Dungeon Robotics 15.2

Good morning everyone! Sorry you only got the one upload on thursday. I never found the time to write while settling stuff in the new house. I STILL haven't hooked up my desktop. Saturday it felt like my back was going to snap in half. Anyway, I should be back on schedule as of today. I sort of have to if I want to meet my Feb 15th deadline with the editor. LOL. Anyway. Enjoy!

First part is Regan. I realized that i didn't copy the entire chapter when i was getting this post ready. 

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Once Obolus stopped struggling against the binding, the dungeon magic officially declared he was bound to me much like with Alara’s dungeon. I was able to see every meter of his dungeon and while I personally couldn’t change things, with my control bindings, I could order the changes or take control of Obolus to do it manually.

As I inspected his core, I could really feel the age of the vessel. There were all manner of cracks, taint, and other issues that showed that this was some sort of prototype that failed to deal with mana properly. From the looks of it, he’d basically brute forced his way to tier four. There was even a part that I felt was fractured.

More out of pity, I placed my hands on either side of the crystal and started to repair the damage as best I could. It would be a patch job for now, sort of like stiches. Obolus would have to heal the damage correctly, but it should help his mental capacities. Once I had finished with what I felt where the most extreme repairs, I stepped back to double check my handy work.

The glow from the core was steadier. A light shone around the core before a small black snake appeared that coiled around the core. Compared to his last form it was almost cute. I held my hand out and the snake slithered over though it probably wanted to kill me.

“You should be able to talk now. I fixed that part of your core.” Dungeon cores could understand and speak to every race. That section of his core’s magic matrix hand been… underdeveloped, but I wouldn’t tell him that. He’d at least been able to understand me before.

“Ta…lk… I… know… words… Strange…”

“I guess just having the knowledge doesn’t instantly make you a chatter.”

“Why did… you attack me… so much?” Obolus asked as he constricted around my hand. Since he didn’t feel any pain, it was more of a instinct sort of thing than out of aggression.

I titled my head at the question. I thought it was obvious considering the malice that he’d displayed before. “You were a threat to the continent and in extension the world.”

“Yes… Yes. I realize… that now. Threatened… by the others… balance must be maintained.”

“Balance?”

“The others part of the same…”

“You were originally one?”

“Yes… no… I can’t remember… Tired.”

The snake dissipated into smoke and I felt Obolus’s consciousness fade back into his core. This was interesting. Maybe I wasn’t the first to use my cores in the fashion that I had, splitting them into subcores. What I wanted to know was why they developed personalities. There was also the matter of which was the original, if it existed at all in the first place.

Puppet

“This is fascinating! You’re telling me that this will let us teleport back to the safety of the dungeon?” Rens asked as I reshaped the tunnel to insert a transponder. The device had been miniaturized, but still needed to be hidden otherwise the wandering monsters or other beings that lived in the Beneath might discover and destroy them.

“That’s right. Father and Jarvis designed it. The Beneath is dangerous and father wants to be able to move troops at a moments notice. Since we are already doing an investigation of the area, might as well install them in the process.” I finished the installation work and felt the device connect to the network that led all the way back to the city father created in the Beneath. With some delicate terra magic, I returned the surface of the tunnel back to its original form.

We were down in the Beneath with Rens scouting out the Seal and also checking on the movements of the dwarves. The Terra wave has reportable caused them to go crazy and we had fought them when retrieving Louella before. With the Seal weakened from the result of the battle with Glorious, father wanted to make sure something even worse wasn’t about to be released on the world.

“How far are we from the Seal?” Z2 asked once I was done.

“Not far. Maybe another day or two. The records of this area were old to begin with and its been a long time since I looked them over,” Rens answered with a tight smile.

“Some guide,” Natsuko said under her breath, but easily loud enough for us all to hear.

“Now, now. Having a local with us should be helpful if we run into any of the more intelligent races. With the dwarves acting strangely, the other four big… kingdoms,” I looked to Rens to make sure that world applied, and he nodded. “are less hostile to others right now. With Rens we can hopefully avoid some trouble.”

“Yes. I owe the host a great deal, so use my services to their full extent.”

“Yes. The host is quite benevolent, isn’t he?” Nero chimed in from the back of the group.

“I still don’t think your services are required,” I said looking at the annoyingly tall man. Him and his two companions had also been asked to assist us in scouting the Beneath after father helped the girl with a problem. That was all fine and dandy, but Nero was more than a headache than I felt was worth it.

“Then its good you’re not the one that makes the big decisions. Pipsqueak.”

