Chapter 219 - Full Confidence (Patreon)

Note : No new chapter for the queue today, and possibly not for a bit, gonna take a break for the holidays. Plus I need to shift my focus to the Christmas special, thank you guys for the suggestions in the poll !

Chapter 219

Alexandra's Core

Simulation One

Alexandra sighed as she popped into the simulation.

The discussion with Emilia…had been far better than she had expected. The advisor understood she couldn't predict everything, and that their daughter would get into mortal danger no matter what. Plus, CQ saying that she'd learned some valuable lessons, and gushing about how awesome the armor her moms and maids had made for her was had done a lot to cheer the advisor up and ease her mind.

That didn't mean she wasn't going to make Alexandra pay for it tonight however.

She wasn't sure if she should be excited or terrified.

"Well well well, our resident air admiral arrives." Said the apparition, and Alexandra chuckled.

"Well, you know, they did insist on people having airforce training back in the day." Which had been stupid, but the original spacefleet officers had to come from somewhere, and old officers being old officers, they'd insisted on the 'damned newbies' learning stuff the 'old fashioned way'. Kind of like people learning how to tie knots in the waterborne navy, or paint the ship, despite barely using ropes anymore over magnetic clamps and tractor beams, and having fully automated the latter. "I guess I went back to the roots."

"Eh. Alright, so you said you wanted to talk to me?"

Alexandra nodded as she took in the room. It was always evolving. The infuriating library with its…interesting titles was still there, but now there was more decoration, including some posters. Mostly novel based, but there was an EFSN recruitment poster. Uh. And…was that table covered in miniatures?

"I wanted to ask about how the non proliferation violation was going."

The apparition snickered.

"Really, that's what you're calling it?" Alexandra shrugged, and the apparition shook her head. "Alright, suit yourself. It's going well. Already started the enrichment process, problem I'm finding is what the hell will I do with the excess heat from the reactor? The usual way would be to just turn water into steam and vent it, but…"

"We have no need for a power plant and some would ask questions. There should be enough space to dump it into the mesa by having a long water cooling circuit. Sort of a very bad heat exchanger."

"Possibly. But the entire mesa would heat up eventually. Besides, it'd show up like a sore thumb on anyone scanning the dungeon, and Allya has proven that someone can do that right under our nose if necessary. Let's not even talk about trying to hide something that large from orbital scans."

"Eh. True…" Alexandra drummed her fingers, before snapping them. "The third floor!"

"What?"

"The third floor! We can use it to heat some of the water on the third floor! You know, make a few steam challenge rooms and that kind of stuff?"

"Oh, good idea. We'll still need a few heat exchangers to avoid, well, contaminated water, but it should be doable."

"Also I can make a jaccuzi."

"Uh uh. You already could with your powers. Also you can keep clean extremely easily thanks to your powers and Emilia's magic."

"Yes, but-"

"You need an excuse to cuddle up your girlfriend inside of a hot tub?" The apparition smiled.

"She's technically your girlfriend too."

"The extent to which we're the same is debatable at this point and you know it. Besides, she would definitely enjoy you more, you're more…tameable."

"Right." Alexandra looked away, and the apparition chuckled.

"But in any case, once the reactor is up and running, we can start synthesizing plutonium, and then processing it for weaponry."

"Couldn't we use uranium two three five instead? Skip the reactor?"

"We've only ever worked with plutonium, when we did use fission warheads." Alexandra nodded. Fission bombs, even as the detonator for fusion warheads, were already well on their way to sharing the dodo's fate when they'd joined the navy. The few they'd worked on had been used by old patrol ships chasing pirates or as training dummies. "Uranium bombs are anemic, and honestly…I don't trust them. They're outside our experience, and they're quite frankly less reliable. It's not like we'll be able to do tests to work out the kinks anyway, if we need to use our nuclear firepower it'll have to work immediately, not five iterations down the road."

"Point taken. Still wondering how bad the cost for the raw materials is going to be."

"Push comes to shove, we can use uranium ore."

"Isn't ninety nine percent of the uranium you get from it pointless for fission? Don't get me wrong, I'm not going to complain about getting depleted uranium for the guns and all, but still."

"Ninety nine point twenty eight. Thankfully, due to Arcadia and her obsession with breeder reactors for her tritium plants, I remember how to do the Kovarex enrichment process. It takes forever but we should be able to recycle some of the uranium two three eight into two three five."

"Alright. Any progress on the recon aircraft?"

