The Bee Dungeon

The next day, Belissar started his newest routine of checking on the Heart of the Forest, watering it from the nearby pond and creating some mana honey to feed it. It hadn’t sprouted just yet, but the gardeners hovered overhead assured him it was growing well.

After that, he set to the task of reviewing his rooms and floors. He now had a brand new floor to deal with, as well as an additional room slot for each of his floors. He figured he’d check the whole set up in case he wanted to rearrange anything.

The first floor held the Dirt Tunnels, Fairy Grove, and Lava Field that were meant for fighting. The second floor started with the battle meadow, then held the Lava Field where the burning bees lived and the Fairy Grove with the nexus door to Tarwantrad’s dungeon. The third floor was the Orchard room with all of the shortcuts, as well as the Fairy Grove where the chromatic bees lived and the Apothecary’s Hut for lack of any better spot to put it. The fourth floor was the karnuq’s, with a Flower Meadow, Orchard, and Dirt Tunnels holding all the resources they needed. The fifth floor held the Apiary, a Dirt Tunnels for the digging bees and subterranean resources, and the bumblebee’s Flower Meadow where the Heart of the Forest was planted. The new sixth floor was currently empty.

The first thing he did was move the Apiary floor up to the sixth floor so that it would remain by the core room, as he and the bees preferred. He left the empty floor as the fifth for now, not entirely sure what he’d use it for just yet.

He then considered moving the battle meadow back to the first floor and the Apothecary’s Hut to the karnuq’s floor, but decided against both. For the former, he realized he liked the battle meadow’s place on the second floor, as the last line of defense for the Tower, and would rather keep the first floor room slot open for addition defense-oriented rooms. For the Apothecary’s Hut, the only person who needed access to it was Juosiutik and she had a shortcut right in her home. Leaving a slot open on the karnuq floor, as well, would be useful in case he acquired rooms with new resources they might want.

In the end, Belissar shrugged and left the rooms mostly as they were. With the shortcuts, all the rooms were accessible to one another so it didn’t matter all that much where in the Tower they were, save for those meant for defense.

With that settled, it was time to consider new rooms. He placed a new Flower Meadow in the empty second floor slot, then lowered the elevation in the center of the room as much as he could while raising it around the edges. It was, not quite a crater, but there was at least a slight depression in the center of the room, creating downward slopes from all the edges.

Then, in one of the corners of the room, he placed a pond with a lotus flower node at its center, a water stone node along its edge, and a mana flower node nearly on top of the water stones. He noted the mana from the mana flowers start to turn a darker blue whenever it drifted near the water stones, and water began to condense on the surface of the node almost immediately.

Belissar nodded. With any luck, the room would flood soon and then maybe he’d have a Lake or something similar. With how many fire shades the Hunger was making recently, a room like that could prove useful indeed.