Chapter 14

Far from the recent site of Corenzite's battle with the remote controlled Titan of Steel, an adventuring party was waiting in a clearing for their mage to finish getting things ready to start their mission. As Sterne, the aforementioned mage, carefully inscribed a teleportation circle on the ground, he remarked "Well, I've got the teleportation ritual pretty much ready to go; we'll just need to wait for the Celestial Palace to arc over us on its trajectory, and we'll be able to explore what has to be the biggest Dungeon on record."

Nearby, the party's fighter Janise was carefully preening the angelic wings she had developed a few years ago, making sure that she would still have her mobility advantage when the party eventually invaded the Dungeon in the sky that they had dubbed Celestial Palace. As the redheaded woman looked up from taking care of her feathers, she asked "Not that I'm doubting your expertise Sterne, but would you mind explaining why it is we need to wait?"

To this, Sterne replied "Basically, the Celestial Palace is circling the world about a dozen or so times daily. While we probably could teleport there right now, the mana cost would be ruinous, since teleporting only works in straight lines and the more physical matter you try to travel through the more mana you need."

Janise shrugged and said "Makes sense to me. Either way, the extra prep time is nice, seeing as I still need to check over my armor and warhammer."

She wasn't the only one to speak up, as Jared, the group's Assassin mused "Well, since we probably have some time before we start our upcoming Dungeon Delve, I'm actually interested in what we might encounter, since it will almost certainly have a major impact on what sort of threats I need to dispose of."

At this, Sterne shrugged, before saying "According to the Dungeon Ping spell, the Dungeon's theme is something called Atomic Clockwork. Now, if it's like most Clockwork dungeons that means lots of Clockworks and Traps, but I will admit that I don't really know what the Atomic component means. I have tried doing some further scrying to figure out what it might mean, but so far no luck."

It was then that the gray, somewhat cylindrical form of the Celestial Palace swung over the horizon, and Sterne remarked "Well, that's our cue to get ready. The teleport should drop us in the safest area of the Dungeon, but we can still expect to be confronted by the Dungeon's hazards almost immediately, seeing as we probably won't be coming in the regular entrance."

Atop the ramparts of a castle on the opposite side of the world from Corenzite's domain, a gold-scaled Grand Dragon was briefing her minions on their mission. Of the eight experienced and powerful adventurers before her, all of them had been carefully vetted for their loyalty before even being informed that there was going to be a mission at all.

She began, saying "As I am sure you have noticed, there is now some sort of massive construction circling the world. I do not particularly care who built it or why, but I do know that anything so far above the sky presents a massive threat. Your mission is to board that structure, before either capturing it for my own use, or destroying it."

The group of heavily armored adventurers knew better than to openly question their dictator of course, but the question of how they would destroy such a structure still hung heavily in the air. Fortunately, they were answered when the Grand Dragon proffered a small crystal bottle, filled with a firey golden glow.

The Grand Dragon Samathin then noted "That bottle contains nothing less than liquefied dragonfire, more than sufficient to obliterate the structure. When the cork is removed, the containment seal will remain for ten minutes, before the dragonfire is released. Further, the teleportation amulets you are being issued have sufficient stored mana to transport you twice; the first teleport will send you to the structure, and the second teleport will return you to the medical ward in this castle."

There was a brief pause before the Grand Dragon finished, saying "If you are critically injured, overwhelmed, or unable to complete the mission for any reason, I expect for you to return. After being aboard that structure, you will be too valuable as intelligence assets to risk losing. Now go, and deal with this situation for me."

With that, the adventurers saluted, readying the latest in clockwork weaponry and deadly magic as they prepared to begin their mission.

It had barely been a day since I had put the finishing touches on my space station; the construction of my next Titan chassis was well underway, and the dividends from having millions of Gremlins working to advance my tech were already starting to show. Sadly, I seemed to have reached the limits of my materials as far as power generation went, but some peripheral additions to the way my reactors recycled their Protonium fuel and handled cooling allowed me to sneak in a few more percentage points of efficiency.

One of the crews of Gremlins had just drawn my attention to their work on a social messaging system based on the processors and transmitters I used to control my Clockworks, when-

WARNING!: Intruders have teleported into the Dungeon!

Immediately, my perspective flipped to the group of adventurers who had teleported in; there were two men and a woman present in the habitat cylinder near one of my millions of Gremlin laboratories, in one of the 'square' areas I had intended for any Gremlins currently on break. Much to my surprise, the woman had a pair of white feathered wings protruding from her shoulders, which left me more than a little confused about just how many sapient species actually existed on this planet.

I didn't fool around with any form of subtlety whatsoever; the whole reason I'd built this space station in the first place was to not have any visitors to worry about, but apparently this place still had plenty of surprises on that front. Thus, to express my displeasure, I first diverted a Clockwork Knight, backed up by a small army of my other Clockworks.

I had intended for the Clockwork Knight to act as a negotiator to start off with, politely asking the intruders to leave, or at least to explain themselves. That, to be completely blunt, is not what happened. Instead, the woman called out enthusiastically "Found the first monster!" before flying forwards and smashing a massive dent in the machine's chest armor with her warhammer.

With that, I ordered the Clockwork Knight to fire its Plasma Pulse, blasting the region directly in front of it with superheated reactor coolant and highly radioactive Sodium 24. Contrary to the expected results, namely a roasted Adventurer, a golden force-field sparkled into being around the angelic woman, before she smiled and smashed the head right off my mechanical minion, dodging upwards before the incoming horde of Clockworks had much of a chance to riddle her with bullets.

Speaking of which, the robed individual who I speculated to be the group's wizard was easily deflecting the fusilade of gunfire my Clockworks were sending his way, shielding himself and the other guy... Wait, where'd the other guy go? WHERE DID THE THIRD ADVENTURER GO!?

WARNING!: Intruders have teleported into the Dungeon!

With resignation, I grabbed one of my Gremlins, plunked them in an impromptu control room, and told them "You're in charge of dealing with this trio of intruders! All methods are cleared for use that won't breach the habitat cylinder!"

I barely paid attention to them long enough to hear the "Yes, Sir!" before I turned my attention to the other group, composed of eight individuals in identical full plate armor, each of them carrying what looked an awful lot like an assault rifle with an underslung grenade launcher in addition to whatever other gear they had on them. With a rapid exchange of hand signals, the group of what could only be the local equivalent of special forces troopers marched forwards, right into the patrol route for one of my Proton Tanks.

The tank opened fire on the group of soldiers, and one of them was knocked backwards by the blast of c-fractional plasma before the rest scattered into cover. I noticed the downed individual getting back up and pressing one of the runes on their armor before jumping back into the fray. This is about when a glowing red projectile blasted out of cover and impacted directly on the Proton Tank, slagging its Proton Beam cannon and crushing the main processor as it exploded.

As the Proton Tank was mission-killed, one of the soldiers darted forwards and attached a small tag to it, before the wrecked machine vanished, doubtless being teleported to somewhere else. I quickly dispatched a battalion of more Clockworks to deal with this batch of intruders, considering what I might need to do about the captured Proton Tank-WARNING!: Intruders have teleported into the Dungeon!

AAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHH!