Chapter 216 - Proposal (Patreon)

Note : Chapter 220 has been written and added to the queue !

Chapter 216

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

City of Rebirth

"That was delicious!" Said Pyn as she set down her spoon, her plate holding naught but a few forlorn crumbs of a thoroughly devoured cake.

"Glad you think so. The place came highly recommended." Both by Stor, the barman of Firegecko's, whose drinks she still sampled on a semi regular basis, and Melia, who seemed to know about basically every high end restaurant in Rebirth and Darthar. "I have to agree as well. This was great."

"Yeah. So, what's the occasion?" Pyn smiled. "Was that the surprise you were so mysterious about?"

Allya sighed, and set down her own spoon, fidgeting nervously as she looked at her girlfriend. Pyn took on a vaguely alarmed expression, and Allya almost cracked a smile. She took a deep breath, and got up, pulling a small, black box out of her pouch.

"No. This is."

Then she got on one knee, and presented the box, cracking it open to reveal an intricate golden ring, resting on a small satin pillow embroidered with the heraldry of Rebirth.

"Pyn, will you marry me?"

*****

Alexandra frowned slightly as Seraph sent her a brief message. Excitement in Rebirth? Well, if no one had bothered to send her a messenger, and there wasn't any weapons fire, it could wait.

Besides, push came to shove she'd be able to download the take from the stealth golems and find out what all the fuss was about. That or just ask Allya.

Hell, that was if Allya didn't come to her first!

Alexandra chuckled as she turned her attention back to the prototype towering over her.

She'd started to need better cargo handling equipment lately. She was getting to the point where racks of guns and piles of crates just weren't cutting it. She actually needed better ways to get stuff to and from storage. And since it was also going to become a problem of getting to and from the dungeon, she'd had to reach beyond her first instinct, which had been to use cranes and robotic arms.

So she'd built her equivalent of the forklift. Unfortunately, a forklift wasn't going to work in the town, what with their liberal approach to roads, if you could even call them that, let alone the fortifications or wasteland itself. So she had to improvise.

And it had ended with this. Her brand new cargo handler, the spider lift. A spider tank with all of the armor and weaponry stripped out, then outfitted with an array of cargo manipulation clamps. They were bulky, sure, but they could handle an insane load, were all terrain, and more importantly she could start production immediately, after only a minimum of testing on the clamps, since all the rest had already been proven in the field time and time again. As a bonus, it also terrified the ever living crap out of anyone who came across them, except the vampires, who saw mechanical horrors as par for the course, and had enough strength in those claws to rip someone in half in a pinch.

Overall, she was very happy with it. Especially as it should fulfill the 'cargo handling help' she'd talked to Willard about during the council meeting. And serve as a halfway decent utility vehicle for an advancing army. She'd just have to make sure to give it a ton of endurance for that purpose. Well, make a specialized model with more endurance, she wouldn't waste the resources for her own, since she very much intended to have them be in close proximity to a recharge hub, be it mobile or static.

While she was revisiting the chassis, she had also made a new version of the templar-class spider tank, which she'd called the mark three. It wasn't really the third version per se, but it was a significant enough change that she felt it merited to be separated from the rest. She'd finally ripped up the field guns on the top, and put shorter barreled versions in underslung positions, in individual articulated mountings that didn't quite have the level of protection and flexibility of a full turret, but were impressively space and mass efficient. Plus, it allowed the tank to split its fire, which given its likely role in swatting infantry aside, was a more than welcome bonus. It did lose on range and indirect fire potential, but honestly she already had too much artillery, and it's not like she was planning on getting into a kilometers-range tank duel anyway. Plus, she wasn't as desperate as the Russian army, using battle tanks as mobile artillery.

Plus, given how that war had gone, she wasn't keen on taking any ideas from them.

Of course, that meant she'd started designing a mobile artillery platform based on the spider tank chassis. But that was a project for another time. Right now, she had more immediate things to focus on. Namely, her ships' imminent launch. Er, relaunch for half of them. Which means that at least they'd only have to use half the champagne bottles, at CQ's great disappointment. The stuff was surprisingly expensive to generate, all things considered, though Alexandra wasn't sure why.

As well as finding a way to redesign and refit her prizes. Or rather, right now, organize stripping everything that wasn't nailed down and go over them with a toothbrush to learn everything she could about the tricky art of airship construction. Why do the research when her enemies already had?

Though, more accurately, why go through all the failed prototypes and explosions when they'd already worked out the kinks? Some of them at least.

And if she got to learn their weaknesses along the way, then even better.

*****

"So, I heard I owe you some congratulations." Said Alexandra, as Allya sat down on the other side of the conference table.

"What? Oh. T-Thank you."

"No problem. It's my pleasure. Though I have to admit, you really kicked the hornet's nest."

"I hadn't expected that."

"Come on, seriously? You're both extremely popular, have pasts shrouded in mystery, and have a love story worthy of a sappy romance novel. 'The fallen Knight-Valiant and the beautiful elf ranger', eh."

"Well, when you put it like that…Yeah, I suppose it was stupid of me not to consider it."

The silence stretched for a few seconds, Alexandra racking her brain what to say without talking shop or making it awkward. The girl had just proposed, she should at least give her the courtesy of talking a bit about it!

Besides, Allya was her friend. As unlikely an outcome as it seems, given their first interaction.

"So, is she going to take your name or…?"

"What? No! My family disowned me. I kept the name because the only things they couldn't take from me were my ancestors and my title as Knight-Valiant."

"So, renaming yourself to Allya Windwrath then?"

"Actually…since we're founding a noble house, and I intend to have a dynasty…I think we'll create a new family. A new line, with its own heraldry and name. One more noble house to add to the archives. That doesn't happen often, even in the Kingdom."

