"What happened?"

"The Teleport failed. I was about 60 m off for my target. I ended up in the middle of the meeting room."

"So they declared war on the wrong group?"

"Yes, and I'm out of dungeon cores mana and contracts."

"I couldn't convince them to stop the research."

"Maybe, if we're lucky, they won't all end up dead at the end of the year."

"The last one cause the mana drought. Do you really think will be that lucky again?"

AI core Cray

Alright, I have three new prisoners to terrify, I mean interrogate. one Princess kidnapped by a war Mech and brought back to my dungeon. a whole ton of runes and books from the wreckage of the enchanted vehicle. And most importantly of all, I have a new target which gave me literally 21 days to build an army.

"Cray, Steve and Andrew have finally woken up."

"Send them to the repair bay. I'm almost done designing the new combat drones."

Almost all the drone designs are meant for one purpose getting one job done and that's it. Combat drones are meant to be fast, strong and durable, but are terrible at stealth and repairs. Infiltrators are great at stealth but terrible at combat due to the lack of strength and speed. Strength is at 30% that of combat drones and the speed is only 60%. War Mecs are nearly 4 times stronger, but they only have 20% the speed of combat drones.

There were actually hundreds of designs for different Mech and combat drones, some using much higher-end parts and components. Even now, Sarah was using a drone meant to be a servant for high-end households. the components focused on speed and even had a much higher range of facial animations. She had requested to take care of the Princess who was basically a 12-year-old, mentally. We did figure out that she really was the Princess. I was kind of surprised about that. I honestly expected them to use a decoy to make sure that Carol was a healer, not that they'd use the real Princess.

The first one I built focused on strength and speed, but ended up being 210 cm tall and way too broad. it had the best of all the components but nobody would ever mistake it for an elf with how large it is. The second design was focused on speed and looking as much like an elf as possible, with the best facial animations. I ended up having a drone that was twice as fast as the combat drones, but only one third the strength. I also managed to give it camera skin which is just a skin layer that matches its background environments and clothes that can do the same. It has permanent invisibility if needed. Steve walked in, as I was working on a new combat drone design.

"You know orcs skin is green right. Or if you're going with J. R. R. Tolkien. It's Charcoal black."

I looked up to see Steve staring at my first combat drone design." What is an Orc?"

"There's a bunch of different definitions but one of the main ones is big, tough and ugly. This one looks pretty close but you need to give it tusks on the lower jaw and change the skin color."

Sarah chimed in. "oh, this would be a perfect idea. When we launch the attack on the capital, we will be able to use the orcs as an unknown race. They will probably freak out for days trying to figure out what's going on."

"What about the shade spiders?" I said with a little bit of a wine in my voice. "They're my favorite. I spent like, a solid three hours designing those."

"Shade spiders?"

"You really don't want to know. Cray's been working on them and they are a 23 on the terrify scale."

"Isn't that the scale you guys use to find out at what point we actually go insane? And isn't 25 that point?!!"

With total joy. I asked. "Yeah, they're great. You want to meet him?"

Steve sounded a little scared. "No, no, I'm, I'm good. Look, Cray, I think we're friends. And as friends when you start playing with stuff on the Terror scale, I just want to let you know that I will be at a friendly distance of not here or anywhere near where you're building them. You know, can I go to town. Now that I think about it. I just want to be out of your way when you're doing these mind shattering tests. Okay, were good, yeah, right, bye." Steve sprinted out of the room.

I Immediately locked all the exits. We weren't really sure what was going on with the town, but I couldn't let Steve get kidnaped too. "Hey Sarah, can you talk to Steve? I'm not going to actually introduce him to the spiders."

"Are you really?"

"Of course, I've got like four other test subjects I can use all this stuff on."

"Two things. One, you're not having a princess, a mentally 12-year-old girl, involved in any of the Terror tests. Second, we still need Steve in here in order to get the orc design right."

"I was just gonna go with a mottled green and gray pattern, but you're probably right. Get Steve back in here and we'll go over the design. Remember I want to get this whole war thing started in the next week. We already have 4 of the 30 m tall Mech ready to go, but they were originally designed for construction and we still need to make weapons for them. the plasma Ram is going to take me at least two days of construction. Once I get the combat drone design down I'll have them done in a matter of days. We also need to fix the mana problem. I need to up the rate at which I can generate it."

"You're trying to distract me from the Ranger again aren't you?"

"Whaaaat nooo" obviously lying. "What would make you think that?"

"Because I can see through one of the shade spiders and its broadcasting what you're doing."

From the perspective of the king Gard, James the Ranger.

I groaned as I woke up "aaawwww" I don't have the last time I woke up drunk. I don't remember the last time I was drunk. I flailed my arms to the side of the bed to find water, only to fall out of the bed and hit the cold hard floor "great, just great." I slowly set up and blinking at the annoying light. "Why is there a candle still burning." Finally, I was able to open my eyes and look around the room. This is not an Inn. "Where am I.", This better not be a jail, I'm going to get Chewed out if It is.

I looked around the room it was gray, floors and ceilings were made of something I hadn't seen before, but the iron bars were clearly a jail cell. "shhhit" The last thing I remember doing was getting into the carriage with Nola and Rodrick. I swear if he got me drunk again. I'm going to kill him when I get out. Three of the walls were made up of the gray material. But the fourth was made up of bars. I walked over and looked outside. There is another room but it was in deep shade and I couldn't make anything out quite clearly. Suddenly a young woman walked out from the shadows and smiled."Morning. Is there anything I can get you?"

I smiled back and said, "well, the keys to get out would be great."

"Oh I can do that one second." woman walked over to the wall where a set of keys were dangling on a hook. She grabbed the keys and brought them back. I hadn't noticed them until she started walking over. I must be more drunk than I thought. I looked around the room more carefully, but I still couldn't make out anything in the shadows. was there something wrong with my eyes? Then I noticed I didn't have access to the HUD anymore. This is a jail cell, but only high-end jail cells have anti-magic rooms and this woman is about to let me out so I can't be in one of those.

And then I noticed something else that was very very wrong. My side had the keyhole. It also had the handle, the woman's side did not. Right as I noticed that something moved in the shadows or a better description is I saw the shadows move. I froze and stared more carefully. There was light coming from all four corners of the room. There shouldn't be any shadows and yet there was a large black triangle taking up a corner of the room on her side.

I looked around my cell more carefully. I started to wonder who's the prisoner and who's the guard" you know, why don't you keep a hold of those keys for me."

The woman smiled but her teeth were not flat. They were sharp and pointed like needles." oh, I'd be more than happy to join you on your side, so please take the keys."

Nope nope nope nope nope. "You know, I think there's been some kind of misunderstanding."

The woman giggled "There's no misunderstanding here just you and us."