Chapter 140: Chapter 140
Belissar turned his attention to the karnuq hunter group, which was just beginning their descent into the tunnels below. The digging bee surprisingly couldn’t see that far beyond the lights the karnuq carried with them, making Belissar wonder how she would operate underground without such assistance. His question was answered, though, when the bee flew off of Metsaitti’s shoulder and landed on the ground. The moment she touched the ground, a small little pulse of mana shot out from her. Information on the surroundings came streaming back to her, and she could feel the vibrations of all the karnuq moving around her as well. It seemed the digging bees didn’t intend to rely on sight in the first place. After the pulse came back to her, she flew back to Metsaitti’s shoulder. She continued to land and send out pulses at regular intervals, building a steady map of the tunnel they were traversing.
But at that moment, something drew Belissar’s attention away from the hunting group.
New plant detected. Fire Mana Flower is now available.
Belissar’s vision blurred as he whipped his Tower sight around and quickly found the culprit. A new flower had bloomed in the middle of the flame radish node in the Apiary. It was like a mana flower but with a stalk that was a shifting shades of yellow, orange, and red, with bright red petals. The mana surrounding it was not a subtle, slowly pulsing glow like the mana flower or ground mana flower’s, but rather a flickering light that illuminated the flame radish flowers around it. The air around it grew slightly hazy.
Belissar’s eyes widened and then he grinned. He knew Cross-Pollination was working its magic, but this was the first time it produced a flower so different the Tower classified it as separate. And what a flower it was. Belissar could practically feel the heat emanating from it…until he realized that with his Tower senses he actually could feel it if he wanted to.
It felt like it was burning him so he decided to stick with vision alone.
In any case, it seemed like a flower that was practically on fire. And while he could sense the regular mana flowers and Ground mana flowers both held as much mana as this one…there was something impressive about it. The mana and Ground mana flowers, for all the power held within them, didn’t truly appear that different from regular flowers beyond the occasional glow. The Fire mana flower, on the other hand, was very clearly magical even to Belissar’s barely trained eyes.
He grinned as he opened up the menu…
Available Resource Plants for Apiary:
Well, in any case, that meant he had another thirty mana to work with, or ten if he wanted to keep twenty in reserve for a Fire mana flower node. The question was…what to do with it?
…Belissar couldn’t think of much. Or rather, he would need new Bee Nests for the next two bumblebee queens but they wouldn’t spawn until tomorrow and the day after. He could also make more resource nodes for the karnuq if they needed any. Or he could add more Pit Traps and Sticky Honey Traps, maybe use them to reinforce the new palisade for the Bee Barracks?
Maybe he should see how his DP was doing and how long it would take him to be able to get something new…
Belissar froze. His eyes went as wide as they could go.
“…how did this happen?”
Because displayed before his eyes were numbers he did not expect to see.
His jaw hung open. He…had enough DP to afford another choice from the DP shop?! Already?!
When he finally snapped out of his daze he realized something. He turned his gaze to the second floor. The karnuq were going about their day as usual. A group of four karnuq strolled through the Orchard, picking apples off the trees. As they returned to their camp, they stopped by the Shrine of Bees, dropping off some apples and speaking a few words. ṞＡ₦օ฿Èṥ
Small messages like that had been constantly passing through his vision ever since the karnuq moved in. He had eventually started to tune them out. They were notably smaller than the DP gained from the hunting group or the original gathering group, so Belissar hadn’t considered them important. He had even thought that his DP income had dropped since the hunter had temporarily stopped fighting remnants.
Apparently, he was wrong. What he had not considered was that there were many more karnuq in his Tower than before. The gathering group and hunters ranged from single digits to low double digits. Now there was a camp of over a hundred. Since the karnuq just stopped by the Shrine of Bees individually as they went about their days, it wasn’t all at once like before. But if he added them all up…wouldn’t it be a lot more?