The interior of the dam was crudely built onto the older construction, mostly a lower level still above the water line. From here the monsters ‘controlled’ the outflow heading east. Inside he encountered more of the same monsters, the long hallways and relatively low roof let the heavies dominate their opposition.
At the center section, he encountered a large door that required battering down. It was protecting the ritual area in the center third of the dam. Here he encountered several more magic users, and another batch of elites like at the Martes waterworks. These ones leaned more towards traditional magic than the others, not that it mattered much. The blasts of elemental damage did little to his golems. The resistances to magic he had placed on the frames shrugged aside the magic they were willing to use in the closed space. The golems rarely gave any time to set up better spells or defenses. Most elemental damage required sustained exposure to cause damage, his biggest worry was raw magic and pure destruction followed closely by the few penetrating types.
After that it was a matter of time, the elites were separated and worn down. The spell casters hounded and shot by the two snipers that came with them. Weak spells causing more harm to the defenders than the golems, in the close confines of the room. The undisciplined nature of the opposition helped as well. Light bone golems sprinted to close the distance and give the casters something to worry about.
It took no time at all for the floor to be covered in blood as the defenders fell to the coordinated efforts of Alex and his forces.
The ritual area was the largest he had seen, made up of dozens of smaller crystals supporting a much larger one in the center. All of these went into a special storage device Alex was carrying, special in that all it had were these gems.
As the ritual failed, he moved on to search the rest of the place, his golems making a mess of anything that he couldn’t loot. Several rooms were fitted into the limited space using makeshift walls and canvas, places for the high-ranking members to sleep and plan. Several maps showed what he assumed was up to date intelligence on the surroundings, as well as mapping out several territories spreading to the east.
Too many territories, and far, far too many settlements and strongholds. It was the same as comparing a road map of a rural area to that of a city, but on the scale of a nation. The former Nilfstrum Empire was vast. The area of the Empire looked to be roughly the size of the continental US, and it was packed, while up close that might appear to be spread out but if accurate these places were only a few days of travel at normal speeds from each other.
It didn’t take long for Alex to rejoin his forces outside; he would study what he had found later. For now, he was looting the town and its surroundings. He wanted those crystals and the seeds so he could grow his own supply. Killing was secondary at this point. The only other thing to do was continue spreading his cleansing enchantments as far as possible.
He stayed far from the lake itself, he had too many visions of some absolute monstrosity climbing out of the sludge like waters to even risk it. Instead, golems with support teams began harvesting crystals, and stuffing them into storage devices. More golems dug up the seeds. Then he was off, moving away from Crystal Lake heading roughly west.
Alex stopped in an open area and set down his base, covering it with earth magic for concealment, then stored all but his recon golems (wolves and drones). When he began thinking about raiding this place and discovered the crystal seeds, he had built an entire module as a terrarium. A place for him to plant those seeds and let the ambient mana in the module grow the crystals. Possible only because they were not living, or growing in a technical sense, it was like watching salt crystals ‘grow’ on an electrode from a solution. The crystals did the same thing with magic, and the seeds were catalysts.
After sorting that out, he began to study the information he had stolen. That information looked grim, he was getting tired of grim. The entire eastern area was filled with settlement markers and roads, divided into different territories with almost no space in between. This included clear indications of opposing factions and battle lines. While Alex had never planned on fighting his way out, what he was seeing made any lingering thoughts of such actions disappear.
If the populations were even close to what he had seen so far, he had no chance but to sneak through. Full special forces mode, in and out without a trace. His golems were good, he might even say very good. Not that good. He would have to go back to a mindset like when he first arrived, the only ‘good’ thing was that it showed a likely way out of the wasteland. There was a location marked as The Maw, a clearly indicated path through the mountains. He just had to get there, through fifteen different territories at a minimum.
One look at that had him reconsidering his options. He was still heading east largely following the river made by the dam. The ocean to the west wasn’t worth revisiting, he still saw no reason to attempt escape that way. The northern and southern mountains were looking better, if only due to the new information making them potentially less of a risk.
He would continue to the east for now scout out the border before making a decision.
***
The prospects weren’t good, the farther he traveled the more miasma he encountered. It wasn’t a problem for him but the effects on the monster population were telling. Beastlings and Dregs got bigger, stronger and tougher. Roving packs of monsters like the pigs and gorilla creatures became more common.
He had confidence that his superior quality and control over his golems would win the day.
