Dungeon Robotics 9 - 28

Good morning Everyone!

Regan

Flying over to the last core, I was positively briming with mana. If I had known I would get this much of a boost, I might have tried to find a way to get one of the cities in the Beneath to send their people into my dungeon one way or another. The dwarves were throwing a fit down there weren’t they, maybe I could get my forces and capture all of them.

I quickly shook my head to clear the thoughts. That was a dangerous path to walk. I’d rather not be a tyrant. Either way, it didn’t matter now. I had the entire population of Fallen Rose in my halls. I doubt the dwarves would stop with just them, and I would need to send some forces to check up on Nefelume and Koraz. The dark elves and the kobold - troll coalition had between at least willing to talk each time I’ve met with them.

Giant insects that were rather hard to describe crawled over the surface of the new asteroid dungeon. They possessed a hard exoskeleton with six legs. Two arms that had large pincer made for some strong weapons. Rather than fangs, their mouths contained numerous tendrils that I was sure would fuel nightmares.

“Let’s finish this up quickly.” I raised my staff and concentrated. A small blackhole opened that started to pull everything in its area of influence. The monsters were crushed long before they reached the center. I even went ahead and had it tear part of the wall into its event horizon to save some time in getting to the core.

“I hate insects,” Alara said shivering a little as we flew through the field of torn up bodies.

“That’s surprisingly girly of you,” I replied not expecting it. I mean for the last hundred years she’s had to deal with undead in her halls. Insects are almost cute at that point.

“They eat my children! Gnawing and biting! Termites are the worst!” she argued.

“Ah. I can understand when you put it like that.” She nodded vigorously causing my to chuckle.

My avatar body was completely supercharged, and I took advantage of that fact to burn my way to the core room. Thanks to the blackhole, it wasn’t that much work. Some sort of monster-fied centipede guarded the core. All I was getting from the core was rage and anger. Unlike the first three cores, the insect cores had almost no intelligence, only hunger and of course self-preservation.

Even after upgrading the cores, they were little more than children. It would take a while to make them useful, but they would still be good blockades from anything attacking the planet in the future. I just hope I wasn’t planning for nothing. That would be a little embarrassing down the road.

The others soon joined us with Soza and Nova going to town. Anubis and Vetur also joined in leaving Alara and I with nothing to do. If many more joined in, we risked hitting each other. Julie landed next to me with an almost depressed look.

“What’s wrong?”

“I haven’t done anything,” she said with a pout. Now that she mentioned it. Everyone else was so battle hungry, that since Obolus, she hadn’t gotten a chance to fight any of the monsters. Well, she fought small fry outside the dungeons when we were heading to the core, but to this group, they don’t count.

“Fighting is not everything. That said, you are briming with mana, what happened?”

“Master gave it to me! Don’t play coy,” she said squirming a little.

I raised an eyebrow not understanding how she came to that conclusion. I quickly checked my mental log as it were and found that when I pushed mana to all my other cores, I included my upper most followers. That meant Julie and Izora got a dose of dungeon level mana. Julie was one thing, she was already tier four and modified, but I would need to check on Izora as soon as I could. For the time being, I cut off the flow to her glad that I still felt that she was alive.

“I’m glad I didn’t send mana to all my followers, that would have been a headache. Though, I could make quite a powerful army quickly.”

“Ah. Master turned it off! I was enjoying the burning in my soul!” Julie said with another pout though her face was beet red from what I assumed was pleasure. Never underestimate a masochistic.

A loud boom in the distance told me the group finished off the boss monster. I strode over to the core and quickly bound it. By this point, I could do it blindfolded. “I wonder if they never had a dungeon fairy,” Alara noted as I finished up.

“Hard to say. I’m fairly confident that they were some sort of prototype, but I’m not sure when the fairies were created. Something about them feels foreign after seeing these. They might be something added to balance the cores mental states. As we’ve already seen, if the fairy is able to, they can protect a core from quite a bit.”

Lena had been the pivotal point that allowed Alara to come back mostly unscathed. All things considered. I was hoping to find one among the group, but if they existed they were either eaten or died during the time their masters’ cores were sealed.

“Sad.”

I put my hand on her shoulder in comfort. It was something that we couldn’t do anything about. Unless we traveled back in time, and that was something I wasn’t about to play with. I had my share of time shenanigans back when I got stuck in the anomaly that was currently orbiting the planet.

“We’ll help them from here on.”

“I know.”

With the core bound to my will, I put it on a proper orbit then returned with the other back to the station. We all did a lot of work and could use a decent rest. Unfortunately, there was trouble in the Beneath and Louella was fighting a war with the mortals. At least of all the problems, one was actually solved.

