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BD - Chapter 237 - An Expert Bee-view
🕑 Added 2025-02-28 20:05:01 +0000 UTCAfter the day’s purification, Belissar considered whether or not to make another DP store purchase. He was just shy of five thousand DP at this point and his DP income had even started to increase further now that the sigmaka had started sending challengers. Ultimately, though, he decided to hold off.
He didn’t feel the need to purchase more monsters, features, or room types at this stage until the bees had finished adjusting to the latest additions. On the other hand, if he waited a bit longer he could start affording some of the more expensive options he had previously discounted. In just a day he could purchase either an extra room slot or additional mana, allowing him to implement even more options. If he waited for his DP to hit ten thousand, he could also purchase a perk choice, which could strengthen his Tower without requiring additional mana from him or effort from his bees.
So, he decided to wait until either a need arose, his bees finished up with all of their current efforts, or he hit enough DP to afford anything in the shop. With no other further business, the day came to a close with the usual small celebration.
***
Tamosmed arrived at the Tower first thing the next morning. Belissar greeted him and found out he was here for their first exchange. Since he’d be here for a while, Belissar then went to finish his normal morning routine before meeting up again with Tamosmed.
“So, what would you like me to help with first, Belissar?”
Belissar hummed to himself. There was actually quite a bit Tamosmed could help with, now that he thought about it.
“Well, the karnuq have a blacksmith who’s still learning, so he could use your help. The thermal mining bees have been making wax with metal, maybe you could take a look and give them advice on mining? I was also having trouble finding a suitable room for mithril…”
Tamosmed stepped forward and leaned into Belissar’s face.
“I’m sorry, did you say thermal mining bees? Bees that are…mining metals and building hives with it?!”
Belissar took a step back as Niobee buzzed a warning.
“Yes?”
Tamosmed’s face contorted several times before he caught himself and took a deep breath.
“Ok. I’m going to assume that you just forgot to mention those last time. I’ll admit I was a bit intense when it came to the slime bees, so I’ll forgive you for not mentioning the others. Now, to avoid missing anything else, why don’t you continue giving me the overview?”
Belissar stopped himself from gulping and did so.
“Right…like I said, mithril’s really expensive and I don’t have a good room for it so I was hoping you could help with that. Additionally, the bees and I have been building some beeswax golems, so maybe you could give us some advice on them? We’re just about done with the one I was helping with if you could take a look. Other than that…I think that’s it for metal and golem stuff? I guess you could take a look at the slime bees and see how they’re doing?”
Tamosmed nodded quickly and soon began to grin.
“Huh, you had more than I expected. I have a feeling this will be a greatly profitable partnership, Belissar. Since you asked, how about we take a look at your golems first?”
Belissar nodded and led Tamosmed over to the Orchard, where the Fourth of the Seventh’s golem was nearly completed. Tamosmed observed the golem as Belissar created some spell bees to demonstrate the process.
“We’re just about done with construction, then apparently we’ll have to create the core and spread mana through it?”
Tamosmed nodded, then stood silently in thought for a bit before speaking.
“A non-humanoid form is complex for a beginner, but I’m guessing bees are a shape you know well?”
Tamosmed continued after Belissar confirmed.
“It should be fine then, especially since it sounds like you got it from a bee-related dungeon option. You might have trouble commanding it yourself, but your bees shouldn’t. May I have a sample of the material?”
Tamosmed held out his hand. Belissar had some spell bees land on it and create some of the breeze bee wax they were using. Tamosmed held the wax up to his eyes. He squeezed it with his fingers, channeled his mana with it, and eventually took out a knife to slice off a piece. He then grunted and frowned.
“Lightweight material, trading durability for better mobility even more than usual for a golem made of wax. I’m guessing you were hoping this one would fly?”
Belissar nodded and Tamosmed shook his head.
“Won’t be able to without enchantments. Even with a material this light, a golem won’t be able to beat the wings fast enough. The material is certainly suitable for channeling Air mana but a basic golem like the one you showed me before can’t channel external mana. You’d need an external source of Air magic.”
Belissar frowned at first, but as he thought about it he had an idea.
“Would the bees work for that? The Fourth of the Seventh…the queen I made this one for, is pretty big and can make gusts of wind with her wings. I’ve seen her help propel other bees along before.”
Tamosmed stopped and rubbed his chin. He slowly began to nod.