I ground my teeth as I started at him, but Z2 grabbed my shoulder and stopped me. I took a deep breath and calmed myself. We’d been down here for almost a week, and it felt like every days my nerves were getting more frayed due to Nero’s goading. Blowing steam from my nostrils, I spun on my heel and moved further down the tunnel.

The tunnel, which showed signs of civilization in place due to careful craving, was more of a highway for the Beneath. It was easily forty meters wide, and a couple dozen meters tall. Creatures of considerable size could move along here with ease, and some creatures used it to hunt.

We’d encountered a few of them so far, but nothing that we couldn’t deal with. Rather than powerful, they were able to consume everything in the tunnel making it hard for other creatures to respond to them when they were encountered.

We kept on the highway for a better part of the next day before Rens directed us off towards the south through some less used tunnels. The suddenly small tunnels was a considerable change over the highway but they didn’t last long. Soon we came to a road that was big enough for two or three carriages to fit with ease. A language I hadn’t seen yet marked spots along the road like markers.

“We’re close,” Nero of all people said with a equally surprisingly serious tone.

“I concur. The mana density has nearly triple in the last few minutes alone,” Rens added.

“Weapons ready and hot. We don’t know what to expect going forward.”

We moved forward carefully, but not carefully enough. There was a click from the ground and Azra barely managed to get her shield up to deflect a beam of light that sliced from the wall. She held it before the energy blasted her to the side and cut into the other side of the tunnel. Natsuo rushed over and began to heal her scorched arm.

“That was a laser!” Z2 said next to me and I nodded in agreement. No matter how you looked at it, it was a weaponized light spell. Something fairly uncommon on Murgin, as light was usually used to heal.

I didn’t want to risk any more so I summoned several drones and had them move forward while scanning the tunnel. The number of traps was bordering on paranoia. The builders had obviously wanted nothing getting through this area. We followed the safe paths marked by the drones and started making progress again.

“Not sure I like this. Our retreat is basically impossible if something we can’t handle is up ahead,” Azra commented. I nodded and made sure to mark the path more permanently as we walked. Rens said there were undead reported in the area of the Seal. We were used to the undead thanks to the war with the necromancers, but from what he said the undead on the surface were nothing compared to the ones around the Seal.

We all would have had white knuckles if our skin could change color like that from how tight we were gripping our weapons. Another hair raising hour went by where I lost two drones from complicated traps. Once I replaced them and found a way to disarm the traps we finally made it to a large cavern.

A ruined city spread out in front of us. I nearly gasped since I felt a strange connection with the place. Almost like I had seen architecture similar to it before. Large sections of the city were ruined from what looked like a rough battle. There was even a large crater to one side of the cavern where everything was missing, as if it was swept clean by a large hand.

Z2 grabbed my shoulder harshly. “Hey. Doesn’t this look like fathers?”

I blinked in surprise and looked closer to find she was right. There was some difference but the structures were certainly similar to the memories that I sometimes vaguely remembered from father’s core. Steel and glass with grey stone called concrete. There were plenty of touches from this world though making me even more curious to its creation.

The sound of stone moving broke my trance and I twisted to look in the direction it came in. A… man of some sort limped towards us. It looked like a zombie, but something about it felt off. I didn’t feel any unholy mana from the creature. It looked at us and the bright red eyes glowed as they obviously locked on to us.

“This might be harder than we expected,” I commented raising my swords.

A high pitch sound emerged from the thing as it pointed at us. I thought it was just indicating out location until a bead of light appeared at the end of the digit that snapped across the distance to impact Z2. A hole was burned through her in less than a second before Azra moved her shield between them.

Z2 collapsed blood leaking from her mouth and the significant wound above her stomach. Natsuo rushed over and started to repair the damage as quickly as he could. “My shield!” was all Azra got out before the beam sliced through it into the wall behind us. It hadn’t even lasted ten seconds!

“Fall back! We can’t afford for more of them to show up!” I shouted scooping Z2 up and running back the way we came. I was pissed we barely saw anything before being forced to flee like children. As we retreated, Rens created wall after wall to try and stop the laser, but it had little effect.

Whether by luck or design, the creature didn’t purse us past the entrance of the tunnel. Its red eyes peering into the darkness. Natsuko attempted to shot it with her rifle, but the round hit some sort of forcefield before being deflected harmlessly away. She then nearly lost her arm when the laser fired, retracing the bullets path perfectly. She would need a new rifle now.

“We need to get back to the dungeon. Z2 is in bad condition,” I said after looking at the wound with my aura. I passed her to Azra then placed my hand on the wall to form a hollow for a transponder. This would be faster for getting back and when Father wanted to return here later he wouldn’t have to go through all the traps.

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