Decision made Alissa decided that wasting time was pointless and began to plan out her new project. First, she looked to the wall next to her work area, the portion closest to the main entry to the core room. That wall contained large and freshly bored holes allowing the swarms to begin work in the untouched and empty cavern beyond. A cavern that she planned to put the goblins in when she was done.
Planning out and ordering first the mini-bot swarms to be constructed and placed near what was going to be the entrance. The cavern was roughly 20 meters separated from her own home the carving would take a while followed by having to secure it once opened. The swarms began carving out the new path.
Next, she filled the area near the river in the core with more of everything that was edible. Until the goblin army she built was self-sustaining she needed more food for them. Following this she authorized the tentative plan to turn the area on the opposite side of the river into a terrace farming area. It would cut into the face of the cavern at a slight downward angle and eventually look similar to the pools you might naturally see in a cave system. Each farm separated by the thin walls of natural stone, giving her a variety of depth to sustain different products, though currently it was going to be limited to essentially and algae and fish farm due to the lack of cultivatable products. Based on complex calculations done by World designer this area would cover most known forms of food products and sustain an actual population of organics when harvested. Even if it currently looked to be a crustation farm in a cave.
That left the final start point for creation, a place to put the ugly little goblins until the cavern was prepped and ready. Theoretically she could create the creatures fully grown, the downside was that they would have a newborns intellect. That is a goblin newborns intellect, not that she believed there was a tremendous difference between adult and infant in the case of goblins, but they would be even less useful and an even bigger drain on here power income to “age” them up then have to train/ teach them how to function. Easier to create children and let them grow into their month-long maturation to becoming somewhat useful. It would also give her time to get the other parts in order.
Workers began moving barriers into place near where the tunnel to the goblins next home was going to be to create a series of pens to contain the creatures with openings to allow the newly formed nanny bots to supervise and care for them. The faint electric blue markings shifting to be a light purple for the goblin caretakers.
That done she moved onto the things she had to take care of before beginning as there was simply no way in hell she could leave this room once she created her bioweapon fodder. At least not until the core room could take care of itself. So she walked down the main artery towards checkpoint one, dutifully followed by her five guards, to begin another massive project.
Upon arrival she step beyond the guarded barriers and looked unerringly at the blank wall leading to the newly designated goblin cave before ordering another tunnel be built from this room connecting CP1 to the, soon to be, source of her new fodder. There was simply no chance of letting goblins infest or troop though her home. Just a giant nope right there.
That accomplished she carefully examined the rest of the checkpoint, seven entrances stood glaring back at her rather ominously two openings went down to a lower level, and she was unsure if they connected to each other or went their separate ways below one entrance came down from much further up in a near vertical drop from above. Aside from keeping an eye on these three entrances and planning the defenses around them there was not much to be done.
The four remaining entry ways were more manageable to the left was a goblin barricade about a liner kilometer away from the check point. The right most passage faced a similar situation with a different set of goblins also trying to gain entry, though they seemed to be more aggressive almost desperate to get in, even from behind their barricades. The second passage on the right led to a mostly new species of digging creature that had even lower intelligence than goblins that Alissa knew very little about and was not keen on disturbing at the moment even if they did need to eventually be exterminated due to the flesh-eating tendencies they displayed and being just barely outside of her current domain.
Then there was one. The last entry was elevated about 6 meters from the floor and on a slightly different elevation from the main floor and that, that was a whole different type of problem. The height didn’t matter as she had already had her workers construct a platform with fortifications as available. They were shabby but allowed projectile to be thrown at whatever approached and would definitely delay a minor enemy for a time using a simple barricade her troops could hold them off.
No the real problem here was that none of the troops she sent down there had returned. Two dozen troops had been sent since her discovery of this tunnel and none of them had even been able to give an impression of what had killed them.
Usually, her troops movements outside her domain were like a poorly designed game where you sent units off map to achieve objective and had no control over the outcome, except here she couldn’t even get reliable information on what happened. She'd get something like Tim died, and that was it. Not Tim was killed, or Tim ate a weird mushroom and died literally shitting his guts out. No, all she knew was that she now had a dead Tim. It was part of why Alissa needed organics in her forces, the automatons/golems she was using simply couldn’t give her the information she needed to make an informed decision about, well anything. They had no sensors or optics no ability to record, when they were attacked out of her line of sight, she got vague impressions like a wire frame of the creature they encountered, but nothing concrete, and they obviously couldn’t tell her what had happened.
