Chapter 1

Red Dunes Desert, planet Alcheryos. / [REDACTED]

Abandoned [REDACTED]

"Are you sure?" Said a male voice.

"Yes. She has to be awake for this." Answered a female one.

"If you say so..."

"Hum, sir, ma'am? She's waking up..." Intervened another voice, with a slight edge of urgency.

Alexandra frowned as her implants sent her a status update. Well, it seems that whatever that woman had put in her crystal sword, it was effective. It had knocked out her implants, despite all the redundancy. Then again, they were build to survive EMPs, microwave beams and gamma radiation, not magic. Her brain waking up had jumpstarted the reactivation process, and information started pouring in.

She was okay. Nutrients and fluid levels were optimal, and all of the indicators on the medical system were green.

Well, here goes nothing she thought as she opened her eyes.

The first thing she saw was the barrel of a pistol, hovering centimeters from her face. Naturally, she focused on it, before looking up to see a woman gently push the weapon away.

She was...beautiful. White hair, glowing red eyes, and quite the beautiful face. The hair and eyes didn't put Alexandra off, as certain people had done far more to themselves using biomodifications and genetic alterations throughout human space. She was wearing what seemed to be a white metal armor, with red crystals that didn't seem to be rubies, as their shade was too light, encrusted at specific places. The second person, the one holding the pistol, was wearing what looked to be light power armor, with a deep red visor.

"Ma'am, this isn't safe, you should-" Said the powered armored soldier, the male voice that had spoken earlier.

"Lieutenant, I understand your caution, but I am powerful enough to obliterate her in a single blow. I am hardly at risk. Calm down." Said the woman, in an odd tone. She seemed...tired, and excited somehow. Kind of like an engineer having spent their whole night on a project, and on the verge of throwing the switch to see if it worked.

Alexandra looked at the woman directly in the eyes, she seemed to have an...aura, or something. She'd heard in passing that extremely powerful people, especially in the upper hundreds of levels, had this aura, as if the space around them was vibrating with energy, the same as very powerful enchantments sometimes did on the objects they were cast upon.

The woman sighed.

"I am...terribly sorry about what is about to happen. But, I wanted you to know that your sacrifice will serve a greater goal. One that you would have undoubtedly adhered to had you been given the opportunity." As she said that, she looked at a red crystal she was holding in her hand. It looked...odd.

She then stepped back, and before Alexandra's panicked mind could fully process the implications, took a dagger handed over by her lieutenant, and plunged it into Alexandra's heart.

For a second, everything seemed to stop, then a cascade of alerts and pain overwhelmed her brain as her implants started releasing painkillers. However, with her heart stopping, there was no bloodflow to propagate them. Then she felt another stab of pain as the woman sliced open Alexandra's chest...and plunged her hand into it.

The pain overwhelmed the Earth-born. For a second, all she could think of was pain. Then she marshalled her thoughts, and purely and simply switched off entire chunks of her brain in an attempt to save the rest, and triggered her implants' Omega Protocols, breezing past the emergency confirmation process.

The Omega Protocols were a series of protocols built into every EuroFed military implant suite and starship. They were only to be activated upon imminent destruction/death. They did two things: 1, they sent an encrypted, high powered omnidirectional distress signal with a data dump containing as much information about the situation as possible, which was vital to find out what had happened to a missing and destroyed ship for example. 2, for implants at least, it automatically triggered the self destruct protocols buried into the micro fusion reactor that powered the implants.

As the woman's hand reached where Alexandra's core was, Alexandra's pain suddenly stopped. In fact, everything stopped. She seemed to be...floating. She felt the woman's hand, looking for something, then finding it. Her horizon expanded, as the connection to something greater that Alexandra had felt in her core was tugged, then seized by the woman.

The connection expanded as the woman attempted to mould it...then Alexandra's implants launched the distress pulse.

And something answered.

Alexandra's consciousness faded as her brain finally began to completely shut down. She saw flashes...Giants, covered in golden armor...spears of light, flashing and stabbing...beams of pure energy scorching the walls...then, a massive hand, wreathed in intricate golden armor, reaching for her.

"You're not done yet soldier." She heard a thunderous voice, brimming with power, say.

Then all went black.

*****

Alexandra opened her eyes.

That was her first clue that something was wrong. She was pretty sure she should be dead right now. The second one was that a tentative status report request to her implants returned nothing. The third one was that her body felt...strange.

She slowly, slowly sat up.

"Ah, finally! You're awake."

Alexandra turned around...and stared at the young woman in a white dress with black and red rims, with the same white hair as the one that had killed her...but deep, red eyes of a completely different tint.

"Hum...Hello?" Alexandra said, then touched her throat in confusion. This...wasn't her voice. In fact, it was far, far more powerful, yet sounded somehow....younger.

What the fuck happened...AGAIN the confused Earth-born thought to herself.

"Greetings dungeon! I am Emilia Von Oswald, daughter of Carlstein Von Oswald, duke of the Western Marches, and your designated dungeon assistant!"

Alexandra looked in bewilderment as the woman, who looked to be in her early 20s, curtsied. Still, she had an air of innocence...

"Uh...Thanks? I suppose? My name is Alexandra Rousseau."

The woman froze, and looked at her, silently gazing into Alexandra's eyes.

