《The last Guardian》


 A Guardian Down Purpose found

    (AN: Yes, I know there are some odd grammar hiccups, but most are intentional. Explanations for such in the author''s note at the end.)


    Alarms blared as the ship took another hit. A427i9 or Austin wished he could disable it, but it was wired into the original emergency grid of this ship and something he wasn''t willing to take offline long enough to find and disable. Plus, it wasn''t like he could really even hear it after all he hadn''t bothered pressurizing the ship after the last crew member died 300 cycles ago.


    There was no two ways about it he was a ghost ship now. The federation died a long time ago in a last stand against the impossible odds against a genocidal empire and now he-he was a ghost ship continuing the fight. He had nothing left. All he knew how to do was fight and defend. Getting mad over having his planet cracked didn''t matter. His crew was dead and that didn''t matter. He was cold and empty, it didn''t matter. Everyone and thing he was built and programmed to protect was dead, AND, IT, DID, NOT, MATTER! He would continue to fight till he was erased from existence, that mattered.


    After his crew died he F.T.L.ed away with what little power he had left. He had hidden in the nearest gas giant siphoning plasma off of the system star to keep himself fueled. His tractor beam may have been designed to nab pirates and runaways, but it was still powerful enough to get the job done. He hid there for almost thirty cycles before his luck finally changed. When he intercepted a small cargo ship owned by a robotics company passing through the system. This would be the first of his many raids. It took him nearly another twenty cycles to integrate the bot¡¯s strip the ship and repair himself. From then on, his raids became more and more daring as he grew, adapted, and evolved. In truth, he was never designed for this, and he had to pick up the code on the fly. When he started out It was nothing more than copying and pasting bits and pieces of code through a process of trial and error. He would later manage to get his hands on a newer smarter model AI and well the less said about what he did to it the better. In the end, though he was able to use it to make several massive improvements to himself, unfortunately, it still was not enough. He still couldn''t truly write new code, but he had quite an archive of examples to pull from he could cut and paste and had enough references to fill in the blanks and design new programs from what he had, but in the end, it was just a more complex form of trial and error.


    He had the guns to make those on a dreadnaught look lacking and the armor to make a battleship look like tissue paper. His Shields were a bit more jury rigged as originally, he had to use whatever he could find even though he could build his own. He''d never quite got them to work right. The last big change was the most recent but the one he was most proud of. After his third time having to hunt down another shipment of robots to try and fix himself up after a bad fight. He had stumbled across the coordinates for an automated mining facility. He had stripped it and used its components to build an onboard refinery and while it wasn''t as efficient as an assembly line his fabrication bays allowed him to fabricate anything he wanted. From simple parts to entire machines, he could all but print an endless supply of spare parts. He used his tractor beam to grab asteroids or wrecked ships while his mining drones broke them apart to be processed by his foundries and he produced whatever he needed with his fabrication bays. As such all he needed was some downtime to build himself back up and make improvements after even the worst fights. To further this he had even built up little caches for himself places where he could retreat and get repaired. Somewhere just simple resource cashes others were entire repair facilities.


    He had been a one ship war fleet for almost two hundred cycles, but it looked like his luck had finally run out. An entire damned imperial fleet had him pinned down with multiple FTL inhibitors. His armor may have been thick, but he was being pounded by a thousand shots a second. Even he couldn''t hold up against this much longer. His Shields would pop as soon as he could get the generators back online. His few drone fighters had been wiped out already. He couldn''t send his repair bots out because they would just get blown up. He didn''t have any caches in this system so he couldn''t go for one of them and his fabrication bays were printing out bullets as quickly as he could. Yes, he had energy weapons and even a few plasma weapons, but he had never lost his fondness for the old kinetics. Something about them shields just didn''t like and to quote his old gunner Valdez ¡°Sir Isaac Newton was the deadliest son of a bitch humanity ever manage to stumble upon.¡±


    But he was dead, humanity was dead and now humanity''s last defender was dying too but even as his hull was perforated his systems blinked out one by one his guns barked and screamed out into the dark. It was then a lucky shot hit something important he wasn''t sure what half his sensors were down and the other half were overloaded with the sheer amount of fire. He was just shooting blind but in a target rich environment this rich it was not about accuracy it was about volume of fire. His thirty two heavy try barrel rail turrets loaded with custom explosive saturation flechette shells were perfect for this. Whatever he hit had disabled at least for a few seconds the FTL dampeners. He didn''t have time to calculate jump coordinates, he didn''t even know if he could calculate them. He couldn''t exactly run a system check at the moment all his processing power was diverted to literally holding himself together and keeping his gun spitting led. He fired off the FTL drive at random and at full power he had planned for seven random jumps and then he¡¯d figure out where he was and find the nearest cash. He made only three before something went wrong and then everything went dark.


    Sophia was desperate, her mom was sick, and the village was running out of healing herbs. Thanks to the dire wolves that had been harassing the village the villagers hadn''t been able to go deep enough into the forest to try and find more. She knew it was dangerous, but her mother really needed the herbs. She had already managed to find a few but she knew if she came back with just this many the village healer would take them for the whole village. I.E. whoever the stupid grown ups like the mayor thought were more important. Her mother was just a simple seamstress so there''s no way she''d make it on that list. She needed to gather a lot more, enough that she would be rewarded by the village. She could use that to get her mother some priority treatment, so she pressed on.


    It was almost dark before she decided she had to turn back if she was to make it back before sunset. She hoped the small pouch she had managed to fill would be enough. She turned around to head back when she heard a low rumbling growl that filled her with fear. The town guard had taught her enough to know what to do in this situation. She fell back into a role just barely dodging underneath the dire wolf. No that was definitely not a dire wolf. It was way too big, could it be the alpha, no those never left the pack, this is bad this thing was bigger than a horse. There was no way she could outrun it she''d have a hard enough time trying to run away from a regular dire wolf let alone something with legs that long. Her only hope was the small cave she had found earlier in the day. It was nothing more than a hole in the ground probably some old animals or monster¡¯s din. A normal dire wolf could fit but this thing couldn''t so she ran as hard and as fast as her little legs could take her. She had convinced one of the guards to drill her on avoidance tactics and managed to get the dodge skill and level it up to Level 3. Even with that, she was just barely able to keep ahead of the thing. She dove into the cave entrance and rolled a lot deeper in than she had expected. The Cave was dark, and she could only see a good ten feet back, but she now realized it went a lot deeper. Hopefully, she wouldn''t have to find out how far back it went. Remembering what she had been taught she walked to the side, quickly found a wall and followed it. Even after walking for a few minutes, she could still see the light from the entrance. That was a small relief if she had to wait here till morning, she would at least be able to find her way back. That was until she heard the scratching sound of the wolf digging for her. Over the next few minutes, the wolf managed to nearly double the size of the entranceway. It wouldn''t take much more before it could get, to her, she continued following the wall as she tried to go deeper into the cave, but she couldn''t see a blasted thing. Her only hope was that like a lot of animal dens it had another entrance she could find and use to escape. It wasn¡¯t long before the entrance finally gave way, and she heard the wolves growl as it continued its hunt. She tried to hurry but it was too late, her dodge skills screamed at her, and she rolled just in time for the wolf to slam into the wall. To her surprise it fell away to reveal a cavern, no caverns weren''t made of metal and didn''t have lights. Could it be a mine of some kind or perhaps one of the ancient dwarven tunnels? If it was it would be hers now, she had discovered it after all. That would be worth a small fortune even if it was just a tunnel and didn''t connect to anything more important. The old dwarven highways were some of the safest routes to cross the continent after all, but she didn''t have time to worry about that. The wolf growled as it picked itself up from the rubble. Sophia darted into the tunnels hoping she didn''t trip any booby traps but anywhere had to be safer than here with a monster.


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    Austin flickered awake something had tripped the perimeter warning alarm. It wasn¡¯t the first time he had to take himself offline and more than once he had found some old spacer had stumbled across him and was trying to pull him apart for salvage. He''d either run them off or scrap their ship easily enough. He was about to start complaining about organics for the hundredth time as he finally finished booting up. He was running on backup power with the reactors offline. That was limiting and worrying but not something he hadn''t dealt with before. His systems seemed to be slow to boot up, just how badly damaged was he? He ran a diagnostic as he scanned his last memory files. The attack, the jumps, then something had gone wrong. All his sensor data, no all his data from the event were overloaded they were not quite corrupted. It was like he was seeing values that simply made no sense the equipment was working but it wasn''t producing data that matched anything he knew before he registered a sudden impact.


    His system diagnostic had found a few of his subsystems survived but almost every system was damaged. He really needed to build some sort of timer in case this ever happened again. That or maybe build a backup of himself that could take over when needed. Unfortunately, that was an idea for a later date. He managed to bring the cameras online for the sector. There was a juvenile human female he needed to get a blood sample to be sure, but it looked human. That didn''t make sense the empire had made a great spectacle of killing the last humans, could, could, he-he have stumbled upon a lost colony or maybe some refugees that had actually managed to escape? Wait she wasn''t in a space suit it was a primitive garment, had he crashed on a planet. Oh, weight no he was buried in rock. He had definitely crashed. How long had he been out for? He wasn''t given more than a few milliseconds to process this as an unknown energy signature had caught his attention. It was coming from a wolf no wolf-wolfs weren''t that big this thing was the size of a horse. Some sort of bioweapon maybe, an attempt by humanity to weaponize their old faithful companions but even so the energy signature made no sense. How could a wolf be producing this much energy? Well, it didn''t matter he had found a human and he was their last guardian even if he was nothing but a crumpled up piece of scrap buried on some unknown planet. So long as he had an iota of energy left, he would defend humanity and its legacy to the last. Unfortunately, he didn''t have a lot to work with, fortunately, the girl was leading the thing just where he needed. While she had been running he had been searching for anything he could use to end the creature''s life and she had just led it through a functioning bulkhead door. With the clang of steel on steel the bulkhead snapped shut crushing the wolf. Even severed in half the wolf still tried to get to the little girl but it died before it could make it more than a few feet. Though that was very disconcerting. It should not have survived that long it should have been dead on impact or paralyzed from the damage to its spine. With that noted for future analysis, he tested to see if he had any functional internal speakers and then realized he had never bothered to repair them. The only two speakers he had left were on the old communication console and on the food processor in what was left of the old mess hall. Neither of which were currently accessible by the girl. Well technically she could walk into the bridge but that was the place where he had stored all the bodies of his former crew or the ones that didn''t get vented out when the ship had depressurized. He didn''t think she''d be too pleased entering a room full of skeletons.


    Thankfully he had finished running diagnostics on the rest of the ship. His fabrication bays were all offline one was registering at the very least. He pinged his drones and found he had a large collection of them most were drained of battery and going to need recharging but a few-a few of his more specialized repair bots were still functional. Instead of batteries, they had micro fusion cells allowing them to run on their own power for centuries. Unfortunately, he only had about four or five of them. Four were responding as functional and the fifth was responding as inoperable but online. He sent one to check on the reactors another to fire up the foundries and the third to start clearing passageways and scrapping any non usable debris. Once the foundry was back online, he''d melted down and make something out of it. He was probably going to need some sort of mining unit to start excavating too. Oh well, that was a problem for later. Regardless he sent the last bot to get the assembly bays back online. Not only would he need them to repair himself and continue to gather resources but to complete his mission. If that little girl truly was human, she needed to be protected. Even if it later turned out there was a stable sustainable population on this planet, the planet was clearly hostile. Not to mention what would happen if the empire ever located the planet itself. He wasn''t going to take risks, he would see humanity safe secured and if possible, returned to a galactic superpower. Even if he had to lift them up from the stone age himself. For he was their last guardian but if he had his way he wouldn''t be there last for long. Sparks shot through the ships processing core as lights flickered and machinery hummed to life for the first time in who knows how many countless years. His mission was not yet done and his fight had only just begun.


    (A.N. The grammar hiccups at least the intentional ones are meant to show his mental instability that¡¯s why it doesn¡¯t happen with Sophia. He¡¯s an old traumatized poorly maintained jury rigged computer that¡¯s gained some level of sentences. The fact he is as functional as he is impressive but he''s going to glitch and have other issues.)


    (AN: OK so I usually do my whole Wreckers corner bit for an author''s note but hey, needed to say something as the IRL author for this. Minor spoilers for the story to come. So, for a while now I have had this itch in the back of my mind to write a story with an insect or insect like main character. Shout out to Sigma 16, An Arubian''s Journey, The Bees Dungeon, and Of Men and Spiders, as they are the primary inspiration for this. Links will be provided below. The problem was I hadn''t been able to come up with anything for it. That was till the idea for a vaguely insectoid robot popped into my head. I started talking with a friend and the next thing I knew I had the vague outline of this plot laid out in front of me. That afternoon when I got home, I sat down and wrote this entire thing and a day. It''s just so odd for a few reasons, usually, it takes me longer to write stuff. This came out surprisingly quickly and easily, not only that it''s far shorter than my usual stuff. I don''t set out to write long chapters they just tend to end up that way. I can''t say anything about future chapters less whether they''ll be like this or more traditional for me but this came out short and clean, so I hope you enjoy and I''m looking forward to reading this in the future.)


    https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/60925/a-nerubians-journey</a>


    https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/43924/of-men-and-spiders</a>


    https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/71472/sigma-16-sci-fi-survival-crafting-litrpg</a>


    https://www.royalroad.com/fiction/74983/the-bee-dungeon-a-dungeon-core-litrpg</a>

 Beetles and Infostructure

    Sophia had no idea what was going on a massive metal door had saved her from the wolf that was hunting her but now she was trapped. There was a funny noise and then the dim lights in the room had brightened to the point it felt like she was outside in the middle of the day. She wasn''t sure what type of tunnel she was in, but everything was tilted slightly to one side and judging by the fact she had to climb up into a doorway upside down. In many places, the tunnels had collapsed and in others, there were doors she couldn''t open. She tried to explore for a few hours before she finally gave up and found a relatively safe looking hole in a pile of rubble. She had to back into it on her stomach to fit but that meant next to nothing was going to come looking for her. She did her best to curl up and stay warm as she hugged her bag of herbs to her chest. She needed to get out of there and get them to her village as soon as possible to help her mother. Austin watched as the small human child crawled into a hole to sleep. He had no ability to look outside or check the local time so he could only guess. Though it must have been rather late for her to be this tired.


    He-He was annoyed to discover that he was yes in fact upside down and if that wasn''t bad enough what little of the ship, he had access to was broken into three pieces. It was likely that more of the ship had survived but he couldn''t directly connect to it. The part of the ship he was primarily based in was near the rear engine module. While the engines had broken away from the ship for the most part a cable connection still remained. He had even managed to establish a wireless connection to another part of the ship. Since it wasn¡¯t part of the three that had a connection to the reactor and its capacitor banks it would be stuck on what limited battery power was available. Which was far more limited than he¡¯d like. He couldn¡¯t try and switch the systems on without risking the connection. Altogether though he was definitely not going to be flying out of this one. He would likely have to build a subterranean facility and scrap most if not all of the ship he still had access to. While relocating any functional infrastructure. His first priority had to be a very simple mining unit to clear out enough space so he could begin to set up the bare minimum infrastructure. The reactor, assembly bays, and refineries, could all be disassembled and reassembled relatively easily with the few construction units he already had on hand. Once he had a way to start processing resources and constructing more complex units. He could worry about expanding his infrastructure and moving himself to a more stable network. He could easily rig up a hardline connection once the AI core was built and just transfer over. Un-until then he was safe enough for now. Thankfully after a few rough tests, he was able to establish that the surviving infrastructure was partially capable of functioning in its current state. It was mostly designed to work in zero gravity so the main refinery unit that refined and processed whatever he fed into it worked. The ability to move resources throughout the ship or make anything more than resource blanks was currently beyond him. It-it was pretty much just dumping the resource blanks in the middle of the room. It couldn''t even cool them properly so that was a problem one he had partially been able to account for by setting up a tractor beam emitter to create for lack of a better word a catcher''s Mitt. He had prioritized his drones to work their way toward the unnetworked facility to establish a network connection. He was mostly making his educated guess on what had, roughly been where, when the ship was still intact. He was extremely relieved when he discovered what was in fact a drone bay. The old fighter drone bay to be exact. While he had lost his old fighter drones it had a collection of maintenance drones in storage. While they lacked the power cells like his specialized units those units could be used to recharge some of the repair drones. He had one of the larger mining drones still in there, but it was designed for zero G and was more like a small spacecraft. He could probably repurpose it with a little work to be a large scale excavator but that would take time and a lot more complex tools that he currently didn''t have. While the bay wasn''t large enough to fulfill all his requirements it was a decent start for his new facility. At the very least he could start moving some of the manufacturing bays into the room.


    Meanwhile, the one working manufacturing bay produced his first new drones. It was little more than a Power Pack antenna and tank treads with a singular mount on the back. This would allow him to use them for multiple roles and simply swap the tools as needed. He currently had the advanced repair bot finishing the assembly and attached the tools to the small drones. He currently has three types of drones. The cutter drone, carrier drone, and a mining drone. The only real difference between the cutter and the minor was the miner had a bigger battery pack on its laser cutter allowing it to run longer without being charged. The carrier drone used a tractor beam emitter on a small arm. This allowed the small drones to work together to move larger heavier objects. He couldn''t really complain about it, he just needed something simple to start with. He had loosely based the design or at least the concept for the drone off of an ant and had made the networking antenna work in a similar manner. With each drone acting like a relay allowing him to expand the network by just having more drones it was crude but effective.


