Belissar was about to call the eting when one of the worker bees he asked to rember things began dancing.
“King! King wanted to fight more invaders since weaker?”
Belissar’s eyes widened for a second before he smiled.
“Ah, thank you. I almost forgot.”
He turned to the rest of the queens.
“Everyone, since we did a weaker purification, we can do more than one. Do you want to? The next one would be in six hours…so during the night, I guess?”
All the battle adow queens imdiately began dancing.
“Will fight for King!”
Belissar didn’t need the First of the Fifth’s First Daughter to tell him the hive of hives approved. In fact, they imdiately began discussing the specifics, the bee army queens wanted to bring the whole army until the First of the Second reminded them that the soldiers needed to rest for purifications during the day…as well as the fact that the majority of them couldn’t see in the dark. From there, they began splitting up the army into more reasonable grouping. Belissar left them to it and turned to Chief Rohsuak.
“Ah, it’s just a minor purification, so it’s fine if the karnuq would rather sleep.”
Chief Rohsuak shook her head, however.
“Thank you for the consideration, Tower Keeper, but it will be good for my hunters to get so night training in. We’ll arrange for a night watch to join you.”
tsaitti seed sowhat less enthusiastic but he did salute. With that, Belissar called the council.
He went ho for a bit, originally intending to sleep...but when he checked the cooldowns he realized it wouldn’t take that long. They did the first minor purification before the victory celebration and the council, after all, so a good chunk of ti had already passed. Belissar practiced a bit with his magic until the ti ca, then made his way back to the gathering place in the Orchard.
There, he found the Firstborn, the First of the Sixth’s First Daughter, and the Fourth of the Fifth leading a noticeably smaller bee army that consisted mostly of the First of the Sixth’s First Daughter’s blinding bees and the Fourth of the Fifth’s digging bees, both types of bees that could operate in the dark with ease. tsaitti joined them with a group of sleepy-looking torch-carrying karnuq.
Since they’d be relying on the blinding and digging bees that lived in the Dirt Tunnels anyways, Belissar put the battle Dirt Tunnels back as the first room and triggered the purification. Another small wolf shade charged into the Tower…and promptly fell into the first Pit Trap along the way.
Belissar chuckled…until he noticed the queens frantically dancing amongst themselves.
“What’s the matter?”
The queens’ antennae drooped, but the Firstborn managed to reply.
“King…hive of fallen, Apiary soldiers, and burning hives all sleeping. Can’t set honey on fire.”
Belissar blinked. That was true, wasn’t it? The bee army hadn’t brought any of the bees either capable of wielding magic and fire or else trained to carry and drop fire radish slivers. Fortunately, it only took Belissar a second to realize the bee army didn’t have to do everything on their own.
“Oh…ah, tsaitti, could one of your hunters go and toss a torch into the pit trap?”
tsaitti saluted and led a team of hunters. The bees guided the karnuq to the pit and one of them tossed a torch inside and that was that. Belissar thanked everyone who got up…then decided to go and grab a tray of honey to give everyone a piece for staying up late. A quick snack later and everyone went to bed.
The next morning ca around…and Belissar realized the cooldown had ended again. The sigmaka hadn’t arrived yet, so he quickly arranged another purification. He moved quickly, confident that the near full might of the bee army could easily handle a minor purification before any of the karnuq showed up…
Minor purification begun. Remaining hostiles: 1,440
Belissar had a brief mont of panic before he saw the over a thousand hostiles in question. They were facing a bunch of ant shades again, only these were even smaller than the expansion purification counterparts. It was more of a moving puddle than a flood.
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Still, it did require so adjustnt of tactics, so Belissar quickly inford the bee army and the queens began rearranging their forces. In the anti, the ants reached the first pit trap…and managed not to fall in by climbing along the side! The bees would actually have to fight a minor purification it seed…
At least until they got to the candle tunnel. The tiny ants were apparently affected by the maddening smoke quite easily. Soon, the entire puddle was scrambling around…in a big circle that made no progress. They were snapping and biting at the ground, but apparently they didn’t have the fla attacks of their larger versions. They didn’t get anywhere close to the candles and so flailed about until the maddening smoke began to paralyze them. After that, the bees moved in while the Royal Pixie Guard removed their magic hiding the light of the candles, allowing the bees to see. The bees then stung the helpless shades one by one and that was the end.
Belissar let out a light sigh. The purification was handled with ease, but this was a good reminder not to let his guard down around the Hunger. He hadn’t considered the ants would be small enough to show up in a weaker purification, not to ntion that they could still appear in considerable numbers as well.
