Dungeon Robotics 9 - 1

Good Morning everyone! I have good news! I have completely thrown out Book 9! What? After all that work you say. Well. I just didn't like it! Okay. Okay. There were parts that I liked and I will be keeping those, reworked to fit into the new version of course. To be perfectly honest I felt like I was wading through mud every time I wrote a chapter.  That said, I've already got close to 10 k words on the rewrite. Spoiler: the major events will mostly stay the same, the dead scar eruption, the dungeon awakening. Just moved and repositioned. I just had to beat Louella with a stick hahaha! but seriously, her parts were giving me the HARDEST of times. Felt like i would go one way with her then change my mind and go another mainly due to the fact that she had lost her place in the world and i couldn't think if a good way to reattach her to it via the story. I'm sure a few of you noticed that nothing of import really happened in her sections. Well, it just got to the point that it bogged down Regan's section and i stopped being able to write on it entire. Well, as i stated. Its certainly flowing now! I do apologize for making you go through 18 chapters before i finally threw in the towel, but a rewrite is better than me abandoning it. 

Also! *insert dogaza image of your liking here* Chaotic Anomaly will be on hold until next year. I know a lot of you really like it. I really like it. Its not that I'm having trouble writing it, but rather i have deadlines to meet next year for editor and Amazon. my first deadline is January 15th (Annihilation book 2) but that book should be done in 2-3 weeks. After that i have a deadline every month on the 15th. So I'm going to need you guys to smack me with messages if i fail to upload on time.

Sorry for the long report, but transparency is best right. without further ado, It is a bit of a reread, but there is new content trust me, close to a third is new I believe. 

Regan

A few days had passed since the battle with Glourios. While the battle had been an overall victory, we did suffer our share of casualties. The gnomes and goblins had each lost some. The automata technically suffered by the thousands, but I had begun to implement a backup for most of my higher-tiered automata so that they could learn and develop.

It was based off the boss system of the original dungeon magic. If a bit of computing magic added, I was able to essentially allow my creations to live past death. There was some memory loss, but it was only the moments before death. Not something many people would miss.

I turned to my partner in crime. Alara sat on a sofa with her eyes closed. She was attempting to communicate with Orina, the ocean dungeon to the north of us. “Any luck with her?” I asked as it had already been a few hours.

Alara exhaled while shaking her head. “I’m afraid not. She has completely closed her heart and mind off to everyone.”

“Damn. We really need all the dungeons to be on the same page.”

Alara hopped off the sofa and moved to lean against my back. I was sitting at a table working on a 3D model of a few creations I planned to test out soon. “Are you sure you want to go through with what you have planned?” she asked with concern clear on her voice. “If it goes wrong the damage, we might cause could affect the planet.”

“I have contingency in mind. That is one of the reasons I want to reach out to the sane dungeons on this continent first. The monster ones will have to be controlled by force.”

I moved my hand and the model added a few components. It was actually related to the Wild dungeons, as I’ve started to call them. I needed a way to reach their cores quickly. Correction, I had a way to reach their cores quickly. I needed a way to control the adverse effects it causes. That was where this little toy came in.

I took my Starfall and replicated it. Then attaching chains that were composed of super material, not cheap to make by the way, the energy produced would be feed back to my dungeons. According to my calculations, which I had Jarvis and several on his team check over this time, the device should be able to handle the energy.

That wasn’t all, part of the energy would be diverted to open a portal, extremely short term, so that drop forces could move in on the dungeon. It wouldn’t be like the situation with Alara. I had to move fast, and this time I didn’t have to worry about a third force adapting to the situation.

I reached back and grabbed her hand. “The alternative might be a three-pronged war. Maybe even four depending on how Louella’s little trip turns out.” Not only did I fear the demon world was somehow making their way here, likely as an intergalactic fleet, but the Wild dungeons posed a significant threat as well. Add to that, the High Dwarves of the Beneath were acting strange, it spelt disaster.

If the demon force arrived and we found ourselves divided like we currently were. I wasn’t sure the planet could survive. One of the solutions I had decided to work towards was the uniting of the dungeon cores. Our ability to manipulate mana and the physical plane would be needed if mortals wanted to survive.

“When is she due back?” I didn’t miss the fact that Alara’s eyes narrowed a bit.

I checked my mental task list. If any normal person had a list as long as mine, I was sure they would give up in defeat quickly. “It should be tonight or tomorrow morning.”

“I see,” she replied with a pout. I sighed and paused what I was working on. I knew she was jealous, actually jealous might not be the right word for it. Whatever it was, I didn’t know how to reassure her that she was the only one for me. A certain red dragon wasn’t making things easier on me either.

