Chapter 334 - Strategic Balance (Patreon)

Note : Chapters 335 and 336 have been written and added to the queue !

Chapter 334

Red Sands Desert, Archduchy of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Fabricator Array

"So. How are they doing?" Said Alexandra as she looked at the rows of fabricators, each surrounded by material hoppers and an entire network of conveyor belts and machinery, all intended to optimize their outputs to the highest possible level.

"Purring like kittens." Answered Ghost.

"Still on schedule?"

"Yep! Of course, that's only for making the fabricators we need. I have no idea how fast we can build the new designs."

"Then let's dedicate a fabricator to do so." Alexandra shrugged at Ghost's questioning look. "We can afford it, and it'll be an excellent test run. Besides, that way we can experiment. With infrastructure costs like these, optimizing to reduce build time instead of build cost is now something we'll have to do. And we haven't done that...ever, I don't think."

"Yeah. Which reminds me, we're not switching everything over to the fabricators, right?"

Alexandra shook her head.

"Not yet, no. The fabricators will enable us to save a lot of money, which should enable us to continue fueling some of the more cost effective assembly lines even in the long term." The first wave of fabricators would be almost exclusively for golem production, at least at first, but it wouldn't stay that way for long. They weren't actually that great at mass production, but a fabricator was a hell of a lot more effective than even an early twenty first century assembly line, and complete automation or no she wasn't quite there yet. "Those making our simpler weapons, for example. You don't really need a fabricator to make a shotgun or an assault rifle after all. At least, not ours."

"Yeah, right. Yours are so cheap and dinky they'd make the Kalashnikov blush."

"Hey, try making an assault rifle entirely out of steel, that you can't exactly maintain in the field and you know you'll have to at least ship through a giant desert if not use it there, for the cheapest possible price, then we'll talk."

"Point taken."

Alexandra smiled.

"Besides, even if it's a piece of shit, it's still leagues ahead of anyone short of Gorromar on this continent."

"You don't fear their reaction to that?"

"If they'd cared about technological supremacy, they'd have gone after Tark a long time ago." Alexandra shook her head. "No, I'm more concerned about the Eris Empire. They do care, a lot. After all, with their military overstretched like that, technological superiority is all that's preventing their frontier territories from imploding. I'm, in fact, utterly amazed they haven't come after me yet."

"Gargor was within their territory. Having to deal with a dead, old dungeon core, and all the evacuations and displacement from that...it has to be a nightmare."

"A nightmare that wouldn't require much of their military, but I take your point. Attacking me, at least without embracing the isolationists' line that I was behind it, would just make it seem like they could have done it. That's not mentioning the fact that most of their military is tied up preventing other dungeons from moving, both within and without their territory. And embracing the isolationists would step squarely into the UDC's civil war arena, and if they do...If they do, the dungeons in their territory they're currently blocking will go from trying to go around them to full frontal assault, and it's a lot easier to block someone by making a wall of bodies than it is to kill the other side, as our dear Kaidani volunteers showed in their fight against the UDC and then Sunrise."

"Yeah. They had a window to make it not about the Civil War, but the UDC firmly closed it for us by allying with Sunrise."

"Yep. Any news on our other projects, by the way?"

"I really should be asking you that." Said Ghost with a smile. "Basically the only thing I heard is you signed off on Glitch and Seraph delving into New Raleigh's gifts."

"Yeah. If we're gonna do a full upgrade on raw material production, might as well go all out." Alexandra rubbed her neck. "I really have been crushing you under work, haven't I?"

"Everyone's busy. Besides which, it's what I signed up for. All the same, might want to schedule some downtime after we get production of the new stuff streamlined. Get everyone to breathe a bit, recharge their batteries. Probably clear out their minds and get new ideas about some problems they couldn't solve too."

"That's...a very good suggestion, actually."

Ghost shrugged.

"Well, I did lead the program to research and build, on a rushed schedule, the largest warship humanity...er, Earth, had ever built."

"Fair enough." Alexandra smiled. "Alright then, I should probably go. We're putting up the finishing touches to boot up the new AIs for testing. And the little surprise for Emilia."

"That insane mech CQ made? Good luck with that. And the AIs are the mage ones right?"

"Yep. Wanna watch?"

"Do I ever!"

*****

Satina Olyrin, head of the house of Olyrin and by the grace of the Gods duchess of Sunrise, and in an ever fading dream -or perhaps was it a nightmare?- 'rightful Queen of the Asarian Kingdom', entered her tent, and more or less collapsed onto one of the chairs surrounding the table she used for her war council.

The pace for her army wasn't gentle, but the one she'd set for herself was even worst.

She barely even twitched as one of her maids started doffing her armor as her nephew entered, alongside her spymaster.

She simply waved vaguely at them and another one of her maids appeared, bringing refreshments as they took their own seats.

The duchess noted, with some amusement, that they utterly refused to meet the eyes of the maids, or even let their gazes linger on them, or the too perfect, too young skin of regularly regenerated flesh.

"So." She finally said. "The dungeon core has been slowly bleeding us, every step of the way. Using that...'Mackie', was it?"

"Yes. That is what the remnants of our network and our rogues have reported." Said the spymaster, and the duchess nodded gratefully.

It wasn't feigned either. Even despite everything, he had managed to keep lines of communications up to agents buried so deep they had survived the loyalists' meticulous purges and counter intelligence operation, inevitable after the string of insurrections she had sponsored to give herself the best start to the war.

And his rogues...

