"..Young master please wake up!"
"Eh?"
I wake up only to feel a very soft bed and the fluffy ears of Yumi on my face.
With my thoughts all foggy i try to move a bit but Yumi held me in place by hugging me tighter before asking.
"Young master were you having a nightmare again?"
A nightmare?
I tried to figure out what was going on but she interrupted my thoughts.
She cuddled even closer to me and started rubbing her face against mine.
"Everything will be fine, you don't have to worry about a thing!"
Just when she said this Rose entered the room.
"Rose, young master is having a nightmare again!"
"Young master is that true?"
Rose asked while she was putting some clothes in my wardrobe before she started coming closer to me while she started to change from her normal clothes to her sleepwear.
"Mmm Rose where did you get these things from?"
Instead of the usual night clothes she changed into a lingerie with a practicaly see through top.
"Hehe!"
Rose let out an embarrassed laugh and turned red before answering.
"I though young master would like them!"
Weren't plain thin clothes a luxury in this world? Where did such a complex and intricate designed piece of clothing came from and further more what is it doing at the hands of a maid loyal to a broke kid!?
While i was thinking of this Rose got close enough as to be within touching distance and bend over a enough as to where her cleavage was right at my eye level.
'Wow, i had forgoten those things were E cup!'
Rose started reaching out her hand as if to pat my forehead and started gently talking to me.
"Worry not Bell, all is going to be fine, just relax and go back to sleep."
The combination of the soft bed, the cute girl hugging me and Rose's soothing voice made all my trouble go away but just as i was to fall asleep with a contend smile on my face i heard a sound.
It was that anoying buzzing sound that bees make.
'Tsk i hate bees'
"..."
Bees?
My eyes instantly open wide and i shoot a 'Light spear' at Rose's hand that is getting all the closer to my forehead before making gluttonus aura surrounding my body.
"CRACK"
A huge crack apear in my room before it dissipated.
The scenery changed back to the dungeon right where i was but now a lilac bee around the size of a human writhing in pain with a hole on it's body.
There is also a plant like thing around me but it was easily taken care of by gluttony.
I emotionlessly waved my hand twice casting 'light spear' and making a spear out of gluttonus aura before firing them both.
The lilac bee seemed to notice the attack coming and tried to dodge but it was too close to me so it ended up getting inevitably pierced by both attacks.
By some miracly the 'light spear' hit it on the head ending it's life instantly while gluttony went to work and in just a minute the whole thing had been 'eaten'.
There was a problem though.
'I didn't get any skills?'
I was expecting to at the very least get dark magic since it is the main element with illusions but i didn't get a single thing.
My thought procces was interupted by a buzzing sound that was coming closer and closer to me.
Quickly turning around i began running away so as to at the very least but some distance between me and whatever type of bee was coming but after some time the buzzing sound started sounding way farther than it should have been, as if the bee suddenly stopped following me.
I still kept running but i turned my head to see the situation.
To my surprise the bee, which by the way was also lilac, stopped and didn't move an inch further than the area that was covered with bee-wax.
'Now that i think about it the previous one also attacked me inthe was covered area.'
There are too many coincidences, there must be some test before making sure but i already have a very scary guess as to how this damn beehive works.
Stopping i turned around while at the same time i pulled out a spear, this time it was a normal spear and not a magic spell.
I carefully walked closer and closer until i was close enough to attack, which i did.
"PUCHI"
The sound of piercing flesh wrung out in the cave but i didn't pull the spear out and instead waited until it started casting the spell.
"BUZZZZZZZZZ"
A buzzing sound was coming out of the bee but this time it didn't annoy me at all, instead i wanted to hear it more and more.
Just when i was about to fall into the illusion i used the spear to pull the bee out of the wax covered area.
The bee didn't stop the buzzing but it no longer possessed hypnotic properties, it was just the plain old annoying sound that i hate.
But it didn't stop, even after 5 minutes and even when i stabbed it again with the spear it didn't even flinch.
It was like a robot that was comanded to do a single command but lost signal form the base making unable to follow up or react in any way, shape or form.
'So it is true huh.'
I slashed at it chopping it's head off while frowning at the same time.
It is indeed hive mind but even more evolved than i could have imagined.
All the bees here are just empty sells with not even a shred of instinct, all are in the complete control of the bee queen probably or perhaps the kind if there even exists one.
Originaly manipulating hunderds of creatures would be impossible unless you are at least a god but here are ways around it.
What if the queen hadn't made the bees into puppets but rather used them as notes like a huge computer network.
She would use all the cumulative brain processing power to further enchance herself by learning magic, magic is a very complex thing but if lets say that a single bee has the intelligence stat of 0.01 then it would need only 1000 simple bees to reach the highest intelligence posible as a mortal human.
How many bees are in this whole dungeon?
At the very least there should be several million which would amount tens of thousands of intelligence points.
Forget learning just simple magic, if given enough time this thing can be a threat to the world as a whole if it were to be allowed out of this dungeon!
But all this requires a medium so a to limit expenditure and this is where the bee wax comes into play, it's like the internet that connects all the bees together.
This would also explain why i didn't get a skill after i used gluttony on that lilac bee, if i had to guess then all these special bees are specialy made to handle the techniques and spells of the queen, meaning that they never actualy had this skill in the first place and were just being used as an intermediary.
But everything come at a cost and the bee queen's cost is her dependance on her minions, if i were to go ahead and through gorilla warfare slowly take down more and more of her minions then i believe she would be even weaker than the white centipede since she would have never enhanced her own body.
Also, due to limitations of the wax, making attacks without huge amounts of preperations or being connected to the bee colony is almost impossible so i won't have to worry about them getting out of hand.
With eveything in mind i started concocting a new and impoved plan.
I will focus on taking out the spiders while daily visiting places taken over by the bees and start using gluttonous aura doing both damage and slowing their expansion pace down.
As for the ants, i will ignore them until i deal with the spiders as long as they don't cause me any trouble.
Not wasting any time i started creating those exploding balls made of gluttonus aura while at the same time started spreading the deluted gluttonus aura at the suroundings.
The attack lasted for about half a minute before i relocated to another tunnel taken over by the bees and did the exact same thing.
Again and again and again until the queen decided that she have had enough so she sent stronger bees to guard their land.
A horible choice of action since i actualy excel in taking down lone targets.
After more than 3 hours of my shenanigans the queen bee started putting around 10 strong bees in each location making it a bit difficult to continue attacking but then again i don't need to.
I intentionally kept attacking the points that are the furthest away from the spiders making it so the bees have to either focus on me or the spiders.
Knowing that i have finaly made some meaningful progress in conquering the second floor of this dungeon i started returing to the safe-zone to get some well-deserved rest.
All the meanwhile i can't help but think of all the useful information i aquired today.
First that the 'Bronze body' is a completely different league to when compared to it's previous version, actualy if it hadn't enhnanced the capabilities of my brain i wouldn't have noticed even with my 'effect tolerance' the existence of that illusion.
Second, the way that the bee colony works, this is of critical value to me since it will make clearing this floor much easier.
And thirdly...
My mind traces back to Rose wearing that blood-boiling pear of nightwear.
I should make Rose some proper underwear when i go back.
.....
There, the boy filled with determination made plans for his future with a smile on his face.
Thankfully no one was around to see that perverted smile of his which was in huge contrast to his age