Chapter 20

Red Sands Desert, Contested Border Region.

Shadow-sword rally point.

"Tenmaki!" Said a voice in the darkness. It was more of a hushed whisper than a shout really, but the urgency -and tension- was there.

"Etherior!" Answered the sergeant. He waited for a split second, then a small light crystal activated, beaming straight at his face. He covered his eyes, cursing internally.

"Sarge? Is that you?"

"Yes! It's me! Now get that fucking light extinguished before I shove it up your arse!"

A distinctive chuckle answered him.

"That's sarge alright. Sorry boss. Lapis is just a bit...nervous, that's all."

"It's fine." Said sergeant Ostror Hektor, codename 'Diamond' as he walked into the small encampment. "Made yourself at home I see."

The one who had chuckled, Ruby, shrugged.

"Might as well. We're too far for them to have a decent line of sight on us, and we need somewhere to rest. Besides, you took your sweet time."

Diamond winced.

"Onyx was...unused to wasteland travel I'm afraid." He turned around, and nodded at the engineer, who had just finished saluting Lapis. "No offense."

"None taken sarge." Said the engineer as he saluted him, and Diamond had to suppress a sigh. Onyx was a nice guy, and a good engineer, but he wasn't used to the military, or it's protocols. Hence why when in doubt, he saluted.

Given the fact that he constantly second guessed himself or his actions, except when it came to direct engineering problems, he was more or less saluting all the time. Everyone had used to poke fun at him, but the poor bastard was so dense he just saluted you again. The rest of his men had been so confused they're just stopped messing with him altogether.

"Right. Anyway. I see that you're all there." He looked at Saphire, who simply made a two-finger salute, before returning to his hushed discussion with his ranger.

Normally, he would have frowned upon such casualness, but they were in the field, and quite frankly Saphire was just doing his job. He was the one leading the 'fire team', a term the Colonel had borrowed from the Tark Hegemony Army, consisting of everyone that could be more or less considered an information gathering or infiltration specialist. In other terms, spies and thieves. That amounted to 4 people, plus Saphire, so 5 in total. Then he had Ruby, who lead what could be considered his 'muscle'. It wasn't literal, but they were his more conventional combat forces. They were the ones he called upon when someone needed to be 'invited' for a talk, or needed to disappear. Or anything that needed brute force really. That was 5 people, 6 including Saphire. Then there were the specialists, which for this operation was just Onyx.

He'd been a bit confused when the Colonel had ordered him to bring the engi guy -he wasn't even an architect, even less an artificer, what use could he be?- but after thinking about it it made sense. Divines knew most of his men weren't stupid, but they weren't necessarily geniuses either. Plus, their training was in getting info or killing people, or a combination of both, not architecture or machine construction. Onyx was there more or less to assess what the dungeon could offer, and point them out towards what they needed to sabotage in the soon-to-be dungeon town to make themselves royal pains in the arse. Diamond would rather have a true city planner, an architect, or heck, an artificer, but Onyx was all he had. That was fine, he was used to do with what he had on hand, not what he wanted.

"Yeah." Answered Ruby as she whetted her dagger. She stopped for a second, gave the blade a critical look, before sheathing it. "So, what's up?"

"The sky, obviously." Answered one of her men, chuckling slightly, quickly followed by his comrades...whose laughter died as Diamond looked at them.

He didn't even look angry, just...disappointed. But that was enough. The joker, Firatite, bowed his head.

"Sorry sir."

Diamond nodded, accepting the apology, and went back to Ruby, who looked slightly annoyed, but resigned.

"Interruptions aside, not much. I did manage to get some recon on the ship on patrol. I assume everyone here did?"

Everyone nodded. When in a massive desert, there wasn't much to look at, and a giant, illuminated airship slowly flying in circles was about as eye catching as it got.

"Does someone recognize it? Or at least the type?"

Someone -Ludlamite, if he wasn't mistaken- raised his hand, and he nodded towards him.

