Chapter 324


    Qualen Woods, Archduchy of Rebirth


    Darthar-Asaria Trade Route


    "Please don''t be mad." Said CQ to her mother as the Earth-born exited the command tent.


    "Why would I be mad at you?" Said the dungeon core, surprised.


    "I mean at yourself, mom. You''re the one who told me to deal with the nobles."


    Alexandra''s face softened.


    "Thanks kiddo. But...I still bear some responsibility."


    "But-"


    "No buts. Now, I''ve talked to Manson. They won''t trouble you anymore. If they didn''t get the message after what happened today, our allies will hammer it the rest of the way into their skulls for us."


    "What''s going to happen?"


    "We''ll allow them to stay...if they dissolve their existing structures, and put themselves under the complete command of the duke. In effect, they''ll be another group of volunteer regiments."


    CQ tilted her head, remembering the soldiers lining up the side of the army, as she had to watch from the screen.


    "The volunteers aren''t so good at following orders mom."


    "That''s because we don''t keep them on a tight leash, by design. Those would be on a very tight one." Alexandra smiled. "It''s high time we broke up these feudal forces and finally hammer in a real army. And you just handed me the anvil. So thanks."


    "I did good?"


    Alexandra hugged her daughter.


    "You did. Now-" She blinked, tilting her head. "Huh."


    "Mom?"


    "Just got a ping from the drones. Looks like someone is getting close to our...special delivery. Wanna watch the maids'' handiwork?"


    "Yes!"


    "Then let''s get up to the Subtlety!"


    *****


    The rebels flowed out of the night like shadows. Enslaved adventurers and hunters made for fantastic stealth troops, and the guards were overrun in seconds.


    The golem ones, that was. The human ones were nowhere to be seen. The slaves secured the area, before shock troops followed up. Those were actual Sunrise soldiers, wielding captured rifles and submachine guns. They deployed, ready to defend the convoy, as the slaves began opening the wagons, and pulling out crates.


    There was a certain nervousness to their movement. This wasn''t their first time, but something was...off.


    Besides which, they all knew it was only a question of time until the dungeon core caught on.


    One of Sunrise''s officers walked to a crate, carried by two slaves, and flipped it open after they set it down before her.


    The officer''s eyebrows rose. Then, finally, the warning signs percolated through her brain.


    She screamed.


    And a split second later, the chemical warheads, neatly lined up in the crate, detonated, quickly followed by others throughout the convoy.


    Slaves and regulars alike went down. Some of the regulars managed to run out of the spreading gas cloud''s reach, but the slaves, absent orders, simply stood there as the neurotoxin enveloped them, delivering the sweet embrace of death, liberation from their torment.


    The regulars stared, wide eyed, at the field of corpses, trying to make sense of what had happened.


    They were still finding their footing when the desert rangers plugged them full of crossbow bolts.


    Mission complete.


    *****


    "Well, that took care of their most annoying raiders." Said Alexandra, satisfaction clear in her voice as she gazed at the images.


    The drones were quickly proving their worth. Despite their relative lack of strategic speed, not to mention their inability to operate in the wasteland, or anywhere where monsters were likely to take a bite out of them for that matter, they were immensely useful. This operation wouldn''t have been possible without them. At least it wouldn''t have been this smooth.


    "Yes. But still, I question the use of those...weapons." Said Manson, clearly troubled.


    Alexandra sighed internally. Chemical weapons had been iffy to use on Earth, for a variety of reasons, and even she was extra squeamish about it thanks to the remnants of the horrors unleashed by the Terran Hegemony she''d witnessed, but Alcheryos took it to another level.


    They''d been a preferred tool during the Great Night, and many a settlement bordering the wasteland or expedition within had been wiped out by chemical spewing automata.The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.


    Automata the God of Fire had kept online, but that went without saying. Though it did bring Alexandra to wonder why the hell did those robots have chemical weaponry, since a great deal of the military appeared to have been partially automated by that point, though as her foray into the supply ship supporting the Hammer of Eternity had shown, there had been human crews behind them.


    Corrosive gases, that could damage machinery as well, maybe? Certainly not neurotoxins, like what she''d just used.


    "They will be necessary. And in this case, they were a mercy."


    "A mercy?"


    Alexandra nodded.


    "For the slaves. With this, they got a clean, painless death, and they will be easier to resurrect." That was how the maids had sold the idea to her, and although she was somewhat...dubious that it had been anything but a sales pitch, it was a valid one. "It''s certainly better than blowing them apart with bombs and picking up the pieces."


    "Point taken. Still it...goes against the grain."


    Alexandra shrugged.


    "Perhaps, yes. But we need to stack the deck in our favor, and I''m not going to discard our aces."


    "Right. Of course. Will you be using...more of them?"


    "Only on the retreat. We''ll need to get them to slow down, and it should help considerably."


    "Let''s hope." The duke sighed. "Any more...surprises in your coming convoys?"


    "I have nothing but surprises. But...no. Not much." Not because she didn''t have more things in store, but because she was stockpiling resources. As soon as the fabricator arrived, she would start replicating it. She might even use her dungeon powers to speed up the process. She was going to do quite possibly her greatest infrastructure expansion yet, and it was going to bankrupt her.