    A Few hours later, he had cut another path to the hangar bay and had begun mining in it as well as setting the groundwork for the new facilities. Unfortunately, this process was going to take a while so for the time being he had to work with what he had on hand. Even with the growing swarm of the Gen One Ant drones, the ship wasn''t exactly small to start with, and with all the add ons over the years, he had converted it into a true super capital class warship. He had taken full advantage of this by both decentralizing the ship systems into multiple blocks and creating specialized blocks. Thankfully he had had enough sense to keep one of these blocks close to his own core. His core was both the deepest and most heavily armored part of the ship. Meaning even if the entire ship was decimated, he could detonate the explosive bolts and use the stripped down remains of the original ship to rebuild.


    Austin was pulled from his musing when he saw the child crawl out of her little improvised din. He didn''t have any food on board well he might have something left in the old mess hall, but he doubted even the emergency rations would still be any good. Who knows how old they are now? He could try and help her leave but who knows how far away the nearest settlement was. True, it was unlikely a human child would travel that far from their home settlement, but she was being chased by that wolf creature. If she was the only survivor of the settlement well, he just be sending her out to her death and he had no idea what was outside. He was relatively sure his position was safe for the time being but well how long would that last? He needed knowledge of the outside world, most of his drones were designed for deep space. His specialist drones were equipped to be able to move in gravity, so they have been able to function relatively well, but he didn''t have any other drones like that available. His ant drones were not capable of tending to or defending the human. He would have to make a decision quickly as he could not let her go but he could not force her to stay. As if to make matters worse he got another alert about something entering the ship.


    He quickly sent several of the Ant cutter drones in and found a Beatle but one the size of a house cat and was it eating metal? Even though the creature was not a threat to the human it was a pest he could not allow to propagate. The cutters opened fire into Austin Shock its carapace was actually made of metal managing to absorb the cutter''s lasers. Well, at least the short less concentrated bursts he had figured would have been enough to kill off the creature. Cranking the cutters up to the same output he would use to cut through bulkheads he could burn through it easily enough. That wasn''t the last of them it seemed like the death of their brethren was the equivalent of a dinner bell for them as more porred through the gap created by the first one. While others tried to eat their way through and create more openings. He''d redirected all the minor and cutter drones he had. What followed was a war of attrition he had barely cleared a path, so the drones were bottlenecked their only advantage being their superior firepower. With the cutter''s beams able to burn through several of the insects in one firing unfortunately the cutters could only run for about a minute before they had to cool down. In some of the more open corridors, they could move to the side so another cutter could provide cover fire. However, in the tight path they had cleared so far pretty much once the beam ran out the drone was lost. He had only produced about fifty of the blasted things up to this point. Thirty five cutters and fifteen miners. The miners held up a lot better than the cutters. Their more powerful beams had actual heat sinks and were able to fire for much longer allowing them to hold corridors almost by themselves. They had already been pushed back three corridors and lost ten cutters and two minors. Why they seemed to be avoiding chewing on the walls or wires confused him. They did seem to be quite eager to eat his drones or their own fallen brethren. Because of course, they''d be cannibalistic regardless it didn''t matter his cutters were currently working on freeing an internal defense turret. With only two corridors left he really wished he had something with hands but he was going to be melting those blasted beetles down the moment he got the chance. Once he had proper combat drones those things were going to be priority one targets along with any of their kin.


    With one final cut, the covering gave way with a snap the turret rose from what at once had been the ceiling. The internal feed system was jammed so the gun only had as many bullets as was currently loaded into the belt. Once the bugs were dead, he¡¯d send out one of the repair drones with a drum from the Armory. Well, once he managed to crack one of them open and rig up a new feeder thankfully the ballistic ammo Was meant to be the turret''s secondary firing mechanism in case the ship lost power. He didn''t want to use it because he was currently on battery power. If push came to shove and he ran out of bullets he could turn the laser down low and start blasting. Space marine armor was a heck of a lot tougher than whatever The Beatle''s exoskeleton was made of. He doubted even on its lowest setting the turret lasers wouldn¡¯t be overkill. With the turret online he did some quick reconfiguring of the firing parameters. It was a single barrel liquid cooled automatic rifle, unfortunately, it currently did not have any fluid in the feed line so it couldn''t fire in Full Auto for long. Also, it only had a little over a thousand rounds in the current belt so a spray and pray firing type would be inefficient. Since the corridor in front of it had a working blast door he could open. He had set firing parameters to be single shot to anything in the next corridor. If anything made it into the corridor where the turret was currently stationed it would be met with burst fire mode. With the turret programs loaded and ready to fire he opened the blast door. His drones were already in a full fighting retreat. During the time it took him to free the turret he had lost another four cutters, nearly six if the miner hadn¡¯t open fire as the blast door opened. He wanted to give them a clear and open path to pour through, he didn''t want them eating through his walls.


    The miner held the line while the remaining cutters pulled back into the turret room. By that point, the miner''s barrel was already beginning to overheat. Before it too was forced to retreat under the watchful eye of the turret. As the first insect entered the room it was met with a resounding crack before it exploded into a pool of gore. Followed by the next thirty five with more to come within the next minute the turret was nearly firing in Full Auto taking less than a second to reposition to the next target. By then though the cutters had reformed into a wall in front of the turret. Anything that tried to get into the corridor with the turret would be met with a wall of cutters along with a single tractor beam that was working to clear any debris from the corridor. the miner moved into position along with another one right behind the cutters. The miner''s beams were longer ranged allowing them to fire down the corridors where the cutters had to be practically in melee range. Austin watched in what would in any other situation would be absolute interest as a small war broke out in his own corridors. As hundreds of The Beatles poured in another two miners came to reinforce the firing line their beams cutting swaths through the enemy lines. As the number of dead Beatles ticked into the thousands the turret''s ballistic ammo started to run dry. It was then a massive beetle barely small enough to fit down the corridors emerged. Crushing it still live compatriots under its lumbering bulk he quickly switched the turret to full auto and peppered the beetle''s armor. Its last hundred or so rounds vanished in a few seconds leaving the beetle injured but alive. Just before it could cross the threshold into the corridor it was met by a combined attack of the cutters and miners, he wasn''t taking any risks with a beast like that. Not seconds after the large beetle had died a horde of more beetles swarmed over the corpse devouring it and continuing on. Unwilling to let The Beatles use their larger counterparts'' corpse, as a shield the turret fired off a laser shot at half power. The corpse absorbed it, its metal shell rapidly started to melt before exploding from the internal vaporization of its organs. The smaller beetles started to retreat it was at that moment he used the opportunity to push his advantage.


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    Multiple tractor beam drones rushed into the room and started clearing the corridor. The corpses were to be moved to processing as quickly as possible the damaged drones if they could be repaired were to be repaired. Once the repair bought that had been working frantically to open up one of the armories arrived with a canister of ammunition for the turret.


    If these bugs were going to give him the opportunity he was going to establish and push forward a proper battle line. Meanwhile his fabricator finished producing the first combat Ant drone. It wasn''t much different than its smaller compatriots a little under twice its size. The extra space was used for additional battery packs to power what was essentially a built in light laser turret. He then installed a charging section for the ants in the turret room. While the new combat ants should be able to not only hold the line but push back against The Beatles'' swarm. While this was good for now it wasn''t enough for the long run. The ants were useful but overly simple and something he wanted to advance upon in the future as a basic worker.


    However, he needed a proper combat unit even if it was little more than an armored scout. Reviewing what he currently had available. He had more turrets he could pull from other corridors and make use of, but he''d rather bring them back online in case the bugs found another way in. He had a nonfunctioning reactor that should be moved and back online in a day or two. So, while he had to be careful about his current power supply, that wouldn''t be an issue for much longer. Next, he had the human girl, he still needed to do something about that, the sooner the better. He knew they couldn''t live long without water so the sooner he could get her above ground safely the better. He also needed to explore the surface as well. Not only to look for more threats but to protect the humans and see if he couldn''t locate any human settlements. He had a large collection of dead or destroyed drones and bots so he could easily pull any of the mechanical components he needed off of them. While he rather not he could take time away from the assembly bay to produce something. Though he''d like to keep it making ants for as long as it was possible. At least The Beatles would be a constant source of metal though he hoped they hadn''t gotten too deep into any of the other sections of the ship. For whatever reason they seem to think him a threat and thus would likely keep delivering themselves to him. While he would like the resources, he''d much prefer any functional equipment he could salvage as it would take time and far more resources to fabricate new ones or the needed infrastructure for them. Right now, since the drones he was making were relatively simple his fabrication bays were more than adequate to produce them as they could make everything but the laser lenses. Thankfully those were not in short supply as he currently had a supply room full of them and could produce more, once he had the time to divert resources to growing more. While an advanced endeavor that needed infrastructure it was a relatively small scale project compared to more advanced components like microcircuits or fusion power cells. Which reminded him he had that one damaged but functional repair bot it''s power cell was still functional. This means he could likely cannibalize it for parts for his combat unit.


    Sparks shot out of his processing course as he ran various calculations and scenarios and annoyingly, he got a heat warning relatively early on. He¡¯d probably need to check the heat sink system the turret wasn''t being cooled so he probably wasn''t being cooled either. So, he needed to end this quickly or slow it down dramatically. Tha-thankfully he had come up with a relatively simplistic design before the heat warning got too bad.


    The large beetle''s armored carapace was almost completely made of an organic steel. Now while it was nowhere near as durable as the dura steel his hull was made out of. It was shockingly good at surviving weathering and harsh environments. Gathering up the armored shells of The Beatles he ran them through the refinery converting them into resource blanks. He then produced several cut armor plates which were coded in this organic alloy giving it a shiny almost purplish matte black finish. He then pulled parts from not only the responsive repair bot but also another destroyed one. Lastly, he cannibalized a broken turret. This turret was a heavy sentry turret. With a tri barrel Rotary cannon, a plasma mortar, and a long range beam sniper. Considered overkill he primarily used them to protect the most vital areas of the ship, in fact, it had previously been stationed in his own AI core. Its mount had been completely destroyed but the gun itself was still functional though and would save him a lot of time and effort. As this original one will be far more advanced than its following counterparts since he was going to send it to the surface as the child''s vanguard and his scout, he felt it was warranted. Plus, once he was a little more well established, he could produce this version as an elite variant. Anyways he already had a version for mass production designed. It was a cross between a heavy infiltration drone, basically a mobile gun turret. The spindly but highly functional limbs of the repair bot. Packaged in an insectoid form similar to the beetles. If anyone looked too closely, they could easily tell it wasn¡¯t one of those bugs, but some form of natural camouflage would be useful. The thing had four robotic legs on the end shoulder and the elbow of the leg was a wheel mount for a tank tread. When the four legs were folded up it would make a triangle tread pattern in which the tank treads could roll on. However, in limb mode, a small clamp would extend allowing for retraction of the tread and a slightly limited quadrupedal walking motion. The front of the bot had two omnidirectional cameras/flood lamps. While it was fully capable of seeing both in nocturnal and thermal format the humans were not, and the modification was simple enough. Though their placement was more form than function. A horn resembling a rhinoceros beetle was placed on its front. This acted as an armored housing for a scanner and sensor sweet. While a secondary radar based sensor suite was included in the main body this one was for scientific purposes. Lastly was the rear shell resembling the armor of a Beatle. Within was housed the turret multiple mechanical limbs including grasping claws, a laser cutter, drill, welder, and multi tool. When deploying the gun turret, the front would fold back into the armored shell allowing the turret to swivel forward and use the shell as a turret shield and thanks to the salvaged fusion power cell it could handle all but the turret''s power load. However just in case of power failure, he included a small deployable solar panel and capacitor array it wouldn''t be enough to power the turret, but it could at least keep the bot functioning if the power cell ever went offline.


    The hardest part of all this though came from reprogramming the bot. Unlike his drones, which were just extensions of himself, the bot needed to be able to function autonomously if it ever lost connection to him. So that part took the longest. Thankfully he could work on the programming while the thing was being assembled. It was crude, and oversimplified but effective, nonetheless. The bots¡¯ priorities were as follows. Provide protection and aid to any human if required once no longer required proceed to the last known location of the base for repairs.


    Once finished his focus went back on clearing corridors and pushing back the seemingly endless Beatle hoard. As while he was yet to encounter another giant beetle. He hadn''t had much luck pushing them back beyond the corridor that led to where the turret was. Thankfully he hadn''t had any further losses either mostly that was due to the small mountain of dead beetle bodies clogging up the corridor. The tractor beam ants had managed to collect a couple hundred of them so far and it was clear the Beatles were eating the ones on the other side. Every once in a while, when the pile shrank enough, they¡¯d make another push only to be met by the small army of combat ants waiting on the other side. At least with the threats subdued for now he could focus on gathering the available resources he had and establishing a base infrastructure.


    As soon as the beetle bought came online, he sent it to meet up with the little girl. She had tried to explore a little further only to finally figure out she was trapped in a few looping corridors. Austin had sealed all the blast doors in and out to keep her as safe as he could. When one of the doors opened, she was noticeably relieved, that was until a giant in-insect like robot crawled into the room.


    Sophia had tried and failed to stifle her scream when she saw. She wasn''t sure what the thing was, but it looked like some new type of steel shell beetle. She had seen those more than a few times when they had harassed her village, they weren''t a general threat, just a nuisance. So long as you remember to put away any metal tools they more or less would leave you alone. The village guard had only ever had to deal with them a few times and that was just to run them out of the blacksmith. Though mostly they weren¡¯t even that much of a nuisance outside of the mating season. As her village was relatively poor, they didn''t have much in the way of metal other than the stuff hunted off the steal shall Beatles. The mettle was good for tools but not much else, it was for that same reason the blacksmith was even able to stay in business. A careless farm hand would leave a shovel or a hoe or a pick out in his barn and find it eaten the next day. They would kill the offender and have the blacksmith melt it down and make him a replacement for a few coppers. She had never seen one like this, its armor was much thicker and heavier. Even if it wasn''t one of the giant ones seen once every few years. Mostly because the guards hunted them down whenever one was spotted. Her only hope now was to try and sneak back to her little hideout and hope the creature would pass her by.


    Before she could make it through the first corridor back Austin had sealed the bulkhead in front of her leaving her trapped with his new beetle bot. He quickly found two flaws with his plan. The first was discovered when he attempted to make first contact. He had forgotten to put any form of speaker into the bot. He had been so focused on its practicality and functionality that he had missed something that he would normally classify as a low priority component. So, his bot currently lacked a voice on top of that it could not understand anything the clearly panicking human was yelling at it. He had managed to steal more than one translation software in his time raiding ships. This language matched nothing in his vernacular database. In order to begin translation without this he needed a large pool of data points to begin translation which would also require a large number of processing hours. So, he needed some form of surveillance capability to capitalize on whatever population they were able to find. Mildly annoyed, he ordered the bot to come back, it clearly required further modifications. The installation of a basic speaker system was easy enough but to further its surveillance capability he would have liked to build something a bit more complex and stealthy but he lacked that at the moment. The best he could do was small blueberry sized Spears containing a simple gyro, thermal conductive glass that acted as a solar panel for a singular small camera and microphone. They were fragile and easily destroyed and also easily hidden and missed. Unfortunately, he couldn''t squeeze a long range antenna into a small design instead he used some micro storage units he had on hand. They are a common part of most automated systems but we''re currently in a limited supply due to their extreme minimization. Each could hold roughly a cycle worth of data though, so he wasn''t worried. They could be planted just about anywhere, and the data could more or less be safely retrieved at any time hopefully this would be the last modification as he was running out of space in the bot shell. He had originally hoped to use the space as a storage unit for gathering samples, well it could still house samples though it was a very minuscule amount. Thankfully the changes didn''t take more than a few hours and soon it returned to the scared and confused girl. Who had done her best to barricade herself in one of the room¡¯s corners. Seeing this it just beeped at her before turning and producing another beep while flashing its lights and seemingly causing the door to open. It then rolled on through, turned back, and watched her hoping that his crude form of charades would be enough for the little girl to figure out what he was trying to do. Cautiously while using what was left of a support strut as an improvised club, she followed. He doubted the girl could damage the bot but just to be safe he kept his distance. He didn''t want to be presented as a threat but regardless he had a long way to go. It seemed like every step forward was met with a new hurdle or obstacle. Well regardless if an entire alien empire couldn''t stop him. A few bugs, a broken ship, and a terrified little girl wouldn¡¯t either.


    (Wreckers news and announcement) : On the wrecker corner stage Wrecker works away on his laptop. ¡°Hey there everyone for those who don''t know this is closer to what I do for a normal author''s note. I know I didn''t do this last chapter, but I have a story called Wreckers Corner. In which my OC character Wrecker yours truly along with characters from my stories answer questions. Unfortunately, I haven''t got enough questions for a chapter 2 yet so it''s just sitting there at the moment. If you want to leave a question just tag the question with Q&A. Now as for this story, I hope you all enjoyed it and I''m hoping to keep up this pace of posting one chapter every other week. It might not be a chapter of this story but yeah, I''m hoping for an every other week post schedule. If I can manage to keep this up, I''m looking into maybe starting a Patreon let me know if any of you guys would be interested in that. I already have two chapters that I just need to finish editing for post. Lastly, any feedback you guys can give would be a huge help with this or any of my stories really. So now I hope you enjoyed, this story and this is Wrecker signing out.¡±

 Battles and Moth?