The losses that had been sustained thus far were all like this, even in the domain those impressions only got slightly more comprehensive and vivid. “Probably because I’m not a magical floating rock that casually breaks science.” Was her idle comment on the issue. The troops sent down that tunnel though, nothing, she had nothing, just POOF and they were gone. The barely noticeable feeling, shared with almost all the creatures of the domain, that they existed and were functional disappeared simultaneously.
Before tackling that proverbial black hole of dead drones, she strolled up the other three accessible tunnels to CP1 and outlined real defenses widening a corridor here, barricading another there, and carving out several guard rooms, and obstacles for an attacking force to overcome disrupting their cohesion. Delaying tactics, as well as hit and run were going to be the name of the game for these tunnels until she had more resources to secure them.
She briefly considered setting traps like pitfalls or similar but discarded them. She simply couldn’t envision being able to reset them, they would interfere with her own troops if she sallied out, and she doubted they would have a meaningful effect here. On open ground she would consider it but these tunnels would be guarded by a shield wall with support troops behind, and that was likely to be the most useful thing she could do with what she had.
Aside from creating favorable terrain, enhancing choke points, and place to standby, none of these three tunnels were really concerning she felt confident that her basic troops could hold these areas for obscene amounts of time especially if she occasionally stopped by during an attack. The two, probably, separate tribes of goblins were of little concern, and the mole-rat like creatures didn’t actually seem to be doing anything except stopping her from progressing down that tunnel. They also seemed to be hostile to everything that entered their territory, so a problem for latter.
Whatever was in the final tunnel needed to be dealt with, if the issue was some magical fuckery killing off those that entered that was fine and it could be ignored, but if it was an enemy she at least needed to know. She couldn’t make any plans for something she knew nothing about except that it was dangerous. Depending on what it was and how it acts she might also leave it in place until she could fully deal with it.
“This is a bad idea, Ally. We can’t risk- "
“No shit it’s a bad idea. It's also the only one we really have. We deal with this now or we deal with it in an indeterminate amount of time after I have finished getting the kids and the goblins set up.” Alissa was quick to cut in.
“Unless you have something better that doesn’t leave us exposed here for however long it takes, I need to at least get an accurate assessment. I don’t know that I want to fight whatever is up there, and I will happily leave it alone if that benefits us just like the mole thingies. BUT if it needs to be destroyed that is what I will do.” Alissa was putting her hair up and waiting for the reserves to gather and get up the ladder.
“This is a necessity, I cannot and will not leave a threat like this so close and unaddressed. Not when I’m going to spend however long it takes to implement the next step. We are past the point where risks are avoidable.” A mental command to her suit and a helmet had flowed out the back and over her head, the face looking like a mask with two blank and black eyes surrounded by thin silver and gold tracings like scrollwork. A quick check of her weapon multi tool and she attached it to her forearm before beginning her own ascent.
“Yes it is dangerous and yes I know it isn’t the smartest thing to do given the risks and unknown we are dealing with. But whatever is up here -” pulling herself up to the top she did a quick visual inspection of the thirty troops going with, fifteen guards a full half of what was available, the rest remaining around the core, stood with her as well as ten drones and five skirmishers. “-is exceedingly lethal I’m not sure if victory is possible without my intervention. The troops are disposable but not without value, we can’t afford to waste them… so that’s where we are.”
She gave the order, and the skirmishers led the way down the path followed by the drones then Alissa then the guards bringing up the rear. If they encountered an enemy the skirmishers would engage and flow to the sides or go vertical, possibly go around the enemy. The drones would follow absorb any damage before the guards charged in allowing any of the remaining drones to break off and engage at range or move close to harass outside the shield wall. It also put Alissa in the center to react. Acting in what she considered a mage role considering the nature of likely engagements using her own abilities as well as magic to support her troops and to run if necessary. The only advice she could find in her implants for a situation like this was in fantasy novels, annoyingly they seemed to be more relevant for somethings than all the real tactical data she had. Her plan was to avoid getting ‘ganked’. ‘Ganking the mage’ seemed to be the key when magic was involved, all her subordinates needed to do was distract the enemy and she would rain fire on them.
About ten minutes of tunnel crawling going through some worrying low points, the type of place that would make it far too easy to catch her if she did retreat, as well as a few wider spots that made her wish she had more forces to bring.
