Chapter 47

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth.

Dungeon Factory, Workshop.

Alexandra sighed as she looked at the magnificently and intricately wrought staff.

Of course the vampire girl had gone overboard. And, as much as she wouldn't admit so even under torture, Alexandra had also gotten caught up in her advisor's enthusiasm, and helped quite a bit. What could she say? Emilia's joy was infectious, and she liked making the vampire girl happy.

"Well, this turned out well!" Said Emilia, oblivious to the Earth-born's thoughts.

Alexandra chuckled.

"Yes, it did." She looked at the other staffs. "I think we should reproduce the same patterns, but with some adjustments for the other staffs, so if someone is perceptive enough they'll be able to tell which type of spell the golem can cast, and act accordingly."

"That's a good id-"

ALERT - 2ND FLOOR CHEST TRAP ACTIVATED.

Alexandra raised her hand, interrupting the vampire girl mid-sentence, and jumped into dungeon view, activating one of the screens in the workshop and linking it to a golem on the second floor, with view on the moat and the chest.

They both turned towards the screen as it flickered to life...just in time to see an adventuring party, steel rank if her guess was correct, disappear in a storm of fire. Alexandra winced, that was...brutal, to say the least.

"Was that..."

"The chest trap? Yes. Looks like they figured the chest must have the same rewards as the quests." Thankfully Emilia had let her use the same chest design...for now. "And they tried to take it. Well, at least they'll have learned something today." She winced. "Although unfortunately I don't think we'll be recovering much equipment from that."

"No, we won't. But hey, still, we're getting some good essence from that."

Alexandra nodded as she plunged into dungeon view, and started ordering the logistic hub to deliver a new batch of betties to the 2nd floor, before stopping.

"Actual, Emilia, I have a question."

"Sure! Go ahead."

"What does essence do for me? I mean, exactly."

"Oh. That...is going to take a while to answer."

"Well, we have time."

"Alright." Emilia sighed, and squirmed a bit on her stool as Alexandra turned towards her. "Essence is...complex. And poorly understood. But while few understand what it does and how it does it, we can at least observe it's effects."

"Right. Like monsters mutating, or people becoming stronger."

"Exactly! Except that, of course, it's different for you, since, well..."

"My body is a giant crystal, I can't exactly have my muscles enhanced, or my eyesight."

"Yeah. At least not in the way most adventurers or people in general for that matter, would understand. See, you do get better as you gain essence. For example, have you noticed how easier it has become for you to multitask lately? Or how much better your interface has become to design things?" Alexandra nodded. "Well, that's because your essence has increased, and you've leveled up. Your core can't get better physically, but most of the aspects of being a dungeon become easier, or more effective, as you level up. That includes your mental capabilities. High level dungeons can have conversations while designing new monsters while administering all of their dungeon, plus digging a new floor on top of it all."

"I...see. So I'm getting smarter?"

"Not really, just...more capable? I don't know how to explain it...."

Alexandra frowned.

"I think I know what you're talking about. A friend of mine named Arcadia explained to me once that intelligence for an AI wasn't proportional to its processing power. More that this processing power was...multiplied, so to speak, by how that AI's mind works. Thought patterns were the bottleneck, not raw processing power, which is basically brain power. So you could massively enhance an AI, and it would get better, but it wouldn't scale with the processing power you gave it. Just because you tripled its processing power wouldn't mean it could do three times more things at once, or do them three times as fast."

"That's...a good description, I think. But yes, basically. Things will get smoother, and it will get easier to do multiple tasks at once. But you won't become smarter."

"Okay, that's fair enough." Alexandra chuckled. "I'm already enough of a pain in the ass smarty-pants, I'd dread to see what I would become if I became even smarter."

She dodge the book in-extremis.

"Don't get too full of yourself. Anyway, that's for the mental aspect, in broad strokes. But essence also affects more...tangible things as well. For example, you can absorb materials faster. Creating stuff with mana becomes slightly cheaper, although that's usually low enough to be barely noticeable if you're not looking, and your consecrated bosses can be upgraded to higher levels."

