Chapter 15: Chapter 15

The first thing Belissar did was check his Tower’s mana.

It was a lot more than he expected. Not only had he gained another two hundred mana to work with, but the Blessing of Bees also reduced the cost of his existing monster bee queen spawners. A quick check of their information revealed their upkeep had gone down from twenty down to ten, a reduction by half. And given that he had spent most of the mana he previously had on those spawners, that freed up a massive amount for him now.

With plenty to spare, he proceeded to place the Apiary, walking back over to the core room to do so. He stepped inside the newly decorated room and took a moment to look around. He knelt down and felt the wax on the floor and nodded. It was much less unnerving than the sort of but also kind of not floor that was there before, or the endless white space everywhere he looked...as long as he ignored the black tendrils of the Hunger still lingering on some of the walls...

He then walked over the core and got to work. Or tried to. He furrowed his brow and crossed his arms as he stared at the core.

“Ok. So...how exactly do I add a new room?”

The first one had just sort of...added itself, after all. But fortunately, the core reacted to his intention. The image inside it zoomed out, showing an angled top-down view of the Flower Meadow, as well as the core room.

Current rooms: 1/2. Add room?

Belissar blinked a few times.

Belissar also remembered that, technically, he was the local Tower Lord now. Well, for whatever locale this tower was in, that was. He didn’t imagine there were many villages in an area that was covered by the Hunger until very recently.

Shaking his head, he walked into the house. It was furnished with some basic furniture, though it was largely empty otherwise. Belissar nodded as he noted a storage area with a lot of jars for honey. He then found a bedroom, with a very simple mattress and sheet.

On a whim, he lay down on it. It...wasn’t as comfortable as his bed back home had been, but it was worlds better than trying to lay down in the original core room had been.

Belissar yawned as he had that thought. He closed his eyes for a but a moment...

Belissar slowly opened his eyes as the sun filtered through the window and lit his face. He rose and stretched his arms. He stood up and walked over to the window.

Those...were not his beehouses, but rather, a bunch of basket hives. Belissar had a brief moment of panic before his mind full woke up, and he remembered the events of the past few days.

“Right. I don’t live in the village anymore. And...I’m a Tower Lord now, or something. And this is the Tower.”

He inhaled sharply as his mind processed the words coming out of his very own mouth. Then he shook his head and walked out of the room.

He had not intended to sleep, as it had seemed that his body remained in good condition regardless. However, it seemed that his mind was not entirely free from exhaustion and, well, he had certainly had a lot to think about recently. He furrowed his brow and checked the dungeon status again...but fortunately, he couldn’t find any “purification attempt” timers. It seemed his little unplanned nap wouldn’t hurt him, for now.

Sighing at his own inability to focus, he tried to recall what he was doing when he fell asleep. He nodded as it came to him.

“Right, traps, or something.”

His vision floated out of his body to view the room as a hole. He found he could also move his sight to the Flower Meadow if he wanted. He went ahead a placed a couple more pit traps, as well as some of the new sticky honey traps, little holes that would spray out a bunch of the sticky honey when something passed in front of them. He found he could, in fact, place them inside of the pit traps and did so.

He also found that while he couldn’t put pit traps, or any traps, right in front of either the gateway or the core room, he could put them in front of the door between the flower meadow and the apiary, so he did that. He let out a sigh of relief. If he had to face another monster, it now couldn’t reach the apiary without stepping on a trap, so he wouldn’t have to lure it with either his bees or his body. All he needed to do was make sure there was a fire set up by the Apiary entrance and he would be good to go.

With the traps in place, it was time to address the spawners.

First of all, he focused on the monster bee queen spawners he had in place and tried to move them through the rooms. He found there was no issue in doing that, and so he moved all four of them into the apiary, placing them in the small field around the hives. He then considered what else to place...

The Apiary itself cost him five mana, while the pit traps and sticky honey traps cost one mana a piece. He had made...nineteen of them, if he recalled correctly, which came out to...

Belissar soon ran out of fingers. With nothing to write on, he stepped outside of the farmhouse, and found some dirt to scratch marks into.