"Didn't recognize the ship itself sir, but that's a heavy cruiser for sure. An expeditionary heavy cruiser, I'd say."

Yep, definitely Ludlamite, thought Diamond.

"How can you be sure?"

"There are some...common characteristics. Namely, it's big, relatively lightly armed, and everything it has in broadsides is to kill monsters, not ships." The soldier shrugged. "It could be just one of them monster hunter ships the pinguies use sir, but I don't buy it. The pinguies can't build airships worth a damn, and their monster hunters are just dingy boats compared to this one. No, that one's foreign built. No idea from where, but whoever made it knew what they were doing." He shuddered. "I don't know much about siege weaponry sarge, but those are some big ballistas. I wouldn't want to get caught in one of their broadsides. But that's not the worst one."

Diamond raised an eyebrow.

"It's not?"

"No, it isn't." Answered Saphire as he sat down in the circle that had formed with Ruby's soldiers. Diamond looked up in surprise, and saw the person Saphire had been talking with -Neptunite, he thought, it was hard to tell in the dark- slink away. Saphire smiled. "Sorry, overheard your little conversation." He turned towards Ludlamite. "You're talking about the other big bastard? The one with the cannons?"

Diamond straightened up in alarm, and looked at Ludlamite, who winced, and nodded.

"Yeah. Big bastard. Not as big as the other, but...big. Light cruiser, probably. Had cannons on the upper deck. Lots of cannons. And not those crappy bombards the ERA is happy to call artillery. I'm speaking real cannons."

"Tarkians?" Said Diamond softly.

Ludlamite shook his head.

"No sir. No way. Those were definitely not breech loaders. And the Tarkians don't use muzzle loaders anymore." He frowned. "It might have gotten it's cannons in Tark, but it sure as hell isn't a Tarkian vessel. Mercs? Maybe, I don't know." He chuckled. "Tark doesn't exactly tell us who they're selling their cannons to after all!"

An answering chorus of chuckles went around the group. As much as the Colonel had wanted to avoid the members of the team knowing who they were working for, it didn't take a genius to put two and two together. The Republic itself was the only logical client. Well, not quite, there were several Patriarchs and Matriarchs who could have used them as their private troubleshooters for their missions, but they were the Republic's leaders, so it more or less amounted to the same thing in the end.

"I concur with Lud." Simply said Saphire. "That's not a Tarkian vessel. Armed in Tark? Sure, probably. But Tarkian flagged? No. This is a warship, too many gunports for it to be anything else. And we all know how 'mercenary' the Hegemony's mercs are."

There were grim nods in the circle. They weren't exactly proud of what they did as essentially a Republic black ops team, but at least they didn't send entire squadron of ships masquerading as mercs or pirates to pillage, burn or murder entire towns and villages. The hegemony might be screaming it's innocence, but there was no way that a group of pirates would 'just so happen' to attack a major ERA base, raze it to the ground while setting the city it was protecting alight, and not bother to pillage anything, all with cutting edge hegemony weapons and military level discipline. If that was the case, then Diamond was an actual gemstone masquerading as a man and his mother was a unicorn.

In any case, it meant that the Hegemony wouldn't use half measures in this case. No doubt that meant that a full scale warship was en route to 'represent them' and open 'trade talks' (not mentioning sticking it to the Republic if they could), but this wasn't it.

"That...might pose a problem." Diamond said slowly.

"Why?" Diamond looked at Ruby, and the corporal shrugged. "Why would it be a problem? We're here to fuck up their infrastructure, kill a few of their leaders, and nick the core if we can. We're not here to blow up warships. Plus, what are they going to do? Fire a broadside in the middle of their camp?" She snicked. "Fat chance of that. No, they aren't exactly threats. Their crews and marines? Sure, maybe, but they aren't trained to look for infiltrators. I'm more worried about whatever they use as a police force there."

Diamond slowly shook his head.

"I'm not worried about them attacking us...I'm worried about what it says for their backing. The Kingdom wouldn't send that much firepower without it flying the royal standard. And none of them do, correct?"

