The Fallen World : A Dungeon's Story

Chapter 185

[REDACTED]

Order Stronghold “sovereign,” Arkan Continental HQ

“You have a visitor, my lord,” said Corson, Joachim’s secretary. The Order commander’s eyebrow rose at the odd tone of his aide, but he nodded.

“Show him in.”

“Yes, my lord. At once.”

Joachim whistled softly as he organized his files, waiting patiently for his mysterious visitor…and froze like a deer in headlights as a graying man stepped through the doors.

“Hello Joachim,” said the man, who sported an adamantium medallion…overlaid with the heraldry of a guildmaster of the adventurers guild.

“Erik. To what do I owe the pleasure?”

“What have you done with Alexandra?” the guildmaster asked.

“You know I can’t tell you that.”

“And you know I won’t take no for an answer.”

“As tempting an option as it no doubt is for you, it would end badly. You are no longer a general of our Order. You have no authority here. And archon or not, we are more than well enough equipped to take you down.”

“But you won’t survive.”

“My life is in service of the Order. I will die without hesitation for our cause.”

Erik stared him in the eyes, before sighing and leaning back into his seat.

“You haven’t changed one bit.”

“Neither have you, sir,” Joachim said, relaxing. “And as for the extradimensional…”

“Lesly sacrificed her, didn’t she?” The guildmaster smiled wanly as Joachim’s eyes widened. “I made that girl who she is today, Joachim, just like I made you. I turned her from a talented welp barely out of basic training into a force of nature. Half of her grand plan, I helped her prepare, I advised her on it. I knew she had always wanted an extradimensional to launch it. Steal the aetheric connection to boost the core.”

“You know I can’t say anything.”

“I’m aware. But I also know a dungeon’s been making waves, smack dab in the middle of the wasteland. I know that dungeon has been more innovative and energetic than any since the UDC’s founder. One that, conveniently, just got attacked by a giant Old World army. Which I’m guessing is to justify the tech she’s about to start introducing.”

Joachim simply stared back silently, hiding his shock behind a neutral facade.

“Let’s not even mention all the fortuitous events that just so happened to escalate the conflicts on the continent in a way that leaves a perfect opening for said dungeon to start expanding, and eventually unify it all under one banner. The nightmare of the Eris Empire. An Empire that, coincidentally, is stretched to the breaking point, and would only take one push in the right place to collapse. I’m going to guess that will happen right when the sleeping giant starts waking up to the fact it’s no longer the only superpower. Opening the way for a new world hegemony.”

“That would be downright Machiavellian.”

“Of course. I’m the one who gave her that book after all. Terra has many lessons we should learn from.” The guildmaster sat up. “So you killed the girl I’d put under my protection. You will pay for that, someday.”

A shiver ran down Joachim’s spine, before he firmly suppressed it.

“Am I to understand you are going to interfere?”

“No.” Erik looked up at the sigil of the Order, inlaid into the wall. “I will not. As much as I find Lesly’s plan reckless, I understand her point of view, and I will respect her right of command. Not to mention I would risk the entire Order by interfering. But there will be consequences.”

“...Her name and legacy will be remembered.”

“I hope so, Joachim. But I do not like to rely on hope. Which is why I am going to make sure of that myself.”

“You cannot—”

“I have many friends within the Order still. Do not underestimate my influence. I will be temporarily reinstated and elevated to the Archives, exceptionally. I will ensure the remembrancers inscribe her story into the scrolls of the stars. And once this is all over, she will be credited for her sacrifice and bringing all of this about. I believe I can count on you and Lesly for that.”

“Yes. You can.”

“Good. Still, this…worries me. We are cutting it too close.”

“You expect a purge?”

“We know they have been lowering their thresholds. And more importantly, I fear that they have sensed something. The Inquisition is agitated, all those with power know it.”

“Their inertia is their weakness. We both think in the scale of millennia and the fate of civilizations, but they are incapable of adaptability. Or the Order would never have survived the Reformation.”

“I hope you are right, Joachim. All the same, tread carefully. The servants of the God of Fire are not done with Alcheryos yet, and even they can change if pushed far enough.”

“By the time they do, it will be too late.”

“I hope you are right. And I envy your confidence.” Erik suddenly turned towards him. “Goodbye, Joachim.”

“Goodbye, sir.”

And with that, Eriksen Dragonslayer, guildmaster of the adventurer guild’s branch of Nardria, left without another word.

*****

Alexandra pinched the bridge of her nose as she leaned back into her seat.

“So. Let me get this straight. I gave you permission to go into town to buy…supplies.” Supposedly she was there semi-incognito to get some stuff they had wanted, almost all of it simple, mundane food. “Semi” incognito because she had asked the guild for approval, through Dominique, and promised them that they would be able to search Sarah when she came back. And “supposedly” because Sarah had most definitely visited a lingerie shop while over there, which Alexandra knew thanks to her sentries on top of her still-under-reconstruction mesa, and Emilia was looking like a cat that had just caught a canary. “And you come back escorted by the city guard, accused of…quadruple murder, with the extenuating circumstances of stopping a robbery, which in the process of doing so, accumulated something close to fifteen thousand mana in property damage. Noting that said robbery was several blocks away from where you were supposed to go.”

“I went for a walk,” the vampire said with an impressively toothy smile. Alexandra chose to ignore the fact that there was still some blood on the canines.