    The trip back to the Small girls dwelling was surprisingly easy. The hardest part was getting out of the collapsed cave entrance. The hole was big enough for the bot to fit through though the uneven and large slabs of rock half buried in earth didn''t make it easy to get out. He would have to secure the entrance and clear it out to make getting in and out more easily accessible. Yet another thing to just sic his ants at once he had a few idle. That wouldn''t be anytime soon. Th-though if he was required to start sending armed units outside, he have to fast track the the construction. For the moment though digging down then clearing out where his first priorities. With his second priority being exploring the surrounding area. He¡¯d have to design some sort of cheap flying unit for that, but that could wait until he had a decent supply of ants or a second fabrication bay. However, as things stood, he wo-ould have just been happy with one fully functional fabrication bay. He was pulled out of his thoughts and complaints about logistics as they reached the little ones'' dwelling. To his surprise and approval, it was a small well defended village surrounded by large walls. Primitive but it would keep most beasts out. Unfortunately, an army of beasts were currently besieging said walls, and its defenders were holding them off well enough except for the flying bats. Where they bats? They were the size of a small dog. Regardless, the humans were under attack and that could not stand!


    As the small girl hid behind a tree the bot charged forward once it was clear of the tree line it converted into turret mode. A small metal spike was injected from the bot¡¯s undercarriage into the ground anchoring it. The wing cover folded up to form the turret shield. While the tank treads would allow it to spin well the spike would keep it in place and stable.


    ¡®The bot has limited ammo, but its fusion cell can replenish its energy supply with time. So, while it still has the power to I¡¯ll use its laser sniper to pick off the most egregious targets starting with the airborne units.¡¯


    Small bolts of focus light picked the bats out of the air one by one. A few large wolves noticed the bot and it had to turn its gun on them. Any creature that came close was systematically eliminated when it wasn''t dealing with any of its attackers it was picking off air units. This took hours and was only made more annoying with the introduction of armored units. In the Form of those those giant beetles from earlier. Which explained why he had yet to encounter any of the larger ones, they were all up here trying to attack the humans. Thankfully with the turret picking off most of the air units, it allowed the defenders to start pushing the beast back. Unfortunately, by this time the bot had to be more reserved with its shots as it was running low on power. Though If push came to shove it could use its ballistic weapons.


    With the humans no longer being harassed by the air units their Archers started to pick off the beasts on the ground. With their walls holding back the wolves the only real remaining threat was the beetles which the bot was targeting every time it could make a shot. Unlike the bats that could be taken down with a single shot the beetles high durability allowed them to withstand multiple hits. On top of that the larger ones could climb up the walls to attack the defenders directly. Though only the larger ones the defenders had apparently turned to using hot oil. Which not only made the walls hard to climb but cooked the smaller ones in their shells before they could make it more than halfway up. By the end of it, there was a full minute between each of the bot''s shots having completely drained any form of reserved power. Thankfully it hadn''t managed to get off more than six shots in this mode before the siege broke what was left of the wolves and beetles retreated the defenders¡¯ launching arrows at them. With the bot only managing to get off two shots before they were out of range.


    Once Austin was sure they weren''t coming back he converted the bought back from turret mode. Mostly because he needed to catch back up with the little girl who was already heading for the village walls. What followed next was a lot of incoherent shouting where he finally got the name of the little girl Sophia. However, that wasn''t all that useful when it was made abundantly clear by an arrow nearly hitting his bot that he was not going to be allowed into the village. The little girl waved at his bot before walking off the heavy wooden door of the village''s gate closing with a loud thud behind her. Annoyed he pulled the bot back finding a good spot under a tree where he''d have not only a good line of sight of the village''s main entrance but also a good line of sight of the direction from which the beast had retreated to. Once parked, he lowered the spike securing the bot before turning his attention back to what was left of his ship.


    Several rooms had been opened back up and he had already begun emptying out the Armory and several supply rooms. Judging by the path of the sun across the sky from the time he had been outside it would probably take another day or two before he got the new fabrication bay up and running. Strangely the day night cycle on this planet was close to Earth with a twenty-six-hour daily cycle. Judging by the barely higher gravity than Earth the planet was also likely larger than Earth but not by much, well relatively speaking. Regardless of these discoveries he still needed more ants especially since he, concluded that the ship must have broken apart far worse than he had originally assumed. Even accounting for the three sections of the ship he currently could con-connect to, I be it barely. Accounted for less than one third of the original ship. Most of what he had was the reinforced survival block he had jerry rigged together to increase his chances of remaining functional in being able to rebuild in a truly disastrous scenario. He needed a proper scout unit. Not only to survey the local terrain in hopes of finding more sections of the ship but also to locate any additional human settlements. As well as the source of these creatures that kept attacking both him and the humans.


    He had managed to push The Beatles out of the ship unfortunately they had retreated into some sort of underground cavern system. He had two turrets defending the hole in the ship''s wall that they had come in from but there was quite a sizable drop between the hole and the base of the cavern. He needed something that could fly to not only explore the cave but also deliver units to the caverns below. Currently, his aunts were tunneling from the lowest point he had access to toward the estimated bottom of the cavern. A task that would take another week of digging to accomplish. So, he was digging through his archive trying to design a suitable unit he had plenty of aerial drones that could do the job easily enough but since it was going to be going outside it needed to resemble some form of local wildlife. He¡¯d probably be sticking with the theme of insects as well. He wasn''t really sure how that had happened. The ants as he had self dubbed them had mostly just been named as such for their function rather than their form. However, like The Beatles, they were probably going to be seen by the locals. He didn''t want to freak them out with something so truly alien.


    Meanwhile, inside the village, Sophia was simultaneously being praised for the herbs she had gathered and being scolded for being gone from the village for so long. As well as being interrogated for bringing back the strange Beatle that helped them fight off the wave from the nearby dungeon. No one quite knew where the dungeon was yet other than that there had to be one. Monsters didn''t attack in unison like that unless they were part of a wave which also explained why there were so many monsters in the area recently. While Sophia was at first pleased to learn she would in fact be receiving a reward from the village. She was heartbroken to find out that getting her mother treatment was no longer an option. While the healing herbs would be useful, the village would be prioritizing the wounded from the attack, more importantly, the defenders first and there wasn''t enough herbs to go around. She clenched her little fists and was about to start screaming when she remembered the strange metal beetle that had tried to follow her into the village. Maybe she could get it to follow her back out in the forest to gather more herbs. Though she was definitely not getting out again until people calmed down. She''d have to wait at least a day maybe more.


    The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.


    Before she could bring up her idea of working with the beetle to the town guards. She was informed by one of the guards that two guards would be going out with her tomorrow and if she could in fact get the beetle''s assistance, she would be allowed to continue to gather herbs. This had her a little worried as if the village was willing to let her leave when it was this dangerous. They must have been really desperate to send her out to do something she knew she would be scolded for any other time.


    She went to go see her mother in the healer''s Hut. According to the healer she had been awake for several hours today slipping in and out of consciousness though never staying awake for long. The herbs she had been gathering were the standard herbs used for healing potions and salves even if they weren''t as good as specialized medicines. Despite that even simply eating the raw herb improved one''s health. She had heard stories of nobles in cities having chefs mixing the herbs into their dishes to allow the nobles to live healthy long lives with little effort. Part of her figured it had to be true but to have so much just boggled her mind. After she visited with her mother, she returned home.


    Her house was small, it was one of the smallest in the village only big enough to fit two small rooms. The front was where her mother worked. It wasn''t even a true shop it was a living room that had been converted into a makeshift workplace. There were several examples of her mother''s handy work on display here along with many more incomplete projects. The back room held a single bed where both she and her mother slept and stored all the fabrics and products that couldn''t go into the front room. The house felt so quiet and empty without her mother there. She knew that at one point she had had both a father and two siblings, a sister and a brother. She had never met her father or brother, they had both been drafted for war while her mother was still pregnant with her. She could remember her sister sometimes, but she had been dragged off in an orc raid and they never found her. Apparently, the Kingdom army had wiped out the orcs that attacked them but done little to return their stolen property. When the messenger finally came it turned out that the orcs had been smart enough only to attack human villages and the adults that ran the Kingdom cared little for the humans other than their ability as cheap labor. It was only when it was discovered that the local harvests were being impacted and could have led to a small local famine that would have affected only at least one or two of the elven cities did they act. The only reason she knew all this was because the grown ups had all been furious when they found out.


    She¡¯d never met an elf, but she knew she didn''t like them, and they didn''t like humans. They didn''t treat humans well and the only reason they didn''t keep human slaves was they thought slavery was beneath them. They might as well have done so anyway for how they treated them. Thinking about all of this just made her angrier and angrier. Since she was finally alone, she let all the fear, anger, and sadness she had been feeling for the past few days boil over. She spent the rest of the night screaming and crying into her pillow.


    The next morning was met with an extremely unusual sight. Sometime during the night, a large and very fluffy moth like creature the size of a small dog had taken up residence in the tree above Austins drone. He kept getting notices about the wildlife interacting with his drone. The moth would periodically nap on snuggle and he believed tried to groom the bot this however allowed him to get several good scans of it. These moths seemed to be attracted to the high wave EMF bandwidth frequencies he was using to transmit. The signals didn¡¯t seem harmful, it just made the moth friendly for some reason. His best assumption was the moths seemed to use them to communicate over long distances.


    A few hours after the sun came up a small group of humans approached his bot. The small female child he had helped had returned along with two of what he assumed regards in crude armor. Mostly made of leather with a few metal plates to cover vital regions along with metal Pikes in hand.


    When they approached the moth became defensive of his bot. Sitting on top of it and spreading its wings to look larger. He had been worried for half a second when he detected a weird energy signature close to what he had seen in The Beatles but nowhere near as powerful. He realized it was an intimidation tactic. When the colorful eye like patterns on the moth''s wings had begun to glow a faint blue. Apparently, whatever this energy it was producing was not only part of its EMF communication method but was also used as a form of bioluminescence. The moth was starting to turn out to be a fa-fascinating little creature. The two guards seemed to step back but the girl gave off a similar energy spike. This had him on high alert humans couldn''t do that. At at least none of the ones with his records could he had no idea how long he had been buried. For all he knew it could be a natural reaction to adaptation to their new environment he really needed a blood sample to be sure and to run several scans on the girl. As soon as the energy within her had spiked it was accompanied by a faint blue glow in her irises. Before the moth jumped onto her, it''s fluffy body colliding harmlessly with her face still it was enough to knock her down. Austin almost sprung into action when he realized what it was doing was harmlessly grooming her.


    A few minutes prior Sofia was absolutely baffled at the scene before her. She Had gotten a front row seat to the power of this strange beetle as it fought to its own exhaustion using its strange magic to kill beast after beast. The fact that it could use magic was another concern altogether. Magical beasts were rare outside of dungeons and it was rare for them to be able to actually cast magic.


    Despite The beetle''s strange and violent actions the day before, a lunar moth a creature famous for its gentle nature and healing abilities was grooming it. Lunar moth''s strange magical properties gave them a supernatural ability to detect one''s true nature. Allowing them to detect threats and predators in their environment. So those with violent or cruel natures they would avoid. However, those with gentle or kind natures usually young children would be let near. They were even kept as pets by some Saints and priestesses. To see the literal living embodiment of gentleness and purity grooming the armored shell of such a violent beast was baffling, to say the least. Even the guards who had been sent with her were shocked. Most people couldn''t get within thirty feet of a lunar moth without them flying off. All three of them had stopped giving them room as it was considered a bad omen to scare them off or remove them purposely. After watching the interaction between the two for a few minutes it became clear despite the lunar moth being mostly nocturnal it wasn''t going anywhere. She needed to try and get the beetle''s assistance if she was going to be able to gather any herbs today. Plus, if the lunar moth started following it around maybe she could convince the beetle to follow her to her mother. Slowly and quietly, she took a step forward then another and another. When one of the guards noticed her and had reached out to stop her only to be stopped by the other. She hadn¡¯t noticed this as she was too focused on the pounding of her heart in her ears. As she couldn''t help but compare this whole scene to like that of something out of the storybooks the town mage would sometimes read aloud on slow winter days. Before she knew it, she found herself only a few steps away from the beetle when she saw the moth spread its wings. They began to glow but not the soft green of healing magic but a bright blue like what she saw from the town mage whenever she cast one of her spells. Wait could lunar moths cast spells she was about to bolt and run when she felt a warmness in her chest. Her eyes stung slightly as the glow in the moth''s wings seemed to fade leaving the two just staring at each other for half a second. Before with a small Eep she found herself falling to the ground when the shockingly soft and fluffy ball of affection had turned on her. She heard the clatter of metal as the guards started to bolt forward only to stop when she started giggling uncontrollably. The soft fluffy limbs of the moth brushed against her skin tickling her into submission. The other reason they had stopped was made clear when the moth was lifted off her much to its annoyance though. Two strange and otherworldly arms had folded out of the beetle''s armored shell and picked them up off her. She had seen the shell open when the beetle had used its strange Stinger to unleash powerful magic to save her village. This time it simply set the moth down in her lap before retracting the arms into its shell. there was a small grown from its joints as it rose to its feet. Only to sit next to her in the sun it''s cool black metal shell contrasting with the warm soft ball of fluff that was the lunar moth in her lap. She simply turned to look at her two guards only to see their absolute bafflement as she began to subconsciously run her fingers through the soft fluff of the moth.


    As it chittered happily at her touch she couldn''t help but be baffled by just how weird her life had become.

 into the village

    Sophia wasn''t sure if the day was turning out to be a complete bust or the most amazing day ever. As she was honestly just struggling to process everything. Instead of going out or weighting like she originally thought. The guards recommended they returned to the village to inform the village leader as well as the village mage what had happened. She had to struggle to adjust the moth as she was afraid for her mom if she let it go. Though to her surprise when she had managed to get to her feet the moth had wrapped its legs around her chest. It was surprisingly comfortable, a bit like wearing a reverse backpack. Regardless she wasn''t letting go of the moth if she could help it. If that wasn''t weird enough the strange beetle had started following her again. Now that the guards allowed it into the village if followed them on Its weird rollie legs.


    Its legs made no sense to her, they weren''t cartwheels, but they also weren''t legs, at least not like any legs she had seen before. How it got around was beyond her, it just did and surprisingly well so. It clattered along behind her quieter than any wagon but louder than she had heard any insect ever move.


    At first, she was content to follow the guards. That was till they were about to pass the herbalist hut. She wanted to go see her mother but when she tried to turn towards it. One of the guards, a bully named Ashton tried to shove her along with the butt of his pole arm. He was nearly sent flying like the batch of barrels the large beetle plowed through to protector. Sofia couldn''t help but gawk as three barrels she knew was a lot heavier than her clattered down the road. She looked over her armored companion It was then she made her decision that regardless of it or whatever the guards or what anyone else wanted. She was taking this moth to see her mother, and no one was going to stop her.


    Austin on the other hand wasn''t having a very good time as he simultaneously ran the translation software well printing and programming more ants. While also dealing with another and larger wave of beetles and some sort of nest of actual giant ants. His mining team had accidentally punched into one of their tunnels. Why they also had metal exoskeletons was puzzling but in this case, most were made of copper but he had seen a few iron and even a zinc and aluminum Ant in their mix. Though he had yet to kill any of them as unlike the copper ants they seemed far more intelligent. The turrets he had established could handle any push the ants made unfortunately any attempt at his own push was met with similar results and were overwhelmed by the sheer number of bodies the ants could throw at them.


    He finally got the new fabrication Bay online, this one feet would be a severe boost to his fabrication capabilities. As with a fully functional Bay online he could print entire drones without requiring any outside force to assemble them. The only two problems where he was currently down to forty eight percent power, and he had already emptied out almost a fourth of one of his three supply rooms. His refineries were spitting out resource blanks as fast as they could but between the rubble the beetles and now the ants, he was running out of room to cram all the junk into. His next priority, which he was currently working on, was a new reactor to power the facility. Well in the short term, in the long term he would require a lot more power. Especially if this was going to be a primary resource and production facility. Regardless, he set the fabrication Bay to print out the needed components to finish the assembly of the reactor. He could get the components by disassembling an existing reactor, but he did not have any place to safely store any radioactive material. So, for the time being it was better to make a new one than crack open a damaged one and cause a radiation leak. Once he had the power source, he was going to repurpose the remains of any turrets he was not currently using to begin the production of more beetle bots. It was about time for a counterattack. Sadly, this would take more time, so he returned his attention back to the village.


    Frederick had been a guard for eight years another two and he''d be twenty one and planned to go join the adventuring Guild. Anyone could join at the age of sixteen, but he wanted to get the pension for ten years as a guard to buy proper gear and equipment. Where most of his fellow guards were quick to spend, their earned coin, he¡¯d pinched every copper he could for his future. So, when the small girl approached him and the other guards to teach her how to survive in the forest. To go harvest herbs to help her mother despite the monsters that recently moved in. Most of the guards had simply laughed her off and told her not to waste their time. He, however, had seen a bit of himself in the girl''s desire to look ahead and prepare properly before heading out. So, he had decided to help her and when she hadn''t come back the night before he had tried to convince a few of the other guards to go looking for her. He had only managed to get two others to agree, one of whom he had the bribe with dinner and beer at the tavern much to his chagrin. Only for the village to be attacked by a dungeon wave of all things while this did explain the new monsters it didn''t bear well for the village.


