As my drones begin to disperse across the outpost I hop out of the scout that I had been inhabiting during the battle. I watch as my repair spiders start welding back together all of the damaged drones with practiced precision. Deciding to check up on everything before I hop back into my vessel drone, I float around the outpost looking for anything that might need my attention.
For the most part everything looked fine in the mining outpost and, after a quick check, the other outpost was doing alright as well. With those two done I move over to the main base. As I float around the factory grounds searching for anything out of the ordinary, I spot GW-3N strolling around the halls.
I feel a pang of guilt as I realize that I've been more or less ignoring her existence for the past few days. Sure I had given her a safe-ish place to live, if you do not count the one MAI raid that happened a while back, but I have not even asked if she wanted her own room or anything like that. I make a mental note to apologize whenever something is not going horribly wrong.
Drifting back to the topic of general check ups, I eventually make it to the core where the ongoing upgrades are being made. I Look upon the factory's resident spider repair/construction team which is currently swarming around my core, implanting new components, welding together more metal frames, and all the other construction related things that I am not well versed in.
Looking above the flurry of work on the core, I see that the time left on the core's upgrades is an hour short of two days. I guess that is to be expected seeing as I only requested my drones to begin the upgrades right before the attack on the mining outpost began. Welp, it is not like I strictly need more drone capacity since quite a few of them were recently destroyed.
Speaking of which I should probably replace them, but as I look into my stock pile or lack there off I suddenly reconsider my plans. It seems that the upgrades to my garrisons have claimed a substantial amount of my already dwindling stockpile, enough so that after the fact it could barely be called a stockpile. Well then, I guess it's time to start filling up my coffers. I wonder if the flock has any more quests, the first one was quite lucrative.
Commandeering one of my spiders, I have the drone weld a message onto a spare metal plate. As the spider does its thing, I think about anyone else who might want anything and would be willing to pay for it. Begrudgingly, my mind points out that the tower tribe might want to purchase some of my services. Conveniently, as my spider finishes writing its message, a moose enters the compound bringing with it a full load of materials all the way from the warehouse outpost.
After my moose finishes dropping off its cargo I drop my message into one of its metal carrying baskets that are strapped to their sides. I tell the moose to please gallop over to the flock's nests and the tower tribe. The moose looks at me with the same glare that I and my co-workers would give our boss when he asked us to work overtime. "Oh don't be such a baby, you can take a long rest after you deliver the message and bring back their responses." And with that the moose speeds off out of the factory barricades and into the distance.
I tell one of the ant guards that are stationed at the barricade gates to notify me whenever that moose returns, to which the ant nods its head in confirmation.
After another sweep of the compound looking for anything else that I might need to work on I conclude that there is nothing left for me to do so I hop back into my vessel drone. My sight is then greeted by the somewhat familiar dusty floor of the mining outpost. I get up from my sitting position on the floor and glance around to see that all my drones are back to doing their assigned work. A couple dozen feet to my right is the mine shaft and snaking out of it is a bunch of ny spider drones hauling small pieces of ore towards the refinery.
Deciding that I don't have anything better to do I walk into the shaft and enter the mines proper. The shaft was quite large, being about four times as wide and three times taller than me, but that is to be expected seeing as the much larger excavator crabs were the main resource gatherer here before I destroyed all the drones and took over. Now that I am thinking about it, that kinda made me sound like the bad guy but my mind decided not to dwell on that for too long and flipped back to random thoughts.
A few minutes of walking the long shaft I eventually see that it shrinks down to around my height and I can hear the ever constant sound of drilling getting louder. I guess this is where the crabs left off and where my moles finally started digging on their own. It does not take long before I spot one of the moles drilling out a particularly large chunk of ores. The drone spots me and then, with its shield-like claws, breaks off a chunk of the ore and holds it out for me.
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"Aww, thank you little guy." I say as I accept the ore with one of my hands and pet the mole with the other, to which the mole seemed to greatly enjoy. I walked out of the mineshaft with the ore chunk and then dropped it into the chute of the refinery and watched as it eventually popped out a bar of metal.