That confidence was quickly shattered.
Each fight was progressively harder, pushing his skills to the limit. As the monsters got stronger, due to the increased mana they could absorb from the environment and by killing and devouring each other. Each monster underwent a qualitive change, a combination of survival of the fittest with the increased populations… and things got … tricky. The higher levels of ambient mana also allowed the use of ‘abilities’ things like enhancement spells and the like. Apparently the lands he had been traveling through had been the magical equivalent of a desert.
He remembered that most of the monsters he faced were essentially starving, and now they were not. That meant that these monsters could really use their mana. That they had enough mana regen to use skills and magical attacks. It was basic stuff for the most part, channeling their mana throughout their bodies and weapons increasing damage in various ways and making them significantly more powerful in a physical sense.
The first sign something was wrong was when he began to lose golems. A bone golem tried to parry the strike from a beastling, one that didn’t look or even feel all that different from normal. The blow crushed through the block and into the golems chest. Vier almost ceased to be as his core was nearly destroyed by a single blow. The attack going through the blade on his arm, the lower, and upper arms and cutting deep into the reinforced chest plate the golem was almost cut in half by a shitty beastling.
Alex managed to recover Vier and the monster died when a heavy swung its halberd into the turds head. But that became the norm, Eins and those with metal frames fared better but the damage was seriously scaling up. Frames were bent armor lost chunks and had large gouges. Enchantments began to be broken and even countered. His golems were losing in terms of speed and strength, worst of all their toughness was no longer up to the task of continuous battles.
The spider, and the ghouls he encountered in Trenton should have been a much bigger warning. It had been capable of penetrating steel with its fangs, the ghouls were able to cause serious damage to Aegis. Alex had eventually managed to avoid most of the damage from such encounters, and later reinforced the frames to handle it both in terms of resisting and repairing. At the same time, he had only really fought certain enemies.
In a way I made sense not every monster could be an inhuman powerhouse. Alex just avoided many creatures he didn’t know. Spiders, dogs, beastlings and dregs were the lowest of the low. Their main advantage was in their numbers.
The average monster here would have easily been the chief in a place like Martes, and there were even monsters that started to be a match Eins, in terms of raw stats. That caused a rather radical if unwanted change of heart.
While not reliant on his air power, most of what he did with the drones were tricks, more than enough for the monsters he had seen in places like Martes, now the spell bombs he dropped were little more than an annoyance. Snipers began to use the specialty ammo as a default, needing the more powerful shots to bring down their targets, even then many monsters required multiple rounds to put down. The occasional large monsters even absorbed numerous bullets and had to be killed by the mass and strength behind a halberd.
Ferocity, skill, and reactions all began to reflect the higher dangers that these monsters had been exposed to. He cursed himself for his feelings of superiority, for allowing himself to think for one moment that he might be one of the baddest things in the wastelands.
***
“Fuck fuck fuck…” Was being shouted in a large helmet. Alex had been careful, he really had. The ruins he was combing had been a trap. He had been carefully probing the defenses looking for a way past without having to fight. He was avoiding going around due to the activity in the area. He had mostly moved away from scavenging, the resources he had made hunting more of a hobby than a necessity at this point.
The monsters had been waiting for him. Hidden behind their own concealment spells and staying in cover, the first thing he noticed was the destruction of the drones he kept on close overwatch. Taken out by spells and projectiles. They were just gone, their cores detonating to prevent examination. It was his wolves that saved him, they formed an outer perimeter that the ambushers had to deal with before engaging his main force. Twenty-five golems had been with him, keeping a tight formation and now he had eight including Aegis.
The wolves died like his drones, letting the enchantments and their detonating cores destroy their remains. Swarms of monsters had dog piled them before they could get out or coordinate, then they hit his main group. If the ambush had been timed slightly better or managed to get closer, Alex would be dead, again.
That slight delay plus the ruins had given him an out, a painful one. A small gap that he hit as hard as possible, leading to a breakthrough. He broke the encirclement at the cost of three heavies and most of his bone golems. The only remaining arial drone was his high altitude one, feeding him information on where to go. Without that it would have been nearly impossible to escape.
Eins, Zwei, Drei, two heavies as well as Sieben and Neun both bone golems heavily damaged but still functional. The heavies weren’t in the best condition either, having taken powerful blows all enhanced and getting focused down by penetrating magics that cut through the resistances.