"Well, I don't have the time to reinvent conventional jets. Nor would we have the fuel for them anyway. So I played around with some of the low tech and magic we have and found something that…might work?"

"How so?"

"Using some wind spells alongside a few contraptions I can make an engine that can work high enough and propel a craft fast enough that it should be able to outfly or outspeed any monster in the wasteland."

"What about enemy defenses?"

"They have directed energy weapons with even just power beams. Let's not even talk about lightning spells. I mean, Seraph covered that, if they can see it and it's in range, they can shoot it down. I mean, Seraph covered that when we fought the Old World strike crafts. The flight ceiling isn't necessarily the greatest, but it should enable to dodge most of the more common defences, but if they see it they can almost certainly fire a beam of energy at it and even with poor aim eventually they'll hit."

"That's still a hell of a lot better than an airship."

"Oh agreed."

"...I sense a 'but' coming."

"Yes, well, as I said, it's wind spells and other shenanigans reproducing a jet engine. I had to brute force it, since the repulsor enchantments we use for the airships would stop working above a fairly low altitude, at least compared to what we need. So it's…well, 'mana inefficient' doesn't quite cut it. It will get the job done, but the aircraft will have to be light as hell and basically the chassis will be packed with mana crystals and the systems to draw from them. If someone so much as sneezes on it it'll turn into the world's most expensive firework show, and every sortie is going to cost us. Badly."

"Can you reduce the cost?"

"Not without making it vulnerable to monsters. A propeller aircraft would be ideal, but there's no way I can make it go fast enough to outrun some of the stuff Allya has told us about."

"Hm. So either we get a cheap to use aircraft that'll get eaten for breakfast before it gets out of the wasteland…"

"Or we make an extremely expensive one that can make it but will make you cough up blood every time you see the price tag."

Alexandra sighed.

"Well, the recon value alone is worth it. But as for the propeller one…could you draw up some plans as well? The Republic's army is getting close enough we might be able to get some mileage out of it."

"Might be better to scale it down to a small drone then, if we don't need it to have a lot of endurance."

"Predator drones?"

"Sort of. Though don't hold your breath on weaponry, I don't think we'll be able to afford the mass."

"Fair enough." Alexandra sighed as she received an alert. Allya wanted to meet with her. "It's always something, isn't it?"

"Hey, you're the one who wanted to get arms deep into the town's business. Enjoy whatever bullshit she's dug up this time!"

"Yeah yeah. Just don't blow up the dungeon."

"Look who's talking."

Alexandra scoffed, but didn't comment as she disconnected.

Well, time to talk to her ally.

*****

"So, finally decided on bringing Pyn into your full confidence?" Alexandra raised her hands as Allya glared at her. "Sorry, bad wording. I don't mean to imply you don't trust her. I know you're trying to protect her."

Allya sighed.

"Yes. Yes I was. But she's not some damsel in distress. Besides, she deserves to know."

"Yeah. Keeping secrets from your significant other sucks." A shadow passed in Alexandra's eyes, but Allya was very careful to not take notice of it. After all, she'd been privy to the conversation in the command center. She'd rather not prod a wound, especially not when she was equally guilty. "Alright then, let's bring her down and have that talk. I'll have smelling salts and a mattress ready. Just in case."

"Yeah. Though she tends to, well…"

"Be less fainty than you?"

"Something like that."

"All the same. Better safe than sorry."

"Agreed."

*****

"Well, that's fancy." Said Pyn as she walked into the conference room.

"Hello Pyn." Said a golem, which Alexandra was currently possessing. "Please, take a seat."

"Sure. Hey honey, how…" Pyn trailed off as she saw Allya's face. "Is everything alright?"

"That…is going to depend entirely on you." Said Alexandra, choosing her words with exquisite care. Allya hadn't taken it against her when she'd bluntly threatened her during their alliance meeting, but she knew firsthand how crazy and resentful someone could get when their loved ones were threatened.

She was, after all, going to smash a country to pieces for that.

"Ah. I'm guessing you're going to tell me what you two have actually been plotting?" Pyn smiled at Allya and Alexandra's surprised demeanor. "I'm loyal, not stupid. I can see the signs, and I'm always by your side honey. Alright then, don't bother telling me to leave if I'm not ready to hear it. I'm ready. Go ahead."

"Alright." Alexandra nodded to Allya, who took a deep breath.

"Honey…this is Alexandra." She gestured at the golem. "The person you know as Crystal. And she's not a dungeon core. Or rather, she wasn't always one."

