Chapter 426 - More Bee-ficient Bee-livery

Belissar watched as a zombie rabbit picked up a honeycomb ward. A significant advantage of the honeycomb wards was that they were small and light enough for the rabbits to carry on their own, no sleds required. The first attempt did end…badly, though, when the rabbit’s front teeth pierced and damaged the ward, but that was subsequently resolved by the bees adding a layer of empty honeycomb around the actual ward.

And with the smaller wards came another possibility. The Second Third of the First flew up to Belissar followed by a group of her soldier bees, those that had evolved into reanimating variants.

“King, since using honeycomb, soldiers want know if can help. Soldiers can carry honeycomb?”

Belissar frowned.

“I guess you’re reanimating, so you could become zom-bees…but I’m still worried about that infection attack. I think we should hold off on that unless there’s an emergency. Beero’s hive can only make so many wards in any case, we have enough rabbits for now.”

The soldiers’ antennae all drooped, but Belissar held firm. With how many traps these mushrooms shades had for his Tower specifically, Belissar didn’t want to take an unnecessary risks…even if the bees were disappointed.

But a moment later, he began rubbing his chin.

“You know, that does give me an idea…”

Belissar stirred up his mana and created a spell honeycomb with brood chambers. The brood chambers popped up and spell soldier bees crawled out. Belissar directed them to pick up one of the honeycomb wards Beero’s hive had just finished…and they were able to carry it as easily as a real soldier bee.

Belissar smiled and directed the spell soldier bees towards the corrupted room. They flew into the mist…and immediately began disintegrating as the Hunger attacked his mana. The spell soldiers wavered, but Belissar tried to push more mana into his connection to the spell. The spell bees’ glow brightened and the bits of their bodies the Hunger had destroyed reformed, so they were able to carry onwards. They managed to reach one of the mushroom shades and then Belissar released the spell.

Belissar grinned as the ward exploded.

“It worked. We might not even need the rabbits, better not to lose anything if we can. Well, if anyone could make spell-bees other than me, but I’ll make as many as I can…”

Niobee began dancing on Belissar’s head.

“King! What about wasp flowers?”

Belissar’s eyes widened.

“Right! The nightshade summoners! I forgot about those!”

Shortly thereafter, a group of nightshade summoners stood by Belissar, with gardeners bees hovering around them. A piece of honeycomb lay out on the ground in front of them. The nightshade summoners created a couple of spell wasps, making the gardener bees instinctively buzz for a moment, and sent them forth. The wasps landed upon the honeycomb…and did nothing. Maybe crawled about on top of it a bit, one of them tried to bite it even.

Belissar furrowed his brow.

“We need them to pick it up and carry it.”

The nightshade summoners all tilted their flower heads. One of the gardeners landed on a nightshade summoner, then took off and danced in front of Belissar.

“King…flowers don’t understand. Can try help?”

Belissar nodded.

“Go for it.”

The gardener danced a salute, then landed back on the nightshade summoner and started dancing. The nightshade summoner perked up and bobbed its head, then held out its branch arms. Its glowing eyes narrowed as it stirred up its mana and another spell wasp emerged.

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The spell wasp flew over to the honeycomb, bit with its teeth and grabbed it with its legs, then carried it away. Belissar smiled.

“Perfect, thanks for the help!”

The gardener responded with a happy dance. The nightshade summoner narrowed its eyes into a smile and began waving its arms about.

It took the nightshade summoners a few tries to actually deliver a ward. First, their wasps repeated the same mistake as the rabbits and bit into the ward itself, making it explode. It took the gardeners a bit of explaining before the nightshade summoners managed to get their wasps to only bite the safe parts. Then, as Belissar had experienced, the spell wasps started disintegrating as soon as they entered the room. It took a few tries before the nightshade summoners were able to sustain their spells long enough to deliver the honeycomb wards anywhere.

Then…they found the nightshade summoners had no idea where to actually send the spell wasps. They couldn’t see through the hive of hives either…until the divine bumbledryad showed up and dusted each of the summoners with her glowing pollen. That let the summoners interact with the hive of hives…but they still didn’t really understand where to send the wasps and couldn’t see through the wasps themselves.