"Wait, what? You mean, I could just upgrade CQ's level right now?"

"Well, yes. No, wait!" Said Emilia as Alexandra opened her mouth and started to sit up. "Let's finish this first. Then you can go beefing up CQ. Okay?"

Alexandra sat back down, slightly embarrassed.

"Yes mom."

Emilia rolled her eyes, but didn't comment.

"Good. On top of all that, there is also the fact that interference areas get smaller. That's why big dungeons can even function, especially once they englobe the town above them."

"Right, because the adventurer interference areas overlap, combine, and amplify each other?"

Emilia blinked.

"You...noticed that?"

"Yeah, of course. Right when the riot happened after the elevator intrusion and everyone rushed in. Most of the first floor was taken out for a few minutes. But it grew exponentially when more people went into my influence at the beginning."

"Right. Well, yes. If you put 10 'standard' humans, each with an interference zone of 1 meter together -which aren't correct numbers, I know-, you get an 11 meters interference zone. 100 humans, 120 meters. A thousand, 1 350 meters, ect. It's exponential."

"Gods, that must suck for the dungeons under the big capitals."

Emilia shrugged.

"They manage. They can't do anything in their first few floors -that's why they never change them, not because they don't want to, but because they can't-, but other than that they're powerful enough minimize the interference zone. The main problem are international summits."

Alexandra tilted her head in confusion.

"International summits? Why?"

"Because every important diplomat, or archmage, or whatever, depending on what its about, usually brings very powerful bodyguards, artifacts, ect. It can quickly add up, and take out entire dungeons. That's why they tend to be held in remote locations. Sure, it can make security easier, but it's mainly to avoid riots when some of the dungeon's floors stop replenishing."

"That makes sense. Wait, why wouldn't the dungeon install mob generators to keep all the floors running?"

"Oh they could. It'd be expensive as hell, but they could. However why would they? It would only encourage those summits, and make more problems for them. That way the discomfort is minimized and they don't have to work around all the limitations."

Alexandra nodded. That was...surprisingly human. She was a bit on the fence about the other dungeons, from what she'd read they seemed very....odd. Well, they were floating crystals after all, but they seemed to go a lot into the extreme of what she would consider human behavior. Especially the UDC, but that was probably because everyone portrayed them as murderous psychopaths due to the United Dungeon Wars. Not that she wasn't familiar with people turning into monsters in the name of justice or duty.

After all she used to be one of those monsters.

"Also, hadn't you said something about the number of consecrated bosses being tied to my level? I think it was back when I first made CQ."

"Yes. I did. It's...complicated, and seemingly arbitrary. But a bunch of stuff is determined by your level. Like the maximum number of consecrated bosses, or if you can create secondary cores, and their maximum number. That's why a lot of dungeons focus on gathering essence by killing adventurers, instead of just serving as a library or something, and just have people lounge inside, generating mana."

"Right, I was wondering if that was an option."

"It is. If you want to you could dismantle your adventurer parts, but that would be...suboptimal."

"Right. Wait, weren't there something called 'synthesis techniques' to convert mana to essence?"

Alexandra almost flinched as her link with Emilia flooded with horror, and her advisor's face became a mask of fear.

"Do not, under any circumstances, use a synthesis technique! It might work on people, but on dungeon cores..." She shivered. "The result isn't pretty. Same for cultivation techniques."

"Okay. Good to know."

"So...yeah. Since you produce essence on your own fairly slowly, most dungeons do the adventuring thing to gain more essence. Dungeons that englobe cities have it better of course, as they gather the essence of the people that die in it, but still, adventurers are usually higher leveled than most people, and contrary to popular belief cities aren't just giant meat grinders."

Alexandra chuckled.

"Like hab towers back on Earth." She waved as Emilia rose an eyebrow. "I'll explain later. Wait, does that mean that I could use my insurance policy on the city?"

"I guess? I've heard of a few dungeons that do that, but usually because they have ties to the city's government, or the nation controlling it."

