Expansion, p.2
Expansion, page 2
part #2 of Dungeon Robotics Series
“I understand, go back to your duties,” Helicilia ordered, having gotten the information she needed.
“As the dark commands,” Morka said while bowing. She turned back to the altar and kneeled in front of it again, letting the darkness consume her once more.
Chapter 2
Regan
I was out of mana. The last week had been hard on my reserves. I’d upgraded Puppet, made way too many mithril items, played around with black holes, not to mention undertook my regular maintenance costs of just dealing with the adventurers. While the foundry made the automata for the floors that were currently being dived, I still had to charge them a tiny amount at the end of the assembly line, or they would just be sturdy toys.
I was able to recoup some mana, as most of the town was in my dungeon. It was still only a drop in the bucket. I needed a tremendous amount to work on even some of my more straightforward ideas for the upcoming events. That’s why I was glad that Wrakras was still supplying me mana. In fact, he was giving me more than I would typically get, I realized after I thought about it. I wasn’t sure if it was due to being locked up, or to the collar, or to some combination of both. Just another thing to test.
The field dungeon covering the town was basically at a standstill. I was diverting all the mana into my main core to rank up, after all. I supposed I should redirect it back so that I could claim the rest of the town. I set the mental command back and, like a rubber band that had been pulled taut, the aura of the field dungeon started to spread like water.
After a few minutes, nearly a kilometer more of the town was claimed. My mana income spiked. I was disappointed that it hadn’t spread further. Another kilometer and I would have claimed the whole town, including the mages tower. Even though I couldn’t affect anything inside houses and buildings, I could look, and they were places I wouldn’t have minded checking out.
I watched my mana pool—it was more of an ocean at this point—fluctuate from the loss and gain from various sources around the dungeons. I thought about various ways power was generated back on Earth. Some I wanted to test, but they would require better access to the sky. With the materials I had on hand, I could make it out of the atmosphere to set up solar collectors. My machines back on Earth used these to pull in almost all the different forms of energy in cosmic waves.
I decided it was time to do some bioengineering. Scientists back on Earth had genetically modified plants to produce electricity a couple dozen years before the world had been lost. Trees were the main plants used, as they were the longest lasting once altered. Plankton and ocean-covering plants were used at first, but it had resulted in some interesting mutations in the sea life. Electric sharks for example.
I hadn’t worked on a new floor in a while anyway, so I felt it was an excellent opportunity to do some labor. I moved down to the sixteenth floor and looked at what I had to work with. I started absorbing the stone until I was pulling in around a ton a second. It was only a few hours before I had removed nearly two kilometers worth of area for the floor. I let my absorption run on auto for the rest of the floor and got to work designing.
In the very center of the room, I added a large mana crystal. I added silver lines throughout the room that reminded me of circuit lines. Then I linked the grid into the mana stone and added a script that would gather electricity and other types of energy that hit the ground. The mana stone was quite big, so I needed a way to keep adventurers from trying to remove it.
I added a ruined temple over the top of the stone. I designed it like I remembered Greek temples to be before the country was razed to the ground. I decided to be creative and added a statue of Zeus in the center with his lightning bolt pointing toward the sky. While I was looking over my handiwork, I got an idea. I added a tablet that had text in his other hand.
Strike my bolt!
Strike and a storm to grant you power will come!
Strike my bolt!
Strike and let your will be known to all!
Strike my bolt!
Basically, I thought it meant that if a Lightning mage were to strike Zeus’s lightning bolt, a storm would be created in the room. This would give them a leg up while cultivating mana, especially being in the dungeon. I added a few more ruins and such around the room to complete the effect. Now for the hard part.
I looked through my mental list of trees. I wasn’t sure if what I wanted to make already existed in this world as some elemental tree or some flaming bush. I decided to ask my trusty flying sidekick, who I seemed to have ignored the last few days. I hoped she wasn’t mad.
“Ignea, I need to ask you something,” I called through my mental link.
She appeared a moment later, and I was surprised by what I saw. Ignea was bigger by a few centimeters and was looking more steampunk than cyberpunk, as she had when she was “born.” She hovered a meter off the ground in front of me, but her wings weren’t moving. Two jewels were glowing in the center of the wings.
“Ignea? What happened?” I asked, confused.
“Well, Father never needs me, so all I do is cultivate mana,” she complained with a pout.
“I’m sorry. I think it should be safe for you to go outside with us from now on. I’m out in the open with my identity, so someone would have to be really brave to try to do anything to you,” I replied as I tried to cheer her up.
“That’s not the point! I’m a dungeon fairy! I’m supposed to help you, but you’re doing stuff I have no idea how to help you with!” she shouted, then broke into tears. “I . . . feel . . . so useless.”
I summoned my avatar and held her to my chest like one would an upset child. “Shh, it’s ok. I understand now. I will try to find something for you to do. If it makes you feel better, I do want to ask you something,” I said as I stroked her hair.