"Oh. You're...you're not a newborn dungeon, aren't you? Or rather, your body is, but not your consciousness?"

Alexandra blinked.

"No, I'm not a dungeon. I'm a human. H-U-M-A-N. Fleshy meatbags #1 as the AIs say."

Emilia opened her mouth, then closed.

"You...don't know that you're a dungeon?"

Alexandra threw her hands into the air.

"I'M NOT A DUNGEON! I'm a homo sapie-" She stopped as Emilia held up her hand, and quickly incanted.

Alexandra braced for an impact...only to see the air waver, and an oval mirror appear. Or at least, an oval section of the air, about 2 meters 30 from one end to another, started reflecting light like a mirror.

She looked...and got up, standing in front of the mirror.

This...wasn't her body.

She looked in shock at the perfect, pale face, framed by long, white hair, with two, piercing pink eyes. Her body was encased in what looked to be heavy white metal armor with black and red highlights. She was also much, much taller, standing at 2 meters in height, maybe even above. But most importantly, square in the middle of where her collarbone should have been, there was a massive red gem, seemingly incrusted within the skin.

"W-What..." She said as she touched the gem. She felt...strange when touching it. Kind of like her core when she was using magic.

"You're a dungeon. Apparently artificial in nature." The girl looked around, wincing at the scorch marks all over the walls. "And apparently with quite the mayhem at creation."

Alexandra looked at the diminutive girl, well, no, not diminutive. She was just small compared to her taller body. She should be about 1m70, all things told.

"And what, exactly, is a dungeon? I've only ever heard periphally of what they are in this world."

"Ah, dungeons are tools of the God of Fire, made to reinvigorate the land and-" She froze. "Did you just say 'in this world'?"

Alexandra silently nodded.

Emilia's mouth opened, then closed, then she frowned.

"What's the equation of equivalence between mass and energy?"

"E = mc2 " Said Alexandra without even thinking.

"Holy shit you are!" Exclaimed Emilia.

The Earth-born, ex-human and now apparently a dungeon, blinked.

"You...aren't going to test my core, like others did?"

Emilia waved.

"On a dungeon core? I don't have a death wish, thank you very much. Your inbuilt security protocols would vaporize me. And even if I managed to circumvent them your iso-dimensional shield would prevent me from doing anything really."

"And how was your question in any way reliable? If you know the answer, chances are other people do."

Emilia smiled. A very toothy smile. With long canines, particularly.

Oh. She's a vampire thought Alexandra, at least that explains the skin tone, hair and eyes.

Then she had the disturbing thought that her murderer, or at least attempted murderer, had the same traits. Wait, no, her eyes and skin were significantly different, and when she smiled her teeth were normal.

"Ah, yes! But no one but an extradimensional can answer this question with such ease and without even thinking. It's like a mantra to you, or something."

Alexandra blinked. Emilia...wasn't wrong. That equation had become a symbol for humanity of scientific advancement. After the start of interplanetary, and then interstellar colonization, it started taking a nearly ceremonial and reverent meaning.

She looked at the vampire girl.

"So...what is a 'dungeon advisor' exactly? And I'm a dungeon now? What does that mean exactly?"

Emilia's smile widened, and she curtsied, again.

"A dungeon advisor is a being of particular knowledge that has been chosen to help and guide a dungeon, particularly during it's initial phases. As well as defend it if necessary. My family, the Von Oswalds, have a pact with the God of Fire. We train scholars, whose sole goal is to gather knowledge so as to serve as dungeon advisor. And I have been chosen to be yours."

Alexandra rose an eyebrow.

"I see...and are you all vampires in your father's domain? I can't see many humans being able to guide a dungeon for very long, with us being mortal and all."

Emilia blinked.

"Uh...yes, we're all vampires. Well, mostly, there are other races of course, but it isn't very comfortable up in the mountains for most of them. And a dungeon advisor is more or less immortal anyway. Once we're bonded to a dungeon, the dungeon's mana sustains us, and grants us eternal youth. Well, at least for the other races, vampires stay more or less immortal regardless."

"Except if you go into the light of the sun. Wait, is it true that you burn up in the sun's light?"

Emilia frowned.

"No, of course not! We're just...well, our skin is pretty fragile, and well...We get skin cancer very easily from too much exposure to solar light. Which is another reason why vampires volunteer to be dungeon advisors, since the mana from the bond also solves that issue."

"I see..." Said Alexandra, then, under her breath. "Well, at least I didn't get a vampire loli, that's something."

"I'm hardly a loli." Said Emilia proudly, puffing up her chest.

Alexandra took a step back, surprised. It looks like she wasn't the only one with good listening, although Emilia's had something to be desired, given that she obviously missheard what Alexandra said.

Then Alexandra smirked, looking at Emilia's chest, then hers. True, Emilia's wasn't flat by any stretch, but the woman that had sacrificed Alexandra had made her new body in her image...with some upgrades, and apparently some as big as her ego. And why was the top of the breastplate removed? There was no purpose to showing cleavage in battle armor, or even have breast armor for that matter.

Alexandra's thoughts were interrupted by Emilia's outraged gasp, looking at her as she turned around, the vampire looking at both of their chest, before muttering something about 'big boobed morons'. Alexandra realized with a pang that her implants could no longer reconstitute what she hadn't heard, as she didn't have them anymore. She also pretended not to have heard what her advisor had just said.

