Isabella arrived at Checkpoint Two with her siblings and mother. A largeish cavern, the Core Room still dwarfed it in size, but this was going to be hers for the next few months. The rotations to different positions would be a test of being able to work together and both create and takeover positions from others in the future.

The first thing she had to do was open up the objectives in her HUD. A simple list filled a corner of her vision, objectives like setting up a command post, begin resourcing operations, and clearing out hostiles to set up patrol paths. She got to work directing the drones under her command to deploy the micro and nanobot base stations.

A few simple commands had the goblins swarming out to clear and secure the room setting up their own camps and haphazard patrols. Drones moved to several walls, where Isabella carefully directed the loose mana in the room to form the material growth zones on the walls. Currently there were no hostile goblins present in the room, but she could sense some in the tunnels and smaller branches leading in. For now, she decided to mostly leave them be.

She would receive a few dozen reinforcements of the goblin variety every day or so from the now swarming islands her mother created in the goblin caves. Time was on her side, once she was established and fortified, she could push out. Once more allowing the domain to grow. Currently that growth was stalled as it encountered pushback preventing more. It appeared that the presence of a settlement of sufficient size competed with the mana used to grow whatever the crystals spherical domain was.

Isabella knew that this more than anything was why the were here. The lack of growth in the domain and the threat of outside forces had motivated her mother to deploy them at this time. Otherwise, they would likely still be training. She desperately wanted her mother to be happy and proud of her. With this in mind she got to work.

~ * ~

Alissa after getting both Isabella and Maria settled into their respective areas, traveled back to the core room. Once there she put the kids Carmilla, Conrad and Karl to work. They managed mundane tasks and training under Nova’s supervision. For the past two years she had been building up her forces and infrastructure, the major thing was the training of her commanders. The annoying part was how the addition of the biological units truly changed how the whole domain worked.

The spiders and lizards alone had held back the encroaching forces. It may be more accurate to say that they provided a continuous source of danger and resources for them. While Alissa lacked the ability to ‘view’ the invaders she at best had a general sense of location within her domain. Now that the kids were in play, she could use her implants to monitor the main entrances to the core room through them.

The goblins she created were subpar even though she was starting to see the evolutions to more powerful variants show up. They were highly primitive, a few tests with better weapons, armor and building material failed as they mostly ignored them or failed to keep them in usable condition. Trying to use them to harvest material only worked using the brutal slave labor programs that they set up. A tribe would only harvest material if they managed to capture members of another group and put them to work, for some reason they were unable or unwilling to use members of their own tribe to do the same thing. Preferring instead to torment, torture, or kill off the useless one of their own tribes rather than put them to work. That was regardless of how they tended to treat the non-useless members, violence was the name of the game with these creatures.

That also brought up the general lack of overall control Alissa had over the monsters within her domain. If she or one of the Firstborn were not present the creatures acted much like they would in the wild. Including killing off other creatures from the domain. It had taken a while to realize as she had relied on constructs for so long. Alissa’s current theory was that there was a disconnect between her and the core preventing the type of control that she wanted. She could control them if she was present, much like her constructs.

This led to one conclusion for her, she needed not only more but better constructs. That and a sentient race of servants rather than the slave types she had. Troops that had a similar level of intelligence and cooperation to the Firstborn. She could always use creatures like the goblins as fodder, or chaff infantry but she needed not only commanders but elite formations. Currently her constructs were playing that role, but they were at best main line level not elite. They lacked the autonomy that she needed.

For the moment the spiders were her best option, they had numbers and cooperation but lacked the brainpower to do more than hold positions. She got a feeling that given time and resources she could guide their evolution towards a more useful form. At the same time, she was hesitant to spend the resources, and play genetic tinkerer. While they held positions quite well and had the numbers to be useful their lack of intelligence and the threat they posed when she or her kids weren’t around to keep them under control was an issue.

She needed better constructs. That was a simple conclusion to the conundrum, her oldest and most basic troops were simply less than the newer models made with better materials. The issue there was with how difficult it was to build them up in useful numbers, the living metal wellspring was holding up production. Producing only three seeds a day was no longer acceptable, she needed those seeds to create new nano and micro bot swarms as well as the golems. She had invested a serious amount in scout units and hunter killers to remove small problems in her domain, in places she couldn’t get access to.