Everyone nodded.

"So that means they aren't hired by the crown. They're not flying a crest either, meaning they weren't hired by nobles either -if they even had the money to do so in the first place-, that means someone else is backing this....someone powerful enough to scrape up two warships, including one that's armed with enough firepower to level a small town if it wanted to." He looked up, and met Ruby's gaze. "And that's what worries me. If they could afford to send two damned warships, what else could they afford to send? For that matter, it's only the first wave. The first, hastily scrounged up wave. There's no telling what else may be coming behind them."

Ruby suddenly looked very thoughtful, and Diamond nodded.

"Alright, that's enough speculation for now. Everyone go get a good nice night of sleep. We'll have plenty of time to think about it tomorrow. Ruby, you set the watch. Saphire? I want a preliminary report by noon tomorrow of what we're looking at in that town. And focus on their leadership if possible. The infrastructure they can rebuild, they can't replace their leaders. Well, not without some issues at least."

Everyone nodded, and leapt into action, and Diamond watched them with pride as they efficiently went about his orders.

So why, oh why, couldn't he dismiss the feeling of dread that was gripping his stomach?

*****

"You know, they could have just fireballed it. I wonder what's stopping them." Said Alexandra around a mouthful of chips, before taking a gulp of scented water to wash down the food. She had no idea where it went, but she didn't have any need to...expulse it, nor had she felt hunger or fullness since her transformation.

"That wouldn't be very fair. Plus, they're here to evaluate your golems and the difficulty of your rooms. They can't exactly do that if they, how did you say it again? 'Nuke everything in sight'?"

Alexandra smiled and nodded, before picking up another chip, and offering the bowl to Emilia. The vampire girl delicately picked one up, and bit off a fair chunk of it. The way she ate them in half bites was adorable. Alexandra took back the bowl as she popped the salted slice of fried potato into her mouth. She had no idea why the mage had some sort of bag of these things inside of his clothes, but she was grateful. She'd missed snacking on stuff, and quite frankly travel biscuits might be edible, but it didn't mean they were particularly appetizing or tasteful.

Plus, Emilia liked it, and that counted for a lot in the Earth-born's eyes. Besides, they had been at this for hours now, watching the adventurers work their way through the dungeon. They deserved a slight break. Not that they stopped paying attention to the screens of course.

Speaking of which, Alexandra looked to the side briefly, at the screen she'd set up to relay Jared's vision, and watched the resurrected adventurer intently. After eating and drinking, he had dragged himself up into a sitting position, his back against the wall, taken a classic lotus mediation position, and closed his eyes. Since then, her influence had started getting really wonky near him. Like, more than usual. She was gaining even more mana from his presence -somehow-, but it was like the disruption area he carried with him had been demultiplied. That had probably to do with the 'cultivation technique' he was using. According to Emilia, they were a weird form of enchantments that allowed you to directly interact with your core. Her books were adamant that was what was causing the increased disruption, although Alexandra would rather investigate further. If intruders had a way to restrict her powers even more, she needed to know all about it.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

She didn't even want to check what number the new item had on the list. Last time she had checked she had gone well over ten thousand entries on her TO-DO list. She really needed something to organize it. Emilia was awesome, but she was no AI secretary, nor should she waste her valuable time on it.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

Oh, the irony.

Emilia looked at her sideways as she chuckled.

"What's so funny?"

"Nothing, just a thought. Anyway, you think they'll make it to CQ?"

Emilia tilted her head, thought for a second, and nodded.

"Yeah. They'll probably send the steel ranked back. That or she'll get killed. But the four copper ones are good. Really good. They'll make it. Now, whether or not they'll win is another matter."

