Belissar felt the mana of the Tower surge once more as his changes went into action. He could feel a new room grow in the corner of his mind. He could have checked it immediately with the tower sight, but decided to hold off. Instead, he stepped out of the core room and turned to Niobee with a smile.
“Shall we check it out?”
“Ok!”
Belissar walked over through the Apiary with Niobee following along. He could see his bees stirring, the workers pausing on their flowers as the Tower’s mana passed through them. He smiled as he thought of them discovering the newest room.
Belissar reached the end of the Apiary and stepped through the entrance. He entered into a room made of yellow wax arranged in hexagonal patterns. The room was empty save for an entrance opening to a stairway. Belissar could only see a couple of steps before it curved around a corner. He glanced around, shrugging when he found nothing of interest, and then made his way to the stairs.
When he stepped onto the first step his vision blurred. He had the distinct feeling of falling, and then a moment later found himself exiting into another empty wax room. He frowned.
“Weird…”
He glanced around the room, again finding nothing of note. He wondered if he had somehow gotten turned around until he glanced at the room’s exit. He could see a slightly blurry image of a field filled with trees.
“Is that it?”
He asked mostly just to reassure himself, since he knew the answer already. His tower sight—or maybe tower sense since he was not actively using the vision at the time—let his intuition know he had moved “down” a floor. He shook his head and walked towards the exit.
His eyes widened and a smile broke out on his face as he entered into the next room. Before him were rows upon rows of trees standing in a grassy field, their green canopies filled with red apples and pink and white flowers. Belissar was pretty sure apple trees weren’t supposed to have fruit and flowers at the same time, but figured that was an effect of the Tower and so put it out of his mind. Instead, he walked up to the nearest tree and placed his hand upon it.
Manage tree types? Available types:
-Apple (Selected, Mana upkeep: 0)
He made a smirk. It was about as he expected. The Orchard grew fruit trees like the Flower Meadow did flowers, and just like the Flower Meadow he got one type for free. He guessed he would have to start gathering pinecones after all. Maybe if they searched the surrounding forests they could find some juniper trees? If that happened Belissar could even resume work on his mead with juniper berries!
Belissar paused for a second as he thought of mead for the first time in a while. Between almost being killed by the Tower Lords, almost being killed by the Hunger, becoming a dungeon master, learning of the Tower Lords’ lies, and most of all gaining the companionship of intelligent monster bees, Belissar hadn’t had the chance to think about his old hobby. His bees were giving him more honey than he could ever eat and he no longer had to supply tribute to either the village chief or the local Tower Lord…so didn’t that mean he could use as much honey as he wanted on recipe experiments?!
Not to mention…his bees were making magical honey. Honey filled with mana, medicinal honey that healed wounds, and mad honey that could poison; Belissar couldn’t help but imagine what sorts of mead he could make from those. Ok, maybe not the last one until he really knew what he was doing, but the point still stood.
Belissar shook his head. He had a lot to do before he could think about hobbies. Not to mention he would need some more equipment first, water-tight containers at the very least. And water. Now that he thought about it, his Tower didn’t really have any water in it, did it?
But he still couldn’t help but have a smile on his face as thoughts of mead danced through his mind. He reached up and grabbed a low-hanging apple and took a bite as well. His eyes widened. It was crisp and sweet and juicy, much unlike most of the apples the villagers traded to him.
He turned to Niobee and motioned to the apple.
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“Want a taste?”
“Ok!”
Belissar held out his free hand for Niobee to land on, and then brought up the apple to her face. She couldn’t actually take a bite, but there was some juice dripping out now that he had bit into it. He turned that side towards her and Niobee extended her mouth, sipping a bit of the juice. She began dancing around happily, causing Belissar to smile even more.
All in all, Belissar thought this was a good day indeed. Regardless of whether it helped fight shades or not, the Orchard was a wonderful place.
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The Fourth of the Seventh paused as she felt the King’s mana flow through her. Something had happened, she knew that the King had just performed great and wonderous deeds. She knew because the mana imprinted new knowledge onto her instincts. New foraging instincts that encouraged workers to visit different types of flowers within a single trip. A new type of soldier, one that could fight in a completely different manner than any other type of bee.