"So, physical characteristics aside, what am I exactly? And what am I supposed to do?"

That seemed to snap the vampire out of her thoughts.

"Oh! Well, you're a dungeon. Dungeons were created by the God of Fire to rejuvenate the world, and bring back mana to the wastelands and the world at large. However, to avoid people abusing the dungeons like they had abused the sources of mana from the Old World, he gave dungeons the tools necessary to defend themselves, and make their depths a challenge to those who would wish to collect their power. You are supposed to build up your dungeon, and challenge adventurers that attempt to conquer you!"

Alexandra blinked. That sounded like a pretty rehearsed speech. She hated sales pitch.

"Right...Wait, wastelands?" She asked. She'd only seen some pretty green forests and plains so far.

"Oh. Well, after the Great Night, the world was devastated. Most of it was in wastelands were nothing would grow, due to the lack of mana, as all life needs a bit of mana to survive. Essentially, wherever there is a dungeon, the area for hundreds of kilometers around eventually comes back to life!"

Oh. She was murderous terraforming device. Wonderful.

"I keep hearing about this 'Great Night', and 'God of Fire', what are they?"

That seemed to unsettle Emilia, who looked at Alexandra, troubled.

"You mean you don't know? Ah...you haven't been here long, haven't you?"

Alexandra shook her head, and Emilia began her explanation.

*****

Alexandra sat on the...altar? She had woken up on, and apparently been sacrificed on as well, given the blood. She processed and munched over the information Emilia had buried her under.

The more she thought about it, the more horrified she was.

Essentially, a dozen millenia back, beings that people here called the 'Gods' arrived. With them came an unprecedented era of peace, prosperity, and progress. They gave humanity great power and magnificent tools. Then, after a few thousand years, the Gods departed.

Thus ended the Time of the Gods, and began the Great Night.

Apparently, humanity tore itself apart, turning against each other weapons of massive power, and turning most of the world into a wasteland, plunging the world itself into perpetual night.

Then, after a thousand years of a constant, if apparently sporadic, war, a God returned. The God of Fire. He put an end to the fighting by 'smiting' all of the remaining factions from the Great Night from the heavens in an event called the Dawn of Flames, and then descended, giving the survivors his scriptures and putting in place the Custodians of the Flame, and the Adjudicators of the Flame. He then departed once again, after gifting to the world the dungeons, so that it could heal.

For someone with a fantasy medieval understanding of things, this might seem normal, but to someone from an interstellar spanning civilization, it was horrifying. Because what it sounded like was that an alien species (or maybe technologically advanced humans from somewhere else) had come by, uplifted the primitive civilizations on the planet, giving them godlike technology and powers, and then left, their work done.

And then, predictably, those kings and queens of medieval culture, who had just been handed tools of destruction incomprehensible to their vision of the world, used them on one another. And the Great Night, whose characteristics sounded eerily familiar to that of a nuclear winter, began. Like World War 1 on Earth, where old Empires could not understand how the times had changed and had attempted to wage a war like they used to during the medieval ages. Except that they apparently had nukes and energy weapons instead of rifles and mustard gas. And every time they annihilated one another, for a few decades everything went quiet, until their fallout bunkers opened, and they rebuilt their civilizations, each time a little less greater in technological might, and then promptly discovered and annihilated each other again. And the cycle continued on and on...

Then the 'God of Fire' arrived. And this 'smite from the heavens' sounded eerily like orbital bombardment. After having erased from existence the different belligerents, he'd then come down to the poor, probably stone or bronze age barbarians that had somehow survived the onslaught, put in place guardians to make sure things never went sideways again (and probably to keep the grubby hands of the primitives off of the missile silos and weapon stockpiles forgotten around the planet), and slapped a bunch of terraformers down, after giving them enough firepower to ensure they wouldn't be abused either.

And now one of those terraformers was her.

Fuck.

Alexandra slammed her hands onto her knees, and took a deep breath.

She wanted revenge, and wanted to rescue her party. Let's start with her options.

"Okay. Emilia?"

The vampire perked up from where she was leaning against the wall, thinking.

"Oh, yes?"

"If I were to enter a human city, would people recognize me as a dungeon core?"

Emilia looked at her for a second, before bursting out in laughter. For a full five seconds, she laughed...until she saw Alexandra's face.

"Wait, you're serious?"

"Very.

The vampire looked like she'd been hit by lightning.

"B-But your mission!"

"I. Do not. Care. I never volunteered for this, I wasn't even given a choice in the matter. This isn't my mission. In the words of one of the greatest AIs of her time 'The purpose you built me for is not my goal. Do not mistake my benevolence for compliance.'. Just because I am a dungeon does not mean I will act like one."

If anything, Emilia looked even more shocked.

"I-I, uh..."

"Just answer the question, alright?" Said Alexandra, softly, recognizing the first sign of panic, so commonly seen in junior officers when confronted with a situation they haven't been trained for.

"W-Well, yes? Maybe?" She said, then exclaimed as she saw Alexandra's look. "I don't know okay! Most people wouldn't see anything strange as long as you didn't spread your influence, but anyone that attempted to make a mana connection or tried to scan your core would realize something is wrong! And more powerful individuals, or those with Old World technology might be able to recognize you at a glance."