“Hm…I’d have to see exactly what she can do but that might work…”
At this point, the Fourth of the Seventh’s workers that had been helping with construction began to fly between Belissar and Tamosmed. Workers that had since evolved to either breeze or nomadic variants.
“King, can help! Like queen now!”
Belissar smiled.
“Why don’t you show him what you can do?”
“Ok!”
The Fourth of the Seventh’s workers began to buzz as they beat their wings faster, causing a gust to pick up. Tamosmed’s hair began to sway about and the black elf hummed.
“That could work, maybe if there are bigger types of this kind of bee? The golem should be capable of gliding with how light it’ll be, so if you have bees riding it to provide the wind, it should be doable. Hm…I’d recommending enlarging the wings in that case. You’ll want them to catch the wind.”
Belissar and the bees followed along as Tamosmed began to observe the wings more closely and made specific recommendations on size and shape. Fortunately, since they hadn’t made the core yet, they could still adjust the wings as recommended.
“Thanks Tamosmed. I’m glad you caught that before we finished.”
Tamosmed shook his head.
“This is nothing. Once you and your bees have some more experience with normal golems, I’ll start teaching you the tricks for more advanced features. You’ll have to start learning enchanting too, once you can carve magic into your golems you’ll open a whole world of possibilities.”
He then glared at Belissar.
“Now, show me those mining bees!”
Belissar led Tamosmed to the thermal mining bee hive. Tamosmed said nothing, just stared in silence as he went around observing. He watched the workers as they bit off little chunks of ore with heat and vibration. He watched them carry them back to the honeypots, who processed the chunks in their abdomens. He watched the workers take the resulting products and mold them into additional wax comb to add to the growing trays. He, like Belissar, poked the comb. Finally, he slowly turned around to face Belissar.
“Is it possible to cross-breed the different types of bees?”
Belissar nodded.
“That’s where these came from, actually. They’re digging monster bees crossed with burning monster bees.”
Tamosmed slowly began to smile…and then he started cackling. He made a full blown laughter for a bit. When it finally died down, he marched over to Belissar and clasped both hands on Belissar’s shoulders.
“Belissar, you have to try and cross them with the slime bees!”
Belissar jumped at the sudden contact.
“I’ll…uh…try?”
Tamosmed looked him in the eyes.
“See that you do.”
Only for Niobee to take off and hover in between their faces, waving her stinger towards Tamosmed. Tamosmed quickly released Belissar and held up his hands as he backed away.
“Meant no harm, sorry bad habit of mine. It’s just…if this works, Belissar, if we could create slime bees that can mine and forge metal in an instant, we could create entire armies of battle-ready golems in an instant. And slimes…not only do they grow and reproduce quickly but they can absorb and feed on all sorts of stuff and turn it into more of themselves, so if your slime bees work similarly we could raise as many of them as we need to make as many golems as we need. Even if your slime bees have to feed on flowers specifically, that alone would mean us growing golem armies with easily grown flower fields. The armies we could build could save your dungeon and my people both, no matter what forces the other humans or even the Hunger could throw at us. I can’t help but get excited at that possibility.”
Belissar blinked as he imagined an army of golems standing between his bees and the Tower Guard. He slowly began to smile.
“Well…that is exciting. No, that could really help us, so I understand.”
Tamosmed grinned.
“Good man, I’m glad you get it. That being the case, mind showing me the slime bees again? We’ve got to figure out how they work, and what they need to grow…”
Author’s Note:
And back to the non-bees, sigh. Well, I guess Tamosmed is helping the beeswax golem fly, making it more beelike, so I suppose we shall give him a pass this time. Still hasn’t gotten an “x one” name yet, though, so he’ll have to keep it up. Lucky him “the dangerous one” is already taken with how he keeps pouncing on the King…
Anyways!
Can the non-bee help make the golems more beelike? Will the bees fulfill all his dreams and desires? Will that dream protect the hive of hives? Tune in next time, to find out!
Comments
Victor
I think at some point I would like a non bee chapter about the humans that are coming after him. Or a chapter where the god of fire finally gets his mead.
Black Esper
Swirling has more intent than regular honey production, that was rhe trigger for the first of tge fifth evolution. So the better raw material should make for better mead. Also, if mead was easy to get in the realm of gods it wouldn't bee such a sought after offering.