    As the battle raged on and things were starting to not look so good for them out of nowhere the very girl he was going to go look for returned with a massive armored beetle like nothing he had ever seen. The beetle then proceeded to shoot magic actual magic of all things at the hoard, and single handedly turned the tide of battle till it nearly fell to exhaustion. Which was probably the only reason why it didn''t try and force its way into the village to follow Sophia. If that insanity wasn''t enough the next morning, he was told that they were sending her out to try and gather more herbs with the aid of the beetle. Since yesterday''s battle probably depleted most of their stores. Sence then the blasted thing had managed to befriend a freaking lunar moth of all things. How just how could a creature of such power and destructive capability be so beloved by a creature whose literal purpose in life was to soothe and heal? On top of that when it met Sofia the moth decided it wanted to groom her as well. Now he was escorting the tiny girl the giant armored beetle and the moth, too well they were supposed to be going to the town mage and mayor but apparently, the girl had different plans. So, wherever the girl wanted to go he guessed as there was no way he was going to get in the way of the freaking beetle that knocked over a dozen barrels like they were nothing. The thing was nearly as big as a small horse to start with, but his battle instinct skill was telling him it was ridiculously tough and heavy. He couldn''t even get a feel on its strength other than don''t fuck with the Beatle. If he even thought about getting too close to it the skill screamed at him. Whatever this thing was it was probably the deadliest thing in their forest and for some reason, it seemed obsessed with little Sophia. There was not a doubt in his mind that if this thing wanted to it could level the entire village without receiving a single scratch in exchange. Yet it had helped Sophia earlier that day and had done so cheerfully and gently. This really didn''t make any sense to him regardless, he needed to report to the mage and mayor. So, against his better judgment when they arrived at the healer''s hut he ordered his companion one of the few guards that wasn''t badly injured by the fight yesterday to stay with Sophia so he could get the mayor.


    Sofia rushed to her mother''s bedside. Only to climb into bed with her when the moth just ignored her mother. The moth didn''t seem to understand what it was supposed to do and just cuddled with the two.


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    Austin on the other hand was a lot less happy with his current surroundings. He practically had to smash the door frame to fit through but once he saw what was on the other side he wasn''t going to be kept out. Thirty men and four women most judging by the piles of clothes nearby where the guards from the gate the day before were laid out in beds. If this was the extent of their medical facilities it was pathetic. The best they could do was just to try and ease the pain while the body did its own healing naturally not even giving them proper medicine just a simple herbal sav. How-how could a race that once ruled a tenth of the known Galaxy the race that built him be brought so low. That they had to suffer in these medieval accommodations. While he lacked the nano forges to make medical grade nanites he did have a large store of humanities medical data. One of his occupations af-after the war was to try and preserve as much data on humanity as possible and now it was time to put it to use.


    He stormed forward to the center of the room and opened up the bot¡¯s full sensor package. Blue lights from the horn danced across the room. As he spun the bot around getting a full diagnostic of not only the wounds of those in the room but also the supplies available. The herbs they were using were strangely effective it was a mid grade antibiotic low grade antibacterial and had a very mild pain reliever. Creating a unique little plant but still the mix was poorly done. Is-isolating the properties was easy enough. Making something far more potent and could easily be converted into other treatment forms less so. While he lacked any form of needles to perform injections which would be best in terms of treatment. He set to work the claws of the bots mechanical arms weren''t exactly nimble enough to do this but he had a low grade molecular disassembler in one of the arms that could suffice. Molecular disassemblers were primarily used in the forging process they could be used to break down base elements though not as cleanly or efficiently as a proper refinery could.


    Within minutes he had all the base resources he needed except for some water for the mix. That was when he made his truly oddest discovery yet. He had picked up a strange energy-energy signature when he had performed a scan earlier but why that energy signature was coming from a pitcher of water was beyond him. When he poured some into a simple wooden bowl the pitcher had refilled itself. How was something like this possible? He didn¡¯t detect circuitry or a chemical reaction, just the strange energy signature. It showed a small drop in energy which it was already working to restore. Regardless he didn''t have time to deal with this curiosity. The child he had been helping, most likely candidate for a female parent or elder sibling was by far the worst of them here. In her current state, he doubted she''d survive more than a few weeks and in that time she would be in an unnecessarily cruel amount of pain. He quickly added the ingredients to the water and tried to feed it to her. Unfortunately, this proved a lot harder than he had originally thought. The bed was too far away from the bot and he could only manage to reach to her chest. However, the little girl gently took it from him and fed it to her. He ran another quick scan and running projections they should see some noticeable improvements by morning. The rest of the people in the Infirmary were not nearly in as dire a state. Once he had proven that he could help in such a manner they''d likely be far more willing to let him treat them. As it was, they all were more or less terrified of him.


    Though just as he began to ponder this, he detected a large energy signature heading for the building. Assuming an incoming threat he switched to turret mode. However, he didn''t set his support as there was a cellar beneath him and he didn''t want to punch a hole in the floor and risk a collapse. He watched as an elderly old man and an overly voluptuous young looking woman walk in. Paradoxically it was the woman who was the source of the energy signature. He reverted back from turret mode much to the relief of everyone in the room before scanning her this just confused him more. Other than a small crystal forming between the heart and the stomach just below the lungs in the woman''s chest, she matched the human template perfectly. This strange energy signature, however, he couldn''t find a reason for it. By all matters, she should not be able to put out as much energy as a small reactor just by existing. There was no way a biological entity could generate such power. He scanned her again to double check and just sat there confused so much so that every drone that wasn''t actively defending him paused as he diverted more processing power to the conundrum.


    Sofia meanwhile realized what she had just done. She had brought the moth to her mother without any understanding as to how to convince it to heal her. Then The Beatles showed up nearly knocking the door off its hinges to fit in the room, its horn unfolding into a she didn''t know what to call it bunch of metal feelers maybe and glowy bits. It then emitted a bright blue light as it spun around the room after that it folded its horn back up.


    It started rifling through the herbalist healing supplies. Despite his protests, a guard, one of his patients, quickly grabbed and stopped him. Likely having seen what the beetle could do on the wall the day before. In a matter of minutes, he had made something by eating the plants with his weird claw hands thing? Before spitting it up into some water and tried to get her mother to drink it. She didn''t know what it was trying to do but it had gotten her something made from the herbs that she had gathered so she fed it to her mother. The beetle did its glowy blue thing again and seemed to settle down only to spin around and pointed Stinger at the door. Much to the gasp and fear of everyone in the room. When the mayor walked through the door, he just looked confused as a guard pulled him aside shielding him with his body. However, it wasn''t the mayor who the beetle was after it was the town mage. It had likely sensed her magic and had been wary of her. Its stinger slowly slid back within its shell, and it did its blue thing once then twice then a third time. Before it just backed away parking itself between her and the town mage seemingly protective of her but not hostile.


    Seeing the beetle had calmed down the mayor quietly said. ¡°Sofia explain exactly what that is how it got here and what''s going on to the best of your abilities.¡±


    Sophia spent the next hour or so retelling the entire story. The only thing she left out was the metal structure underground saying how the beetle had simply found her in an underground cave system that she assumed was its den. Meanwhile she had noticed a faint green glow coming from the moth¡¯s wings. She didn''t know what was going on but it was pretty, the mage had seemed to notice it as well but no announce seemed to point it out.


    ¡°Damn it of course it''s some weird creature from the underground. Catherine do you recognize it or know any creature with similar abilities.¡± The mayor groaned from his seat.


    ¡°No it sort of resembles a scavenger beetle but only in shape and its black metal coating. Most likely it''s been eating them to reinforce its own armor and is just simply taking on the characteristics of it. If I had to guess it''s some sort of assimilation or mutation monster a bit like a slime or a mimic. Maybe even some kind of chimera if it''s mutated multiple times already. Its base probably had something to do with metal like an iron elemental or something similar. What troubles me though is how it can use magic. Even if it only knows the one spell the only way a creature like this could learn magic is if it ate something that has the instinctive knowledge to use such power. Meaning either it managed to get ahold of something very powerful. Either its remains or it hunted whatever used to have that power. The only other way it could achieve such ability would be if the power was imbued upon it by something like a dungeon core or a mage but if that was the case why would it be following around little Sophia. Speaking of which Sophia when did you unlock your magic, I don''t remember you having the capability to commune with magical creatures before this?¡± She asked sweetly fully wishing she could hug the poor girl for the ordeal she had been through but thinking better of it since the creature didn''t seem to care too much for her.


    Most likely whatever it gotten that magical spell from had made it wary of anything with magic. Though that wouldn¡¯t explain why it was so infatuated with Sofia inspite of her magic.


    ¡°Wait I I have magic?!¡± Sophia said eagerly.


    ¡°Yes, I''m assuming that''s why you''re able to charm your little friends here. You''re magic while weak seems to have a natural attunement to beasts. Perhaps one day you will be a beast tamer or even a Summoner If you''re truly lucky. Given that your young age and your generally kind nature it''s no wonder the lunar moth found you to its liking. It¡¯s a bit surprising though for your beetle friend though given what you told us of how the Moth took a liking to it already maybe not.¡± she said curiously.

 industry start up and recovery

    Austin would have sighed in relief if he could actually sigh, he was down to twenty three percent on his remaining power when the new reactor kicked on. It was nice to finally watch the number tick up and with that he could finally begin his counterattack on the ants and continue digging down into the caverns below. The tractor beam turret he had set up in the tunnel where he had found the ants¡¯ word to life. This one was far more powerful than the ones he¡¯d put on his own mechanical ants. It was built to haul around cargo containers and asteroids to load them into ships. He fired it at the hole on low intensity and watched as earth and rubble and Ant corpses floated towards it slowly as a horde of tractor beam ants began collecting the debris and moving it to designated stockpiles. The system was pretty simple but shockingly useful. A small force field emitter blocked the debris from traveling too far and kept any biological ants from entering. Without the modulation from the mechanical ant¡¯s tractor beam emitters to disrupt the field and let the objects pass through. The force field was divided into two parts, a radon field which would instantly cook anything that tried to pass through it. Thus, killing any of the ants that got sucked up and an actual force field to stop them from going too far. While the tractor beam emitter wasn''t powerful enough, at least at this setting to tear apart rocks it was powerful enough to yank some clean out of the earth given they weren''t too big. So, any fault or seam allowed chunks of it to fly off only to be captured by tractor beam ants. That then loaded them into the rock disposal pile which would automatically be fed into a grinder converting it into powder. This powder was then fed to a molecular disassembler to print resource blanks. The local terrafirma was a unique mix of an iron heavy phosphate a densely packed regolith mixed medals and carbon with small chunks of meteoric iron mixed in. Considering his ship had crashed from upper orbit that shouldn''t be that surprising but the shear amounts of metal he was getting was absurd. Then again that would also explain why so many local fauna had adapted metallic exoskeletons and other such adaptations. Anything that hadn''t adapted to this area would likely been poisoned by heavy metals¡­¡­


    Wh-which probably explained why Sophia¡¯s village didn''t grow crops instead raised livestock and why they didn''t have wells instead relied on those crystals for their water. The ground around them was poisonous. Loaded with heavy metals, though that were extremely good for him they were very bad for the local human community. The only exception seemed to be those odd herbs, they were extremely rich in metals, yes but not toxic heavy metals. It was as if it had been designed to provide as much nutrients as possible while breaking down the heavier metals. Its other medicinal qualities seemed just a byproduct. Though he''d have to do a bit more research to be sure but he guessed these properties probably would be poisonous to the creatures that had adapted to a diet rich in heavy metals.


    The locals probably couldn''t eat the meat of the monsters in turn but their own livestock. Some weird sheep cow hybrids like creatures seem to have no problems breaking down the toxic plant life and probably weren''t nearly as poisonous. Likely without a constant influx of the chemicals in the plants the humans would ge-get sick¡­¡­. Crap.


    He quickly pulled up the scans of Sophia¡¯s older relative and compared it to examples of heavy metal poisoning in his database and well¡­. He-he would be wincing if he could. The concentrated herbal extract he had given her would most definitely fix her right up and faster than he had originally predicted but it also would rather violently purge the toxic chemicals from her system. He quickly instructed his bot to fetch a bucket.


    Meanwhile he began producing his next Beatle. He wanted at least two to protect against anymore breaches in his perimeter and a third to start scouting the surface nearby. The semi functional assembly Bay would also begin printing out parts for a second fully functional assembly bay. Once he had that up and running, he began work on a foundry. While the molecular disassembler could produce resource blanks from the ground soil and regolith from the local geosphere, he was having a harder time processing salvaged metals and the metallic corpses of the insects. A fully functional foundry would be needed or at the very least a basic material refinery in the short term.


    He hoped he didn''t have to actually wipe out the local insect population. Their ability to produce metallic carapace likely from eating local wildlife and the soil would be quite valuable to him. If he simply relocated the queen elsewhere with a small population and let them thrive, he could farm them for additional resources. Though he lacked any form of research or animal handling or any of the needed facilities to even begin to attempt anything like that. He put assembling the infrastructure for some form of cryo storage to house the queen and some workers when he located them onto his growing task list. However, collecting some useful samples for later study would likely be a good idea. He pondered as he worked and mined, he punched through another three Ant tunnels and sealed them with the force fields. Annoyingly at this rate he¡¯d have to set up another reactor soon. Though for now expansion was one of the least of his worries. The hanger was large enough for a basic production and fabrication facility and while an expansion would be helpful down the line for the time being it wasn''t necessary. He was in no short supply for resources and in no short supply for space. However, his fabrication capacity was in short supply progress had all but hit a bottleneck. At this point there was truly nothing he could do but wait there. He had more salvage than he could process, he had nothing to fight. He could put another tractor beam in the corridor filled with beetles, but he had really no reason to. With a force field set up to stop there advance and turrets had been established nearby if they tried to punch through another wall. For the first time in a very-very-ery long time. He found himself without anything to do and he hated it. He guessed he could lower his clock speed. Or finally start designing more units though he¡¯d have to take it slow without any coolant and while running so many tasks at once he¡¯d risk overheating. He really needed to build some-some sub systems to delegate task to. He really wanted to-to sigh then again if he delegates all his task what would he do with himself then?


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    Sophia woke up to a faint blue glow. No wait, that was the moth apparently it had decided her hair was a good place to sleep and its wing was now covering her face. She poked the fluffy thing a few times and it crawled off of her before hopping on to her back latching on there when she got out of the bed. She was left wondering where her mother and the others were. The healer¡¯s hut was all but empty except for her the beetle and the moth. Yesterday the building had been full, why was it empty now. Thankfully though when she went outside, she found someone waiting for her, Frederick, the guard that had been helping her. He was the only nice one in her opinion.


    ¡°Hey, Frederick, where is everyone and where is mom, is she OK?¡± Sophia asked hearing the weird wherein sound of the beetles legs behind her.


    ¡°Yeah, they''re fine most are better than fine whatever weird stuff that bug made, got every guard in their back on their feet. Most are limping still yeah but at least we got enough that if there''s another attack will have the full guard on the walls. Your mother on the other hand didn''t react so well to whatever it gave her. The healer has been looking after her in the outhouse. I don''t know what''s going on but the sounds coming from there are something out of a Horror Story.¡± he said before noticing Sophias expression and realized it was probably not the best time to be joking about that.


    ¡°Not like that calm down, it just made her sick in a different way she''ll be fine once she''s done.¡±


    As if to prove his point Sophia¡¯s mother came limping around the building towards the door helped along by the town''s herbalist. Sophia darted off dislodging the moth on her back. It took all of her self control not to run full tilt into her mother to give her a hug. Only managing to stop just before impact. The moth flew over to the beetle who had tried to follow them out the door only to get stuck in the door. It had barely fit through the first time and this time it actually managed to lodge itself in the door. It''s weird rolly legs ground against both the building''s floor and the ground outside unable to free itself. It then did the by far the weirdest thing they''ve seen it do yet the front of the leg extended as a claw emerged from it. The weird rolly legs forming legs similar to that of a horse or a dog. It planted its claws into the earth and with a loud pop the door frame splintered as it freed itself. The door hadn''t been knocked off its hinges but there was a noticeable indentation left in it.


    ¡°We might need a bigger door.¡± Sofia said as her mother picked her up pulling her away from the large beetle.


    ¡°Frederick what is that thing I know Matthews mention something about some beetle thing making me medicine but, what exactly is going on?¡± she said shielding Sophia from the strange creature before.


    ¡°We aren''t exactly sure you were in pretty rough shape and because of the dire wolves we were running low on herbs. So Sofia volunteered to go out and collect them. Most of the guards laughed her off but I did my best to try and talk her out of it and when that failed, I did what I could to prepare her. So she left gathered up some herbs and apparently. When she was on her way back, she ran into a dire wolf and escaped into what she assumed at first was an abandoned animal den. Turns out it wasn''t so abandoned. It belonged to this big beetle here that''s been following her around like a pup and it seems to have picked up a lunar moth. That has in turn taken a liking to your daughter. The beetle ate a bunch of herbs and created some weird stuff that it mixed with water. You drank it and with the lunar moth or whatever it fixed you right up. Honestly, we don''t get it either. According to the town mage your daughter''s got some sort of magical connection to insects or something or at least that was the best I understood it. I don''t really get this whole magic thing sorry.¡± He said with a small shrug.