Honestly most of the damage to his forces was from trying to keep Aegis alive. His position near the center of the group, slightly back, meant that his forward forces had to hold the line. Then the flanks had to deal with getting attacked, his forces collapsing and forcing Alex to position his golems between Aegis and his opponents. Aegis was focused on killing its way out and into the gap, leaving its back and flanks exposed.
These monsters had similar equipment to usual just so steeped in mana that they performed much better than rusty metal on a stick should. Very little was truly enchanted, less than any monsters he encountered at the dam or Martes waterworks. It was how familiar these bastards were with what they had, and their ability to channel their strength properly.
If it weren’t for Alex’s finely honed sense of battle, and the experiences of the wasteland, he might have panicked. He might have lingered or tried to turn the situation around, but instead he had fled instantly. It was far from the first time he had been jumped, even by vastly superior forces. It certainly wasn’t the first time he fled from a bad encounter.
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His major fuck up was all due to his inexperience with losing golems, a few heartbeats of hesitation to recover the damaged and destroyed frames. Resulting in Aegis being slightly out of position and taking a few hits. Hits that landed on weaker armor, previously damaged. He now had several injuries to his body. His arms and shoulders had several injuries at the joints, and his side had a deep painful cut. Nothing his healing couldn’t handle but not exactly the best right now. His helmet was cracked from a blow that rang his gong. Worst of all was the cumulative damage degrading his golems’ ability to fight.
There was no time for optimal fighting, he had to attack and tank blows that he normally would have dodged. Killing as fast as possible and run over and through the ambush, not exactly one of his golem’s strengths. Alex had gotten used to controlling and choosing his engagements since he left Trenton, now complacency kills was all he could say. Recon and the ability to maneuver at will had lulled him. He had forgotten what it was like in Trenton, where he had to scramble every day just to live.
In any case that was just the beginnings of his problems, breaking out of the ambush kept him alive for the moment. His enemies were not willing to give up after a minor setback though. The heavies had to be recalled along with his bone golems. He did this immediately after leaving the encirclement. That left him with Eins, Zwei, and Drei playing cat and mouse in the ruins. His snipers were positioned outside as there were limited sightlines, places for them to use their ranged advantage, and the dwindling effectiveness had him leaving them in support when he entered the ruins. This had the added benefit of giving him a ‘secure’ extraction zone.
If he could get out, he might have a chance of using them to buy time. He had a few fresh frames in storage but was hesitant to summon them, all his heavies were out of action, and what was left were his bone golems and the metal medium frames. Useless in this fight. Some while combat effective still needed repairs from previous battles.
Getting out of the ruins was a fast-paced nightmare dash, sometimes falling upon small groups of enemies as they rounded corners or leapt over obstacles. Most of the time he was able to avoid a fight by changing direction, other times he needed to eliminate his opponents. Either to avoid being driven into a larger group or because they were too close. The confusing mixture of monsters ranging from beastlings to dregs, some spider type monsters occasionally used as a mount all the way to more of the newer upright pigs and gorillas.
Alex didn’t remember much from the battle in the ruins and his flight, he had been operating on instinct totally in the moment. The probable concussion from the head injury didn’t help. Forces were moving outside in the open as well, his snipers had been forced to engage to keep yet another corridor open for his escape. The slow rate of fire, by modern standards, had let the enemy get close if they were willing to accept the casualties. These monsters were more than willing.
In order to keep the corridor open the snipers had been forced into a melee, rather than fleeing and reengaging. It also meant that Alex had no cover fire for crossing the open. In the end his weakened force had picked up the bodies, and one functional sniper on its last legs as they ran past killing or driving of the few enemies within reach. All the support dogs had been downed as well. Magical bombardment nearly crippled Aegis during the run, the other golems spared because they sprinted ahead faster to maintain the breach.
Out in the open the golems managed to pull slightly away from their pursuers. That was when things got grim. This was a coordinated attack; he hadn’t been far into the proper borderlands. A week of careful maneuvers to travel maybe a day’s worth of normal distance. His high altitude recon showed other forces moving to cut him off from escape. He wasn’t much faster than his pursuers, and they were definitely chasing him.
He needed to break contact, find some way out of this part of the wasteland. He lacked the means to turn and destroy his pursuers piecemeal. The maneuvers required to avoid other forces kept him in contact.