She sniffed and flapped her wings, returning to the air. She turned away from me, then rubbed her face with the heel of her palm to remove the tears. After a moment, she turned back around with a smile on her face. “I’m holding you to it, Father. Now what do you need to know?”
“Do you know of any plants that produce lightning or deal with the elements?”
“Well . . . yeah, dungeons usually make them eventually, considering stuff mutates with concentrated mana in the environment,” she replied while flying around my head.
I considered that for a moment. Hopefully that meant this part would be easier than I’d first thought. I grew a few trees a few dozen meters apart. Then I was about to start injecting mana when I felt a tap on my head. I still had my avatar, so I was surprised momentarily. I looked behind me and saw Ignea wanting to say something.
“Yes?” I asked with curiosity.
“Did you forget you have a huge room upstairs that has a bunch of trees already pumped full of mana?” she asked with a tilted head.
I smacked my forehead and dismissed my avatar. I went up to the room I had made for making charcoal. When I had gotten coal, I had stopped using the room but never removed it. It was a couple hundred meters square, so a couple hundred trees were in here. When I arrived, I was stunned, as there were only a few of the original trees left.
I moved forward and saw trees made out of metal. One was grayish-silver, which I thought was tungsten, and others were bronze- and copper-colored. It seemed like there were trees that had a bit of most of the metals I had in the dungeon. The only ones I didn’t see were mithril and orichalcum. When I reached the edge of the middle of the room, an interesting-looking tree came into view.
It seemed to be made of a layer of metal with gears sticking out in places. I used my dungeon sense on it and saw that the gears ran throughout the trunk of the tree. There seemed to be some type of crystal near the center. When I was a few meters away, the tree started to move! I stopped and backed up a bit, as I wasn’t sure these were loyal to me or not. I had summoned their original trees into the dungeon, but it had been a while.
The tree stood up much like a treant would from those fantasy books I’d read. I was actually surprised there was a horrendous screeching sound of the metal moving so weirdly. It moved forward, and a spot near the top cracked. A red bot could be seen. It looked at me for a moment before it raised its arm. I jerked back some more before I remembered I was an incorporeal entity right now.
A figure flew past me and landed on the treant’s arm. Ignea was sitting liked she had been here before, which I realized she had. I sighed and moved back over.
“How long has this place been like this?” I asked.
“A few weeks give or take. I usually roam the dungeon, and one day I saw that the trees were full of mana, so I started dropping off ‘gifts’ to help them. This one,” she patted the treant’s head, “had taken a liking to me . . . I think anyway. I named him Clunker since he clunks when he walks.”
“See, you’re not useless. Look at all the change you’ve done in here, while I completely forgot about this room,” I said with a mental smile to her, then turned to Clunker. “Take care of her . . . Clunker.”
The treant gave a shake, which I took to mean it agreed.
She blushed. “I was afraid you would be upset. Most dungeon cores would be,” she said, looking away.
“Well . . .” I said, drawing it out and causing her to get worried. “It’s fine, honestly. As long as it doesn’t affect the dungeon overall, I don’t think it will be a problem,” I finished, getting a sigh from Ignea.
Ignea smiled and went to play with a few other treants that were slowly moving over. I left her alone and went to the grove of unaltered trees. Even with all the trees Ignea had helped evolve, there were still plenty to work with.
At times like this, I was glad I was a dungeon, as I was able to use all the elements I wanted. I wasn’t stuck to a single or dual alignment like the mortals. I moved to a tree and started inserting lightning mana without picturing any type of attack or change. The tree took it like a sponge and quickly began to change.
The trunk and branch turned into lightning. It grew several meters taller, putting it close to thirty. The leaves shifted in color to gray, and small clouds started forming around them until a storm seemed to be floating around the top of the tree. It was one of the most amazing things I had seen since coming to this world.
Satisfied with the tree, I moved back to the sixteenth floor and planted the lighting tree all over till there was a forest of the trees. I was actually worried what would happen if a lightning cultivator came in here. I might not be able to get them to leave. I thought of the baroness . . . the viscountess and decided I should probably let her use this room. The more powerful my allies the more powerful I could become.
I looked at the next couple of floors. I went ahead and made similar floors for the other elements. They were just the basic layouts for now until I got some more information on what suited them better. I would add automata that suited the floors later when I had more mana to spare. I mentally cracked my knuckles and got to work.
Chapter 3
Louella
I was tired. We held a large funeral for all those who had lost their lives fighting for the town. I had to send messages to their loved ones if they had any. Luckily, Baden had been coming to see me after he was done with his patrols. That was quickly becoming the high point of my day.
I felt a little bad, though, considering Ezal was still depressed from Lord Val leaving. She tried not to show it, but I knew she missed him. On a happier note, she was close to breaking through. It seemed she was getting closer every day she practiced. She was studying how different materials burned and the qualities they exhibited while burning. We both understood it was something in the air that Regan had made to burn, but it was hard to believe it.
I had seen Regan only once since the attack, and that was for the funeral. I was actually glad he’d come, as it had made me feel a little better about his character. He built a monument to the people who passed away. It was practical, just a simple obelisk that had their names carved on it.
