Chapter 29

Red Sands Desert, Contested Border Region.

Expeditionary Camp.

Allya shifted slightly, then opened her eyes as she heard the rustle of the cloth door opening.

"Milady, capt-"

Allya stared at Éclair, and the bodyguard stared back. Then the pink haired soldier cleared her throat, her gaze firmly fixed on the ceiling.

"Apologies miladies, I was unaware you were...busy, this morning. I'll tell captain Anders to wait...an hour."

The pink haired bodyguard closed the door, and the sound proofing enchantment turned back on with a slight snap.

Allya blinked, and looked over her shoulder as she felt the warm body behind her shift.

"Mmmmhhhh....What was that about?" Asked Pyn, sleepily, as she met Allya's gaze.

"Not much. We just have to get ready to meet Anders." Allya smiled as Pyn's eyes opened in alarm. "It's fine, we have an hour." She rolled around, so she was facing her friend...no, definitely girlfriend now. "So we can take our time."

"Okay." Said Pyn as she smiled back.

She kissed her girlfriend softly. They could afford to take some time off. For now at least. Besides, she really, really didn't want the elf to get dressed just yet.

An hour later, to the minute, Allya and Pyn stepped into the command part of the administration tent, returning the guards' salutes, and taking their seat near the map table.

Anders looked up from the map, noted that his superiors were positively glowing, and practically sitting on top of each other, and wisely decided to drop his comment on the 1 hour delay. First, because they were still his superiors, second, they were signing his paycheck, and third because it was none of his business anyway.

"Greetings, miladies." He nodded at them, and they nodded back. At least they didn't insist on proper protocol. That was nice. He could have done without their suicidal 'I need to be on the frontlines' tendencies, but he'd take what he could. "I hope you've slept well. I have news, if I may?"

Allya and Pyn looked at each other briefly, and the baroness gestured at Anders.

"Go ahead captain."

"Thank you milady." He gestured at the lieutenant by his side. "I have received a full report on the operation last night." He smiled. "I'm happy to announce it has been a resounding success! Despite taking 6 casualties, we managed to eliminate 4 enemies. Fortunately, we took no fatalities, and most of our casualties were from the assault on the command post." He turned towards the lieutenant. "If you could give a fuller account, lieutenant?"

"Of course sir." The lieutenant stepped forward, and cleared her throat. "Miladies. We have gone through the possessions of the enemies, as well as the charges they had set. The first thing we have found is that each and everyone of them had a soul sealing dead-man device on them. The second is that they all possessed a suicide device containing a powerful fireball/explosion spell. The third is that each of those devices was embedded with a precious stone. The purpose of the stones is unknown, but...." She shrugged. "It is only conjecture, but the more precious the stone, the better equipped and more skilled they appeared to be. The one that attacked the command post, in particular, had a sapphire in his suicide device."

The lieutenant paused, and Allya nodded.

"That makes sense. Anything else?"

"Yes. After going through their equipment, we realized that there seemed to be two broad....types, so to speak. All of their equipment appeared heavily customized and adjusted to individual soldiers, but there seemed to be two general trend. The first one is what we call the 'combat type'. Crossbow, short-sword and backup weapons, with a variety of highly powerful enchanted or runed crossbow bolts. Their weapons were also of greater quality in general. The second group we call the 'saboteur type'. They had better infiltration tools, smoke bombs, and a variety of tools, demolition charges, and spatial bags. Their weapons were mostly crossbows with a single short-sword as backup, and their ammo, although still enchanted, generally consisted of a single generic type." She pulled a small sheet from her pocket, and unfolded it. "According to lieutenant Estar, we managed to eliminate two saboteurs and two combat types yesterday. The one body we recovered from the battle around the well was a combat type as well."

"Uh....I have a question. Eliminated? We didn't take any prisoners?" Asked Pyn.

Anders winced.

"It's not that we took no prisoners so much as they didn't let themselves be taken alive. Each and every one of them preferred to kill themselves rather than be captured."

The elf's face became decidedly green at the thought, but Allya simply nodded. She'd expected as such after all.

"Unfortunate. By scarcely unexpected, given our previous encounters. Has there been any other sign of activity on their part?"

Anders shrugged.

"The Sakura fired on any sign of movement, as planned, but they took no return fire, and can't confirm that what they shot at were indeed hostiles. We're still going through the warehouses just in case we missed a demolition charge, and we are currently verifying the identities of the adventuers that were caught in the sweep. Apart from that, no, nothing."

"Excellent!" The baroness smiled. "In that case, I think we'll leave the situation in your hands. I'm afraid that we have a meeting with guildmaster Starvak, concerning dungeon delves and taxes later today, and I would like to take some time to prepare for it."

