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BD - POBee 215.1 - Assem-Bee-ling Mobile Hives
🕑 Added 2024-12-30 20:05:00 +0000 UTCThe next day, Belissar began to set up the Death room Hesfalle had described. He made a new Flower Meadow on the karnuq floor connecting to door near the stairs to the other floors. He place a mana flower node and a basic poisonous herb node, then enabled rabbits in the room.
And after that…he was done.
For now, at least. He didn’t want to spawn the butcher bees until there were enough rabbits to feed them. Likewise, underworld phlox required death mana to even start growing, so he couldn’t plant those until they started hunting rabbits. Hesfalle did recommend adding poisonous plants…but besides the poisonous herbs none of the rest really fit. Subterranean deathcap were, well, subterranean, while the lava lotus needed lava, so neither of them were available. Vaporous hemlock could be planted if he added a pond…but Belissar was wary of filling the air with toxic mist. The karnuq and bees were supposed to hunt here, after all.
So, Belissar was done until the rabbits reached sufficient numbers to sustain butcher bee hives. He wondered how long that would take…
***
As Belissar went about his day, he noticed something peculiar. Worker bees constantly landed all over him, crawling over all parts of his body. They buzzed and hummed and occasionally bumped into and danced with one another. Belissar greatly enjoyed this, so he didn’t question it, content to watch the bees buzzing around him and occasionally offer them some magic honey.
The workers in question then went to report the nearest communer…
Back in the First of the Fifth’s bee apartment, the First of the Fifth’s Fourth Daughter’s antennae twitched as she felt a communer’s mana flow towards her. She spun about until she found the spot with the strongest mana flow to ensure she didn’t miss a single step of the communer’s mana dance. Once she had received the report in full, she began dancing and spreading her own mana.
“Leg too short, waist too wide. Bring closer!”
Before her, a buzzing cloud of workers shifted in response to her dance, piecing together bits of wax that they fused with their mana, cutting and trimming as instructed. Propolis sealed the gaps and reinforced potential weakpoints. Gardeners brought in as much pollen and resin as they could gather, which the honeypots converted to huge globs of mana-imbued wax and propolis for the workers to use. Communers and drones monitored the effort, the drones using their big eyes to identify inconsistencies with the desired measurements and the communers relaying the corrections.
Nearly her entire hive was at work here. Thanks to the recent boom in honey production, her queen mother had instructed her to focus all available efforts on this task, and the Fourth Daughter intended to do just that.
For what greater task could there be than building a hive in the image of the King?
***
The First of the Fifth’s Fourth Daughter was not the only queen working at this task, however. The First of the Fifth’s Seventh Daughter may not have lived in her queen mother’s hive, but her queen mother had taught her all that she knew. She built her hive with all of the diligence and excellence her queen mother expected of herself and all her children.
Though, she could not use any of the precise methods her queen mother had taught her, for her hive was…different.
All of her hive’s honey, rather than sitting neatly in organized cells, globbed together and flowed around her in a viscous mass. She had tried to separate and organize it at first, but she could only ever do so temporarily, all the honey mixing back together the moment she stopped paying attention to it. She had tried to separate the honeys entirely, but any that lost contact with the mass she swam in lost density and melted into pure liquid. The one thing her queen mother hated worse than mixing the honeys was wasting them, so she had quickly given up on that idea.
It had been a dark time as she had been forced to mix the honeys, but her queen mother had reassured her. The whole point of her birth had been to discover a new kind of bee and a new kind of hive, so her queen mother had not wished for her to rigidly adhere to the traditional methods. No, her queen mother had advised her to experiment and find her own ways of doing things, ones that were compatible with her unique characteristics.
Even as she reminisced, a huge glob of honey slime came sliding into her palace. A soldier propelled the entire mass forward while honeypots floated within, processing nectar into honey slime on the spot. Their work was already finished by the time the glob reconnected with her hive slime, seamlessly combining their masses.
She had found that since her bees’ honey was their hive and they liked to carry both with them that she could move her honeypots around without any loss in production time. This had solved the issue with her workers moving more slowly than others, as they could move the nectar delivery point right to the flowers.
Still, all that had only made up for their disadvantages compared to the other queens. The Seventh Daughter was still trying to figure out if her unique characteristics provided any advantage. Slower bees that had to carry their honey with them, honey that couldn’t be separated from the hive without rapidly diluting, and an inability to organize different nectars were all heavy prices to pay, and she had yet to find any particular advantage worth all those constraints. Sure, she could move honey around as easily as commanding her children, but her queen mother could already move honey faster than her by just having a soldier carry the honeycomb. She could apparently fill parts of all of the honey with her venom, but maddening and the new toxic bees did the same without any special effort. She could increase her honey slime production by converting water into slime to mix with the honey, but extra diluted honey was not particularly appealing to her.
