"Stabilization completes. Revitalizing AI conscience."

I wake up with a gasp as I quickly open my eyes to find that I'm back in the room that I started in what felt like months ago but was only about a week. No matter how many times I'm going to experience death it's still going to suck. Looking down I also notice that I am once again just a pair of floating invisible eyeballs. A notification pops up in front of me as I was about to begin drifting over to the main room.

It was a manifest of all the things that happened during my stasis that was apparently 5 hours long. The list read "Enemy Mining Outpost claimed. Lv 1 Territory Map unlocked. All drones fully repaired and rearmed."

A level 1 territory map? Wonder why it's only level one and how am I supposed to make it better. I pop open said map and a light blue tinted 3D holo projection of everything that my drones and I have so far explored. Everything from the other factory segment, that I have been procrastinating about, to my newly claimed territory a sizable distance away from my Home base.

Speaking of those two areas, they both were shaded in dark blue, which I supposed meant that they were my direct territory. All around the map there were various pin points which showed where various things of importance were. For instance, the Tower Tribe's tower had a pinpoint right on the top of it, not that I would need it since the tower was almost 2 times as tall as the rest of the buildings. I could also see the positions of all of my drones dispersed around the maps.

But enough of that, I look over to the Enemy Dungeon's base, whom I am going to call MAI which stands for mining and AI. Over at MAI's base, their territory was also shaded in but with a dark red. Around MAI's base were a few other outposts not too far away from the one I took. I guess I need to start reinforcing that area soon.

With that thought I drift over to my small and medium drone works and start placing orders. I start pumping out another batch of 10 spiders in the small drone works. Then I put in the order for 2 more moose, another 2 squads of 5 hounds, and checking on how many hornets I have left I put another 7 in the queue to round up their number to 10. I also order for my vessel drone to be replaced because I'm starting to miss my hands.

While they are doing that I order one of my patrol groups to start clearing a more safe and unobstructed path over to my new Outpost.

———

A dozen or so minutes later most of those spiders are finished fabricating but the medium drone works is just starting to produce its third hound so I order the spiders to start construction on a second medium drone works.

This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.

Then before I start to wait again I realize that I should be looking around at my new territory. Hopping over to Outpost I realize I do not need to be in one of my drones or in a vessel while here. Well that's nice.

I float around for a few moments taking inventory on everything of potential use around here. There isn't much infrastructure around here, only a mostly destroyed refinery, to which I send my remaining spiders on deck to repair, and a mineshaft with not much in it aside from the occasional ore vein that has not been fully extracted yet.

Floating over the pile of drone corpses I do a quick look over before picking the most intact of the scorpion drones and pull up its description.

"The Electric Beam Lancer or the EBL is a combative drone meant to fry circuitry in smaller drones while disabling larger ones. Due to its need to dissipate large amounts of heat after every blast, the point at which the beam it shot from is kept far away from the rest of the body which unfortunately leaves it extremely exposed to any sort of damage. Can be constructed in a Medium Drone Works.

Hmm, disabling larger drones you say? Now that leaves the question of if I could make them mine. Hopping back to base to quickly add 3 of them to the still very long queue. The first squad of hounds are complete and the drone works is currently midway though the second so I send off the hounds to help defend the Outpost. Looking at the small swarm of spiders I see that they have made good progress and are almost done with the second medium drone works.

After a few minutes they finish with construction so I have them crawl onto the backs and carrying baskets on the moose pair and have them be shipped off to meet up with the new hound squad. Moving over to the newly made medium drone works I shift over some of the queue over to it and away from the first which now has essentially doubled my production speed.

Realizing that I have just drained most of my material savings I hop over back to the Outpost and am happy to see that the spiders here have recently finished the refinery over here. I quickly order some of the hornets to start shoving all of the drone corpses into the refinery for recycling. As they do so the spiders also make themselves useful by picking up the resource blocks and drop them into the remaining moose's baskets.

The scrap that was salvaged from the pile of corpses was more than enough to fill up the baskets of the remaining moose and have a bit left over for more emergency repairs.

Finally, I check up on the scout squads and make sure that they are still patrolling the area so that there are no hostile drones sneaking up on us.

With that all done I move back to my main base and start passing the time by looking to the sky and watching the clouds and occasional birds from the Flock fly by. Speaking of the Flock, a small group of their members land on the clearing in front of my base. Hopping into the view of one of my ants I watch as one of the birds then pokes at some rope-like material. The material then falls to the ground and with it a small electronic tablet.

Having my drone walk over to the tablet to get a better look, I read from the tablet with a peaked curiosity.

"We, the Outskirt Aerial Attack Flock, request that you construct a wing of drones to replenish our ranks. You will be compensated with a sizable amount of resources."

Well this will be interesting.