"I am glad it is over. How is everyone?"

"Sticky. You splashed honey all over me."

"Yucky. I want to get out of this goo."

"Yummy. This honey is delicious."

"Tic tic."

"Helen, are you feeling well? Did you get any strange title or changed race? I mean, the bees obeyed you and the other queens were targeting you."

She is scared for a moment. "Status!" She stares at the system windows and sighs in relief. "No. Everything is fine. I got a 'Queen Bee' title... It granted a unique skill to control and communicate with my insect subordinates."

I open the title management window, it is not listed. My guess is that it cannot be set as active.

"Is she going to lay bee eggs now?" Zahariel innocently drops a bomb.

She blushes and answers with a meek voice "Summon, not lay."

"What?"

"I can summon bees that are not under the control of a queen now... [Summon Worker]!" Her spell does nothing, but a few minutes later there comes a worker bee monster just like the thousands that lie dead below us. It hums happily before landing next to the cocoon. "I can sense what they do and control them at a distance."

If there are no side effects this could be a useful ability. "How many MP summoning a worker costs?"

"It depends on the distance. It has no upkeep costs. There are some bees that were not serving under any faction around the hive. Just a few of them." One more reason to get out. They will want a new queen.

"Can this bee make more honey?" Zahariel developed a taste for it.

"I don't know. Where would they get flower nectar?"

Marcy gives a practical solution, "Maybe there are flowers in a lower level and they get it from there." The dungeon's ecosystem might be a real thing.

Honey, huh? "Is honey expensive?" My guess is that it is. There are not many things sweetened with honey in town.

The girl's business sense flare up. Even Helen is a merchant's daughter. "This floor is a gold mine!"

Marcy licks the honey off of her arm. "There is profit to be made there. How much honey can we bring home?"

A lot should be the correct answer. But we would need to take the honeycombs back. I can't store fluids by themselves. There must be a solid 'object' I can target. A bucket of water can be stored, but not the water without a bucket, or a drop of water mid-air.

"We can cut the honeycombs out and get Grendel to store them. Even the beeswax is valuable."

"The royal jelly is valuable too. It is very nutritious. Now that winter is coming, it will be important," I point out. "We should get a lot for sister-in-law to eat. It will make the baby strong." According to Marcy, the baby is due late spring.

We drag Helen out of her queen cocoon. Unfortunately for the merchants, most of the contents were just girl, there is not much royal jelly inside. Just a few pounds.

"We should probably get to a safer place before this whole thing crumbles down," Marcy voices her concern and looks down. It is pitch black down there. The number of glowing honeycombs thin out the lower you go.

"How fast can these bees work? Can't they make a bridge?" Zahariel is now a bee enthusiast.

"I will need to call more bees. Should I?"

I don't think there will be a problem. "Yes, do it." Helen begins to use her spell to call out the remaining bees.

There are around one hundred feet between walls. The exit tunnel we came out is below us. I take the rope that is completely drenched in honey and tie it to the tip of a goblin spear. After trying a few times, I got a solid hit on the other side and the javelin won't come free easily.

"Ask the bees to make a wax bridge using this rope as a foundation. I think it will be strong enough to allow you to cross."

"What about you, Grendel?"

"I want to go down there and get the queen's pemadras. Anyone against? I'll ask Helen to send a bee scout first."

Helen makes a bee go down and describes what she is seeing to us. "The honeycombs go all the way down to the stone floor. There are thousands of dead bees down there. Honey is flooding in and soon will cover the entire floor."

"Then I need to work fast or it will become a honey lake down there. Stay here and work on reaching the exit. I will join you soon." Just to make sure, I left a teleport anchor behind.

I move to the wall of the chasm and everyone fits inside the niche I dug out. I am then free to retrieve the spears that were used for the makeshift platform and Helen's cocoon after breaking it free from the wall.