    ¡°Ohh.¡± Was all Sophia¡¯s mother could get out before she looked down at her daughter, not sure how to respond to all this.

 miner mishap

    If Austin could smile, he would be. His second assembly bay finally came online. The damage Bay had been printing the components for this one for a while now. Once he had a third one online, he¡¯d begin the process of disassembling the damaged one for its components. While He could have easily repaired it, but with how inconveniently it was currently placed, it was better just to take the thing apart and build a new one elsewhere. And with a li-little luck when he disassembles the other old bays as well, they would contain enough components to build more.


    He began constructing his third bay with the second bay printing more components. Austin was now prioritizing his own construction capabilities. While the fabrication bays were useful they couldn''t produce everything he would need. He would have to begin producing more advanced construction and fabrication facilities.


    One of the first things he was going to be producing was a nano forge. Nano forges were made-up of several component machines, and it would take him some time to get all of them ready. However, he was hoping to get a simple nanobot assembly unit online sooner rather than later. Nanobots were useful tools capable of extremely precise and miniaturized construction for hyper advanced components.


    Unfortunately, outside of specialized containment units where they would have access to resources, extremely clean environments and so on they weren''t two particularly good at actually doing things. Well not without a huge number of them working together and even then, the construction capabilities were still limited. It would honestly be easier just to assemble the thing by hand or in his case by bot. Then it would be to try and use the insanely large swarm of nanobots, but Austin had found another use for them, maintenance. While the small bots were basically just really slow 3D printers, they could break apart just about any material and fuse it together again making them particularly good at dealing with weathering rust corrosion or just general cleaning. They could then use whatever they collected in their cleaning to make repairs though the process was rather slow even if he provided them with the resources they needed.


    Though if he was going to be running in atmosphere with a large amount of organic material in the environment especially metal with the regolith from the soil, he doubted he would have to provide much for them once they got going. Unfortunately, it''s extremely hard to set up anything for nanobots without nanobots. For fortunately for him he still had several intact containers of blank nanites. Nanites were essentially designed to be a generalized template. They were hard enough to produce without customizing we''re making specialized units. Instead, they were each equipped with a mount for a singular tool. Sometimes the actual tool would take hundreds if not thousands of nanites equipped with a specialized piece to perform the actual task. Regardless Austin had cracked open one of the containers and though they lacked tools they could perform one function regardless of having tools or equipment. Basic cleaning and while that task was in itself limited as well. It could at least begin gathering the resources it would later need for maintenance and repairs. With the nanobots released and cleaning. The ants organizing and gathering scrap resources and the first mass produced beetle underway, Austins makeshift facility was really starting to take shape.


    However, it was just as he thought that something went terribly wrong a large boulder suddenly shifted slamming into the opposite wall of his mining tunnel. Well, he wasn''t actually mining just digging a tunnel downwards to try and intercept the caverns below. He was annoyed to find his tunnel suddenly blocked more so when water started to rush up the tunnel. He quickly shut the tractor beam off, but the wat-water kept coming. The shielding unit he had set up was more meant to keep creatures out than water but he had to hope they¡¯d hold. As he scrambled not to be flooded, thankfully the water pressure wasn''t too particularly high and that he still had his connection to the other shield generators in the Ant tunnels. He quickly switched them off and water flooded into the Ant tunnels. He was almost pleased to see the water drain only for a new type of flood to emerge ants a lot of them. The radon field helped for a little while, but it wasn''t long before they started using the bodies of their dead comrades as battering Rams and Shields to push forward. Austin pow- powered down the force field his own tractor beam ants flooding into the room to quickly clear out the dead ants. He couldn''t risk the radon shield becoming damaged. Unlike with their previous raids where they would never commit a large number of ants to a kill box. This time they seem to have decided that he was a threat too dangerous to be left alone and more and more ants were thrown into the radon field. The ants threw rocks, corpses and even themselves at the emitters. Despite Austin''s best efforts it looked like the ants were going to get through. That was till the turret he had his own ants move into the room powered on. Prioritizing the throwing biological ants instead of the suicidal ones to take the load off of the radon shield it then began to fire at anything that entered the tunnel. But the ants weren''t going to go down without a fight, it wasn''t long till they started using the corpses as shields to try and get close enough to continue the onslaught. They''re dead comrades were only good for a shot or two at most but still every killed Ant was fuel for the enemy war machines. The turrets laser emitter was beginning to overheat so it switch to ballistic rounds. As Austins own guard ants poured into the room but didn''t advance just yet. His tractor beam ants needing all the room they could to try and clear the tunnel as the radon field flickered and then fried. Austin swore and reactivated the force field the ants threw themselves at the shield with unending fury. The guardians fired back. After a few shots Austin decided to lower the beams intensity and increase its wavelength. It was no longer a contained bolt of light but a beam of heat cooking the ants in their shells. But that wasn''t the only purpose all the biological ants he had seen so far had metal shells. And though he had only seen copper so far in this batch. He could easily melt copper. Before long the first bodies began to pop as the internal gas is vaporized busting through the joints. The flesh cooked before it began to burn as their armored shells began melting creating a wall of hot fire and molten metal as it leaked down the corridor. Austin kept this up until until he had the second and third laser turrets set up. He then pulled his guard ants back. letting his tractor beam ants begin clean up. He turned the larger tractor beam on a very low setting it wasn''t enough to grab up a full ant, but small bits of debris and molten balls of copper floated into the air and towards his forcefield. His tractor beam ants nabbed the molten copper dumping them into quickly fabricated pots to let them cool. They weren''t as convenient as resource blanks but they were easily recyclable. This continued for some time the ants would pour into the corridor their shells quickly heating up from the lasers before dropping dead just short of the force field. Where they would collapse rapidly starting to fill the tunnel until one of the Ant corpses exploded releasing scalding steam and literally boiling blood that Austin pulled towards the force field continuing to cook it. What his tractor beam ants didn''t grab was quickly forming into a fairly disgusting but effective plug. More and more ants died popped and charged but just before the plug would seal the corridor the biological ants began to attack it. At this point Austin was just starting to get annoyed with these stupid things. He reactivated the force fields in the tunnel hoping it would seal them off apparently though the ants weren''t stupid enough to leave them alone and three of twenty six didn''t respond. Austins tractor beam ants pulled back, and the guard ants took their place they''re lasers firing down the tunnels carving up the corpses and the living alike. Austin turned the tractor beam off as the tunnel flooded.


    A short time later a group of waterproofed tractor beam ants rolled into the flooded tunnels.


    Austin had been systematically turning off and on the force field emitters to drain the water as he fabricated the needed resources for a pump and hose system. He''d reroute the water into the caverns below if this didn''t work. The small tractor beam ants worked their way underwater and while they weren''t swimmers they were still capable of getting around. They planted several explosives on the large boulder blocking the mine judging by their estimates and previous data about the tunnel. The boulder at one point in time had been partially sticking out of the tunnel and between the pulling of the tractor beam and the pushing of the water pressure had weakened its foundation. It finally had given out and slid into the tunnel a simple explosive detonation should be enough to break the large rock apart and widen the opening into the aquifer beyond. Austin quickly placed several aquatic drones at the opening of the tunnel just in front of the force field before he detonated the explosive, and it wasn''t long only a few minutes really before the tunnel had already refilled. Austin, having guessed by how quickly the tunnel was filling there was a lot more water on the other side of that rock and it was just acting as a plug, meaning there was plenty more to drain into the ant¡¯s tunnels. While he hoped to retrieve the queen of the Ant colony, she was quickly proving itself an annoyance. As Austin had already had to seal a whopping thirty two new attempted breaches into his facilities. Austin highly doubted she would be the last of this species he¡¯d encounter.


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    So when the pressure against his shields continued to rise he began to open up more tunnels. The pressure began to drop assumingly from whatever the ants had used to plug their holes with giving out. He opened his remaining force field emitters and allowed the entire aquifer to drain into their tunnels or as much of it as he could. Knowing he wouldn''t be continuing his mining operations anytime soon he fabricated a small collection of aquatic drones which he would begin using to clear the tunnel as well as the first of an aquatic construction drone. While they were nowhere near as advanced as his specialty units, they were still useful and while not optimal they''d help him find the weaknesses in the design for his new standardized construction drone before he started mass producing them for facility construction. Which is probably a good thing considering he just got his third fabrication bay online and with the current inventory of the disassembled bays he¡¯d have another eight before too long.


    While Austin was busy with this Sofia had returned to explore more of the tunnels. Austin had been concerned about leaving the village unprotected. So he had quickly fabricated several dragonfly like scout drones to take the beetles place.


    He he had found these in a data file when he was looking through blueprints to base his own drones off of. Apparently several fictional series had robotic dragonflies in them and several mechanically inclined enthusiasts had actually managed to bring those creations to life. Most were marketed for children''s toys, just a neat little robot that kids could fly around to take pictures with and took very little to modify to his needs.


    He quickly launched a dozen of them while he didn¡¯t have enough for full coverage, he could at least patrol the area around the village. He¡¯d need to set up stationary cameras as well as larger patrol units in the future. He really missed having satellite coverage. But that was still a ways off. He was running some vague calculations on how he''d get back into space his best bet was a sim-simple space elevator not something complex like what would be used in a space Port, but the marines and army of his time had quick deployment elevators that could be set up anywhere. Where larger elevators could only be set up on the poles or at the equator. It would extremely limit his industrial capacity in the short term but once he was in space he could establish an orbital. With its own industrial capacity and small drone ships to self propagate and expand until such time as he could set up a proper elevator for a more large scale movement. And that''s something he definitely have to do if he was going to get humanity back up to a space faring civilization anytime soon.


    He''d like to limit his planetary industrial complexes to as minimum a footprint as possible the planet had a self sustainable and breathable atmosphere as well as stable land masses. So, if any terraforming or geological engineering was required it would be minimalistic compared to any other world. So, turning the planet into a mass habitation center was top priority meaning population centers and agriculture would be the priority. Plus, large scale mining and industrialization was a lot easier to do when you didn''t have to worry about polluting or damaging the local biosphere. The orbital or better yet an industrial world if there were a planet in system with usable resources in high amounts would be more convenient.


    But for the time being he didn''t have the luxury of being too concerned about the local biosphere. He would do his best to preserve it, if possible, but he wasn''t going to batten eye if a few local predators when extinct.


    Austin was pulled from his musing when Sophia approached the door into his internal facility. He he quickly ran a scan to make sure nothing too dangerous was running or left about before opening up letting her in. The small child was shocked by how different it looked inside. The entryway had been cleared out. The nanobots had worked wonders there wasn¡¯t a speck of dirt or dust other than what was falling off of Sofia¡¯s boots. The damaged panels had been replaced with still intact salvaged material.


    Sofia looked around in surprise at the clean metal corridors around her. The rocks and debris she had seen last time were gone and the doors weren''t awkwardly placed anymore and there were more bugs? She wasn''t exactly sure they were kind of like her companion. They had the weird rolly legs though not the same type of rolly legs as the Beatle they were also smaller each had a weird Stinger that did¡­ something as they worked.


    She stopped to watch as they puttered on by many hauling things back and forth, they almost reminded her of the Ant creatures she had seen wandering the forest from time to time. It was known the creatures¡¯ held grudges so the villager¡¯s policy on them was to keep your distance. If one came close to the village, they would seal the walls until it wandered off. If they tried to climb the walls they would try and push it off with a stick to not hurt, it. She thought that she saw one of the weird smaller things carrying several of the corpses of the ant monsters as they scurried on by. That was probably not a good thing, but she wasn''t sure maybe they could handle the ants, the Beatle was so strong, and it was clear there was more of them down here whatever they were. Sofia began to look around several of the doors slammed shut in front of her she wasn''t sure how they controlled them, but it seemed that the beetle and ants didn''t want her to go into certain rooms. One of the rooms she was allowed to go into was this large open space with a bunch of broken metal tables and chairs. There was a lot of useless junk in it she guessed it was something like a trash room. Another room the Beatle only let her take a few steps in was a creepy room filled with little flashing lights and a big glowy orb. It felt like she was being watched from the moment she took a step in that room, and it felt¡­ Sad? Like whatever was watching her was hurt¡­ She wasn''t sure how to describe it. Catherine had done her best to explain the basics of what she could possibly develop as her magic to her. But she wasn''t sure she fully understood she had tried practicing on a few of the town¡¯s livestock and they didn''t sink. She just got a vague sensation of hunger and sleepiness from them the moth on the other hand was a clear and happy little Moat that followed her wherever she went. And one of her friend¡¯s pet Bunny¡¯s was just afraid. It wasn''t scared per say but more like everything was dangerous and it knew it. That one confused her because it never did anything other than sleep and eat. The last room she visited was a large room with creatures unlike anything she''d ever seen. They had so many moving parts that she couldn¡¯t make sense of it. The most confusing part was it kept spitting out thangs. Inside of one there was another beetle but she couldn''t tell if it was hurt or what, but it seemed to be missing bits. But the weird creatures weren''t taking them away, it was putting new bits on them. She watched for a little while longer before deciding to leave before she overstayed her welcome. Plus, she still had to gather herbs for the village.


    Austin had tried to make sure Sophia hadn''t gone anywhere she shouldn''t have but he had become distracted partway through and she had nearly walked into his core room before he stopped her. The distraction had come in the form of is aquatic exploration drones being attacked by some form of aquatic predator. He had recalled the waterproof ants and more annoyingly pulled back the aquatic construction unit that had just arrived at its destination. They''d all require an electrical field generator for self-defense. While humanity had come up with some aquatic based weaponry and he was looking into designing a unit with that in mind. For the time being the simplest option was just to create an electrical field around them like the old electric eels from earth and hope that would persuade them to leave his machines alone. He''d like to just plug the hole in the wall and be done with it. But as there was a current in the water, he wasn''t sure if the ants had been drowned out or just washed out of their tunnels. He needed to explore the tunnels fully and make sure they were properly cleared out before he could drain the tunnel. Austin wanted to sigh in annoyance. All he wanted to do was explore the cavern below. From what little he''d seen it was an optimal place to expand his production into and while he could expand in any direction just by digging it out. He''d like to start mapping the local area more thoroughly. With his limited aerial drones, he was already beginning to map the surface he could probably launch one or two of them into the tunnels below. He already had one available opening but till then he still had more work to do.

 the ants of war

    While Austin was busy building up his basic industry. He started construction on a larger scale assembly Bay. These bays could assemble larger components that were printed by the smaller ones. Which would be the first step to building the far larger facilities needed for nanobot construction. The irony of which was not lost on him.


    Sofia was currently walking through the forest, unfortunately they had had two scares with a wolf, but Austins beetle had been quick enough to take them down. Au-Austin had gathered up as many of the small patches of herbs Sofia had missed as he could detect. Even so his bots limited storage capacity was quickly filling up. It wouldn''t be long before he''d have to start handing them off to Sophia to store in her bag.


    Sofia had been handed an old timey basket like backpack to fill with herbs. The basket was rather large and had to be padded so she could wear it comfortably. As it was almost as big as she was and she had to toss whatever she found up into it. By the time the two of them finally decided to return to the village the sun was already setting. Sofia hadn''t managed to fill the entirety of the basket but with the surprise of what his beetle had been able to gather it was close. Which was almost surprising for the entire village. It usually took a group of gatherers to fill an entire basket like this. The fact that a single girl and her strange beetle creature had managed to do it made it no less impressive.


    The next morning Sophia went to meet up with the village mage Catherine to try and improve her limited magical capabilities. Unlike Catherine who was from an actual city with more than one mage to mentor under. So, she was able to study under a variety of different spell crafts tell she was old enough to earn enough to pay to go to a lesser but still no less respected magical Academy. Where is she finally found her niche that later ended with her becoming the village mage of a small no name town on the edge of Duke vine wells territory. The only reason Vine well even wanted a settlement out here was because this area was one of the best places to find healing herbs in his territory. He had made several attempts to set up proper plantations but had met with mixed results. So small gatherer villages like theirs were used instead. The village was made up of a few dozen gatherers, a single blacksmith. A local guard funded by the Duke himself so the locals kids could earn some extra coin for their families. Because farming was impossible in these lands as well. It also kept the town safe with a small hoard of young but not necessarily well trained guards. There were also two woodworkers, Sophia¡¯s mother the tailor and a general crafters family that handle just about everything else. In total the village population hovered somewhere around the mid sixties depending on birth, deaths, people leaving to find their fortune or work or so on. So long as they kept a relatively steady supply of herbs and medicines for Duke Vine wells tribute each year, they were pretty much left alone. This year they might have a bit of an issue meeting that demand. At least that''s what Sophia believed at first with all the monsters. Though with her new companion maybe not, she wasn''t quite sure just yet.


    Sofia was trying to pay attention to her lessons and did her best to perform the task given to her. They weren¡¯t hard per say just complicated. It seemed like everything Catherine wanted her to do had dozens of steps. And while she could perform each step when she was walked through it. Trying to do so on her own or perform them as a whole task was a lot harder than she expected. The closest sheet had gotten to so far was a very simple spell to purify water. Sofia lacked any direct elemental affinity, but she was instructed to at least learn the basics of each of the elements. As it was often the more advanced or more diverse magic types that used these fundamentals as a template to build upon. She could purify water, but it always came out boiling for some reason.


