Raiding complete Alex sat down to evaluate, luck did not describe what he stumbled on here. His plans still remained the same, complete his project and get the hell out of town. He simply could not stay. Now he had far more than he could ever have expected, rare materials, and an entire city worth of resources. Literally no reason to stick around, unless he wanted to play the hero. He didn’t.
The only thing left was getting out and finding somewhere… not here. With people, but right now he would settle for somewhere green, a place with life beyond hungry monsters or at the minimum a place with monsters that wasn’t a frozen wasteland.
As for his project he felt that remaining in this facility was the only ‘good’ option. Leaving to prepare to leave seemed stupid. He couldn’t imagine that the city had much more to offer, maybe more quantity, but was that just grabbing stuff to have more stuff? Yes, yes it was.
He had just gotten several lifetimes worth of stuff, not counting what he had before. No fucking way was he risking his life to remain here on the dubious hope of just more. As secure as this facility was, he didn’t trust it not in long term, it was too big to secure, and the goal was to leave.
Now he was just wasting time. “Pick a spot and get to work. There is no point sticking around, the sooner you are finished the sooner you can leave. Think about the details when you’re done, stop wasting time on pointless circular thinking. You may have to come back here, and maybe you can clear this place out, or maybe you can get more stuff. None of that shit helps you… Right. Fucking. Now.”
Alex was starting to feel like he may be spending too much time talking to himself… something to think about later.
He moved to an exit near the surface, much like the one he entered in. His reasoning was simple, he needed a moderately large area to work. He didn’t have any need for power, although that had more to do with not having any generators to power anything. He also needed to actually secure that place, and he needed an out. A way to get out from underground if the shit hit the fan. Deeper in he might end up trapped if a few select areas collapsed, that meant more time to dig a path out. Closer to the surface was yes closer to monsters but he might have a chance to get out if they found another way in. It was in his mind only a matter of time until that happened, some subterranean monster ripping into the unprotected facility. Or some monster knocked a hole in the roof giving total access to the facility to surface monsters. Alex was kind of surprised that hadn’t happened. Yet.
Now in position he set up a work area, a real work area. Much like the workshop he had in Alessa’s tower minus the powered tools and machinery. On the back of the work station he pinned up the design for his project and started to get to work. He had some odd thoughts of cackling like a villain after revealing his plan, or a mad scientist. He held it in. Barely.
~ * ~
Much, much, much later Alex collapsed. Completely drained mentally, emotionally, spiritually, and magically. The only thing stopping the mad scientist laughter was exhaustion. He was done his project was finished.
It had taken way too long, involved far too much swearing, a shitload of restraint to avoid throwing shit like a child. He had to deviate often, working on other projects just to keep his mind sane, letting things percolate in the back of his head.
To his knowledge no one here had done what he just accomplished.
He had carefully shaped each piece of metal, still working with mundane materials like steel, iron, copper and aluminum. Just because these could be shaped by mana alone. He wished he had the courage to set up a forge and a smelter to make his life easier, even though he would have to find a way to make them work. He resisted.
While he wanted to use the rare materials he collected it was beyond impractical. They had their own difficulties, and he didn’t have the tools or experience to work them.
He had practiced the enchantments and engravings until he could do them in his sleep, unwilling to risk the cores he collected, he practiced on the beastling cores he already had. Endlessly.
Alex had made, tested and refined dozens of new enchantments ensuring they worked as he needed them to. Frequently scrapping the whole design and making a new one. Piece by piece through blood, sweat, and often tears of pure frustration. He built his project.
When he could no longer think he practiced with his golems integrating more into the party. He had designed and built several new variants. Gone back and redone the design and enchantments on his older models. Reinforced the defenses around his work area. Ignored the judgmental stares of the golems around him, mocking him for each failure. He had built up a decent reserve of spare golems in the band now sitting on his arm.
All that for this one moment.
Mission. Accomplished.
Before him in roughly shaped dull steel glory sat a beautiful set of power armor, vaguely modeled as a hybrid between tactical dreadnaught armor (terminator armor from Warhammer 40K) and the T-45 from Fallout 4. The helmet portion was recessed into the body meaning the back and the neck was protected, while still leaving the ability to look around. The helmet itself was more fallout, and the entry/exit features were definitely along fallout’s style in how the armor opened and closed around him.
