Chapter 95 - Completing the Deal (Patreon)

Chapter 95

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Dungeon Factory, Command Center.

"Alright, seems to be going smoothly so far." Said Alexandra as the crane rearranged the labyrinth, picking up entire rooms like glorified legos.

"Ssshhhh, don't jinx it!" Said Emilia, and Alexandra giggled.

"Of course! How careless of me!" Alexandra shook her head. "More seriously though. It is going smoothly." She looked at the screen displaying the new configuration, decided by the algorithm. "Not so sure about the order of the rooms, but…" She shrugged. "That's the price of randomness I suppose. Still, their first few teams are going to have a bad day."

"As you said, it's the other side of randomness, they can get very lucky…or very unlucky."

"Right." She looked as the crane picked up yet another room, and shook her head. "I wish everything went this smoothly."

"The cannons?"

"I was thinking about the chemical experiments actually. The gunpowder I got is good, but it's basically black powder. That's far from cordite or, hell, NEXT-8."

"NEXT-8?"

"Last chemical explosive compound ever used for firearms on Earth, before advanced ballistic gels and molecular body armor plates made them completely obsolete. Packed one hell of a punch, but it still couldn't even come close to gauss rifles."

"Right. Have you considered asking for some…surface help?"

Alexandra winced.

"I have, but unfortunately what with the military alliance -although it's not exactly public yet- the adventurers guild is watching me like fucking hawks. Plus its early enough that I don't want to take the risk. I still haven't mastered the powder I already have yet, let alone find a way to mass produce it, so I'd rather avoid taking too many risks finding something else, potentially even more complicated." She sighed. "At least with Ella's help we're making a lot more progress than I'd hoped."

"She's very good at chemistry."

"And enthusiastic." About killing people, at least. Especially with poisons. Convincing her to move away from that hadn't been easy, but in the end a few pointed suggestions that, say, chemical explosives would be far more helpful in killing any adventurers before they even stepped into the dungeon to harm Emilia, had gotten the maid onboard. However the fact that it wasn't the vampire's area of expertise, or that Alexandra and Emilia had flatly refused to let her manipulate explosive compounds directly had slowed down proceedings a bit.

Alexandra had to build a specialized, heavily armored lab and give the vampire maid a variety of screens to monitor the experiments, but it still wasn't remotely the same as being able to use and test the chemicals themselves. For one, the golems were surprisingly flexible, but there was still a lot of Ella's knowledge that was purely empirical and almost instinct based that she simply couldn't put into instructions the golems could understand.

Which was why the entire lab complement had to be replaced already. Twice. At least they'd gotten some highly potent, if equally unstable, compounds out of it, including something that resembled some very weird, and partially magical variant of nytroglycerin. Stabilizing that was going to be a bitch and a half, but Alexandra had a feeling it was going to be worth it in the end.

"Enthusiasm is a considerable understatement in her case, I'm fairly sure."

"True." Alexandra blinked as an alert popped up on her interface. "And it looks like we have a visitor."

"We do? We're closed for the night."

"Yep. Not that closing for the night would have done anything, said visitor is at the main entrance. And it's one we've been expecting. I'll be back!"

*****

Ellyana looked around the entrance hall. It looked…damaged. Heavily damaged. She'd chosen the old entrance because the guard there had been lowered, and the new one for the 'thousand steps' was swarming with adventurers day and night. There were even food stands there now! Well, and liquor stands of course, which tended to be the most popular ones after nightfall. The guild didn't like it, or so she'd heard, but they seemed to have given up trying to push back the adventurers, and a sort of microculture was starting to evolve there, as with the guild hall in construction for expansion, and Firegecko's bar monopolized by the higher ranks, low ranked adventurers met there to exchange advice, tips, weaponry, hell even gamble!

"Well, it has been a while, miss Ellyana, was it?"

The fox eared woman smiled as the golem came through the door.

"That it has been." Ellyana straightened. "I have come to honor my part of the deal we struck."

"Do you now?"

"Yes. It would have been…churlish not to do so, especially as you have done every effort to implement the ingredients me and my sister wanted in your loot." Not to mention suicidal. Even normal dungeon cores in calm times were rarely enemies worth making, and Crystal was neither normal nor in a peaceful situation. "So here." She pulled out a large file out of her spatial pouch, as well as several small parcels wrapped in cloth. "Full schematics for blast furnaces, oxygen furnaces, and a full description of the steel making process. Plus a sample of the steel thus produced, and every material needed for the furnace or raw materials required for the process. Bits of bricks, ceramics, coal ore, the works."

The golem's face lack of features made reading its expression impossible, but she could almost physically sense the surprise it radiated as the golem took the files and the samples.

"That is…quite thorough."

"Yes, it is. But then again, I believe in going above and beyond, like you have."

"So you do. Tell me, will you be looking for more…opportunities like this?"