"Oh?"

"Yeah. I'm thinking of naming it something like Nouvelle-Aurore. Keeps up with the theme of renewal with Rebirth, and still have some heritage from my old family."

"New Dawn? I like it."

Allya twitched.

"How did you…"

"I know French. Crap, I am French, as much as that means anything in the European Federation. But then again, traditions are hard to kill."

"Tell me about it. So you know what my family name means?"

"Dawnstar, yeah."

"Whimsical, eh? The founder of my house was an extradimensional, like you. She took her family name after the biggest, baddest warship in the galaxy, according to her."

"What was her name?"

"Océane. Her original family name was Rapier. No, wait riv…"

"Rivière."

"Yeah! How…did…" Allya did a double take, as there was something like shock on the dungeon core's expression. "Are you okay?"

"There was an Océane Rivière on the design team for the Dawnstars' fusion reactors. Hell, 'on the design team', those reactors were her babies. She was a great loss to the program. I thought the UIS killed her with task force Echo at Alpha Centauri."

"Almost did, according to the diaries she left behind. Had to read them like every kid on the direct line had to. Her ship was heavily damaged, and something happened when they tried to jump out."

"The hyperspace shield collapsed. Damn."

"How…did you know her?"

"Yeah. Not well, mind you, but I worked with her. She was a talented woman. Very talented."

"...Damn. It feels weird to hear you say that. She was the first of my line, millennia ago."

"Eh. I guess that makes me your elder. In the 'I knew your great great great great grandmother young lady, now pay attention!' kind of way."

Allya snickered.

"I suppose? Though does that mean I should call you 'old woman' or 'venerable one'?"

"Ew, please don't. Besides, if I'm venerable, then Emilia positively ancient." Alexandra blushed. "Please don't tell her I said that."

"Why? Would she get snippy?"

"Uuuuhhh…" Alexandra's blush deepened.

"Oooooh. I see. Well, wouldn't want that, mmmhhh?"

"Indeed."

"Though, I have to admit that I'd love to-"

"Before you say anything like 'love to see what happens', I would like to point out I could have her coach your fiancée. See how you like it then."

"...Point taken." They exchanged smiles. "So, for yourself, are you planning on, well…"

"Maybe. I don't know. It's going to be a hell of a lot more complicated. It was already a shock to them when they realized CQ was our daughter."

"Ah. Succession?"

"Among other things. Besides, marriage would almost certainly mean having the parents visiting. Do you want the duke and duchess of the Western Marches to drop by? Besides, I don't want to overshadow your own wedding."

"Well, thank you." Allya chuckled. "Though to be honest, I wouldn't mind someone distracting the public."

"By attracting them onto myself? Nah, you're on your own."

"I knew you were evil at heart."

They both laughed.

"Alright, alright, more seriously. Your ships have taken off, right?" Continued Allya. "How long do you think until they can attack the Republic again?"

"Depends on the enemy, honestly. I'll cut it closer this time, and take less of a detour around the enemy camp. Should save us a fair bit of time."

"Won't that risk detection?"

"They would be stupid, incompetent and thoroughly insane not to have taken all available precautions. Knowing it's, say, my airships and not monsters would only partially hinder their response. I'm not saying it wouldn't be nice to have, mind you, just that it's not thoroughly vital, that's all. Besides, we need to get the pressure on."

"Cutting it close?"

"Aren't we always?"

"Fair enough. Speaking of which, the guild is cutting back a bit on its cautiousness for the salvaging."

"I thought you guys had healing spells for radiation?"

"Yeah, but it's easier said than done. They don't necessarily cost a lot, but they take a while and require a trained healer. Both of those are in short supply in a dungeon town."

"Ah."

"But with the priest and his cohorts helping out in the main clinic until the temple is built, things are getting better. So Dominique and Oromar are relaxing some rules. Hopefully with that, we'll have a map of the ships and their available resources by the end of the week."

"Honestly, I thought you'd be done with the mapping by now."

"The problem is that the pockets of radiation are almost random at times. You can't just go through the places far from the reactor without worry. And adventurers, unsurprisingly, aren't too keen about coughing blood or having their hair fall out."

"Can't blame them for that. Can't blame anyone for that really, even if you can be cured later."

"Yeah. Especially since they're mapping and not, well salvaging. Doesn't give much motivation."

"How the hell do they even get them out there?"

"It's a good way to make some mana for lower level parties, especially since it takes a while to get a delve."

"Should be quicker soon. I got everything finished for separating the floors into their own delves, with separate entrances and everything. Just need to pierce the surface and roll out the red carpet. Kind of put that on the backburner, given everything going on honestly."

"Sweet. Well, then feel free to do so. It'll up morale."

"And distract people."

"My marriage is already helping distract them from the upcoming siege on Darthar, and our…well, let's face it, bleak situation, as far as they'd concerned."

"I meant more from your marriage announcement. I think the different clothing shops and seamstresses are about to kill each other over who will get to make the wedding gowns."

"Well, it would be an appreciable side effect. And that's still ways off. We haven't even settled on a date yet!"

"You know how people are." Alexandra titled her head, her eyes losing focus in a way Allya had come to associate with the dungeon core communing with her systems, or going into 'dungeon mode' as the extradimensional called it. "And your fiancée is at the entrance. Far from me to get between you, so better cut this short."

"Right, yeah. We can do another meeting tomorrow morning."

"Eeeeeh, given how excited she looks…better make it tomorrow afternoon." Alexandra winked, and Allya had the good grace to blush.

"Quite. See you, Alexandra."

"See you Allya."