Her personal mine in the core room was a massive power sink, she was focused on materials like copper, tin, aluminum, and a variety of others like cobalt, and nickel. The trace materials enhanced the useability of iron when mixed together. Iron was however a problem, it just cost so very much to make, and she wasn’t getting it in useful quantities. A few pounds a day was so small that she had decided not to use it for now and just stockpile. Bronze required more work than just iron as it was an alloy, but she could produce it in actually useable quantities.

At the moment, her ‘people’ were at the bronze age of tech, she really needed to get that up to industrial revolution level at the minimum. However, the space and requirements to build up to that point meant she needed to start taking territory, and when you followed the logic, you created an annoyingly circular bunch of logic that went right back to the start.

To break the cycle, she was going to take the wellspring offline and take the time to upgrade it. One of the useful features of most survival equipment that had long term use in mind. Her main line troops, the constructs, were a lot of things but easy to produce was not one of them. With supply bottlenecks and the like, it made it impossible to produce them in the numbers needed long term. Periods of down time like recently made it possible to stockpile, followed by the losses in combat that caused her to grind to a stop creating a sine wave of usefulness rather than the more linear upward trend she wanted.

This unfortunately also created other problems, she needed to take the energy to matter converter offline as well as her advanced nano swarm not to mention the massive energy sink to create the advanced materials needed and the time. It would take a few weeks or so.

Once complete she would have more seeds to use for activating the golems, expansion would give her the available mana to divert to get a more stable resource income. What really hurt was the lack of a productive population producing goods and materials for the domain. She had to build and arm her entire population on her own, producing more kids wasn’t currently possible without a Necrarch corpse to bridge the creation gap. It also wasn’t needed, what she wanted was a civilian population that would mostly manage themselves and produce the things she needed if they were fed raw resources. Given time she could also foresee them producing and contributing a fighting force without her input.

As capable as Nova was, she lacked the true support structure of an AI network, that severely limited what Alissa could do on her own. Nova would become more and more tied up in managing the day-to-day production and economy if she didn’t get sentient beings working for her. Not a right now problem, but a pretty soon problem. Alissa had been sitting in front of her fireplace while contemplating these things and got up to get to work.

Setting the wellspring up she began the upgrade. This was followed by her creating and building plans for an internal transport network. Mining carts and rails throughout the domain, the basic nano swarms were more than capable of that plus the reinforcement runes on the tracks, since she lacked motors, she had them rigged for pullies and a few constantly running conveyors running off the river’s power using water wheels. That would take time but increasing her throughput to the front lines was important.

Infrastructure was one of those things you had to stay on top of or you fell so far behind you quickly lost control and ended up in a game of constant catchup.

The goblins were mostly using stone and bone weapons, lizard skin for leather and spider exoskeletons and some bone for armor she had managed to get them to combine leather and bone for shields, but the task had been exhausting.

Nova found herself managing a farm/ranch that harvested both useful plant and animal materials in the goblin cave including harvesting venom. She was helped by the kids back at home as this got added onto their plates.

Alissa had hoped that the goblins would produce a surplus of material for use, but it seemed that that was in vain. The closest thing she got was what several swarms and drone patrols brought back from the waste piles this also necessitated the construction of several ferries across the water separating the tribes as well as a simple network of land bridges that the swarms used to move material back to the core room.

The study of the brought back ‘goods’ helped a bit in understanding the goblins’ “society”, but the primary point was that they had no sense of preparation. No stockpiled materials, if material wasn’t used it was discarded. They also had little sense of conservation, they would frequently ruin the entire hide just to get a few choice pieces and discard the rest or throw away a useable or repairable tool the moment they had an upgrade.

As time went on Alissa found herself more and more disgusted by the creatures. They were wasteful and parasitic on the environment, if she wasn’t managing the area the lake would be a disgusting mess of shit, litter, and corpses. That was even before their behavior was taken into account, rape, murder, and infanticide were common, including sacrifices. Cannibalism happened daily and seemed to be an accepted food source. Forget even trying to count or classify things like theft or assault. These behaviors, distasteful as they were she could accept, including the way they looked at her and her children. She would kill them if they tried to implement their thoughts, no it was their waste and general uselessness that irritated her.

She had a long-term plan to raise a tribe in semi-isolation using a different strategy to hopefully make them useful, but she lacked the resources, time or interest for now.