So far, nothing she could do seemed to justify all she had given up.
But she was nothing if not persistent, and she had something new to try. The King had granted them new knowledge to experiment with and so the Seventh Daughter set out to see if her hive could use it. It seemed to involve making wax structures. She paused and pondered for a moment. Her hive could make wax, but she hadn’t seen much of a point. Her children could grow directly within the honey slime and grew better that way, she couldn’t store the honey slime in cells, and she already had the King’s magical palace for protection from the elements.
Now though, she had a reason to try. She sent out a surge of her mana and the honey slime responded. The entire mass began to shape itself according to her thoughts. That, she supposed, was one of the few advantages she had. The honey slime itself acted as her own legs and wings, she could command it and any of her children within the main mass even more easily than her fellow queens could command their own hives. Within moments, the entire hive had reshaped itself according to the pattern in her mind.
Then, she commanded it to make wax. The other layer of the honey slime began to harden while compounds within the mass shifted about. The honey slime itself turned into completed wax and so the shape of the wax golem was completed in an instant.
The Seventh Daughter froze at this, staring at the completed wax structure for a moment. Having not attempted any wax structures after the first few honeycomb, she hadn’t realized she could do this. The ability to complete an entire hive in an instant, without any effort needed from her workers? That was powerful indeed…or would be, if she had any need for honeycomb. But it was a solid advantage, and for that, she was deeply grateful.
Her work was not done, however, so she refocused. The knowledge from the King stated that the creation of the hive’s form was only the first and easiest step. The difficult part would be to imbue the creation with mana and to form a self-sustaining core that would both maintain the hive’s structure and allow it to move. So, she stretched out her mana…
…and found that the wax was completely full of mana. It was still connected to her honey slime hive and her mana still flowed through it. She paused. Did this count as sufficient? She wasn’t sure, the knowledge implied the process should have required her workers to imbue mana bit by bit. But, well, the knowledge also implied the workers should have built the hive bit by bit and she had been able to do it all at once, so maybe it was fine?
In any case, the state of the wax seemed to match the end result the knowledge described, so she decided to attempt the final step. Forming the core that made the hive into a golem was the trickiest part, according to the knowledge. Why, it required a queen to learn how to treat mere wax as if it were one of her children…
The wax moved.
The Seventh Daughter floated in place, completely still for a moment. She gently told the wax to move again.
The wax lifted its arm.
…was she doing something wrong? This wasn’t hard at all, not anything like the knowledge implied. It was no different from moving her own honey slime.
She wasn’t sure but she followed the instincts granted to her by the knowledge. She told the honey slime to condense into a core that she embedded into the wax, which it did immediately, then she withdrew her honey slime from the golem entirely. She stretched out her mana and told the golem to move again.
The golem sat up as she commanded.
She…had done it? Just like that?
She stared at the golem for a while before her wings began to beat and swish the honey slime around her. She…had done it. By all metrics she knew, she had made a functional wax golem…in mere moments, and with none of the difficulties the knowledge warned her of.
Which meant…maybe she had an advantage after all.
Author’s Note:
And we’re back…for now. Thanks everyone for your patience! The holidays can be a bit busy…especially if you happen to be an introvert haha. Don’t plan to take off for New Years but again, we’ll take this week one day at a time.
But all that’s non-bee stuff so let’s get back to what’s important! Bees! Bees making stuff! Slime bees making stuff! Well, I suppose if a bee uses the stuff it makes as her own body then she’d be even better at making stuff! The Fourth Daughter might be in for a surprise from her younger sister, huh.
...ah crap, only realized now I made a mistake. In Chapter 181 the First of the Fifth names her Gravity daughter as Fifth Daughter and her Slime daughter as Sixth Daughter. But...she already had a Fifth Daughter who's working on mass honey production, so it should have been Sixth - Gravity and Seventh - Slime. I'm moving forward with Sixth - Gravity and Seventh - Slime from now on, sorry for any resulting confusion!
Anyways!
Will the Fourth Daughter complete her urgent task? Has the Seventh Daughter already done it? Will the Seventh Daughter find her place in the hive of hives? Tune in next time, to find out!
Comments
Durphymcbob
Thank we can agree on.
phantom
The goal is not to streamline golems with other wax effects. but streamline parts of a golem that can be streamlined.
Durphymcbob
It would make since that the only reason that the slime wadx golems can be made so fast is becasue they are made of pure slime wax, so if they wanteded to modify it and add diferent waxes they would have to do so manually. Plus i beilve they could ass more then just different waxes to the golems as long as it is till mostly uses a wax as a base. A few slime bees could be crossbred thou to adapt to current enviroments.
phantom
To some extent I think it is a toss up whether it is weaker or stronger than normal wax. We have not really been told any of the properties of slime honey aside it being slime. And yes it can't be used for the other honey types. Though I wonder if they have to make it all one uniform type.