***
“Four… four fucking days.” He managed to avoid capture or destruction over a fast paced four days of running, with intermittent bouts of hiding or remaining still until a gap in the patrols formed for him to slip past all while doing his best to maintain separation from the force that followed from the ruins.
He didn’t trust it. It felt like they had let him go in some poorly defined way, or lost interest. In any case he had no plans to stop despite the exhaustion. Now back in the more familiar areas of the wasteland he ran on. The thinner mana would have some impact. Right?
What he needed was another city. He could no longer rely on always knowing where opponents were. A place where the environment would tell him what was going on. A place that would be hostile to their forces, out of their control. It had to be a place where he could lay low and recover. Somewhere he knew perhaps? It had to be relatively close, he was running on fumes and needed the time to get back into fighting shape. Even worse he needed to make sure he wasn’t being tracked somehow.
Looking at the map he only saw one option. It had him looking at the sky and screaming in pure hate. Trenton. It was close. It had an early warning system and its own defenders.
Four golems and a scout returned to their ‘homeland’ weaker than they had left.
~ * ~
Getting to, and inside of Trenton was easy. That had him moving deeper, this time he started in the suburbs. Passive repair had made itself known getting the group somewhat back to fighting strength. Resting for a day, and conducting the critical repairs, mostly patch jobs. He wasn’t willing to pull out his base. If he was being tracked or observed he didn’t want to reveal that card. Alex was in full paranoia mode as he had just encountered the most organized and persistent enemies of his time in the wasteland.
Instead, he temporarily fortified any location he was staying at. He was headed back towards downtown. The first thing he did was make and release more drones, both to deliver his remaining cleansing tablets and to keep an eye out for the disturbance his pursuers would make. He also left a few of his obelisks a more sustained and permanent mana diffuser. A few miles into downtown proper he found a hidey hole.
Like the parking garage in Martes he selected it for its height and concealment from outside. This time a small office building. Then he finally took a chance to really rest and recover. That had been the closest he had come to dying since he made Aegis. To say he was unhappy about being back… also an understatement.
Sighing and feeling like he was finally somewhere he could at least see pursuit coming, Alex got to work actually repairing his golems. For now, he kept the group small, repairing a golem to put it in storage. He had learned the hard way that a large group drew attention in this city. He was here to hide after all.
Getting back out was not likely a problem, if it came down to it, he could just unleash his full might and force a breakout using heavies. As long as he avoided the super predators, he would be fine. No his real problem came after.
Aegis got up and began pacing the interior room he was in, a large office space that he stripped down to nothing. The walls and doors had been reinforced and his faithful golems stood watch Eins, Zwei and Drei along with a newly repaired sniper and dog. He kept an eye on his drones but focused on the problems at hand.
“Seriously what the fuck… How do you deal with that shit. Three or four beastlings to take on a heavy WTF. No calm down ok. You need to think this through not just get upset. Take a step back and figure out what you need to do.”
This was harder than it sounded, taking quite a while.
“Ok walk through the steps you’ve taken since getting here maybe you’ll see something, a wrong path or some shit… I made Eins with the materials and knowledge I had… Ended up needing to make more to cover me because as good as Eins was he can’t fight and protect me at the same time… The bone golems were expedient and I made them from available materials… Had to make Aegis to keep myself safe, but I could do that due to supplies from the shelter… I continued to make more golems because my needs kept expanding… recon and a larger fighting force… The heavies were in response to the growing strength of the opposition, they were only possible due to my greater knowledge and experience… I made a system for control because I needed more troops and flexibility.”
Something about that twinged his hind brain he felt like he was missing something simple but elusive.
“Is that where I went wrong? OK forget the enemies for the moment, the systems I made improved my control immeasurably… that might be it! The same problem in a different area… I eventually stopped working on the system because improvements were becoming miniscule, I didn’t stop that with my golems though. They are rapidly reaching the point where I can’t make changes that matter to their effectiveness. I am over optimizing obsolete hardware… no not hardware… materials, I’ve been steadily improving the basic designs of the golems as time went on based on the after action reviews.”
If he could have pulled out his hair he might have.
“I have been adding to a poor base. The core components of the frame are still the basic stuff I had when I first started. I haven’t really changed them that much. I wanted to keep them simple, so aside from fixing the bugs and smoothing stuff out I didn’t upgrade that base line or reoptimize the base.”
He paced as he thought over the path he had taken and the potentially wasted time.