"Uh, okay." Something to file for later. Just in case. She was fairly sure it would make for an excellent bargaining chip, if nothing else.

NOTES UPDATED

"But yeah. That's about it in the ways you can get essence. At least at your level. As for what essence does...Well, those were the general benefits."

"Right. Okay. Well, if we're done here?" Emilia nodded. "Let's get to CQ. If I can make her higher level I will, the new upgrades will help, but quite frankly they were more depending on her Crimson Shield than anything else. At least now she might be able to fight without completely depending on that."

*****

"Are we done?" Said Allya, hopefully.

Pyn turned back towards her, confused.

"No, of course not! Have you seen the number of shops here? There's even one for those charms you wrap around your kunais! I'm sure we can find some better than a poor conflagration spell. And I'm sure they'll have some enhancement ones as well."

Allya crossed her arms.

"My kunais are fine! And what's wrong with the conflagration spell? It does its job, its cheap, and I can easily make another one."

Pyn sighed, and shook her head, looking at Dominique in a 'you see what I have to deal with?' way. Wisely, Dominique stayed silent and didn't make any indication she had gotten the message, refusing to take a side in the nobles' confrontation.

"Honey, you have more productive things to do with your time than writing charms. And you have more than enough money to just buy whichever one you need outright."

Allya opened her mouth...then closed it. Pyn had a point. It was just that she was so used to having to replace most of her equipment on the field....except for her poisons, but those she only used the best, well, the best she had access to anyway. There was some stuff you just couldn't afford to skimp on.

"Point taken. Still. Could we please hurry this up?"

She did her best puppy dog eyes at her girlfriend, and Pyn wavered, before looking away.

"Fine. Just a few more shops, then we can go home."

Allya sighed in relief.

"But we will come back later."

The baroness winced. Well, she'd take what victories she could get. She meekly nodded.

"Of course."

"Good. Now, for the-"

Pyn winced and stopped as a loud siren drowned out her words, and Allya was still unsheathing her daggers when Éclair stepped between them and the...wasteland? With her sword up in a guard position. Why would she-

The wasteland monster attack siren. It was the monster attack siren, Allya's surprised brain finally realized, the one only used in the direst of emergencies. And if it was sounding like this....

She swore viciously. Of fucking course. OF.FUCKING.COURSE. Ooooh, she'd been so smart, predicting that a large wasteland monster attack would eventually be too large for the caravan to deal with, and she'd positioned her forces to swoop in, save them, and strongarm them into staying inside her damned jurisdiction. Except that she'd apparently significantly underestimated how much the attacks were ramping up.

And now she was stuck in the middle of a giant attack with her girlfriend.

She stepped forward and tapped Éclair's shoulder, before leaning into her ear to be heard.

"We're pulling back! We need to regroup with Anders' men before we can help them!"

Éclair nodded empathically, relief plain on her face. Obviously she'd been afraid that her charges would stand and fight. Pyn looked at her with confusion, then horror as she waved for her to fall back. Then she turned towards Dominique...who was already pulling out her spellcasting aids and preparing for combat.

Right. A guild attendant. The kind that would interpose herself between rioting adventurers and a dungeon's entrance just because it was her duty. Gods damn it.

She could either: a. Be a sensible human being, and pull back, before coming back with a small army at her back, and probably lose all respect from a guild attendant whose friendship she was cultivating, or b. be a vainglorious and idealist idiot and stay there to help in whatever last stand the beleaguered caravan would no doubt throw up while waiting for Anders to save the day, and get kudos from the guild attendant for being a suicidal idiot.

Sometimes she truly, really hated her life.

Then, the choice was made for her.

Éclair simply raised her hand as a blurr suddenly appeared in the sky, heading straight for them, and before anyone could react a lightning bolt leapt from her fingers, and an otherwordly screech filled the air, before the blurr resolved into...a bunch of sands and rock, dropping to the ground.

