Looking over her domain, Alissa could hardly recognize what she was seeing. The cavern looked completely different than when she had awoken, not that long ago. The only remaining feature of the cavern were the imbedded ship parts (she couldn’t use them at the moment), and the river. The stalagmites and stalactites had been removed and broken down into useable materials. The floor, walls, and ceiling was now covered with a network of channels/traces filled with either corruption or the cores’ personal energy giving off a simultaneously blue-green glow, and a pulsing ‘aura’ of dark around the corrupt mana flowing through it. These channels tracked across the whole surface of the cavern when she learned that her creations didn’t have to remain inside the domain she had them continue to expand this network across the rest of the room.
On the ledge the core was doing whatever it did and processed the organized flows of mana entering it. The room was illuminated by a soft white light from various points, even the columns holding the roof up had patterns covering the sides connecting the ceiling to the floor. At various places in the network were either stations or a complex bundle of channels/reservoirs directing the flows of mana into either larger or smaller channels some leading to things needing power and others separating out into gossamer thin traces filling the gaps in between the larger channels.
The only wall that remained untouched was the one on the right hand side of the river, she was going to expand the cavern that way and use the river that was tucked against the wall for various projects, it would also help be a defensible point in case she encountered anything from that direction during her expansion of the cavern.
Swarms of bots traced patterns over portions of the increasingly fertile soil she was making creating elevated platforms and a ridge on the banks of the river nearest the core. There was also an incomplete river crossing currently sitting near the edge of her current domain, so her creations didn’t have to go through the river to get to the other side.
As for her forces she had 600 units complete including two new designs. Her minor bout of OCD especially when it came to these things was kicking in. There were 120 drones, 360 workers, 100 skirmishers, 20 guards. She had to stop producing workers as even though they were cheap she simply didn’t have anything for them to do.
So she had changed the production to the skirmisher, this model had backwards knees with small feet tipped with claws and its design was hunched forward capable of moving on either two legs or using it arms to run like a four legged animal. She had made up for its increased cost by making it smaller about the size of a large dog standing on it hind legs. She aimed for a sweet spot in size slightly larger than the small goblins yet not quite as large as the hobgoblins. The skirmishers were also currently the only model that had a face. It was modeled after a canine's long narrow and filled with teeth. Its hands had a locking set of actual claws ready to be retracted if they needed to throw or engaged if the needed to fight. This was the models close range weapon, useful for climbing or digging into the ground when running.
On its back was a bundle of short wickedly thin barbed javelins, some with the tips etched to be fragile and thin breaking of when impacting flesh or when one tried to pull it out, others were the standard design still short but heavy with a solid tip. As this was clearly a cave network the ability to gain dominant positions in a room might require climbing or crawling.
The idea was simple build a small fast attack creature that would charge into dominant positions on the battleground, give them ranged options and send them in to harass the flanks and rear either when they ran out of ammo or to support the main line in close quarters battle. Make them fast and agile to move through the possibly narrow spaces in caves, or to chase down retreating enemies.
The worker designs were at best a cost effective jack-of-all-trades. They were too expensive and took too long to build, to be considered fodder or chaff units. They were just inferior to the drones in combat ability, and arming them was necessary to making them effective. They required the ability to use multiple tool types as over specializing them at this point was stupid, and they were going to end up as support creatures. Her planned expansion would see these following behind and beginning work in the areas she conquered, for right now that meant building fortifications while the others were doing the fighting/patrolling. They were too useful in their roles to be wasted, yet too weak to add much more than numbers to her front line troops, this excluded the drain on resources for her to arm them.
These initial models lacked the strength to equip armor, leather (if she had it) would be a waste as the things were made of stone, so anything she added needed to be worthwhile and be light enough to use. As things stood she simply couldn’t justify throwing them away in combat, so she formed them into impromptu military engineers. They would transport both nano-swarm and micro-bot base stations into newly acquired areas and then get to work.
