Chapter 99 - Crystalline Returns (Patreon)

Chapter 99

Province of Irakia, Sagitarius Empire.

Strategic Communications Site Seraph-4, Command Center

The core waited. And the longer it waited, the more confused it grew.

It didn't know that much about special operations tactics -just enough to counter them in case of an emergency, for some value of 'counter'-, but it knew that speed was essential. And the assault team…was being anything but speedy.

It detected seismic activity and his sensors, however damaged they were insisted that something was using a kind of geomancer magic on a mass scale above. But if so, they could have dug out its command center by now!

The core waited a bit more, puzzled, before having the virtual equivalent of a shrug, and going back to its drones. If its enemies wanted to give it time, so much the better.

The repair drones had been hard at work. The command facility was still wrecked to hell…but now he had cleared the way to the security barracks. There was nothing left but skeletons in the dormitory, but the long, transparent tubes containing the facility's most advanced combat androids were still there. Damaged, as were their content, but there.

It wouldn't have the mana to run them. Not yet. But once it did, anything trying to step foot into its domain was going to regret it.

It didn't even notice how the command center slowly slipped in its mind from place to defend to 'its' place.

*****

Alexandra paced back and forth in her imaginary office.

Her programs were starting to take shape. She was lucky 'paranoia' was basically Arcadia's modus operandi, and she had EWAR programs and counter measures imprinted into her biological brain on top of the systems already integrated in her implants. Even if someone had ripped out her implants and tried to scan her brain directly they would have had a very, very bad surprise.

Except that they hadn't triggered when her true self and her were moved to this 'dungeon core', which the more she looked at it, the more it looked like one of Arcadia's experimental atomic level circuitry mixed in with energy state super-computers. Tech so advanced Arcadia had buried them in her most secure facilities, and with good reason.

After all, it wouldn't have done for the other super-AIs, or humanity, to discover she was turning into a bona fide technological singularity.

Overall, it made for some seriously worrying signs that whatever the hell had tried to kill her true self, they had access to the very best tech in existence back on Earth, at a minimum. That was….not a cheerful thought, especially not when her true self was still tinkering with muskets and cannonballs!

Still, she had more immediate issues. The programs were working, but they were a bandaid fix. Every time she neutralized one of those monitoring programs, another popped out of the woodwork. And she had to be careful, she couldn't afford to trip an alert and cause a diagnostic cascade, and activate whatever security systems were buried in this mass of code.

There was only one solution. Create a complete simulation, a 'shadow' of her true self, which the programs could monitor and modify to their hearts' content, without any risk of her missing something, or them stumbling on one of her programs adjusting the simulations. But that was going to take time, and far more computing capacity than she was comfortable diverting from her true self's capabilities.

She sighed. Looks like it was time to have a meeting face to face.

Alexandra sat down, this time adjusting the cape without missing a beat, and began paving the way. Finding a time when her true self was alone and could be safely pulled in was going to be challenging. But making sure the monitoring programs didn't realize what was going would be even more so.

She cracked her knuckles, and went to work.

*****

"Milady. There's a party of adventurers outside that wish to see you."

Allya blinked as she looked up from the map spread out on the council table. She'd been discussing how to upgrade the original defensive plans with Philia and Anders, now that the basic strong points had been established and they could start working on genuinely linking them together. It was quite clear that however desirable a full wall might be, they probably simply wouldn't have the time for that, and she'd rather have a far less effective abatis with a few trenches when the Republic came than a wall in construction that would leave her ass hanging in the air.

"I beg your pardon?" Said the baroness as she looked at the guard. Adventuring parties weren't her problem, and they could take a damned appointment if necessary! Her guards knew better than to let 'mere' adventurers disrupt her already fragile schedule!

"They, ah, they're mythril ranked ma'am. They say they're team Crystalline, the party that assessed the dungeon, and they'd like a few minutes of your time."

"Oh." Allya looked at Anders and Philia. "This seems like something I should really take care of, can we…?"

"Of course milady." Said Anders as he bowed. "We were almost finished anyway."

Philia nodded in turn.

"Agreed, although there's a few points I'd like to bring up about artillery emplacements, I feel like we can finish it later without issues on our own."

"Alright, excellent! Now shoo!"

Allya made shooing motions, and both officers chuckled, before leaving. The baroness smiled as she saw them disappear into the hallway leading deeper into the ever bigger mansion/administration building, before straightening up and plastering a neutral expression on her face.

"Show those adventurers in, please." She said to the guard, who saluted.

"At once milady!"

Allya watched him go, before quickly rearranging a few things on the table. In the end she didn't have to wait long, as four young women walked into the room a minute or so later.

With a full squad of guards and knights in tow.

Allya thought for a second to reprimand them -those were mythril adventurers, what were her people going to do, tickle them to death?-, but deciding against it. They were taking their job seriously, and getting into good habits.