Placing my hand on her cheek, I looked into her eye. Emerald eyes flashed as her mind raced as I touched her.  “I love you.” I poured as much sincerity into the three words as I felt any man could that truly loved a woman. I stroked her cheek with my thumb gently. “More with each day. Enough that I know I would die for you.”

Tears sprang to the corner of her eyes, and I carefully wiped them away. “Me too!” She said as she flung herself at me. Before I could grab her, she locked her lips on mine. “I’m… sorry.” She said in between our kisses.

I pulled back with a grin. “A little jealousy never hurt anyone, and I know I had my fair share back in my last life.” Try being locked in a tower for over a decade and not get jealous of the actors in the shows you’d watched several dozen times.

“I’ll be nice to the mortal. You two are bonded over more than just fate. But you have to do something about that dragon!”

I placed a hand on my temple and nodded. “Believe me, I’ve been trying. Why did I have to make Nova so stubborn?”

Alara laughed, it reminded me of bells, then patted my chest. “Well… He takes after you!”

I chuckled at that. “I can’t deny it. Apparently being stubborn is hardwired into my soul.”

“She agreed to postpone the fight thanks to Glourios. You need to find a way to get him strong enough to beat her.”

“Easier said then done, but I’ll figure it out.” I pulled her in for another deep kiss, making sure to enjoy every moment of it. We technically didn’t breath, but when we separated, we were both breathless.

“More,” Alara said with a slight moan to her voice as she wrapped her arms around my neck.

I grinned and placed my lips just barely touching hers. “Certainly.”

I spent more time than I probably should have with Alara. If it was up to me, I would spend every second with her, but whether it was self imposed or not, the fate of the world rested on my shoulders. Part of me hoped that the spatial anomaly was some sort of natural occurrence that would eventually dissipate, but the pessimist in me knew that likely wasn’t the case.

Focusing on the model in front of me, I made a few more changes. I would have liked a few months of work on it, but I didn’t have that much time. The spatial anomaly grew stronger by the day. We had tried to send probes into the anomaly over the last few hours, but of the ten that were sent, one hadn’t been outright destroyed. That one was sending data that frankly didn’t make sense. At one point, it said it detected a planet sized object. The solar system that Murgin was part of held close to two dozen planets, which rendered the data useless.

For now, I was just using the probe to harvest more time particles. They were useful for magic that manipulated time, and when the only known magic to work on the demons was time, meant that I needed as much of the stuff as I could get. I shook my head to clear it of the things I had little control over. At the moment, I was purely on the defensive in regard to the spatial anomaly, but that just meant that I needed to be proactive on other fronts.

Checking the model over a few more times, I clapped my hands with a sound of finality sure that it was ready. I closed my hand into a fist and the model vanished. I checked my mana reserves to make sure I had enough to go ahead an implement the project. My mana pool had gotten so large, it was accurate to describe like an abstract number. Keeping it full was a pain and a half though.

Since the battle, I hadn’t spent much mana on things other than repairing and I was still only at about thirty percent. Even if I were to mediate like the mortals, I would barely nudge my mana pool. The problem being that I was the one creating over seventy percent of the mana in the areas around my cores.

“It might be time to deploy more cores around the continents,” I mumbled.

“The new Theocracy might not appreciate that,” Alara commented from her sofa.

My eye twitched while I mentally groaned at the stupidity of mortals. “I have half a mind to just drop a few Starfalls on them, but that would defeat the purpose I suppose.”

“A little bit.”

“No matter. There are several cities in the Thonaca Kingdom that would serve well as batteries for the engine that is likely going to save them in the long run.”

“If only they saw it that way,” Alara said with a laugh and I nodded. I remembered from history that Earth entered ones of its worst periods because people almost went insane with what they declared as their life given rights. All the while, they were killing people with their actions. I was lucky to be born, given Earth had been reduced to nearly forty percent of its population after a plague, several plagues really if you considered the waves of false information that hit the internet.

“We’ll figure it out. I’m sure they would prefer that to me placing a Dyson sphere around the sun. We’d survive, but the mortals would be hard pressed to survive that winter.”