Once the encroachment into her domain had become about getting resources for the enemy goblin tribes they had mostly backed off, buying her time rather than everything becoming a massive rush. Isabella and Maria would soon find themselves managing their own goblin tribes at the front, this was more so to avoid having to supply the disgusting things than anything else. These tribes would basically be slaves for the rest of the goblins, or they might enslave those she sent to the front either way was good. Hell, she might even order the kids to make them work semi-cooperatively just to teach them how to manage annoying and uncooperative factions and make them functional, it would be a good learning experience for the children.

She envisioned something like trading captured slaves to the nomadic checkpoint tribes for materials and resources they didn’t have.

She then moved to the workshop; she was going to spend time figuring out a way to increase the usefulness of her constructs. Karl was already there. He had asked for a place to work so he could help. He had been so adorable that Alissa gave in immediately. Karl was unfortunately pretty incompetent at fighting and his magic was weak. That was in comparison to his siblings and Alissa herself. He seemed far more powerful and competent than the shaman she had encountered, and he was more than capable of dealing with goblins in a fight. Preferring a war hammer over the more elegant weapons his siblings favored, he would use his greater strength to bash his opponents into the ground.

Enjoying this book? Seek out the original to ensure the author gets credit.

None of that changed a feeling of inadequacy when he looked at those he knew and respected, he was determined to make a difference in his own way. Karl liked to tinker; he also had an almost stereotypical male love for ‘robots’ and magic. Combined and he was determined to blend magic and technology. His declaration to Alissa that he would “Mad scientist his way to greatness, all I need is a Lab-boor-it-ory” had her giving him a spot in the workshop larger than his siblings. Alissa was following a system of granting relatively minor gifts to the kids usually on a one for one basis, Karl wanted a workshop and Carmilla wanted a garden and so on… she was working hard to avoid favoritism among the kiddos.

Alissa had to give it to him, he was determined. Karl was the furthest ahead in his studies, he had the spirit of the grind at least.

She wandered over. Checking was at least as important as what she had planned.

“Hey what are you working on?” she asked.

Karl had a large looking scarab slightly bigger than himself on the table. A few drones walked about placing parts as the kid controlled a nano swarm to carve out a complex set of channels and runes in the body.

“Nova said you wanted a large builder, so I’m making one. The problem according to Nova was an inability to set up fine control without constant supervision. Because they are so stupid on their own, I came up with the idea to give them a brain without needing a computer.”

“How did you manage that?”

Karl held up a silicon wafer. I put the design inside this along with the materials, another one designates where and when it can draw materials and a final one controls the limbs while they work. Each wafer looked nearly identical to a primitive circuit board. “I added in some variability to dimensions that can be changed or input using our limited version of World Builder.”

Alissa was stunned. “Um… isn’t that just a primitive computer?”

“That’s the brilliant part! These operate off of magic, if I can find a material like Krystal, I can make something like the molecular circuits Nova showed me! I still don’t know if it will work the way I think, both Nova and I wanted to test it before we brought it up to you.”

“So… you’re making a magical brain, slash processor? Combining the concept of technology and replicating it with magic… that may just work if you can get the elemental balance right.”

“The elemental balance shouldn’t matter. The ‘mental magic’ of the Necrarch wasn’t based on the basic elements. Mana is neutral until it is given form, I want to use that. Magic is a system just like physics, it isn’t tied to any of the elements it is a force that is frequently used to ‘conjure’ said forces. Other than that, it has the same flexibility that electricity does.”

Alissa felt like she had been struck by lightning. She pulled up a chair and began consulting Nova on the idea and implications. Meanwhile Karl, being familiar with the somewhat vacant look his mother got when deep in thought got back to work.

For this test he was avoiding using any activation seeds, they were too valuable to waste. He wanted to see if he could get this to work without the core’s help. He had a mini proof of concept ready, a semi-precious ‘core’ made of quartz that he had part of the advanced nano swarm fabricate and carve out, was running a little toy soldier marching back and forth on the back shelf. He had to occasionally add mana to keep it going and the wall behind it contained the circuit holding the commands, connected by a thin copper wire.

He felt his mother drop into subjective time, knowing that she was now looking over and communicating with Nova about his research. The thought that he had been valuable made him smile.

Alissa, after spending a great deal of time going over the studies and reports of Karl’s work, patted the adorable little nerd on the head and wondered back out of the workshop. She did massively up the priority of his research and allocated a nearly unlimited budget from her resources towards such endeavors. Nova would manage that for now, on her end she would have to think long and hard on the implications. Karl showed her that it was possible to use magic to reproduce the effects of technology.

