Dungeon Annihilation 3 - 9

Good evening Everyone! A chapter for everyone to read during lunch.

Regan/Earle

Spending some time studying the people that went through the dungeon, I was surprised when I spotted Louella and her band. I debated making them immune to the script but decided that was showing too much favoritism. Their healer was particular weak to the radiation and already showed some nausea just from walking into the dungeon. It was going to be horrible for her when they go to leave.

The general system in place, I washed my hands of it and moved onto my next project. Or rather, it was time for a field trip into the gnome city. I had been putting it off more out of necessity than because I wanted to. Something kept cropping up when I was going to head out.

My agenda clear for the next couple hours, I would have plenty of time to explore the city with my actual senses. Moving over to the Jade Wind core, I scanned the city for a good out of the way place that wouldn’t be too weird for a gnome to emerge. Once I found a suitable location, I started creating my fourth form.

“God of shapeshifting,” I said with a small chuckle to myself. Then shook my head. “Nah, more like demon.”

Gnomes were essentially a short elf in this world. They had pointed ears that were only slightly longer than a humans. I wasn’t sure if it was caused by the mana radiation from the city they lived on, but their skin had a slight yellow tint. Their hair colors reminded me of the media back on Earth called anime. It was almost to the point that at first I thought they were dyeing it, but after some closer observations I found it was all nature. Pink or blue hair was just weird at times.

The gnomes were of course short. They came in under the dwarves at just over a meter and half. There was some range in that. A few gnomes could even be mistaken for short humans, but their ears usually gave them away. It would be quite a change from my dragonkin form that was well over two meters in height.

Finally, and this is another mystery that I wasn’t completely sure about, but the gnome culture is remarkable Japanese in essence. They wore kimonos and many of the soldiers looked closer to samurais. Their advanced technology had likely gone further at one point, but for now, they had reached a rifle that used wind magic in an innovative way to fire the slugs.

Then there was their quality of life. They had access to electricity which allowed them to save mana for other uses. Plumbing was also much more advanced. In Louella’s town, a person could channel some mana into a runed stone to create water or heat, but here it was much more Earth-like. In fact, I was really feeling the pangs of nostalgia, though admittedly, part of me wanted to wipe this place from the surface of the planet.

Pulling myself from my trance, I focused on creating my newest avatar. I went for a height that was just above the average. From there, I made the form have grey ash colored skin while going with silver hair. Nothing to amazing, it helped that other than a few minor details, the rest of the body could basically be human. As for my attire, I gave my form the trappings of an upper crust member.

Taking the new form, I stretched feeling weird about the fact that I was so short. I dismissed it and moved out of the alleyway. I scratched my chin as I looked around. I knew most of what I wanted to know about the city itself, where should I go if I wanted to hear about the actually happenings of the city?

I snapped my fingers and turned toward the market. As I walked, I got a few head bows as well as fearful expression. Even if they were more advanced, human, or rather mortal, nature would prevail. There were also people that took advantage of the weak. That when people like me come and break everything. It would be interesting to see if someone would be able to stop me at some point.

The hustle and bustle of the market soon reached my ears. Fragrances of all sorts reached my nose and I took it all in. Now then, who would be most likely to fess up about their precious city. I was roughly halfway through the city when I detected something I wasn’t expecting. With a sly grin forming against my will, I turned on my heel and made for the sensation.

“Powders and potions!” a man called as a woman worked further back. I took in the building while looking the pair over. Most everything in the gnome city was constructed out of an extremely strong and light wood that was grown on the mainland next to Jade Port. The entire building that housed the shop might not weigh more than a hundred pounds total, but the wood could support a weight over a thousand times that.

“Welcome, Welcome!” the man called when he noticed me come in.

“What exactly do your powders do?” I asked looking at a purple substance in a pouch.

The man rubbed his hands together and made a devilish smirk. “Most of our items help, well, help with nightly activities.”

I snorted before I burst out laughing. I wasn’t expecting that to be their cover. I coughed as the man gave me a glare. “Sorry about that. You caught me off guard.”

“What do you want?” He asked getting annoyed. “You’re obviously not here for our products.”

“You have that right,” I said reaching out to grasp his hand. He panicked until a small green glow formed between my fingers. “I’d like to have a chat.” I would have to thank Yoshida for teaching me this little signal.

“Messenger!”

“Indeed.”

~~~

As expected of the necromancers’ cell network. They were extremely skilled in gathering information on their targets. What amazed me was the amount of discontent the gnomes felt about their leadership. Almost half of their navy had pledged to revolt against the royals. I wanted to ask if the necromancers would really change that many gnomes into their fellows then realized the obvious answer. The undead do not complain.

“Then the plans are well underway. They will be pleased.”

“What would you like us to do?”

“Keep going as before. Many things are in motion across the board and more messengers than ever before are moving.” I was talking out my ass, but hey, whatever kept them busy. I still wasn’t sure how I wanted to handle some of the issues with the necromancers yet.

“As you wish!”

I was about to get up and leave when I had a thought. “Has there been any attempts to get the royals on our side?”

The man shook his head before he looked to his wife, or partner to complete the façade. “No. As you can imagine, by using the royals’ ineptitude as our platform, we’ve decided to completely abandon that path.”

“That was wise.” It wouldn’t be good for a citizen revolt to find out they were still working for the man. It would also make it easier for me if I decide to play that side of the board. I scratched my chin and nodded. “Alright. That’s everything for now. I’ll be in touch.”

“Ah. I should mention that the queen is sick. No one has found the cause, but it appears to be getting worse. One of our agents has worked their way close to them, in case we get the order to move. I almost forgot about him since we only speak once every month.”

“Really… Interesting.”

I left the store and turned to look at the large tower. I had seen most of it with my dungeon eye, but there were a few areas that I wanted to explore with my physical body. Mainly their archives, admittedly they well protected even with their reduced states. I was pleased with what I learned in the market. Time for a bit of adventure.

A few minutes later, I found myself walking through a strange hall. Strange for someone seeing it for the first time, that was. The main reason was everything felt like it was on its side. Deep in the tower of Jade Wind, I walked without issue in my shadow form. The tower was essentially a highly advanced ship that was parked over the ocean.

The ships thrusters were keeping the vessel and in extension the city above the ocean. I was impressed that they had lasted over a thousand years. If the gnomes were truly the race that created it, I would have liked to meet them in their heyday.  Either way, the inner tower showed signs of a once great race and history that were forgetting their roots.

Places were technology and magic essential to keep the city afloat should have tons of technicians and engineers working, were empty or stripped bare. Replaced by the gaudy trappings of royalty. As a former engineer, it almost hurt to see.

I slipped through a few check points guards by lazy looking gnomes who struggled to stay awake. I was making my way to their archives. My cyber-oni were about to run out of data to comb over and they needed some new information to go through. These databanks should keep them busy for a few days. After that, I would need to give them some goals to research towards or I might have a riot from them being bored.

Looking around as I came to about the center of the tower, I checked my mental map to make sure I went the right way. If someone looked in from the outside of the tower, I was about even with the city platform. The number of people dropped as I got closer to the archives.

Not surprisingly, knowledge from the past was locked away by the nobles. So far, I had only seen one person enter the archives in the time I’d had my core over the city. I wasn’t really interested in the identity of the person, but after following them, I was sure they were the princess.

As I passed through the door leading to the archives, the two statues on either side of the door started to glow with mana. I groaned as I turned to take in the devices. I almost wanted to smack my forehead when they started to move. A race once capable of building robots was reduced to this level of technology awareness. I felt it was a pity.

“Intruder. Surrender or prepare to perish.”

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