“I love it when you talk so evil,” Alara said grabbing my hand. “All the while, I know you would never do such a thing.”

~~~

Alara and I, along with Ignea and Glint stood next to the core on the Station. I had never understood why it had ‘stuck’ like it had when I had placed it, especially since Alpha, my floating city core had been able to move without any special requirements. That had changed once I had claimed the moon under my domain. Having two samples to study allowed me to figure out the unique quarks of each.

“You sure?” I asked Ignea again. I really didn’t want to break one of my cores in the process of trying to change it.

“Yes. Glint has coincided the information. When you created this dungeon, you created a new type of dungeon. When the moon became a dungeon, we both felt the information enter our minds,” Ignea replied with a bit of contrite. I didn’t blame her though, it wasn’t the first time I had grilled them on it.

“A satellite core. I suppose it is apt.”

“The universe has been adapting to the change. Making the moon into a dungeon as you did, added more information to the equation. This is actually a process that all the current types of dungeon underwent at one point or another,” Glint added. “Since it would be nearly impossible to stop the moon from moving without causing catastrophic problems for the planet. Who or whatever that is in charge of the magic governing dungeons as made changes.”

“Nero claims it was Teriso that created dungeons. Does that mean he changed it?”

Glint and Ignea both closed their eyes then slowly shook their heads. “No. I feel like it has someone else’s touch. It feels more… elegant. More complete, compared to some of the other things in my mind,” Ignea said finally.

I tapped my chin as my thoughts wandered to Creation. I knew he had the power to do something like this. I also had the feeling he was a perfectionist. Of course, it could easily had been Destruction. She didn’t seem to harbor any hesitation in pushing things in a way that will result in more destruction.

“Alright then!” I cracked my knuckles then left my avatar body. I almost regret creating the thing since the adamantium keeps my consciousness in the damn thing now. I was still housed in my main core at the valley, but the situation was rather complicated. I feared what would happen if my god-metal body was destroy or damaged too extremely.

The station core was tier four like my others, but its coloring was much more varied due to the spatial energies it was absorbing daily. I delved into the magical workings of the core and searched for the part that controlled it being locked in place. According to Ignea, I had to destroy it then allow the core to heal which would replace it with the proper workings of a satellite in space.

After a few minutes, I found what I was looking for. If the core magic were a program, it would contain close to ten billion lines. I had gone into the workings a few times in the past year since becoming a core but hadn’t attempted to break or change anything. It was basically my body after all.

Looking at the magic, I reached out and grabbed it. Just like Ignea warned, I felt a headache start to come on. Powering through it, I snapped my fist closed and the magic code broke into motes of light around me. Like a program that was crashing, I was thrown from the core’s inner workings and back into my avatar body.

Had it been made of flesh and blood, I was sure I would be vomiting right now. I ground my teeth and flooded the core with mana from the other cores. The energy filling the room fluctuated wildly before it calmed down. There was a sudden lurch as the station started to move, being pulled down by the planet’s gravity.

I wasn’t worried as I had built propulsion into the station when I first built it. The automata on the bridge jumped to action as the engines came to life and corrected our fall, then moving us a bit further out into space. I rubbed my forehead before I straightened up.

Alara grabbed my hand and while she helped me up. “Regan!”

“I’m alright, my love. Just a bit of a headache. It’s nothing compared to the pain you suffered when your core was destroyed.”

“That doesn’t mean I’m not worried!” She huffed and crossed her arms over her chest.

I smiled and swept her up in an embrace before locking her lips with mine. When I first saw Alara it was through a mental projection and I had felt a connection at the time. At the beginning, I thought it might be some sort of magic that was swaying my thoughts to make me more willing to help her.

Now that several months have gone by, I still believe that magic might be involved. Only it was of the sort that I had no control over. Either way, I knew I loved her with just about everything in me. While it might end up with me getting into a tough position down the road, I had tasted loneliness for over two decades before. I wouldn’t trade what I had with Alara for anything in this world or any other.

I pulled back and snickered when I found her breathing heavily. It was more of a mental choice. Our avatars didn’t need to breath after all. “Thank you, my love.” I rubbed her nose with the tip of mine, and she squirmed in my arms. Looking up from her face, I turned to look at the Station captain. “Head for the Fuizol Continent then maintain position on the outer limits of the continent. There are some things that I want to investigate.” I had some dungeons that needed to be tamed.

Once I got a nod from the captain, I teleported to the place I had been neglecting since acquiring it, mainly due to the nature of the acquisition. Worried that I might damage the orbits of all the stellar objects in the area if I started messing with it had made me hold off for a bit. After talking to Glint and Ignea, I felt a bit more secure with making changes to the moon.

Void stretched out all around me with the Krona’s green surface under me. Alara also seemed to enjoy it as she jumped and floated through the air. It was time for me to get to work on this lump of rock. It helped that as Avatars, we didn’t need to breathe whether it be ocean floor or the vacuum of space.

The core on or should it be in, either way, the moon’s core was already in tier three and I had more space in this dungeon core than any of the other ones, with the exception of my main core. As the first line of defense against the coming demon force, or whatever was using the temporal anomaly as a passage, it needed a few upgrades. It wouldn’t be the first time my predictions turned out to be wrong. Information… I just didn’t have enough of it.

Shaking off the worries, I focused on the task at hand. To start, I hollowed out the center of the moon around my core. Adding a layer of dense metal as a shielding, I went ahead and made it airtight with airlocks at a few locations around the moon. The passages acted like elevators that were large enough for my ships. The only one that couldn’t fit through the elevator was my flagship, but anything under a kilometer would be able to fit.

I further sectioned off the sphere in the center adding everything that mortals would need to survive. My core was providing the power to the moon for now, but I had a few plans that I felt more comfortable implementing in space than on the surface of the planet.

“Regan!” Alara’s excited voice pulled me from my work and I looked over to see what she was doing. She was sitting on the branch of a tree. The bark was pure white and seemed to be emitting light from its surface. The leaves were black with pinpoints, reminiscent of the night sky.

“It’s beautiful. How did you make it?” I asked unable to resist running my hand over the bark. It felt almost like a crystal. Around the base, I could make out a root system that was of even denser crystal structure than that of the tree itself.

“I took the energy I’ve been feeling since coming up here and infused it with some seeds I always bring with me.”

“Energy?” There were dozens of different kinds flowing around us. Focusing on the tree, I found it had a structure that used galactic cosmic ray radiation and gamma radiation. If a mortal got near these things they might die in a few days. That said, it was creating mana at a crazy rate and there was only one of them. “Amazing!”

I scooped Alara up in a bear hug and stole her lips again. She truly was the master when it came to nature related topics. I was even more impressed at her ability to blend things of into the scope of nature. We laughed as we spun through the air, our momentum from me picking her up causing us to float through the air. Alara seemed to enjoy it though.

Finally, we came back down to the surface of the moon. “If you like it, I can make more!”

“Please do so! Do you need anything from me?”

She shook her head while pointing at the sun in the distance. “That’s all I need. Here or on the surface of the planet for my plants.”

I set her down but didn’t feel like taking my hands from her waist as I looked into her eyes. “Alright. Then I will mark some areas that I plan to create some structures, and you’re free to plant them everywhere else.”

“Leave it to me!” she replied excitedly.

I turned back to my work with more energy. From the areas I told Alara about, I started creating large scale orbital weaponry. Laser, positron, and other energy-based cannons were soon sticking off the surface in stark contrast to the beautiful trees that Alara was growing around on the moon. I couldn’t help if it was just in my nature to create things that were meant to destroy.

After that, I added more physical means of attack. Cannons and turrets that could fire rounds at rates that would be terrifying to the mortals if they knew. Hopefully, the battle never reached them, but Murgin was large. It would be hard to defend her skies in their entirety. The mortals would have to do their share if the fleet is larger than I anticipated.

“If only I could create a shield around the planet,” I mumbled then shook my head. That was impossible at my current level of power. I would need at least a third of all the mana on Murgin to power something like that. It was a nice dream though.

