Chapter 115: Chapter 115
Belissar stood just inside the entrance to the new room. Sunlight trickled in from the entrance, illuminating a dirt tunnel about ten feet across. A Shrine of Bees stood in a small alcove off to the side, perhaps a tad shorter than before to fit within the more cramped space. Besides that, there was dirt on the ground, dirt on the walls, and dirt on the roof…and nothing else in the few feet he could see. Beyond the initial slope down from the Apiary was…pitch-black darkness.
Belissar turned to Niobee.
“Um, can you see inside?”
Belissar blinked at that.
“You can? You can see in the dark?”
Niobee paused before beginning a slower dance.
“Not with eyes. But can feel!”
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On the other hand, he was at least happy to have confirmation that all those plants the karnuq had given him would, in fact, grow in the Dirt Tunnels. And, most of all, that Ground mana flowers were not only not as expensive, but significantly cheaper in the Dirt Tunnels. The same upkeep as a normal mana flower, even. If only he could move the Ground mana flowers from the other rooms to here…
Belissar suddenly realized that he could. He walked out of the Dirt Tunnels entrance and over to the flower patches of the Apiary, where countless bees were flying to and from the new Ground mana flowers. They all stopped as they saw him approach.
“Um, sorry, could you give me a second? I’m going to move these slightly, but they should come right back, ok?”
The bees all saluted and backed away from the Ground mana flower patch. Belissar then reclaimed it, watching as glowing light covered over the flowers and then melted back into the ground, leaving an empty patch of dirt as if nothing had ever existed.
Belissar then swapped to his Tower sight and thought about adding a new Dirt Tunnel entrance, opening up a hole right where the Ground mana flower patch had been. He then put a new Ground mana flower node right by that entrance, illuminated by the sun and visible from above, then returned to his normal sight. He looked around at the bees and nodded.
“Thanks for waiting, you can go back to gathering now.”
The bees saluted and then dove into the new hole in the ground. Fortunately, there was enough sunlight for them to work with, so they resumed gathering from the new Ground mana flowers same as before. Belissar nodded with a smile as he checked his mana.
Success. He had reclaimed a significant proportion of his mana while still leaving the Apiary bees with access to the new flower. He briefly considered whether he could that for the Flower Meadow and Orchard patches as well…but they were a bit too far away from the Dirt Tunnels, as the bees would need to fly at least the full length of the Orchard to reach it. But that was fine, as he probably had enough mana to work with now.
He went ahead and added one of each of the Dirt Tunnel resource nodes. He found he couldn’t actually place them directly in the sunlight streaming from above, so he placed them to the sides of the room, where they would be shaded from the light but still visible enough for the bees to see them. He even added the two mushrooms for good measure, just to see if there was anything the bees could do with them.
When he was done, he found he was back where he started. It seemed all those resource nodes cost exactly the same amount he had saved by moving the Ground mana flowers, so that was convenient. And that gave him a decent amount of mana left for traps, seeing as both the Pit Traps and the Sticky Honey Traps only costed one mana…or would they? Belissar frowned as he recalled the Sticky Honey Traps were as cheap as they were because the bees were refilling them with their own honey. But these traps would be located deep inside the tunnels where the bees would have trouble reaching. He would have to consider how much the Sticky Honey traps would cost if the bees couldn’t reach them.
In the end, Belissar shrugged and added two Sticky Honey Traps and a single Pit Trap by the original entrance. He put one Sticky Honey Trap in the roof, and the other in the Pit Trap itself. He figured he’d wait to add anything deeper in until his bees had a way to actually reach it.
He’d get a bit of his mana back once the bees started filling the Sticky Honey Traps themselves, but even then his mana was almost depleted. He’d done all he wanted to for the Dirt Tunnels at the moment, though that could change if the Ground mana flowers resulted in a subterranean bee of some sort…or if he wanted to make nodes in the Dirt Tunnels for the karnuq to gather from, not to mention if they gave him new plants as a result. Still, at this point it was worth considering whether he should go back to expanding his mana from the daily purifications. The only question was…should he attempt the expansion purification before or after that?