I never thought I would be used as a ballistic shell, but it seems that it worked out as I could see on my internal map that the single ship had cleaned away all the remaining swarm ships. It was still up there doing something to what remained, it looked to be cleaning them up for the most part as I saw the husks of the fighters vanishing slowly.

As much as the game made the planets seem incredibly small when I looked around other than my sight being close to the top of the trees there was not much difference to a normal planet. I started picking up on data-streams there was thousands of messages being sent between tons of different endpoints, this was their internet. Surprisingly as I looked at them they got translated despite them being made of unrecognizable characters. I found a news channel to see what they had to say about the fight in orbit.

I couldn't say I was surprised when there was nothing about it, there was only a section about a military exercise that was glossed over. They were definitely hiding what was happening and I didn't want to be caught up by them. Even if they didn't silence me to keep it quiet the politics I would be forced to navigate would be immensely annoying and probably time consuming. First step, get repaired. I did get a view at just who I was supposed to be protecting, the pair of reporters was interesting for my gamer mind. There was a female Elf, long ears with a striking gaze and a very obvious forced smile. A much more bulky looking male who I couldn't see anything that would distinguish him from a human, who had that same always smiling face as the Elf, professional new anchors. I'll have to dig further into the internet later for more information.

My literal first step was with a groan of damaged engines and grinding of metal. So was the second step, but my current goal was to find some ores to facilitate some repairs. When I got to the trees at the edge of my landing crater a hand was swapped out for a resource gatherer, I aimed it at the trees in my way and with a yellow beam the tree seemed to turn into dust before following the beam into my arm and into a container where I now knew was my 'Inventory' But it really was stored as literal dust, the data of what it should be was saved and when I wanted it out it would reassemble the dust into uniform logs. It didn't take all of the material it left some so that the plants would grow again in time, a long time but it wasn't just complete destruction. More and more trees were sucked into my storage as I made my way in a perfectly straight line.

It took me a while to realize that if I wanted ores I wouldn't find them on the surface like the game. I was going to have to actually go mining, I should also get myself an underground base of some sort. My map informed me of some small unknown fighters following my path through the trees, luckily I arrived at a lake that was fairly deep as the bottom was gouged out more by a picture-esk waterfall. I started to submerge myself in it as I kept walking forward deeper into it, the mud was kicked up as I kept walking deeper in but that was normal for this lake with the waterfall. I couldn't see though my cameras but I could see through my sensors that fed my internal map the fighters that had been following my trail were circling the lake.

They left a bit later as I metaphorically held my breath. Well, a hidden base behind a waterfall is cliché for a reason right? It was time for me to find out why. But I wasn't going to do this at surface level, I walked under the turbulent waters directly below the waterfall and aimed my resource collector upwards at an angle starting to carve away at the stone. If someone wanted to come into my secret base they were going to have to swim under a waterfall and up into my cave that will probably not have any fresh air. The fighters that tracked me confirmed my desire to not deal with this government, they had seen 'something' at least land here and now had evidence that something had walked away from the landing zone.

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I had quickly carved out an empty space as I walked up the slope, breaking the surface of the water into a freshly made cave. As I had harvested all that stone I also managed to get enough of other materials, like iron and copper. It was an incredibly small number compared to the stone I had collected. Was this proof that there was small amounts of elements in basically everything? If I wanted to really get some materials I would need to find actual ores. I checked what kind of upgrades or repairs I could get, there was quite a few but the biggest one the one to repair my mobility was still too much. Luckily there was an upgrade to my sensors that would let me scan for ores, fairly cheep but still way more metals than I currently had. Luckily I didn't need to sleep as I aimed my harvesting tool and got to work expanding my future base.

I could figure out exactly how long I spent expanding the cave but when I turned around to get a view it was just black. I had carved out a space so large I wasn't able to see the far wall. I quickly sent some of those logs to burn in my reactor and turned on my lights. I had lights on my shoulders facing forward and across my chest, I flooded what I could of the large room still unable to see the far end but I felt much better about there being at least some light. I stopped because I had managed to gather enough metals to upgrade my sensors, I quickly started crafting. It wasn't how I thought it would be, with the materials in a molecular dust their data was just restructured and that took time. The power I had been saving up from burning all the logs I had collected was now slowly draining again as an automated system turned the ores into metals and metals into chips, then I started the upgrade and those were chips were added onto the existing ones in my chest. I sat myself down, not that I needed to but it just felt right to sit down as I waited.

Luckily I was still able to access the 'internet' I don't know if that is what they call it but I will for now. It was actually fairly easy to find basic information, sure enough there was humans, elves, beastmen, and there was a mention of spirits. There was also a huge section about a hero who had destroyed a demon army, he even had a medal named after him. It was the equivalent of the medal of honor. They say he died as he killed the demon king and from there the seeds of technology he left behind sprouted and bloomed they had a few wars against each other until now where they have space ships and were preparing to send some people to colonize another planet in their system. That ship in orbit was actually supposed to be an escort for that colony ship, but they delayed their colonization for 'Unknown' reasons. I guessed that the reason was the swarm ships that showed up.

A short while later my sensor upgrade was completed, it wasn't just an ore scanner it was full terrain scanner. I could see my map updated itself showing me my cave in all its perfectly uniform detail, I could also see that there was a few small iron and copper nodes around my not so little hole in the ground. It also informed me that my hole was going to possibly collapse if I didn't put any supports up. Right, that's a thing I forgot about that. Luckily I had tons of stone to use as a material for support pillars. I would have smiled if I could when I was suddenly in a design interface, I was to design my stone pillar. I wouldn't want any visitors to think my home was just a cave.

I settled with a stone brick pattern with large blocks and with some copper and glass for lights that were inlaid in the thick gaps between the bricks, I did the same with the walls but I had the lights be along the top to shine down. When I was done with replacing all the wall and placing some pillars I turned around to inspect my work. Did I just create a dungeon? There wasn't any power for the lights so they only had a low glow that made the space seem just like a dungeon. It wasn't the 'Adventuring' dungeon I was talking about but the medieval jail cells. I'll definitely have to change that up when I get more materials but to do that I'll need to start to mine.