It solved everything he was currently worried about.
Alex was too weak. Too Squishy to survive here. Any one of the monsters he encountered could kill him. Likely in one shot, including the fucking Beastlings. He didn’t know how to fight with these weapons, and even if he did the basic stat difference was too much, and he was alone. No other humans to fight with him. Any actual armor capable of keeping him alive would be too heavy and clunky. Weak monsters were tearing through steel. Others were capable of battering down a steel monstrosity like Eins if they had time, doing damage to internals. No way he could even move with that much armor on.
His solution had been to use golems for fighting. It still left him too exposed.
If he couldn’t survive on his own, he just needed to build a better golem.
The golem before him accomplished that goal.
He would be inside the golem, safe from almost any threat. He could command his other golems and himself with his mind and magic. This golem like Eins was a combat core, one he had painstakingly made, smart and independent, supported by no less than three other support cores each large and powerful enough to be a combat core, in the frame.
It was an exoskeleton to move him around, to do the fighting for him while he focused on controlling the other golems. No more time worrying about his positioning so he didn’t die instantly. A shitload of tough armor and enchantments between him and the monsters. Set up so he never had to exit if he didn’t want to. Designed to prevent the golem from killing him with its movements. A suit that could keep on the move even while he slept. Armor that could move while he rested, allowing in the worst situations him to outpace any pursuers. Armor that could fight for him while he focused on controlling the others.
This was the only thing he could think of. All the same problems from when he first arrived still applied and got even worse. At first when he left the tower, he had hoped that he could just get materials necessary for a journey across the wastes surrounding the city and move (hopefully) towards people. He had confidence in himself, that he was physically capable of that. If it was only the journey, he probably was. Now he no longer had that confidence. He no longer felt he could adapt fast enough or grow strong enough to make it. A large part of this was that it wasn’t a matter of crafting items to solve problems, he had done very little of that since leaving the tower. Mostly he had just upgraded the stuff he had previously made, he had hit a stone wall when it came to combat capabilities.
So here he was. Building armor using a video games for reference. He should be survivable now, no longer requiring Eins to hover over him. He could let the golem he was in defend him. If he screwed up well, he could regrow his limbs and his vitals were as protected as he could make them. Inside a tireless golem all his needs for food and water accounted for in the design. A true command and control system in place rather than his old helmet. Enchantments and careful design caused the golems interior to conform tightly to his body, preventing it from breaking him with its movements. Weapons like the other golems on its arms and legs, he added further extendable claws to the hands, as well as the blade arm. More work to ensure that he could survive falls that would kill a person. Others sealed the suit and provided air, food and water, protecting him against poisons or drowning. A golems superhuman strength and toughness to protect against being crushed. He could continue working while on the move, no longer needing to stop to study or practice. Most of what he needed that didn’t require a book was in crystals he could pull up in the suits helmet. He was as safe as he could get in this fucked up place.
He just needed to catch his breath and pack up. It was time to go. He had a stompy suit.
~ * ~
Alex waited for his mana to recover he saved packing up the area for later. After a long nap, he engaged the suit opening it up from the back. He climbed in remembering how much of a bitch getting the joints and proportions to work had been. The suit was tall closer to nine feet (3 meters) most of the height had come from the feet which he had made clawed for traction and separated from where his actual foot would go allowing it to rotate and move in ways he physically couldn’t, the rest was sheer bulk and his body sitting much higher than normal. The helmet was large, sitting on the golem rather than his head. Kind of had to be with how he had overengineered the thing. Bulky, and rough, was the best description for it.
Even with a combat core its whole purpose was to keep him alive, and able to control his golems. The work he had to put in to allow him to manipulate magic outside the suit was horrifying. The armor closed around him activating the enchantments inside it tightened over his body and a spell on the collar integrated his mind and body to the golem. Preventing him from trying to move the armor with his own muscles it fit like a second skin, he wouldn’t rattle around inside, nor would he resist movements that the golem made.
Not perfect by a long shot, but enough. Alex also suspected that anymore and he might end up doing useless shit. On top of barely being able to get the parts and enchantments he needed into the frame already. He would need to test it in a live fire situation, see how it performed.
