Chapter 226 - Cores (Patreon)

Chapter 226

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Command Center

"Absolutely not!" Yelled out Emilia.

"Vampy, I-" Started Alexandra, before recoiling as the advisor slammed her book into the holographic projector.

"NO! I am not letting you send my maids to their fucking deaths!"

"Milady, we-" Emilia's glare could have frozen a supernova solid, and even Ella wasn't immune to it, the maid closing her mouth with a snap.

"You.Shut.It." The advisor turned back towards Alexandra. "Why the hell would you even propose this?"

"Because it's the logical thing to do. And they agree."

"You're going to get them killed."

"Maybe." Emilia blinked, visibly taken off-balance by the blunt answer. She'd clearly expected some kind of denial. "But maybe not. Risk is an inherent part of war. Or any combat really, even sparing matches. And they'll have both CQ and Jared, not to mention the teleport talismans, to help mitigate that risk. But yes, they could die. But we need them. I need them."

Emilia gritted her teeth, but both of the maids nodded in agreement, and Sarah visibly gathered her courage as she stepped forward.

"She's right, milady." The maid visibly quivered under the advisor's gaze, but she valiantly rallied. "She needs our expertise for this to work. CQ and Jared are formidable, but they simply don't have the experience."

"I won't risk losing you. Not…not again." Emilia began to waver, her last words sounding like she was choking back a sob as her anger melted away, and Alexandra winced.

So that's what this was about.

"You won't." Sarah took another step forward, and knelt in front of the advisor. "You won't. But this is what we do best milady. What we've done for centuries. And, let me tell you-" She smiled. "-If the worst the Western Marches' enemies could offer wasn't enough to kill us, those Republic goons definitely won't!"

That made the advisor chuckle, though it was weak and Alexandra could see a tear rolling down Emilia's face.

"Alright." She cleared her throat, her voice returning to a semblance of normalcy. "Alright. I yield. But your plan better be foolproof. How do you even plan on sending them there anyway?"

"Well, the land caravan thing buys us some time, but not much of it. By the time a battlegroup, even Calder's, makes it there, they'll already be too deep in Republic territory, we'll never make it out."

"So…?"

"So, with the raiding squadron to provide the firepower, we simply need a small and fast strike team to secure Amelia until the senate guard is neutralized."

"...The blackbird?"

Alexandra smiled.

"The blackbird."

"I thought you couldn't arm it. And neither of them can't pilot it."

"Won't have to. It can carry some cargo if we make it a one way trip." She held up her hand at Emilia's suddenly worried expression. "Don't worry, they'll have the squadron to carry them home."

"Are you just going to stuff them in a crate?"

"No. Wouldn't get them down in one piece anyway. But this is where our little raid comes in, even if it was aborted. Remember the drop pods we made?"

"You can have the blackbird carry some?"

"Well, yes. Only one though."

"...They can only carry three persons apiece."

"I know. And while Jared could pilot one of the blackbirds if I upload the routines to him, he'd never make it to the ground, there's no pilot ejection. So I'll make a second aircraft, and send some extra gear or a couple extra golems."

"And just…drop them and pray they land in the caravan?"

"Well…there are…ways to increase accuracy."

Emilia frowned. She knew that tone.

"What ways?"

"...Have you ever heard of dive bombing?"

*****

Marie frowned as she neared the powder magazine.

She liked the colonel, but he could seriously stand to be less cryptic. Meet him immediately for a secret meeting? They could have done that in her office. Though she did understand why he wouldn't want to hold it in his, given she'd wrecked his door, and probably damaged the anti-scrying and soundproofing enchantments of the room in the bargain.

Maybe he didn't trust her office's security. That or he was being extra paranoid. Given what had just happened…he was far more than justified in that.

She arrived in front of the magazine's doors, and nodded in approval. The room had been sealed in anticipation of her arrival, with only her (or his) mana signature able to open it. She'd been warned by her men that he had spent quite a bit of time down there before asking for the meeting, which meant he had probably swept the entire room, then locked it down to prevent any tampering or planting of devices.

He was pretty thorough.

She put her hand on the crystal screen that was in lieu of a lock, and waited patiently for the device to recognize her.

Then, she pushed the doors open as they unlocked with a click, before closing them behind her.

She looked around in the room. Uh, odd. Where was he?

Marie walked a bit into the room, raising tiny puffs of -thankfully normal, not gunpowder- dust as she went, and rolled her eyes as she saw him sitting on one of the dusty powder barrels.

"Ah, Marie, you're here." He jumped off of the barrel, and Marie had to repress a frown. There was something…off here. Her subconscious whispering a sense of wrongness into her psyche. "Good. Sorry for dragging you here." He sighed. "Before you ask 'why the powder magazine?', it's because it is by far the most heavily secured room in the fortress, and I could order it sealed for your arrival with far less suspicion, if I was pretending evidence of sabotage, than by doing the same with an office. What I have is that sensitive." The colonel paused for a second, clearly gathering his courage. "I have evidence that Amelia was indeed preparing a revolution. And far more besides."

"What?!? Why didn't you-" Marie closed her mouth with a snap as Orzal raised a hand imperiously, though oddly not quite directed at her.

"I only learned it today. Because she had to have some form of 'open this if I disappear' message. It ended up in the hands of Malcom, the brigadier…with a full list of her contacts and those supporting her cause, so he could take up her mantle. I found out thanks to some spying devices I managed to plant in his most secure office."