And…something else. Something had changed about the world around her, though she knew not what. She could not help but take a short walk to the entrance of her hive. She moved her antenna about in the air, trying to see if she could see, feel, or smell anything different.
Well, she didn’t notice anything, but she did get to see the King and the Conduit walk by her home.
Unfortunately, she couldn’t figure out anything else and her workers wanted her back inside the hive. Since she didn’t know what had changed, she had no specific reason to refuse, and so went back as her foragers began their next trip to the Flower Meadow.
Not even a minute later and her foragers rushed back into the entrance of the hive and began a frantic dance. The Fourth of the Seventh noticed the disturbance in her hive and rushed over to find out what had happened.
She froze as the workers spread their news.
The Flower Meadow…had disappeared? When the workers passed through the normal entrance, they found an entirely different environment.
The Fourth of the Seventh began to tremble. She now knew what she had sensed. The King had reshaped the world! He had built an entirely new land in between the Flower Meadow and the Apiary! That was where he and the Conduit were going earlier!
The Fourth of the Seventh nearly flew out of the hive immediately, but her instincts held her in check. Instead, she began to dance and brush her antenna against the surrounding workers, giving them her commands. A third of the foragers who normally visited the Flower Meadow would stay in the Apiary today, and focus on keeping up honey production by gathering from the flowers around her hive. The rest would head into the new lands and scout them out. Surely the King had not removed the Flower Meadow entirely, so the Fourth of the Seventh figured there must be a new route to get there, her foragers just needed to find it. Finally, she told them to speak with the Conduit if they had the chance, to discover the King’s purposes with this new land.
Her workers stopped their frantic dances as their queen gave her speculations and orders. Now that they knew how to respond, they immediately began organizing themselves as she had said. Before long, workers began flying out to the new lands. The Fourth of the Seventh couldn’t help but dance about as she watched them leave.
What wonders would they find? What new lands had the King created? What sort of grand design was he building this time? The Fourth of the Seventh couldn’t wait to find out!
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While Belissar and Niobee were sharing the apple, he heard buzzing. He turned back and noticed worker bees flying from the entrance to the second floor and the Apiary. He hummed for a moment.
He considered whether he should add some spawners to the Orchard or not. They would spawn new queens to fill up the new room very quickly…but since he had much more time than he originally thought, was that necessary? One of the queens had moved her hive already, so maybe some of them might want to check out the Orchard? Or they could raise some new queens to populate the room.
Belissar nodded to himself and decided he would wait and see on the spawners. Instead, he checked what he could do with traps and basic resource nodes.
Available Resource Plants for Orchard:
-Apple Tree (Mana Upkeep: 1 per tree, upkeep reduced due to room)
-Basic Wood Tree (Mana Upkeep: 3 per tree)
-Mana Flower (Mana upkeep: 5 per node)
Belissar tilted his head at that. Apple trees were a resource plant? He tried to place one to see if it would make a bunch of trees like with the flower nodes, but only a single transparent tree appeared before his eyes.
Did that mean all the trees in the Orchard were resource plant nodes? Or would a tree made with a resource node be different? Belissar figured it was probably the latter. Maybe it would produce fruit faster, like the difference between the beehouses that came with the Apiary versus a normal beehouse he just made himself?
Other than that, there wasn’t much new. Wood trees might be pretty useful if making them a resource node made it easy to harvest useable wood. On the other hand, while he could easily gather flax plants from the textile flower node, he still had to process them himself, so he might end up having to saw and dry the wood himself anyways. He would have to try it out. Beyond that, he was limited to the apple trees that came with the room…and the Mana Flowers for some reason. Not as many new options as Belissar had hoped for…but he supposed that was what Cross-Pollination would help with. In any case, it might be good to scout the forest more thoroughly and pay attention to what sort of trees were out there.
Belissar finished his apple and Niobee took to the air once more. It was a good break, but he should finish up the room as much as he could. He then stretched and started to consider where to put traps for the room…