Dungeon Robotics (Book 4): Cascade

by Matthew Peed

  “Come on, Wrakras, we have an appointment to keep,” I said, grabbing his shoulder and pushing him down the hall. I had to keep myself from laughing, as he was still smoking and grumbling the entire time.

  Chapter 23

  Regan

  I examined the location of the second dryad with Alpha’s sensors. I didn’t see the green fog that had surrounded the last one, but I was sure something was bound to be overpowered at this one as well. We were maintaining a distance of fifty kilometers from the dryad in case it was some type of trap.

  “Anubis, what do you think?” I asked. He was the main person responsible for the coming battles. His ability to absorb the unholy mana as well as help the souls of the dryads was a major linchpin of these coming fights.

  “I see the spirit, but she seems to be just floating in the ambient mana, not doing anything,” Anubis said as he looked out the window.

  “I wonder what their game is,” I said, standing next to him. Was it a trap? The necromancers weren’t stupid by any means, but I wasn’t sure they’d ever dealt with anything like me or my fleet.

  “Orders, sir?” one of the command automata asked.

  “Hmm, begin bombardment. Let’s see if the fog will appear if we attack it,” I ordered after a moment.

  The turrets on all the ships opened their covers and emerged from the hull. The artillery turned toward the giant tree, then some of them charged while others loaded ammo. What followed was a rain of rounds as all the ships opened fire at the same time. The energy weapons struck first as the beams from the laser turrets impacted the tree. Next, the rounds struck the tree and most of the ground around it.

  Explosions and shock waves blasted out from the impact sites of the weapons fire. I could only tilt my head—the whole time, I never once saw the green fog, making me wonder if it had been unique to that single dryad. We maintained bombardment for a solid ten minutes before I ordered them to stop. It was a windy day, therefore the debris cleared quickly.

  I stood up sharply at seeing the tree unharmed and showing only a few scorch marks. I looked over all the readings from the console, then compared them to what my senses were picking up, but with my aura not covering the area, the information was limited. The area around the tree was devastated, however, so I knew it was localized at the tree. I really didn’t want to waste firing an ion blast at it if it possessed some way to negate the damage it was receiving.

  “Thoughts, anyone?” I asked over the comms to the other captains.

  “Sir, allow me to head in closer for a more thorough examination,” Wilson suggested.

  I knew I might not have any other choice. Unless I could figure out the cause, we would be stuck in a stalemate. “Alright, link with Liz in case something happens so you have the extra energy,” I ordered, accepting his proposal.

  “No! It’s too dangerous, Wilson!” Liz said with a determined look.

  “I’ll be fine with you protecting me,” Wilson said, cupping her face.

  I hadn’t realized they were on the same ship until that moment. Never underestimate lovers, I guess. Liz kept her sour face but nodded, then teleported back to her ship. I felt the link between the ships a few seconds later. Wilson saluted me, then began accelerating toward the dryad.

  I expected some kind of resistance, but after a few minutes, his airship was only two kilometers from the tree and still nothing happened. Suddenly, much like a pane of glass breaking, a dozen airships appeared around the dryad’s tree. A few suffered from minor damage, but it looked like their barriers had held up against my barrage. I honestly was impressed they’d been able to take that.

  Beams of mana arced toward Wilson’s airship, buffeting his barrier. If Liz hadn’t been feeding him energy, I wasn’t sure he would have held up against the barrage. I saw his thrusters flare to life as he started evasive maneuvers, but instead of returning to the fleet, he angled toward the enemy airships.

  “What is that idiot doing?” I muttered to myself, then in a louder voice ordered, “All ships ahead. Provide cover fire for Wilson!”

  The enemy airships were quickly marked by the system and the information shared between all the ships. I designated one as the target and let the battleships go to work. Beams of energy arced through the air and slammed into the enemy airship. Its barrier held much longer than I anticipated, but as soon as the physical rounds impacted the barrier, it couldn’t hold any longer and the weapons fire tore the ship apart.

  I saw a few survivors jump out using something similar to a parachute. I ordered Alpha to a stop, then released my ground forces to round them up. These people should have been more informed than the bloody cell network in the countries to the south. They would have to be in order to plan something like this, and I planned to pull it out of them.

  Wilson was pulling off some incredible moves to evade the enemy fire. He was doing quite a lot of damage to the enemy as well. The gnome airships’ barriers had been designed with long-range weapons in mind, most likely cannons and magic types of attack. With Wilson up close and personal, he was able to get inside the barrier and hit the airship directly. It helped that the weapons on his airship were meant to do more damage the closer he was to the enemy.

  Only five minutes passed, and four of the twelve enemy airships were downed. My forces were already rounding up the survivors of the crashes. Wilson’s airship finally took some damage from enemy fire, but it was more a scratch than anything. I would need to add a battering ram to the front of his ship. I felt that would increase his combat effectiveness a great deal with how well he flew the thing.

  Once the sixth enemy airship was destroyed, the others tried to retreat. They all turned to the north and stoked their engines to full, but I wasn’t about to let them get away that easily. I turned one of my ion cannons toward the group of enemy ships. While I had been planning to use it on the dryad, I could make another one quickly enough, so it wasn’t a great loss if it broke. I didn’t need to vaporize them like with the dryad from before, so several smaller bursts would work.