The second model was probably wasteful but she did need to start forming more than ‘militia’ forces. Her drones were simply more robust builders and while this let her upgrade them a bit more, as they could simply support more gear, it didn’t make them anything more than light infantry at best. The line they formed had still buckled under that pathetic assault. And nothing about their design was specialized to for a purpose the only reason she was using them as fighters was because she lacked options.
This was her second military model it cost a shitload of resources and time to build needing two seeds and a few dozen pounds of mana generated resources mostly metals. It was a medium infantry unit using better versions of the drones equipment, meaning she had actually put more emphasis on the quality rather than the quantity produced. She also added a layer of copper armor mostly to the head and chest, to help blunt and absorb incoming attacks over a layer of ‘flesh’ that was loosely packed powder covering the skeletal structure under a finely woven net for skin to reduce blunt damage to those points, and she placed a miniaturized nano-swarm inside the chest cavity to give it some active repair. Minor inlays of the metal reinforcing the limbs and joints where possible. With the short spears designed for tunnel fighting, shields, some ranged options with javelins stored behind the shield, and a secondary blade about the length of the forearm this model should be able to slowly phase out her drones for frontline combat. At the moment the cost meant that she only had 20 of these available, and she named them Guards.
They were also in her mind vital to any expansion as they had both relays and some autonomous functions available. The commands they had were simple and preprogrammed, so they would be far less effective without a connection, but they would also be able to do something if she lost comms with them. She had a series of relays built and ready to deploy, as they expanded.
Not having any experience with cave fighting she felt that this was the best she could do in terms of preparations for her expansion. And that needed to happen. Like right now. Alissa’s domain felt strained, overfull. There was a stress that seemed to want to push out that was becoming harder to resist as time went on.
“Nova monitor the core, I think we have cleaned this area as much as possible, so I’m going to allow the domain to grow and relieve some of the stress on it.”
“No problem Ally.”
Letting a bare trickle of cleaned mana flow into a dormant channel towards the intake for the growth gate in Krystal she held her breath ready to cut it off in a moments notice if things got out of hand. As the mana slowly flowed into the core the domain seemed to stabilize slightly, and began to grow. The rate was laughable and had diminishing returns over time as more energy was needed to support the growth currently it was at a rate of a few millimeters a minute. She was watching the system with a single minded focus on how it was holding up. Any increase to the diameter increased the volume exponentially so if the domain grew too fast it was possible that the increases would overload the core, there was even a possibility that those same increases could be fatal.
“So far so good.” She whispered to herself.
Despite her need and a desire to expand she refused to be killed for acting too fast. She had all the time in the world when it came to this. As the domain grew it began drawing more corruption through the caverns structure pulling them into the air. To her it looked like a cross between a steam vent or in the worst cases like a fountain of sludge bubbling onto the surface, those from the walls looked like streams running down, and the ceiling looked like a stream of falling black water. It was in short rather creepy looking. Whatever governed how this stuff moved though solids meant that they pooped up all over the cavern and not just in the new areas, thankfully the maintenance bots were showing their power as they located dammed and directed the energy into the network in rapid order. Krystal was able to handle the new stresses just fine, even seeming to thrive on the influx.
Alissa continued to add more to the growth circuit as time went on trying to maintain a slow steady growth she would continue this until she began to feel a strain on either the core or her domain. As minutes turned to hours and hours into days this expansion continued, she reached the main entrance to the cavern and then beyond. The smooth growth actually had her worried, she really expected to have a bomb dropped on her at any moment but she continued until she had covered well over another kilometer past the main entrance to her cavernous home.
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At this point she had a problem sustaining the growth with the mana income she had. Stunningly she had no problems with the stability of this new domain, she simply didn’t have the spare mana to continue feeding the crystal for its growing domain.
“This fucking finicky thing. How come you’re fine now?” She asked the calmly floating core in the middle of the ledge.
