Chapter Ninety-Seven: The Hive Completed

Queen Bee: The only female bee in the hive capable of laying eggs, she is the mother of the entire swarm. To recruit a hive, you must first have a queen bee! Recruitment cost: 1,000 raw meat (each hive can have only one queen bee).

Worker Bee: Aside from eating and sleeping, their lives revolve around labor. They are the most industrious members of the hive. Recruitment cost: 50 raw meat.

Drone Bee: Their sole duty is to mate with the queen bee, producing more offspring! Recruitment cost: 100 raw meat.

Soldier Bee: Guardians of the hive, these fearless warriors are ever ready to sacrifice their lives for the queen’s safety! Recruitment cost: 200 raw meat.

Special Hive Attribute: Each day, five giant bees of random types—excluding the queen bee—will automatically hatch.

After diligent gathering, Justin finally managed to construct the hive, situating it in a clearing within the woods just outside the city’s southern gate. The location was deliberately chosen to create a defensive barrier; if the city guards or imperial army tried to attack, they would have to come through the south gate. With giant bees blocking the path, any assault on the city would be far from easy.

The queen bee was a massive, plump creature—if other giant bees were like small boats, she was a luxury cruiser. Her size was nearly unimaginable! Though she wasn’t particularly strong in combat, the ability to hatch five random giant bees daily made her as valuable as the werewolf Wolf, who also cost 1,000 raw meat to recruit. In fact, she might even be more valuable than Wolf!

With a queen bee, worker bees were essential to care for her and her eggs. Justin spent 5,000 raw meat to recruit 100 worker bees, then used 10,000 raw meat to recruit another 100 drones. Finally, the option to recruit soldier bees was unlocked!

The hive was a unique structure and could not be upgraded, making soldier bees its most powerful combat unit. Of course, recruiting them was expensive—exorbitantly so—and only 500 could be recruited per day. For more, one would have to wait until the next day.

A hive could hold a maximum of 30,000 giant bees, including the queen. Once this limit was reached, no more bees could be recruited or hatched unless some perished.

Justin, unwilling to waste any opportunities, promptly exchanged gold coins for 100,000 units of raw meat in several trips, filling that day’s recruitment quota for soldier bees. This cost him 100 gold coins—a painful expense.

Fortunately, the resource exchange station allowed him to trade one gold ore for ten gold coins. After mining the nearest small gold vein, he had 113 gold ores left—116 in total with those dropped by the Fire Python. That was 1,160 gold coins’ worth. With the treasure left by Captain Brent of the town guards, Justin could continue recruiting without interruption for at least half a month, expanding his army of soldier bees as much as possible!

Of course, knowing he would need money for many other things, he realized he had to find more gold veins to mine.

The Magic Beast Forest, a perilous region even the imperial army dared not enter, was rich in mineral resources. He planned to take advantage of the downtime to expand his search, hoping to discover more and larger veins.

Now that the Fire Python was dead, a whole new region awaited exploration.

After handling matters at the hive, he immediately returned to the city with Wolf.

Upon arriving home, he found that Tina, who usually stayed quietly indoors, was nowhere to be seen, and neither was Perin, who always accompanied her. Justin worried they had wandered too far outside the city and hurriedly asked around.

“Tina? They’re at the town guards’ camp!” a villager informed him.

Justin rushed to the camp with Wolf.

“Sir Keen!” the town guard on duty outside the camp greeted him at once.

“Where’s Tina?”

“She’s at the training grounds!”

Justin hurried to the training grounds and, sure enough, spotted both Tina and Perin. Only then did he breathe a sigh of relief.

The two girls hadn’t noticed Justin entering. They faced the wooden training dummies, practicing with intense focus.

Swish, swish, swish! Perin, wearing the bronze necklace Justin had given her, attacked the wooden targets with impressive ferocity. Her swordsmanship was already quite good, and the necklace’s added properties made her even stronger. One wooden dummy after another was split apart by her strikes, only to be restored moments later.

The training grounds had a distinct advantage: the wooden dummies would repair themselves automatically after being destroyed, so the trainees could focus entirely on their practice, without a care.

“Hah!” Tina, dressed in the Fire Robe and Fire Boots, used Fireball spells to attack the dummies, honing her control over her magic.

Seeing how serious they were, Justin refrained from interrupting and instead sat in a corner with Wolf, quietly watching.

“I’m out of magic!” Tina, exhausted from hurling fireballs, sat down where she was, clutching her staff as she looked at Perin. “Ugh, my magic is still too weak. What should I do?”

“Diligent training should gradually increase your mana, just like how we town guards build our endurance with daily hard work,” Perin replied, her expression blank.

“But that’s too slow!” Tina sighed. “I want to help Keen too—I don’t want to be a burden!”

“Unless you can master the basics of being a mage—meditation,” Perin answered. “Once you learn to meditate, your mana will increase dramatically, and your recovery speed will improve. Otherwise, you could restore your magic by drinking mana potions.”

“I do have mana potions! But only two, and Keen gave them to me. They’re so precious, I can’t bear to use them—not unless it’s an emergency!” Tina sighed. “I wish I could learn to meditate, but there’s no one to teach me. And with my talent, even if I enrolled in the Mage Academy, I’d probably be rejected right away.”

“Then there’s no other way. You’ll have to improve and accumulate your power bit by bit,” Perin replied, still expressionless.

“I envy you... I wish I could help Keen sooner! Every time a battle starts, I can only hide. I’m hardly any help at all,” Tina said, feeling a bit down. “Am I useless?”

Perin was silent.

“Tina, how could you possibly be useless?” Justin couldn’t help but speak up when he heard this. “Having you with me is what makes my life so fulfilling!”

“Ah!” Tina jumped at the sudden voice behind her. Turning around, she saw Justin standing above her, smiling broadly. “Keen, when did you get here?”

“I was worried about you, so I came to check on you,” Justin replied, descending the steps to her side. “Don’t worry. One day you’ll become a powerful mage. For now, the best way you can help me is by being happy every day.”