Chapter 153

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Dungeon factory, third floor boss room

"You know Allya had a point. This thing might be a bit too big." Said Alexandra as she craned her neck up. And up. And up.

"You wanted an impressive mechanical monstrosity. You got one." Said Emilia, and the Earth-born chuckled.

"Fair enough. Still. Maybe making it five meters tall was a mistake."

"I mean, you wanted it to be able to use its heads as a melee weapon. To do that it needs some reach."

"True, true." Said Alexandra as she contemplated the third floor's boss.

The mechanical hydra towered over them, waiting with the unnatural stillness of an automata as the waterfall splashed over it.

Sarah had actually been the one to suggest the creature as the base, and Alexandra had rolled with it. She had most of the parts required to make the necks thanks to the cobras, and with some tinkering she had 'themed' each head to a specific combat attribute. There were six in total, three spellcasters and three mundane combatants. Those were, respectively, fire, ice, wind, defense and attack, both melee and ranged. Effectively it meant that a head had a fireball launcher as basically a giant cannon, another could turn the environment into a nigh infinite supply of icicles and freeze adventurers in place, and the last arcane head could throw adventurers off of the pyramid and use a variety of air manipulation spells to deflect projectiles. The first person to toss it a grenade was going to have a very bad day.

As for the mundane ones, so to speak, defense was a giant cross between a spiky mace and an armor experiment. It was covered in composite armor made with steel, the pseudo-bronze the golems were made out of, and a kind of alchemical electric and thermal dispersion gel that Ella had made. It was, overall, incredibly effective, at least in testing, and something she'd direly needed. Whatever the lightning spells were on this world, they clearly didn't behave like 'true' lightning, and the traditional insulators like rubber didn't do anything to stop it, although it did attenuate the effects. Then came the ranged and melee attacks variants. The melee attack one was perhaps a bit sadistic. She'd realized that the neck and head had a lot of empty space, and decided not only to implement extendable spikes, but also coat them in poison…and put rotating saw blades and even sweeping swords at intervals, turning the entire neck into a giant poisoned blender, impaling victims and drawing them to a very messy, and excruciatingly painful end.

For the ranged one she'd gone for a simpler design however. The upper levels of the neck and head had massive scales that could be lifted, revealing a mix between a blowgun and a pulser. Most of the energy came from compressed air thanks to some wind spells, but she'd also tested some of her newly found understanding of magical gravity. The result…wasn't bad. The rate of fire wasn't good, especially for glorified metal darts, but they hit hard, and despite not having even remotely the same armor piercing capabilities as a firearm, they would shred most unarmored targets and deal a real number on even essence boosted flesh.

The whole package was one hell of a challenge, even for gold adventurers. Or at least she hoped. There were some theming issues of course, since the heads didn't grow back -her tech was getting good, but she wasn't a goddess, at least not yet-, and there was no acid anywhere, much less acid blood, since she hadn't figured out a way to make it work without threatening the machinery in the hydra's systems.

It also doubled as a general purpose line breaker for military units. It wasn't something she'd go out of her way to build during a conflict, but it meant that any pressed into service from her reserve could actually perform something on the frontlines, if push came to shove.

And the more she heard from her UDC contacts about the Republic buildup at Erakis, the more she was afraid it would come to that. Emilia said that there was no way a sizeable army could cross the wasteland without being annihilated by sand krakens, but Alexandra didn't care. The Republic wasn't assembling at least a hundred thousand men and a full squadron of battleships at Erakis for no reason. She wasn't going to assume they didn't know something her advisor might not be aware of, and if nothing else the 'impossible' had a disturbing habit of becoming anything but around her on this damned planet.

"Alex? Alex!" Alexandra blinked as Emilia snapped her fingers, and smiled apologetically at her girlfriend. "Ah, back to Earth at last?"

"Alcheryos, actually." Alexandra chuckled. "Sorry, yeah, I spaced out."

"Well, could you do it somewhere else? No offense honey, but this is rather…damp."

"Why? I thought you liked it when I got all wet?"

"Oh shush." The vampire advisor gave her a toothy smile, before shaking her head. "Anyway, the test was successful right? We should open the third floor for business then!"

"Sure. I'll ready the opening quests to cycle on the board for tomorrow, and dispatch a messenger to Allya." Alexandra wondered if it was the case for every dungeon to have their advisor turn into their aide de camp and manager, and decided that it was probably the case. She was honest enough to admit she needed to be recentered from time to time, and Emilia did a wonderful job at it, her other self's suspicions none withstanding. "What's next on the list?"

"The 'diffraction lance'. Whatever that is."

"Oh. That." Alexandra smiled. She'd spent so much time trying to get everything in Seraph's schematics database to work that she'd forgotten she'd put in some missing items she remembered from Earth. "Ever heard of light diffraction?"

"Kind of?"