Durphymcbob
Fair but the slime wax golems are probably exactly as strong as a base normal wax golem, the process probably can't be copied with other honey types and waxes so we cant use ghis process to get wax golems for the lava fields. The only other way to improve them is probably by adding things like wood, ceramics and metal.
phantom
Actually I believe there is probably few side effects. The speed was not the result of a rush job. It was simply that her honey already met the qualifications of the golem. For instance it is not that she skipped having the wax saturated with mana. But that it was already saturated so there was nothing left to do for that step.
Durphymcbob
Their is still the limited reasource of slime honey/wax, sure she out of all queens than make the golems the fastest and proabably the destory slime wax golems can recycled into new material quickly, but the wax they are made out of is the slime wax. prefect disposable units as they can be mass produced, but their is properly side effects to the fast speed of them being made.
Presten
3d printing bee queen. Bees, additive manufacturing is so cool.
Fernando Oliveira
Thanks for the chapter. Loved it. 1st of 5th 7th daughter is brilliant. She's literally a mobile golem production plant. And she can probably do so much more. It took her moments to make the golem she could probably help with the construction. Building wax walls in moments. Especially if other hives donate more honey to her. Additional her soldiers could probably trap shades by dive bombing them with their honey. Their slow but they can try a similar method as the lancers. Making them selves into wax spears onto to crash into the enemy and envelope them in the honey within. Only to harden all the honey to wax and retreat. Some shades might be able to escape but most of the current one would be screwed. It would also be an effective weapon against the human and other bipedals.
mly85lc
Basically a one of thous skinless bear takes + the mountain + say.. wrestle Aleksandr Karelin in hes prime. Sure last two are on enchanting biet. And Karelin probably would piss trought test cup. But in world of magic statuses screens that not big ask.
mly85lc
And since they need front line warrior/troops how about having giant boby build bearkin that is more on animalism side act as inspiration. Some living models form bears form tower lords and most buffet up humanoid MC tower guards recall seeing.
mly85lc
For example A spiderkin antkin or horsekin whit full insecticide/animal lower boby to acts as flowering gardening backmules.
mly85lc
Nice. Since golem need be humanoid too move around dose it need exciting people? How long can humanoid shape bee bent before its not humanoid eny more? Or can it bee imagine humanoid creatures?
The furry in your walls in your walls
Haven't read yet, but my first thought when I read the title was "fuck yeah bee mecha!" Edit: Now that I've read the chapter, heck yeah golem printer bees!
phantom
The slime golem would be specifically slime wax so there is advantages in making a few of other waxes. But she clearly won for best overall golem maker. Also this sheer speed is a weapon all its own. This means she doesn't need to make them all in advance. She can make golems specifically suited to countering their opponents or adapt golems. Speaking of which if she makes a golem she modifies mid combat there will be justification for her to be close to combat. The Firstborn will be so jealous. .. while maybe it is time for the Firstborn to pick an affinity. From what I see the First of the Fifth is the only one that particularly needs to remain neutral as she is focused on honey production.
Black Esper
Thanks for the chapter. I beelieve Belissars reaction to the wax golem in his form to bee highly entertaining 🐝😉
Durphymcbob
Thanks for the chapter! The beginings of the death room/hunting room, is starting cant wait to see how this goes. The Golems are finally being produced super exicted to see where they go! Its clear that 4th daughter, is clearly going for making the highest quality golems, and will most likely be the one to lead int research of how different waxs and or materials being added to golems and how they affect them, but seventh daughter being a slime bee, and having the abilty to shape her honey easily as it being a smlime and all is great for the mass production of golems, and that power would also be extremelky useful in repairing them, thou the golem being made of pure slime wax probably wont allow it to gain benifts for any of the other magic waxes as easy unless the golems could be made of multiple waxes. Once these golems start being added to the rotation of the Army, the battle meadow queeens, and kurnuq could probably give some tips on how to craft them to be better at combat in each individual room. the building Queen could probably make some wooden supports to increase the golems strudiness, and the kurnuq craftsmaen could proabbly also make simple armor plates or metal spikes to be used as weapons, to increase thair damage. (Im just super exicted to see just how customizeable the golems are)
fanfan8000
typo? The other(outer?) layer of the honey slime began to harden while compounds within the mass shifted about.
Drakenclaw
Thanks for the chapter. If I read that right, not only can the slime bee queen pretty much make a golem instantly, she should also be able to repair and modify it even mid battle. Very nice!
Will-o'- the-Wisp
Yesss, Sweet nectar, Bee chapters!