I make my way down by jumping from one wall to the other. It is messy and sticky but I reach the floor without much damage. There is already a thin film of honey on the floor and much more is dripping down. I use sense treasure to locate the queen's bodies. Once my eyes adapt to the poor lighting I scout around, but there seems to be nothing else in this floor. Most of the worker bees that fought don't have a core. It is a bother to collect this many low-level cores so I'll leave it behind.

This narrative has been unlawfully taken from Royal Road. If you see it on Amazon, please report it.

The floor is out of range for short jaunt, so I have to climb on my own.

Climbing up I find some live larva enclosed in the honeycombs. I cut one of them out and they count as 'bee eggs' when I try to store them. Maybe if I find the strongest larva around here, I can give some nice gift to go with Helen's new power. There is one big cell shaped like a peanut with a live larva inside. This is what I wanted. I also tried to take a glowing cell, but it stopped glowing when I cut it off from the surrounding honeycomb. Maybe it is fueled by honey. Most probably the inner twisted magic of the dungeon. Or 'miasma' as Zahariel calls it.

I also took the time to cut out huge sections of the hive and store them. This should be enough honey to last for decades. If only I knew any Earth recipes... Or how to cook, to begin with. My diet was basically junk food and microwave...

Seal Strength reduced by 5%

I forgot I am not supposed to remember. The seal is now dangerously close to zero. At least I didn't fall down. Up there I can see the bridge. Did everyone cross safely?

"Grendel, over here!" They call me from a side tunnel. I guess the bees know their way around. It took a few jumps to reach their place.

"Where is the exit?" There are about a dozen bees buzzing far down the tunnel. Helen's bees. The 'party sense' extends to them just like the rats and Mittens.

"Over there. Did you get the honey?" Marcy asks with sparkling eyes.

"Yes, lots of it. Is everyone accounted for? Let's get moving." I notice several bulges in Helen's jelly-drenched robes. "Are those the rats?" I see Emory is being carried by Mittens.

"Yes, these children ate too much. I hope they don't have a tummy ache."

After a half-hour of hiking, we found ourselves back to the roach level. There are some roaches here and there, they become target practice for my magic skills. They are very interested in our honey covered bodies, I am sure of it. Any movement in this floor will be met with a firebolt.

Without the treasure sense guiding us to the boss it took a lot of time to find the way up. It is not my fault that I ran across my own trail when I was blazing through. Hiking for hours took its toll on our bodies. Helen is slouching from the added weight. Marcy is complaining of her shoulders. Even Zahariel is yawning too often.

"Everyone is tired, but we need to keep moving. It is a death sentence to sleep on this floor." I am not becoming cockroach food again.

I also discovered that If I spam snowballs I can block a tunnel. And I can move through the snow without disturbing it too much, courtesy of water mastery. But the best thing is that the cockroaches only dislike fire more than they dislike ice. They do not attempt to cross the tunnels I cover in snow. It is useful to mark the path. We sometimes walk in circles. Marcy's direction sense only works in natural settings, and this dungeon is anything but natural.

"This sucks. Are we lost? Can we please make camp?" Marcy is the last person still walking. I am carrying Helen, Zahariel and the smaller rats. The bees stuck to my back and are quiet. Even Mittens looks tired. He is clicking too little.

"Not in cockroach country. Come here, Marcy, there is room for you on my neck." I put the girl on my neck like those kids riding their dads in a park.

We find a tunnel with cleaner air and a draft. There are lots of burnt cockroaches around. I'll try following the draft against the wind.

A few hours later, we are back at the geode that was once the lair of the phoenix butterfly. I make Helen seal the tunnel to the cockroach level. Zahariel uses the light spell again. "Everlasting Light!"

"Good. Now everyone can rest here." We need to shower and clear all this gunk. If I had a barrel I could make one. There is nothing like it in my item list. Most containers are already being used for something. I think I could empty the crate with the bug pemadras the gnomes collected. Will they taste bad even if coated with honey?

