Chapter 27

Red Sands Desert, Contested Border Region.

Dungeon Factory, 2nd Floor.

"Watch out!"

Emilia ducked as a spider golem went flying over her head.

"Thank you!"

"No problem vampy."

Alexandra smiled as her advisor rolled her eyes, and gave her a very exasperated look, before going back to the demonstration as the vampire girl casted a ward of protection around them, clearly cautious of being 'far enough' to avoid 'any danger'. They were currently on top of one of the ruins of the second floor, a fair distance away from the moat and the water temple.

They had decided to test out the spider golem's efficacy by pitting them against a bunch of legionnaires. And Alexandra was of the opinion that tests in a clean room were all well and good, but in certain cases, nothing beat a good old wargame. Or, in this case, a pitched, actual battle.

It looked like the legionnaires were winning, for now. They were using their shield effectively to deflect the leaping spider golems -hence why one had almost hit Emilia-, but they were having trouble dealing with the swarms that did make it. In fact, it looked like they were steadily getting overrun.

Granted, even the spider golems that survived their jumps were pretty dinged up -she needed to find a better metal to make their bodies in-, but they were simple enough to keep working more or less as intended even after impacting. Which was essentially to use the wrought iron pseudo-spikes/blades she had added to to the tip of their legs to turn whatever they were attacking into ribbons. It wasn't that great against armor, but it did the trick if the spider golems could find exposed parts.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

Uh, strange. She was sure there already was an item on the list to upgrade her golems' body materials...but maybe her software had made a separate one for the spider golems.

Her rumination about her TO-DO list came to halt as Emilia pointed at the battlefield.

"Look!"

Alexandra looked up, and smiled as the legionnaires' line broke. Until now, they had been fighting in a pretty good formation, since programming golems to stand side to side and fight with spears was fairly easy, but the spider golems had created enough holes to infiltrate the formation, and now the legionnaires were breaking up into small knots of soldiers, fighting back to back...which just made them more vulnerable.

It was pretty clear that the writing was on the wall, and after a few minutes, the legionnaires were wiped out, and the swarm of spider golems wandered aimlessly for a minute or so, automatically patrolling for remaining hostiles, before going back in the water.

"Well, that was conclusive. It looks pretty good."

Emilia shrugged.

"Against our golems, yes. Adventurers are slightly different. What if a mage throws a lightning bolt at the moat?"

Alexandra winced.

"Fair enough. I'm not sure quite how to prevent that though."

Emilia looked at the moat for a few seconds, and Alexandra gave her a sideway look. It was unusual to see the vampire girl thinking this obviously, and she looked cute during it. Then again, Emilia looked cute while doing almost anything.

"Alright, I have an idea." She finally said, turning to face Alexandra.

"Shoot."

"Instead of preventing them from doing that...how about we reward those that don't?"

Alexandra opened her mouth, and closed it.

"That's...brilliant. Thank you Emilia!" She decided that for once, praising her advisor was more important than teasing her, and refrained from patting her on the head or using her nickname. That concept -probably- wouldn't have occured to her. She'd had some experience with it of course, it was easier for governments and corporations to get people to do things by proposing bonuses or rewards in some form or another, rather than just ordering them around, but she was more used to the military way of doing things. Which was giving orders and kicking asses until things took shape.

"Now the big question is...what do we offer as a reward?" Asked Emilia.

"Well, the golems would be a reward of their own, but...I suppose that wouldn't be enough?" Alexandra sighed as Emilia shook her head. "Well...How about a treasure chest? I know, it's cliché, but a chest that unlocks if no electric spell was used and all the spider golems have been neutralized would do the trick."

Emilia nodded.

"Indeed it would." She smiled. "That means we get to design your first loot pool! And the chest!"

Oh gods, thought Alexandra.

"Can't we just have a stone box?" She said meekly.

The look Emilia got her wasn't even angry, just thoroughly confused.

"What would be the point in that? Now, we need to-"

Well, at least she tried.

*****

Allya's eyes were dark as she contemplated the map.

She was fresh out of a security briefing from Anders, and things...weren't good. Not only the security chief was -rightly so- pissed off, they'd also lost almost a dozen people, and had that many heavily wounded and stuck in the healers' tent for a while. Of the dead ones, they were able to only bring back 3, thanks to them dying from bolts with area of effect attacks and not having been hit by the soul sealing ones. Apparently there did seem to be a limit to their enemies' resources, since area of effect soul sealing enchantments were possible...but expensive as all hell, and actively banned by most nations. And not the 'boo-hooo it's baaaad don't use it!' banned, the 'we will send an ATRB hunter-killer teams after unlicensed producers' banned.