  Targeting just in front of the lead airship, I set it to a microburst of two seconds and to autofire when the capacitor was charged enough. Then I watched from the window of the bridge. A few seconds later, the first ship was struck, its barrier only holding for half a second. Consequently, it was sliced in half as its momentum carried it forward. It exploded when the beam cut into the reactor at the back of the ship.

  Not ten seconds later, the second airship followed in much the same way. This airship was bigger than last one we’d struck and appeared to be carrying more supplies. The explosion that followed was much bigger than the first one, as cargo led to secondary explosions. The other airships immediately tried evasive maneuvers, but the third and fourth were still hit without a problem.

  I was watching the airships closely, so when the last two raised white flags, I saw it. I still let the ion cannon fire on the fifth ship but stopped it before it sliced it fully through, only letting it put a ten-meter smoldering gash in the front of the ship. Beta and Gamma moved forward, then took the crews captive once they’d surrounded the two ships. The crews were moved to Alpha, which had areas in the city for captives as well as their ships.

  “Anubis, how’s the dryad?” I asked, concerned that the dryad hadn’t participated.

  “She is dying, Father,” Anubis said, looking out over the tree with a solemn tone.

  “What do you mean?” I asked, confused. When I looked at the giant tree, I could still feel the massive amount of unholy and dark mana.

  “The airships were siphoning off her mana to power their ships. The dryad’s spirit couldn’t handle whatever method they used. Soon, the unholy and dark mana will transform her into something . . . less,” he explained.

  “I was wondering how their ships were taking as much damage as they were,” I commented. Not to brag but I’m confident in my weapons. Even with the repairs and corrections I’d shown the gnomes, the combatants’ ships couldn’t have handled
that much firepower.

  “The battle is over. This dryad scarcely has any will left to her,” Anubis said, then bowed to me. “If I may do my task before it is too late?”

  “Go ahead. As long as you feel it is safe.”

  “I do, Father,” Anubis said with a nod.

  I teleported him to the edge of one of the arms. He jumped off, dropping the nearly five hundred meters to the ground without a hesitation. Right before he hit the ground, a burst of shadow slowed his descent, and he landed as if he’d just made a small hop. The area around the dryad’s tree was torn up from the bombardment from earlier, making Anubis jump over craters and boulders before he could reach the dryad’s tree.

  When he reached the giant tree, he walked up to it and set his hand against the bark of the trunk. Anubis removed his hand, then stepped back. He drew his scythe from his back and started to channel his mana into it. Finally, he swung with all his might, embedding the blade deep into the tree.

  Streaks of what looked like black lightning arced from the embedded blade and made their way across the tree. I didn’t sense any resistance. In fact, I felt like the dryad might be welcoming it. Unlike the first dryad, this time the trunk appeared to turn to ash, starting at the canopy. It swirled into a vortex centered on the embedded blade. The tree was so massive that it took nearly three minutes before it was finished.

  A burst of light flashed, then a mote of light was floating above Anubis. He held his hands out, then guided the light to a section of the ground that was relatively flat. The light sank into the ground, then a sapling burst from the ground. Again, Anubis gave the sapling a piece of himself to protect the tree from the unholy mana in the area.

  “What do you plan to do for a guardian?” I asked him.

  “Something killed many treants here. There are enough still lingering that want to protect her,” Anubis sent back in answer.

  “That’s sad, but good news,” I sent back.

  He performed the second ritual, and another guardian emerged from the ground like with the first dryad. This one was smaller than the first by a few meters but still looked capable enough. I checked the area, then moved Alpha ten kilometers to the north before having the city set up a transponder. While I was trying to remove the threat by its roots, you never knew what the necromancers might try to use against the races next, so better safe than sorry.

  While the city worked on that, I turned to the new guests in the city brig. The two ships plus the survivors added up to two hundred and eighty people. Most were gnomes, but there were a few of the other races mixed in their ranks. I counted five that were generating a good chunk of unholy mana. It was funny, as they were the ones that were doing their best to blend in with the others. I was sure they didn’t know this was a floating dungeon and were getting into their new role for when the “interrogator” arrived.

  “Time to get some answers,” I said and stood up. I was about to move to the cell block when I got an idea. I moved over to the forest tower and found Julie. I could only sigh when I saw her covered in blood.

  “What did you do?” I asked, more exasperated, then worried.

  “They tried to turn me against you, Master. They needed to be punished,” Julie said with a bright smile that was ruined by the blood smear on her cheek.

  “Why do I have the feeling you gave them false hope?” I said, shaking my head.

  “Master should know never to take a woman seriously. We’re known for changing our minds at the drop of a coin,” Julie replied, licking some of the blood that reached her lips.

  “Are they all put away?” I asked. “And alive?” I added as an afterthought.

  “Yes, I knew Master would be upset if I killed them . . .” Julie answered with a pout.

  “Good,” I said, then waved my hand, absorbing all the blood as it came off her. “I need you to do something for me.”

  “Anything!” Julie said with force.