~~~

“I think that should do it for now,” I said, dusting off my hands. I’d spent almost two days working on the moon. I couldn’t over tax my mana, but I had plenty of regular resources for this type of work. Not to mention, Alara’s trees had boosted my mana gain by a substantial amount after she’d planted thousands of them on the surface of the moon.

“I’m done too!” Alara said, jumping onto my back and wrapping her arms around my neck.

Looking around at the changed surface of the moon, I worried about what the mortals were going to say when they saw the moon in the night sky. For one, Alara’s tree caused the once green moon to appear as if it hadn’t been dyed white and black. I shook my head not too worried about it for the moment.

Next would be to populate the moon’s core mechanisms with automata, but that could wait for now. I would send some of the automata from the station over here, but for the most part the moon was a giant weapons platform. It could operate on automatic for decades. I found it ironic that I had built the same thing as the Arcarins on Krona. At least I didn’t plan to abandon them there.

“I suppose I should head to the Fuizol continent and get started on dealing with those dungeons.” The station had started orbiting over the continent on the first day after all.

“What about Orina?” I could hear the concern in her voice.

“It’s a pity that she won’t even talk to us at this point, but she has a decent level of defense after so long defending against the undead. If an enemy force starts descending from the sky, she might be more inclined to help us. Continuing to pressure her might end up biting us in the end.”

Alara swung her feet as she sat on my shoulder. Orina was once her friend. It must be hard to see her in such withdrawn state. “Alright. I’ll keep trying to talk to her.”

I grabbed her hand and lightly squeezed it. “It is hard to see a friend in such a state, but Orina is lucky to have a friend that isn’t willing to give up on her.”

“She deserves better. I regret what happened a century ago.” Alara looked down at her hands. “So many of her children died at my hands.”

I knelt in front of her and pulled her hands to my lips. “We’ve both done regrettable things and things that were outside our control. I’ve told you about my old world. I may not have given the command, but I might as well have. My children murdered billions of my kind on that planet.” Picking her up, my embraced her tightly. “We have to learn to live with our sins, but never forget them.”

“You’re right.”

She buried her face into my shoulder and we stood there for several hours. The world literally moving along without a care about us as it drifted through space. It was easy to forget how little one was compared to a planet and all the people on it. All we can do was strive to make a positive change around us.

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