The Station Core: A Dungeon Core Epic (Station Cores Book 1)

by Jonathan Brooks

  When it was complete, Milton looked at it through one of his drones’ “eyes”, and he started laughing internally. He had ended up putting it in the middle a small clearing he had found, but after seeing the finished product he wished that he had hidden it in the middle of some trees. If he had been aiming to create a 15-foot-tall shiny metallic phallic symbol, then he had more than succeeded. With a base installed into the ground that was wider than the rest of it, the “shaft” of the tower was about a foot in diameter and stuck straight up into the air, ending with a bulbous, rounded top. He wasn’t sure who had originally designed the amplifier, but they must have cared more about function than aesthetics.

  With that in place and activated, he found that he could just barely reach the rock formations he had found that housed the Pygmy Wolves. He temporarily reassigned his Quizard to guard duty, protecting his drones while they started exploring and mining the newly-reached ore deposits. Weeks passed without any attacks, but one night while the Quizard was out hunting, a massive pack of Miniature Pygmy Wolves the size of large hamsters attacked en masse, at least 300 of them swarming over his dig site. His flying drones were fortunately in the air transporting material back to his Core, but two of his drones were enveloped in the wolfen tide, torn apart by their surprisingly sharp teeth and claws. The remaining two drones had burrowed underneath the ground for safety, but the wolves were already digging their way after them, massive clumps of dirt being thrown all around by their fervor.

  Since he was still “awake” while they were actively mining the hills, he directed his Quizard back to the site, knowing that his Combat Unit was the only thing standing between his remaining ground drones and their destruction. The Quizard quickly sped back, arriving within moments of the initial attack. It was like a force of nature, tearing through the assembled Miniature Pygmy Wolves like a tornado, slicing apart swathes of them with its claws and stomping on dozens of them as it almost danced around them in fury. After only a minute, his Quizard was victorious, chunks of wolf strewn about and blood coating its scaly skin in smears and splotches of purple and red. While most of it was purple from the wolves, a good portion of it was from his lizard, wounds covering its body from the many tiny wolves that got through its defense before they died.

  Milton watched through its eyes as it tried to move around afterwards, only to almost collapse from an injury to its back-left leg. He didn’t want to have to kill this Quizard off, especially since it did such a good job defending the worksite, and the expense of replacing him was cost-prohibitive. He knew the nanites inside its body could heal small wounds, but it looked as though its extensive injuries were a bit too severe. Instead, he brought out ALANNA, hoping that she wouldn’t be too mad at him for waking her up.

  She was actually quite congenial, at least as much as personality would allow. Milton thought she must have been ready to wake up and “stretch” – for a little while at least. “Heal your Combat Units? Why the fuck would you want to do that?”

  “Well, I don’t want to have to make a new one – it’s pretty expensive and it also would take too long to create another one from scratch. It needs to get back to my worksite so that I can make sure the drones are guarded while they mine.”

  “You’ll have to research Biological Repair in your Bioconversion Lab. I’m surprised that you haven’t already looked at that. Has there been anything exciting going on lately?” she asked, unfeigned interest in her expression.

  “Uh…not really. Just mining and collecting resources. Pretty boring actually.”

  “Well then, I’m fucking out of here,” with that, she turned into her grey fog and wisped into his shell once again.

  “Thanks…” he said, not sure if her retreating form could hear him. He turned his attention to his Bioconversion Laboratory and focused his attention on it. Suddenly, something popped up in his “mind” – a list of things that he could research or “unlock” in his lab.[30] It cost Bio Units to unlock the functionality of each option, including 1,000 to obtain the Biological Repair function. He was intrigued by some of the research that granted him the ability to increase the damage and defense of future creatures he made, but the cost was a little high yet to justify purchasing them.

  He purchased the ability to repair his units and instructed his Quizard to return to the dungeon. As it limped back – its speed a small fraction of it prior sprinting ability – he had his airborne drones cautiously bring back the pieces of his destroyed drones so that he could repair those as well. Maintaining my units is getting expensive, he thought.

  His drones were repaired just as the injured Quizard made it back to the dungeon. His drones had to disarm all the traps in the way again, but he figured the time and expense saved by doing this would make it all worthwhile. When the lizard reached the lab, Milton instructed it to climb to the top of the cylinder using a handy ramp located around the side and to jump in. Once it was inside the liquid, he activated the Biological Repair option on the creation menu and within minutes his giant lizard was back to normal. All in all, with the repair only costing 215 Bio Units, he only spent a total of 1,215 – which was less than half of what a new Quizard would cost. And now he could repair any of his Combat Units as well.

  Milton sent his Quizard back to the worksite, carrying his repaired ground drones with it to get them back as soon as possible. He also spent the necessary resources to create an extra sensor orb as well, so that it could stay airborne and keep watch and hopefully avoid another incident. Forewarned is forearmed, or so they say.

