LIGHTNOVELONLINE Chapter 35 - Drone Swarm
Chapter 35
Red Sands Desert, Contested Border Region
Dungeon Factory, Second Floor
Alexandra watched intently as the adventurers arrived at the bottom of the ramp and fanned out into the second floor’s entrance hall. As for the first floor, she’d decided to make it a safe zone—and she’d probably do the same for every follow-up floor—but the adventurers were obviously done taking anything for granted.
After a solid three minutes of looking in every nook and cranny of the room, they apparently decided that it was safe enough and sat down to take another pause. A lot of people might have found that weird, especially those that hadn’t experienced combat before. But it was impressive how many calories anyone could burn through in a few minutes-long firefight, and sustained combat like a dungeon delve must be even tougher. Alexandra wondered if the concept would even be viable for “normal” humans, without all the advantages of essence, or any other enhancements. Probably not, except for a small minority, she decided.
“Well, they’re taking it easy,” Emilia said, as she took another snack.
Alexandra giggled.
“You’re one to talk!”
Emilia didn’t dignify the remark with a response and simply sniffed haughtily, making the Earth-born giggle once more, shaking her head, before refocusing on the screen.
The adventurers rested for fifteen minutes, although this time they were clearly a bit too excited to settle down and try to cultivate. Actually, given what had happened to their comrade in the hallway of swinging blades, there might be some fear in it as well.
They got up and reorganized at the massive double doors leading into the floor proper, and the elven fighter, after a nod from the rest of the party, pressed the button on the pedestal by the side of the door and rushed to put himself between whatever might come out and his party.
The doors rumbled, and slowly, ponderously, began to swing open. They were pretty much a less ornate copy of the ones in the first floor’s entrance hall, although they weren’t quite as thick and resilient.
The adventurers braced themselves, and then relaxed, their jaws dropping.
Alexandra wasn’t that egotistical. Okay, perhaps she was a bit, but still, it was nice to see her work impress, and even inspire awe, like this.
Because very clearly, whatever the adventurers had been expecting, the second floor wasn’t it.
For a good fifteen seconds, they just stood there, gazing at the seemingly unending array of pillars and ruins, before the mage shook himself and spoke in a deep, rumbling voice.
“I’ll give the dungeon credit. THAT I did not expect.” He chuckled. “Well, let’s not just stand here! Even the assault guild hasn’t seen this floor!”
That seemed to shake the rest of the party out of their stupor, and they slowly stepped inside, looking around in amazement. Alexandra had a sneaking suspicion the comment had more appealed to their sense of greed, as according to Emilia it was customary for the assault guild to have bounties for new floors and information on them, rather than to their sense of discovery and adventure. If that last one even meant the same thing on this world to begin with, of course.
“My, at least they are polite. And complimentary,” Alexandra said, as she looked at them cautiously scanning the area around them for threats.
“Flattered much?”
Alexandra shrugged.
“Not really, no. Pleased? Yes, definitely, but I’d be a poor engineer or architect if I wasn’t.” She snickered. “I guess I am an architect aren’t I?”
Emilia gave her a confused look, and Alexandra waved her hand.
“Nothing, just something to do with degrees.”
“You’re a dungeon core, why would you care about such things?”
The Earth-born sighed.
“I wouldn’t. Well, I would care about the knowledge itself, but the degrees would indeed be fairly useless. It’s just that back on Earth people would have an aneurysm if I’d started constructing buildings without an architect’s degree.” She snickered. “At least I guess no one will question me if my stuff starts falling apart, and assume it’s a feature.”
Emilia laughed.
“That’s true enough!” She smiled, then stopped laughing, as her expression became serious again. “Say, how do you think this will go? I mean, the floor is pretty empty right now.”
Alexandra winced. That much was true as well. Oh, she’d begun populating the second floor before the whole kidnapping incident with the commandos, but it was only a relative handful of golems, most of them spider golems, patrolling the floor at random or holing up in some ruins, and a few bouncing betties she’d carefully emplaced so Emilia and she could get to their testing zones without having to worry about them.