In any case he carefully waited for the long boot-up of enchantment and diagnostics. He had time, making it so that those didn’t disable the golem had been another nightmare. The lack only prevented him from working at 100%. Final tests, he packed up the work area. Including the items he deliberately left out, ensuring that he could still loot from the suit. He carefully manipulated a fire spell through the hands. Just to see if he could use magic, last thing he wanted was to have to leave the suit to repair other golems. A strenuous test of command and control of his golems, including the release of several from the golem storage. Followed by a recall, it was slightly more mana intensive than he wanted but… it was what it was.
Alex couldn’t believe how smooth the interface for golems worked when he could actually concentrate on it and had the time to integrate the proper support spell on the golems and in his own mind.
Having upgraded Zwei and Drei to metal frames and using the last two combat cores he found in the facilities storage. The cores had been marked for removal. Accounting/shipping error apparently. He had a solid front line with support from the bone golems. He had upgraded those two simply for the practice of metal shaping, figuring he may as well make that practical beyond just randomly shaping the huge reserves he had. The new golem suit had taken a much finer touch and precision than he previously needed, so to make that work he began to refine the parts of his other golems. Also letting combat cores go to waste was stupid.
In his mind he found an interface, one he based off of video games and his limited understanding of military software. A list of his golems and their condition. The locations on the map, a small set of preprogrammed stances like guard, standby, attack. A set of programmed options, such as aggressive, passive, and defensive. Multiple views for each golems senses, the view for his new golem, including a complex bit of rune work that let him partial look at his golem in the third person, another one to give him a ‘camera’ that could look 360 degrees. Rather than just being restricted to the view port on the helmet, especially when it came to looking in blind spots. It was too much information to see or display, his field of vision would never have been large enough for all this. Magical bullshit for the win yet again, the field of view provided by his eyes and the size of the helmets display didn’t really matter, it was more mental than visual but he still ‘saw’ all of these things.
He spent three hours getting comfortable with manipulating the golems. He had practiced with the partially complete systems, but he needed to be sure the final design hadn’t acquired bugs with the activation. Only one thing remained before he left this facility, the golem needed a name. It was different from the ‘numbers’ not like Eins and his brothers.
“Aegis”
The name popped into his head, and as far as he was concerned described the golem and its function perfectly, despite the simplicity. While working on Aegis he had spent time figuring out his next step, fully packed up he approached the door leading out of the facility. Vier and Fünf, still bone golems stacked up. This door was slightly closer to the edge of the city and he didn’t want to waste time leaving.
This book's true home is on another platform. Check it out there for the real experience.
He didn’t think it mattered one exit was as good as any other, with no way of knowing what was on the other side, and not knowing the state of the city above. Alex didn’t want to spend too much time running around. Getting to the surface was step one, should be easy enough, and really any exit should achieve that.
Vier spun the handle. As soon as the locks disengaged the door exploded open. A flash of movement and Alex was airborne. A worryingly deep gash in Aegis’ chest plate. It hadn’t penetrated the pure armor but it was close.
An abomination pushed its way into the room trying to squeeze past a door that was a third of its size, a vaguely humanoid upper skull and a gaping hole with a bladed tongue below, the tongue was what hit him.
The dwellers were right on the other side of the door this whole time.
Vier was a broken heap, that he immediately summoned back, despite the painful mana cost. Fünf had mostly dodged but had taken a disabling hit to the right arm, also got recalled. The creature was screaming holy hell, so loud that Alex almost thought it was a sonic attack. The scream echoed throughout the facility, likely carrying for miles.
Zwei flowed forward and drove its blade arm under the creatures jaw, opening its throat. Eins a heartbeat behind slammed his blade behind the ear severing the spine. The beast dropped as the two golems stabbed it a few more times, despite this it was still alive even with a blade through its head. The wounds were closing almost as fast as they were being made, behind the creature he heard scrabbling at the walls around the door.
He had a brief bit of pucker factor remembering how close he had come to throwing things at the door. All this while Aegis regained its feet, less gracefully than other golems due to Alex not having joints that flexible, and due to the sheer bulk of the suit.