The idea that magic was an entire system hadn’t really occurred to either Alissa or Nova. Magic as an energy source was not new, but using that a replacement for electricity seemed… broken?

Alissa had considered magic and mana to be little more than a basic and different replacement for the psionics and other “powers” and abilities that various peoples had.

This concept of magic and mana being something more like a fundamental force of the world was new and odd. That such forces could be manipulated in a scientific manner should have been obvious. Hell, she was already doing that with her network, cleaning and channeling both corrupt and clean mana around the domain.

Now, what she needed to do was stay out of his way and let him work with Nova to bring it to fruition. She would of course remain appraised and try some experiments of her own out when she had time. At the moment trying to get up to speed and interrupting Karl’s work would be counter productive and might have a detrimental effect if she took over “his” project. It would take too long to get up to speed and she may hurt his motivation, she actually understood technology whereas he had stories. Killing creativity or restricting him based on those things was not on her to do list.

It did, however, free her up from the infrastructure projects she had planned. The builder units and the possibility of creating magical golems and constructs without the admittedly stopgap measure of using the wellspring was a good thing.

Magic might create the opportunity to temporarily bypass the massive resource and support requirements of purely mechanical units.

Using magic and the various mediums to program in an advanced way without highly refined and processed materials… just delicious. Using magic runes, gates and rituals like those that showed up when casting to direct mana in a more controlled manner. Filling a blind spot that both she and Nova shared.

She would swing by and see what Carmilla was up to. Conrad being the guy watching the goblins and practicing his fighting on the observation platform, he would likely be annoyed at the interruption as he was almost a token musclehead and battle junkie. She would play with him later or just let him disrupt the goblins as an “invading” force to blow off some steam.

Carmilla was for lack of a better word a gentle soul. She liked to grow things and had an aversion to violence. Mostly it was towards pointless violence, she was still a predator just one that preferred peace to destruction. When possible, she leaned more towards negotiation and diplomacy, and when combat was the best option, she preferred to act decisively and destroy her opposition quickly and efficiently. No muss, no fuss and no rules. Complete and total destruction leaving no possibility of return. Carmilla could be very scary when provoked not in terms of pure power but in her mentality and approach.

If the girl lacked something it was ambition. She was perfectly content with her garden, and the study of living things. Between her and Karl, Alissa tended towards the idea of removing them from rotation as bosses at the perimeter of the domain as the research they provided was highly valuable. Almost to the point where Alissa herself taking command of a checkpoint just to let them do their thing would be a better use of available resources.

Carmilla was busy at the moment working on her garden. One of the things Alissa needed for the domain was a greater diversity of biological resources. Wood or an analogue was high on the list, bone was decent for a number of items especially when combined with leather. A strong and flexible renewable material would be better, with it she could build bows and crossbows. Proper siege and support weapons. The same things could be made with metals in a pinch but… metal was expensive and a highly needed resource for well… everything.

There was never going to be a time where iron, steel, copper or other metals didn’t have some use for either building, infrastructure, weapons, support and so on. That combined with the girl’s desire to tame some of the monsters in the domain to make them more useful made her a god send.

Her experiments with the garden and river plot had already borne fruit with increased efficiency and a growing amount of biodiversity as the girl used her magic to subtly alter the creatures she encountered towards a more beneficial direction.

With Carmilla busy Alissa made a low priority note and moved on.

***

Maria was having problems. She had been setting up just like Isabella following the simple set of objectives provided by Nova and her mom. It had been going much the same as the simulations they all did together to practice. What those simulations didn’t cover were the annoyances in her cavern. The goblins at Checkpoint Two were far more aggressive, hostile, and organized than those Isabella had to deal with. Her own goblins were difficult to control as well.

These goblins were looking to take over. Or they had gotten annoyed at the lack of resources they were finding in the actually contested chamber beyond the checkpoint. The swarms were expanding the available space, and Maria was placing down resource extraction points, but she was constantly being harassed.

She had set up breeding areas for spiders, rats, and lizards as well as tunnels towards the chamber so that the creatures could kill and be killed. Except they weren’t killing.

Nor were they delaying the hostile force. They died and were harvested then the goblins tried to take her checkpoint. Her smaller goblins were barely able to hold them off with slings and numbers in surprisingly bloody, but low fatality battles. Lots of wounds and several enslaved groups on both sides, but more a constant ongoing skirmish.

If she massed her forces they fell back, but she wasn’t able to get her work done. The moment she released her people to go back to work she came under attack again.

