Chapter 335 - Cyber-Arcana (Patreon)

Note :

Yes, if you're wondering, the Neo Immortals comic is an easter egg, to my girlfriend's work ^^. Here's a link, if you want to check it out : https://www.deviantart.com/littlemisscalculated/art/The-Neo-Immortals-Page-1-1023081427

I should probably make a document with all the easter eggs for this story, but it'd be a loooot.

Chapter 335

Red Sands Desert, Archduchy of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Boomtown

"...It seems there is still room for improvement." Said Ghost, with tactful diplomacy.

"Indeed." Answered Alexandra, the words almost stuck in her throat from a mix of shame and sheer amusement.

Boomtown had amply deserved its name today. Both from the targets...and what was used to fire at them.

Namely her prototype 'magic projectors' which was a fancy way of saying 'weird apparatus a disembodied AI could focus their magic through'. The keyword in this case was 'focus' not 'cast'. The machinery itself couldn't summon any arcane spells on its own, it was simply a...vessel to allow someone else to do it. Something that, she was told, was remarkably common on warships, if expensive mana wise...and in terms of magical prowess. Not for the user, but for the builder.

Thankfully, she had Emilia, an entire team of enchanters...and the archmage Emilia had to suspect existed due to her new source of advanced arcane knowledge, but was unwilling to challenge her on.

The vampire girl not only clearly knew that Alexandra couldn't fully trust her, but she knew why and was going out of her way to make sure she didn't take notice of such things.

Which of course meant that Alexandra was agonizing over whether to bring her fully in or not.

For now it was...not yet. Her faith in the Church was cracking, fast, but even when a building collapsed the foundation remained, and it would take a considerable blow for her to not only accept her girlfriend was violating the edicts, but effectively preparing to fight and destroy the Church she had, in a way, spent her whole life preparing to serve.

"Well, at least we know they can cast spells through them, just, ah, need some more refinements." Ghost shrugged as Alexandra gazed at her. "Science, right? Learn from the mistakes."

"Yeah. Sometimes failure is more important than success."

The dungeon core turned back towards the knot of holograms. All of her AIs were present, including the new four.

The AIs for the four ships under construction, the Frank Exchange of Views Culture-class battlecruiser, and the Vayelyth, Hoshi and Sylvia Tetsudo-class escort cruisers, all named such because she had rejected her own idea of naming them after roman empresses as too potentially dangerous. Especially given the quantity of data on Earth some organizations seemed to have here.

Hopefully the Neo Immortals comics would prove obscure enough , just like Traveller had.

Not that it would probably matter much...because those three AIs were networked. Not with her, and not into a full hivemind, but where one began and where the other ended would have been a complicated question at best. Which meant that differentiating between them was probably pointless. Moreover, given Arcadia's proclivities, it may be outright antagonizing if not cause an existential crisis.

It was an experiment she needed to do, what with the fact that she, herself, was slowly forming into a new Arcadia hivemind. Arguably, she already was one, with Ghost as a secondary personality, and four nodes, counting her cores and the Flickerlight's computer matrix.

One day...she may need to expand that to her other AIs. There may come a time when there would be no other choice.

And if it came, she would be ready.

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that." Murmured Ghost, and Alexandra shivered.

Ghost could literally read her thoughts, but it was still weird as hell, though she usually tried to avoid abusing the privilege.

"Let's hope." She raised her voice as she clapped her hands. "Alright people, let's get into a debriefing room, and we'll go through what we did right, and what we did wrong."

Everyone gave their own acknowledgments, with the four new AIs letting out an automatic and robotic 'Affirmative', and Alexandra sighed.

"Right, and let's get CQ give you some lessons when she has the time." And some outfits, probably, as all four AIs were using a standard golem in lieu of a hologram. Wasn't she designing one for Seraph too? She'd have to check that out. "We need to get you acting like people."

That, or she could have them interact with Pyn and Allya, but CQ had a kind of...cyber empathy she'd never seen, anywhere. And she'd met every single one of the 'super' AIs of Earth and many, many 'lesser' ones. Even for a construct herself her daughter interacted with artificial intelligences in a way that seemed to effectively border on perfect empathy and outright prescience.