“That walk ended with you leveling a building and ripping a mage in half, before using the lower bit to beat a ranger to death. I’m not even going to comment on what you did to the others. All robbers, mind you, but still.”

“I go on very enthusiastic walks.”

“So it would seem,” Alexandra said, her voice dripping with irony. “Thankfully for this little expedition, not only were all witnesses ‘debriefed’ by the city guard, but they have agreed to cover up this mess, with some assistance from the adventurers guild.” Which was probably an attempt to buy back some good will. Ah! As if. “Provided of course, that we help with the damages, which I will handle. The baroness has also obliquely suggested that if any of you girls want to ‘go for a walk,’ you get a guard escort, which I have accepted.”

Sarah and Ella both looked supremely unphased.

“And I would like to note that slipping by the escort and leaving them behind would make me supremely angry, and I would be forced to ask for an intervention by Emilia,” Alexandra continued.

Now they looked uneasy.

“Is that understood?” the dungeon core finished.

“Yes,” they answered in unison.

“Good. Dismissed.” Alexandra watched them leave, Sarah walking out and Ella on her spider throne. Not that she needed said throne now, but the maid seemed to have taken quite a liking to it.

The Earth-born sighed, and gave the screens in the command center a brief glance, before getting up and stretching. Well, nightfall was approaching, and Emilia had retreated to the bedroom to ‘prepare.’ Since she was probably in for a treat, she wasn’t too mad at the maids, but it was still an annoying incident.

Oh well, it wasn’t like she wasn’t already pretty cozy with Allya, so it shouldn’t be too much of an issue, even in the long run. And the new measures might prevent a problem like that occurring once more.

Hopefully.

*****

“You know, I’m starting to like this place,” Alexandra said as she looked at the screens.

When she had rebuilt the top of the mesa, she’d decided to build an observation dome in it. She figured it would be an asset…and quite frankly she just wanted to be able to look at the stars again, just like when she’d started out as a dungeon core, before she had to hide her avatar.

Of course, having her and Emilia in a flimsy glass dome on top of a structure that had just been nuked was a no go, even without the threat of being seen, so she’d gotten the next best thing. She’d placed golems in the “real” dome and built a replica in the core fortress, with a full 360-degree seamless screen that transmitted the collated images from the golems, giving them an astonishing view of the town, bustling even so late at night it was technically morning, even if the sun hadn’t made its appearance yet.

Alexandra would rather have been there earlier, but she had been…busy. Very pleasantly busy. Apparently Sarah hadn’t just visited a lingerie shop. That or it had a second business in marital aids. Regardless, it had been pleasant enough that she was almost regretting the chewing out she’d given the maid. Almost.

“You mean the town? It’s a bit…crude for my taste, honestly.”

The Earth-born chuckled.

“I was born in a tower that differed from a mountain only in that it was made out of concrete, and built specifically to resist nuclear bombardment. Crude is a nice change of pace. Reminds me a bit of the colony at Alpha Centauri, during the second battle. At least outside of the primary settlements. Very frontier spirit, rebuilding even amongst the battle scars, trying to make the world their own, come hell or high water.”

“I’m betting the scars were a bit bigger than here.”

“Were they? I don’t think so. Look at it, Rebirth already has its fair share of battle scars. The field of sorrows, the crater…The city got nuked twice, in the span of a single day no less, and it’s still there.”

“True enough. You’re being surprisingly melodramatic.”

“Just got reminded of Earth. Did you know that Allya is the descendant of my countrymen?”

“The baroness?”

“Yep. Her reaction to the radiation poisoning? Standard EuroFed genemod. And her name is clearly inspired by the Dawnstars. It’s the French version of the name.”

“You had genetic modifications that made you even sicker when you go irradiated?”

“Small price to pay to lessen the long-term impact. It violently purges all damaged cells and expels any radioactive particles you had in your body. Very useful, practically made most anti-radiation medicine redundant. My parents had the same mods. They were basically mandatory, if you wanted to head outside for any length of time. They only became obsolete when the reclamation efforts began, and the government finally managed to clean up the worst of the fallout. Too bad those mods didn’t work on the Hegemony’s biotoxins and viral weapons.” Her tone darkened, and she felt Emilia move, before her girlfriend hugged her.

“Well, at least we don’t have those here. Whatever weapons they deployed, it seems the plagues died out loooong before we found them.”

“Yeah. They were never useful against military targets. And I’m guessing there weren’t many civilians around once the Great Night kicked into gear.” Alexandra sighed as she hugged the vampire back. “Look at me, being all dark and gloomy. You’re right, I’m being too melodramatic.”

“I said ‘surprisingly,’ not ‘too.’ We can all be melodramatic.”

“Like CQ when lamenting her lack of personal artillery?” Emilia smiled. Their daughter was becoming every bit as much a proponent of “victory through overwhelming firepower” as Alexandra, and if she had it her way, her new boss room on the fourth floor would just be a giant wall of guns. Which obviously wasn’t possible, not if they wanted the adventurers to survive. Yet. “Or you when you point out how drab our surroundings are and how much decoration is missing.”

Emilia simply pulled open a pouch, and held up her notebook menacingly, causing the Earth-born to laugh.

“Alright, alright! I yield!” Alexandra said, and Emilia chuckled as she pocketed the notebook once more.

“Thought so.” She looked at the landscape. “Still, it is a nice view.”

“It is…”

They just waited there, in comfortable silence, as the sky began to redden and the sun rose.