Alissa could afford to lose thirty units right now; it was at the edge but manageable. Any more however would compromise the defenses too much. The other thing was the oppressive feeling that was pressing in on her and… her lifeless troops. The walls radiated an unseen menace, the air heavy and claustrophobic. The very space she occupied hated and meant to harm her, the shadows created by the dim and now flickering lights thrown off by those under her command…reached for her. They became deeper, not the empty void of space, but an inhabited hostile place filled with unnamed horror.
The unliving warriors leading the way becoming clumsy and overreacting to getting caught on small outcroppings of rock, shivering under the shadows, hesitating to move forward. “Ally-” as Nova began to speak Alissa forcefully silenced the connection and focused her senses. Nothing showed on her implants, her natural senses had become unreliable and her perception of the energy flows around her was muddled. The only conclusion she could reach about her current situation was that she was being overconfident. She had fucked up bad, whatever reasoning she had for being here was not good enough for the new risk.
The only smart option was to turn around and run away, hide like the scared little girl she was pretending she outgrew. But she couldn’t… couldn’t give in to the panic setting in. Couldn’t run or hide, like an idiot she had already wandered into the kill zone. A fly caught in a web already captured.
She was being watched by something.
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Something old and hateful.
Not a clean hate but dirty and full of dark desires.
Evil given form staining the surroundings.
Given will, backed by intelligence.
Backed by hunger.
No, there was no going back. No running, no hiding. If she turned back this thing would be ready waiting to attack. She wondered briefly if it really was, or if that very feeling was part of the trap. Her weapon no longer stored on her forearm was curled around her hand ready… waiting… unable to be dropped from clumsy fingers.
As they pushed on Alissa subconsciously entering the battle meditation her instructors had ruthless beat into her. Her focused senses became sharper her implants and enhancements looked at the now chilling world with the cold disdain only machines can. Augmentations throughout her body became fully active increasing strength, speed and reaction times. Probabilities and optimal attack and retreat vectors overlaid themselves behind her eyes, her personal power flowed ready, and eager to answer her call.
Not long after she was hit by an overwhelming stench coming from the new cavern that was opening up before the group. The smell of death in a cold winter cavern, the reek of opened bowels, the cloying sent of old rotten blood mixing with fresh vitae, spoiled meat left out to long, and a smell that could not be so easily identified. The last one, a smell that was not a smell, if a feeling or emotion had a scent this smelled like a child’s scream silenced, a desperate but futile struggle gleefully quashed, and a slow smothering of a helpless victim.
The platoon moved into the room deploying as planned skirmishers fanning out, both drones and guards falling into a shield wall. Here Alissa got her first look into the cavern, it was relatively small the size of a small-town store stockroom. Crowded in by rock piles and stained, deformed stalactites pitch black shadows that like, and her senses failed to fully penetrate. Creatures she vaguely recognized hung to the columns some looking like the were pushed part way in, others forcefully broken and draped over slight outcrops or had been pinned like a macabre display. Only one thing was consistent the pain and terror evident on what remained of their faces.
The deafening silence broken by irregular clicking and scraping sounds. Slight sloshes from shallow pools of near dry blood. Faint sounds like a voice you hear but question immediately after words, raked Alissa’s hearing forcing a shiver down her neck to her back as though the sound itself was dragging sharp claws carelessly down her back.
The skirmishers spread out, two of the guards carefully put down the packages on their backs in the corridor itself, before falling in around Alissa. As she scanned the cavern further the back of her mind noted the injuries on the corpses. Fast, sharp, and heavy, was the theme blows that shatter bone even when they could easily cut, blows that flay flesh faster than the mortal eye can follow even when it could easily kill.
Whatever lived here liked to make its prey suffer even when it could have finished it off in the blink of an eye. Alissa felt blind and deaf, her senses unable to penetrate the cloud of horror that pervaded the room. Her eyes glancing off a pale humanoid corpse on one of the pillars, only to do a double take and find it gone, leaving a new dripping wound in the corpse where it had been resting its head.
“Fucker’s toying with us” Alissa thought. Her quick view of the room hadn’t revealed any superior positions for battle, they had climbed over a small pile of rocks and pieces of bodies to get in once it opened up, and now stood in a slightly more open area. First appearances said this was where the entity preferred to fight those that wandered in this way.
“First things First…” Alissa formed a ball of glowing light energy using mana and let it drift up towards the ceiling, she followed this with several others at different heights and pushed them out in an arc to the other side of the room.
The weird feeling in the room closed hungrily on the pinpoints of light smothering them slowly. As shadows filled with fell energy tried to take apart the lights she created only to fail to douse them instantly, a screech tore through the cavern shattering the bright little constructs.