    She''d considered some measures to increase her income, but none were really viable. Expanding the dungeon itself was starting to bring diminishing returns, at least for the time being, and would be a long term gain anyway, not to mention it would require its own upfront infrastructure cost, making it a net loss on the time scale she was operating at.


    Expanding her influence was also a no go. It would net her a lot of mana, probably, but the growing interference might reach her mesa fortress and prevent her from editing it. And since she still hadn''t finished her shield and point defense project, to fend off an orbital bombardment attack...


    Thus, she was stuck with cutting expenses, and that meant lowering production of new stuff and the infrastructure to build them, while also dialing everything else down. It would mean a lull in the flow of armaments, but a veritable roar later. The eternal balance of industry, produce what you need now, or set up greater production for later?


    Thankfully, she had some modern equipment reserves to draw from, though they were running dangerously low, so she could play that game, even if barely.


    But what she would be able to build afterwards...oh yeah. Sunrise was going to have a bad, very bad day. She''d just need for the army to hold them off for that long.


    "While I am relieved that you are currently out of surprises, I am also somewhat sad of that fact." Said the duke, and Alexandra laughed.


    "I said I had no new ones in the incoming convoys, not that I was out of them."


    "Point taken."


    "I assume you have the nobles handled?"


    "I''m letting them stew for a bit, get all worked up about the horrible fate you no doubt have reserved for them for their transgressions, before swooping in for a hard but fair rescue from the vengeful dungeon core and her golem army." Alexandra barked out a laugh as Manson smiled ."I expect some excellent results."


    "With a good cop, bad cop like that? Yeah, no kidding. Alright then. Time for me to hop on home, I have some reinforcements to prepare." And a fabricator to receive and assemble.


    "Good luck, lady Crystal."


    "Thanks, but I prefer to make my own."


    "No doubt. But still, sometimes one has to roll the dice."


    Alexandra grimaced internally. She''d already done that by taking over the Flickerlight. She was lucky she hadn''t rolled low, since no one seemed to have notice the ship''s change in its communication ping.


    "Yes, well, I''d rather avoid it if at all possible, unless I''ve weighted said dice."


    "If you''re not cheating, you''re not trying hard enough, right?" Manson smiled, and Alexandra chuckled.


    "Precisely, your grace. You''re a fast learner."


    "An old war horse like me always has some room for new tricks."


    "Well I guess you''re full of surprises as well."


    "Mine have a lower body count."


    Alexandra shrugged.


    "What can I say? I like spectacle and crushing my enemies."


    "Then let''s make a show out of Sunrise''s defeat, shall we?"


    "Yes. Let''s."


    *****


    Orzal Vek, formerly colonel of the Elkis Republic, now agent and officer of the Order to Restore Humanity, gazed at the army, progressing through the scrublands.


    Hugging the wasteland like that was a risky gamble, but it appeared to be paying off. The army was making good time, better than what the senate probably expected. They would be in position to march on Mystral soon, cutting through the floodplains and young forests to the north of the vital trade link, rather than the massive, old forests and marshlands that would have otherwise impeded their progress.


    It was a shame he was there to prevent that.


    He gestured at one of his men, who pulled out the emitter. When he had been told what they were about to do, he''d been horrified, but what choice did he have?


    With this, they would broadcast a signal that would awaken the defenses that surrounded the large lake within the wasteland. The lake that had once been a city...a city the God of Fire had murdered upon his return, slaughtering millions of innocents by bombing them from orbit upon his return.


    The more he worked with the Order, and the more he learned of the truth of the world...the more he was starting to wonder if they weren''t right. If their cause wasn''t...just.


    If only their methods weren''t so abominable.


    Orzal grabbed the remote, put his hand on the button, and...


    He froze, as the artifact glasses he was wearing flashed warnings. He became perfectly still, his brand new stealth systems fading him into the background.


    He was in the perfect spot to observe the advancing army, for he had wanted to gaze and remember what he had unleashed.


    But perfect meant that equally competent others would think of it as well, and his eyes darted as he saw the whispers of stealth fields. Not stealth composites like those of the Old World, but shrouds of energy.


    Divine technology. And not the low end either.


    He was surrounded by a strike team of Seraphims.


    He slowly, very slowly, loosened his holster, and prepared himself for annihilation. But to his amazement, a voice began speaking.


    "Adjudicator. There is no further sign of the heretics."


    "Then we must have gotten ahead of them." Answered another voice, coming from the ether, dispersed by the stealth field to prevent a lock on to its speaker. "Send your men below, and set up an ambush between those troops and the wasteland. This army mustn''t be stopped, at any cost."


    "Yes, adjudicator."


    The former colonel held his breath as the faint signatures moved on, one lingering behind the others, seemingly taking in the view. And he realized that his insistence on setting up well in advance and simply observing the army move in, in silence had just saved his life and that of his strike team.


    Their stealth, after all, wasn''t impenetrable...but a passively stealthed object not emitting energy and effectively immobile, as they had been for the last few hours, was damned near impossible to find. The Seraphims'' own tech even had the weakness of being faintly detectable at point blank range if they were moving, as they had just demonstrated.


    The colonel exchanged a glance with his second in command, whose distress he could read even through the camouflage.


    The mission was aborted...and high command needed to know. They were being followed.


    And the Seraphims were coming out to play.


    Well...looked like that regardless of his superiors'' wishes, they had the opportunity for a trap.


    He had to make a call.