  He didn’t have any major problems after that. He stayed “awake” for another month, watching the progress at the Wolf Den Hills and looking for any problems that needed his attention. There were another couple of attacks by groups of Miniature Pygmy Wolves, but there were a lot less than the first group and were barely able to scratch his Quizard before they went the way of their predecessors.

  With things well in hand, he left his drones and other units to do their thing while he activated Sleep Mode again with instructions to wake him up in 15 years if nothing else happened. The usual blankness enfolded him in its embrace and he had a good 10 years (or 10 seconds) of uninterrupted “sleep” before he was interrupted by one of his squirrel scouts.

  Chapter 30 – Proctans

  They were back. He wasn’t sure where all the people went, but his squirrel scout had noticed a party of them making their way through the forest, about 1,000 feet inside the border near the abandoned village he had found decades ago. It wasn’t abandoned anymore, which he found out when he flew over it with his just his bird instead of the bird-snake combination he had been using for years. He didn’t want to gain their attention before assessing what kind of threat they would be to him.

  He wasn’t naïve enough to think that they would be nice and understanding when they learned about him. If they were anything like humans, then they wouldn’t hesitate to try to destroy something unknown and different from them, even if they understood exactly what he was. He had to take things slowly, investigate them as stealthily as possible and try not to do anything to garner their attention. Therefore, he just watched from afar.

  They looked humanoid in shape, but their skin was differing shades of purple, from a light lilac color to a deep purple, almost black color. They also had larger eye sockets and eyes, the pupils of which made up most of their eyeballs, as if they were used to being underground and had adapted for low-light conditions. It was possible that the sunlight on this planet was different than what he was used to, and he didn’t notice because his “eyes” were all artificial or part of the native creatures nearby – their eyes must need the extra-wide pupils to compensate.

  Their ears were another striking feature of these people – instead of smaller ears like humans, they had large ears that fanned out from the side of their heads, sometimes extending out a foot or more. They almost reminded Milton of the fins on the side of a fish.

  They had different shades of hair, had legs, f
eet, arms, hands, and fingers just like humans. If it wasn’t for their eyes and ears, Milton would classify them as close to humanoid as it was possible to get – except for one unique characteristic. Somehow, they had magic.

  The first time he saw it was when he was sitting on a branch high up in tree as his Big Yellow Bird, watching the planting going on in a cleared field below. There were three men – at least he assumed they were men – wearing green, loose-fitting clothes with wide-brimmed hats to keep the sun out of their eyes. He watched as they poked in the freshly-plowed dirt below and dropping in seeds before covering them back up. It was slightly fascinating as he had never actually seen any type of farming before, but at the same time it was boring with the repetitiveness of it. He was about to fly away when they finished but stopped as something curious happened.

  The men moved to various portions of the field and stopped. Raising their hands up slowly, Milton sat amazed as shoots of green, blue, and purple shot up from the ground, the seeds that they had planted minutes ago showing days or weeks-worth of growth. The men looked exhausted and they quickly headed back to the village, only to disappear within one of the buildings.

  Fascinated by this evidence of something he’d only read about in books and played with in videogames, he spent the next year learning as much as he could about these people. By listening to their conversations when he was close enough, his Communication/Charisma stat helped him to understand what they were saying within a couple weeks of observation.

  Even after observing as long as he did, he didn’t learn a lot from them. He learned that they were call Proctans and the planet they were on they called Proctus. They had just moved back to this abandoned village after years of recovery following something called “The Beast War” and were planning on settling there if the beasts were able to be kept away. The magic they seemed to possess was just a normal part of their lives and almost every adult he saw had some sort of power. He saw Proctans magically digging trenches, healing wounds, growing plants, and even some moving abnormally fast. He wasn’t sure how they got these abilities or why they chose certain ones, but he wasn’t about to get any closer and risk exposure.

  After that year of observation, he focused on doing anything he could to prepare for his inevitable discovery by the people in the village. First, he took all his accumulated resources and spent most of them to build more drones. He had enough from the last decade to triple his workforce, acquiring eight new flying drones and eight new ground drones. When he sent them to his mining operation, their presence was well worth the expense – his incoming ore was arriving in triplicate as well. Without anything else that needed his attention, he went back to sleep after creating 10 additional squirrel scouts which would patrol the border between his territory and the growing Proctan village. He wanted to know if they started delving deeper into the forest before he was ready.

  He then started a “sleep” cycle for the next 20 years where he “woke up” once a year to check out the situation and to create a few additional drones to mine. After 20 years, he had accumulated 40 each of his ground and flying drones, leveled up to Combat Level 10, and had nearly mined out the entire Wolf’s Den area, leaving large holes in the surface of the ground that he had his drones cover up with dirt in an attempt to lessen the impact he had on the surrounding landscape. He didn’t want to be responsible for creating some “man-made” lakes that would stop water from getting to where it was needed and causing a drought somewhere. He was trying to survive – not kill everything else.