Anders politely nodded.

"Of course miladies."

*****

Alexandra toyed with the pen as she looked at the screen. She'd finally run out of patience with the constant alerts, and simply built surveillance screens in the workshop, so she didn't have to run off to the command center to check whatever calamity her surface dwellers had brewed up that day. It was useful...But also distracting as all hell. She knew she had a tendency to procrastinate (to Arcadia's great frustration, back in the day), but at least there was no internet, so there was no risk of her starting to watch videos or something. The only feeds were of her dungeon, in which nothing was happening right now, the forges, which she used as background noise, since for some reason the sounds of the blacksmith and just general production soothed her, and the external guard golem.

As much fun as it was watching the people from time to time, it felt boring very quickly, and besides the occasional odd scene, it was very...normal. Besides, she felt like a voyeur when watching that feed for too long. And she was slowly getting more frustrated over the delay to get adventurers down here. She could understand that they wanted the situation to be at least semi-stable first, but still.

At least the discussion with their representatives, after she'd requested it, had been smooth and informative. It would be a couple of days at most, then they'd let anyone who whished enter, at the rythm of one per hour maximum, to let her rebuild the golems and replinish the rooms. That was nice. Plus it would let her get some of the golems to their positions, since the legionnaires' weapons were handmade by the blacksmiths.

Mmmhhh, I might want to upgrade that...if a group waits and blocks the way, I wouldn't be able to have them walk past, she thought to herself.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

In any case, it was a problem she could smooth out later. Right now....

She looked down at the schematics, and sighed. Fortunately, she'd gotten Emilia off of her back, briefly, by throwing her at CQ and Jared and asking her to train them in anti-mage tactics. It was a pretty cheap -and transparent- trick, but it had worked. It wasn't against the vampire girl, but sometimes she just needed to be alone to think properly.

The schematics represented the pulser cannon she'd recovered. Her first prototype had...suffered a malfunction (polite terminology for 'blew the hell up'), and budget issues had prevented her from making different iterations to work out the kinks through sheer testing. The problem was that given the cost, she wasn't sure she'd be able to get the mana for a while. Oh, she was sure the opening of the dungeon to adventurers would help enormously, but....adventurers would bring out more expenses, like replacing golems, fixing the rooms, adjusting some stuff, maybe even having to create more loot, not even speaking about continuing expansion to avoid the adventurers getting bored or feeling like she was stagnating and leaving. Emilia had been very adamant on that last one actually, since a fair amount of dungeons experienced a big decline after stopping building more floors, and it was apparently hell to get the ball rolling again. They were still getting adventurers, but less new blood and less alchemists, artificers or such came in in the hopes of finding or appraising something new and expensive in the depths of the dungeon. This meant less growth for the dungeon town, which meant less business and accommodations, which meant less adventurers...the downward spiral went deep.

That reminded her of theme parks, to some extent. Except that theme parks didn't -usually- kill people and brought them back to life. At least dungeons had a base value and wouldn't drop below a certain level, thanks to mana cultivation and loot.

Which reminded her that she seriously needed to enquire about mana cultivation to Emilia. She knew it was important, but she hadn't had the time to familiarize herself with it -there was no need, she'd generated her own mana while she was an adventurer after all-, and she had a feeling she wasn't quite grasping the importance or implications of it.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

Thank you, magitech, she thought of the umpteenth time.

Then, she sighed, and went back to the schematics. She knew she was hitting diminishing returns just trying to figure out what was wrong, but she really wanted that pulser. If nothing else, she really didn't have much that could harm people of a certain rank or higher. The power beams, maybe. The scorpios could prove pretty decent as well. The spider tank -which she had managed to mount and successfully fire a scorpio on- could also do the trick, but it was relatively slow and very bulky. It could squeeze down some of the hallways, sort of, but it was far from ideal, and outside of the second floor, it wouldn't have the space to truly manoeuver in any room anyway.

Point was, while she had a handful of weapons that might cut it, she had nothing outside of Emilia's magic that definitely would. And she refused to rely on a single solution, no matter how powerful or reliable it might be. Besides, she'd rather keep Emilia out of the line of fire if she could, and as an ace up her sleeve for last resort measures.

She stared at the schematics for an additional handful of seconds, then dropped her pen, and rubbed her eyes. She was getting nowhere. It'd probably be better to drop the matter and try something else for a bit. Maybe something would occur to her then. She pulled up her TO-DO list, and winced at the...rather large quantities of things on it.

I definitely need someone to handle this for me, she thought to herself.

The algorithm didn't even trigger -there was no need to, that particular item was practically on top of the list-, and she sighed.