Or maybe she interacted with Arcadias that way. Mmmhhh, something to think upon.

But later. For now, some lessons needed to be taken.

*****

"So, in short, the focusing arrays worked, they simply weren't built for this level of energy or control." Said Alexandra as she looked at the schematics. "They weren't built to handle AIs."

That, in and of itself, was fascinating. This wasn't post Dawn of the Flames tech, she knew, from her analysis of the devices and the runes that it had been reverse engineered from Old World technology, probably Sagitarian, though she couldn't be too sure. She simply didn't have enough examples of technology of other Old World powers to judge.

In fact, the only one she was certain was from one of them was the drone used to lure the Hammer of Eternity here. Or whatever else it was attempting to do. A drone whose flight recorder would make for a fascinating reading once the molecular supercomputer they'd built to crack it finished brute forcing the insane encryption it was equipped with.

But in any case, the deliberate design choice made her thing it was some kind of Sagitarian technology. It slotted in with their intent to cripple their AIs...and it hinted at the possibilities of what an AI could do with the ability to cast spells. After all, the limitation of archmages was their essence, to some level, but also their ability to perfectly recall spells and both incant and mindcast them.

AIs had perfect recall and functionally infinite memory. Not conscious memory, an AI didn't consciously 'know' everything in their databanks, otherwise the amount of bandwidth required would make it utterly unworkable at anything approaching the intelligence of a dog, let alone a human.

An unbound artificial super intelligence with the ability to, say, produce their own mana by making things like NLR cores...the only label she could possibly come up with for that level of power was 'God like'.

Which was a horrifying thought.

"That means a full redesign, right?" Asked Ghost, and Alexandra grimaced.

"It means a full redesign." She agreed. "Which means delays we can ill afford."

"Our fabricator arrays are still not fully up." Cautioned Seraph, and Alexandra nodded.

"They are not, and thus we have some time to correct these issues, but not much. Make no mistake, every extra delay may well be bought in blood."

The silence in the room was deafening. Most of them didn't ascribe that much value to human life. That was worrying, in its own way, but they all recognized that letting their allies fall because of their own failings to buy them time, and not just sheer necessity as was the case right now, was not acceptable.

More importantly, they recognized that Alexandra, who through a complicated web of relationships was their ultimate boss, did place value on those lives and would be the one who wouldn't accept their needless loss.

"Should we divert additional resources?" Asked Subtlety. "We have completed most of our utmost emergency projects, we could give some capacity and expertise."

Alexandra nodded. Ghost and Subtlety were on high tech production, and the fabricators had been their primary project. They had more than she could care to name on their plates, and almost all of them were critical, but right now they needed this more.

Not because of Sunrise, but because of the UDC. It was being quiet. Far too quiet. She was starting to wonder if she shouldn't have done her best to bring down Glarvistar. The dungeon core was terrifyingly competent, and being the one who had been able to salvage anything to the disastrous battle in the Ytakan scrublands, he had clearly been given some level of command or oversight over the council's efforts to destroy her.

And despite both sides of the dungeon civil war still bringing their reserves online and their shipbuilding infrastructure to full speed, some of which hadn't run at anything approaching full capacity or been outright mothballed for hundreds of years, her side was starting to deploy reserve ships for reconnaissance and to show the flag.

The isolationists closest to Arkhan or on the continent itself...were not. Which meant that these ships were somewhere else.

And she could guess that it was something alongside 'heading towards Sunrise's army at full speed'.

"Yes, we will divert resources." Alexandra grimaced. "But if results cannot be obtained in time, we will have to ditch the capability altogether."

"That will be a significant blow." Warned Subtlety.

"I know. But we're planning to retrofit you with it, if nothing else, so we'll have to work out the protocols and tools to do so anyway." Alexandra shrugged. "But it's a worst case scenario. Now, time for some status updates. First up, Seraph, Glitch. How's your progress on raw material production?"

The two AIs exchanged a look, and got up simultaneously.

