placed the mithril nodes in were even brighter…and growing brighter by the minute.
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Niobee started buzzing.
“King! Danger!”
Belissar’s eyes widened. Niobee was pushing him to leave, so he rushed back through the shortcut. He kept watch with his Tower sight and found the mana from the mithril nodes flowing into the entrance and colliding with each other, making the room glow brighter and brighter to his mana sight.
Until the mana exploded in the entrance cavern he was just in, causing the entire mine to shake and stones to break loose of the ceiling.
Belissar gulped.
“Thanks Niobee. Let’s…not replace the Dirt Tunnels for now. And let’s ask Tamosmed for help before anyone goes in there…”
***
Tamosmed was apparently busy with his Golem-master duties, but he was able to send some information about mystic mines. Apparently, mana would continuously gather within it until it trigger some sort of magical phenomena, often explosions. The mystic nodes in particular would generate a lot of mana, mining from them would always be a bit risky. And if someone happened to place them all very close together, connecting them all to a single cavern…then a great deal of mana from different sources would condense in said cavern very quickly and become very volatile.
Tamosmed did not recommend that arrangement.
So, Belissar moved the nodes, keeping one relatively close to the entrance, but then spacing the others throughout the room. All in their own separate caverns that each had many branching tunnels with many twists and turns before they connected to one another, ensuring that the mana from any two nodes would disperse before meeting. Unfortunately, Tamosmed said it wouldn’t be possible to completely eliminate the danger, the mana concentration was necessary for the mystic nodes to function in the first place. He did say he would teach the thermal mining bees how to keep track of the mana concentration around them and determine when it was growing dangerous.
On the bright side, Belissar had recovered a hundred mana for moving the existing mithril node to the mine, so he now had more than enough for both an Acid Lake and a Stormy Coast.
Since both rooms were better for defense than raising bees, he put them both on the first floor. He placed them between the Sparkling Desert and the battle Lava Field, moving the battle Flower Meadow up to the third floor to make space. They would join the Tornado Plains and Sparkling Desert as the experimental defense rooms for now, at least until they could figure out if there were any flowers or bees that might like them. He added shortcuts to each, though he held off on any other features for now.
Then, he and Niobee braved the rooms to test them for bees, trusting in the Tower to keep them safe as keeper and conduit. Belissar and Niobee stepped into the Acid Lake room first…and Belissar was immediately struck by a rotten, sulfuric smell coming from the a sickly-green lake ahead of him. He frowned as he held his nose.
“Those are some fumes, alright. How are you, Niobee?”
Belissar glanced up…and found Niobee’s antennae drooping. She crawled slowly to dance her reply.
“Getting…sleepy…”
Belissar’s eyes widened and he all but rushed out of the room.
“Niobee! Are you ok?!”
Niobee quickly perked up.
“Am ok! Room air made sleepy. Would make other bees sleepy, might kill.”
Belissar’s eyes went as wide as they could go, then narrowed as his expression darkened.
“So, no bees in the new room, huh? The description said sulfuric fumes…”
Niobee, however, danced the negative.
“Think toxic bees ok! Antidote bees too. Slime bees if have slime.”
Belissar slowly nodded.
“Ok, if you say so. Let’s have them test it, but let’s be careful and make sure the Second of the Sixth’s hive is ready to help.”
The hive of hives soon sent bees for the test. As Niobee predicted, the toxic bees and antidote bees weren’t affected by the fumes, while the slime bees were fine since they were surrounded by their honey-slime and not directly exposed to the air. They had a few other surprises as well, the ash bees were also not affected. Maybe the new lava bees wouldn’t be either, but Belissar was still letting them spawn and grow so they didn’t test them just yet.
Then, the bee army started to send different soldier types that were not immune to see how long they could last. Belissar disliked that test, but he held his tongue. It was important to see if the bees could fly through the room at all in an emergency, better to take that risk now than to get into trouble during a battle.
They started with the bigger monster bee knights before working their way down. The bigger bees could last for a bit, but the soldiers and sprayers started getting sleepy almost right away and it was judged as too dangerous to even test worker bees. Fortunately, the antidote bees were able to help…and could even help a lancer, archer, or knight fly through the room. Still, even the bigger bees flew slower when exposed to the fumes, so it was decided the Acid Lake would be left to the toxic and slime bees for now.
Next, Belissar and Niobee visited the Stormy Coast. Belissar carried Niobee in his arms this time, expecting strong winds.
The room did not disappoint. Rain began pelting his face as howling wind blew around him. The sky was completely gray, the sun blocked by dark clouds. Belissar stood on the top of a cliff overlooking a sea far below rocky cliffs. But unlike the calm surface of a lake or the Muddy Seabed, the sea formed huge waves taller than a person, smashing against the side of the cliff and sending spray all the way up to where Belissar stood.
Niobee didn’t even try to fly in the room. The hive of hives immediately concluded bees would need help to travel through the room. They’d see if Beero and the hive of the fallen could do something like they did during the fight with Starami, when the hive of hives worked together to push through the Tower Guard’s wind spell. For now, though, the room was off limits.
Belissar only hoped that all these dangers would be even worse for the Hunger…