Allya gulped. Sand spirits. Fantastic. Oh, and her bodyguard could mindcast lightning bolt. She made a mental note to check in with her guards to see exactly what they were capable of.

She looked up, and saw more blurrs appear into the sky, heading all over the camp. Some heading behind them. Looked like retreat wasn't an option. Well, in that case...

"We need to regroup!" She yelled over the siren, and the screams and shrieks that were starting to come up as the sand spirits began their attack.

Dominique looked at her, surprised, and Pyn looked more relieved than anything, while Éclair was still scowling, searching the sky for anymore creatures heading for them, but otherwise keeping silent. Of course, Allya had gotten much better at reading her, and the bodyguard was radiating grim resolve right now. She'd followed the same chain of logic as her baroness, and realized that a speedy escape was no longer an option.

Allya turned towards the guild attendant.

"Fighting here in small knots will just let the spirits take us out in isolation, and distract us while they go for the civilians! We need to gather every adventurer and soldier we can and establish a safe zone! Otherwise they'll just murder everybody!" And, of course, the safezone would be much, much easier for the reinforcements to find, and for the airships to cover from the skies. Not that Dominique needed to know that. If she realized that Allya had purposefully set the caravan up for failure, she would...probably not be so pleased. To say the least.

Dominique nodded.

"Alright. Let's move!" Said Allya. "Éclair, you take point. Next Dominique and Pyn, you watch the skies. I'll bring up the rear."

They all nodded. And Allya pointed Éclair towards the military area of the caravan, where off duty guards generally hanged out. It wasn't perfect, but it would be the most logical place for survivors to try to reach. And it would most likely be the safest place to make their stand. For some values of 'safe' at least.

Well, at least it beats being dragged shopping, thought Allya.

*****

Alexandra stepped forward, and laid her hand on CQ's head, who..leaned her head into them, probably asking for a headpat.

The Earth-born rolled her eyes, but obliged the boss. What could she say? She was too cute.

"So, how do I up her level exactly?"

"It should be in your interface, when you look at her."

Alexandra frowned, and plunged into her interface, before looking at CQ.

ENTITY_NAME: CRIMSON QUEEN

LEVEL: 26

SPECIAL ABILITIES:

OCCUPATION: DUNGEON FINAL BOSS

LEVEL_UPGRADE POSSIBLE. UPGRADE? Y/N

Oh, right. That menu existed. Uh, there indeed was a new line at the end. Alexandra hesitated for a second, before shrugging, and tapping 'Y'.

She felt her mana dipping, and just like when she had originally consecrated CQ, a sphere of crimson energy surrounded the boss, before she absorbed it. Alexandra looked at her for a second, before looking back at her interface.

ENTITY_NAME: CRIMSON QUEEN

LEVEL: 56

SPECIAL ABILITIES: ;

OCCUPATION: DUNGEON FINAL BOSS

Alexandra's eyebrows rose. A new ability? That was interest-

ALERT: SENTRY GOLEM REPORTS: ANOMALOUS SURFACE ACTIVITY

The Earth-born sighed. What now?

"Emilia, it looks like our friends on the surface are back at it again. Could you pull up the screen please?"

The vampire girl nodded, and after a quick incantation the usual floating screen appeared, and displayed...utter chaos.

People were running in all directions. No, actually. There was an order to that chaos. People without equipment were running to their tents, while those in armor or with their weapons were rushing towards the exterior of the camp, spearheaded by...holy shit, that was a lot of soldiers. How had they gathered so quickly? Alexandra had some familiarity for how long it took to form a marine boarding party, or assemble spacers to do anything. And she had well trained soldiers with light-speed communication equipment everywhere, as well as AI assistance. Even they would have had a hard time beating that response time if it came at them cold. Which meant that this was something they'd either rehearsed, but she'd never seen them drill, or planned well in advance.

"Mom, what's happening?"

Alexandra opened her mouth to answer, then froze. Mom?!?

She turned around, quickly followed by Emilia, and stared at CQ, who tilted her head.

"Did I say something wrong?"