Alissa mentally recoiled from the auditory blow but was held in place by the unfeeling, and uncaring implants in her brain.
At the same time a pale hand reached out and snatched one of the skirmishers that wandered too close to a pillar, dragging the now dead unit out of sight. The four remaining moved to fill the gap pulling back to the curved line of drones that stood in a tight block just before the entrance.
Alissa reconjured the lights annoyed at the slight drain on her reserves, doing so simply because it clearly frustrated the creature rather than for the benefits it offered her or her troops. She also wanted to get a better look at what they were dealing with, and what its lair did to smother said lights.
While she was doing this, she heard the monster pulling that poor skirmisher apart and tossing the pieces around the cavern. Silence soon descended, and nothing moved. Deciding that the waiting game in this fake stalemate played too much in her opponents favor, Alissa leveled a pointing finger at the point on her HUD and loosed a spell.
In front of her finger, for a brief moment, a geometric pattern formed. In less time than a heartbeat, a spark followed by a small bright sphere of fire formed and then flew with mechanical precision into a tiny gap before detonating.
This resulted in an outraged shriek as the pale monster leapt from hiding into the open. Moving through the air to Alissa’s left towards the flank of her forces. She continued the assault while the thing was in mid-air from her left hand flew three more blast of fire each with a slightly different purpose. The first to impact was meant to blind and disorient hot and bright but not particularly damaging. The second was more focused trying to dig into flesh before detonation, and the third was a loud concussive blast to throw the creature around. The various responses to each attack would keep her from wasting energy on attacks that wouldn’t work.
The creature didn’t seem to bothered by any of these and though it looked slightly singed the hate filled glare it leveled at her promised painful retribution. Good thing she had no intention of letting up or surrendering the initiative. Her right hand had not been idle and was now facing the ground just where the thing would land, unleashing the spell it contained.
The monster hit the ground tensed like it would leap at her on contact with the floor. Body already oriented, bloody mouth open. However, it found nothing solid to leap off as the ground turned to marsh under its feet.
The moment a target presented itself the skirmisher threw their javelins, two heavy and two of the fracturing variety. The creature had been aiming its one free hand at the group but pulled it back to cover its face, allowing one javelin to impact its oversized palm. Each impact seemed to cause no damage a little shifting in the creatures body but the only wounds were scratches.
Those closed quickly pulling dark energy from the surrounding to reveal unblemished skin after. Clicking her tongue Alissa ordered her troops to surround the thing and begin attacking. Remaining where she was, she continued to focus on the ground and make it as swampy and hard to move in as she could. Her other hand alternated between throwing overcharged bright lights driving away the darkness the thing used to heal itself and blasting the creature with more and more focused fire blasts.
The javelins and spears of her minions didn’t penetrate deeply but they did distract and annoy the creature keeping it in place and between her efforts with the floor kept it from regaining a stable footing. She knew the fight would only become more difficult if she allowed it to learn or adapt. That was something she couldn’t tolerate.
The frustrated creature swept its clawed hand before it, tearing through three of the drones as they left themselves open after attacking. The guards had split into three groups of five and were alternating attacks and angles presenting a solid shield wall whenever the creature managed to turn to face them and retreating out of range only for another group to move in and attack the blind side. The drones were suffering the most here, unable to do much they were bashing away with their spiked clubs pulling when able, to throw it more off balance when the points of their weapons caught and tearing small gashes in the pale flesh. However, ten became seven, then three as the monster finally was able to get it hand leveled and unleashing a spell of its own. Darkness splashed over four the drones working in tandem before the thing, only to dissolve a few seconds after getting hit.
The skirmishers having been waiting for an opportunity after exhausting their ammo dove in locking their jaws around the creature and beginning to unleash a frenzied attack from each limb clawing, raking, and tearing. The tough hide resisted for the most part but still accumulated small injuries.
The skirmishers were shortly dispatched. only one surviving thrown towards the wall after being forcefully ripped off, too damaged to do anything more than slowly drag itself back in the fight with its one remaining arm. The others were grabbed and crushed, or found themselves pushed into the quagmire around the creature's feet.
Still no permanent damage was being done the monsters wounds still closed themselves almost as soon as they were inflicted. Alissa was however forcing the creature to use the energy in the room, and it was slowly dwindling. The light and fire attacks made it harder for her opponent to use that magic and each time it unleashed an attack there was a far more noticeable drop in the mana it had available.