~ * ~
Ready to begin operations she sent some of the new skirmishers to the opening of the tunnel, supported by several drones. As they moved down the tunnel being careful as she could make them, she could see through their eyes, but she couldn’t she exert direct control, as in think or fight for them. She was having to operate all of her combat units through her implant. Now this wouldn’t be a problem if she had access to you know Warbots or the like, but she didn’t.
In her implant was a module used by warbot commanders, mechanized units such as bots only cost resources not lives so her people frequently used them. This module allowed commanders to give complex orders, targeting, and response plans to the bots they were using. It used the built-in functions of these bots to give pretty unparalleled battlefield awareness, in three dimensions all without compromising the commanders ability to operate or fight. Supported by heuristic programming allowing the bot to learn how to react on their own without the commander having to give the same order every time they encountered similar situations. Preprogramming responses to the action that occurred around them such as movement and attack patterns.
These bots couldn’t support that, their ‘brain’ was a cluster of nanobots forming a logic center. She had linked this cluster to that module, however it was like playing a game where you haven’t unlocked the tech tree so her control over what each unit did was limited to what the learning program in her implant taught her combat units and basic commands. ‘Go here’ and ‘(select action from drop down menu)’ was the name of the game for right now until she got a real industry started. Instead of being able to make them do what she wanted she had to pick from short and annoying lists for the bots in each control group she made.
It was clunky and annoying to operate like this. Now she had plenty of sadistic trainers that put her through her paces, and ruthlessly exploited the weakness’ of warbots but this was worse. Keeping these limitations in mind the groups of bots a mixture of skirmishers, drones, and two guards moved forward down the tunnel.
The main artery first tapered down into a relatively normal corridor size, just wide enough for three skirmishers moving side by side. The skirmishers moved in a staggered line down the corridor until it fed into a slightly wider point after about 200 meters further down. That path had a slight downward angle of only a few degrees. This wider point was past the range her sensors had so now she was entering the fog of war.
After these ‘scouting’ units had secured the area, she moved up the majority of her combat forces, leaving a token element in the core room. Including the dedicated forces for protecting the core and for maintenance, she would always leave five guards around the annoying thing. There was also a dedicated nano-swarm constantly swirling around the core killing off airborne crap, she wouldn’t be surprised at this point if some freaking microbe could kill the core. Her answer was to nope out that fail scenario and just stop everything before it became a threat.
She moved with her four bodyguards who would remain in the same room as her always available, her combat forces arranging themselves into combat units of varying size but that had at least two of the new guards with them. Both to maintain the link and to command if needed even though it would be poor, at least the units could function.
This new room would be a problem. “Seriously, how in the hell am I supposed to make progress with this sort of shit in my way?” Alissa asked sarcastically. A wide room a few hundred meters around, the roof slanted down from where they entered to the far side going from twice her height to only half a meter from the ground. It was a problem because it had half a dozen entryways and after the room was taken into account she doubted they would make further progress until she expanded the domain again.
“Alright time to get set up.” She told Nova, this sent several unit moving from the core room to lay in the relays and place both a micro-bot station, and several nano-swarms to clear out the tunnel they traveled down. The rest began to set up in this new room, taking position around the entrances several in the walls at least three moved through the ceiling leaving holes and short ledges, and another two from deeper below all of the openings were large enough to crawl through. Many of them were large enough to move normally.
Growling at this new frustration, she made a new layout including fortifications for the entrance to her cavern and the openings she could see. Alissa had a large amount of basic rock material for these sorts of creations stockpiled so workers brought up container after container of the processed rock then began cutting into anything in the room on the floor. Yet again it would be a waiting game as control of this checkpoint had to be maintained.
The right side of the room had the only actual benefit through the wall was a small stream of water falling into a pool, the pool itself then formed a creek that cut its way across the room. Splitting into two tributaries and that fell through near vertical holes in the floor a final one cut its way down the middle of a descending path on the far left. Inside this pool was not only silt but some kelp or seaweed like plants, small fish, and crustations.