Alexandra nodded. She'd seriously worried if she had made CQ too powerful for the first floor. Hence why she was planning to start on her second one soon, and move her down. Sure, CQ herself wasn't that lethal...but in conjunction with 12 Palatial Guard Mk2s and 2 Royal Guardians (18 and 3 if a particular outcome of the Shrine of War was rolled), she didn't need to be. They were tough, very tough, and the royal guardians in particular packed one hell of a punch with their one use power beam bracelets. And as long as a single one was still in working order, CQ was effectively invulnerable. That was what made her so powerful. Oh, and the teleports, but even those had a limit. Not in uses, more that once the enemy adapted, they weren't that powerful anymore.

"I think I'll let CQ handle this on her own. She needs the experience...and I don't want to make it too hard on them."

Emilia nodded.

"Fair enough. She'll make us proud. I've seen her practice."

"So have I. I sparred with her, remember?"

"Right."

They watched in companiable silence as the adventurers reorganized after their latest battle. Then Alexandra tilted her head.

"By the way, why is copper higher than steel? I mean, it'd make sense back home, but aren't you like, medieval technology here?"

Emilia blinked.

"Right, we haven't done the briefing yet. It's...complicated. But no, we aren't all 'medieval'."

Alexandra looked at her advisor, puzzled.

"Then why-"

Emilia held up her hand.

"That's a...very long discussion. Let's have it after their delve is over. If nothing else, we should have a day while they collate their data."

"Okay."

She went back to looking at the screen, and slowly nodded as a small dispute burst out between the adventurers. Looked like they indeed were going to send the steel rank back. She reached for another potato slice. It should be fun to watch.

*****

"But-"

"No. I'm sorry lass, but this is becoming too dangerous."

The steel ranked adventurer opened her mouth, then closed it. She looked about to simply storm forward, and damn the consequences, but a quick look at Sorior, casually playing with a serrated blade juuuust on the edge of her vision seemed to bring her back to reason. She took a deep breath.

"Please. Sir."

Artok shook his head.

"Sorry, no. You'll get your cut. And your friend back. But we can't bring you in further. No offense, but you're more of a liability than an asset at this point. You'll only put everyone in danger by staying."

The woman looked vaguely rebellious, before sighing.

"Promise you'll get him back?"

Artok patted her on the shoulder. She must have been more attached to the mage than he thought. Then again, most adventurers were very attached to their party members.

"I promise." He chuckled. "Now go before Sorior becomes impatient and simply drags you by the scruff of your neck."

The adventurer let out a small laugh, and nodded at Sorior.

"Sorry, I didn't mean to be so...obdurate."

"It's fine." Answered the elven ranger. "Now, after you." He said as he gestured towards the hallway they had come from.

The steel ranked adventurer stepped forward, then looked back, and Artok nodded. She nodded back, and then disappeared down the hallway, quickly followed by Sorior.

Once they were out of earshot, Artok sighed, and looked up as Elahyl patted him on the shoulder.

"Come on, at least the girl listened in the end. Plus, she was worried about her comrade, not glory. Maybe we should look into more definitive recruitment after this. Adventurers like this are rare. Well, apart from us of course."

Artok smiled, and shook his head, quickly followed by Elistria.

"Of course." He took a deep breath, and looked at the hallway...and the golems he could see at the end of it. It was the last room before the end of the dungeon, and according to the assessment team's report, there were 12 of each golem types in it. Saying that it would be a tricky fight would be one hell of an understatement. "I think we're going to need some serious area of effect for this one, if only to clear the shaft. Blizzard?"

Elahyl frowned, thinking furiously for a few seconds.

"I'd rather not. The area is...unpredictable. Plus, they don't seem very vulnerable to cold. Thunderstorm's area is smaller...but it's more reliable, and I think electricity will do just fine in this case. Plus, well, I could use flame-winds, but I'd rather avoid an AoE fire spell for now."

Artok nodded, his eyes grim.

"Yeah. Well." He looked at the high elf mage. "I think thunderstorm will do just fine. We'll need the crowd control. I'll try to get as much attention as I can, and tank the hits. But I don't know how much I'll be able to take. If worst comes to worst, cast on top of me." He smiled at her suddenly worried expression. "I can take a thunderstorm. So can Elistria for that matter. I don't think they can however. Some will almost certainly go for you directly as well, so Elistria, you'll have to bodyguard her."