“No no… it wasn’t useless the practice I got still matters, my proficiency and control are orders of magnitude better than when I left here. I fell into a trap of trying to use numbers to compensate. The avenues I have been pursuing are plateaued… the mission is also changing. It’s not about fighting, it was never about fighting it was about survival. Now it’s about avoidance. I cannot out fight these forces I have to do something else.”
His vague rambling led him to conclude that he was making a mix of militia (Bone golems) and regulars (Everything else) and what he needed was a Hero party or special forces.
“I already know where these golems are lacking but I didn’t want to overhaul and upgrade them, and I need to. I need to condense my formation and make better golems, better cores. Not new models I need to raise the base line. Like Aegis I need to plan and build them from scratch using the best techniques I have. Take all I have learned and move the baseline stats higher; my golems need to match my proficiency, knowledge and experience. As it is what I’ve been doing is using what is most convenient and cost effective, I discarded ideas due to the testing required and the work involved. I settled for good enough in my rush to leave… never considered the problems… Too many thoughts and theories just ignored because I didn’t have the time or materials, and I never revisited them. I was too focused on what was in front of me and more than once lost sight of the mission. With what I know now I should be able to build golems that eat most of this city alive. Just Aegis and two or three bodyguards… I can’t afford to scavenge or fight in those territories they react too quickly and are too dangerous. I need a combination of stealth, meaning a small party, and overwhelming killing power on the chance I have no other choice. It’s not all bad I still have the option and tools needed for numbers if it comes down to it, I just need to change focus on upping my quality in a comprehensive manner. Time for a total overhaul of my golems.”
Getting into the swing of things and plans forming in his head Alex finished his thoughts.
“More golems won’t help, I have limited storage and even my current best just got ROFL stomped. First I need to give my inventory a good hard look. Until I have this figured out I am going to need to be careful. Got to figure out if they are still tracking me before I show any more of my capabilities. Careful and balanced decisions with the golems, plus using my new knowledge to move forward.”
Sighing he got to work on his golems, trying to implement his thoughts now was foolish. He needed to refine them first and come up with a plan for his plan. Designs test and theory crafting with a dash of experimentation. He also needed to set something of a hard limit for waiting for pursuit. Then he needed to find or make somewhere he could put down his base, the tools inside would be absolutely necessary for his work. A good first step might even be upgrading said base. Like the mobile version he had several other thoughts, one of them might be doable.
Hell considering the terrain he was on an area of mostly flat frozen ground he might be better off making a mobile command center and just drive around in the empty areas.
The other idea he had discarded it because of the work required and the limited reward he saw, same with making more golem storage bands. The idea of a personal and portable dimension home was just out of his reach, granted that ‘just’ was a huge pain in the ass to solve but it was there. Same with his golem storage they shared the same issue namely that of making it work on ‘living’ beings. If he did it right, he would be able to work at his leisure without fear of being found. Something like you might expect from a cultivation novel.
The other factor was one he had largely ignored since his arrival, and that was the lack of ageing on his part. When he first arrived he figured that leaving this place in a timely fashion was something of a must. It seemed entirely reasonable at the time.
He would get older, weaker, and eventually run into the problem of it even being worth the effort much less if it was possible. Who wants to escape a situation like this and be a crusty old man looking for a retirement home, better in his mind to go down swinging if there was nothing to look forward to at the end.
As near as he could tell he was a gestalt entity. A fancy way of saying he was a specific kind of immortal. Mind, body and spirit made up a living thing. Always all three had to exist together, and well his body and spirit were one. He hadn’t fallen through a portal his ‘soul’ or spirit had traveled here carrying his mind. Upon arrival his soul had formed a body, one that matched exactly to his spirit and the environment.
This was a big deal, his spirit hadn’t formed or fell into a biologically created body from normal reproduction. He had no dissonance between the two, his body was a physical manifestation of the immortal soul. Alex wasn’t going to pretend that he knew more than that, basically time meant nothing to his physical form. Everything else was PHD level and he was barely at elementary school in terms of learning. It was why he was able to regrow his hand, the spells he used shouldn’t have worked that way. Regenerating lost limbs was at a much higher level of spell and learning, for him pouring magic into the body made it go back to matching his soul. No need to learn biology to make it happen.
The usual magic fuckary.
He had all the time in the world if he could remain sane and focused.
Time once again to slow down, prepare, plan and wait for the opportunity to leave when he was ready. East was still his best option, he just needed to have some patience. Set the stage as it were.