  In addition, he now had enough BMUs to greatly improve his Structural Integrity/Constitution and Reactor Power/Strength by a large amount, with a bit leftover to finally create the Biological Recombinator ALANNA had been asking about almost a century ago. He had half of his drones hollow out a section of his dungeon near the Bioconversion Lab, while the rest followed around the badgers while they continued to look for ore deposits. His drones worked so efficiently that he had trouble keeping up with the blocks of stone that were needed to complete the room, and minutes after the last stone block was converted the room was ready.

  He selected the Biological Recombinator on the facilities screen and parts started to poop out the back of his shell. The army of 40 drones were able to take most of the parts in just two trips, meaning that the new facility was built within about 20 minutes. As soon as it was built, he received a couple of notifications.

  Current Average-term Goal: Boot Camp – Complete!

  Learn the different functions of a Station Core:

  - Sensors – Complete

  - Drones – Complete

  - Molecular Converter – Complete

  - Biological Recombinator – Complete

  - Resources – Complete

  - Self-Defense System – Complete

  - Units – Complete

  - Neural Connections – Complete

  - Structures/Manufacturing Facilities – Complete

  - Defenses – Complete

  - Combat & Combat Levels – Complete

  - Statistics – Complete

  - Skills & Achievements – Complete

  - Research & Discoveries – Complete

  Difficulty of Goal: Hard

  Timeframe: 1 year -- Incomplete

  Rewards: Become a fully-functioning, knowledgeable Station Core

  No bonuses due to it not being completed within a year

  Current Average-term Goal: If You Build It, They Will Come – Complete!

  Using current and new metallic resources, design and build various manufacturing facilities. These manufacturing facilities will accomplish a number of things: increase refining output of raw materials, allow for the experimentation of new Combat Unit hybrids, repair and create new drones and sensor orbs, and create high-tech defenses.

  - Locate and accumulate 10,000,000 basic metal units – 12,574,114/10,000,000 Complete!

  - Create 5 different manufacturing facilities – 5/5 Complete!

  Difficulty of Goal: Frustratingly Hard

  Timeframe: 100 years

  Rewards: +10 to all statistics

  Bonus: For completing it years before the timeframe (95 years, 6 Months, 14 Days), you receive an additional +2 to all your statistics

  Error: Reactor Power/Strength and Structural Integrity/Constitution are unable to be increased due to damaged core

  Congratulations!

  When you reach certain milestones in your statistics, additional bonuses can be unlocked. In this instance, when you reached 20 points in Sensor Interpretation/Perception, you are now able to determine the mineral characteristics of anything your sensor orbs can visually detect.

  Congratulations!

  When you reach certain milestones in your statistics, additional bonuses can be unlocked. In this instance, when you reached 40 points in Processing Power/Intelligence and a minimum of 10 points in Reactor Power/Strength, the Bio Unit limit is effectively doubled again. Whereas you could previously control 8000 Bio Units, you can now control 16000 Bio Units.

  Congratulations!

  When you reach certain milestones in your statistics, additional bonuses can be unlocked. In this instance, when you reached 40 points in Communication/Charisma, the effective communication range of your Combat Units and drones is increased by 25%.

  Congratulations!

  When you reach certain milestones in your statistics, additional bonuses can be unlocked. In this instance, when you reached 30 points in Processing Speed/Agility, the speed at which projects are completed in your facilities is increased by 10%.

  Congratulations!

  When you reach certain milestones in your statistics, additional bonuses can be unlocked. In this instance, when you reached 30 points in Ingenuity/Wisdom, the required BMUs for facilities is further decreased by 10% as new materials are found to make up for the lack of resources.

  Wow! That is a huge bonus! With the increase in his statistics – except for his RP/S and SI/C, of course – he could feel a lightening of h
is load, as if he had been carrying a bus on his back and was finally able to drop it. He could think faster, reach out farther, and he somehow understood a little more of what was trying to be taught to him with the two engineering skills. He eagerly brought up his Core Status[31] to find out what had happened.

  With the increases in his Communication/Charisma – as well as the bonuses – he thought that he was finally able to reach the mountain range where he had originally found the Quizards. He knew that it was likely to be infested with the creatures, so he needed to be able to field a large complement of his own – but hopefully he could improve them…

  He played around with the Biological Recombinator a little before discovering that it required two separate creatures be “sacrificed” to the machine, where it could analyze their DNA and recombine it to create something new.

  While he didn’t have enough Bio Units yet to start going crazy with experimentation, he could at least fulfil a promise he had made.

  “ALANNA, I have a surprise for you!”

  She materialized on top of the water after quickly erupting from her hole in his shell. The eager look on her face made him smile inwardly as she said, “Ooh, I love surprises! What the fuck is it?”

  Even though he hadn’t been awake all that much himself over the last century, Milton found that he missed her company – abrasive as it was. He was glad that he was able to do something for her, even if he didn’t know what it was she wanted. When he told her that he had finally made the Recombinator she was ecstatic.

  New Short-term Goal: Feed Me!

  In addition to Research performed by your Bioconversion Laboratory, the Biological Recombinator requires Bio Units to create Combat Units for experimentation purposes. Gather Bio Units to perform these experiments to improve your defensive capabilities.