In the end, the easiest way turned out to be to have the gardeners just give step-by-step instructions to the summoners. The gardeners could watch through the zom-bees and the undead rabbits and so could navigate for the summoners. The summoners then didn’t need to understand where to go themselves and just followed the gardeners’ directions.

From then on, the purification settled into a routine. The hive of the fallen made honeycomb wards, nightshade summoner and gardener teams delivered the wards to mushroom shades while the Second Third of the First’s zom-bees and rabbits acted as the hive of hives’ eyes in the room. The only complication came when they reached another big mushroom growing over a former fairy circle…

Belissar watched a spell wasp fly forward. The big mushroom, as the previous one, began releasing bigger clumps of Hunger mist, creating a shower of black snow spreading out from its cap. One of the clumps hit the spell wasp…and reacted to its mana. Both the clump and the spell wasp began dissolving where they contacted each other, creating a big hole in the spell wasp. The wasp shuddered and then faded as the spell broke apart, dropping the honeycomb far from the target.

Belissar sighed.

“Well, I guess it was too much to hope that the spells would be immune to that. We’ll have to use the rabbits after all for the big ones…big ones…huh…”

Belissar realized there might be something else they could try, something he had never tried before. The spell didn’t actually need to survive the big mushroom’s attack…it just had to last long enough to get to the stalk. So, perhaps all they needed was a bigger spell, one that would take longer to dissolve?

And that made Belissar realize that, up until now, he had only ever made spell monster bees. But honeybees were not the only kind of bee out there, so spell monster bees shouldn’t be all that Bee magic was capable of either.

Deciding it was worth a try, Belissar stirred up his mana. He started making a big spell, bigger than any other individual spell he had made before…though after the sheer amount of spell bees he had created during the battle with Starami, it proved far easier than he had expected. His spell began to take form…but not as a honeycomb this time. This time, his mana formed into a wax pot, one that came up to his thighs.

The spell managed to complete, then glowing mandibles pierced through the top of the pot and began chewing their way through. A few moments later, the first spell bumblebee soldier emerged, big, glowing, fuzzy, and ready for Belissar’s command.

Belissar…first stepped forward and petted the spell bumblebee to see if it was as fuzzy as the real things. Its hairs weren’t real, but they did produce a pleasant tingling sensation that was not dissimilar. Belissar smiled, then stopped playing around and sent the spell bumblebee forward towards the corrupted room.

The spell bumblebee’s wings buzzed and thumped through the air as it made its way towards the nearest big mushroom. As it approached, the mushroom released its attack. The spell bumblebee flew onwards, flying straight into the dark rain ahead.

Clumps of Hunger stuck to the spell and began attacking it as with the wasp. Belissar winced as he felt his mana jolt, but he held onto the spell and sent more mana through it. The spell bumblebee was taking even more damage than the wasp had…but the spell was much larger, so its overall integrity remained intact. Indeed, the hairs on the bumblebee acted as a shield as the spell didn’t seem to take damage when the hairs did, so the spell’s integrity wouldn’t be directly threatened until the Hunger dissolved through the hairs.

More and more clumps of Hunger landed on the spell bumblebee, but onward it flew. Its hairs dissolved away and the Hunger began attacking its chitin. The spell wavered as it started unraveling, Belissar reinforced it as he could but the Hunger had completely coated it by this point and was attacking from all sides. It was dissolving faster than Belissar could repair it.

In the end, it was a battle Belissar couldn’t win. The spell bumblebee faded as its integrity failed.

But it faded right at the base of the mushroom’s stalk. Belissar smiled.

Shortly thereafter, four spell bumblebees flew forth, with webs looped around their legs to one of Juosiutik’s combusting orchid bombs hanging between them all, an extra big one. Spell wasps flew around them as a shield, ready to absorb as much of the mushroom’s attacks as they could.

The wasps vanished in the first wave, but they bought the bumblebees some time. The Hunger started its work, chewing through the spell bumblebees’ hair…but it was not fast enough. The bumblebees lowered the bomb to the base of the mushroom’s stalk before their integrity failed.

At which point the integrity of the trigger ward failed as well…and the bomb exploded. And not a single defender of the Tower was harmed, not even a zombie rabbit.