Chapter 139
Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth
City of Rebirth
Allya sighed as she walked out into the streets.
People bowed as she passed, and she waved at them. Some of the adventurers she’d actually bothered talking to when her title was still a secret, or those she’d become acquainted with at Fire Gecko’s, even waved back. But most of them had an…edge to them.
The tension that had been present during the Republic’s assault was gone. But there was an underlying apprehension to the whole damned town now.
Some people feared the dungeon. Others the Republic. And more and more people were fearing her. For some ungodly reason, rumors about her supposed bloodthirstiness had been amplified by the recent battles, as if the dungeon core’s massacre of the Republic’s army was her doing, somehow.
People simply weren’t used to dungeons taking such an active role in the world…and they seemingly had decided to pin the blame on her. And the Republic’s—and Sunrise’s!—propaganda wasn’t helping.
At least it had made some things smoother. The merchant combines were shitting their pants so hard negotiations had gotten easier. But that had its own issues and—
The ground shook, and Allya dropped automatically into a crouch, narrowly dodging her own bodyguard as Valker tried to tackle her to the ground.
“Gods damn it, milady!” the sergeant said as he somehow managed to recover into a roll and avoid tasting the dust and sand that seemingly permeated everything here.
“Sorry, Valk. Old habits die hard.” Allya scanned the area. “Where the hell did that come fro—”
Alarms began blaring from the dungeon entrance, and Allya’s eyes went wide. No no no, not again!
*****
Alexandra frowned as she saw the report from her golems currently doing their best to salvage whatever pieces of technology they could find in the facility. She was standing on the third floor’s pyramid, overseeing the tests for how her newest version of the spider golems could resist the tidal wave that had previously completely destroyed the older models, and put a serious crimp in her plans to open the floor. Well, now that she was done using it as a testing ground for an army assaulting a fortress at least.
The communications arrays in the facility were fairly simple to find, but bringing them inside her influence was going to require one hell of an effort. Those things were freaking huge. A lot of miscellaneous components, spare parts, and such had been discovered, but many were decayed and damaged, but through sheer volume, she was able to get intact versions.
The main prize, however, still eluded her. Whoever had made that facility’s power grid was either batshit insane or extremely paranoid. Not only was the cabling a nightmare to follow, but the fusion reactors themselves were NOT where the plans said they were, and the cables linking them to the rest of the facility had a lot of duplicates leading nowhere. She wasn’t even sure whether they were decoys or put there because they’d intended to expand the facility’s power generation and were never able to finish it.
Given the missile silos she’d found…it might actually be the latter. Which as always begged the question of what had actually happened to the Old World. Because according to Emilia’s history, the Great Night had started with a sudden nuclear and antimatter exchange. There had been no buildup, just someone had launched and everyone followed.
But everything in this facility told her that not only had the Sagitarius Empire known what was coming, they’d been desperately expanding their military capabilities and trying to keep it secret. Maybe because they were preparing to launch a first strike, but if that was the case why build defensive missiles? And try to keep them secret from someone else’s first strike?
This didn’t make any sense.
Unless, of course, they were expecting something to come and attack them. Something that knew exactly where their defensive systems should have been and had the power to take them out, to the point where absolute secrecy was the only solution. And even then that hadn’t worked.
And the only people she’d seen who even knew this crap…were the God of Fire’s servants. The adjudicator had to have at least the facility’s plans to make a beeline for the NLR core. For that matter, how had she even known it was active and not destroyed?
This stank. Stank very badly.
But at least Seraph was making good progress. They’d gone over half of their schematics already and while they’d not been able to replicate a good portion, her arsenal had expanded dramatically. Everything was unbelievably expensive but—
Alexandra blinked as she received an alert.
Something had happened to the labyrinth. Something that had caused a catastrophic failure and made every security system go off. Seraph was pinging her in what had to be the AI’s equivalent of panic as they started mobilizing golems, and Alexandra began sprinting towards the command center.