What really did it for him was the sounds he faintly heard throughout the facility, screeches and screams coming from the distance. He bolted. Eins, Zwei, and Drei following. The facility had been breached and he doubted he could get through the creatures blocking his way fast enough to avoid being surrounded. Down was the only option tearing through halls beelining straight for the stairs hoping the layout would confuse the creatures and buy him time.
Another, man sized dweller jumped out in front of the group. Eins, now taking the lead while Zwei and Drei covered the rear, cut the dweller in two in passing. Behind him Alex heard a booming sound of the larger dweller trying to break in, it was also letting others through. Now they were being pursued. The whole facility filled with a nightmare cacophony of screams, and scratching claws.
The topside exits were unsafe, by now the sounds would have reached the entire facility. Any of the dwellers near the entrances would be trying to get in or trying to get to said exits.
He headed down trying to get to the utility area, the only exit left. A squat, and fast dweller caught up from behind spitting at Zwei, the action caused the creature to rock back when it spit and throw itself forward into a follow up leap. Zwei dodged both the spit and the dweller. Its arm lashing out into the spitters side, opening its body up and crippling its leg. While it howled on the ground, a few others tore into the dying creature eating it alive. Others continued the pursuit.
The party got stopped on the medical level. Other dwellers had either cut them off or these had come from below. Alex and the three golems, managed to break contact and hide, in one of the doctors’ offices.
“Well shit, how am I going to deal with this?”
Thinking hard while focusing on giving Aegis the mana to repair the damaged chest plate.
“Up or Down? I’ve been avoiding down because its sounds like a bad idea, still sounds bad. But is up any better? Even after these things settle down, if they settle down. I find it hard to believe they won’t fight, and I’ve just given them a shitload of new territory to fight over. Up has the potential to run into more of those big bastards, he is going to have a hard time fitting down here without tearing the place down. Have to fight my way out either way, I don’t think sneaking is a good idea. Should also leave before these things become established, use the constant calls to my advantage rather than risk drawing them all after me.”
Fast and hard to the utility area then to the outflow into the lower sewers. Through those to the underground canals, then follow those out of the city.
Plan in place the group left the room, killing the few dwellers nearby Alex pulled them into his necklace for study as they passed. He also didn’t want to leave fresh meat around their path, might draw more attention. He didn’t bother to clear the place as he went, it didn’t matter if they missed some dwellers on the way down and he didn’t have time. More and more were coming from in front of him when he made the choice to use the elevator shafts for a rapid descent. When he looted the place he noted that the elevators hadn’t been blocked off or destroyed, now to get down to the furthest levels and with Aegis he could probably make his way to the storage level without having to fight his way through the whole place.
When the group reached the typical double banks of elevators, Eins tore one set of doors open. After a quick check just to ensure that they weren’t going to jump into some monsters mouth the descent began. Alex had to move to the secondary elevator shaft to avoid, a stopped car. Aegis just jumped down to the other car below and then down to the bottom. Eins again peeled the doors open and Alex found himself looking at the maintenance level.
Looking at the broken and torn apart machinery that littered the level, all surrounded by catwalks above a seriously nasty set of reservoirs. There were a few places that were ‘solid ground’ scattered about but most of the space seemed dedicated to water, power, and some limited hydroponics.
Few dwellers were in sight and he mostly figured that he could avoid them, leaving the elevator Alex pushed to the power generator. He had to pass by it to get to the facility’s outflow into the lower sewers. Moving forward at a jog he examined the machinery and complex maze of pipes looking for threats, he marveled at the engineering prowess behind this facility. The generator had been disabled, it looked like a few hundred generations of dwellers, and their variants had battered all the equipment in this place apart. So far they hadn’t been noticed, Alex spent a little time examining the opened sphere of the generator.
His mind stuttered to a stop at its interior. He forgot the complexity of enchantments, forgot the magical metals it was made of. No he was staring at a core the size of his body, a sphere almost six feet (2 meters) in diameter. Surrounded by five cores ‘only’ the size of his chest. Aegis leapt the gap into the generator, touching each for capture. A pause of a few seconds, just long enough to gain the attention of the nearby dwellers. Then the group was off.
Zwei and Drei carving through the dwellers that got close. The group jumped over a railing towards the objective. A broken pipe leading out from the waste reservoirs, a twenty foot wide pipe (6 meters) the four golems and their human passenger sprinted off at a speed only the tireless could manage.
