//Just a small filler exposition chapter while I think of what to do for the next character introduction

“Why underground?”

“I’m sorry?”

“Why did they invade from underground?” She clarified.

“How much do you know about technology, kid?”

She hesitated for a while. “My family used to teach me about the technology of the old days, of how basic machineries worked. They had wanted me to understand the basics before moving on. Sadly, I’ve never gotten the chance to learn more from them”. She made eye contact. “I know how technology worked at its base. I know most major laws of physics. I know how machines of war worked, how jet engines can propel themselves and how radars detect flying objects ”. Do Newton’s laws even apply here? How do mechanical dragons spew blue fires and how the hell did they get forcefields to work? Countless questions popped in her head. She dismissed them with some difficulty. I’ll save them for another day.

He nodded. “Alright, I suppose I’ll just say anything that comes to mind. I’m no mechanic though, don’t expect fancy wordings”. He grumbled.

“Our radar technology is advanced enough to detect moving entities as far as the horizon. If your cat were to jump from the window, chances are the radar users from our bordering countries would have noticed. Though no matter how far reaching it can be, we still can’t quite look into the ground yet. Tiny seismic vibrations and the uneven distribution of terrain would make any results unreliable. And the technology to dig through the $#%Q# is freely available, at least in the general black market. There are ways to cloak them, but it would be troublesome to have to hide every single unit. Hence the underground drills. Theres a limit to how far they can dig though, we can still monitor the ground around the base and will give any intruders our share of drill charges”.

She frowned, one of the terms sounded like gibberish. She can generally guessed it to be the lithosphere. It seemed she cannot comprehend the words that she had not heard in her life as Emilia. She checked the system for any translation feature.

-Automatic Translation using the receiver’s language processing part of the brain-

Status: On

Desc: only works with soul context

-Translation using existing dictionaries-

Status: Off

Dictionaries: 0

I can understand more than one language if I get other dictionaries. She almost squealed. I really need a working Internet. Though she then realized the quality of translation might be poor if a dictionary was all it relied on.”May I get my own computer soon? I want to be able to read more of these things on the internet”.

“Oh, one was going to be delivered today, but Tom decided to order the newest and most robust one. It won’t be delivered until tomorrow. I thought he must have gone insane if he thought a kid like you could use it. But I was quite wrong, wasn’t I?” He grinned.

Returning a small smile of her own, she cleared her throat as another worry emerged. I still have to talk to Tom about the other world thing. She decided to deal with it later, there were many things about the battle she wanted to know and she needed to pester Bob as much as she could. The urge to sleep was creeping in her tired, battered body. “Why did the invaders use genetically modified animals? Shouldn’t they be harder to manage than robots? Why aren’t we using them? Could you try to use some simpler words? My vocab is rather limited. ”

“Well, Those fuzzy little ball of furs are -” She interrupted him with a glare, showing a deadpan look at his chuckle.

“Alright, Alright. While its true that live animals are much harder to handle, $%^&* was ridiculously easy. The typical robots needed monthly calibration, joints lubrication and ^&*()* update. The typical Gani, as they are called, only need to be fed, they can heal quickly and even regenerate missing limbs. The reason why we are not using them is because... Alice felt repulsed by the sight of them. Tom really dotes on her you know. At least we don’t have to deal with the horrid fecal stench”. He smiled wryly.

She was getting rather annoyed at her limited lexicon.

From the screen, numerous small lights glittered the forest. The cleaning bots used their tracks to traverse the forest ground, they grabbed the carcasses of animals and robots and dragging them towards the nearest flying dump truck. The work was fast and efficient, she wouldn’t be surprised if everything was cleared by morning.

“Why are you doing the practice raid tonight, of all times? “

“We wanted to you get familiar with the raid first and to see if you’re too weak hearted for the job. Can’t really have a panicking child running around in a real raid”.

She couldn’t refute it. “How often is there a raid, a real one? How long does it last?”

“From anywhere between hours to weeks, sometimes months. Their duration can also be mere minutes to hours, but never more than a day. ”

“Those two dragons, “. She paused. “They are only meant for demonstration right? I don’t think they can fight real battles.”. She tried to keep her tone neutral so as to not offend him.

He gave a booming laugh. “So you noticed it too huh. Thats a keen eye ya got there. These models are only used to please the media by opting for a fancy look. They can’t do sh - pardon me. We would never use them in a real raid. I’ll show you to the garage sometime so you can see the real one, its design is much more practical. Though most would call it plain”

“I saw a small group of bots fighting against a much larger number of wolves, but why do the wolves attack with so few at a time? I know about the friendly fire risk. But many of them wore visual guides, shouldn’t they be more corporative?”

“The guides were only there to differentiate friend or foe. Wolves had always been wild and prideful. While genetic engineering can change its fur and size, it is still impossible to breed fierce warriors that are obedient. The guys probably decided to keep their behavior as is, what you saw there was how they hunt naturally in the wild”

“Why weren’t the invaders attacking our sentries, they just avoided them. And why didn’t our bots defend the sentries?” She yawned, it was getting harder to stay awake.

“And another point goes to Miss Ellowyn! I think I’ll tell Tom to make you my assistant.” He cackled. “The standard procedure was for the medium and large bots to entrench themselves around the sentries, defending it. Those bunkers are much more fragile than they look. The only reason why they weren’t smashed to pieces was because the practice raid wasn’t meant to be destructive. Our bot controllers probably knew this so they didn’t go through he trouble of entrenching. I’ll give them a piece of mind later. Have you seen a raid before? You are rather knowledgeable on these things.”

She gave a proud smile. I guess those hours playing rts had paid off. “I suppose Alice had seen many of these raids?”

“Sorry, but you’ll need to ask Tom and Alice about these things, I don’t think they would like you to hear my opinions on your family. Ha ha. Its not as if I despises them though, I love them as much as I do my own. You should let your body rest, it has been a rough day.”

She nodded weakly before falling unconscious on her bed.

//I am not very good at RTS strategies so please correct me if I say something outrageous xD