She wanted to take and set up at the far side of the cavern but was held back by Nova as it was pointed out that she had yet to secure a beachhead in the checkpoint. While she agreed that such a task was risky it changed nothing. That she was personally prevented from joining in and her reluctance to send in the golems. Especially since her mom told her that they were now a high value troop with the wellspring temporarily offline.

Sighing she sent a medium priority requisition for two additional companies of goblins to her position. Then she went in her head and worked on the design she had for a mount. Squads and a few platoons of enemies were going to be coming and going for a while. Additional ranged power would be helpful, her magic largely not a factor due to being used in the setup of the base. Sending her goblins out to fight seemed counter productive while the room wasn’t secure.

Fast and mobile forces would be welcome like the still small groups of spider and lizard riders that were popping up in the goblin spawning point. Those however were being nurtured, the spider’s ability to traverse the 3D environment and the lizards less sure footed but more massive impact would be good.

For now, she just let a large portion of her goblins spread out in the chamber. They drew attention and that was all she really needed. Let the filthy things fight it out in similar group sizes or let the attackers get caught by a few of the larger patrols. The only real change she made to her plans was the addition of more base stations to increase the size of the admittedly large cavern. Soon she would have trenches and camps throughout the cave. Nova had suggested a system of control based on fortifying key locations to take and hold territory. So far, the hostile force was content to ominously grind against her own forces, not looking for a decisive battle. Like they were using her troops as training partners. They completely avoided her position and the few times she sent out constructs the fled before contact.

She also noted that the goblins were dumping a large amount of the corruption in their bodies into the domain. Cleaning and healing themselves, gaining battle experience, and growing stronger due to the effects the domain had on all things inside it especially in battle.

That was disturbing to say the least. She didn’t understand her mother’s almost primal joy at the discovery… nor did she miss the fact that her forces also grew stronger with each conflict. Growth required challenges, required conflict, and she was going to be the grindstone. She personally was annoyed at not being allowed to join in the fun, not that she expected the goblins to be a challenge unless in large numbers. For the moment both Nova and her mother considered the battle data, and study of tactics and strategy to be far more valuable than driving these creatures out.

The large force of constructs set up behind both checkpoints by Alissa was comforting should the battles begin to become actually threatening.

The presence of intelligent creatures in the domain, and how they reacted was more than enough to confirm some of the beliefs and theories about Krystal. Contingencies in place Maria got back to work.

***

Clack was happier than he had been in a while. Yes, he had received the mandatory beating from the bosses of the tribe. They might have actually killed him if Shaman Flamespit hadn’t stepped in. The incredibly old shaman had been very interested in what Clack had to say. Flamespit was the true power of the tribe, even with centuries of mana corruption in his body he could still wipe the tribe out with the spells he could cast. The Thing Clack had found may as well have been the fountain of youth for the aged goblin shaman. A thing could remove the corruption from his body, it could save the tribe and allow them to rebuild and climb to greatness in the City of Pillers nearby.

Flamespit had ordered the tribe to pack up and move into the tunnels near the Thing. What he called a Dungeon, a place for challengers to grow strong and to release the corrupt mana in their bodies. The surroundings would have little to no corruption to hurt them all of it being drawn towards this marvel.

Clack didn’t care about that. He cared that he received a reward upon arrival. Standing out was a good way for a goblin to die. To make enemies.

His reward was a female for a few days. He had his needs after all and getting his balls drained made him feel on top of the world, it was also a reasonable reward that wouldn’t get him shanked. A few nights of pounding away at a fertile female possibly creating spawn of his own then he would fade into obscurity.

That was what he wanted others to think anyways. His “fame” had gotten him just enough power over the useless gobbos of the tribe to form a party. Twenty strong all much weaker than him.

He wouldn’t be anything more than any other lucky gob, but he would stay in the place for a long time grow in power. Learn and adapt to the dangers, taking his minions with him.

Clack had no loyalty to the tribe. Few did. Goblins banded together for safety and convenience not loyalty he would slit some throats in this “Dungeon” kill some of its inhabitants. He would be cautious and careful, selling and trading just enough to get by without standing out.

The Dungeon and the scary elf might just be his, if not they gave him the chance to rise into a leader of his own tribe. Then others would serve him, he wouldn’t need to ask for females he could just take them. His eyes held a dangerous light because what he heard was that the dungeon would make him strong, something he dearly wished for but hadn’t seen a path to without dying.