Ellyana hesitated. Her sister and her had been given broad, discretionary authority, and they were trusted a great deal, but still…

"There…might be. But I cannot make any guarantees. In time, possibly. But right now, I believe I will already have my hands full with the fruits of this deal. You will keep the ingredients flowing, correct?"

"Of course. As you said, it would be churlish not to. Besides, people might start wondering why said ingredients suddenly went missing. Not that I would have cared had you not upheld your end of the bargain."

"Which is more than fair." The fox eared twin flicked one of her ears. "I suppose I should be on my way. I hope you have a nice day Crystal."

"Likewise, Ellyana. Oh." The alchemist stopped as she turned to leave. "When the alliance becomes more active, and not a just 'on paper' thing, do keep in mind that the guild will focus on the military entrance and the golems deployed outside, if you wish to contact me again."

"An…excellent point, and one I'll endeavor to keep in mind. Goodbye."

"Goodbye." Alexandra watched the alchemist vanish, before looking down at the large folder and the small pyramid of parcels piled on top of it. She retreated into the renovated halls of heroes, and commanded the door to close, before carefully setting down the folder, putting the parcels on the side, and starting to flip through it.

She could just have absorbed everything, the writings would have stayed…but she was paranoid enough to make sure to read everything, in order, and take mental pictures out of every page and copy them perfectly, as she absorbed the parcels with the back of her mind.

Exactly as the fox-eared woman had said, they contained a variety of materials. Including iron ore, which was redundant, and coal ore, which was wonderful. She'd been making due with charcoal so far, and it had been…less than optimal, and expensive. She immediately began expanding the mining area of the new forges as she read.

Time for some upgrades all around.

*****

"Well, this new labyrinth seems to have worked well." Said Allya as she sat down in front of the bar. "People are grumbling less at least."

"Ah, adventurers will always find something to grumble about." Said Stor as he pulled out a bottle of Allya's preferred brandy and poured a shot, before doing the same with Pyn's glass and favored drink. "But yes, they're happier." He slid the glass to the pair of nobles and Allya picked hers up, downing its content in a single gulp. "The loot's good. Very good. And it's challenging too. Some of them like that."

"Probably the ones that didn't get blown to bits."

"Well, yes, but even those that did brought valuable information to the follow up teams." The bartender shrugged as he began refiling her glass. "Pity that the assault guild can't do most of the exploring, but they'll still buy the info off for distribution."

"Right." Allya sighed. "Not that there are that many teams that can explore the labyrinth. I know I should be feeling grateful it's there at all, but after the other 'steps' letting people in every fifteen minutes, a full hour feels punitive."

"Well, it is what it is. And it does keep the higher ranks occupied. There's already a guild wide effort to catalogue all of the rooms in the labyrinth you know."

"Seriously? It's only been there for a couple of days."

"Oh yes. There's even some groups pulling together ideas of what might be in some of the rooms. Since they seem to be inspired by the old floors, everyone is pulling together the nasty surprises they remember and drawing up contingency plans. Speaking of the old floors, you wouldn't happen to know anything about when they might reopen, would you?"

"I wish." Allya sighed. "But Crystal keeps her cards close to her chest. I know her boss keeps coming in for meetings, but I don't get anything like a schedule. First because she doesn't have to tell me squat, the few warnings I've gotten were purely courtesies, and lastly because I doubt even she has a schedule she'd be able to stick to. I mean, you've seen the rate at which the dungeon is improving and changing, and I'm ready to bet most of those ideas hadn't occurred to her until recently. She has to be tearing her schedule up every few days and redoing it."

"Something I've grown familiar with recently I'm afraid." Said Pyn, grimacing. "The influx of new hands is nice…but I could have done without having to get a roof over all of their heads! It's becoming quite the pain in the ass."

Allya nodded. The elf rarely spoke up when her girlfriend was present, preferring to stay in her lover's shadow, which the baroness found rather odd. After all she seemed to practically own the space she was in when she led her construction teams around, but then again that might be because she was in her element. A good way to get her to talk was to draw a parallel to that kind of stuff. The rest of the time she'd just stay back and listen.

"Well, it's the price of success." Said Stor, before raising his head as the door to his bar slammed open and an adventurer rushed through. The bartender moved a bit closer to his shotgun, still on the wall, albeit with significantly more scratches on its stock, thanks to him taking up arms to defend the city during the last struggle with the mercenaries.

Allya winced internally as she remembered the flashes of light, and the screaming. The cries of those hit by his weapon still haunted her. The flame burst from when it was fired was bad enough, but the buckshot effectively superheated into lava and somehow staying that way for several minutes even when it hit somebody was even worse.

The guard accompanying them -Valker and one of the knights- automatically moved between their charges and the adventurer, before the latter skiddled to a halt.

"There's a caravan arriving! A caravan from the Republic!"

Allya exchanged a look with her girlfriend, and they got up simultaneously. There hadn't been a caravan yet from the Republic, but that was mostly because Darthar's equivalent in the Republic was smaller, and farther away. And the first caravan might be trouble. A lot of trouble.