Allya sighed. She'd practiced in front of the mirror for hours, but she was already almost tripping over her words.

"In truth, she's an extradimensional. And that's only the first thing."

*****

Overall, Pyn took it pretty well. At least better than Allya had. She didn't faint, she simply looked bewildered and asked for a few pauses to take it all in.

Well, many pauses. Though she did take her fair share of drinks, she didn't almost poison herself with alcohol like Allya. She barely blinked at Seraph interestingly enough, though she had given Emilia a few curious glances, given how close she was to Alexandra's avatar, before something seemed to click in her mind with an almost visible 'ooooh'.

"Alright, so let me get this straight." Said the elf. "You're Dominique's extradimensional friend, that got sacrificed, turned into a dungeon core, and now you're readying to carve yourself a pocket empire in the Kingdom and go after the super secret organization that did that to you?"

"In a nutshell? Yes."

"And you want me and my fiancée to serve as your figureheads."

"More than that. As full allies. I'm not pretending I'm not the senior partner in this, but I need allies, not vassals. Besides, I've seen what has happened to Allya's last boss. I don’t want to go the same way."

"With more holes than swiss cheese?"

"Yeah. I already got three, thank you very much. Well, more. A lot more actually. But no more than a normal human, is what I mean."

Pyn looked at the avatar.

"Why would your avatar need…" She saw Emilia's grin. "Oh. Nevermind." She coughed. "Anyway. I appreciate you telling me all of that. Really, I do, but…do you need me for any of this?"

Allya and Alexandra exchanged a look.

"Not really, no." Admitted the dungeon core. "I'm not saying we wouldn't be glad for some of your expertise, but this was mostly for Allya and your relationship."

"I see." She waited for a second, and then walked up to her fiancée, yanked her off of her seat and kissed her. Very thoroughly.

Alexandra hid a smile behind her hand as Pyn finally set the baroness down, the poor noble gasping for air, before kissing her again as soon as she'd started to recover.

Finally, Pyn decided it was enough, and let go of her fiancée.

"There. Call it my thank you." She smiled at Alexandra. "Don't worry, I'll refrain from thanking you the same way."

"Probably for the best." Said Emilia, her voice dripping with warning.

"Oh I know. Far from me for interfering like that. Though I'm sure I can find another way to thank her." She exchanged a conspirational look with the vampire advisor, and Alexandra shivered.

Note to self: never let the two in a room alone.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

Stars knew what these two would share and cook up together.

She exchanged a look with Allya, and saw the same fear in her eyes.

"R-Right." Said the baroness, regaining her composure. "But yeah. We'll try to have you come into the meetings from now on. Though I doubt you'll want to be in most of them."

"Yeah, especially given how busy I am."

"Fair, but we'll still tap you from your expertise from time to time."

"What expertise?" Said Pyn with a snort. "We both know I'm only good at killing things."

"Don't sell yourself short." Intervened Emilia, to everyone's surprise. "Your city planning is quite excellent. Trust me, I've seen worse at my home."

"Well…thank you."

"No problem."

"As Emilia said." Continued Allya. "You're far better than you give yourself credit for. And we're going to need a lot of that planning, not to mention some help with optimizing infrastructure for logistics, though that's more Alex's specialty. We'll have to, if we're going to build a cross wasteland principality."

"Do you really think their majesties will swallow that?"

"They'll have to. If we survive this, we'll have crushed the Republic and Sunrise. As much as I hate to say it, their majesties wouldn't stand a chance against us at that point."

"Then why.." Pyn hesitated.

"Why not overthrow them?" Said Allya, and Pyn nodded. "Because I take my oaths seriously. And more importantly, there is such a thing as going too far, too fast. Trust me, I've seen what happened to the Eris Empire from its highest levels. I have no intention of making the same mistake."

Pyn looked at Alexandra, who nodded.

"I agree." The dungeon core winced. "Crap, saw it firsthand as well. My nation, back on Earth, spread itself too thin as well. Sometimes, slow and steady wins the race." She coughed. "For, ah, some value of 'slow', of course."

"Right. Slow and steady." Said Pyn, her voice dripping with sarcasm.

"I know, right up her alley, right?" Said Allya.

Alexandra rolled her eyes.

"Oh come on. Emilia, back me up here."

The vampire advisor grinned.

"I don't know, they make a good point."

"Traitor."

"Uh uh. Now, I believe there were other reasons for this meeting? Reasons that still have to be attended to?"

"Right. Let's get down to business."