Chapter 279

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Weapons Laboratory

Alexandra whistled softly as she looked at the results of the test.

"Good suggestion." Said the dungeon core, as she looked at the maid by her side, and Ella shrugged.

"It was the obvious solution. Besides! I wished my discovery was used."

The dungeon core nodded.

That it would be. With her newfound surplus of mana, thanks to the NLR core, she'd been able to dedicate some resources towards a new test room, this one made to be entirely rebuilt from scratch to simulate upcoming battlefields.

Or, in this case, Sunrise's little fortification projects.

There were some limitations, notably she couldn't actually use the siege missiles for Subtlety here, no ceiling was going to accommodate ballistic missiles, but she could still fire them from a gantry pseudo-railgun and replicate the effects of a high velocity bombardment.

Which in this case, had allowed them to test Ella's suggestion. Which was to use an airburst napalm missile, using the fuel from her napalm trees, and bypassing the pits' reinforcing by just setting the entire area on fire and letting the burning fuel naturally drain into the pits.

"It will be. Amply so. This should take care of those fortifications nicely."

"It's not foolproof. Spells can put out the fire."

"Spells can also shoot down the missile itself. There will always be counters and new solutions, it's the never ending dance of warfare. This will be our solution for now." Alexandra tilted her head, and looked at Ella. "By the way, how's it going with the alchemist?"

"What alchemist?"

"The alchemist golem I used to give adventurers potions. You took him." The vampire maid licked her canines, and suddenly refused to meet the dungeon core's gaze. "Thought I wouldn't notice?"

"You've, ah, been very busy lately milady." Ella coughed. "And highly distracted during your free time."

"Uh huh. Well, I'm not blind. So, what are you working on? If you say 'it's a surprise', I'll conduct an audit of your projects."

The vampire maid opened her mouth, and closed it. That was the problem with spec ops, they never asked for permission, and rarely even asked for forgiveness. And she had a sneaking suspicion that the maid had been a spy as well, what with her tendency to keep some things hidden.

"Well, I was, ah, working on a wide area of effect gaseous poison."

Alexandra froze.

"You were making chemical weapons?"

The maid took a step back as the temperature in the room dropped.

"Just a prototype milady!"

"My dear, I acquiesced your 'special' grenades as an exception. But there are some lines even I won't cross." Yet. If something was to happen to Emilia or CQ...all bets were off. "This is one of them."

"But, mil-"

"Ella." Alexandra's tone was mild, but the maid stopped immediately. "I won't stoop to my enemies' level. Is that clear?"

"Yes milady. Absolutely milady. I understand."

"Thank you. Now, on the other hand, if you were to develop a non lethal version, like say, tear gas, I would be very interested. The equipment and protection for their slave soldiers is effectively nonexistent, and none of them are trained to resist such effects."

That seemed to give the maid some heart, and she nodded vigorously.

"Of course!"

"Excellent. Now, we need to get these incendiary missiles produced, and shipped to Subtlety." Whose ship was currently on its way to Darthar. Wasn't that going to be fun.

"That is your department, milady." The maid hesitated, and Alexandra sighed.

This story has been taken without authorization. Report any sightings.

"Yes, what is it?"

"About Glitch, she, uh..."

"She has some issues. Given her, well, birth, that's not surprising. And yes, her avatar is weird."

"It's worrying."

"No, it's eccentric. I..." Alexandra sighed again. "I know you don't have much experience with AI, let alone Arcadias, but believe me when I tell you that this is positively mild."

"She has six arms?"

"So? I have...physical relationships with people. For an AI, that's considered way weirder than a strange avatar. Crap, six arms was positively mundane by the standard of bioengineering on Earth, if you looked at some of the fringe shit. Some weren't even remotely human anymore."

"This was on Earth, this is Alcheryos!"

"Says the one who's a concentrated bundle of cybernetics and nanomachines made to kill people."

That stopped Ella dead in her tracks.

"I..."

"Look, I know you don't care what she looks like, so let's drop the pretenses. You're worried she'll snap and attack Emilia."

Ella gave Alexandra a sad, almost pitying glance.

"I'm worried she'll attack you, milady. You've already died once, the young lady...none of us want it to happen again."

Alexandra opened her mouth, and closed it. She'd been taking it as a given that the maids would only care about Emilia and CQ, but...well, they had been there for months, and they hadn't ratted her out to Etheria, Emilia's mother, even if the advisor had asked them not to. They had gone around her on occasion after all.

"Alright." Answered Alexandra, softly. "I'll be careful. Implement some further safeguards. Have a talk with Glitch."

"Thank you, milady."

"No need. No need..."

*****

Joruk swore softly as he darted behind a crate.

'Retire from adventuring' they said, 'the pay is way better with the merchants guild', they said.

Well yeah, it was, and with the money he'd made during his delve with the assault guild in Rebirth, he had been able to buy the equipment to get recruited. Problem was, at least if he got whacked inside the dungeon, he knew he'd come back.

But now here he was, for his sin of being actually good at his job and being known and trusted by Rebirth, he was stuck on tailing some seriously paranoid smugglers that seem to have a bug up their ass. Thanks Camille, real buddy there.

He took a deep, if quiet, breath, and stomped down on those thoughts. Do the job first, bitch later. It's what they taught him in his village's militia, and it would work here.

He darted a look by the side, and nodded as the smuggler vanished in the maze of crates.

The line of sights sucked here, which was precisely why they stored their cargo here, obfuscating the ship that was to receive it.