Marie was speechless. Absolutely speechless. She'd started to have some doubts about the Colonel, especially with his bleeding heart for his men, but damn. One of the reasons why Amelia had lived this long was that no one had found anything but circumstantial evidence pointing to her treason. Senator Charles sure knew how to pick them.

He began to pace back and forth, and her subconscious began positively screaming at her that something was very, very wrong here. Something…about dust?

"Of course, the recording itself is of little value. We could have falsified something like that, and many will be quick to point it out. However, if we act fast, we can grab Malcom and hopefully the list. We'll have to be extraordinarily careful of course, the troops are on edge and looking out for another kidnapping."

Marie nodded again, while looking around the room nervously. What was wrong about the dust? Why would-

Her wandering gaze fell onto the barrel the colonel had been sitting on. The dusty barrel she'd noted.

The dusty barrel with absolutely NO marks of someone having sat there.

It clicked. The dust. His footsteps weren't throwing up tiny clouds of dust like hers had.

She stopped paying attention to the colonel's monologue as all of her danger senses stopped whispering and started screaming in alarm. The colonel was an illusion. And in here…it was a trap. A distraction from something else. From him or someone who had gotten his likeness, didn't matter.

She sprinted past Orzal's hologram, running through his illusion without blinking. She had been lured here for a reason. And she was quite sure that if someone had programmed an illusion with her presence, there had to be a failsafe for her trying to get out through the door. Which meant that someone needed her here. And the illusion was to keep her there…or prevent her from finding something else before it was too late.

It only took her a few seconds before she saw something out of place out of the corner of her eyes, and she skiddled to a halt as she tried to discern what it was.

She had a split second to scream as she recognized the bomb before it detonated.

*****

Orzal watched as the entire fortress vanished in a massive ball of flames, bracing for the shockwave.

It hit him like a wall, and he stumbled back, before regaining his balance.

Two birds killed with one bomb. Now, for this to truly work, he had to disappear alongside his men. After he did one last thing.

Then…all that would be left is to pray that he'd made the right choice.

*****

Alexandra blinked as she saw the notification, waiting patiently for her attention.

That was unusual. Not having a notification per se, but having one from her core systems. After the thorough purge they'd gone through, most of it that could interact with her mind was neutered. A bit too much, perhaps, since the notification had sat there for a bit, ignored, until a routine check had stumbled upon it.

She opened it. One of the nice things about having been able to rewrite the code for this stuff had been to rip out the niceties and bullshit the program tried to wrap everything in.

SECONDARY CORE CAPABILITIES: UNLOCKED

Alexandra leapt out of her seat in the command center.

*****

"So, what are the limits of this thing?" Asked Alexandra as she held the core. Well, not 'held', since it was hovering above her hand, but it was close enough. It felt…odd. Like she was in it and not at the same time. Her other self had helpfully provided a parallel by saying it was pretty much what her body had felt like to Arcadia when they'd been in the gestalt, as a node that was technically the entire hive mind but yet a small chunk of it. It was…impossible to explain further, really.

"Well, it's kind of like bosses?" Said Emilia. "It's limited in how many you can make, relative to your level. I'm guessing the teleport commando team pushed you over the threshold?"

Alexandra nodded.

"Probably, yeah. I just hadn't noticed."

She paused a bit, watching to see if that surprised Emilia, but the vampire girl just rolled her eyes.

"I told you you got too much into your work."

"Hey, you're the one that wants this to be a safe mission."

"...Point taken."

"Anyway, can I send it over with the assault team? It would be very useful if I could control everyone in real time."

Emilia exchanged a look with Sarah, who was the only maid present, Ella being too busy whipping up some last few nightmares in the chemistry lab.

"You could, but…Are you sure you'd like to? Cores are precious. And hard to replace."

Alexandra winced. She could believe the 'hard to replace' part. Not only had the damned thing cost her a small mountain of mana, it had cost her essence as well. And not an insubstantial amount either.

"Yeah, but still…Besides, I can just teleport it home." She blinked as Emilia shook her head. "I can't?"

"You can't teleport dungeon cores, secondary or otherwise." Emilia gestured. "Otherwise, don't you think they'd have just gotten a scanner in range to see your core and then whisked you away through that during the third kidnapping attempt."

"Uh." So the Gods had their own way of preventing teleports. Interesting. She'd have to look into that.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

"And as for other limitations, wellll…one of the reasons why secondary cores are mainly used as military assets is that everything is more expensive."

"What do you mean?"

"Expanding a dungeon influence zone through them? More expensive. Same for creating anything through your powers in an influence where only a secondary core is present."

Alexandra frowned.

"Wait, my zones of influence are…separate?"

"Yep. Your mana is global, not sure why, but your influences are separate. Though, for example, you could leave the secondary core here and take the main core, and the dungeon influence here wouldn't collapse. But everything would be more costly. It's part of why most dungeons keep a central location, and not, like, half a dozen secondary dungeons around."

"...How much more expensive are we talking about?"

"Enough that if it was the case for the main dungeon, you'd be operating at a net loss. Even with your manufacturing. It would be even worse otherwise."

"Ouch. Okay, point taken. Most dungeons just use them to extend their control?"

"Kind of, yeah. Influence zones that touch use the efficiency of the main core if it's in either of the zones. And no, before you ask, you can't just withdraw the secondary core from the second influence zone without it collapsing, so you can't grow your dungeon like some horrible infinity wart."

Alexandra closed her mouth with a snap.

"Alright, fair enough." She sighed. "So not profitable, but….Mmmmhhh."

"...I know that tone. Spit it out!"

"I think I may have an idea. And if what that 'colonel' said was true, one that will benefit us, Allya, and our new friends within the Republic."