I'll just eat the whole bunch and worry about taste later. The boss' pemadras will remain stored.

6,458 points earned. 28,280 points available. [301,325 / 1,000,000]

Awful.

What else can I use? There are some spare shields I will never get to use because the living shield won't break. I can spare one. I take it out along with the hammer and anvil. A few minutes later, it was bent into a bowl shape and tiny holes were punctured in a circle. I'll attach it to the bottom of the crate, smear some beeswax to seal the inside of the crate and open a tiny hole at the bottom for water to flow out. I even placed a cork over the hole that can be opened pulling a string from below. If you let go of the string, the water flow is blocked by the pressure.

I'll tie this improvised shower over a tall obsidian boulder near a slope for draining the water and pile some rings from the pillbug as a screen. The improvised shower is done. Now all that is left is to fill the crate with warm water. I got soap here. Also a change of clothes for everyone.

"The shower is complete. Who wants to wash first?" Steam is coming out of the crate.

Marcy approaches and carefully checks the setup. "A shower inside a dungeon... I'm not complaining, but it is too surreal. I'm first!!" She starts to strip without even giving us time to turn away. I'll run to the other side before I get in trouble.

"Marcy! Not fair going in first!" Helen barges into the shower. I'll just sit here facing the other side a few boulders away. Don't mind me.

Mittens are grooming himself using the scythes. He is almost free of honey. Emory comes and asks for help removing his armor. The little scoundrel dashes to the shower right after its free.

"Can I join you, girls?" The naked seraph just walks into it. Nobody complains.

Playful sounds and voices come from the shower. I do my best to ignore them. A few minutes later they come, dressed in clean clothes.

"Aren't you going to shower too, G?" Marcy is drying her hair with a towel.

"in a minute. Come here, let me try something." I mix fire magic and wind magic to make a hot air draft. It is harder to do than use formulaic spells but it is not for combat. The hot air is then directed at the hair. "Is it too hot?"

"Whoa! What is this? Feels so nice!"

"Something imitating a tool from my world. We call it a hair dryer."

"Marcy! Not fair! Grendel, use it on me too."

I oblige and dry the girls. Somehow I ended up drying all the rats and Zahariel too.

"Now it is your turn, big guy. Go and clean this gunk." Marcy pushes me into the shower. "Don't worry, Helen replaced the hot water."

I also take a shower and change my clothes. Afterward, I dismantle the shower, stash all the dirty laundry inside the crate and store everything back.

"Is obsidian a valuable material?" I ask after drying myself.

"There are some fancy colored stones here and there. They might fetch a reasonable price." Marcy evaluates the surrounding stones.

"I mean, as a material for making equipment."

"Stone weapons? I think it is too brittle." She replies matter-of-factly.

"Does it have a high affinity for magic?" Helen asks and then tries to put MP into some shards. "Doesn't seem so."

In the end, it is just crystallized lava. I light a torch and go search for valuables. I'll harvest the chunks with fancy colored veins. A few pounds of obsidian are stored. Now I want to harvest some quartz from the geode formations. Maybe I can find some precious gemstone. I walk around the base for a while but nothing special appears. I got some clear quartz chunks. Up ahead in a crevice there are some pink colors dancing in the torchlight. I found some light pink rocks with white bands. They look pretty. Maybe if cut and polished they can be gemstones.

Going the whole way around took half an hour, but I also found some purple quartz. Since it was different, I stored large pieces. A few pounds. I returned to our campsite, people are staring at me.

"What is wrong?"

"Food! We are hungry! Give us food!" One lesson learned from this expedition that will remain forever. A hungry Marcy is a cranky Marcy.

"Yes, miss. Here is your dinner." I take out fruit, bread, watered mead and grilled meat steaks for everyone. Marcy smiles and blows me a kiss.

Everyone eats and we sleep. There are two dozen bees, a dozen rats and a killer mantis to keep watch, let them work.