He followed the smuggler, taking care to stop every few steps to listen. The smuggler had boots with stealth enchantments, but he was no professional rogue. These enchantments had no point unless you did all of your clothes as well, and his nice, comfortable shirt rustled softly with every step. And the smuggler had stopped part way.

For a second, Joruk was afraid he'd been found, or that the smuggler suspected something, but then he heard a few strange sounds.

Then the smuggler resumed his walk, and the rogue tailed after him.

He took a quick look at the crates the smuggler had stopped in front of, and he smiled as he saw that someone had swapped the ship they were slatted to be loaded onto.

Got them.

Now, to figure where the hell that ship was actually heading.

*****

Alexandra sighed as she looked at the forges. It'd been a while since she'd been there.

She'd had her long delayed talk with Glitch. It was becoming unfortunately clear that she was having some…troubles. Of the split personality kind.

What she hadn't anticipated was that while, yes, the download and synchronization had failed, some of it had gotten through, and the AI had tried to update herself with it. Hence her, well, glitches.

Thus, she had an incomplete update, with some of her memories and personality traits improperly applied, and it was slowly developing into a parallel personality.

It wasn't as dangerous for an AI as it was for a human, but it was concerning. Ghost was keeping her under observation, and push came to shove they had coded in some failsafes. But hopefully it wouldn't come down to that.

Well, they had created an eccentric AI, if nothing else. A proper Arcadia, ah.

Which reminded her, CQ had started working with Seraph a lot while she was home. Alexandra wondered why. An avatar maybe? She wondered what the AI would represent themselves with.

Regardless of Glitch's problems however, she had proven an outright gifted data analyst. And before the dungeon core stood the fruits of the AI's labor.

Her first Mythril furnace. At long, fucking last, she would be to produce the rare and expensive material. Well, at least produce it without slitting her own throat with the cost.

Though, 'furnace' was a misleading term. Alexandra had seen less complex metamaterial forges.

"Ready?" She said to Emilia, who chuckled.

"Are you joking? I'm doubling our wards and I don't think we'll be ready."

"Come on, I told you, Glitch is safe...mostly."

"Oh I believe you, I'm more worried about the machine."

"Well it is a big boy."

"With an equally big boom." Emilia pulled out CQ's first sticker, the one for exploding prototypes, and Alexandra rolled her eyes.

"Oh ye of little faith."

"On the contrary, I have a great deal of faith in your inventions' destructive potential."

"Ah ah. Alright, starting Mythril furnace production cycle test run number one...now."

Alexandra pretended not to see Emilia bracing to summon more barriers, in case the ones already in place, both physical and arcane, failed.

The mythril furnace...didn't rumble to life. It hummed, a hum that gradually went higher in pitch until it dissolved into a whine.

What was going on inside...even Alexandra had trouble understanding it. There was a rise in temperature, but also a small mountains of spells and no less than three different types of energy being pumped into the raw ore within, bombarding it with various wavelength of light and even pure, finely crushed mana crystals. Which was, well, not exactly what one would call stable, even at the best of times.

There was a few minutes of alternating sounds, each stranger than the last, then, the machine simply beeped, and receptacle opened, revealing a bar of refined, ready to use mythril.

Alexandra opened her mouth to mock her girlfriend's certitude in the machine exploding, then decided that she'd rather not jinx herself. Perhaps she was learning after all.

"Alright. Let's get this to the blacksmiths, and hammer it into something useful!"

"What, not straight to your fabricators?"

"Honey, if you think I'm missing the chance of using every possible and increasingly over the top means to try and get this thing into the shape I want, then you really don't know me at all."

"Uh huh. Of course. Should we invite CQ then?"

"Sure." The girl was sad she'd missed Subtlety's departure towards Darthar, but she was now lobbying to get onboard the transport slated to carry the new incendiary missiles. Remarkably flexible class those Freedom-class, excellent design. They still served admirably, with small waves regularly exiting the shipyard, loading with military hardware, and going straight for Sarth's advancing army, giving them a constant and ever increasing supply of modern hardware and new warships. Plus, every day cut down the travel time. "I'm sure she'll love hammering some stuff up."

"In that way, she definitely takes after you."

"And she has your fashion sense."

"You say that like it's a bad thing!"

"If it means all the boys and girls are drooling after her, it kind of is. Hands off of my precious little daughter and all that."

Emilia chuckled.

"Yeah, I guess I have to agree."

"See? In any case, this bar." Alexandra tapped the arcane metal, which rang strangely. "Cost a third, a third, of what it normal would have."

"That's still pretty expensive."

"It is. But it's no longer 'only CQ and the praetorian guard' expensive."

"Oh. I know that tone. You're planning on making some kind of super golem, aren't you?"

"Weeeellll, we'd already done the work for my ambassador golems to be able to kick some ass, and I was thinking...if we're going to be fighting really powerful individuals like the duke we killed, might as well fight fire with fire, right? Besides, they'll never see it coming! I've always relied on numbers so far."

"The army you broke at Darthar would disagree."

"Okay, fair enough, but still. I believe making some champions would be a good idea. If nothing else, we need something to keep the powerful enemies occupied while the rest of the army riddles them with bullets."

"So...decoys?"

"Sort of! I mean they'll still kick ass, and better not turn your back on them, but it's like I said, the only way we're making it out of this mess is smokes and mirrors."

Emilia's face darkened.

"Right..."

"Hey, hey, don't look like that." Alexandra tilted her girlfriend's chin up with her fingers. "We'll get through this, okay? One step at a time."

"Right. One step at a time."

"And the next step is watching our daughter unleash her creativity on a poor, innocent bar of metal. To the forges!"

Emilia laughed.

"To the forges!"