“Yeah. But hey, the water temple is pretty catchy! So if they see it and investigate...”
“They should come across the chest!” Emilia nodded, then winced. “I don’t think they can win that fight.”
Alexandra shrugged.
“I don’t think so either. On the other hand, the spider golems are leashed to the shore in their programming, so they won’t pursue them very far. If they retreat they should be able to survive. Emphasis on 'should be'.”
Emilia smiled.
“Well, I guess we’ll see.”
*****
Alexandra perked up as the adventurers, at long last, spotted the water temple. She’d already made a note to make the thing much higher, because although the rumble of the waterfalls could be heard, it seemed remarkably hard to locate with all the ruins and pillars distorting sound, given how confused and disoriented the adventurers had appeared. Then again, they might just suck at this kind of thing, and normally relied on their ranger...who was currently happily cultivating, Alexandra verified, as she gave a side screen showing Jared’s vision a quick look.
In any case, it had taken them a good half an hour to finally get within sight of the temple. They hadn’t just spent that time running around, of course, as they’d encountered several small groups of golems and taken them out in fairly short order. They hadn’t stumbled upon a bouncing betty, but Alexandra had resigned herself to the fact that unless they were extraordinarily unlucky, they wouldn’t even come close to the handful of mines dispersed throughout the floor.
Still, the water temple seemed to have grabbed their attention quite nicely, and they were now making a beeline toward it. After a few minutes of walking, they stopped as they went over the last ruin, and contemplated the massive temple.
Once again, Alexandra felt a prickle of pride as they gazed upon the temple in awe. This time, however, their attention was broken when the elven fighter pointed at the treasure chest and took a step forward, only to have the mage catch his shoulder.
The party argued back and forth for a bit, practically shouting over each other, and making it impossible to discern the precise words through the scrying spell, before starting to cautiously move out toward the treasure chest.
A few minutes later, they arrived at the massive stone container and deployed around it, while one of their party members—the healer, if Alexandra wasn’t mistaken—tried to open it.
Obviously, the chest didn’t budge. After a few more tries, the healer gave up, and another argument broke out, seemingly between whether they should try to break it open or try to find a way to open it on the floor.
None of them noticed as the water began to move.
The first sign they got that something was wrong was when the first spider golem flew into the middle of the group, missing the mage by a few centimeters, and crashed into the chest. They stared at it for half a second, before turning around in unison as the splashing sound of more spider golems erupting from the river reached them.
The fight was short and brutal. At first, they tried to hold on, but as it became clear they were becoming overwhelmed under the rain of golems, they started retreating as fast as they could while holding off the horde. Fortunately for them, massed lightning spells were as effective as ever, and their mage apparently wasn’t shy about using them “danger close,” as some soldiers would have said. A few of his teammates ended up seriously singed, but it bought them enough room to cut and run for it.
All except the elven fighter, who made it a few meters before a leaping spider golem hit his knee, making him stumble and fall.
His screaming was cut mercifully short as the swarm rolled over him, and his throat was promptly reduced to shreds. Alexandra winced. It wasn’t an especially pleasant way to die. Then again, being set on fire was much worse.
The rest of the party continued running after some yells from the mage, who seemed to more or less take over, not that they’d had a clear party leader to begin with, and only stopped almost a hundred meters from the shore. They looked back at the milling swarm of spider golems, clearly shocked by their sheer numbers, although they seemed to relax slightly as their comrade’s body vanished from the teleport spell of the resurrection orb.
They continued staring at the swarm for a few more minutes before the mass of spider golems retreated under the water, a slight red tinge appearing in it from the blood-soaked ones.
I need to make a water filtration system.
TO-DO LIST UPDATED
They continued staring at the waters and the temple before shaking themselves, and after a brief discussion, moved directly toward the massive column that was the ramp back to the first floor. Alexandra frowned as she suddenly realized that they were in no condition to fight their way back through her dungeon and that the time they’d spent in her dungeon was far, far longer than the minimum one hour between dungeon delves Allya had announced during their meeting.