Well, it looked like designing a new set of traps using the bouncing betties was near the top, and she was feeling like making something go boom. Explosions always made her feel better. And-

SURFACE GOLEM REPORTS INCOMING

She froze, and frowned. What could they want this time?

*****

Firatite had some very stressful moments in his life.

Approaching a golem belonging to a dungeon core he knew he was going to try to kidnap, to convince said core that they were nothing more than a regular group of adventurers, just a bit more...adventurous (ah, a good one he'd have to remember for later) than others, probably ranked among the highest.

"Greetings!" He said as he crossed the invisible boundary between the rest of the world and the dungeon's influence. "Could I have a word with you, please?"

For a few, long, endless seconds, the golem just stood there, gazing at him with it's...he couldn't call it a face, since it was more or less a featureless plate. Then, a somewhat metallic voice, devoid of emotion or even just...texture, answered.

"Yes. What is it you require, adventurers?"

Firatite suppressed a sigh of relief. Looks like wearing the guild medallions was a good idea after all. They'd been unsure on whether to do so, as some of the more...sophisticated guild halls had put perimeters of sensors, letting them detect when someone with a guild medallion stepped into a certain area, and identifying them. That was mostly for tax purposes, of course, but it still warned someone that adventurers were in a place they really shouldn't be.

But Onyx had simply argued that if they were putting said sensors, they almost certainly had other ways in place to detect intruders, ones which they wouldn't have the time to disarm, which made the entire point moot. They had checked anyway of course, but fortunately there hadn't seemed to be any sensors around, as far as they could tell anyway.

"We would like to start a dungeon delve."

The golem waited for a few seconds, again.

"You do? I was told dungeon delves would not begin just yet."

Firatite gave the golem his best smile. He didn't know if dungeon cores even cared about human body language, but it was worth a shot.

"That is, indeed, the case, but thanks to particularly generous....donations, we have been allowed access."

The commando waited for the golem's response, praying that the dungeon couldn't somehow see the sweat running down his back.

"Very well." The golem finally grated out. "You may enter."

"Thank you, good dungeon." Said Firatite, as he bowed, and gestured for his comrades to come up the entrance.

*****

Alexandra frowned as she looked briefly at the entrance's surroundings, as the adventurers filtered into her entrance hall. She couldn't see the guild guards...which made sense, since she was pretty sure the adventurers had either bribed some guild official, or the guards themselves, and would probably be pleading for an 'unfortunate administrative misunderstanding' if they were caught. Gods knew she had seen people do that often enough in Fleet Logistics.

Still...it rankled her. She sighed, and checked her failsafes, juuust in case. Everything was in place, and the replacement golems were ready to charge in should the need arise. Still, just to be on the safe side, she activated the blast door between the core room hallway and the boss room, activating it's massive locking bars, who smoothly slid inside, turning it into a giant vault door. It was standard protocol to lock it down, but only when the adventurers got to the last room before the boss room, just in case adjustments had to be made. Satisfied, she left, and went back to her body, to warn Emilia of the good news.

She would have been far less satisfied, and far more worried, if she'd been able to see the magical hologram projector, currently creating a massive one-way pane between the camp and the dungeon entrance, showing the guards still obediently standing near the entrance, and not a single other figure, like, oh, a few people entering the dungeon.

And she would have been outright alarmed if she'd seen the 3 bodies stacked behind a rock, their throats slit and heart punctured for good measure. Each and every one of them part of the usual guard detail of her entrance.

*****

"Alright!" Said Diamond as he turned around to face his men. "Everyone remember their roles?"

His handful of remaining soldiers nodded. There were only 4 of them left, excluding Onyx. All of them were part of Ruby's team, as to the best of his information, none of Saphire's men had escaped the trap laid out for them.

They were all dressed as adventurers. Very well geared adventurers. Technically, in purely military terms, the equipment they were now sporting was far better than the one they had previously been using. Unfortunately, plate armor and enchanted armor made for poor infiltration clothing, and their capes of invisibility -one of the only reasons they'd been able to infiltrate the area and run from it without a high risk of interception or being tracked- were very finicky devices, which didn't do very well in conjunction to most types of armor.

It had taken some care to change into their adventurer gear, but thanks to their holographic screen, and some helpful boulders, they'd been able to do it. Getting the guards outside of the view of the dungeon entrance, and especially it's lone, sentinel golem, had been no small feat either, but they'd done it, allowing them to assassinate said guards with little difficulty or fear of discovery by the dungeon. It still had taken more of their precious, limited high tier crossbow bolts and artifacts than he would have liked, but if they couldn't even get into the dungeon there was no point in conserving them for later.