  “Excellent. It’s about time you went to your holy land,” I said with an evil grin.

  “What do you mean?” she asked, confused.

  “You’ll see,” I replied vaguely. I grabbed her shoulder and moved us to Alpha’s cell block.

  The prisoners were wandering around their cells with a range of emotions displayed. Some were depressed, while others were obviously scared. The biggest emotion showing, though, was fear. I grabbed Julie by the back of her neck and lifted her up visibly from the ground. The cell door opened as I approached, and because barriers boxed in the area just past the doors, no one attempted to make a run for it.

  “Try to make some friends,” I said as I tossed her into the sectioned-off area. She landed heavily on her back, which I thought added nicely to the show.

  “Bastard! You’ll pay for this!” Julie shouted as she got off the floor.

  The cell door closed, and the barriers disappeared. All the other prisoners looked at her in fear and pity, mostly like they thought she was one of the few who’d tried to make a run for it. I let my avatar vanish, then moved my mental eye to over Julie’s shoulder.

  “You know what to do,” I mentally sent to her.

  Julie was rather twisted, but she was also quite intelligent when she wanted to be. If I had trusted her more, I might have actually let her run missions for me, but that was basically never going to happen. She nodded and I released the limiter on her collar so that she could emit some unholy mana more actively.

  She made her way through the warehouse-size cell that housed sixty-seven of the prisoners, of which all the necromancers but one were in there. As she wondered around the cell, one of the necromancers followed her with a hawklike eye. I felt it was time to start the next part of the plan.

  “Attention all prisoners! I am aware that the necromancers use a curse of silence on their followers. I will be undoing that magic in ten seconds . . . It will hurt,” I said to the prisoners. Panic started to cloud the faces of everyone present. Rage, however, was the expression the necromancers wore.

  Exactly ten seconds later, a surge of mana cascaded through the rooms and enveloped all the prisoners. Screams of pain and anguish rang out from the cells. Many of the prisoners dropped to the floor as the mana burned deep into their mana pool where the curse resided. I wasn’t going to have mercy on my enemies unless it served me in some way. Julie joined in since I couldn’t isolate her from the blast, though it looked more like she was enjoying it from the bliss on her face.

  I sighed as I saw her and could only shrug. It would take a few hours for them to recover, but there was little choice in the matter. It would still take this long if I did them individually, so might as well hit them all at once, I decided. I released some mana into the room to speed their recovery, but it still depended on the person’s own body. I mentally leaned back and waited.

  Chapter 24

  Louella

  My entourage made it to the dungeon entrance without much issue. The town was on its second level of development. The next layer of the city was composed mostly of large housing complexes. I found out that a member of the Builders Guild had traded for it on the ninth level of the dungeon. Regan had apparently added a merchant selling all varieties of merchandise. The price was steep and, from what I’d heard, involved a magical contract. Judging from the knowledge the builder had gained, however, it appeared to be worth it.

  The housing complexes were huge, easily topping the mages’ and Regan’s tower at over twelve floors and then some. Each floor had enough room for five or six families to live very comfortably, much more comfortably than most commoner homes that you would find through the countries. The first one was set to open soon and was already being rented out to mostly adventurers.

  The craftsmen in town were in love with the dungeon. The mine was basically a never-ending fount of resources for them. This allowed newer, younger members to experiment more with their craft, as the basic materials were quite cheap. The shops were hiring as many people as they could get to head into the dungeon to work the mines.
Especially since Regan had pulled his automata from that floor.

  And individual who got their information from the automaton that loaned out tools reported that Regan was opening the entire floor to the adventurers for their use. The only automata left on the floor were guards for the automaton that ran the shop, not that anyone would try anything with him. He was well liked by the miners and adventurers, and everyone else.

  The thing closer to home for me, however, was how the people were treating me. As my group traveled through the town, the citizens and adventurers would bow their heads and press their hands to their chests in a salute. I didn’t actually recall when it had started, but it was growing in strength through the masses. Ezal had told me to smile and wave to them a while ago so that the people could see their leader cared for them and appreciated the sign of respect.

  I was riding Lucifer at the moment, which put me a good meter above the heads of most of the crowd. Wrakras and the rest of my guards walked in formation around me, easily clearing a path through the crowded parts of town, though most people moved of their own accord. My new staff was an eyeful, drawing the attention from many people, some whispering and even pointing.

  “Look, she has a new weapon!” I vaguely heard from someone. My new body possessed increased senses, which allowed me to hear much better than I could before. Not that it helped me against Quin, I thought angrily to myself.

  “She keeps the dungeon in line. Of course she’ll have something that powerful. I can feel the energy from here!” someone replied to the first speaker.

  I almost burst out laughing at that. Me! Keeping Regan in line—that was hilarious. We moved out of earshot of that pair, but I heard similar conversations from people until we left the town proper. On the road to the dungeon entrance, the people were a little more dispersed, so we were able to pick up speed and not have to listen to the passing chitchat as much.

  We found Izora’s group in front of the restaurant. They must have grabbed a late lunch before heading into the dungeon. They all wore satisfied expressions that came from eating at the restaurant. We made our way over to join them.