Chapter 87
Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.
Small Floor Prototype.
“You know we’re going to need a better name for those than ‘small floors’ at some point,” Alexandra said idly as she looked at the first room.
“Agreed,” Emilia said, while darting worried looks at Sarah, who was standing behind her…with three golems ready to catch the vampire if she collapsed.
If the maids had impressed Alexandra with their physical resilience, their mental fortitude—and sheer pigheaded stubbornness—had amazed her. The only reason she’d been able to keep the vampires in bed for so long was that she had some of her golems physically restrain them, and after they’d broken a handful ‘accidentally,’ she’d gotten down to the new infirmary herself and explained to them that Emilia was extremely sad seeing them wounded, and if they got out of bed and collapsed and hurt themselves further, they would have to console her if she cried.
That had bought her a few days. Then Sarah had simply sat up and declared she was ready for duty, despite it having taken no less than three attempts for her to get upright and stay upright.
So, Alexandra had caved, and authorized her to come, only if she had a small coterie of golems to lean on, if necessary, not to mention Jared unobtrusively waiting to leap to the rescue. The vampire maid had only smiled and commented that it made her feel like a princess, so she was perfectly fine with it.
Alexandra hadn’t been sure if the maid was joking or not, and quickly decided that she didn’t want to know. The other maid, Ella was…simply too badly wounded to be getting up just yet, and she’d wisely decided to stay in bed once Alexandra had agreed to have Sarah keep an eye on Emilia. The only thing she had asked for was a chemistry set, a supply of ingredients, and a golem to follow her orders, which Alexandra had been more than happy to provide. She didn’t have all the ingredients—or the equipment—the vampire wanted, but she was currently busy instructing one of her golems in the finer art of poison-making. Poisons that, she’d noted, appeared to be specifically tailored for humans and giving the most horrific, painfully slow death possible.
Needless to say, she was really going to pity the next Republic soldier or would-be core kidnapper that crossed the maid’s path. Or not. She had a mean streak a lightyear wide, and right now if she had access to VX gas and some artillery she’d happily send an expedition to the nearest Republic city—Erakis, was it?—and send the Geneva Convention down the toilet.
“You can relax vampy, she’s not going to vanish in a puff of smoke,” Alexandra said, before tapping her cheek with a finger as she contemplated her handiwork. “What about ‘the thousand steps,’ with each having a name for their rank, like ‘steps of clay’ or ‘steps of copper’? For the name of these mini floors, I mean?”
“I am not that fussy! And it’s pretty decent.”
“Good.” Alexandra shrugged. “I think we’re done with this one. It’s tiny, but…I think it’ll be appropriate for clay-level adventurers.”
“I think so too,” Emilia said, as she nodded. “Only half a dozen rooms, each with just a handful of golems…not that different from the first third of the old first floor when you think about it.”
“Yeah. I mean that was the goal. Alright, so, next up.” Alexandra rubbed her hands together. “The mines, and the labyrinth! Oh, this is going to be fun!”
Emilia smiled as she saw the obvious joy her dungeon was having. Normally, she’d have rolled her eyes and made a comment about the risk of explosions, especially for her core’s concept of a ‘labyrinth,’ but not this time. To be honest she’d been really worried from time to time after the attack. She knew dungeon cores were protective of their advisors, but Alexandra had that turned up to eleven. Whoever she had been before coming here—and like her mother she was absolutely sure it wasn’t who Alexandra had said she was—she’d signed up for their ‘star navy’ out of a desire to protect people. Add to that a desensitized soldier, a streak of megalomania, and a love for explosions…
It had worried her. A lot. But the dungeon core looked like she wasn’t going to do something rash and was simply building up to protect them. She had decided not to comment on the self-destruct Alex had put into place or ask where the resources to build it had come from. It was clear the dungeon core had bamboozled her somehow, but that had saved her life, and almost certainly those of her maids. Ironically being crushed by rocks had been less lethal to them than staying under the influence of that vampire neutralizer—which had the nasty ability to prevent resurrection to boot—or a backup, had the core thieves had one.
“Just as long as she doesn’t blow up her ‘rearranging system’…again,” Sarah muttered under her breath, and Emilia tried very hard not to laugh as Alexandra whirled around, and held her hand, index extended, just under her maid’s nose.
“You…You!”
“Yes, milady? Did you hear anything, milady? Why, milady, I’m sure it must have been your imagination, a poor, wounded maid such as myself would have never made such a…scathing comment about your prototypes’ volatility and exemplary safety standards!”
If you spot this story on Amazon, know that it has been stolen. Report the violation.
Alexandra looked at the maid for a few seconds, before throwing her arms in the air and stomping off, grumbling loudly about being surrounded by ‘sassy vampires,’ and Emilia shared a smile with Sarah, before following the falsely irate dungeon. It felt good to have things back to normal.
*****
“You know, when you said, ‘one-hundred-room modular labyrinth’ I imagined something…smaller.”
Alexandra looked at her vampire advisor in disbelief.
“Vampy, my second floor was a ruined city a square kilometer in surface area. What in all the hells makes you believe I ever go for small when an alternative is available?”
“Well, isn’t this supposed to be a small dungeon floor?”
“It is but it is supposed to be the crown jewel! It has to be bigger than the others!”
“...I suppose that’s fair enough.”