Still, she'd lost a good chunk of her own forces, and had been forced to ask Calder for some backup. To the orc's credit, he'd actually started scheduling for lending her additional forces before she'd even asked him. And, as much as it pained her to admit, his marines were much better at ranged combat than her own forces were.

But it was very clear that their current tactics weren't working. They couldn't post enough guards anywhere to even repel an attack, and the enemy was too slippery to let her quick reaction forces pin them down and eliminate them. It was fairly clear that without the sergeant that toured the mesas -she'd made a note to make personally sure his pension to his family was paid, with a nice bonus on top- the commandos would have ambushed her response forces and wiped them out. Hell, it would have probably happened anyway without lieutenant Estar's lightning quick decisions. He'd managed to engage the enemy before they could properly organize, and while it had almost cost him his squad -and his life, which to his credit seemed to be the least of his concerns compared to the former-, it had also allowed Anders and his men a far better fighting chance, and probably significantly reduced fatalities on their side overall.

She needed to switch gears...and the only option she could see would be a gamble. A thought out, logical gamble, but a gamble nonetheless.

Pyn isn't going to like that...she thought to herself, and surprised her how much the elf's opinion mattered to her...even in such matters. The obnoxiously well endowed elf was a civilian after all.

She shook her head, and refocused on the map.

Well, there's no way around it, she thought, and took a deep breath, before opening the tent flap.

"Milady?" Asked Valker, standing guard at the administration tent's entrance.

"I need you to send a runner for captain Anders, captain Calder, guilmaster Starvak, and lady Windwrath please. Tell them we're having a strategy meeting."

Valker slammed his fist against his heart.

"Of course milady, right away!"

*****

"You want to WHAT?!?" Asked Pyn.

"I want to ambush them. Pick the most likely place where they'll strike next, and concentrate everything we've got there to stack the odds in our favour and wipe them out." Allya looked at the people gathered around the map table. "It's the only chance we have. Otherwise they'll just keep picking our men off until there's no one left!"

Anders looked grim, Calder's expression was unreadable, but Starvak was stroking his beard thoughtfully.

"That's insane!" Pyn looked around, and her anger started to subside as she saw the others' expression. "It's...it's insane, right?"

Anders sighed.

"I hate to admit it, but...she's right. We can't continue like this. We're losing too many people, too fast."

He turned towards Calder, who silently nodded, before turning back to Pyn.

"So her plan makes sense...But," He turned to Allya. "I am not going to allow you to join the ambush force milady. No way in hell." Allya opened her mouth, and froze as he held up his hand. "Don't argue with me over this, you'll lose. You're too important to risk in this. Gods, you're not even fully healed yet!"

Allya shifted, her expression letting slip some of her anger, despite her best effort. One of her greatest flaws was that she was vindicative as all hell...which had lead her to a duel field in the Eris Empire. As well as her recent, headlong charge into the enemy.

She took a deep breath, and Anders sighed.

"Alright, I can let you come, but....you'll stay on the sideline, with the command group."

Allya looked up, and nodded. She knew he was throwing her a bone, but she was willing to take it. It would be something, and it would prevent a fight. Besides, if she went to the front lines, so would Pyn....and she wasn't sure how she'd react to see her wounded again. Probably very impulsively, and violently. Which would be...less than optimal in a situation requiring careful tactics and calculated manoeuvers.

"Thank you captain." She looked at Pyn, and the elf sighed, crossing her arms under her chest, inadvertently pushing her her breasts. Her gaze strayed downwards...

No, bad Allya, she thought to herself.

"Fine. But I'm coming with you!" Said the elf.

"Of course." Simply said the baroness, nodding, before turning towards Starvak. "You look like you have something to add, guildmaster."

The dwarf smiled.

"Ah, yes, indeed." His smile turned positively devious, and suddenly Allya remembered that he was the dwarf that had bamboozled 3 different armies, and lead them to fight each other while he ran away. "It occurred to me that there could be ways to...enhance the effectiveness of your ambush. See, I happened to bring with me some...interesting items, that aren't guild property, and that I could...loan to you. In exchange for some favors later down the road of course."

Allya warrily nodded. She was all to aware of the kind of things he could extract from her as a repayment for those 'favors'. At least she was sure they would more have to do with economics, and probably a bit of leniency on some adventurers on the law side than anything else, and would be fairly reasonable. Still, she was probably going to regret it down the road. But right now she had too many potential problems to turn the offer down.

"Of course. Go ahead guildmaster, what are those items you speak of?"

*****

"There, done!" Said Alexandra as she showed the chest to Emilia.

The vampire girl looked at it critically, slowly moving around it, before nodding. The chest was intricately carved, with it's sides depicting scenes of adventurers fighting leapin spider golems, and the top showing the crossed sword and torch of the adventurers guild, surrounded by a gear, representing Alexandra.

"Alright, that will do."