"Good. Now apply that to the ability to manipulate light with gravity, throw in some military grade light manipulation crystals and mirrors, pair it with a high powered laser emitter…and you get the diffraction lance. The weapon that made the Mirage tank the terror of the UIS and the bane of the Marine Corps." Alexandra's smile widened at Emilia's wince. She'd told the vampire girl what the mirage tank was, and she was no doubt picturing the devastation. "Don't worry, it's not the primary gun. It's only what kept the infantry off of its back."

"Infantry in power armor, according to you."

"Oh quite. Ours won't be as powerful. If nothing else, we don't have a fusion reactor to power the damned thing." Yet. "But it'll give any large group we're likely to fight a run for their money. It'll probably be expensive as hell, but we really need something in between the basic anti infantry laser weapons and the railguns." She'd actually been surprised Seraph didn't have something like that already, but then realized that the plasma guns simply hadn't survived the millenia. And since they were running into a brick wall making them work…Well, she was up for alternatives. "We need a well rounded arsenal and all that."

"You're worried about encountering commandos. High ranking ones."

Alexandra opened her mouth, then closed it with a snap. It was almost disturbing how adept her advisor was becoming at reading her, even on -or especially on- military topics.

"...Yes." She looked at the hydra, and patted its heavily armored scales. "The Republic is coming. And while the best defense is a good offense, we simply don't have the capacity to attack them on their own ground. Not yet. And this time they'll be ready."

"No one has many powerful commandos. I don't think they can afford to waste them on us."

"They can if their perceived survival is on the line." Alexandra sighed. "You don't understand dictatorships Emi. You really don't. You're familiar with monarchies, empires, but not hijacked democracies. I, however, am. Their rule is based on apathy, force and threat. Remove one of the three from the equations and the whole thing comes tumbling down eventually, and the heads of the leaders come off. As long as their citizens' livelihoods aren't threatened, most will stay apathetic and not bother rising up. As long as they have military supremacy, they have enough combat power to prevent a takeover by pure force. And as long as they keep the psychological threat of their military and oppressive apparatus, many rebels will keep their heads down and plot or just distribute tracts instead of taking up arms. And we just obliterated an entire division of their troops. They have to respond, or the perceived threat of their military evaporates."

"But…we're so small! That's ridiculous!"

"It's because we are so insignificant that they have to win. Think about it, if your army was defeated by, say, the Eris Empire, it'd still seem powerful and threatening, right? After all, it was one hell of a foe to go up against! Throw in some propaganda, some judicious playing with the actual events and facts, and the government can make it seem like the troops put up one hell of a fight rather than be steamrolled. But against Rebirth? A newly founded dungeon town with a baby dungeon? We're so thoroughly insignificant in their eyes that no amount of propaganda will make the defeat seem like anything but crippling weakness. Even the lowliest of revolutionary or rebel will smell blood, and a lot of it."

"...Shit."

"Yeah. And it gets worse. They've already survived the process, once, with the Far Reach invasion. They held because they maintained the threat thanks to emphasizing the role of the dragons in their defeat. But they still spent the better part of the last decade stomping down on renewed calls for democracy, or hell, independence for some provinces! These revolutionaries weren't very threatening, not on a national scale anyway, but they were there. And now those movements will have built up experience and martyrs. They simply cannot afford not to throw everything they have at us. Especially not when the Far Reach is a non threat by default, not with the clans incapable of producing -or even fielding- siege weaponry to smash through the border with anything bigger than a raiding party, and the Hegemony is too busy rearming to fight."

"So you expect the worst."

"'Hope for the best, plan for the worst.' That quote served me well all my life." Right up until her 'plan for the worst' had come into effect, and she'd ordered an entire world exterminated. She took a deep breath as unbidden memories of a world burning in nuclear hellfire rose. "And it will serve us more here. I hope I'm wrong, and the Republic will stop the hostilities, or try to keep us out of them. But I'm not going to bet on it."

"Right. And so you're preparing for the worst."

"Which in this case would be gold rank or higher commandos, possibly backed with a team of mythril. The mythril I can deal with." Either with an army, like during her little demonstration against team Crystalline, or with railguns. She'd prefer the former, but she was realistic enough to realize that a prepared opponents would most definitely require the latter. After all, it's what you don't know about that gets you, and the Republic most definitely knew about her army. "But the gold ones will be a problem. They're not chaff, and they'd be very dangerous. Standard weaponry isn't going to cut it, especially if there's a lot of them. Hence, the diffraction lance. The Federation's solution to the UIS' powered armor supremacy, and my solution to essence supremacy."

"I see." Emilia smiled. It was a bit weak, but it was a smile. "Well, let's get it done then! Wouldn't want to be…unprepared and inhospitable to our guests if they do arrive, mmmhhh?"

"That's the spirit! Come on. If we do it right, we'll be able to cut a spider tank in half!"