“Hey, Emilia, is it possible to make teleporters to move live adventurers?”
The vampire girl blinked.
“Uh, that’s kind of random, but yes, why?”
“Then we should probably start to work on them. Or at least devise some way to get adventurers from deeper floors to the surface.” She gestured at the group of adventurers. “If they have to fight their way out, or go the long way, it’ll limit our appeal. Plus, other groups might become angry that ‘their’ golems are being stolen.”
Emilia nodded.
“That’s a fair point. Most dungeons use some form of ‘escape’ thing like that, usually in boss rooms, floor accesses, or safe zones, that let someone pull back to the surface quickly. Some even let adventurers that have already beaten a certain boss start at the beginning of the next floor through that special access. Although that’s usually on the bigger ones.” She shrugged. “I don’t know if teleporters will be the right answer right now though, as they’re tricky to make, and kind of expensive. Sort of like an insurance policy.”
Alexandra gestured at the beaten group of adventurers.
“If it lets me augment my capacity by letting me have many more adventurers inside the dungeon simultaneously and allow these kinds of groups to pull back, get stronger, and come back another day, I think it’ll be worth it.” She got up from her stool. “Come on, I don’t think they’ll send another group before these guys come back up, probably because of that. Let’s at least cover the basics.”
“Sure!” Emilia said, as she got up and followed her out of the command center, toward the workshop.
*****
Allya winced as she saw the group of adventurers stumble out of the dungeon. They looked definitely the worse for wear. And two of them had the look of people who’d just been resurrected. But she refrained from going forward and asking questions and simply gazed at the guild attendant and the adventurers accompanying him going to meet them, followed by a handful of her own security guards. They talked, but fortunately, the copper-ranked adventurers seemed experienced enough not to try to avoid their taxes and handed over their loot for inspection. A few minutes later, they grabbed back their bags, now 30% lighter, and moved on. They didn’t look elated, but they had probably expected it.
In fact, they looked remarkably happy for a team that had two of its members killed and resurrected. Allya’s eyes narrowed slightly and then widened as she spotted Artok, the assault guild leader, who had unobtrusively set up something of a stand by the entrance, answering questions and distributing what looked like schematics of the dungeon to whoever didn’t have them yet.
The crowd parted before them, and they quickly engaged in a hushed conversation with the assault guild leader. Then, after a few seconds, Artok simply nodded, gestured for one of his subordinates to take his place, and left, the copper-ranked party in tow.
“Well, looks like they found something interesting,” Pyn said, almost absentmindedly.
“Indeed.” Allya looked at her girlfriend, who was currently busy drawing plans and scribbling notes on a map. “Everything going alright?”
“We’re on schedule...mostly.” She shrugged. “The aqueduct is coming along nicely, although we’ve had some problems with weakened foundations. And we’re finally starting to designate lots and begin preparations to build some real houses. Which is about time. Everyone is starting to get tired of tents, especially those that expect to be staying here for a while.” She smiled at Allya’s surprised look. “Paradoxical, I know, but the fact that they know we’re going to build a city here eventually is making everyone more impatient. If we were just in the middle of nowhere, they could endure it for months, but knowing that there will soon be houses is making everyone more impatient. Sort of like people getting even more annoyed when a goal is close by than when it is distant.”
“That’s...fair enough.” Allya looked at Starvak, who had one of his guild attendants pull another name out of the pot, and an iron-ranked party moved forward. “And another one prepares to go in. Wanna make a bet on how many will come back intact?”
“Nah, estimating their chances is more your thing. Besides, what would we bet with? It’s not like we aren’t essentially pooling our funds to begin with.” She raised her head and waggled her eyebrows. “Unless you’d like to wager something...else.”
Allya chuckled, blushing slightly.