The high elf fighter/healer nodded, and Artok smiled.

"I'll have Sorior do his usual thing. You know, throwing pointy stuff everywhere. In the meantime, while he is off to the entrance, I think we should take a bit of a rest." He looked down the corridor again. "I think we'll be needing it. Don't worry, I'll bring him up to speed before we head out."

The others nodded, and a few minutes later Sorior came back to them eating and resting.

"Awww, didn't wait for good old me?" He said, a hand on his chest, mockingly hurt.

Artok shook his head, and threw him a sandwich, which the ranger caught in midair.

"We all know you practically inhale your food Sor. This is just giving you a handicap so we can try to keep up. Maybe we'll beat you this time."

The ranger snorted.

"Ah! You wish!" He said before sitting down, and devouring his sandwich.

Artok watched in almost morbid fascination. How could the elf even breathe? He wasn't sure it could be called truly eating, absorption would be a better word. He'd seen starving direwolves eat more sedately than Sorior did.

He shook his head, and went back to his own food. A few minutes later, after having refreshed themselves, and brought Sorior up to date, they arrayed themselves for combat, and walked through the corridor. Sorior carefully guided them around the pressure plates and the pit traps, well, more jumping over the latter than anything else really. They quickly arrived in front of a door on their left. That, according the assessment team, who had asked the dungeon, was an 'altar room'. Not quite a challenge room, it apparently modified the difficulty of the next room by rolling a random effect. They entered the room, and looked at the altar, who was topped with a button labeled 'Yes'. There was an inscription on the altar itself:

'Do you wish to gamble upon the tides of conflict?'

Artok looked to the side at Sorior.

"Feeling lucky?" He said.

The elf smiled back, and nodded.

"Oh yeah! Leave it to me!"

He walked forward, and pressed the button on the altar. For a few seconds, nothing happened, then...

They all jumped back and readied their weapons as the room shook slightly, and a rumble sounded from down the hallway. Then, massive letters of light appeared over the altar.

'The way is clear, but the greater foe grows stronger' It read.

"Well this isn't ominous at all." Simply said Elistria.

Artok frowned, and stepped back, before looking down the hallway...and seeing not a single golem.

"I...I think I know what happened."

The rest of his team gathered around him, and he gestured at the now empty room at the end of the hallway.

"I think we just cleared that room...but reinforced the boss'."

They looked at each other grimly. They weren't looking forward to that room, but further reinforcing a boss they knew could teleport, and could not be harmed until it's minions were killed....

That could be bad. That could be very, very, very bad.

They made their way in silence down the hallway, dodging the traps, and arrived in a very much deserted room. They made their way a bit deeper, and surely enough, they were in the hallway leading to the boss room. A quick peek around the last corner amply confirmed that. It also made Artok's gut clench. The way the boss had met his gaze instantly, and tracked him as he retreated had been...terrifying.

"Alright. I think it's time to put some of these to use." Said Artok as he extracted a handful of potions and elixirs from his pouch, and the rest of the team nodded, grabbing their own.

They all had a few 'enhancement kits'. They were a series of potions they pre-separated into different pouches before missions. They had them divided by tiers, usually for varying levels of costs and difficulty, but this time they went straight for the maximum. He had a feeling they were going to need it.

They all drank their respective potions and elixirs, enhancing themselves. Then Artok took a deep breath, and looked at the others.

"All right. We're going to adapt the strategy slightly. I'll try to focus the golems on me. Sor, keep the boss off of Ela and Elis. Elis, run in, you'll need to help me keep the golems' attention, we can't afford to let them overrun us. Use your AoE spells like we discussed Ela, we're going to need them badly. Ready?"

They all nodded back in unison.

"Then let's GO! CHHHAAAAAAAARRRRRGGGGGEEEEEEEEEE!"