Alissa had several workers bring up containers and an improvised net she ordered them to gather as many of the specimens as possible and bring them back to the core room. While the creatures were small it would kick start the biodiversity in the core room river.
Just based on the location she felt that this small pond was also fed by the river that went through the core room. It was in short a rather abrupt, uneventful and anticlimactic end to her expansion plans as she now had to secure this room. The only upside was also a downside, she did have several options for expanding from here, it meant more avenues of attack but that was probably better than having to wait or blindly carve out her own paths.
And in some ways despite her excitement to get this show on the road she had learned that she was able to at least get a general sense of the core room from here and actually had a good idea of what was going on while she was away. This was provided by the domain, apparently once she had a chance to leave that room she had noticed a general awareness of what lay inside her domain.
It was far from perfect but she could sense some other passages near the core room that didn’t have the full connection mapped out. Alissa figured that with some practice she could refine this into more than the vague sense of whether something was there or not.
Successful and disappointed she turned and headed back to the core room her bodyguards and several workers trailing behind.
~ * ~
Not long after the abrupt end of her first expedition into the passage leading from the core she had made in her mind some rather significant progress. The soil she was creating, went down to silt some of it being submerged in what may be best described as a manmade swamp barely separated from the river.
First she had hung another net across the entirety of the river passage at the edge of the cavern also supported by nano-swarms it was there to control access to her portion of the river by things coming from up stream. That it would prevent the lifeforms she was placing in the river from escaping was also a plus.
She had created several tributaries from her mana network near to and inside both the river and the soil area as well as setting collectors around the edges these fed back into the main network. It created a looping system, allowing her to irrigate the area with mana. This hopefully would stimulate growth. Transplanting the ‘kelp’ was easy placing it in the submerged soil area, likely this would be an area for the small fish that she caught in the pond to live in. That done she had her workers dump the creatures in the area along with both crab and lobster analogues that she had also found. Numerous insects had also began filling the area. Every creature was kept in place either by micro or nanobots that attacked anything that managed to make significant progress at fleeing, as well as the smooth stone edges that surrounded it.
Only those that have lived for extended periods of time off of survival rations can appreciate how important this was, for one she might soon be able to use the E-to-M converter for more than creating organic matter and could feed the paste dispenser from this area she was creating. On the other hand being able to eat seafood was definitely a positive.
This led to the second major project she had been putting off, mining. Her newfound senses told her that the area under the core room was solid rock at least a couple of hundred meters deep, so she was going to begin there. Her last micro-bot base station started it off sending its' payload into several clear areas in her network and began digging, some eight different places around the room became a hive of activity. For now she was limiting this to her smaller bots as she didn’t want to tie up workers, she had been studying how the core created its’ materials and it was done yet again by gates and 'will'. Similar to how she was flooding the soil with mana she could do the same thing to the rock under the core. She would designate an area fill it with the complex patterns of gates and (for lack of better words) runes.
Connect it to the network and it should passively ‘grow’ resources in those areas. She didn’t need to go big but not having to personally create all the materials she wanted was a plus. The only downside was that as she climbed the periodic table the cost of the result increased, for now she simply planned out a room almost as large as the floor of the chamber 300 meters deep. Instead of hollowing the room out she left pillars that held the designs on the outside edges and formed roughly an ‘x’ shape with a square core in the center. The cutouts if this worked like she planned would slowly fill with material as it pulled from the network. The small bots could then harvest it giving her a passive income of much needed resources.
Setting all that in motion, she felt like for once she would be able to get ahead of the problems facing her. With the assimilation of the corridors under way and plans to set up relays in the other passages to begin active patrolling of her new domain and beyond. She settled down to really get to work on getting a proper bed planned out for herself as this sleeping on stone was getting on her nerves.