Chapter 152

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

City of Rebirth

Allya sat down heavily behind her desk, and held her head in her hands, panting heavily.

She'd managed to keep it together, somehow, until she'd been out of the dungeon and on her way home. But this was…too much.

Crystal was that extradimensional. That 'Alexandra'. Nothing else made it sense. And it fit so perfectly. It explained her affinity with technology, her oddities, everything! Extradimensionals had always been exceptional beings, and many of them had been great scientists, archmages and conquerors. And it looked like the dungeon core was dead set on becoming all three.

Which begged the question of how she'd become a dungeon core. By Divine Grace, obviously, or the Adjudicator would have executed her on the spot. But while that was reassuring, it also made her wonder about the mercenaries. Who had they delivered Alexandra to? And why was the dungeon core so desperate to keep that information hidden from everyone, including the inquisition? Otherwise she wouldn't have bothered killing the executive officer and stealing the documents.

Allya took a deep, staggered breath as she centered herself. She was getting lost in speculation. For all she knew the inquisition already knew everything and Alexandra had simply been trying to keep the information away from her and more secular forces.

But she needed to be careful and thread lightly now. She wasn't dealing with an unhinged dungeon core, she was dealing with one of the most dangerous individuals on Alcheryos trapped inside one of the most dangerous gifts of the God of Fire. 'Deadly combination' didn't even begin to describe it. At least it answered why the dungeon core had a seemingly unlimited amount of mana and was growing so quickly. She must still have her extradimensional mana generation on top of everything else, although Allya wasn't sure how much that'd be compared to everything else.

She should start preparing an insurance policy just in case. Maybe by taking a page out of Amelia's book and using the list Crystal -Alexandra, but it was probably safer to thing of her as 'Crystal' for now- had given her for a baseline.

And there was the matter of who she could tell this to. There was clearly far, far more going on behind the scenes than she knew…and would it be wise to dig her nose into that?

Allya sighed. Unfortunately, it was the things that you didn't know that killed you. And so far she'd been blindsided too many times by things she assumed had to have been caused by the dungeon's….history and shadowy dealings.

Which meant she had a new mission for Trira. Trained assassins against Earth supertech, or whatever the hell the dungeon core had cooked up.

Joy.

*****

Alexandra sighed as she looked at the NLR core and the mess of wires. After failing to connect it to her core, she'd simply ordered Seraph to rip out the entire setup it had been housed in in the bunker and bring it up, since every part of it was so mind boggingly expensive mana wise to replicate. They'd also shipped in some of the golem charging stations from what had been the barracks and maintenance rooms. It had not been an easy or quick exercise, but the maintenance bots had proven incredibly adept at minute work, so much so she'd earmarked them to replace her golems on the assembly lines.

"So the setup works. Which is good. But we need more adjustments on the interface side of things, which is going to be a bit more problematical."

"Why so milady?" Asked one of Seraph's golems.

"Because I'm the only one that can do the software for that." Well, it was both true and false, depending on how you saw it. Her other self was technically her, and also an entirely different person altogether. "And my time is…limited."

"Affirmative. Time is always the most precious resource."

"Indeed it is." Alexandra sighed. "Even on Earth, there was just never enough time."

"The Mother World of All That Is."

"Yes." Alexandra had asked the AI where that name came from, and they had no idea. Her other self had also gone into the database, with little success. Seraph's creator had just…programmed them that way. It reeked of a cult, if only one of personality about their founder, who apparently had been an extradimensional. "In any case. I'll do some adjustments and we'll do another test."

"Might I recommend failsafes? The power failure was somewhat disruptive to operations."

Alexandra winced, but nodded. The problem was that since she couldn't get the mana of the NLR core for herself, she'd decided to try and power her golems with it. But to do that, she'd have to find a way for her powers to stop feeding them mana. Finding a way to do that had required a bit of fiddling with her interface's protocols before finding some kind of emergency shutdown feature when on low mana.

Fortunately, it had worked and proven to be able to be activated at will.

Unfortunately, they'd input the wrong command and cut the mana input for EVERYTHING.

And a lot of her earlier dungeon parts had systems that had effectively zero autonomy, unlike her later weaponry and traps, which had usually doubled as some part of a field army.

It had been a bit of a scramble to get everything back online in time.

"I'll scrounge something up."

"Thank you milady." Seraph tilted their golem's head. "And greetings milady."

"Greet-Eeep!" Alexandra jumped a bit as she felt a prickle on her neck. She almost whirled around, before stopping herself, and sighing. "Hello honey."

"Hey Alex." Said Emilia, before going back to nibbling on her girlfriend's neck. Apparently, when vampires became intimate with someone, they also got nibbly. It wouldn't be so bad if it wasn't so ticklish…and if her maids weren't just laughing their asses off each time, even if they were doing their best to hide it.

Just like Sarah was doing right now. She could hear the muffled snickers, even if she couldn't see the maid.

"How has your project gone?"

Emilia reluctantly pulled away from Alexandra's neck, and coughed, rearranging her dress to look somewhat presentable as Alexandra turned to face her.