“Yeah. And since the labyrinth only resets at midnight, it fulfills our part of the deal with the assault guild’s leader. What was his name again, uh…”
“Artok, I think. Beardy dwarf, plate armor, large war axe.”
“Yeah, him. Although that description is basically all close-quarters dwarves.”
“Not really, there are some spellswords and seriously badass monks among them who eschew armor in favor of mobility. And don’t discount rogues either.”
“Uh.” Alexandra nodded. Guess D&D or Tolkienesque stereotypes didn’t really apply to a real fantasy world. Hell, she didn’t even know if dwarves lived underground here! She’d have to check that out actually, for all of the knowledge she’d pestered Emilia about on this world, she knew surprisingly little about the species and variants of humanity inhabiting it. Probably because, down to a base level, they just seemed like normal people to her, and no more different from those that underwent extensive genetic engineering on Earth. But here they had developed societies based around those variations, so there might be some true cultural differences, alongside more mundane physical changes.
TO-DO LIST UPDATED
One day I’ll actually start crossing stuff off of this list faster than I add them, Alexandra thought…knowing that it probably was never going to happen.
“I’ll have to ask you more about dwarves someday,” she said, before looking up at her new “floor.”
A floor that currently was made up of a hundred “boxes,” each twelve meters on a side with a gigantic hook on top and arranged in a gigantic square arranged in rows of ten, for a total surface area of 14.4 thousand square meters. Well, less if you took out the walls, but still. And all of that was at the bottom of a pit, with a gigantic crane, storage racks loaded with other “room cubes” ready to be picked up and placed, or with enough room to place some of the cubes currently deployed for long term storage.
She’d originally had the idea for her fourth floor, a fully reconfigurable labyrinth she could build like some kind of giant Lego castle. She hadn’t fully worked the idea out—she still lacked the tech to make it workable in three dimensions—but it was a start. A very good start.
After all, with the algorithm remaking the entire labyrinth every day at midnight, it was an infinitely replayable floor, with unknown resources, loot, and danger. Well, to some extent. A lot of the algorithm’s job was to generate a new “course” for the labyrinth, selecting rooms and their positions, as well as opening and closing doors linking said rooms to make sure all were accessible in one way or another and it was possible to clear the entire structure. Making it confusing and challenging as part of the program was just the cherry on top. At some point she was quite sure the guild would get to know all the rooms, but they’d still be rearranged randomly, and she could add some new ones from time to time to keep them on their toes. Plus, it was an excellent way to set up experiments on ideas for later floors: just make a room and slip it into the queue! It wouldn’t work for larger scale ideas, but still it was something.
And, of course, it fulfilled the deal they had made with the assault guild. It provided a stable source of income, a need to map a small floor daily, and gave her a better chance to score some kills while seeming generous at the same time. After all, the rooms packed with loot might end up close to the entrance that day (not to mention they were already far more generous than the same type of rooms in the other “thousand steps”). And with the reconfigurations, you wouldn’t be able to plan and optimize to hell your delve, like so many adventurers had done for her old first floor. Adventurers weren’t that different from soldiers in the sense that it’s what you don’t know, or didn’t plan for, that kills you.
“And I’ll be happy to answer.” Emilia gestured at the giant crane in the ceiling. “So, now that you have simplified your ‘rearranging system,’ what are the rooms you’re planning on adding exactly? So far all of them are, well, pretty barren.”
Alexandra smiled, and extended her hand towards Jared, who handed her a scroll of paper. The Earth-born took it, and holding the top edge, unceremoniously let the scroll drop and roll on the ground, unwinding the paper.
Emilia watched the scroll as it bounced against her shoes, and then looked back up at the dungeon core.
“You seriously built a scroll just for this gag, didn’t you?”
“Yep! I always wanted to do that!” Alexandra chuckled as she gestured at the scroll and absorbed it. Better to take it away before Emilia started to question how much time she’d spent practicing that move or making the scroll and paper that would fit perfectly and not break or tear during it. “Alright, more seriously, here.” Jared handed a rather large notebook to Emilia, and the vampire girl’s eyes began to widen as she flipped through it. “What do you think?”
“That is…a lot. Like, a lot.”
“Most of it is just random ideas, and I doubt we’ll put all of them into action. After all, there’s what, three hundred room ideas? We don’t need that many at first! But we’ll be able to put them into place over time.”
“Yeah. It might be better to only have the one hundred initial rooms being rearranged at the beginning as well, and no new ones being swapped in. I doubt the assault guild is going to be able to map out all hundred rooms in a single run, so it might be for the best to give them a few days to get settled in and comfortable before we start truly switching it up. That way more people will try to run the labyrinth, and more will fail.”
“That’s an excellent point vampy!” Alexandra smiled. “Plus, if the assault guild can’t map out the whole labyrinth every day, it might encourage other adventurers to take far more risks to sell their own, more complete map, to the rest!”
“Right. So, should we get started on those rooms?”
“Yep! Let’s start with the more generic ones first. So, the one with the standard golems, I was thinking—”
ALERT: SENTRY GOLEM REPORTS: ANOMALOUS SURFACE ACTIVITY
“Oh for the love of the gods, what now?” Alexandra shouted, before popping into dungeon mode and jumping into the sentry golem.
And she fell silent as she saw the surface dwellers of the town all assembling in one place…and the massive convoy of vehicles and people arriving from the wastelands.