And that is why it would pay to prepare so new options for his Tower now. Once the purification was handled and his morning routine was finished, Belissar moved to implent the new room and monster at his disposal. First of which would be the Abyssal Trench.
“Niobee, I’m going to add the new room. It’ll be dangerous, so can you warn the bees not to visit it yet?”
“Ok!”
Belissar smiled as he felt Niobee’s mana flow into the hive link. Technically, he could have just told the hive of hives himself. In retrospect, he could’ve done so ever since he learned he could send ssages directly to any of his monsters or sworn defenders. But, now that he thought about it, he realized he just liked talking with Niobee and watching her talk with the other bees. It seed to make her happy as well to help him out.
That done, Belissar went ahead and added the new room. The preview showed him what appeared as a deep, rocky ravine flanked by cliffs on either side, except that the entire thing was underwater. He didn’t make any adjustnts to the room yet since he didn’t know what, if anything, changes he might want, so he moved to place the room as-is within the Tower. He placed it in the empty room slot on the first floor, since the room would be purely for battle unless or until they managed to evolve a bee that could survive within it. He intended to place it off to the side of the last room on the floor, which was the Bog, for now, so that everyone in his Tower could pass through without having to enter it…though he supposed shortcuts made that concern irrelevant. Still, he didn’t want any accidents, so he went with his plan and put the room to the side, then moved to place the entrance. He then confird the room…
The mont the door appeared, a huge jet of water burst through and began spraying across the Bog. Belissar jumped and began waving his arms around.
“Ah! Stop! Stop! How do I stop that…”
Apply environntal seal to room entrance?
“YES! Quickly!”
The flow of water cut off and the jet died down. The new door in the Bog no longer showed the new room but instead appeared as a swirling vortex of colorful light and smoke. Belissar let out a sigh, then inhaled deeply and went to survey the damage. Fortunately, this was the battle Bog so there were no beehives in the room. There were so bees visiting the vaporous hemlock, but those were closer to the front of the room while Belissar had placed the entrance to the Abyssal Trench in one of the far corners so neither the plants nor the bees had been affected. The worst the bees suffered was concern over his own panic, but Niobee quickly inford the rest that he was ok.
Belissar sighed once again. Well, if nothing else, the Abyssal Trench was already proving as dangerous as promised. He really wished he knew about the environntal seal thing before placing it, though. Or that one of the Circle masters had thought to tell him. But in any case, now he knew, and no bees were hard in the process of him learning.
Belissar then tilted his head. He focused on the door.
“Is it possible to do it again?”
Remove environntal seal from room entrance?
Belissar paused, staring at the ssage for a mont.
“Hey Niobee, can you let the bees know to stay away from this area? I’m going to try that again.”
“Ok!”
Belissar waited for Niobee to dance, confirming on his own that all bees were clear of the area, and then nodded at the ssage.
The swirling light and mist faded away before a torrential flood again burst through the door. Belissar then willed it to stop and the Tower asked him about the seal again. Confirming caused the flood to cease.
Belissar rubbed his chin. Sohow, he thought this could be useful. For now, though, he left the seal in place…because the last step was to add a perpetual mana storm to the room. If the Abyssal Trench alone could apparently flood another room, he definitely did not want to see what one with a mana storm would do.
So, with not a small amount of trepidation, Belissar selected the mana storm feature and added it to the room. As with the Fairy Grove, the changes began slowly. The room was pitch black when view with normal sight, so Belissar was already using his tower senses and could see the flow of mana as well as water. Both flows began to gradually pick up…and split off into different directions.
Suddenly, a section of water near the top of the room seed to grow…heavier, sohow. Belissar had no idea how but that bit of water sohow started moving through the rest of the water, pushing the other water out of the way. Stuff like that began happening all over the room, until whirlpools and rapids started to form underwater, creating violent currents whipping across the rocky cliffs. Chunks of rock even broke off, hurtling through the water until they broke apart into small, sharp pieces that picked up even more speed. He saw the water suddenly crush one rock outright, without warning as dense water smashed everything in that area.
And then there was the darkness. Dark mana was pulled and pushed around by the Water mana. It condensed around one of the whirlpools and all of a sudden Belissar couldn’t see a part of the room centered on that vortex, not even with his tower sight, though he could sohow still sense what was happening within. The darkness seed to grow almost solid in places, lashing against the rocks along with the currents of water pulling it along.
Belissar decided that he would leave the environntal seal on for the foreseeable future…
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