*****
“Please stand back. A security lockdown is in effect. Please stand back. A security lockdown is in effect.”
Allya winced as the golems poured out of the main entrance, guns in hand and ready to shred anyone who even thought of rushing it. But she was heading for the military entrance, and she just had time to see her troops permanently stationed there form into ranks, and be led into the dungeon by a handful of golems. Including one that looked like Crystal’s butler, except covered in pistols.
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The butler golem clearly saw her coming, as he—she? They? Did it matter for a glorified pile of metal? Well, it clearly did for Assaria, so she guessed gender could apply regardless—waved the troops forward, and waited for her to arrive, her bodyguards at her heels.
“Hey, what the hell is going on?”
The golem stared at her, then gestured. Allya was about to say she didn’t know sign language when one of the screens in the pillars flanking the military entrance flickered to life, showing a diagram of the dungeon.
With a big old red warning icon in the middle of the labyrinth.
“Damn it,” Allya muttered under her breath. “Can I come in? I know our alliance doesn’t specify about unexpected visits, but…”
The butler tilted his head, presumably communicating with the dungeon, and nodded, gesturing for them to follow him as he sprinted into the dungeon.
Allya looked at him take off with wide eyes—he was moving WAY faster than she assumed Crystal’s golems could go—and began following him.
*****
“Status report!” Alexandra snapped as she walked into the command center.
“We have multiple catastrophic breaches and failures on the labyrinth floor. Source unclear, but the central point corresponds to where an adventuring team was.” Seraph’s golem shrugged as Alexandra gazed at them. “I have diverted golems and deployed security units. All reserves are gearing up, but I can’t order them around without your authorization.”
Alexandra wordlessly sent over the authentication, and once again wondered why she’d bothered getting to the command center. She could have just possessed a golem, or hell, stayed where she was and gone into full dungeon mode.
But old habits die hard, and even if you’re the damned captain of the ship, you let the watch officer run the show until you took command on the bridge. Simple as that.
“Thank you, ma’am.” Seraph tilted their head. “Security golems report being under attack. Multiple hostiles…confirmed, they are the adventurers. They’re breaking out of the rubble and moving into the maintenance areas.”
“Fuck that. Detonate the charges!”
“Aye aye! Detonating…now.”
Alexandra caught the edge of the holoprojector she’d installed in the center of the room, as the mesa shook once more.
This time, carefully emplaced charges detonated, and the entire supply of spare rooms and a good bit of the ceiling collapsed onto the labyrinth area. She had the schematics for the whole place, she could replace it easily. And despite there being minefields in the maintenance area…it was too damned close to the forges. Better to lose an important, but not vital chunk of her dungeon than one of the core sectors.
It was an evolution of her final defense protocols, once she’d realized that however valuable, perhaps destroying her whole dungeon as her only option was a bit overkill, and lacked in flexibility. Which is why each new area came with its own self-destruct. Of course, the lower ones would pretty much obliterate everything above them as well, but for the steps, the topmost zones? It was only going to hurt her infrastructure on top of the mesa, and she hadn’t even started on it!
“What the hell is going on? Are we under attack?!?” Emilia asked as she burst into the room, followed by a handful of her new praetorian golems. Alexandra spared her…girlfriend, now? A smile, before going back into professional mode.
“Possibly. But if it is an attack it isn’t very well organized.” Alexandra turned towards Seraph. “Do we still have eyes on?”
“Yes ma’am.”
“Put it up then.”
The golem nodded, and a hologram appeared above the new holoprojector, showing the ruins of what had once been the labyrinth. The dust hadn’t even settled, and…
She saw rubble shoot up, revealing a small party. Five people, clearly battered and bruised, but still alive.