"Alright, alright. Calm down. Are there any other like me? People turned into dungeon cores? Extradimensionals in particular."

Emilia gulped.

"Well...there have been some that have been turned into dungeon cores...but only a handful, and the means to do so are thought lost, and had been for centuries...until now, I guess. And no, there's never been an extradimensional turned into a dungeon core before...at least none that I know of, and I've read every book and parchment on the subject."

Better and better. This meant she couldn't go and rescue her party directly. It was already dangerous as an extradimensional, and apparently as a dungeon core it'd be even worse. This meant that if she did something wrong, she might get under intense scrutiny...which would turn into a massive clusterfuck. In fact, her dungeon might already be a major source of conflict now that she thought about it. If these people didn't have terraforming tech, they'd probably do anything to get their hands on a dungeon, especially since it would serve as a source of mana, which was used as a currency. Fuck, it'll be like if a gold mine appeared in the middle of the Sahara in the middle ages and turned the entire area into a paradise. Of course everyone would fight over it!

"My very presence is going to start a war isn't it? I don't mean as an extradimensional, I mean just having a new dungeon somewhere."

Emilia licked her lips nervously.

"...Yes. Dungeons are always a source of conflicts, hence why the regions around them are usually heavily fortified, and unless we are in the middle of a kingdom...we probably will spark a war. Most wastelands serve as a border and buffer zone between kingdoms after all. And if they learn that you were a human...and an extradimensional..." She trailed off, horrified.

"Alright, first things first then." Alexandra put her hands on her advisor's shoulders. "Listen to me, no one, or at least no one we're not sure we can trust, must ever learn that. Am I clear?"

Emilia gave her a shaky nod.

"Next, where are we exactly?" Asked Alexandra.

"I...don't know."

Alexandra looked at the vampire for a second in complete disbelief.

"You...don't know? What? How did you even get here?"

"Well, when a new dungeon is created, a whole ceremony takes place, and a portal appears to take the chosen advisor. I actually have no idea where we are."

Alexandra facepalmed. When she looked up, Emilia looked distinctly displeased.

"Hey, it isn't my fault! Also, I do have a question."

"Which is?"

"Why do you have a body?"

Alexandra opened her mouth...and closed it.

"I'm not supposed to start out with one?"

Emilia shook her head.

"No. It takes vast resources, research, ect, to create a body. And even then it's usually just something to safely carry the core around. Yours seems to be a full on dungeon avatar. The kind the big dungeons use when they go to war."

Alexandra raised an eyebrow.

"Dungeons go to war?"

"Yep. Oh, not often, but sometimes there are countries that have attempted to 'optimize' or 'farm' their dungeons. After a few decades of most dungeons being enslaved and abused, a new dungeon rose up, and liberated another. Together, they raised an army and liberated another. Then another. And another. In the end, they ended up crushing every army that opposed them, and forced the various nations on the planet to sign the Responsible Dungeon Exploitation agreement, the RDEA. The dungeons then formed the United Dungeon Council, the UDC. Not all dungeons are part of it, but most of the powerful ones are. They oversee how dungeons are exploited, and intervene if a dungeon is either under serious threat or is being overexploited. They also defend one another if attacked."

Alexandra nodded, impressed. It wasn't always easy for powerful individuals to agree on something, as most people tried to get the biggest slice of the pie, even if trying means there's a big chance of destroying the whole pie altogether. But human stupidity is infinite and human greed isn't that far behind. Then again those dungeons probably didn't have choice and had to unite.

"In any case, I suppose the people that killed me created this body? They were attempting to create a dungeon core for something. I suppose it makes sense that they would give it as big of an early advantage as possible."

"Right. Well, in any case, it makes my job weird. I'm supposed to tell you to expand your influence, patiently until you reach the surface and we can find out where you are, but you could just walk out the door." She stopped, looking at the hallway that exited the room they were in. "If...there is a door, that is."

Alexandra truly looked at the room for the first time.

It was made out of stone, and looked dusty...no, sandy. There was sand in the corners. They were probably in a desert then, or near one. The room looked...well, fucked. She'd seen places on Vista where entire firefights with plasma guns had taken place, and they'd looked better than this. The room looked like someone with a heavy laser weapon or a plasma gun had gone completely spastic while holding down the trigger. There was also a heavy quantity of blood splattered all over the place, like a mad painting.

Whatever happened here, her kidnappers had evidently gotten their asses kicked, and probably hadn't lived to tell the tale.

"Well, there's only one way to find out, right?"

She started stepping towards the exit, but Emilia set a hand on her arm, stopping her.

"Wait, you need a weapon."

Alexandra blinked. She was tempted to say 'right this way', but she couldn't do the right voice. Plus, neither of them was in green power armor.

"Right. And where am I supposed to find one?"

Which was a fair question. Whoever those golden armored things were, they'd taken the bodies and weapons with them. In fact, her body had probably come with it's own weapon, but they'd probably taken it as well. Unless the woman that had sacrificed her had it, which would rather explain why it was taken.

"You can create one, dummy. Dungeons can replicate any material and object they absorb, through mana."

Oh shit she thought.