By now the room was brightly illuminated with globes of light attached all over, she didn’t need much focus to replace the ones lost as the darkness consumed them. She focused her attacks blasting the creature several times in its lower body and legs. She had given up on a quick win trying to limit the things mobility was the order of the day, slight burns gave way to deeper injuries.
Attrition was just fine with her. The longer the battle went on the better her soldiers preformed just like with the short-lived battle against the goblins, when they were within her sight they became a part of her. Their movements becoming well adapted to their enemy. Her senses and implants recognizing attack patterns and movements. Ordering the constructs to move before an attack happened. The semi-mechanical beings not tiring or losing focus, no emotions to go wild or cause mistakes.
The last of the drones fell just before the analysis of known attacks completed. This caused several guards to fall leaving her with three groups of four rather than the groups of five. The guards having shifted and rotated to get into empty positions.
Her mana reserves were draining but at a manageable level she recovered almost as fast she was using it now that she paced herself. As a targeting prompt form her implants threw up another blip she reacted without thinking throwing a fireball at one of the corpse piles. That threw her off for a brief second as she watched the dark energy of the room flee the fire and the barely noticeable strands of energy were broken and failed to return until after the flames died down.
The creature next shriek contained a new real anger and it flailed more haphazardly afterwards. She got the impression that it knew what was coming next. A fireball was replaced by a fire storm as she blasted a large cone of flames all around the room and onto the pillars setting the room alight. Filling the space with dense smoke and the unpleasant but “clean” scent of burning corpses.
The pale monstrosity stood as tall as it could ignoring the flames and attacks of her guards, who were quick to exploit its inattention. It called to the remaining dark energy in the room pulling it into itself and releasing a portion in a spherical detonation around it. The blast tore the mana she was using to make the ground unsteady apart and swallowed half the guards in their two-by-two shield wall killing them off. the other six were thrown away by the blast and slightly damaged by the energy released.
Tearing itself free it threw itself at Alissa beyond thinking and enraged at her actions of desecrating its lair. Landing just before her and launching a devastating but wild overhead attack with both its arms, intending to smash her flat. It found her ready in a stance a dull metal blade raised over her head ready to intercept the attack. Its own blow landed, to its confusion softly on the blade. Its arms despite the tremendous force it put in were swept to the side and the stepped out of the way. It tried to swipe sideways only to find that the original force of the blow had returned and increased slamming it hands into the ground. Instead of pulverizing the rock despite the blow landing full force all it felt was the blade as it descended crushing through and nearly severing its arm at the shoulder.
As Alissa brought the full force blade down was surprised at how hard the creature was, that blow should have cut cleanly through, but it didn’t do anywhere near the damage she expected. Suddenly feeling immense relief that she had kept these abilities in reserve. Had she used them in the outset victory would have been far less certain.
As the blade neared the ground continuing its decent, she changed the direction hitting the creature in the torso as it fell forward its own considerable weight added to the now upward slice. The blade landed just below the ribs spilling the creature’s intestines to the floor. After the blade ripped free Alissa rotated and landed a snap kick on the nearest leg dropping it further. She followed this up by cutting the now exposed other leg across the back near the ankle. Now behind the creature she thrust between its ribs and threw the thing flat on its stomach and forcing the blade down into the ground pinning the thing that was now desperately struggling to reach her… or to get away it really didn’t matter now. It had made the last mistake of its life.
Following the patterns supplied by her implants, she cast another spell sinking the creature’s limbs into the ground before ripping her blade free. Up close there seemed to be a nexus of the rooms dark energy inside the creature’s skull. That was where her next strike landed, the meaty thwack bringing sudden silence to the cavern.
Warnings shrieked through her head as the energy in the skull flew out into a formless shape before throwing itself at her like a spear thrust. Alissa’s inexperienced attempt to stop it fell short and she barely dodged a hit to her center of mass the energy ripping through her side leaving a deep but ultimately minor injury. The Aegis activated a full power blast as soon as the formless blob flew past tearing it to pieces with a final deafening shriek.
“Well, that went better than expected but… OW! … that shit hurt!” holding her side and with sweat beading on her face from the pain that was swiftly being damped down. Reforming her sword around her arm she kicked the creature in the head. “Asshole. Well at least I will have time to rest after this… Now just need to burn this room out in case the fucker comes back, and then to make an army of goblins, yea, because that sounds fun.” Alissa continued to talk to herself as she proceeded to burn the room followed by the six remaining guards carrying the surviving skirmisher. The spiders that she released at the entrance moving forward to take positions around the room. “A perfectly good opportunity wasted due to that prick's shenanigans.”