Alexandra hid a sigh of relief, and gave the vampire girl her best smile. Which she didn't seem to buy for a single second.

Right, we're emotion linked. Fuck. She thought to herself, and Emilia giggled at her expression.

"Come on, don't be like that! It's fine, we both have differing opinions and personalities. It's a good thing in a dungeon advisor and dungeon core relationship. It breeds creativity and invention, and makes sure we can look at things critically."

"Right."

At least the vampire girl couldn't divine her thoughts, which was good. Last thing she needed was to have hear some of her more...esotheric ideas.

Or some of my greater plans, she thought to herself. There was a reason the legionnaires were programmed to fight into large formations after all.

She sighed.

"Well, at least it's done." She looked at her advisor. "We are done with this, right?"

"Yes, of course."

"Excellent! Now, as for what to fill it with..." Alexandra quickly plunged into dungeon mode, and started sorting through some of the stuff she'd earmarked for loot. A few thoughts was enough to materialize them on top of the chest, neatly lined up. "There. What do you think?"

Emilia blinked as the items just...popped into being, and bent over slightly to look them over.

"I mean...they look good, and it's reasonable, but...isn't it a bit too much?"

"Well, I mean, I intend to have only a few spawn at one time, based on a random generator."

"Ah! Okay, that's good." She snapped her fingers. "Hey, why not link it to the password? You know, that way people smart enough can start cataloging the loot and compare it to the combination. That could be interesting, especially since this area is pretty challenging to begin with."

Alexandra blinked.

"That's...an excellent idea actually!" She looked at the row of items. "Although I still think we'd need to avoid guaranteed spawn, because even then it'd be too much."

"Fair enough."

Alexandra looked over the lineup critically. There was a dozen of them, all of which were pretty generic, but all should constitute good loot in some way or another.

The first one was a set of standard golem electronics (magitronics? There was still so much she didn't understand about these things), their brain, so to speak. That was followed by a wrought iron shortsword, like those of the legionnaires, then 4 different low grade potions, one of healing, another of recovery, which was more or less a more effective healing potion, but which took some time for the effect to fully take hold. Like something augmenting HP regen instead of just refilling your HP bar in a video game. Then a dexterity enhancing potion, and a strength enhancing potion.

Fairly standard stuff so far. Then came the slightly more precious items. Another 4 items were various alchemical components the mage she'd resurrected had been carrying around. Emilia had checked in her books, and they were useful in a variety of potions. Just to be sure that it would be worth something, Alexandra had made a fair quantity of each for every 'loot spawn'. Then came a scroll of lightning arcs, which was apparently one of the lowest grade electricity spells. It was pretty good, all things considered, and she had taken the time to have it create a few arcs instead of a single one, to boost it's power a bit. It was surprisingly similar to creating her old mudamudamuda spell, all things considered.

Last, but not the least, was a bracelet of power beam. It wasn't quite the ones her Royal Guardians used, since she'd had to tone down the power significantly to avoid the bracelet literally melting down with a single shot. It still couldn't be used multiple times, but at least it shouldn't encase the arm of the poor bastard firing it in white hot, or even outright melted metal. Still wouldn't be very comfortable to fire if you wore it on your skin, but she couldn't exactly prevent adventurers from being stupid. Still, she'd engraved a big 'WARNING: GETS HOT' on the bracelet, just in case.

"Well, I think....I think guaranteed spawn for the potions, golem bits and sword is more than fair. Then....Mmmhh, let's say 75% chance for the ingredients, then 50% for the scroll, and 25% for the bracelet. That should do it."

Emilia giggled, and Alexandra looked at her questioningly.

"You really like things to be...evenly spaced out, don't you?"

Alexandra looked at her for a second, then shrugged.

"Yeah. I mean, having some degree of OCD is inevitable in engineering. Especially space engineering. Plus, you're one to talk! Remember the entrance pillars?"

Emilia huffed, and crossed her arms under her chest.

"It was an aesthetic decision! It didn't look right otherwise!"

"Riiiiight." Alexandra smiled, and patted the vampire girl's head, before withdrawing her hand, laughing at the look on her advisor's face. "Alright, alright! I believe you!"

That seemed to calm Emilia down....if only a bit.

"Good." The vampire girl looked up at the moat. "So...how are you planning on having adventurers avoid breaking into it exactly?"

Alexandra blinked.

"Why would I need to? I mean I can just spawn the loot if they win, after all....Oh." She said as she started thinking about it. "Their interference. It will prevent me from doing that, won't it?"

Emilia nodded.

"Yep. That means that you'll have to pregenerate the loot...and prevent them from getting to it without doing the associated challenge."

The Earth-born tapped her chin as she thought.

"Why not booby-trap it? Like, if they open it, a fireball pops out."