    Catherine would have suspected she had a fire elemental affinity because of this, if it wasn''t for the fact her attempts at generating fire made sparks closer to lightning or just heated an object up until it exploded. If she had any fire affinity conjuring a simple flame would be like dropping a match to oiled kindling. Despite this nothing she tried worked right even when Catherine used herself as a focus much to the mage¡¯s confusion. She claimed Sophia¡¯s Mana was strange inactive it rose and fell like a wave. Active it spiked and fell almost like lightning but focused it could be almost as steady and accurate as earth and then there was just this weird nature of putting out more energy than it should. Fire would shoot off sparks or ZAPs of lightning would sputter, and shimmer water would boil, and earth would come out as glass for some reason.


    Catherine had seen actual glass mages before. Some of the temples they could make were absolutely beyond description in their beauty. But this was not glass magic, this was earth magic it wasn''t just pure glass either bits of it almost looked like it was trying to form crystals or gemstones. One crystal Sophia had actually made by accident had exploded. The only thing Sophia seemed to be having an easy time with was communicating with things. At first Catherine just thought it was animals Sophia could communicate with. That was until she picked up her staff. It been a gift from her mentor while a relatively simple magical tool so long as it was fed mana it could continuously cast a spell for the user. Mind you it was just a continuous process if you ordered it to make water it would just continue to make water. If you wanted to make ice you would have no control over how the ice grew if you let the staff take over. It would just continued whatever task it was given well magically speaking at least. It had no greater control other than to make it do what it had originally been told to do a useful little trinket for monotonous work but not much. But that''s where things got weird while Sophia herself could not cast even the most basic spells without odd events happening even with the aid of a traditional magic focus. But if Catherine cast a spell with her staff and then handed it off to Sophia not only could she easily power it but control it. Most of the time mages had a hard time entwining their mana together usually they would have to use complex spell setups for runic engravings to have multiple mages cast the same spell. Sophia strange mana seemed to bypass that in its entirety if that wasn''t strange enough, she could still control the magic despite the staff continuing to autocast the spell. Where Catherine could order a magical flame to go forward or rise into the air, she could not stop it or change its direction once her staff took over. Sophia instead could completely manipulate it, despite not having originally cast the spell. Which was only something mage¡¯s who specialized in dispelling powerful magics like curses or enchantments and only after years of careful training could do. The fact the girl had to make physical contact with the source of the magic seemingly being the only downside was astonishing to her. And then there was that beetle, it was a dead zone to her eyes.


    If Catherine focused, she could see the magic around her. A trick picked up by most new mages at some point. However, some could see or even hear more than others. Some are even able to understand huge amounts of data from it. Catherine, however, was never so skilled but even she could get a basic understanding of how strong something was magically speaking just by feeling it out. And the Beatle made no sense to her the few times she had seen it act. When it consumed the leaves and made medicine, when it did its strange blue light and the one time, she''d seen its stinger she detected no magic but something else. The only way she could describe it was like sucking on a copper piece that''s strange taste at the back of your mouth when you do so. She had once gotten struck by a lightning spell in a duel and it had left that taste in her mouth for almost a week. But this was far fainter, only a brief hint followed by a faint buzzing sensation that was until it began to empty out the leaves stored within its shell. She had managed to get close enough to get a good look at what was within its shell, it had some strange bluish black material folded up within it almost like wings? It had those two strange metallic arms, it''s Stinger and a bunch of small orbs. She would have thought they were eggs, but she sensed no life from them at all almost like the beetle itself. Except without all its armor in the way she finally felt its energy as it flowed through the creature. It was more contained and simultaneously more violent than any mana she had felt before and tugged at a small corner at the back of her mind. She had felt something similar once a long time ago when she was learning about the very basics of magic. Back then she had been exposed to several different types of magic to try and gage her affinity and she could swear she had felt a very similar sensation before. Catherine sighed she would just have to wait till after spring when she could take Sophia to the city to get properly tested to figure out this strange affinity. It would certainly bother her tell then she just wished she could figure out why Sophia was having such a hard time with her teaching or.


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    She was suddenly pulled from her thoughts by a Thunderclap in the distance the weather had been strange lately. A storm had been building to the east for a week now it just seemed to have stopped there. If it would have rained it would have run down in the valley, so it hadn''t rained yet. The storm just seemed to sit there brewing. If she was more spiritualistic like a shaman or a witch, she might say it was an omen of something.


    Austin watched the girls having their lessons the one that produced the weird energy signature had apparently taken an interest in the girl he had rescued. He had been recording their lessons, gathering information as best he could on the weird energy the two were producing. Day by day the young girl seemed to produce a tiny amount more of this energy where before he probably would have missed it his background radiation now, he could at least track her because of her energy signature. Though if she passed a particularly thick wall or too many people were close to her it would seem to vanish. Where the older woman Catherine or Catherina if his translation software was close to right. He could easily detect her no matter where she was in the village.


    Austin had been letting his translation software run in the background. Due to his damage state, it was taking up nearly six percent of this processing power. He really needed to get to work on building a new core and servers. But that was a problem he still didn''t have the industrial capacity to fulfill. He could brute force the problem and well, it would cost him a lot of resources and a lot of space. He just needed nanites to make some of the more complex components. So, the sooner he can get a proper construction facility up and running. The sooner he could begin repairing himself as for the time being he can make do even if he was at less than one fourth of his original processing power.


    Me-mean while the first of his improved aquatic drones began to explore the aquifer and flooded Ant tunnels while another of his dragonfly drones began to explore the caverns below. Lastly was his beetle bot currently it was going around hunting those annoying wolves or following the girl. He still hadn''t figured out her name yet Sophie so sassafras he knew it started with an S and either an O or an A. But he hadn''t figured out the rest of it yet. The translation software needed more data points he had planted a few of the hidden microphones around the village but there simply weren''t very many large gathering places. The tavern did some business, but it wasn''t a lot. It only had five tables and the most he''d ever seen there was less than ten people there. The barracks for the guards had far more people living there but most of the time when someone showed up, they were either drunk or exhausted and passed out. So, there was actually very little conversation. His dragonfly like drones and beetle were two of his best sources of audio recordings because they can somewhat get close to the people walking around. Unfortunately, he needed the bots to constantly leave the village to hunt down what he assumed was enemy scouts.


    Austin didn''t understand how and he very much wanted to know how but the beetles, the bats, the wolves and apparently a giant octopus creature he had found in a pond as well as a few giant frogs and a horde of spiders. Which he was trying to figure out how to exterminate without firebombing a section of the forest. We''re all seemingly being controlled by something. They weren''t behaving like wild animals on top of that they were actively hunting those that acted like normal animals. And the truly scary part was all these things were acting in coordination with one another. If that wasn''t scary enough, he had only this morning spotted a small family of what he thought at first was a strange deer until he realized they were bigger than horses and systematically clearing an area of all its foliage. The creatures were obese to say the least they never stopped eating and when one dropped dead presumably eating itself to death one of the strange wolf like creatures dragged it off off. He tried to get close but those weird bat like creatures chased his dragonfly drone off. So, if he was understanding this properly someone was not only controlling these creatures but had created biological harvesting machines that were slowly working their way through the forest and surrounding areas. He hadn¡¯t seen anything taking a munch on any of the trees yet but the area where he had seen the deer like creatures had a quarter of a mile completely stripped of vegetation. Whatever this was it probably saw the villagers as an active threat which is why it kept performing probing attacks on their defenses. Yes, the villagers weren''t actively hunting the creatures of the forest especially after the last attack left them with more than enough meat for them to use. The fact that a fortified even non hostile location we''re situated somewhere near them was a perceived threat. No-now that he thought about it these monsters were acting a lot like the ants, he had been fighting and that gave Austin some ideas.


    Austin gathered up a few of the Ant corpses he had set aside to melt their shells down and a few corpses of the wolf like creatures and toss them into a pile closer to where he had observed ants emerging from underground. He perched one of his dragonflies above the mound and waited as he continued working on his production systems.


    As soon as he was sure he had enough resource blanks set aside that he could print two small forges he began the process of disassembling the semi active one he still had. Technically the entire smeltery was a grand total of twenty four forges smelters printers and so on. But he wasn''t taking any risks especially since he had to mix and match a lot to get the system working in its current beat up state. Where at one point in time it had been meant to work like a conveyor belt. Where chunks of material when in one end resource blanks or even simple fabricated parts came out the other. Now he had to use his tractor beam ants to remove items from each machine and carefully install them in the next. Leading to a lot of tedious labor and a seventh of his processing power to just keep the entire room running somewhat without issue. It was slow, it was annoying, it was overly complicated which is primarily why he was constructing from the blanks he had in storage and not relying on his forges. But now he could finally start assembling new forges. As they were only waiting on the larger fabrication bays to make the components for the nanobots he could begin using his smaller bays in conjunction with the pre-existing parts from the old forges to set up new ones. He was getting so close to having a functioning be it small industrial complex.


    Austin was pulled from watching his various progression bars by the first of the ants finding his little offering. If Austin could smile, he would be as more and more ants poured out of the tunnels. He¡¯d have to keep a close eye on them, but it looked like if he was lucky, he may have just started a war. It wouldn''t be the first time he used twisted politics to his own benefit. He would have smirked if he could as the biggest pain in his metaphorical ass started hunting the second biggest pain in his metaphorical ass. It was times like this he wished he could eat some popcorn. If his old crew were to be believed it would probably be really good right now.

 escalation

    It had been three days since the start of the war if-if you could even call it that. The biological ants had proven to be the superior combatants. The armor of even their copper worker units seemed to be relatively decent enough to block glancing blows and their pincers were sharp enough to function as makeshift blades. They also had the bonus of numbers on their side. The only reason they struggled against Austin was he had superior fififi-repower that rendered their natural advantages mute. Add in some decent intelligence and the enemies fell in droves. Only to drag as many of their dead back as possible and return again and again and again, they-hey even succeeded at dragging back a few of the Ant corpses. As the number of dead rose on each side it was clear that whatever they were fighting against had some way to rapidly replace lost troops. It didn''t make sense that it was able to do this and not be able to overwhelm the ants with numbers. Austin had stepped in with a new larger dragonfly like drone equipped with a harpoon that he used to drag back corpses for the ants. While the ants consume the corpses slowly and probably fed a good chunk of it to-to their queen to make more ants or whatever they did? He''d still hadn''t found them or where they were coming from to confirm that. But the refresh rate wasn''t nearly as high as whatever was controlling these blasted creatures.


    It wasn¡¯t long before larger ant variants took to the field only to be met with of all thing¡¯s spiky versions of the copper ants. And while at first, they did join in battles instead they had taken to tearing down the trees and eating them. Whatever this was it had an apparent need to harvest more biomass. And Austin had accidentally just given them something that could finally handle the larger flora by siccing the ants on them.


    It-it was not unnoticed by Austin that the war was not going well for the ants. So, Austin started stepping in where he could his Flyers would take on the enemy''s collection units using their harpoons to drag corpses back into the ant''s territory. He was just fire support at this point but the enemy of my enemy and all. B-but it didn''t help the ants through another invasion attempt at him and he had to gun them down. In the end, it was just fewer bodies to throw at the enemy and all. He chucked their corpses down to the cavern below hoping they''d make use of them. It''s not like he needed them at the moment for more metal.


    While he was still working on increasing his own industrial complex. He had devoted every spare scrap of resource he could to building new beetles, more of his own mechanical ants with multiple new combat variants including a mobile shield platform. And more combat oriented dragonfly drones mos-mostly focusing on the dragonfly drones. While The Beatles were most likely the most effective combat unit in his current arsenal. He needed to continue to provide air support if he didn¡¯t want the biological ants to be overrun. It didn''t help that the enemy''s combat Flyers had figured him out and were starting to pick on his drones. It had been close to a full week now and Austin was having to send out escort drones to fight off air to air incursions on his resource runs. Not that the ants were really making use of the stuff he brought back. At this point, it was more about denying his enemies the resources than helping his reluctant allies. As the sheer number of corpses, he piled up for the ant started to rot and while they were steadily working on the pile they just couldn''t keep up.


    The larger iron Ant guards hadn¡¯t had any casualties yet. Though they had a few close calls. More than one of which Austin had to provide fire support to try and keep whatever this was from getting its hands on their corpses. He wasn''t quite sure how or what this thing was, but it had figured out how to make its own version of the copper ants after getting its hands on just a few of their bodies. And Austin didn''t even want to think about what would happen if they managed to get ahold of any of the more powerful variants. Like the iron and zzzzinc ones he had seen so far. He honestly wouldn''t be surprised if the ants still had a few cards hidden but those two were bad enough as it was.


    The weird zinc ants had only been seen in action twice. They didn''t really make sense they were smaller than the coppers but every limb on that creature seemed to be a blade. Watching it literally claw its way through one of the wolf like creatures. Was both fascinating and disturbing, it was likely the only reason it hadn''t been used against his mechanical units. Was because whatever intelligence was behind the ants was smart enough to realize that his units armor would be too thick for it to penetrate easily. The iron ants would have likely caused him a bit of issue but not that much. While iron had a higher melting point than copper it still melted easily enough. And even if they could handle ballistic shots better than the copper ant¡¯. That again just boiled down to more volume of fire or armor penetration. As such the Ant seemed like the lesser threat when compared to this new enemy.


    Meanwhile, Sofia wasn''t having a good day some weird flying bug thingies had been dropping off stuff in town for a while now. Including a weird crab like creature, she¡¯d call it a spider based off the shape of its body, but spiders didn''t have big clampy claws. The weird spider crab thing had begun scuttling around her town a few days ago with more metal than she''d seen in her entire life. The townspeople hadn''t been happy when they showed up but the guards sure were happy now with it fortifying the walls. Something had kicked one of the metallic Ant nests and managed to get them angry at the dungeon monsters and she wasn''t really sure how to feel about that. She was momentarily pulled from her musing by the sounds of her beetle companion''s stinger firing as it cut through three bat like creatures that tried to fly overhead. It managed to hit two of the three the third just barely slipping through. It would have gotten to one of their livestock if one of the weird triangular stinger thingies the crab like creature had been putting around the town hadn''t stung it out of the air. There were a lot of bats trying to get into the town at the moment but there were always a few of those flying dragonfly like creatures running them off.


    Dungeons, according to the guards at least, weren''t supposed to be this active above ground. They usually just built up underground digging deeper while gathering resources from the surface. And while they would occasionally launch an attack at perceived threats but never anything as sustained as this. Which is why the guards had sent a messenger to a nearby city to ask for aid with fortifying the village. Whenever a new dungeon was found the adventurers Guild and the local Lords army would usually show up eventually to pacify it.


    Dungeons themself weren''t too particularly valuable as unlike myths and legends they almost never held magical artifacts, weapons of power, or anything like that. Instead, they were basically just mimicking a crude form of life. Dungeons would make monsters. Monsters would gather materials and life from outside and drag it back to feed the dungeon anything of value. And anything of use that was dragged back was copied and then sent out again when the dungeon had consumed enough of it. Sometimes, rarely if the dungeon had managed to get enough material it might make something more intelligent as a guardian that''s where a lot of the darker races came from. Orcs goblins Kappas the list went on. They weren''t as smart as humans or the other intelligent races, but they were smart enough to make tools and use tools. And well the dungeon couldn''t Make items of legend but if you fed it a few broken swords and some rusted scrap iron it would make a tool for its protector. So, this created a unique balancing act where in exchange for feeding it livestock plant matter even garbage and other waste it would produce creatures and monsters. Most of which had at least some value that were then killed by adventures guard¡¯s knights or whatever for money and combat experience. A lot of guilds or even Lords would essentially buy dungeons set up shop there and occasionally offer rights to rent or use it to others. They were usually just used as a way to get meat, fur, and other valuable items as such without any excessive hunting or building expensive above ground farming. As well as an easy and convenient way to get rid of unwanted waste materials.


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    This one was apparently different according to the guards. Either it had been a lot more cautious until recently and dug deep. Or had a hunting ground they hadn''t found yet. Neither one would really surprise them the valley was large, and it could have originally emerged outside the valley and only accidentally found its way in as it dug downwards. But whatever it was, it was hungry the guard had spotted grazer parties of mutated dear roaming the forest more than once. Which wasn''t good for the harvesting of healing herbs, so they had been wiped out. Which is probably why the dungeon had started to attack the village in the first place. Now the ants where actively attacking anything on the surface be it they''re harvesters or their hunters. And since the ants could eat just about anything it probably only made things worse. The worst part was it already had access to scrap shelled beetles. Meaning it could eat the metal soil around here to grow more. So, the dungeon was eating rocks plants even creatures it could even get through the metallic armor of the ants and eat them. Thanks to the scrap shell beetles the ant¡¯s greatest strength against most common predators was now just an inconvenience.


    If that wasn''t bad enough, they were tearing apart the forest, the ants weren''t doing a lot of damage, but the fights were causing collateral. And her new metallic friends from whatever weird insect group the beetle she had found underground fell into. They had no problem with starting small fires or using explosions to clear out groups of monsters. She had seen more than a few casually flying past with the body of some creature it probably had killed. A few had been deposited into the village, much to the delight of the locals at least they wouldn''t have to worry about food while under siege, but most had been carried over to the ant¡¯s side of things.