And, thanks to some efforts from Saphire's team early on, they'd had access to the notes from the original assessment team, as well as the rough, first report of the assault guild. With this, they should be able to breeze through the dungeon fairly quickly, kidnap the core, and get out before their ruse was discovered.

"Good. Then let's go!"

And with that, they moved forward, and into the depths of the dungeon.

*****

"They're doing fairly well."

Alexandra hummed her agreement as she chewed the chips, before washing the snacks down with some scented water.

"Agreed." She sighed as she watched the group of adventurers, currently taking a breather in her safe zone, the one right before the hallway of swinging blades. "Actually, that's an understatement. They're doing very well. They've barely been wounded."

Emilia shrugged.

"They're copper ranked, there's 5 of them, and they skipped the challenge room. Besides, they'll be able to avoid most of the nasty surprises thanks to their intel."

Alexandra nodded in sour agreement. It was very clear the adventurers had access to the assault guild's report, as they had gone through the initial puzzle room without a problem...and their leader had briefed his teamates on the sequence for the blades, as well as the pressure plate, at the start of their pause in the safe zone.

That could prove...annoying. But at least the second floor would remedy to at least some of those problems.

There was also something...an itch she couldn't quite scratch. They were acting like she expected adventurers to act, but there was something...odd about them. Something she couldn't quite place.

"Alright, well, I suppose we'll see how they fair against CQ. If they decide to fight her of course." She chuckled. "Want to take bets on whether they'll risk the shrine of war, and what they'll get?" She smiled as Emilia raised her eyebrows, and put her hand on her heart. "I won't cheat by changing the odds, I promise."

The vampire girl looked dubious, but shrugged.

"Sure. What would we be betting for however?"

"Free passes for design stuff?" Said Alexandra with her best innocent expression.

It didn't fool Emilia one bit.

"Sure..." She smiled. "But if I win, I get 6 hours of your undivided time for art design...without any complaining."

Alexandra looked suddenly far more thoughtful. Then, after a few seconds, the Earth-born sighed, and nodded, extending her hand.

"Deal."

Emilia shook her hand, smiling, and the Earth-born suddenly felt a spike of anxiety.

"I bet that they won't use the shrine."

Alexandra bit her lower lip.That was what she wanted to bet on. Oh well.

"Sure. I'll meet that. I bet they'll use it." She smiled. "And if they do, I bet they'll get the 'doubling the golems' outcome."

"I bet on halving."

"Good!" Alexandra stretched, more out of habit than any need to, and gestured at the screen. "Well, let's see who wins."

*****

Martin's day wasn't going fantastically well.

Nor was his week, really.

When his application to join the expeditionary team had been accepted, he'd been ecstatic. Him, a newly made iron ranked adventurer, allowed to join a dungeon town expedition? And as a member of the assault guild no less? It was too good to be true. And in some ways it had been.

Oh, he hadn't minded the infrastructure grunt work, after all the guild paid for them to do so, and it was good fun and a nice way to make friends among people higher ranked than he was. However, the assault guild delve had been anything but good fun. It had started out nicely, and probably would have ended fairly well, if not for that maniac with his fireball fetish and itchy trigger finger. Fortunately, his armor had been enchanted against fire attacks -courtesy of his father, himself a retired adventurer, and now an enchanter of some renown-, and it had saved him from the worst, but...seeing your friends and allies be cooked alive around you didn't exactly help with keeping good memories.

And if that wasn't enough, these maniacs had started attacking the camp! They hadn't attacked adventurers yet, but he'd been to the funeral service for the dead soldiers that had given their lives to protect them, and he-

He froze, and dropped to a crouch. His instincts were screaming at him that something was wrong. He looked around, but...there was nothing, and no one, around.

Then he realized what the problem was. There was no one around. He was right next to the dungeon entrance, on the opposite side of it from the expeditionary camp. He'd just finished his shift in one of the outer mesa lookout posts -although the security forces could handle it, due to their recent losses they had started once again to ask adventurers to give them a hand- and he was on his way to get one of his friends, whose shift as a guard for the dungeon entrance was supposed to end shortly as well. And said guards should be perfectly within sight. In fact they should have hailed him by now.

The ranger gulped, and looked a bit more around, before calling out.

"Hey! Anybody here? Elrar? Can you hear me?"

He listened for a few seconds, then started slowly walking forward once more, still crouched, before suddenly stopping, as he spotted a strange pile, hidden behind a rock.

He cautiously approached it...and his face went white as he recognized what -or rather, who- was in that pile.

He started sprinting towards the camp, the glazed eyes of his friend's corpse emptily watching his receding back, a crossbow bolt planted squarely between them.