Dungeon Robotics 9 - 6 (Patreon)

Evening Everyone! This chapter was pulled from the old version. I'd say about eighty percent of it is the same. I'll mark where the new content starts and since there is little new (technically) I will be posting an annihilation chapter as well. 

Izora

Looking over the construction from the air, I felt that Lord Regan would be pleased by our progress. I was amazed at how far into the future the lord was looking. Even though he had the portals, he factored that they might not work forever, and he had been right. It was unfortune that we hadn’t started earlier, but we were still making good progress.

The train system as lord Regan calls it would allow anyone to move from city to city without any fear of monsters, or more recently the undead. To start with we were connecting the city of Tearfalls to Steel Spire then the valley. From there, I believe lord Regan wanted us to connect the capital of Thonaca and even the new Theocracy that had formed in the southern areas of Lecazar.

“His lordship certainly is openhearted,” I mumbled to myself. I don’t think I could be as forgiving as my lord. Thonaca had attacked Vaihdetta and the church of Lelune had declared us all heretics, they deserved to be wiped from the surface of the planet in my opinion.

An explosion pulled me from my thoughts, and I spotted a large undead heading from the Mobile Constructor. I knew the vehicle could handle the monster, but my thoughts made me want to break something. Spinning my spear, I beat my wings as I aimed at the monster. Gaining speed rapidly, I was soon directly above it.

With a thrust, I slammed through the monster managing to impact the ground under it. Twisting, I brought my spear back around in a horizontal slash that severed the monster in half. Black blood and decayed flesh rained around me. I channeled some mana to create a flame to burn it all away.

“My lady. Its not safe for you to keep doing that,” Hatsu shouted at me in annoyance as she ran over with the rest of my former royal guard.

“I’ve told you to just call me Izora. I don’t deserve to be your queen,” I said looking at the ground. I was the princess of the only gnome city on the continent, in the world and my family had managed to reduce our population by nearly half. It would have been more had lord Regan not saved them from when the city exploded.

“Don’t be an idiot,” Hatsu said with a tone I’d never heard before. I looked up at her in surprise and found she had an even more annoyed expression than usual which was extra pronounced her sharp features that were rare for a gnome. She looked around at the others before she blew the air through her teeth making a hissing sound. “My lady. I’m going to be blunt with you.”

“Oh… okay?” I said nervously

“The royal guard, and really all of your people still love you and want you to be their queen. That’s why its really annoying when you talk bad about yourself. Nothing that happened was your fault. In fact, if you hadn’t connected us with Lord Regan then chances are we’d all be necromancers slaves or worse undead at this moment.”

“Don’t forget that demon thing that was taking over the city,” Sasori commented from next to her.

Hatsu gave her a nod. “Right. Or we could all be mind controlled puppets. Either way, tell me when you had any involvement with those events that didn’t result in most of us being saved in the end.”

I was about to comment when Tsuzuki interrupted me. “I don’t remember teaching such a stupid pupil. Did you only remember how to throw that old Warhammer around from my lessons?”

I blushed at the sudden attack but deep down I was happy. The events leading to and the destruction of Jade Wind had been weighing me down. To be honest, even this construction was more of a distraction. Lord Regan had asked if there was anything else I wouldn’t like to do when he talked to me about it. I hadn’t been able to think of anything.

I jumped forward and hugged Hatsu. “Thank you.” I whispered in her ear. Then louder for everyone else. “Thank you everyone. I’m awake now.”

“Its about time.” Morita said with a straight face, but I could still hear the relief in her voice. I couldn’t let my friends continue to worry about me. I was a princess, no, I was a queen. It was time for me to truly take up my mantel. First, I would finish what Lord Regan had asked of me.

I rubbed my eyes. I couldn’t let them see me crying. “Alright. Let’s get to work! We were going to be through the dead scar in a week. I want to be through it in two days!”

Everyone cheered and we rushed back to the train. I hopped onto the top and placed my hands on the panels. Mana began to flow through me and the automata and machines began to work faster. Looking back, I think Lord Regan had hoped this would happen. He had created the vehicle after all. Why would he create a feature to speed up the construction rather than just require me to use it in the first place?

Sparks of mana shot up into the air around the train as it began to work faster. The tainted mana was pulled into the train were a modified mana reactor worked to cleanse it then used the excess mana to build taint resistant metal ties that made up the tracks. Anything in front of the train was ground to dust by large metal blades that rotated fast enough to tear a person limb to limb in seconds.

What normally would have taken us two or three days to reach, only took us the rest of the evening. The undead were slowly starting to become a real problem, but the weapons on the train easily kept them at bay. Anything under tier three was easily turned into pieces of meat.

“The gorge is in sight!” Hatsu shouted from the front of the train.