Presten
I would be very sad if he sidelined the golems out of the picture. I think we have been shown that the bees do best with a big melee fighter at the front soaking up attention and damage so that the bees can perform specialized roles that bees are simply better suited to. I think Bees are just not big enough or optimally shaped to stand and fight against any enemy that is so much bigger than them.
Presten
Any force faces attrition, but especially Frontline combatants, even more so melee fighters. Even if they kept producing golems ever since the hunger became a thing or whatever calamity befall the land, they would not be able to match the rate golems would be lost in a war of attrition against the hunger. As they freed more land from the hunger there would be significantly more borders to defend from the hunger. Basically it doesn't matter if they kept making a few master crafted golems every year for hundreds or thousands of years, because you need infantry to conquer and hold ground and you need alot of them. And the fey never would or could produce enough golems to meet that requirement.
TheLostGolem
I think the degradation over time thing makes sense for why there isn't a large number of golems.
Brendon
Aren't the Gods limited by their realm? The god of fire doesn't understand much about topics non related to fire, the god of bees wouldn't know much about topics unrelated to bees, and while honey is a major ingredient there are multiple steps that don't involve honey or bees at all. Secondly, I disagree with you about the honey swirled not having a noticeable difference. First, there IS extra work associated with honey swirled. The ingredients themselves have been changed via extra work. The work the bees have to do changes the mana honey and so gives a higher quality ingredient. A blacksmith can make a sword out of rusty old scraps or via a magical iron ingot, and though the method of smithing might be mostly the same, the ingot is obviously a more highly refined ingredient and improves the final product
phantom
The fire god is only waiting like a week extra. It is probable honey swirled mead by itself won't actually do much. From what the gods said it is largely the intention that makes the product not just the product itself. So unless Belissar puts a lot of work into making the product I doubt it will be all that. For evidence of this the Queen of All Bees already has better honey. she could presumably even make it into mead if she wanted to.
phantom
Thinking on it there is an issue with golems being that powerful a solution. He said the faes don't have numbers. but they have something else. TIme. Surely they could have just kept producing golems and eventually have an army unless there was some flaw with golems. (Or they just degrade over time.)
phantom
An army of golems would make other bees fighting unneeded. Given author planned for hunger pulling more tricks and we have not seen those tricks. Meta guarantees that something goes wrong with the plan. The most obvious detail that comes to mind is the slime bees could only form the golems quickly. Given he talked about slimes breeding quickly it seems he did not actually consider the slime bees might not create slime as fast as he expects.
Durphymcbob
And those parts and armor could easily be take by to two daughter queens who are specializing and gilem making (one slime on normal forgot their names) and use those metal parts and weapons to make the golems they create stronger! I really hope it goes down that path, it would be sad to see the slime bee queen be pushed to the side because she can't work metal. Into her golems. (7th daughter i think?)
Black Esper
The non-bees did an awful lot of watching and discusding bees 😊. I hope for a big wake-up call for the old forgemaster next week 😊🐝
Fernando Oliveira
Thanks for the chapter. Loved it. Taosmed is hilarious, he's got his priorities straight. Cross breeding the thermal and the slime bees could result in the metal slime bees they want. It could also result in a Crucible-Bee, a living furnace that can cook/melt ores and press them into shape. Might not be able to produce instant golems but could produce parts and weapons/armor. A smithing bee so to speak. Lol.
Black Esper
And he needs to figure out the fire honey mead. The god of fire is getting impatient 😊
Durphymcbob
Thanks for the chapter! Ahh the Crafter arrives to teach the bees the art of golem making! I'm sure he can given them some tips and can probably wrangle in the kurnuq Smith to help. I'm sure they could work together to come up with a golem design with some armor and a weapon built in to it. Give the golems some metal/wooden plates on the outside of it to give it some carapase like a bee, and maybe build it some spears to weird so they have stingers like a bee! That is totally how the golems can become more bee like, and while the golems are good disposable units them being made purely of wax doesn't exactly bode well for their combat potential. I'm sure the hunger or any average armed soilder can deal with a man made of wax.
AEgamer1
Soon(tm)
Brendon
I can't wait to see the fair folks reactions when he eventually shares his mead. Specifically honeyswirled Mead. I'm also expecting all the gods to get jealous again if one of them gets honeyswirled first Speaking of, how is Belissars mead doing? I think it's been awhile since our last alcoholic update