“In your dreams! ” She looked at the entrance and shook her head. “Well, let me give you a hand, because it doesn’t look like I’m going to have much to do, thank the gods.”
Pyn nodded gravely as she looked at the entrance as well. They’d been afraid that some adventurers would...forcefully protest the taxes. There wasn’t a high chance of it turning into violence—no adventurers wanted to attack the equivalent of cops in sight of guild officials, let alone a guild master—but a scene could have undermined their authority. As such, Allya had come with Éclair and Rogard, as well as Anders and a good squad of soldiers. Officially, they were there to guard them while they made plans for the dungeon town, and just happened to be near the entrance because it gave them the best view of the camp. There might even be a particularly stupid clay-rank that believed that. Maybe.
“Sure thing.” The elf gestured at the map. “Actually, I had a question. We’re going to have to build walls eventually, and I was wondering...”
*****
Alexandra shook her head as she contemplated the numbers.
In the last twelve hours, she’d had four dungeon delves. Apparently, they’d decided on a three-hour delay between each party which was more than fair, in her opinion.
The first party had been the copper-ranked ones who had reached the second floor. The second and third had been iron-ranked, with the second having reached the safe zone before falling back, and the third having managed to nearly get itself wiped out in the challenge room. Only a heavily wounded rogue and a mage had been left, which had presented the interesting problem of how, exactly, she was going to get their resurrected comrades to them. She’d ended up simply sending a squad of standard golems to carry them, but she definitely needed a better way to go about it. The fourth and last delve had been handled by a group of steel-ranked adventurers, who had made it to CQ and decided to turn back right before the boss room.
She’d been a bit miffed that most of them appeared pretty prudent, and very clearly had preplanned routes they’d stuck to (except the third one, whose plan appeared to be “continue till we hit a brick wall”) and retreated at a predetermined position. Still, she couldn’t argue with the results, as not only had the mana income been pretty decent, but the influx of essence and, especially, new stuff had been very much welcome. It wasn’t an incredible amount of stuff, but she was already starting to have trouble keeping everything she needed to test in mind with the commando’s things, and it was becoming steadily worse.
Well, better to have too much than too little, I guess, she thought, shaking her head.
“That went well,” Emilia said from her stool in the workshop, looking at the screen where the adventurers were dispersing for the night.
“Yes. Yes it did.” Alexandra looked down at the table where they sat. “Although when you said that teleporters were complicated...I wasn’t expecting them to be that complicated.”
Emilia shrugged, gesturing at the pile of schematics and runes inscribed on paper in front of them.
“It’s something that lets you literally move around instantaneously. What did you expect?”
“Well...CQ can teleport.”
“Yes, and she’s a consecrated boss, and even then her range is very, very limited. And keep in mind, we have it easy. We can anchor the teleporters into your influence. It’s even harder for normal teleporters, like the ones from the WMC.”
“The World Mage Court, right?”
“Yeah,” Emilia said. “I never did explain to you what they were, did I?”
Alexandra shook her head, and Emilia looked at the table, then at her friend’s frustrated expression as she studied the schematics. They really should continue to work on the teleporters, and avoid diverting their attention but...the poor woman deserved a break. Besides, wasn’t she the one that said that one way to think your way out of a problem was to stop thinking about it altogether, and sometimes the solution would just come to you?
“Well, you know what? It might be time to remedy that.” Emilia got up, dusting off her dress. “Come on, let’s get you that political briefing. If nothing else, it’ll help clear our minds.” She looked up at the screen. “And it should prove pretty useful for later as well.”
“Sure.” Alexandra sighed, and stretched, before nodding toward the door. “Command center?”
“Yeah. And I’m going to need to spread a lot of maps. Mind making a table there?”
“Sure thing.” Alexandra smiled. “Actually, I might just make it permanent. What kind of command center doesn’t have a map room, or a map table at least? Maybe I should project it on the wall, that would be neat. Or perhaps even…”
Emilia shook her head and followed her friend into the hallway.
Here we go again.