"Pretty well, all things considered. Your runework has improved tremendously, by the way. Hardly spotted any mistakes." Alexandra smiled at the compliment…knowing it was wholly thanks to her other self's compiler. It was a lot harder to make mistakes when there was a dedicated program to warn you the damned thing was going to explode as soon as you flipped the switch! "I'm not sure why you wanted that however. It's an inefficient way to achieve flight."

"I have gravity generators thanks to Seraph, but not the materials to make the more…stable ones." Artificial gravity generation had been a tricky process even for the Federation, and they'd basically invented it. Although, to be fair, the Ottoman Directorate probably had a greater mastery of it when she'd…left. And, well, she didn't have access to molecular assemblers, much less metaforges to create the metamaterials required. And even if she did, she lacked several radioactive isotopes critical to the process. She could make the extremely unstable ones from the pulse grenades and unwinder rounds, but trying to make a vehicle with those was a recipe for disaster. "So I'm improvising. Thanks to my breakthrough, I've been able to narrow down what I've been missing with magical gravity." Thanks to the compiler and, actually, her old knowledge. Somehow, the kinesys runes didn't so much create a gravity field as momentum. Sort of. The inertial equations got rather complicated, but it was actually closer to how a hyperdrive generated 'speed' in hyperspace than any realspace equivalent. Which meant that without some pretty precise stabilization sequences and energy bleeds, the system just went into a loop, got a massive feedback/lashout from hyperspace, and exploded. Exactly like a hyperdrive trying to go faster than its design specifications would have, if there'd be anyone left alive to tell about it afterwards. Which, actually, there might be on this world, which would answer how they'd solved the problem. "That allows us to make some basic high energy gravity systems. Namely, limited flight. Among other things."

"Let me guess, those 'other things' are going to entail a lot of explosions?"

"Probably! Now-" Alexandra blinked as she received a ping.

A ping from her other self.

Found them. Read the terse message. Appended was an image taken by a golem, showing a strange looking device, inlaid from top to bottom with runes, with only a single spot instead stamped with faded, but still readable letters.

'Sagitarius Empire - Bureau of Strategic Defense - Aetheric Intrusion Interdiction System'

Alexandra smiled as Emilia gave her a slightly worried glance. Usually when the dungeon core trailed off like that, something was happening.

"Well well well, would you look at that. Emilia, care to join me? I've found something you're going to be very interested in."

*****

Emilia whistled softly as she inspected the device.

"I know it has become rather common as of late but…still, devices of the Old World are quite awe inspiring."

"Indeed they are." Said Alexandra, trying to avoid visibly reacting to the apparition, her hologram in the corner of her vision.

"Well, it's going to take me a bit to sort through, but yeah, it does look like an anti-teleportation spell. A big one."

"That's good. It's something we're going to need, badly."

"Agreed." Emilia clapped her hands, smiling. "Let's get to work!"

*****

So how did you even find this? Asked Alexandra through their cobbled together messaging system, while paying attention with one ear at Emilia who was busy studying the artifact.

It occurred to me that the anti-teleportation system might be purely magical. In which case it would need a line to the mana systems of some kind, if only as a backup. Answered the apparition as her hologram shifted.

So?

So, well, the link to the 'ley line node' lead back into the NLR core's power distribution system, which was basically a complete mess. Fortunately, you pulled it out. I then sent a golem into the power nexus, and looked for the most resilient looking cables. The ones obviously made to take a hit and who had regular maintenance before the war. Alexandra nodded internally. That was a pretty good idea actually. Even with all the obfuscation, there would be telltales for the reinforced systems who were given special attention. Found one leading straight to the silos, another to what I assume had to have been the antimatter power core, had it not, you know, gone critical. Alexandra winced internally. She knew exactly how devastating such a power core could be, and according to Seraph it hadn't been a small one by any stretch of the imagination. And the last one lead to a redistribution hub and completely different array of capacitors that then fed these things.

Fully redundant system?

Only way to have more of that redundancy would have been another set of mana generation systems for it, but those clearly came at quite a premium. The apparition shrugged.

Right. Anything else worth noting?

There seems to be three fully separate mana power networks in the base. The one for the teleportation jammer, the main base network, and another that I think serves to service the mundane generators and their own maintenance systems. I'm trying to hunt down the fusion reactors using those, but it's proving to be a royal pain in the ass. Whoever did this was one hell of a paranoid asshole. And coming from me, well, us, that's saying something.

Agreed. Alexandra blinked and focused back on what was happened around her avatar as Emilia straightened up smiled.

"-soo, with this, we have the basic spell structures to make teleportation blocking enchantments of our own!"

"That's great! So we'll be free from assault that way then."

"Well…Yes and no."

Alexandra blinked, tilting her head.

"Explain?"

"See, they're not…absolute. Those spells will make teleports more costly, dangerous and, most importantly, inaccurate, but, well, the more time and resources they're willing to spend on it…"

"The more they can overcome that. Wonderful. Can we…I don't know, stack them up?"

"Not really. They more or less weave in with the spell and attempt to disrupt it, multiple instances wouldn't do much. In fact they'd probably more interfere with each other than help!"

"Ah." Alexandra frowned, then she blinked once more. Weren't the teleportation spells effectively hyperspace jumps? If she could recycle the part of the spells that allowed for detection of the teleport…

She briefly exchanged a furtive look with her other self's avatar, and the apparition nodded.

There was something worth thinking about there, even if only for the future.