Looking at my moon dungeon, I began moving it back to its proper location in orbit. I was sure I messed up more than a few ecosystems by moving it for the day. This was the sort of thing that got turned into an evil omen or something along those lines by less developed peoples. I just had to hope that the little queen was able to deal with any fanatics that might emerge from this.

~~~

After a stop to check on Izora, a visit that I was sad to learn that her girlfriend had been caught up in. I went to check on Louella. The mortals were important to my power and I couldn’t afford for a war to get out of hand on the continent. As they said, every person counted when the fate of the planet was at large, or at least I assumed it was at large.

I found her and Izora’s fleet surrounding the capital of Thonaca. It would normally be a beautiful city to visit, with high marble walls. Buildings and streets that looked like they were painted. And a palace that rose into the sky towards the center of the town. Other than the old dwarven city in the north, this was the first city that gave me the ‘it was built in a fantasy world’ vibe.

All this was ruined by the walls that had thousands of soldiers ready to fight to their deaths and what looked like an equally large number of refugees that appeared to be starving. From their state, they had been suffering for a while. Many of them weren’t much more than skin and bones.

A few airships that flew the Thonacan colors hovered over the castle. A bad placement if you asked me. One good shot and you’d have a few hundred tons of flaming airship falling on top of the king. That was if the king was brave enough to still be sitting in the castle. It would take quite the feat to flee under these circumstances, but it could be done.

I flew over to Louella’s flag ship and landed on the deck. A few of the soldiers raised their weapons, but quickly lowered them when they realized who it was. That was good. Better to be too cautious than too relaxed. There were all sorts of hidden masters in this world after all.

“Lord Regan. Lady Louella is in the conference room,” a guard said taking the initiative over his peers. I nodded and made my way to the room. Having helped build them, I knew the ships like the back of my hand. Once I reached the conference room, the guards pushed open the doors while announcing me.

“Lord Regan. It is a pleasure to see you in our midst,” one of the captains said with a head bow. She looked fairly young to be a captain, but everyone here was chosen through merits and talent. The other captains quickly echoed her words.

“Thank you. I wanted to see how the war between the mortals was going,” I commented looking over to Louella. She sat in a throne at the back of the room.

“Well. We lost a few soldiers during the battle a day ago, but they lost many more.”

“I see. Good to hear the tide of war is in your favor. What do you plan to do about the fortress in front of you?” I asked tapping my finger on my crossed arms. The metal Tink echoed through the room as everyone took on a hard expression. The enemy king was in their sights, but Louella had declared that they wanted a bloodless war. Though that goal was gone, they could still spare the people, if only the surrendered.

“The king is refusing to surrender. In fact, the bastard tried to kill my messenger,” Louella said nearly growling as her anger leaked. “It’s all Valaravans Soas doing! He has managed to poison the ear of the king and the man is refusing to hear reason.”

“That is quite the claim. Isn’t Soas Val’s father?” I asked though, I couldn’t recall his family name off the top of my head. If I was in my dungeon, I had lists for this sort of thing.

“Yes. He is also a known necromancer collaborator, though he was never a necromancer himself. Val was on his way to deal with him before the incident with Glorious,” Louella said with a sigh. “Now he’s holed up in the palace with the king.”

“Then what do you plan to do?” I asked forming a seat and taking it. “From what I saw, they likely have weeks if not days before starvation reaches its peek. Of course, it will be the commoners that suffer long before the nobles and king. The again, if you massacre the soldiers to gain access to the city, few would trust us even if we did feed them. Those that did would likely do so only out of desperation.”

“It is a problem that we don’t have an immediate answer to,” Louella said after a few long moments of thinking. “I am hoping that a few days would loosen the hold the royals have over the city enough for the people to decide to revolt.”

“Again, you run into the problem that innocent people are going to die,” I said tapping my chin. “Let’s grab Val. No one would be better informed of the city than him.”

I went to teleport him to us, then thought about it and quickly checked on the man before doing so. I would hate to teleport him if he was holding his newborn. Luckily, he was in the middle of some duties. With a snap of my fingers, the man appeared and proceeded to walk into the wall. He swung around bringing his fists up but quickly realized he was among allies.

“Lord Regan. I would appreciate some warning next time.”

“No. I make it my policy to teleport people when they’re least expecting it so I can get a good show out of it.”

“I see. Then, what was I summoned for?”

“I’m sure you’ve been reading the reports. Your father is causing us more than a few problems to bring this war to a more peaceful end.”

Valamar snorted and threw his hands up in a shrug. “That doesn’t surprise me. Always was the warmonger. I’m more surprised that he left his seat of power in the south.”

One of the captains said. “This report is from less than an hour ago. The third fleet has Blue Whisper Port, though they have yet to capture it. The church is complicating matters in that area.”

“Well. How can I help?” Valamar asked taking a seat after I created it for him.

“Is there any way to get to the king without involving the citizens?” Louella asked leaning forward.

Val thought for a long moment then shook his head. “The king of Thonaca has always preached that if the kingdom should fall then the king is to go down with it. With that in mind there were never any escape tunnels or teleport matrixes built. At least to my knowledge. There might be a royal only secret.”

“Sounds like we’re in check on the no blood thing,” I said leaning back.

“Why doesn’t Lord Regan do some shock and awe?” Val said.

“Excuse me?”

“You’re a god, aren’t you?” He asked with a mischievous grin. “Go show them.”

“Hmm… I suppose I could whip something up.” I did have plenty of mana to use after all.

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