Chapter 400: Just Bee Cool |
Belissar was about to move on with his day when Niobee started dancing.
“King! Fourth of the Fifth’s First Daughter want know if need move metal flowers?”
Belissar’s eyes widened.
“Ah.”
He sent his Tower sight over to the bees’ Dirt Tunnels, where the resource mineral nodes were. Metal mana flower roots had been left behind when he removed the mithril node from the room. Through his mana sight, he could see the roots pulling back towards the plant’s own node.
He thought about moving the metal mana flower node as well, but with his mana sight he could also see the flower’s roots spread in the other mineral nodes he had left in the Dirt Tunnels, the mundane ones like iron.
“Hm, I think we’ll leave those flowers where they are. I don’t want to disturb them…at least, any more then I already have.”
Niobee’s antennae twitched as she danced question.
“Should let gardeners know?”
“Actually, I think I’ll add a new flower node. It’d help if the gardeners could check on it, but they should be careful. The room is dangerous after all.”
Belissar had gotten plenty of mana back from moving the mithril to the mine, so spending a bit on an extra metal mana flower node should be reasonable. Besides, the explosions would almost certainly harm any flowers in the area, so a node that could regrow on its own would be better than trying to plant them normally. Belissar thus added a resource plant node next to the closest mithril node from the mine’s entrance and went to select the flowers. But he noticed something strange about when he checked the available plants…
Available Resource Plants for Mystic Mine:
- Metal Mana Flower (Mana Upkeep: 10 per node, 3 due to exceptionally suitable environment)
The rest of the available options, like the shadow vine, were all the normal upkeep, but Metal Mana Flowers were cheaper than they had ever been. Even cheaper than the usual half-off upkeep he’d normally get from a compatible room! He guessed that the mystic mine must be even better for them, maybe this was where they were supposed to grow in the first place?
In any case, Belissar selected the metal mana flowers and watched them grow, spreading their vines to the nearby mithril node.
“Ok, I added metal mana flowers to the room. Could you let the Fourth of the Fifth’s First Daughter know, Niobee?”
“Ok! King is best king!”
Belissar smiled as Niobee happily danced around.
The next day, Belissar awoke to a message from the Tower.
A room is about to shift natures.
Tundra Meadow is now available.
Change Flower Meadow (3F) to Tundra Meadow? Please raise the temperature to restore room to original nature.
Belissar smiled and turned to look at Niobee.
“We got another new room!”
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Niobee responded by zipping around.
“Amazing, incredible!”
As much as he wanted to see the new room, Belissar went through his normal morning routine, checking on the bees and making offerings to the gods. But as soon as that was done, he and Niobee rushed over to the Flower Meadow on the third floor that he had filled with Cold Mana Flowers. Then, he confirmed changing the room and stepped inside…
A cool wind blew across Belissar’s face. While the Tower’s mana protected him from anything too cold, he still shivered instinctively from the sudden drop in temperature. The room itself was surprisingly green, now covered in short grass with patches of cloudberries and sweetvetch providing a bit of color. The ground had become more rocky, with the grass growing around several gray sections of bare rock, and there was even a patch of ice in the distance. The short trees present in the Flower Meadow were nowhere to be seen, replaced by a few bigger rocks instead.
Belissar, still a bit shaken from the last rooms he had visited, quickly checked with his companion.
“Are you ok here, Niobee?”
Niobee danced about on his head.
“Is cold, but ok!”
Niobee then clung tighter to his head, lowering herself into his hair as best she could. Belissar reached up and brushed her before considering what to do next with the room.
“There are already flowers, so I guess we just wait to see if the hive of hives can raise cold bees? Oh! I should get rid of the pots now.”
He still had ten universal floriculture pots with Cold Mana Flowers in them that shouldn’t be necessary anymore. He didn’t want to lose the flowers though, so he checked to see if he could move them to resource flower nodes.
Change Universal Floriculture Pot (Cold Mana Flower) to Resource Plant Node (Cold Mana Flower)?
It turned out it was possible to change them in place. Belissar went ahead and did so for half the pots, then manually replanted the rest of the flowers and dismissed the remainder of the pots. Dropping the ten pots gave him back a hundred mana, twenty-five of which went back to the five Cold Mana Flower nodes. In the end, he was back up to over a hundred and fifty available mana and had a new room filled with a type of mana flowers that had been rare beforehand.
A great start to the day indeed. Belissar grinned.
“Ok, that should do it. Niobee, could you let the hive of hives know about the new room? I’m sure they’d love to use these flowers.”
Niobee took off from his head and zipped over the big patch of Cold Mana Flowers.
“Will! Amazing, incredible! King is best king!”
The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter received the good news from the Conduit, the King had created yet another new room for the hive of hives. Her queen mother would be pleased, she had already raised workers on honey from Cold Mana Flowers, but had been waiting for a suitable room for them before raising a Cold-mana queen.
And the timing was excellent indeed, for today, the hive of hives’ newest round of queens had just hatched, crawling out of their cells and preparing for their mating flights. If the First of the Fifth could make some honey from the Cold Mana Flowers, then it would be a simple matter for one of the new queens to raise her workers in it. Then only the queen herself would need to evolve, as all of her new hive would already be prepared for the new environment.
And she was sure one of the new queens would be happy to have a new purpose, especially compared to some of their newest sisters. Because while some of the new queens were still base monster bees, many were not. All of the queens in the hive of hives had coordinated to raise new queens as they were able, there were new maddening queens, new medicinal queens, new digging queens, new burning queens, new shocking queens. New swimming queens, new shining queens, new blinding queens, new toxic queens. The Fourth of the Seventh, amazing and incredible as always, had even raised new breeze queens, an evolution she had skipped when she evolved straight into a nomadic queen. The First Daughter’s generation joined in as well, the Sixth Daughter raised a new gravity queen while the Seventh Daughter had managed to raise a new slime queen!
But, the hive of hives was not satisfied with merely expanding their numbers. As the new queens flew out on their mating flights, the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter coordinated the evolved drones, making sure that each queen met the drones she needed. That her own queens and drones happened to meet the Fourth of the Seventh’s more often than not was purely coincidental, of course. But not all of them, for the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter ensured that some of the queens and drones that meant were not only from different hives, but entirely different types of hives. The burning and digging bees exchanging queens and drones before had resulted in the ash bees, who were nourishing soil across the King’s Realm, and the thermal mining bees, who were utilizing a mana flower no other bee could.
It was now time to see what other combinations would produce new kinds of bees. The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter even ensured that some of the Fourth of the Seventh’s children would not meet her own, because even she wanted to see what kind of new, amazing, and incredible bees the Fourth of the Seventh’s daughters might become.
So, as the new queens finished their mating flights and returned to their origin hives, some of them dove right back into their cells. Their queen mothers workers capped their cells once more, leaving the new queens to evolve in peace.
Soon, the hive of hives would expand once more. New queens would fill the Beecity’s empty trays, new hives would settle the new rooms King had built, and brand new types of bees would emerge to make King happy.
King never ceased working for the bees, providing them all sorts of new rooms and flowers. So, neither would the hive of hives cease to raise new bees in turn.