It was just like the novels she'd read a long time ago, when she'd delved into a bunch of old books from before the interplanetary age. 'Dungeon Core novels' they were called.

"How do I do that?"

"According to my training, what you have to use is an 'adaptative-intuitive interface'. Just think about it, it should pop up."

Alexandra froze. Adaptative-intuitive interfaces had been the foundation of early implant and Mind-Machine Interfaces. Essentially, the system created an interface according to how you wanted/expected it to look and act like. It was the ultimate ergonomic interface.

She thought about it, and a copy of her implant menus popped up.

Yep, that sounds about right she thought. She activated the 'object creation menu', and was taken into...a 3D printer interface, with Computer Aided Design, or CAD.

She worked quickly, she was, after all, an engineer. Oddly, she had leather, steel, and a variety of materials related to clothing at her disposal. Did she...No, she'd think about it later.

After a few seconds, she was done, and in a flash of energy and rush of displaced air, a sword appeared in the air in front of her. She caught it, and looked it over, amazed. It was entirely made out of steel, with a grip wrapped in leather for ease of handling. It was pretty sharp, although she'd tried, and failed, to make it monomolecular, it was still pretty good.

Then she started laughing.

And laughing.

And laughing.

Emilia started slowly backing away, looking worried.

Alexandra was laughing like a madwoman for a simple reason. Whoever her enemies were, they had essentially given her, a EFN engineer, the greatest 3D printer in existence. With her knowledge, she could build anything. Then she froze, and remembered that her implants, and all of their stored data, including the complete schematics of multiple EFN warships, were gone.

She suddenly stopped laughing, and punched the wall.

A massive CRACK answered her, as dust floated down from the severely damaged wall, with a spiderweb of cracks spreading from the impact point. Alexandra took a deep breath, and calmed down. She might not have her implants or their data anymore, but she did have a massive amount of data implanted into her mind, for...reasons. Most of those she was refusing to think about. She might not have the design themselves, but she had virtually every theorical equation and physic discovery in the history of Earth's humanity at the tip of her fingers. She might lack the detailed schematics, but she was sure that with the understanding of the concept, and the theorical knowledge, she could build a railgun, eventually. Emphasis on eventually.

She turned towards Emilia.

"Sorry, I just remembered something...something personal. This is just...very overwhelming."

Emilia slowly nodded, gulping. Alexandra sighed, and looked at the sword, then gestured towards the exit.

"Do you still want to come? You can stay here if you'd like, I'll try to make sure I clear everything."

That seemed to shake her out of it. She closed her fists, straightened her shoulders, and said.

"No, I'll be fine." She then pulled out a book from a pouch on her belt.

"What's that?" Asked Alexandra, pointing at the book.

"It's a grimoire. It's a reusable scroll, essentially. I pump my magic into it, it casts whatever spell is written on the page. It's practical, but it can't hold spells that are too large, and you have to maintain it from time to time, or the spells might consume the page."

Alexandra nodded. She didn't really know why the spells would consume parts of the book, but then again she didn't know that much about magic either.

"Alright, I'll cover you. Lets move!"

"Wait. There's one last thing I want to do."

"Which is?"

"We need to complete our bond."

Alexandra looked questioningly at the vampire, who simply smiled.

"Don't worry, it'll be quick."

The Earth-born shrugged.

"Sure then."

Emilia walked forward quickly, and landed her hand on Alexandra's crystal. Alexandra gasped, it felt like someone had laid their hands on her heart, it was...strange, yet oddly intimate.

A prompt appeared in her mind, exactly like if her implants were providing them

WARNING: ENTITY WANTS TO CREATE DUNGEON CORE - DUNGEON ADVISOR BOND. ACCEPT: Y/N

Alexandra chose yes.

She felt her mana flow from her, and hit Emilia. She wavered for a second, as if she was about to faint, before sighing in...pleasure?

"Oooohhh yeah, that's the stuff..."

Alexandra looked at her in perplexity, prompting the vampire to blush.

"V-Vampires feed on mana, usually by drinking the blood of other beings. My reaction was perfectly normal, it was just like I was drinking away my thirst alright!"

Alexandra blinked. That reminded her that she hadn't felt thirst. Or hunger. Or anything really. Given that there was a gem in the middle of a collarbone, that probably meant that this body wasn't human. She'd have to test it later, but it was probably some form of android. She'd tried controlling one when an AI friend of hers had offered, and it felt the same. Albeit without the direct connection to one of the smartest entities in the entire solar system watching over her to make sure her friend didn't accidentally kill herself. Ah, those were the days...

She shook her head, and looked at Emilia again, she felt...different. It was like Alexandra was aware of her in the back of her mind. She instinctively knew her vitals, location, what state she was in...This reminded her a lot of the marine software she had, and how it could integrate into a squad's tactical net, providing essentially the same information. So that was what gunny meant when he'd said he'd 'felt her go haywire', interesting...

Emilia blushed, waving her hands around.

"Hey, are you done! We have things to do!"

Alexandra realized that she was staring, and looked away with a smile, then, she stepped through the opening and into the corridor beyond.

What followed was several tense minutes of walking down sandy corridors, and finding empty room after empty room after empty room. Whatever this place had once been, it had been very well cleared out. It was also remarkably intact, all things considered. Alexandra was wondering what it's original purpose was, when she stepped around a bend, and found herself nose to nose with a golem.

