Chapter 64: Giant Beekeepers
Kaelor turned to look at Titan. The great beast towered over men and horses alike, its bulk a mountain of power and muscle wrapped in dark, jagged plates of metallic armour.
Each segment of its hide shimmered with a deep obsidian hue, pulsing faintly like embers under the surface. Its plated chest rose and fell slowly with each breath, exhaling steam from nostrils that flared like a furnace.
Even without the additional armour fitted by the system, Titan Cebereus was a fortress on four legs. Its natural hide alone could turn aside silver ranked swords, and he had seen it catching ballista bolts in its maw and crushing the bolt like kindling.
Titan was bred for war, for sieges, for trampling through enemy lines, but even with all its monstrous might, Kaelor’s heart faltered as he gazed at the distant black clouds. Bees. Not dozens, tens of thousands. A living storm of buzzing wings and stingers, pouring out from the distant hive like a curse.
No beast could fight that. No matter how tough. Maybe it could survive a hundred. A thousand at most. But that?
Still, Kaelor returned later with reinforcements, ten more Guardsmen, Vi at his side, and ten volunteers from the town: seven women and three men.
They gathered on the edge, just before the flower field, where the air was faintly sweet with nectar and danger.
These were not ordinary townsfolk. They had all stepped forward willingly, despite Kaelor’s warnings and spoken consequences. Once fused, they might never be fully human again. Their limbs might change, their senses alter, a great shift, but the reward outweighed the fear. Two silver coins would be given monthly from next year, paid directly from Kaelor’s treasury. A fortune to any peasant. Enough to buy a new life. Enough to dream of lands, livestock, and a home with stone walls if they worked long enough.
"Go ahead," Kaelor said, nodding to Vi.
Vi stepped forward, her eyes focused and resolute. In her left hand, she held the Diamond-ranked Focus Crystal, pulsing with a gentle blue glow like the still heart of a storm. Her right hand stretched forth into the open air. For a moment, there was silence.
A faint whisper of pressure gathered at her fingertips and swirled into existence, forming a twisting spiral of wind and force. A cyclone bloomed from nothing, spinning rapidly and howling like a hungry spirit. It surged into the swarm, slicing through the air with precision, catching hundreds of bees in its pull. The vortex dipped low and swept in an arc, carrying its catch back to their side.
As the cyclone dissipated, the bees fell in a flurry, hundreds of them twitching and buzzing feebly on the ground.
Without hesitation, Vi extended her hand again, summoning a second cyclone. This time, as it took shape, she whispered an arcane word. The spell shimmered and split. Two cyclones spun in opposite spirals, slicing a path through the air. The bees panicked, scattering in all directions. Many tried to flee back to the hive, but hundreds more were snared in the magic, sucked into the twin vortexes like leaves in a storm drain.