Besides, she'd detected the sect's hidden assassin in the ceiling within thirty second of entering the room. If one of the adventurers tried anything one of her old comrades would make them regret it. If they managed to make contact, which…wasn't guaranteed. Still, it was her best chance, if there was any.

"Hello ladies, what can I do you for?" Said Allya as she looked at the quartet.

A heavily armored woman stepped forward, before giving her a parade ground perfect salute, which Allya returned a bit belatedly.

"Greetings milady! I am Pyris, of team Crystalline, and these are Sonya, Arinka and Ellyris, my teammates." Said the adventurer as she gestured at a woman in a scandalously short robe, another in heavy armor, and the last one in what looked like leather armor…if you hadn't been around high tech troops enough to recognize mil-spec high tech synthetic materials at a glance. "We were lucky enough to be the team to undertake Crystal's original assessment. We, ah, continued on our way afterwards into the Republic for another quest, and decided to pass by when returning to the kingdom."

"A quest in the Republic?"

"Some kind of abomination crawled its way out of the Seaside 9 death zone, and the adventurers guild wanted a mythril team to take it down, so we answered the call." The adventurer winced. "Wasn't easy, I'll tell you that much."

"I can believe that. Well, it is nice of you to drop by, but once again, what can I do you for?"

"Well…" Pyris rubbed the back of her neck. "We wanted to have a meeting with the dungeon core, if at all possible? The guild directed us towards you when we asked, and well, we have some things to smooth over with Crystal."

"What kind of 'things'?" Said Allya, an edge of alarm in her voice. The last thing she needed was some idiots who provoked the dungeon core to be associated with her!

"My…colleague here." Said Pyris, glaring at the scantily clad woman beside her, who had the good grace to blush. "Made some unwanted advances onto the dungeon core's advisor."

Allya blinked.

"And you're still alive? Impressive."

The entire team of adventurer froze.

"I'm sorry?" Said Pyris.

"Crystal blew her entire dungeon to kingdom come, and collapsed the whole mesa it was in onto the last persons to get too close to her advisor. So yeah, you're lucky." She was just phoning it in, of course, Crystal was protective, that much was clear, but not to the point of psychosis….or so Allya fervently hoped.

"I…see. I'll keep that in mind. Would it be possible to arrange a meeting?"

Allya sighed, and looked at the maps spread onto the table. Well she could use the dungeon's expertise on some of this stuff, and she intended to have Dominique carry the plans over to her so the dungeon could make her own plans and for the interest of having the dungeon fully aware of the surface defenses for coordinating their efforts when the time came.

"It would. Stay here, I won't be long."

*****

Alexandra held her head, closing her eyes, before shaking it off. She'd gotten some kinds of pseudo-headaches lately, and it wasn't particularly pleasant.

"Alex? Are you alright?"

"I'm fine vampy." Said Alexandra…with a tone that sounded less than truthful, even to her, and the vampire girl gave her a worried look. "Look, I'm fine, really. Let's just get on with it, alright?"

"Okay…" Emilia took a deep breath. "So, Sarah has overseen the new series of musket tests, and she says the golems can finally hit the broad side of a barn at a hundred meters….barely. Ella has also started working on making gunpowder, but not much luck so far, since we don't have sulfur. She's trying to find alchemical substitutes but that's easier said than done with what we have. She's also working on stabilizing the pseudo-nytroglycerin compound, and had some successes with it, but its not what she -or I- would call remotely satisfactory yet."

"Well, she's only one woman. Er, vampire. We shouldn't be expecting miracles." Especially not as she was starting to be able to walk on her own, even if only in short bursts, and she was already insisting on starting physical training again, which was a headache. "And the main dungeon rebuild tests?"

"Right. Well, the drawbridge for the water temple is operational again, and so is the puzzle to unlock it. There was a problem with the moat and the water flooded the entire floor, but it's taken care of and the runes were adjusted."

"Excellent. So we'll be ready to reopen as soon as the golems are in and the logistics are back up."

"Do we have the capacity?"

Alexandra grimaced.

"Not yet, no. The steps are extremely profitable, but damn do they take a lot of golems! I'll have to expand the forges. Again."

"Well, don't you always?"

The Earth-born chuckled.

"Fair point vampy, fair point. Now, how about you and I go to our newly enlarged testing area, and give those howitzers another try?"

"I'll prepare my wards. Hopefully there won't be a chain reaction this time."

"Hey! It was just a bad positioning of the ammo reserves, and a gun bursting."

"The explosion was so big the freaking ceiling collapsed Alex!"

"Pffft! Simple fix! So, are you coming or not?"

"Of course I am! Someone has to protect you from your love of explosion, and be the voice of reason around here!"

Alexandra opened her mouth to retort, and mention the vampire girl's ever so unstable -and highly volatile- new rounds of influence stabilizers, before meeting the advisor's gaze and suddenly deciding that discretion was the better part of valor.

"Of course vampy. And I-uh?"

"What is it?"

"There's…The baroness is at the dungeon entrance. One second, I'll be back!"