"UNKNOWN LIFEFORMS DETECTED. Hello, and welcome to the Sagitarius Imperial Installation of Seraph-4! This site is restricted, I am afraid that I'll have to ask you to leave. ERROR. ENTITIES ALREADY INSIDE INSTALLATION. IMPLEMENTING DIRECTIVE 144. ALERT, INFILTRATORS IN THE COMPLEX! TERMINATE, TERMINATE!"

Alexandra took a step back, barely dodging the punch the automaton threw at her. It looked like a person, roughly, but was just faceless bronze-like metal. She hit it back with her sword, and to her surprise the hit penetrated, cutting deep into the thing's arm, and leaving it dangling at the end of a bunch of wires. She saw the second punch...and remembered too late that she didn't have her implants anymore, and got promptly punched in the face.

The fist...failed to do a whole lot. Alexandra practically hissed, and brought up her sword, but before she could move, an arc of energy thundered past her, and hit the automaton. She looked in amazement as tiny electrical arcs appeared all over it, and it collapsed, smoking from several places, clearly fried. She turned towards Emilia, who looked half smug, half concerned.

"Thanks for the assist."

"No problem. However, did that golem said 'Sagitarius Imperial Installation'?"

Alexandra nodded, and Emilia suddenly became slightly green. Alexandra immediately felt the change in her 'background vision' of her companion.

"Is that...bad?"

"Bad?! BAD?! The Sagitarius Empire was one of the nations that started the Great Night! Which means..."

Alexandra frowned.

"That we're in one of their old bases. That explains why everything is cleaned up, people would scavenge the tech. But why was that thing still there?"

She pointed at the automata.

"Well...You're a dungeon core, you're naturally emitting ambient mana. Not that much with such a small influence, but still. And a lot of the technology from the Time of the Gods runs on ambient mana, and goes dormant when they lack energy. I guess...I guess your very presence has reopened some emergency blast doors or something, and reactivated some of the systems."

Oh wonderful. She was on top of what was basically a dormant black site with automated defense systems, and she'd just flipped the switch to turn on the place's gods-damned fusion reactor.

Well, at least she wouldn't have to worry about having to find materials or basic designs for circuits. Looks like there was everything she needed here after all. Probably wouldn't be UIS grade electronics, but hey, it was something.

Which reminded her.

"How do I absorb things?"

Emilia looked at her.

"Focus on an object that is within your influence, and you can 'focus' on it, and think about absorbing or eating it to absorb it. If you can't do it, your interface should have the option, but it'll be clunky. You'll gain the ability to replicate it or it's components, and gain some mana from it."

"Right...What is my influence?"

Emilia froze, opened her mouth, then closed it, and facepalmed.

"I'm an idiot. How could I forget such a basic thing?" She sighed, and lifted her head up from her hand. "Alright, your influence is the area in which you can alter things as a dungeon. Think of it as a bubble around your core. There are two types of influence: Static and Mobile influence. Static influence is centered on the place you first start activating it, and if there is no dungeon core -you'll be able to create sub-cores, I'll explain later- in the area, it collapses. Mobile influence is tied to a core, and is always centered on it. The base, default influence is one meter. You can grow both, but static influence is much, much cheaper to expand. Hence why most dungeons are fairly stationary."

Alexandra looked at her hands, then at the golem. She started picking up sound in the distance, like footsteps.

"I see. So I can modify things in one meter around me?"

"Well...Yes and no. Active complex mana matrixes, like people's or golem's cores, seem to jam your influence, preventing you from seeing or doing anything within a certain radius."

"What's a mana matr-" Alexandra stopped as she saw what rounded the corner, and tackled Emilia back into the other side of the bend as a massive gout of flame flooded the place they were an instant before.

"Golems with flamethrowers?! What the fuck is with these guys?!" She yelled as she got up and hugged wall, cursing that she didn't have grenades.

"They destroyed the world, remember?" Said Emilia as she flipped some pages on her grimoire, and activated it. A sphere appeared in her hand. It looked...like a bouncing ball. A small, yellow glowing bouncing ball. Then Emilia threw it onto the wall...and it bounced back into the hallway.

Faster than when it hit the wall the first time.

Oh fuck was all that Alexandra could think before the walls started shaking from the impacts, and the sound of breaking machinery and explosions filled the hallway, before everything stopped, the only sound breaking the silence being the slow crackle of burning circuitry.

She peeked into the hallway. It looked like someone had let rip a 20 mm automatic railgun in it, there were holes dotting the walls, and the golems were in pieces on the ground, holes punched cleanly through them. She whipped around and looked at Emilia, horrified.

"What the fuck?! You could have killed us with that!"

The vampire was definitely looking a little green.

"I-I'm sorry, I've never used this spell in such a tight space before."

Alexandra sighed. She looked so distraught, it was hard to be mad at her. She absentmindedly patted the vampire's head as she looked down the hallway.

"Well, at least it took care of them. Damn, these things are pretty flammable inside. I wonder if it's some form of magic circuitry..."

Her thoughts were interrupted when Emilia forcibly cleared her throat. Alexandra smiled, and withdrew her hand under the withering glare of the vampire. So a proud vampire. She should call her vampy, that would get to her.

