The Legendary Beekeeper-Chapter 46: Bee’s Eye View

Like god’s blood, golden energy flowed into the grooves of the stone slab’s hieroglyphs, providing luminosity within the room where the rays from the outside sun could not.

Beelathorn’s eyes narrowed as an equally bright hologram bled out from the top of the extension station.

『Extension Station has been reconfigured to ’Unique’ Status』

┏━━━━━━━━━━━┓

─Selection Screen─

〖System Screen〗

〖Skill Tree〗

〖Map〗

〖World Rankings〗

〖Advanced Communications〗

〖System Manual〗

┗━━━━━━━━━━━┛

’It’s like an advanced system screen,’ Beelathorn thought to himself, skimming over the different selections. After a bit of indecision, he found himself most drawn to the map selection.

He had spent roughly five days in Apocalypse at this point — though from the way he was constantly in and out of sub-dimensions, he couldn’t be too sure— so it was high time he got a sense of the world he was living in.

Just like with the system screen, he focused his intent on the map selection, and the hologram crackled like static on an old television.

A moment later, a holographic display of a globe flickered into existence.

He was amazed at how much like Earth this planet seemed. The continents and oceans were more or less the same, save for some slight differences in what should’ve been Africa and North America. However, an unignorable difference came in the form of a massive hole that had eaten away at what should’ve been Australasia, almost as if something had taken a large bite out of the Earth.

From Beelathorn’s knowledge of physics, life shouldn’t be sustainable with a large chunk of the planet missing. But who was he to refute this reality? After all, he was a boy turned bee, now sent on a crusade to slay an otherworldly god. Broken physics was the least of his concerns.

On the globe, a tiny red dot was blinking somewhere within what should’ve been central Asia. He focused his intent on it, and the perspective zoomed in until the outline of what looked like a small town came into view.

There, he found three large boundaries taking up most of this small town, and they were conveniently marked: ’Central’, ’The Manor’, and ’East Alliance’. Of the three, ’Central’ took up the largest portion, its boundary spanning the entire northern area of the town and far into a part of the map that seemed to be blank.

The manor was the smallest, taking up a mere pinhead in what seemed like the ocean of this town. And ’East Alliance’ as it was aptly named, took up the entire Eastern area of the town; however, its entirety was completely blank, as if all landmarks upon it had been purposefully erased.

This seemed quite odd as the map was filled with all sorts of landmarks, well, symbols to be exact. The read manor with its crimson crown, Central with what looked like an ancient Greek palace. And apart from that, glowing question marks, skulls, swirling clouds, and other unfamiliar symbols of all sorts.

Beelathorn tried to focus his intent on one such symbol, but found that nothing happened. It was almost as if they were locked, kept hidden from his scrying eye by some command within the stone slab.

’Still, it’s not too difficult to piece things together. All these symbols are likely quests, or objectives of some sort,’ Beelathorn surmized, before willing the map to zoom out a little. It was only when he had zoomed it out nearly all the way did he find what he was looking for.

The symbol of a black tower, floating above the circumference of the globe to the far north. He could not fathom why it might be floating while other symbols seemed glued to the planet; however, he knew it had something to do with what Nolan had mentioned.

The closer you got to it, the more dangerous the climate and monsters became.

Even its position seemed odd. It was stationed exactly where the north pole would be; however, anyone could see it plain as day, watching over them from the horizon. Surely this map couldn’t be right?

Had the rankers all travelled thousands upon thousands of kilometres to find it?

Before Beelathorn could think of an answer, a knock came to the door.

He had half the mind to ignore it. There was still so much he had to explore on the extension station, and in an area filled with strangers and unmet enemies, answering the door probably wasn’t a wise move.

However, the decision was taken away from him when a dark mist began to seep in from the space beneath his crimson door.

’Didn’t Jack say this place was spatially locked?’ he thought in annoyance, summoning his echo-blade from his inventory, and preparing to use Queen’s Gaze as soon as a threat materialised.

Strangely, he found himself calming down when the shadow mist materialised into a familiar figure.

"Shadow woman," Beelathorn spat. "I was told my quarters were spatially secured."

The woman in front of him... or better yet, the girl in front of him, smiled. "There’s not much that light can’t reach. And wherever there’s light, there’s shadows, dear Han," she said musingly.

This was Beelathorn’s first time seeing her in the flesh. She was clearly of East Asian descent: monolid eyes, fair pale skin, and straight black hair tied into a messy bun. Unlike Nolan and Jen, her face and clothes were clean... though it wasn’t like she was wearing much anyway. Her stomach, parts of her breast, and most of her leg up to her upper thighs lay exposed, and what little was covered was hidden by shifting shadows fashioned into a silk gown.

A weaker man’s trousers would’ve burned with lust at the sight of this girl. But to Beelathorn, it just made her look all the more dangerous. His father had taught him well enough that women were a man’s greatest weakness; luckily for him, Beelathorn’s had been made without it.

"What do you want?" Beelathorn asked, turning back to the extension station.

A tendril of shadow energy zipped past him, and the shadow woman materialised on the opposite side of the extension station, staring at him past the holographic map.

"It’s not about what I want, dearest Han," she mused. "I’m here to ask about what you want."