The Bee Dungeon

Belissar grinned as he made his way to the Flower Meadow with the rabbits. The First of the Fifth was one of the oldest queens and one he relied on heavily, yet she had declined to evolve with any of the special honey types thus far. Belissar couldn’t help but anticipate what she might become now that she was finally evolving.

As he imagined different possible evolutions for her, he arrived at his destination and took a look around with his Tower sight. He blinked. It hadn’t been that long since he enabled rabbits…and yet he saw them spread around the room already, munching on the flowers and digging burrows in the dirt. He had expected a handful at this stage, maybe ten at most…

Well, fortunately, he had asked the karnuq to check the room regularly and start hunting immediately once they noticed the rabbits, all on Tarwantrad’s zealous recommendation. A few of the karnuq archers were present and Belissar watched them for a bit. They seemed to be having a bit of trouble hunting out in the open and the rabbits noticed them before they could line up a shot more often than not.

Belissar couldn’t really help them with that, he had always relied on snares for his own hunting. Fortunately, he had already shared that method with them and the karnuq were apparently using both, so they had caught a few rabbits despite their struggles. Still, there were a lot more rabbits in the room than corpses.

But Belissar smiled. With how many rabbits there were in the room and how quickly they had spawned, he was now confident there would be an ample food supply for the butcher bees. It was time to add a new queen spawner.

Belissar made a short trip back to grab his supplies, then made his way over to the furthest corner of the room from the entrance and shortcuts. One of the hunters was just tossing a rabbit corpse there and saluted to him. Belissar, after discussions with Chief Rohsuak and Tarwantrad, had decided to designate this corner as the corpse spot, given that they would very much prefer if any undead rose as far away from the exits as possible.

Belissar greeted the hunter and confirmed the corpse here was being dumped and so free for his bees to use, then got to work building both a beehouse and a bee nest block before digging a small hole that could be converted to a bee nest. He had no idea which of those the butcher bees would prefer, but he intended to be prepared for any case. When he was done, he took a deep breath and turned to Niobee with a smile.

“Ready to meet some new bees?”

Niobee danced about happily.

Belissar went ahead and placed his first butcher bee spawner. He held his breath and bounced a bit as he waited for the light to fade and the spawner to appear.

The first thing he noticed was the near skeletal carcass, which put a bit of a damper on his enthusiasm. It vaguely resembled that of a cow, though there wasn’t enough left of the body to tell for sure. There were still some chunks and even hunks of rotting meat left on some of the bones, complete with the smell of decay. Belissar’s face scrunched up as he looked away from the corpse.

His eyes drifted to the ground in the center of the corpse and widened. There, in the middle, was something in between a honeybee hive and bumblebee nest. It was built out of larger wax cells like the bumblebee’s used, but arranged more like an orderly honeybee comb, thought with a twist. Instead of a flat comb, the cells were arranged in a multi-layered spiral rising up like a little pyramid. Belissar was so entranced by the sight he even forgot the bones and rotting meat surrounding it.

And as with the other spawners, one of the cells began to glow and a queen crawled out of it. She was nearly pure black with reddish-brown wings. Unlike his other bees, she was sleek and smooth, with hardly any hairs on her chitin. Her jaws, however, were anything but, sharp and serrated as per her name.

This book was originally published on Royal Road. Check it out there for the real experience.

Belissar put a smile on his face.

“Hi there, and welcome to the Tower!”

The butcher queen shook herself and then buzzed her wings while crawling about rapidly. It wasn’t quite the same dance as the monster bees, but the Tower’s mana translated it without any problems. She was saluting to him as every newly born queen had. Belissar smiled…and just about managed not to gulp as he held out his hand towards the flesh-eating bee.

“Come on.”

The butcher bee flew up and landed on his hand. Belissar held in a sigh of relief as she did not attempt to take any bites out of him as he carried her over to the beehouses.

“Here, I made these to be your home. Take a look and tell me if you like any of them, or if you need something else for your hive.”

He opened up the beehouse first and showed her the interior, pointing out the trays and explaining how they would work. Niobee also landed on his hand and brushed her antennae against the butcher queen’s to provide additional detail before flying back up to dance before Belissar.

“King! New queen likes! Says trays sideways, worried food and brood will fall out!”

Belissar’s eyes widened slightly.

“Ah. I see…could you wait a bit? I’ll try to see if I can flip them around.”

At first Belissar thought of just flipping the hive itself, but it seemed a bit flattened that way, and the legs were on the wrong side so it ended up at an angle when he tried to rest it on the ground. He gave up on that and decided to just build a new one from scratch. He referenced the spawner hive and tried to adjust the design to fit. He built it a bit more square than normal and with the grooves horizontal rather than vertical. He made the trays a bit thicker as well to account for the larger height of the wax pots. Fortunately, with the dry wood and tools from the karnuq he was able to make the trays and grooves fit more nicely than in his first attempts, so the house had no issue holding up the horizontal trays.

Belissar decided this was a good first attempt and waved the butcher queen to the house.

“How is this? Any more adjustments?”

The butcher queen flew inside and began crawling around the walls. A moment later, she crawled outside and began spinning about rapidly while making long buzzes with her wings. Belissar needed no translation to understand that response but the Tower gave one anyways.

“Amazing, incredible!”

Belissar chuckled at that. Flesh-eating or not, she truly was still a bee. He then held out his hand and waited for her to hop back on before carrying her over to the rabbit corpse.

“There should be a bunch of these in the room, you can hunt as many as you like. You can eat any that are dumped here for now but try to leave some if you can once you’re established. There’s also a mana flower patch over there…do you drink nectar from flowers?”

To his surprise, the butcher queen confirmed that she did. Belissar took a moment at that before he continued.

“Got it, you can drink from those then, or from any flowers in the room. Other rooms are fine too but you should ask the other bees living there first. Ah…and regarding hunting, please don’t attack the karnuq…or Tarwantrad…or the humans…or the wyverns…for now, how about you just stick with these rabbits and let us know if they aren’t enough?”

Fortunately, the butcher queen saluted at that…and then began spinning and buzzing about again.

“Amazing! Incredible! Big Queen is best queen!”

Belissar couldn’t help but chuckle again. Worries about flesh-eating bees aside, he was excited to help these bees grow too.

“Great. We’ll let you get to it, then. Just let me or Niobee or one of the other bees know if you need anything or have any questions. Ah, we normally gather each night, so we’ll introduce you to all the others later this evening if you’re done working by then. Let us know if you need to work on your hive today, though, we can always introduce you later.”

The butcher queen saluted and called him best queen once more before zipping off to the mana flowers and taking a big drink. Afterwards, she made her way to the rabbit corpse. Belissar watched intently, wondering what a flesh-eating bee would look like while foraging…

He decided his curiosity was sufficiently sated when she started tunneling through the eye of the corpse. Well…hopefully this meant he wouldn’t have to worry too much about whatever rabbit disaster hit Tarwantrad’s dungeon…

Speaking of which, Niobee’s mana starting flaring and soon she was dancing about.

“King! Frelis says dangerous one’s flowers ready! Has new flowers for King and ready to invite flower one!”

Belissar grinned.

“Great, let’s go check it out.”

And so, Belissar left the new butcher bee to her feasting.

Visit and read more novel to help us update chapter quickly. Thank you so much!