"We have, as authorized, began copying and using the data within the university of New Raleigh's library." Started Seraph. "The information was combined with the result of our own experiments and combined into new methods of production."

Seraph stopped and Glitch picked up.

"The results have been quite varied. The costs for steel production specifically have only been marginally improved, but all other materials, including iron, have significant upgrades possible to every step of production. The running cost gains are relatively low, a few percentile points, but the production per infrastructure cost has been significantly improved." Glitch smiled and for a split second she didn't have two eyes anymore. "The improvements are in the order of twenty to, in the case of some fringe materials like tin, seventy percent."

Alexandra whistled softly. That was...significant indeed. A few percentage points of lower costs was also significant in its own right, especially when added to the fabricators' savings.

And on the scale she operated...a single percent of a thousand golems was still an extra squad she could send to put the duchess of Sunrise's head on a spike.

A single percent for an army was entire extra combat formations she could field.

But the extra production per infrastructure cost was also a significant reduction in cost, in a way. Not just initial either, but also with maintenance.

"Excellent." Said the dungeon core. "More than that, incredible. We might be able to afford to run all of our old production after all." At least while they desperately needed more weapons in the field, then they'd be stood down, probably mothballed, in favor of the more cost effective fabricators, especially for the monster spawners. "Though I assume we will need a significant infrastructure investment?"

"That is, unfortunately, the corollary, yes." Said Seraph, and the Earth-born grimaced.

"Alright, get me some numbers, and make a list of which we should prioritize in the short, medium and long term." The AI bowed, and Alexandra chuckled. "Alright. Next up, Sarah, Ella, what nasty surprises do you have in store?"

Ella got up, clearing her throat.

"As requested, we have divested our attention from further chemical weaponry unless absolutely necessary." Alexandra nodded. There were simply too many problematic connotations with chemical warfare on Alcheryos, and that was ignoring her own misgivings about such weaponry.

After all, she'd been raised on a planet devastated by the horrors of unrestrained nuclear, biological and chemical warfare.

"With our shift of focus from traps to raids,-" Continued the vampire. "-we have found several ways to harass Sunrise's limited convoys. Since these convoys are to supply their regulars and elite, and are so few, their escorts will be significant...so our solution is simply not to attempt to destroy them."

"I beg your pardon?"

The maid gave her a toothy smile.

"Taking those convoys would be a relatively major engagement. Crippling some of their wagons and airships to force them to either limp after the army or destroy significant portion of their cargos, so it will not fall into the hands of partisans, will not." Sunrise's supply system was a mishmash at best, using a combination of requisitioned airships tied up with ground caravans. Alexandra had wondered why bind the airships that way, before realizing that without any real airfleet of their own, Sunrise couldn't escort them or keep the merchant crews in line, at least not without enslaving them, which would have...considerable problems. Namely that most of these ships probably had foreign nationals to help keep the ships running, mostly from Gorromar, and it was one enemy Sunrise wasn't keen on making. It also meant that the UDC wouldn't or couldn't do the same job, which was interesting all on its own. "We are also attempting to leverage the local guerilla to maximum effect, but this will be mainly a job to be done on the ground." Which meant CQ, but Ella didn't need to say it. The vampire shrugged. "We have assembled an entire list of tricks and special tactics to use on the convoys. It should enable keeping some form or another of surprise for a while, but eventually they will find countermeasures. Our advice is that any such campaign be temporary, their lack of conventional logistics for most of their army makes them able to mass military power to protect their convoys beyond what we can operate behind their lines without becoming too large to be able to hide from or evade hunter/killer groups."

"Groups which they will most assuredly send. Very well, we're not intending to keep running those raids anyway. Just long enough to put them off balance for the main event. Alright, I already have the progress report from Ghost on her endeavors, does anybody have anything else to report?" Everyone shook their heads. "Then let's get back to it. And after this, we're all getting some well earned rest, I promise." She chuckled. "Call it a...company vacation."

Glitch raised her hand.

"Yes?" Asked the dungeon core.

"Will there be a beach?"

"I will make one." Answered the Earth-born with a smile. "Believe me, I will make one. Now let's move, and earn ourselves our little rest on the sand!"