I came back to the moment and looked back to the stack of letters on my desk. I passed the letters into a sack and went to the post. The town had actually grown enough to get an official one. Once there I paid the extra fee to make sure the letters were treated properly and delivered quickly. There were tons of horror stories of mail taking months before it arrived, by which time the information was usually irrelevant.
I made my way out of the post office. The outer parts of the east side had been severely damaged after the battle. Thrad was taking care of it on credit and was going to give me a tally when he was done with the repairs. Mostly homes, unfortunately, but people were coming through and letting neighbors stay with them.
After the battle, I realized that my town was too dependent on the natural defenses of the valley. We had the walls at the entrances, but as we’d seen with the necromancers, a well-placed assault could easily cause quite a bit of damage. That’s why I had gotten with Thrad and planned several layers of walls for the town, starting with the central district, which would house all the government-related buildings. The commerce district would be home to the businesses, inns, shops, and anything else that generally dealt with merchants. The outer district was for the housing of the citizens. Each district was roughly a square kilometer. Luckily, Thrad and I had already planned for such expansion, but the walls were supposed to be secondary.
The central district wall was already being set. The ground was prepared for foundations. A sound wall requires more than just mortar and stone. A particular branch of mages had to come in and were enchanting it to resist magic, or else a well-placed Terra spell would negate the entire thing. In short, it was going to cost a decent amount of gold for the town.
Walking through the market right then, I was glad to see that most of the people wore smiles. The adventurers were even more serious about attacking the dungeon since the battle, wanting to gain more strength and wealth from its depths. In fact, I felt the number of adventurers seemed to have been on the rise over the last week. I would have to check with Cassie.
I thought for a moment and decided to go find out then since I was free for the rest of the afternoon. I made my way over to the Adventurers Guild, Ezal following behind me like a shadow. Sometimes I even forgot she was there. There were times I wondered if she wasn’t actually a dual cultivator. The sounds of activity could be heard from all over the town, and it made me want to protect it all the more. This is my town! I built it up. I will defend it! I thought as I listened to the noises of life.
We made it to the guild quickly. The first thing I noticed was that the building was being expanded. It had been three stories before, with quite a bit of open land spreading out for training, but it seemed they were adding another two floors and a whole wing. I watched the work crews moving over the structure like ants for a few moments, then made my way inside.
I walked upstairs and knocked on Cassie’s door. A voice answered a moment later. “Yes?”
I pushed open the door and saw Cassie buried in a stack of papers. I made sure she was at a decent stopping point before speaking to her. “Redecorating?” I asked.
“Yeah, thanks to the bloody dungeon,” Cassie replied with a sigh.
“Huh, what’d he do this time?” I asked, confused. To my knowledge, Regan had been relatively quiet as of late.
“He changed the method of payment for those stones. Now . . . now all you need is to put in a thousand mana, and you can get one. He even created rent-to-own, or whatever it’s called so that people can pay some up front and every other day the stone will draw the mana from you automatically. Ignoring the implications of this by itself, adventurers from all over the continent are making their way here,” Cassie explained before setting her forehead on the desk.
“I should probably let Baden know, then. I’m starting to feel sorry for him having to deal with all these changes, though he did say it was keeping him on his toes,” I said, scratching the top of my head in apology.
“It’s not a big deal. We expected this, just not so soon. Most dungeon towns grow to cities within five years. I have a feeling this one might break a record, though,” Cassie said as she pulled another sheet to work on.
“Expect any problems coming?” I asked nervously. Some adventurers thought quite highly of themselves, and you had to be careful with handling them.
“At the moment”—Cassie paused as she flipped through a few stacks of paper—“the only big name heading this way is the Argent Lords. Depending on their mood, they can be a handful.”
“I’ll keep an eye out,” I said with a sigh.
Cassie was working on another sheet of paper when she gasped. “Make that two problems. The gnome, Princess Izora, is coming as well,” she said as her grip tightened, making her knuckles turn white.
“What makes her a problem?” I asked, confused. I figured if a princess were causing problems, I would have heard about it somewhere.
“Not so much a problem for you. I’m more worried about your friend. The gnomes worship the ancient technology. What do you think will happen when she sees even the first automata in the dungeon?”
“Now I feel like a storm is about to come, and here I thought that trouble would leave us alone for a while,” I said, putting my head in my hands.
“Trouble has always found you, Mistress,” Ezal said from her spot next to the wall.
“Not funny!” I shouted at her but still smiled a little. I always did seem to be getting into some type of situation, even while growing up.
“My informant says she will be here within the month, so I would get the host prepared for the worst,” Cassie said, having finished reading the letter.
“I understand.”
We talked for a while longer, then Ezal and I made our way out. I made my way around the town, checking on people and making sure everyone was taken care of. I knew I couldn’t stop the fear completely, but I could help alleviate it for some people by making sure everyone who’d lost someone or lost their home had food and clothing.