“Everyone be prepared. The undead are their strongest in this area,” I said, using air magic to make sure everyone heard me.

I manually slowed the train’s progress while keeping the purification process going at full strength. The excess mana was being sent back along the tracks to Lord Regan’s core as well as strengthening the tracks in the process. Lord Regan wanted to cut the undead scar in half to slow the spreading of the taint while also giving mortals a way to pass through the undead scar.

“Incoming!” Morita exclaimed from her watch post.

Turning I spotted a field of red dots. A decent horde of undead were making their way toward us. I removed my hands, feeling as engerized as when I first placed them on the panels. None of my mana had actually been used, apparently. “Lord Regan,” I mumbled shaking my head.

I jumped into the air, my metal wings spreading out around me. “Let’s deal with them!” I shouted. “Together.” A cheer went up along the train as the large caliber turrets rotated. Soon the sound of cannon fire resounded through the night air as the rounds crossed the distance. Explosions flashed along the line of the undead sending corpses through the air. Most of the time in pieces.

“More.”

I glared at my spear. The damn thing had fused with a cursed sword when I had changed in Lord Regan’s dungeon. Now it had an almost direct line of communication to my mind. It was quiet most of the time, but liked to talk when I was fighting a lot of enemies.

“Don’t worry. You’ll get you’re fill tonight,” I replied with a sigh spinning the weapon around me. Taking a deep breath, I concentrated on something I had learned from Lord Regan. Creating a light spell, I focused the light to one point before I directed the beam at the undead horde. A line of red streaked across the empty land between us and the horde, before it sliced clean through four or five of the undead.

I pulled the point along the horde’s line and the beam followed. Like a blade, the light cut everything it touched in half. The heat from the light caused the corpses to catch fire which further hindered the undead behind them.

“Well done my queen,” Tsuzuki commented, ever the teacher.

“Not throwing Warhammers around anymore,” I replied with a smirk.

“No. No you are not,” he said with a nod.

“We can’t be outdone!” Hatsu shouted. “Firing squad! Ready!” She along with fifteen others aimed their weapons, rifles that we’d made after studying some of Lord Regan’s texts in his library. “Fire!” With a crack, rounds zipped the air and struck the undead horde. The riflemen were some of the best shots in the Gnome race and nearly all of them scored a head shot.

“Damn. I guess I’m buying next time,” one of the riflers groaned out loud to the laughs of the other men and women.

Before the gnomes had access to powerful weapons that made most of the continent fear us, like children we called them airsticks. Lord Regan knew of weapons that could wipe out a planet. I could still recall the scene he showed me of a city being turned to dust in a matter of seconds.

Hatsu walked over to me as her squad continued to fire at the remaining undead. “Looks like we managed to take most of them out from the distance.”

“I’d rather fight the undead at a distance any day of the week,” I replied with a shrug.

“True.”

There was a shudder from the train as it stopped. I jerked around and found that we had reached the edge of the chasm. The machines that were responsible for building the tracks extended and a bridge soon started to take form in front of us.

“When the war is over, I would not be surprised if a city unlike we’ve ever seen flourishes over the land,” Tsuzuki said as we the construction happening before us.

“What about nature? Will it be replaced?” Hatsu asked.

NEW

“I doubt it. Think about who Lord Regan’s consort is,” I replied, shaking my head. “We might see something truly amazing in the future.” The conversation ended shortly after that and we returned to our individual duties.

The construction lasted the better part of the day. Even if the undead could spawn from the ambient unholy mana in the air, there was a definite limit. While the automata went to work, I calibrated the systems to record the readings. Lord Regan said that you could never have enough data and I was inclined to agree with him.

If there was one sliver lining, was that the unholy mana decreased every time an undead was spawned. As long as new death wasn’t added to the equation, the undead scar would heal naturally. The odds of that happening were not just zero but in the negative in my own opinion.

The undead sought out the living. For the undead scar to heal naturally, it would take close to seven hundred years and that was without a single new death in the area of the scar. An impossible task no matter how you look at it.

“Your highness.” I looked up from the screen to see Hatsu. “We’re about to finish constructing the bridge.”

“Thank you.” I got up and joined her on the deck of the train. The automata had managed to construct a bridge that would allow two trains such as this to pass with ease. Using a dark blue metal, the beams extended well into the chasm. It would take a sizable force to remove this master construction. There was even a mana purification effect that was draining unholy mana from the air and keeping the bridge from tainting.

While there was currently only one track, it would be expanded over time. From what Lord Regan explained. He wanted the network to span the continent in the future. Even if his portals resumed operation in the future. They would only link the large cities. Once the network was completed, hundreds of villages and towns would be able to benefit.

“Let’s get back to work! I want to see the edge of the scar in two days!” I shouted at those at the railing and moved back to the pedestal. Time to follow my own advice.

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