"That's a way to do it, but they might just take the chest, to disarm any traps once they're done."

Alexandra laughed. Then froze as she realized her advisor wasn't joking.

"Wait, you're serious?"

The vampire girl simply nodded, and Alexandra gestured at the massive, stone chest in disbelief.

"How? This thing has to weigh, like, what, half a ton?"

"And so what? Have you even considered the weight of all of your golems, the ones the assault guild took with them?"

Alexandra opened her mouth, and closed it. She did a quick and dirty calculations, and even taking only 100 golems, with the volume of an average humans, and saying they were more or less made out of bronze, which was pretty much the metal they were made of for some reason. Or at least something close to it in density and resilience. She came at...

Around 50 tons.

Gods, that much?!?

Alexandra gulped. No kidding everyone was so hot for dungeons. 50 tons of metal was...a fair bit of the monthly production of a medieval era mine complex. And by a fair bit she meant all of it. Yes, they had far better mining processes than on Earth thanks to magic, but still.

It was still nothing compared to what she was used to -the asteroid smelter that fed the European Federation Aurore star yards output nearly 500 tons of steel and other refined alloys every minute-, but it was impressive nonetheless.

"O-Okay, fair enough. How about bolting it down to the floor?"

"They'll just rip it off."

Alexandra sighed, and massaged her eyes. Maybe she should just rename the adventurers 'magpies'. Or slap the blood raven symbol on them.

"Then, how about a trap that isn't contained in the chest? If the chest is taken, or opened before the challenge is done..." She looked up, and smiled nastily. "They get some...complications. 'Le ciel vas nous tomber sur la tête!' indeed..." She smiled as Emilia looked at her, confused. "It's French, my native language. It means 'The sky is going to fall on our heads!'. It's an old saying I remember from a comic. Glad I can make it true."

"You want to collapse part of the ceiling on them?"

Alexandra's smile turned outright nasty.

"Among other things, among other things...It'll also solve one of your problems for prototype testing." Her smile widened as Emilia looked at her, slightly confused and worried. "We've been having problems with the bouncing betty launchers. Well, we don't need a launcher if the explosive is falling from the ceiling, now do we?"

Emilia slowly nodded, then faster and faster.

"Of course!" She winced. "Are you sure it isn't a bit too much though?"

"Nonsense! I'll put a warning somewhere, but cheaters must be punished. Well, those that are unsubtle about it. We'll treat the more...inventive ones on a case by case basis. Come on, this should be easy to set up!"

A few minutes of absorbing and set up later, Alexandra looked at the group of golem in the distance, while Emilia casted a ward around them.

"Alright! Starting anti-chest-theft system, triggering test number 1...now!"

The golems in the distance started moving as one. They split up, 3 on each side of the chest, and knelt, grabbing the massive slab of stone, and heaving it up, before starting to move, carrying it away. 6 was a bit overkill, but she wanted to simulate a party taking the chest the old way.

After going a meter away, the small enchantment she had weaved between the chest and a small sphere of metal she'd buried in the ground beneath it broke.

A split second after that, the ground shook as an entire chunk of the ceiling crumbled, and fell towards the ground. It wasn't truly collapsing, more a matter of a false ceiling breaking, kind of like for the 1st floor challenge room.

The falling rocks, as well as several iron cylinders, fell towards the ground, then, a split second before hitting the poor golems, still walking away with the chest, everything simply vanished in a flash of heat and fire.

"OW! What the hell?!?" Said Alexandra as she shielded her eyes.

A second later, she lowered her hand...and gasped.

She might have gone a bit overkill on the number of charges.

"That...worked." Simply said Emilia, seemingly unbothered by the flash...or the sight. Alexandra gave her a side look, and almost sighed as she saw that her advisor was wearing shades.

Of course she is. Clever girl. She thought.

"You knew this would happen, didn't you?"

"Kind of? I mean, you did just pile fireball mines ontop of each other. What did you expect?"

Alexandra winced.

"Fair enough. Still...." She gazed upon the half melted golems, and the white hot sand. "I didn't think it'd be that bad. And there was barely any shrapnel as well."

Emilia shrugged.

"Fireballs are more here for fire and heat than shockwaves, so it's hardly surprising."

"Fair enough." Alexandra sighed. "Well, I guess I'll have to tone down the-"

PRIORITY ALERT: ENERGY SPIKE DETECTED ON THE SURFACE

Alexandra froze. She did remember the threat thresholds for a priority alert. And for them to have been crossed, and the message be sent straight to her.

"Emilia, go to the command center, now. We have an emergency."

The vampire girl nodded, and ran off, quickly followed by Alexandra's body, on autopilot, as she plunged into dungeon mode, and looked through the eyes of her surface golem.

She froze.

What the hell is THAT?!?