Chapter 256: Chapter 256

Belissar watched with a smile as Paisijik handed out her honeycomb and then offered the remaining half of the tray to the God of Bees. He was only slightly surprised this time when the Shrine lit up. What work would the God of Bees approve of more than beekeeping, after all?

A challenger has been fully blessed.

A challenger has selected a blessing unique to your patron.

Gained additional 10 DP.

His smile grew, for he had a feeling he knew what sort of blessing Paisijik had selected.

Only then, did he see the words that caused his jaw to drop.

Mission: Teach the karnuq the art of beekeeping completed!

Reward: One flask of ambrosia

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He took a deep breath, and set out to handle slightly less divine parts of his day…or so he intended.

Because just then, the Tower flooded his vision with more messages. Belissar’s mind, still recovering from receivingambrosia, just went blank and refused to process anything more.

The First of the Fourth’s gardener made her way over to the front of the Flower Meadow, near the wooden platform the hive of the fallen used to reach the sky. It was far enough from the actual battlefield that her experiments wouldn’t get in the way of the daily purifications, but close enough that a success could assist in battle.

If she had any successes, that was.

She had been at it for a few days and now there were several thorny stems just starting to grow into bushes around the platform. She had filled the original rose flowers with pollen, taken the seed that resulted, and then planted them over here. She then had come here each day and stuffed the sprouts with as much of her mana as she could, boosting their growth as fast as she could without harming their health. The flowers had grown and bloomed quickly, allowing her to see the results of her labors.

But none of them had proven suitable for her goals. Oh, the flowers had changed, that much was a success. A cross with mana flowers had boosted the plant’s overall mana density and strengthened its thorns. It had grown more popular with the foragers than its original parent, but that was it. It was still just a small flower with some small, if surprisingly sharp, thorns. Nothing that could stop a shade like the karnuq and the wall of long spines they carried. A shade could simply walk around it, or step, jump, or fly over it, or use fire, lightning, or dark mist to destroy it. It would not contribute anything to the battle but a minor inconvenience.

So, she had tried other combinations. The poisonous herbs gave thorns dripping with purple sap. A ground mana flower hardened the stems and thorns until they were like rock. The flame radish, in exchange for nearly burning her legs trying to carry heated pollen, resulted in thorns hot to the touch.

But, in the end, they were all still just roses with small flowers. None of them could stop a shade. None of them could fulfill her desire to defend the hive of hives alongside her queen.

So, she had branched out. She had tried pollen from every flower she could get her legs on. From mundane and medicinal flowers from the most exotic flowers in the furthest corners of the King’s Realm, ones she had to ask the gardeners of the other hives to help her gather. Medicinal herbs just made the thorns thinner and weaker. Seeds pollinated by cloudberries and underworld phlox just failed to germinate at all, their mana informing her that the Flower Meadow simply wasn’t suitable.

Still, none of them had worked. By the time she approached the gardeners of the Apiary for assistance, she had grown desperate. It seemed that this idea, too, would be a failure. That there would truly be no way for her to contribute anything of note to the hive of hives’ defenses. That there would be no way for her to participate in her queen’s grand mission.

So, she had done something she wasn’t supposed to. The other gardeners had directed her to the most exotic flowers in the Apiary: the slime flower with its viscous sap. She had to recruit the assistance of a slime worker from the First of the Fifth to even approach this one, unable to locate any pollen that she could recognize. The worker had gathered a glob of slime a bit more solid than the rest that she insisted was some kind of pollen. The gardener had had her doubts but who was she to refuse at this point?

So, against her better judgement, she had jabbed her legs into the gooey mass and flown it back through the King’s Realm, until she arrived back at her roses. Then, she had flown over a scattered mess of multi-colored dust, her attempt to make a pollen bag out of every different kind of pollen she could gather. It hadn’t worked, the pollen from different sources refused to stick together and the whole thing fell apart at the slightest breeze. Her instincts had even warned her that this was a bad idea, that it would turn out poorly even if she could get all the pollen together.

She hadn’t cared, so she went and smashed the gooey mass over the pollen, turning the whole thing into a slimy, grungy mess as the different colors blended together within the slime. Then she had stuffed the whole thing into the nearest mana rose and flown off to sleep.

In something of a surprise, that flower had actually produced a seed. She had planted the seed and stuffed it with as much mana as she could make. That had been the last idea she had, so she wished with all that she was that something would result. That the Queen of All Bees would guide her to a way to defend the hive of hives.

Today, she would check on that seed. Her wings slowed as she grew closer to the bush. Every instinct she had as a gardener told her that mixing the pollens like that, especially with the slimy one, should have ended badly. If the seed failed the germinate, then…well, she didn’t know what she’d do then. Maybe go volunteer to serve the hive of the fallen, the hive made of only bees that had truly fought to defend the hive of hives. If they would take a failure such as herself…

She had to force herself to fly past the other roses so she could see the spot she had planted the seed. Her wings buzzed and she nearly dropped to the ground. The seed had, at least, managed to sprout and germinate.

Which meant that now was the next moment of truth. She couldn’t even force herself to fly again, this time crawling across the ground until she stood before the little shoot. It was a tiny thing, smaller than her with naught but two little leaves on top of its miniature stem. She stopped moving her abdomen to draw in air as she gingerly extended her mana towards the plant, intending to find out what exactly it was…