Hours of sprinting, had Alex frustrated. He didn’t have a map of this area, so even when he tried to follow the largest pipes or tunnels, now made of concrete rather than the metal of the facility, he kept running into dead ends or otherwise impassable barriers. A new type of dweller appeared as well. If he had to guess this was where they sent the weak, diseased or elderly. Forced out of the groups above ground they scavenged down here for the scarce resource that was food. Some of them have clearly survived and reproduced creating extremely dangerous single entities, it was a mixed bag. Sometimes the lone dweller died easily, other time they died hard. He wouldn’t be surprised if the groups from above also didn’t send scavengers down losing most of them to the solitary variants that were common down here.
The first time he ran into one it was on the other side of a deep canal just moving along. Out of reach, larger than the monster that damaged Aegis. It looked over before moving on. It was unable to get at Alex. The intelligence in its movements was chilling.
Alex didn’t want to get lost, and the only thing he knew for certain was that he wouldn’t suddenly forget where he had been. The obnoxious amount of back tracking and these levels had more damage than the surface. They had been torn apart by insane monsters with super strength lashing out in hunger.
Salvation came when he found a broken floor leading even lower into a smaller set of concrete tunnels, after Aegis leapt down he recalled Eins, Zwei, and Drei. The new tunnels would make any claustrophobic person have a panic attack they were barely large enough to fit Aegis, less than a meter of clearance all round. They also narrowed, it would force the golem to low crawl (on it stomach), and these were water lines. The type place that would fill entirely with water. Glad he wasn’t afraid of being underwater he had Aegis move forward.
It wouldn’t matter to Alex if the tunnels did fill, Aegis was water proof and could both filter air, or at a higher cost generate air all with the simple flip of a rune set, the mana generated by the cores and not needing him to maintain it. Being submerged would only reduce the golems available power, not his personal mana. Progress was slow but steady. Moving at a hundredth of a walking pace, Alex eventually reached a grate. A few bashes from Aegis and he fell/flipped through into the canal system. After a brief moment to confirm his orientation he was off, heading towards the river entrance, the place where outside water would flow into this manmade water system.
Resummoning the three golems on the run, Alex allowed himself to relax slightly. The wide canal they were in would be terrible for fighting long term, however it also needed unimaginable numbers to clog. His group should be able to push through anything they encountered using the speed runner tactic of just going around and out running. For now he kept the pace at a comfortable jog about twenty-five mph (40 kph), he wasn’t in danger or in a rush. The longer he remained out of combat the more he could practice, and the more any damage could be worked at by repair runes.
At the easy lope they maintained it took over a day until he noticed light up ahead. Having now crossed the majority of the city and constantly running slightly upwards only broken by the rare steep slopes that indicated a change in sub-level. He exited the underground at a divergence in the rivers flow one part went to the rest of the city, like a normal river, the other had been channeled down into the underground.
Looking around he found himself in the suburbs, lots of single family homes and small businesses, rather than the downtown sprawl he woke up in. The canal filled with dirt, trash and debris left by the unknown centuries that had to have passed. All forming its own environment separate from the city in the wide flat-bottomed vee. He spotted some movement along the corridor out of town. It looked like a few of the animal types had taken to scavenging for food here.
Alex, thoroughly done with this city summoned three new golems from his armband. There had been no point in the mad dash to bringing them out. These golems had been designed for the surface, their use underground was dubious especially considering the rushed exit.
Scouts.
The thing he missed on the surface. Reconnaissance. Two golems were wolf-like, lupine bodies with industrial presses for jaws and massive claws. While obviously capable of fighting their purpose was to roam ahead check for traps and ambushes. Circle the group going forward, the claws and strength giving them a limited ability to climb, able to be eyes on the ground while remaining capable of outrunning their pursuers. Four legs just made them faster than his humanoid golems. He had used the intact and reinforced skeletons of the canine monsters he killed for simplicities sake. He didn’t want to design them from scratch. At the same time he had reinforced them with thin metal to give them weight and power behind their attacks, the extra armor helped too.