After I do that I spot three of my hounds strolling around the outpost. Walking over to them, I notice that the lead hound is one veteran drone that had survived both of my assaults on the two outposts. I guess that makes that one hound the most experienced of their rank. As I approach the three drones, the veteran hound notices that I am here and quickly snaps to attention, which is to say they sat down facing me and straightened their back, and the two others quickly followed suit.
I pat the lead hounds head and say, "There's no need for you to snap to attention. You've survived through more than enough to be exempt from that." I see the tail of the veteran hound wag a bit but the drone continues to stay at attention. I sigh to myself but my mouth curls up a bit. "Well alright, if you want to be like that, fine. I'll be sending you and your subordinates," I glance over to the two hounds flanking the main, "Another batch of recruiters. You all better train them well."
As I walk away my hound happily barks in response. Saddling up to the cliffside of the hill that the mineshaft is dug into, I sit down and wait for the moose to get back with the messages. Thankfully I do not have to wait for that long, as my ants notified me that the moose had just arrived after a few minutes of me sitting around.
Slipping back out of my vessel drone and hopping back into the factory base I spot the moose in question sitting down in the main room of the factory and inside the moose baskets were two new tablets. Having one of the indoor ant guards pick up both of the tablets and lay them on the floor I begin to read off what has been inscribed.
Reading the flock's message first, it said that they would deliver a quarter of the previous requests alloys reward for another batch of then replacement swarm lancers. That is a bit less alloys per drone than last time but I guess they do not need reinforcements as badly as last time. Ordering up the requested drones I begin to read the tower tribes message and I see that they too are ordering drones. They are specifically ordering a group of three hornets to supplement their guard force and would be willing to pay with a decent chunk of metal scraps and electronic components for the drones.
While I do not particularly like the tower tribes leaders, I can not see a way where they could become much of a threat if I give them the drones. Placing the three hornets on the queue, I order the requested drones to fly off to their new owners after they are all finished being fabricated.
———
About an hour later, the woodpeckers had already flown off to the flock's nesting grounds and should have arrived by now. Two of the hornets have finished being constructed and the third has just begun. Floating outside of the factory walls, which is something I have been able to do ever since I had my spiders build the barricades, I see that the sun is beginning to set.
I am lounging around and watching the sun slowly dip down when one of my ant guards notifies me that someone is at the gates. I drift over to the mentioned section of the barricades and spot a small group of one green who is holding up a severely damaged yellow bot with the help of another yellow.
"Please Mr. Dungeon, let us in. We have wounded and they need repairs now!" The green robot pleads with my ant guard and its escorts.
Sensing me, the ant guard turns to face my non-existent body with a questioning look plastered on its metallic face.
"Open the gates and escort them inside the factory." I order my ant, to which they nod in understanding. As my drone gets on that, I pull away two of my spider drones that were working on the core beforehand and I tell them to meet in the main room. The spiders in question begin to climb up the staircase as I simply slide through the ground like a ghost.
I see the three bots as they storm up the stairs leading to my factory and finally reach the main room. They place their injured friend on a random nearby table as the spiders finally make it up the stairs. The two healthy robots nearly swat the spiders away when they get on the table but they stop themselves as they see the pair of drones starting to weld the, what I can now see are gashes and bite marks.
Not long after my drones began the procedure, GW-3N strolled into the hallway from upstairs to see what all the commotion was about and spotted the damaged yellow on the table. She runs into the room and yells, "What's going on?" To the other bots.
"S-46 and S-53 were scavenging near the big statue when S-46 was attacked by a pair of LASHs. We were able to fight them off but S-46 was hit pretty hard. A few days ago one of the guards was sharing stories and told me that there was a Dungeon not too far from the tower and that it had repair drones. So I helped carry S-46 over here with S-53 and prayed that the dungeon here did not mind fixing S-46 up." The green bot explained.
"I'm glad we made it here in time, S-46 didn't have much left in him." The yellow robot, who I guess is named S-53, says while glancing over to his injured friend.
Then the green bot speaks up. "The sun's getting pretty low, do you mind us staying here for the night?" Everyone looks over to my ant drone and essentially, me.
I have my ant shake its head and walk out of the factory to get back to work. The three standing bots seem to correctly take that as a "yes I don't mind" and relax a bit and begin to idly chatter to each other, and I am more than happy to have some more company even if they can not see me.