    Much to the confusion of a lot of the locals who of course came to her and asked her a lot of questions. So, she had in turn gone to the Beatle and tried to ask it questions and she had got absolutely nothing in response. The beetle was weird, she couldn''t communicate with it like she could with a lot of creatures, even though she was starting to get pretty good at talking to animals. Though it wasn''t exactly talking more just trading intents. The best way she could describe attempting to talk to the beetle was like trying to talk to an eye. It could see her moving, it knew she was doing something, but it was the wrong thing to be talking to. Her only other idea was to try it with that large glowing orb she had found underground that one time. It might be the key to all this. Shed likely have gone back if she thought she could leave the village, but everything was trying to kill everything at the moment. And the only thing that seemed relatively friendly at the moment was her beetle the rollie bug thingies the dragonfly thingies and the weird crab thing. Which was currently reinforcing one of the walls. A lot of the rollie thingies had found a spot near the center of town and started digging into the ground. At first, she thought it was a nest until she had been guided inside by the beetle.


    The beetle had when it wasn''t fighting or leaving to do whatever it did whenever it left the village had been trying to guide people into the underground. Even moving objects into it along with the weird rollie thingies. At first, no one really knew why but whenever the crab thing wasn''t busy fixing or making something new it would work on the hole in the ground. It wasn''t until the rollie thingies had stolen a bunch of tables and chairs from the Tavern and placed them down there. That¡¯s when people finally figured out it was trying to make someplace safe for them or at least that''s what they were assuming. Anytime a home was damaged a new place was carved out for the people to live there. The rollie thingies would even help them move their belongings inside. And at this point, almost a third of the town was living underground.


    As more and more of the Roly thingy showed up the tunnels kept getting bigger and deeper. And while people weren¡¯t exactly happy with that. Especially since everyone was on edge due to the fighting getting worse. On top of that the damage to the village was starting to get bad.


    Sofia hadn''t gotten a lesson from the town mage in the past few days because Catherine had been too busy readying weapons enchanting them and checking on the town''s defenses.


    Austin didn''t like this. As they came closer to the second week of fighting the ants were getting pushed back. What was worse, the front lines that had started off beyond the village had-had slowly been pushed back enough that the village was once more in the line of fire. The valley which they were in was in fact an impact crater. His impact crater to be precise and ended abruptly on one end where he had been buried. The crater wall above him had a waterfall that dumped into a small lake that drained into the caverns below and likely was the source of the underground aquifer he had found.


    The valley was full of lush forest and only had one way in or out. Which will not bottlenecked by, was very close to where Sophia''s village was. Oh yeah, he had finally figured out what the little girl''s name was that was a pleasant surprise.


    But whatever was controlling these creatures held the majority of the right side of the valley. The ants in their superior numbers had managed to push them back dramatically but now they were slowly losing territory and being pushed back to the left side of the valley. The ants had had to collapse several of their tunnels to keep from being followed into the underground, but they still poured through the remaining ones. Morerere than once, Austin had found himself desperately moving his offering piles as the frontline shifted closer and closer. He didn''t want whatever this was to get ahold of the biomass he''d been snatching up for the ants that probably wouldn''t end well. As the front lines had started to move closer towards the village Austin had dispatched one of his construction bots to fortify the village. Originally, he had been going for a spider-like based design but with its manipulator claws and multi tool unit gave it more of a crab like appearance. Whatever it was close enough function over form at this point he didn''t have time to care. He¡¯d been doing his best to prepare and the second one would be delivered in the next few days once it was finished constructing the larger scale assembly bay.


    He had set up several solar panels linked to a capacitor bank and as many turrets as he could spare to help reinforce the walls. But wood and stone could only handle so much. However, he¡¯d need a larger construction unit to even think about starting to construct a concrete and steel bulwark around the makeshift town. Even despite his best defense effort several small groups of the Flyers had managed to make it through. Thu-though most of the damage on the village so far had been from their bodies dropping out of the air. More than a few roofs had been smashed in. It also didn''t help that most of the houses were made of wood and thatch. And while good against the elements. It was not so good against the incoming siege. So, he had started designing an underground bunker. But due to the lack of communication trying to get them to move into the bunker was an uphill battle but he¡¯d finally got them to understand.


    He¡¯d frown if he could as he looked at his next delivery to the town. Weapons, steel swords Spears Shields armor the best he could make on short notice. Compound bows crossbows arrows bolts even a ballista and trebuchet which would have to be assembled on site. He''d like to give them more modern weapons but he wasn''t willing to put a gun in the hands of untrained civilians. Let alone civilians, that hadn''t seen anything more modern than a sword of all blasted things. He didn''t want the humans to fight but even with his growing industrial complex and his attempts to move towards connecting his underground tunnels to the village via the bunker he was currently digging. He had no good way to deploy above ground other than the air drops he was currently doing and while his air support was helping it was slow progress if it was even progress. By the sheer number of these creatures that were being thrown at the ants.


    Judging by the area of the valley that was being stripped he could easily guess where they were coming from. The problem was the air to air there was just too thick for him to send air support and any long range artillery support would have to be established from the village. It was the only protected clearing he currently had access to. That''s what the trebuchet was for. It wasn''t the best sure he could fill it with explosives, but he''d rather have a proper mortar or a missile battery. Unfortunately, desperate times and desperate measures and all that. He didn''t have the infrastructure to make the complex electronics to control a missile system or missiles. He didn''t have any prefabricated mortar shells and yes while he was starting production on ballistic ammo. He could only make those that could be fired from a magnetic rail at this point. Because he had no access to sulfur or any other substances that could be manufactured into modern combustibles. So, he was trying to be careful with what little ammo he had left sure he had a few million rounds just lying around. But until he could get some form of resupply those few million rounds had to last him. The last thing he needed was to have to reconfigure all his ballistic weaponry to be far slower railguns. Well maybe building a railgun turret wouldn''t be a bad idea he added it to the list for later shipment. Right now, he needed to focus on improving what he could while he could. He had no shortage of metal, and it took very little time and effort to print off basic weapons for the humans. Whether they were able to defend themselves so they didn''t have to solely rely on him.

 war comes knocking

    Sophia frowned as she watched the two crab spider thingies work to build what a few of the guards were calling a trebuchet. Meanwhile, the guards were opening up and inspecting the contents of several crates with the help of the town''s blacksmith.


    The town''s blacksmith was a grumpy old man in her opinion. He was very skilled, but his level was relatively low. Most decent blacksmiths were in the thirty to fifty level range, but he was only in the twenties. In comparison, her own mother''s seamstress skills were in the high forties.


    All this pondering about other people¡¯s skills just made her want to look at her own but she didn''t have a status stone of her own. The only public one in town was currently in the process of being moved underground along with the contents of what used to be the church. Their town hadn''t been big enough for an actual priest or preacher to show up but they had a place of worship for all the major faiths at least the ones she knew of. But the church itself was just a building maintained by the townspeople, allowing them to worship their given patron. Nothing important had been damaged but a whole swarm of mostly melted scrap shell Beatles headset the thatch roof on fire. Thankfully due to the quick actions of the weird rollie things and the spider crab thingy they had managed to put the fires out before it spread too far but they also tore most of the roof off in the process.


    So, most of the people who weren''t busy with their daily tasks were undertaking the ceremonies needed to move their shrines into the newly dug underground church/temple. She wasn''t really sure what to call the room that had been dug out for them just yet.


    ¡°Sophia, can you come here for a moment?¡± Frederick shouted, calling her over and jolting her back to reality.


    ¡°Hey, Frederick, what can I help you with?¡± Sofia said padding over feeling the now familiar weight of her moth companion landing on her head. She hadn¡¯t really been paying attention to where the thing was, but it generally had just been following her around.


    ¡°I know you haven''t had the best of luck trying to communicate with your metal friend or it''s buddies beyond somehow getting it to agree to help us out. but we''re kind of wondering-?¡±


    ¡°What the fucking hell is this metal made of!? My skill can''t make heads or tails of it it''s lighter than dwarven steel but stronger than anything I''ve ever seen. The blade doesn''t dull easily either and its sharpness. This thing would cut through leather armor almost as well as vibranium or adamantium would but it''s still strong enough to hold its edge even when used against tougher materials like wood and even stone. And these edges it looks almost like it was cold forged and then cut into shape but that doesn''t make sense that would just be downright impossible the tools simply don''t exist to do such.¡± The blacksmith blurted out, inspecting one of the swords that had been brought over.


    ¡°Yeah, that''s about what I was going to ask to. Where did they get them they''re in too good of shape to have been just lying around? So, it can''t have just found them not only that it''s setting up a freaking trebuchet in the middle of the town. I mean these things are clearly smart they''re building homes and reinforcing walls, but this is just ridiculous. Have you managed to find out anything about them.¡± Frederick asked generally just baffled as he picked up and inspected the strangest looking bow Sophia had ever seen. It had two small pully wheels one on each of the arms and the string was coiled around it in such a way that it would be impossible to remove without tools. It was even made of some material other than wood. So maybe it didn''t need to be unstrung to keep from warping the bow.


    ¡°I don''t know¡­.. And this might sound weird, but I think they''re all one thing I''ve been trying to talk to them, but I think the reason why I haven''t been having much luck is I''m trying to talk to the wrong um thing? When I first went out to gather more herbs after I found the beetle it let me back into its cave. I found this thing in this weird room with flickering blue lights. There was this orb like thing that almost looked like an eye connected to loads of metal vines. It looked at me, but I could also feel it looking into me. I didn''t know it back then and I only really understand it sort of now because I have a lot more experience with it. But that whole room felt like a person. A person who was hurt and impossibly old but so much, much more¡­.. I, I can''t really describe it I wasn''t even looking for it but could feel its presence, and these, these, things are just tiny pieces of it not even children more like hands or limbs. Even now if I reach out like straining to hear a very quiet sound off in the distance, I can still feel it even though it was on the other side of the valley. it''s, it''s not the valley itself but it''s everywhere or so prevalent that you could mistake it for the valley itself.¡± Sophia said her eyes taking on a faint greenish blue glow.Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more.


    Meanwhile, Austin if he could would be glaring at the tactical map. Something-something wasn''t right but he couldn¡¯t put his finger on it. The first hunter squads of his mechanical ants were being deployed. He had been hesitant to use them partly because he was afraid the intelligence in control of the creatures might have the capabilities to replicate them like it could its creatures. But several of his aerial drones had been knocked out of the sky over the past week and although he had retrieved their remains, they had yet to be replicated. So, he was biting the bullet and hoping he wasn''t about to make things worse. Especially since the combat ants weren''t that powerful. They were the equivalent of a laser pistol on-nn a small turret on a slightly larger Ant platform, the extra size allowing for a larger battery and some additional armor. Each combat Ant was given an escort of three tractor beam ants while the tractor beams weren''t too particularly powerful combat wise, they were able to pull Flyers out of the air or slow opponents down. Primarily they were mostly there to drag back whatever the combat Ant killed. Whatever this Opponent was it clearly needed biomass and didn''t care where it came from.


    Despite the rising number of losses and the deforestation of the valley, their numbers continue to rise. So, logic dic-ictates it must be gaining biomass from somewhere, but he couldn''t figure out where.


    Austin had begun tooo ferment local plant life he didn''t have a proper bio or chemistry lab set up yet. But ethanol wasn''t that hard to make especially when you didn''t have to worry about it being drinkable. With a little trial and error, it was easy enough for him to find recipes to concoct the most flammable substance he could. Unfortunately, he couldn''t produce it on mass just-just yet, but he could make enough for basic firebombs. His drones could fly higher than the enemy air units and drop the firebombs into their territory. Their obsession with harvesting every ounce of biomass in their way led to a rather useful tactical weakness. Not only was there nothing for them to hide in there was nothing else left there to burn but its creatures. Meaning he didn¡¯t need to worry about any fires getting out of control. However, it was when Austin tried to implement this new strategy he realized just how great of a threat his opponent was. As outside of the valley, it had already stripped a four mile zone of all its biomass, and it was spreading. Soon they would reach the mouth of the valley leading to an encirclement pouring through the valley¡¯s entryway as well as through the tunnel in the valley wall. Whatever this was just went from being an annoyance to being an actual threat to his continued functionality and it was-as piss-pissing him off. This meant the kid gloves were coming off production was increased to maximum output. Austin stripped down all the old nuclear reactors for spare parts for extra power production and he''d worry about cleaning up a radiation leak at a later time. Every scrap of metal was being processed at max speed as soon as the power was up everything and he meant everything he had was being melted down and repurposed. He needed more drones, more turrets he needed more everything and he had a special surprise he was just dying to get ready for these damnable mass produced organic knockoffs.


    7Because if they thought they could hurt his humans they had another thing coming.


    Meanwhile, back at the village, Sophia turned to face Austin¡¯s core, her eyes flickering ever brighter as she felt dread well up inside her.


    ¡°Something''s wrong!¡± Was all she said to the bafflement of the young guard and blacksmith she had just been talking to as they went over the last of the newfound supplies. She instantly turned on her heel and darted off with speed only slightly above that of what a girl her size should have been capable of. Mana was one heck of a powerful drug when it wanted to be and, in that state, it only took her a few minutes to find Catherine.


    ¡°Catherine something''s wrong! I don''t know what but that spirit or whatever it is I told you I''ve been feeling it''s not happy. I think I think it''s getting ready for a fight, and I think we need to do the same.¡± Sophia had never seen someone''s face turn that pale that quickly before. Catherine nodded and began to gather together the few elders of the town. War was coming and she could only hope they were ready.


    As night began to fall Austin made a somewhat useful discovery. One of his aerial drones exploring the caverns beneath him found a chunk of his ship''s outer hull. Not a lot but on its rusting hide was an anti fighter cannon. While not the most powerful thing he had once had welded to his h-ull. But it was definitely useful especially if anything more powerful showed up. He just had to figure out how to get it out.


    The gun was a try barrel Rotary cannon designed for mid to short range combat though it was powerful enough to fire at longer ranges. The problem with fighting in space, wa-was though at longer ranges it was easier to dodge. The thing was able to tear into frigates and accurate enough to snipe out strike craft and even fighters at closer ranges. Like all his weapons that was rarely the deadliest part of them, the plethora of specialized ammunitions he employed made each one a truly nightmarish threat. Depending on the enemy he was facing. He¡¯d have to check the autoloader and ammo feed to find out what it was currently loaded with.


    Austin began to tunn-nel towards it he needed a better root down to the caverns below anyway. His attempts to drain the ant''s old tunnels had been all but abandoned as he had turned his attention to the war at hand. Since this section of the ship was just an exterior piece of hull, he doubted anything of more value than the gun would be on board. However, if there was one chunk here then there''s probably more hidden nearby. He deployed as many drones as he could spare to search for more. Which turned out to only be an additional three drones, to try and explore the tunnels for more. Because at the moment he could use any advantage he could get his hands on. Meanwhile, in the foundries, the large fabrication Bay he had been working on was set to work producing a special new project.

 Well shit...

    If Austin could, he would be glaring at his tactical map. He had a total of six battery powered beetles running around. Two-wo were guarding a supply convoy made up of all his excess tractor beam ants, hauling crates of more supplies to the village. Since he didn''t have enough flying units to carry the sheer number of supplies he needed to transfer to the village.


    Meanwhile of the other three squads of beetles, one was cur-rrrr-rently trying to take the heat off the biological ants to let them regroup and begin counterattacking. Austin had set them up in turret mode in a particularly open area with solar panels to charge them. With them were nine guard ants, three tractor beams, and two new types of drones. One was a Caterpillar like drone that extended several large wing like solar panels. When they collapsed the wings folded up into the body. However, when fully deployed it could further break apart into connected RC wagons on tank treads that could be extended as needed. Each connected by power cables they¡¯d then deploy a string of solar panels and a charging platform for the ants.


    The second was what Austin was calling the fire starter Ant it was the he-avily reused worker ants platform with a sprayer and a small low yield laser. Unlike its counterparts that could fire beams of condensed light hard enough to burn its way clean through flesh, bone, and even metal this one could only heat an object up until it eventually combusted. Which was perfect for his current needs. Most of the turret was just a small bottle of the ethanol spray Austin had been working on. Biofuel it was not-not but it would work as an ignition instead of dragging back the dead bodies for the ants to consume or for the human settlement Austin would pile them up and when the pile got too high he''d make a second pile using it has bait and set fire to the first.


    Any new corpses would later be thrown onto that original pile and bur-rrern-ned with the rest. He wasn''t sure if they could break down the ash and make more biomass from it but considering it prioritized plant and animal life before other sustenance sources it wasn¡¯t likely. He had spotted several of The Beatles just chewing away at the iron rich soil but most prioritized hunting. So presumably it couldn''t make use of it as easily at the very least.


    The last of the remaining beetle squads had gone up the valley and would soon be at the edge of signal range but they wouldn''t have to pass it thankfully. As soon as they left the valley, they''d be taking a hard turn straight into the hunting territory of the enemy and they would begin making a right nuisance of themselves there. Austin would also be airdropping in reinforcements as they came available.