“Powerful mage. Fast one, too. Must have popped a shield the second the charges went off,” Emilia said, and Alexandra nodded. She’d briefed her advisor extensively on their defenses and what they did, including the activation codes for most of them. While she still had her doubts, the vampire girl hadn’t thrown her to the wolves with the adjudicator. So she’d decided to extend more trust, against her other self’s vehement protests. That trust was not total, however. She was, quite probably, in love, but not completely insane either. “Can you handle them?”
“The security teams were tailored against steel and copper opponents. These guys are silver, at the very least. Probably gold. So they’ll only slow them down.” She smiled as she checked the status of the response forces on one of the screens. It felt a bit better doing that, having an AI feeding her tailored and processed information, rather than just having to do everything herself. Besides, her other self had asked for more processing power for a project, and she’d decided to oblige, which made this actually more practical than the alternative, however briefly. “But they only need to slow them down.”
“Are you…throwing the new guys at them?”
“No. I’d rather keep the fact that I have all this—she nodded at the praetorian guard—under wraps for as long as I possibly can.” The guard had gone from barely passable to dangerous to “Oh fuck why” over the course of the last few months. With Seraph’s schematics, the advanced golems, the Republic’s bribe, and her own homegrown enhancements, they’d become a force to be reckoned with. They were horrendously expensive—she had only twelve of them—but each had a railgun; a rapid-fire laser rifle; several integrated weapons, including a seriously nasty wrist-mounted anti-tank rocket; iron-man style portable shield generators; and full mythril and steel composite armor plating with ablative reflective layers to counter energy weapons.—She had tried to use the armor Seraph had on their combat units, and not only was it horrendously expensive, but it was effectively pointless without the nanite matrix underneath, not a single drop of which had survived the millennia for her to replicate. So they had strength and agility to spare. As in they could quite literally lift a spider tank and run faster than an Olympic champion. Without carrying the tank, obviously. “
“So, the reserve, then?”
“Yes. Especially the old army models. Muskets. Lots of muskets. Let them think I sent my best. The more underestimated we are, the better.” Alexandra sighed as she received another message from Jared. “Which reminds me. Our dear baroness and her troops are rushing to the rescue. So to speak. So we’ll have to meet them before they arrive at the core fortress.”
“Shouldn’t they be brought directly here?”
“Did you seriously think I’d give them access to the express elevators? Hell no. Besides, their help isn’t needed. And we can turn this into a dog and pony show. There are also some discussions that need to happen in the near future, although not today. Discussions that very much need to be away from the damned guild.”
Emilia grimaced, but said nothing. Alexandra’s distaste of the guild, and its guildmaster, had only grown over time. Especially with their damned hypocrisy! They were grumbling about “unauthorized transfers” while these bastards had given her the communication crystal in exchange for having something for the assault guild to make business off of! The end result that was, in fact, the now destroyed labyrinth.
At least they knew better than to annoy the dungeon core, but whispers were still heard, and Alexandra was starting to think the guild might make a move against Allya.
In which case it was going to end badly for everyone involved, because when Alexandra made a vow she meant it. And she might be able to be…pliable with it under the right circumstances, as with Amelia, the general she’d allowed to retreat, but there was no way in hell she was abandoning her ally. And their alliance never specified that the enemies they would join defenses against had to be external. So if they decided to play hardball, she was going to make them bite the dust and throw them out of the town.
The problem being, of course, that the guild was one of the most powerful organizations on the planet, and their guildmaster could probably level the dungeon, even with the new upgrades. Which meant she’d need to be careful. Hence the plan to use the guild as the hammer to break the Void Blades. The more she undermined their moral authority, the easier they’d be to beat later on.
“Just try not to be too frank. The poor woman almost pisses herself every time she meets you. She doesn’t need more stress on top of that.”
“No promises!”
Emilia rolled her eyes, but followed Alexandra nonetheless as they walked out of the command center, a handful of golems grabbing screens so they could be kept up to date. Well, so Emilia could, but the Earth-born seemed to have gone back to a more physical medium lately.
Time to meet the baroness. And hopefully avoid giving the poor woman a heart attack.