The last one was the almighty eye in the sky. Basically a magical copy of a modern drone. He had covered it with sensory and concealment enchantments to the best of his ability, along with both a magical and physical mode of flight. It had propellers for fast movement losing stealth, and other magical means, a mix of gravity and wind to unobtrusively give a birds eye view.
The drone shot up, and the dogs rushed forward. Alex had every intention of just following the culvert out of the city and into the wastelands beyond. He needed to get out, it was no longer a mental objective it was becoming a physical need. Every roadblock driving him closer to despair, building a dangerous frustration. A part of him knew it was stupid to push if he wasn’t ready, the only reason he had been holding on, another part didn’t care, it knew if he stopped trying to leave he never would. It wouldn’t be inconceivable for him to stay simply to purge the place, no matter how hopeless. For him to forget why he wanted out and just lash out at the enemies before him.
Alex had no grounding, no one to speak to. Even his hope to find civilization was only a hope. Not a single shred of evidence that he wasn’t the only human alive on this hell hole. Just a possibility, and the knowledge that people had lived here at one point.
Alex also carefully avoided thinking about how he would pick a direction, quite literally any direction, with no landmarks like mountains, forests, a convenient ocean. Only the city.
For now he resolved to just move, even if he was only going deeper into wasteland. Anything to get away, anything to avoid being stagnant.
The culvert he was in was thankfully sparsely populated. A few pseudo crustations and other insect analogues including spiders scattered with more bone wolves (dire doggos), and the occasional beastling hunting party.
The end of the city and the culvert was a small reservoir where the inhabitants allowed the river to deepen before flowing over into the culvert he was in. A short climb up and he was out past the borders of the city. Looking at a dry riverbed a one or two feet deeper than the surrounding terrain, its edges blurred with the passage of time and lack of water. The darkened cloudy sky above him, leaving the wastes a washed out dull uniform gray. The loose sand reminding him of moondust, that incredibly fine sand with the consistency of powdered sugar, fine enough to leave a fingerprint. The rest was a cold, cracked and lifeless vista.
The uniformity of the land broken only by folds in the terrain, and the occasional isolated building in the distance.
He didn’t cry, the relief he felt at seeing and being here wasn’t like that. It was a goal achieved. Nothing more and nothing less.
Alex just began to walk his only indication for direction was to head for the outline of a road on this barren landscape.
He was leaving behind the place of his nightmares. Leaving behind the endless vigilance, the spiders that could tear through a car and hid under near invisible trapdoors. He was leaving behind the blood coated buildings filled with a mixture of frozen and rotting meat. He was leaving behind the closed in stench of opened bowels mixed with blood and feces. He wouldn’t be crawling through unidentified muck filled with giant bugs like the centipede that cost him a hand.
No more running in tight ruined buildings from Beastlings, trying desperately to find either a place to fight or somewhere to hide. He was leaving behind a desperate struggle to get things done while leaving enough strength to deal with a fucked up situation. Leaving behind spending years in darkness with no light natural or manufactured, relying solely on the sight enchantments of his helmet.
He was leaving behind the silence, the lack of human touch. No voices spoke to him. His golems could talk, but not respond. They were both best friend and disposable tool. He couldn’t bring himself to talk to them. Not like a Wilson, his loneliness was different. It was too desperate talking like that would draw threats to him, the monsters made noise and they hunted noise. So he remained silent, unless he needed to speak and process his thoughts, even then he was careful whispering in a safe location.
He was leaving behind cold conjured food with the consistency of bland oatmeal or plain grits. Conjured water that while refreshing had no real taste, somehow less than any water he had ever had. Even if he still used it to fulfill his food and water needs, doing so somewhere else made the mental difference. The cold creeping past his climate enchantments, with a wind that cut to the bone. At times he forgot what it was like to be warm and comfortable, to let his guard down even a little.
The road ahead was not any better, with no way to know what hemisphere he sat on he might be wandering into the artic circle or the equator. No way to know if oceans even existed here. Still, it was better than staying, better to walk deeper into the wasteland and further from any civilization. Better now to be exposed to the inevitable threats above, below, and on the barren plain than to be stuck in the city any longer. Better than fighting every day for a place to scavenge.
He would still be cautious, still study and practice. If for no other reason than to keep him busy. Step 1 achieved get out of the city.