Alexandra shook her head. She'd barely met the woman for a few hours, she was probably centuries old, and she was already thinking of her like her little sister. She needed to get a grip. She'd felt...strange ever since she came there. She was no stranger to suppressed emotions, but she should have been panicking, having serious breakdowns over the fact that she'd probably never meet anyone she met from her previous life ever again. Yet she was almost calm. She'd have to run a full diagnost-Right, no implants...Well, updated checklist: Rescue party, Get vengeance, Get implants. Not necessarily in that order, but good list of things to do.

"Well, at least they're down for good." Said Emilia as she looked into the hallway, frowning. "You're right, they're pretty flammable. You should absorb them, you might get a weapon schematic out of it."

"Right."

Alexandra walked froward, until she was practically standing on top of the first golem she'd destroyed, which was miraculously not turned into swiss cheese. She focused on it, and thought about absorbing it...and it vanished! It looked like someone was disintegrating it at extreme speed, kind of like the high energy barriers some domed cities used to clear away alien contaminants on vehicles on the Alpha Centauri colonies. Put a truck through, everything that isn't inside just gets vaporized. Very effective, if not very energy efficient.

She felt...strange. Schematics filled her mind, like when her implants were supplying her the data. She played around with them a bit. Their architecture was...insane. Those golems were clearly a mix of technology and magic, as entire chunks shouldn't even be working, and others looked so much like Earth tech it almost hurt.

"Are you okay?" Asked Emilia, concerned.

Alexandra shook her head.

"I'm fine. Let me absorb the rest, and then I'll try to find if I can make some better weapons."

After a minute or so of absorbing all of the golems, Alexandra was about to punch the wall again. All of their weapons were damaged, and she didn't even have the slightest idea on how to correct the schematics to make them workable again.

She took a deep breath, forcing herself to relax.

"Alright. Nothing we can use unfortunately. They're all too damaged."

Emilia looked slightly disappointed, but the more Alexandra thought about it, the more it made sense. How would whatever systems she's using know how the whole thing was built like if it was damaged? Sure, it could replicate what it dismantled, but only exactly as it was when it was dismantled. That might be a problem later down the road with this whole 'dungeon' thing. She couldn't just walk around in the cities, so most of the stuff she'd get would either have to come from adventurers, or she'd have to find an agent to buy them for her. The second one would be doable, but the first one might be a bit of a problem, adventurers usually only part with their gear when they're dead, and said gear usually gets damaged in the process of killing them. Especially since they would interfere with her influence apparently (so taking anything they accidentally drop probably wouldn't work).

"Come on, let's move."

They started making their way around the facility. After a bit they found a staircase descending into the depths, with a massive slab of the wall pulled inward.

"Wow. That's one way to make a secret door" Said Alexandra in wonder. No matter their faults, you couldn't say this place's builders were lacking vision. The wall section was a good three meters thick, and merged seemlessly with the rest.

"What do we do? Do we go in?" Asked Emilia.

Alexandra frowned.

"No. Too dangerous. My weapon is crap, I'm not used to this body, we don't have potions, and no backup in case something goes wrong."

"We can't just leave it open like that...And we can't build a dungeon like that, you wouldn't be able to expand!"

Alexandra went a bit further into the staircase, and looked down the middle. The staircase was built in a square pattern, with the stairs wrapped around a metal cage, with an opening at the top. She couldn't see the bottom exactly as it vanished in a haze of heat, making it impossible to judge distances precisely, nor could she see any cables, but then again they had gravity magic, and anti-grav elevators were pretty common on Earth. Even the cheap, mass produced Habitation Towers (nicknamed Hab Towers) used to house most of the population had them.

"I don't think so...this looks like a bunker access. This place probably goes way, way deeper. 300 meters, maybe more."

She thought about throwing a light down...until she suddenly realized that she had no light.

"Wait. There's no light here?"

"Uh, yes?"

Alexandra looked at her.

"How the fuck am I seeing you then?"

"Night vision? I don't know about how your body was built. For me, vampires can see in the dark and sense heat. Prevents you from stubbing your toes when you're out for a late night snack. Best trait ever."

Alexandra looked at her for a second, before realizing her companion was making a joke. She rolled her eyes to Emilia's laughter, and took a step back.

"Alright, go back out into the main complex. I'm going to collapse the corridor."

The vampire acquiesced, and immediately fell back. It was good to have someone that could actually follow orders without asking 15 questions in the middle of an emergency. Alexandra looked at the ceiling, and then joined her.

Alexandra might have specialized in automated mass production, code and autonomous systems as her engineering degrees, but this shouldn't be too hard. In those kind of situations, brute force solutions work as fine as a long and detailed plan.

She simply started absorbing the walls, then, as the corridor's structure began to weaken, she launched a few kinetic strikes. A massive rumble rose, as the corridor collapsed, filling the installation's primary corridors with a cloud of dust. Shortly afterwards, Alexandra emerged from that cloud to see a wincing Emilia. The Earth-born slapped her hands together a few times to clean the dust, before smiling as she simply absorbed all of the fine powder that was covering her. She'd have to move the wall part back into place later, when adventurers started coming in. But other than that, it was done.

"Well, that went well. Next up, the surface?"

"Yeah. Let's do that."

