The Bee Dungeon

Chapter 241: Mass Bee-volution

The next day, Belissar awoke to a message from the Tower.

A monster has evolved!

Monster Bee Trapper is now available!

Belissar blinked at the sudden words. Thanks to the Tower’s magic, he always woke up fully alert…and yet, it still took him a minute to comprehend what he was reading. A monster evolved? Monster Bee Trapper? To help him figure out what was going on, he opened the new bee’s description.

Monster Bee Trapper

Vitality: Minimal

Strength: Minor

Speed: Average

Magic: Minor

Resistance: Minimal

Special: Below Average

Notable Skills: Weaving, String Trap, Silk Production, Poison Sting, Death Blow, Brood Offspring

Spawner Upkeep: 15 (7 with Blessing of Bees)

Evolves From: Monster Bee Soldier

Description: A monster bee that retains its larval ability to produce silk into adulthood. This one is a soldier variant that can use this ability to prepare traps and warning lines, as well as to reinforce the hive. In battle, the Monster Bee Trapper may also wrap strands of its silk around targets in addition to stinging them, entangling them to restrict their movements.

In addition to existing monster bee soldiers evolving, monster bee soldiers may now be raised as trappers.

Belissar tilted his head before recalling that the Fourth of the Seventh’s hive had learned how to weave flax fibers from him. He directed his Tower sight there and, sure enough, a new kind of bee had just emerged from her cell. At first glance, she appeared similar to any other soldier bee, but on closer inspection she had two small protrusions on either side of her torso. She began to experiment with these and soon, silk strands shot out of them. She caught the two strands with the hairs on her legs and began to weave them together.

Immediately upon finishing her little rope, she ran off and began dancing before the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter and one of the Fourth of the Seventh’s communers, both of whom had come to greet her. Belissar smiled and withdrew his sight. Leave it to the bees to come up with new types of bees he hadn’t anticipated at all.

Belissar made his way over to the Orchard to congratulate the new bee and her hive. The First of the Fifth’s First Daughter confirmed with him that the bee in question was one of the soldiers he had taught to weave flax, and that she evolved after being fed the swirled honey. The First Daughter was now feeding the rest of the soldiers who participated in weaving said honey, so they’d soon have a full squad of the new bees. Belissar, of course, wholeheartedly approved of the plan.

He was just leaving them to it when he felt another burst of mana in the Tower. He quickly sent his Tower sight in the direction of the burst and found Beero, a drone, and one of her soldiers…he presumed. He couldn’t tell for sure, as the soldier in question was currently obscured by a bright light…

Beero turned and brushed antennae with the Fourth of the Seventh’s drone as the soldier in front of them began to glow.

“See, drone useful!”

And not just useful, irreplaceable, especially in this case. The light died down to reveal another newly evolved battlecaster…but this one was squat and had heavy, brown-colored chitin. The very first digging battlecaster.

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

The wounded digging soldier had been incredibly enthusiastic at first…but Beero had immediately run into a problem. The digging soldier’s mana was not like a normal monster bee’s, it was solid and tough like a rock. So, when Beero had tried to impart the tiny lightnings, it hadn’t gone well. The mana resisted the lightnings and sent them into the ground, where they vanished. Trying with fire hadn’t gone much better, the soldier had ended up scorched but the fire hadn’t blended with her mana at all.

Teaching the soldier the dances proved difficult as well. Her mana didn’t want to flow like the lightning or fire did, she said it was like pushing rocks. Eventually, though, she managed it, and learned to make rock stingers that stung from the ground. But…without fire or lighting, she couldn’t join in the group dances with the other soldiers of the fallen. Her mana just didn’t match theirs.

Beero tried it in reverse…and eventually the soldier was able to teach her how to solidify her mana into tiny rocks. The battlecaster squads could now make rock stingers and the digging soldier could join them on those dances. But, no matter what they tried, they just couldn’t seem to get the soldier to make lightning or fire.

Until now. The new battlecaster danced and her rocklike mana began to roll, forming a solid honeycomb pattern in the air. The pattern began to heat up as a new kind of mana spread throughout it and the battlecaster danced to merge it with her own. Once the pattern completed, a stinger made of rock burst from the ground…glowing red with heat.

As with so many of Beero’s struggles, the drone had the answer. Since the digging soldier’s mana couldn’t change from being rocklike, he had proposed trying to blend it with another type of mana instead. With his help, Beero and the digging soldier managed to make a hot rock stinger. He then helped teach the digging soldier how to blend them together and now, finally, the digging soldier learned to make the blended mana all on her own. That, apparently, had been sufficient to trigger her evolution.

The drone could only acquiesce to Beero’s praise as the digging soldier began to happily fly through the air with her restored wings, performing an aerial thanks dance as well.

Belissar smiled as he watched the new battlecaster fly. Beero and the hive of the fallen were hard at work as usual, and the new battlecaster’s spell seemed like it’d be really helpful in the Dirt Tunnels. He went over to the battle meadow to congratulate them as well. Beero told him how helpful the drone had been, so he made sure to praise the drone too.

At this point, Belissar began to send his Tower sight across the Tower, wondering what other new bees might be evolving. He saw a couple of captains joining the soldier bee army, helping the queens organize the squads and formations. He saw some bumblebee workers that were even fuzzier than normal, a closer inspection revealing they were the first bumblebee gardeners. He found the First of the Fifth sealing up some workers in large cells filled with swirled honey, the kind of cells normally used to raise new queens. He wondered if she was raising new broodmothers right away?

He saw ash bee soldiers now flying with their burning counterparts in the lava field, the ash monster bee hive now large enough to support them. Toxic bee soldiers were starting to hatch, and a full squad of gravity soldiers now joined the soldier bee army. Belissar wondered what they might do when it was their turn to fight.

He had turned his attention back to the Orchard. The stingless hive was quickly getting settled and expanding its numbers. And as for the carpenter bees…

Belissar froze. Because, at that very moment, a carpenter bee was crawling out of the nest block. Out of one of the giant holes he had carved in said nest block. The Tower soon confirmed his suspicion.

A monster has evolved!

Lumber Bee is now available!

He focused in on the now much larger carpenter bee as she shook herself and spread her wings. Or…was this one a drone? Belissar figured so since his eyes were really big and he didn’t seem to have a stinger.

Lumber Bee

Vitality: Average

Strength: Average

Speed: Average

Magic: Minimal

Defense: Below Average+

Resistance: Minor

Special: Minimal

Notable Skills: Poison Sting, Wood Cut

Spawner Upkeep: 20 (10 with Blessing of Bees)

Description: A monster carpenter bee evolution. The Lumber Bee’s larger size allows it to not only bore into trees, but to bite through branches or small trunks entirely. Its sharp and powerful mandibles can also bite through living things that stray too close to the nest. May evolve from monster carpenter bees if available, females may lay monster carpenter bee eggs.

He was even bigger than the bumblebee soldiers when they first hatched, and Belissar wondered if he’d continue to grow like them. Belissar also found it curious that there were male lumber bees to begin with, and that they were so big. Maybe the males would also help fight and work in that species?

If so, he really wished he had known when trying to explain human work and reproduction earlier. It would have been much easier if he could’ve just said humans were like carpenter bees…

Belissar shook his head and smiled though, heading over to go see the new lumber bees. Today seemed to be an exceptionally good day for bee evolutions, maybe it was the swirled honey making its way through the hives? Well, whatever the cause, it was a good thing. Belissar really couldn’t wish for anything more…

At that moment, Niobee began to dance on top of his head.

“King, Second First of the First wants to try evolve. Can?”

It seemed the bees weren’t done just yet.