Chapter 22: Chapter 22

Belissar sawed away as best he could at the piece of wood before him. He was working on one of the beehouse walls at the moment, trying to cut some grooves he could slot the trays into. He looked at it and sighed.

It...was not his finest work, a rough cut that looked more like some creature had taken a bite out of the wood than a detailed woodworker. But that was the limit of his current tools and material. Since he was working with wet wood, he would have to leave room for the wood to bend or shrink or any number of other such things he couldn’t necessarily predict. He just wasn’t going to get it to fit perfectly together. He was just hoping he could get it to fit together, period.

He sighed and put it aside and began working on the next wall. He wanted to make sure all this would actually work before he went and cut a bunch of the grooves. A while later he had a basic three-sided box that fit together...sort of. There were holes and gaps and what not, but at the very least it stood up without collapsing. Belissar then went and cut out a floor piece, seeing if he could get it to fit in. It did...sort of. Again, there were gaps on the edges Belissar would have preferred to do without, so he tried to cut some pieces to line the edges.

Next, he began to cut some thinner long pieces for the frames. Getting the grooves and shapes so the frame parts would fit together was...challenging, but eventually Belissar got one assembled. He placed it down into the box...and it managed to fit into the grooves he had carved in the wall. He heaved a sigh of relief.

With the proof of concept confirmed, he could begin to assemble the rest of it...

It took most of the day, but eventually Belissar finished. He took a step back and beheld the work of his hands.

...it was a rickety thing, leaning to one side where he misjudged the length of one of the legs, and with gaps all over the place. But it was a complete box, with some frames to guide the bees that could be pulled out...with a lot of effort and grunting. Belissar sighed.

And then he heard a chime.

Mission: Build a beehouse completed!

Replacing the basket hive was all well and good...but that queen had been working hard in the basket hive. The very last thing Belissar wanted was for her to lose her brood growing inside. So, he quickly removed the lid of the beehouse and began pulling out the frames. He then exhaled his breath.

Honeycomb now filled the frames...and Belissar could see little eggs and larva in some of them. The queen herself flew in front of Belissar and began a dance of happiness and gratitude. It seemed the process had transferred over the queen’s brood to the new house without issue. A smile grew on Belissar’s face as he put the frame and the lid back where they belonged.

The queen gave her gratitude once last time, saluted to Belissar, and then flew into the beehouse to continue her work. Belissar then turned his attention to the words he had ignored in his panic.

Apiary Beehive upgraded to Belissar’s Beehouse!

Product Mana Honeycomb changed to Mana Honeycomb Tray.

Maximum products stored increased from 1 to 3.

Bee productivity increased.

Bee happiness increased!

Belissar blinked. The last line was written in glowing yellow letters. Soon though, he began to grin. That alone made all this effort worthwhile to him. He went and focused on the next basket hive. Since the Tower could upgrade them, he figured he wanted all his bees to have one.

Upgrade Apiary Beehive to Belissar’s Beehouse? Cost: 100 DP (25 if beehouse provided)

Belissar frowned and rubbed his chin. It seemed it would be a bit more expensive to upgrade if he didn’t build the beehouses himself. He did some...as quick as he could manage math in the dirt and determined that if he built all of the beehouses personally, he could just afford to upgrade the entire Apiary, while if he didn’t, he could only afford to upgrade two more.

There was no choice to Belissar, especially after he heard another chime.

Mission received: Upgrade all Apiary Beehives to Belissar’s Beehouses.

Belissar spent the rest of the week working on the beehouses. With each one he made, he was able to adjust a bit more, both improving the quality of the construction and decreasing the build time. He noticed a curious phenomenon: every time he upgraded an Apiary Beehive with a new and improved beehouse, the other upgraded beehouses would adjust themselves to match. It wasn’t an identical copy of the latest one; rather, it seemed to average out between the quality of the first one and the best one available but either way Belissar was glad. He was happy to know the first queen wouldn’t be left high and dry.

Of course, that wasn’t all he did. As much as Belissar enjoyed working entirely on the beehouses, the whole purification business still weighed on the edge of his mind. So, he also spent some time making whatever preparations he happened to think of. He gathered and chopped a bunch of firewood throughout the week, since it would also need time to dry.