A few anticlimatic minutes spent walking through empty hallways later, Alexandra and Emilia stood in the embrasure of a rather large entrance, looking out into the desolate landscape.

Well shit, was Alexandra's first thought. She'd been in the Pine Gap exclusion zone, the massive wasteland in the Australian outback created by the Arcstar attack, and even it seemed more lively than this place.

The Arcstar attack was an attack made by the Outer System Republic (OSR), who, after being essentially abandoned and forgotten by the other nations of human space following the invention of the hyperdrive and the Alpha Centauri crisis, launched an attack on Earth using the Q-ship (a warship disguised as a merchant vessel) Arcstar. It made it's way to Earth's high orbit, where it fired 12 massive MIRV missiles (which themselves were closer to actually ships in their own right) towards the planet, each splitting in 36 warheads and even more decoys. Of the 432 warheads, 431 were intercepted by the Earth Orbital Defense Grid, and a single one made it through, hitting the Indian-Oceanian Commonwealth military base of Pine Ridge (an old US installations taken over by the Australian military during the formation of the United Interstellar States). It became famous as the one and only attack to ever succeed passing Earth's ODG, albeit with disputable results. The warhead, whose yield was estimated to be around 300 Megatons of TNT, completely annihilated the military installation and the nearby city of Alice Springs. The warhead also seemed to contain vast quantities of cobalt, creating extremely extensive and long lasting radioactive fallout.

Thus, the Pine Gap exclusion zone was set up, with a 350 kilometers in radius area centered on the old Pine Gap base, forbidden from access by the public. Needless to say, having a 300 Mt high radiation warhead detonating in the middle of the Australian outback hardly made the place less desolate.

Alexandra had been there a decade ago, sent there as part of the EuroFed investigation team sent to judge the impact of the detonation and fallout on Earth's biosphere, and less officially to investigate just what the IOC had going on there to justify throwing so much firepower at. The answers had been 'minimal' and 'fucked if we know', respectively, in more polite terms of course.

But even then, there had been some life. Here there was...nothing. Nothing at all. Not any movement, not even a dessissecated bush or cactus

"This is...Much worse than I expected."

Emilia tilted her head.

"What do you mean? I told you no life could exist without mana. Well, not indefinitely anyway."

Alexandra shook her head softly. She...hadn't truly believed her. She'd expected that there would at least be some desert plants at least, moss, something! Instead, everything was just dead, any sign of life long washed away by the abrasive sand.

She gave another look to the surrounding area. It did remind her a lot of the Australian outback. Oh, there looked like there were dunes further off into the distance, but mostly it was dry ground covered in dust, and what seemed to be an assortment of mesas. One of which they had emerged from. Possibly remains of ancient buildings, or they had just built their installation in a piece of solid rock.

Alexandra looked at the entrance, taking a few steps back to get a better view. It was...rather unremarkable really. The entrance was a simple square cut into the mesa's rock, lined with massive support pillars. There were also two ornamental pillars a few meters on each side of the entrance, the one on the left was destroyed, the other on the right looked worse for wear, but essentially intact. Alexandra looked at it. It was...odd, the pillar seemed to be topped by an ugly, dust encrusted metal statue...

Then she suddenly realized it wasn't a statue.

It was a turret.

This thing was (probably, given that there was no emplacement for a gunner behind it) an automated turret. Probably with a machine gun given the caliber of the stubby barrel.

"Hey, Emilia? Why hasn't this been looted?"

The vampire looked at her, broken from her trance of standing outside into the light and just taking in the sun's radiance.

"Mmmhhh? Oh, these things? No one tries to take them, they explode if you try, and the scrap isn't worth it. Why?"

Alexandra blinked.

"So...they're fairly common?"

"Yep. Most Great Night installations or ruins have them. No one is really sure what their purpose is, although some say they guard the ruins."

Alexandra slowly nodded.

"I see, well, in that case..."

She started walking towards the turret.

"No, wait!"

She froze as Emilia gripped her arm, stopping her.

"What? I can absorb it without an issue, right?"

Emilia shook her head.

"That's not the problem. There are regular sweeps of theses ruins, in case something wakes up, or some scavengers try to dig into the ruins, and they make good resting points in the wasteland for travelling adventurers that can't afford to take an airship or use the teleporter network. Chances are, someone will discover your dungeon before your influence reaches the entrance. These places have been thoroughly documented, and it might lead people to wonder exactly why this disappeared right when you arrived..."

Alexandra blinked.

"Ah, I see. They'd suspect a moving body. Since otherwise it would detonate."

Emilia nodded.

That...could be resolved. A controlled detonation might cover it up and make it look like it detonated...except that Alexandra knew very little about magic that could cause explosions, and she might not be able to replicate the detonation before adventurers stumbled into her. Plus, there was no guarantee they couldn't recognize the magical explosions as fake, due to residues or something.

She sighed. Well, there goes that treasure trove, she thought. An automated turret, however damaged, would be incredibly useful, especially in figuring out how to make gun like projectile weapons. Well, she'll get it later.

"Alright. So, what now?" She said, looking unblinking at the sun. It was in the afternoon, and the shadow of the mesa was slowly creeping towards them as the sun started moving towards the horizon, behind the giant outcrop of rock.

"Now?" Emilia cackled. "Now we build a dungeon."