They didn't have that many of them. But some had been able to slip into the civilian train of the army, though they were...reluctant to enter the ranks of the Kaidani volunteers. The reports her spymaster was getting went from concerning to the downright bizarre, and had made her doubt their reliability at first.

But their coup with the reconnaissance aircrafts, albeit from the ones that only shadowed the army, had made her seriously consider the reports.

They'd filled her with dread. She was no soldier. Her entire life had been spent nurturing Sunrise's nobility, commoners, slaves, and the intricate balance of emotions and perceptions that allowed one to rule a Duchy and make it prosper, both economically and socially. As much as the Crown would hate to admit it, there was a reason Sunrise was so powerful and prosperous.

And thus she knew exactly the depth of trauma, hatred and renewed hope that could birth the kind of fanaticism and mysticism the rogues were reporting. The Church may be powerful but it did not demand worship, only compliance. Most people anywhere were only mildly interested in the Gods and praying to them. A fair amount of it was mostly routine.

Those people had fallen into despair so deep they'd latched onto that damned dungeon with her gleaming golems as their fucking divine sent saviors and would willingly die for something that was fundamentally alien. Something they had been told since childhood was threatening, aloof and also the source of life. Ever since the United Dungeon Wars, dungeons had been seen with a mix of awe, greed, fear and suspicion.

She'd always known her conquest would be bloody but she'd planned from the get go to free most of the slaves she had acquired. She wasn't foolish enough to believe she could impose mass slavery by force on the western provinces, it would be the same as trying to emancipate her own duchy, suicide. She hadn't intended on this level of resistance, and the destruction that had followed. Devastating Molro and Kaidan had never been an objective, she'd simply needed to get through them quickly but that pace and the relentless fighting with the local and then the Crown's hosts had forced her to enslave people en masse to replenish her ranks. With their Queen at the helm the loyalists had fought like demons and bled her main army so deeply she'd had no choice.

Originally she had planned for some level of destruction, true, that was inevitable in war, but once she had freed most of her slave soldiers she could enslave the Crown's own troops and levies as workers to help rebuild everything, with perhaps a tithing of the west for some of their less desirable elements to replenish and keep topped up her duchy's slave supply. It would have been effectively the same as the peasant levies some of the Crown's loyal nobles had used, simply with slave brands to ensure compliance.

She just hadn't realized the level of hatred she was raising with this...and hadn't counted on the dungeon core. Had she had the support of the neutral nobles as she encircled the capital, she would have won. The peace that would have followed would have been uneasy, but it would have worked.

Instead there was this nightmare. Even if she was victorious...victorious for what, exactly? For a throne no one would bow down to? She'd have already proven that whomever holds the blade can take it for themselves. And the western half of the Kingdom would never bow to her now. Even the central sections would be shaky as well, and already renewing the garrisons would pose a major problem. She had counted on the neutral nobles forming islands of stability in the lands her own loyalists would get as rewards, but the exact opposite was happening now.

She could win, but she would no longer have an Asarian Kingdom. She would almost certainly create a schism. Rebirth would be eradicated with the death of its dungeon, but she couldn't wipe out Sarth and the Western Baronies. Doing so would bring down on her the wrath of powers whose attention she was already trembling under.

Ironically, it seemed even if she lost she would create a schism and the destruction of the Kingdom anyway. If their majesties believed they would be able to exert any control over the new archduchy of Rebirth, they were wrong and then some. The archduchess may stay their loyal lapdog, though her past put that into doubt, but what of her heirs? And her heirs' heirs? Within two to three generations the Kingdom would be done for, and given the fact that dungeons didn't die of old age, she wouldn't bet on the Crown.

"Your grace?"

The duchess shook herself, as she'd realized she had completely spaced out from the conversation.

"Apologies, it...has been a long day." She said as she rubbed her eyes.

"My aunt." Said her nephew, looking at her with open concern. "You should get some rest. You have been pushing yourself too hard."

"Perhaps I have, perhaps I haven't." In fact, they both knew she had...and that there was no choice. She wondered if her UDC 'allies' realized that she was the only thing holding her army together at this point. "But regardless, with our rogues' reconnaissance and preparations...we have a trap laid out. One that may give us a chance."

"Only a chance." Said the spy master.

"Perhaps, but it's a hell of a lot better than being led by our nose to death by a thousand cuts. If they even wait that long." The duchess' eyes turned even grimmer, and the two men's followed suit.

The slow, ponderous advance, with the dungeon seemingly dancing around them, bleeding them at her leisure was building a sentiment of...dread. It was a variant of the same feeling of inevitability the dungeon had when she had marched undefeated to the North, but even more vicious. Now, her people were convincing themselves that the dungeon was too in control, too calm, too precise. The roads, the bombs, the ambushes, in their mind everything had been prepared, carefully orchestrated. The gullible fools believed that they were walking to the tune of the dungeon's flute, and marching straight into some ambush or other nefarious scheme.

That wasn't the case. But what was very real was that every step they took got them closer to Darthar, where the dungeon's 'branch office' was. That meant shorter supply lines and easier reinforcements. The dungeon would try something, once she was good, ready, and had her supply lines short enough to support fighting the main army. Or at least attempt to.

Thankfully, her UDC allies had a solution to that. A solution that would arrive soon...and tip the balance the other way.

It would also prove how much of a foolish child that dungeon was. After all, why make a branch office to shorten your supply lines...when you could send a secondary core to the army itself?

"The die is cast, as they say." Simply said the duchess. "We need only hope, that we roll well."

Or that, at least, their foe rolled worse.

One could hope.

One could pray...