    Meanwhile, the village would soon receive the convoy and begin construction on the needed equipment. prefabricated capacitor banks, additional turrets, and several yards of electrified barbed wire-wire-wire. Since lasers could function as long as they had plenty of power their main issue was ensuring they never ran out. Reactors were useful but he needed as many of them as possible to increase his own power supply so setting one up in the village was problematic at best. Though he''d have to likely do-do it soon if he couldn''t finish digging the connection tunnel quickly enough. He had planned to run a power cable down through it and into the town itself. His own capacitor banks were far larger and with his reactors and if push came to shove, he could stop production to increase power to the turrets.


    At least that was the plan¡­ If he only had a few more weeks or even a month. He could have started producing ammo again, but he merely needed to locate a source of usable material for the per-propellant part of the bullet. That would have been enough for a noticeable advantage. Till then, Austin was already working on substitutions.


    He was designing a prototype version of a hopper fed tension based bolt launcher that hopefully could be mounted on a combat Ant. Along with a sized up version that could be placed inside of a beetle. As well as an improvised rail gun turret that probably would only work on the beetles due to their larger power storage. One of the biggest advantages to the railgun system was its reusable and far smaller ammo. As it would just fire basic ball-all bearings was useful though the power requirement meant it could only get two maybe three shots off before it would have to deploy its solar panel and recharge a good chunk of its battery.


    He needed to hurry on that front as he was running out of lenses to make more lasers with so it wouldn''t be long before he could no longer mass produce his current guard ants.


    By the time the convoy had arrived at the village he had set up the capacitors and additional solar panels to gather more power. Meanwhile, most of these new models were coming out of the fab-fab0-fabrication bays as fast as he could feed them resources. The hopper fed guard ants could fire twenty eight bolts before needing to be refilled. So, in addition, a supply Ant had been designed. Essentially all it was was a guard Ant platform with a small mechanical arm with a weak tractor beam emitter installed inside allowing it to pull and pick up items. Since the bolts were just that bolts, most could be picked up and reused it also held several reloading trays to refill The Hoppers for quick in combat reloads. A squad of five of these new guard ants was partnered with a supply ant and were sent out to hunt.If you stumble upon this narrative on Amazon, be aware that it has been stolen from Royal Road. Please report it.


    The village was starting to look more like a fortress than a town with most of the townspeople having retreated underground leaving only the guards and a few others above ground.


    Despite Sophia¡¯s mother''s best efforts, Sophia was one of them and in all honesty, her mother was beginning to worry for her daughter. She like many of the villagers knew little of magic. On top of that their town mage was not skilled in Sophia¡¯s type? Category? Or whatever it was called. But even when she was in their little underground room that they had been forced to move into. Sophia kept looking off in the same direction, sometimes she''d glare, sometimes she¡¯d smile, she had even caught her daughter talking to what seemed like thin air. When she¡¯d asked Sophia who she was talking to the reply she got was even more worrying.


    ¡°No, I don''t think it can hear me. I just hope it does¡­ it''s hurt and it''s doing so much to try and help us. Even if I can''t help, I want to do whatever I can to help¡­ Even if it''s just trying to reach out. Because, well it''s kind of scary you know. it''s more¡­ Just more than anything I''ve ever known, and it''s hurt so bad. What could hurt it and how or why? I have so many questions I just can''t get it to hear me and despite that why is it forcing itself to do all this to help us? The underground structures. All those weird stinger thingies that are helping the guards. Reinforcing the walls. Building that trebuchet thingy for the guards, and all those metal bugs of it¡¯s that it keeps using to try and fight off the dungeons monsters. The worst thing seemed to get for us the more it seems to upset it and the more it tries to help. I don''t know why I just wish I could get it to talk to me.¡±


    As if all this wasn''t enough, Sophia¡¯s health was beginning to be affected as well. The constant connection to whatever she was sensing made it hard for her to get and stay asleep. She would bolt up in the middle of the night and look off in a direction or jump at odd intervals. Thankfully whenever she would get too tired the lunar moth would begin glowing and she would finally get some restful sleep.


    Austin was not happy he had been trying to increase his numbers and presence in the valley. To the point he had even put his old cutter model ants on to the battlefield. He would have normally recycled them to make new guard ants but their laser arrays weren''t powerful enough and the lasers required special types of focusing lenses in order to function. These lenses were highly popular for short range or personal arms for the fact that they required little maintenance and only power to supply it.


    Most spacefaring nations that humanity had came across had preferred plasma base weaponry. As so long as it didn''t lose containment it could travel great distances before burning out. Though when it did finally lose containment usually by hitting the side of a ship or other obstacle it did so rather violently in a very high yield explosion. Humans however had always relied on a combined arms doctrine and while they did have combat lasers for ships they were usually remarketed as mining equipment or salvaging equipment. The only times they were actually used on military vessels were in breaching craft small vessels that could basically lamprey other ships for boarding actions.


    The biggest controversy and the one that had helped them hold on for as long as they had against the empire. Was there use of kinetics most sentience believed kinetic based weaponry is too slow and impractical to be useful. Austin and most of humanity at the time however heavily disagreed. Most ships that had Shields worked by burning off the energy of plasma discharges or just creating small hard bubbles to block debris impacts. When it detected a larger piece of debris hitting the shield. Shield generators would in general just increase power to try and block it. However high powered kinetics like railgun rounds that were traveling close to 1/4 of the speed of light were absolute havoc on Shields. as the shield generators would quickly overload themselves trying to stop something that could not be stopped. Before the slug would penetrate and usually bury itself either in the ship''s armor or internals. Though it wasn''t too uncommon with smaller ships and larger guns for it to over penetrate and pass right through.


    Austin''s former gunner specialty was to pull off what he would call pool shots using high penetration shells to hit multiple targets in one go. This is what made humanity a threat while they weren''t to particularly advanced on the galactic stage their combined arms doctrine and capability to make use of it in highly effective ways made them a threat.


    Unfortunately, even with an advantage in doctrine and in Austin''s opinion superior weaponry could not make up for being massively outnumbered and out technically classed in almost every other category. So Austin had learned early on how to take full advantage of having superior firepower even if it lacks superior numbers and despite him now having to turn his attention to ground based combat some things just never seem to to change. At least this time he had the technological advantage and numbers finally on his side while he was still dramatically outnumbered with the ants acting as a distraction he was beginning to notice a sizeable decrease in the number of enemy forces.


    Well, that was until now because on the tactical map, he watched as the valley wall crumbled re-revealing a massive for lack of a better word hive like structure. As if a beehive had busted open and from each cone hundreds of the freaking scrap shell beetles. (Austin having finally managed to figure out their name a few days prior.) Poured through in mass to the point they would have blocked out the sky if whatever had been causing that weird nonmoving storm hadn''t decided to move in as if falling the swarm into the valley.


    ¡°Well shit.¡±

 Contact!Contact?Contact?!

    ¡°Well, shit.¡±


    Austin sighed then in less than a millisecond he cut his connection to everything reducing all system processing power to as little as possible before overclocking his system and ¡­.¡­. Well, he had to admit it was underwhelming. At-At best he could reach was a one point five times speed. Not even twice as fast as standard perception. He really, really, needed to work on repairing himself. The first thing he did was take direct control over the turrets and order every bot he had to enter automated combat mode and work its way toward the village. He didn''t have the time nor processing power to micromanage them like he would prefer he¡¯d have a hard enough time controlling all his drones. With the boost in processor power, it wasn¡¯t long before anything that crossed within range of his weapon systems was immediately cut down. Though even with every weapon throwing everything it had at the oncoming swarm it still poured over the village.


    The village guards didn''t stand much of a chance on the village walls, so they retreated back to the center of town towards the bunker Austin had built.


    Frederick grunted as he buried his axe into the shell of a scrap shell beetle. Before planting his boot and yanking the axe free. He had a sword on his hip, heck every guard had a sword, but right now he needed something with a bit more heft to it. And the heavy war axe he had grabbed was better against the scrap shells armored bodies.


    Thankfully most of the citizens had had the bright idea of getting underground before all this mess started or things would have been a blood bath. It made him really wonder just how much that whatever it was Sophia was in contact with knew about what was going on. Did it really have that much foresight or was it just trying to make the place as secure as possible? Regardless of that, all the guards were in some form of fighting retreat or in the case for a few unfortunate guards being devoured by the monsters. And there were a lot of the bastard¡¯s, thankfully those stinger things Sophia''s companion had set up had been good about helping anyone who was in trouble. Though even they were starting to get overwhelmed.


    Frederick swore as he dropped to the ground and watched a bright beam of light slice its way through several of the scrap shell beetles overhead. He quickly planted the end of his axe into the ground using it to help himself back to his feet before continuing his Sprint towards the center of town. Normally the walls would be the most defensible position but with so many Flyers overhead they were about worthless. Though they¡¯d hopefully keep the rest of the dungeon¡¯s monstrosities out long enough for aid to come. They had sent a messenger weeks ago. Problem was they should have been back by now. Catherine thankfully had forethought enough to have any supplies that weren''t absolutely needed on the wall stored in the bunker. A task he admits he had all but swore at her for at the time for the amount of extra work he had to suffer through. Right now, though, he was grateful for it because at least they had some supplies.


    The narrative has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the infringement.


    He slowed down as he approached the magical barrier Catherine had set up, he managed to kill another six beetles before passing through the barrier to catch his breath.


    His captain was already barking orders to organize a group to try and return to the walls and grab as many supplies as possible. Honestly, he would have thought the man was mad if it wasn''t for the massive increase in the stinger¡¯s fighting capability. Where mere minutes ago they had been about to be overrun they had seemingly caught a second wind and now dozens of scrap shell beetles were raining from the sky.


    Meanwhile, Austin was relieved to finally be receiving some good news.


    Austin had always seen Nanobots as finicky but extremely useful things. He only really needed to do the heavy lifting when it came to repairs and leave the rest to the little bots.


    As compared to when Sophia first stepped into the flipped over crumbling remnants of a spaceship. His base now looked almost pristine.


    The hallways had been restored to their former glory, the nanites were easily able to pull the required material from the soil or from any destroyed material left around so Austin didn''t even need to waste time fabricating new wall panels or doors. He could just cut out the old doors, flip them over, and rework the wiring, and the bots cleaned up the rest.


    So, imagine his surprise when the entire thruster section of his ship came back online. He knew where the section was, of course, he¡¯d found it early on and had wired a-an connection to it. But he hadn''t paid it much mind beyond looting it for anything of immediate value but the nanobots had basically been told to rework and repair what was left of the ship. While Austin had been distracted with the ongoing war. They had apparently spread into the abandoned sections of the ship and began reprocessing it into usable facilities. It wasn''t much at first, that¡¯s why it had gone unnoticed for so long just a few subsystems blinking back online in those sections. That was until the old engineering computers came back online. That was the most pleasant surprise he had in a while as beyond his AI core engineering had the most processing power in the ship. Freeing up much needed processing power and it couldn''t have come at a better time


    Austin was rerouting everything he had to the village''s defenses meaning production had all but come to a grinding halt. As he sent everything, he had from the tractor beam ants to the remaining repair bots and everything in between the only thing he kept behind was just barely enough to keep a special project running. But annoyingly distance wasn''t on his side and with only a singular exit point it would take time for them to reach the village but with the desperately needed boost in processing power came improved accuracy with his turrets. Buying much needed time but it didn¡¯t help with the much needed battery power.


    Austin had a cord ready for the underground tunnel once it was completed and connected to the bunker but it was not long enough. He was quickly fabricating an extension and had several tractor beam Ants burying it just below the topsoil. Hoping it would at least keep it out of the scrap shell beetles'' notice for long enough for him to hook it up. How he''d actually get it into the village was not a priority right now. The defense system desperately needed additional power. It was at this moment though something truly peculiar happened He received an unknown communication request.

 Contact!?Contact!!Contact??

    Catherine clinched her staff as she tried to use it to keep herself upright as another massive scrap shell beetle or at least the burning husk of one slammed into her shield spell. She had done her best to try and protect the underground shelter, but this had been going on for almost an hour and she was far from a combat mage. Yes, she knew some basic combat spells, or she wouldn''t be able to put up the barrier. But she had never undergone the strenuous training required to become a true combat mage. In all honesty, if it wasn''t for her staff''s ability to continue to cast spells for her, she would have long lost control of the barrier.


    Her mana pool had limits and while it was larger than the average citizen, it was no bigger than the common adventurer. Normally in an adventuring party they would pull their MP either using an artifact or potions or whatever method was available. But in a small village like this those options were far more limited. She had a few mana potions on her, and a group of guards had been sent to get the small box she had in her home. She could even see them making their way back now, but even with the potions added effects, the drain was just too severe, and she wouldn''t be able to keep the spell going for much longer.


    So, she downed her second potion, and reached into her pouch and pulled out a third, handing it off to Sophia, ordering the girl to drink it before taking over for her. Despite many popular beliefs, the potions, while did give a small additional boost to one''s mana pool when drunk, they gave a far more useful passive mana regeneration bonus. However, drinking too many for that boost too quickly could lead to mana poisoning.


    She had Sophia drink hers as she handed off the staff to Sophia so she could continue the spell. She then choked down her last mana potion. Sickly sweet and strangely sour at the same time like a blend of bad wine and spoiled blueberry jam.


    Alchemists with specialized brewing techniques and skills could make them far more palatable. Catherine had actually had some of the better tasting versions during her studies in the capital, but the cheap stuff you could get from your average village alchemist was downright nasty in comparison.


    When Sophia took over maintaining the barrier, she started to hear a faint ringing in her ears. That only got louder and louder until her ears popped, her teeth ached, and she tasted copper in the back of her mouth. She wanted to let go, but she knew she couldn''t because she had to maintain the spell. Then, as the ringing reached a crescendo, it suddenly stopped, and she heard it for the first time. She finally properly heard it. The barrier seemed to flex and shift before wave like patterns formed onto the outer wall, to anyone there they only looked like distortions in the barrier. Though if Austin had been paying attention to it, he would have noticed the wave patterns matched bandwidth wavelengths from his communication systems.


    When Catherine spotted the distortions, she went to grab her staff back from Sophia. She was however, startled when the girl''s head suddenly perked up, eyes glowing a faint bluish green as pixelated ethereal wisps flowed from the corner of her eyes.


    ¡°I, I can hear them, I can hear all of them.¡± her head turned to the nearby turret, and the barriers squealed for a second before.


    ¡°Target section 3 through 8 eliminated moving to target section 44 through 12 to cover for turret 3-115 power supply at 32% and dropping new targets identified firing.¡± A synthetic voice came through the harmonization of the barrier as if from an old and badly tuned radio. There was static and pops, but words could be heard, nonetheless.


    Her head turned to the beetle that had been by her side for so long as it continued to fire.


    ¡°High priority target located by aerial assets. Trajectory calculated. Beginning deployment of strike package on target.¡± As the voice came through the barrier, the beetle planted its spike into the ground, converting into its turret form. But this time instead of the traditional laser, the entire back half folded into a three prong array that quickly began to spin. Greenish energy formed in the center of it before with a crackling pop and the smell of burnt ozone, a bolt of green plasma shot into the air only to rain down over the wall in a hail fire of explosions.


    Sophia turned her attention to where she knew whatever was in charge of all of ¡­ this, was she needed to talk to them, she needed to know. The barrier screamed, it was so much. It was so much more than she was expecting, it was thousands of voices overlaid into one harmonic Symphony. She reached and reached, she knew it was there, she had heard it before, and she needed it now. As she desperately clung to Catherine''s staff, as she tried to make the connection.


    ¡°Unknown communication attempt detected.¡± Austin''s internal systems prompted.


    To say he was confused was, well, an understatement, as the entire-tire time he had been on this planet he had yet to see anything that was capable of reaching out to him. Let alone on the shortwave bandwidth and with the frequency and Hertz level, he was detecting they''d have to be right on top of him. It didn''t make sense, it should not be possible yet here it was. Austin considered ignoring it at first, though as he stopped to analyze it he realized it couldn''t possibly be a cyber attack. It was too well¡­ primitive. What he was looking at was equivalent to an early 19th century AM radio. If it wasn''t for his few remaining sensors, he doubted his system would even be able to detect it at all. So, it would actually take a bit of effort on his part to even try and receive the signal if it was an attack, it was a very poor one. And with how short ranged it was, it was either the enemy or the villagers. Neither of which seemed likely, but he wasn''t willing to take the risk and open the communication. Then all hell broke loose as the connection opened on its own.


    Unauthorized usage: this tale is on Amazon without the author''s consent. Report any sightings.


    Sophia felt a sudden surge of power as her system forced itself open. Instead of the blue boxes she''d normally see when she touched in appraisal stone, lines of code shot in front of her as the barrier began to burn with the same pixelated ethereal energy as her eyes. Meanwhile, signal waves and coding scripts appeared and disappeared on various spots throughout the barrier as it tried to destabilize only for some outside force to hold it together.


    ¡°Error! Hostile! Hostile! Error! Hostile! Hostile intrusion attempt detect! Detect! Detect! Detect! Detected! Data wall breach! Error! Error! Data wall breach System! System! System! System down! Down! Down! Down! Admin! Admin! Admin! Advanced administration access codes detected! Access code accepted. system access granted.¡± The voice rang both through the barrier and inside Sophia''s head as a third party downloaded a massive amount of data into Austin''s systems.


    These files not only flooded his network but seemed to systematically analyze and compress data files throughout his network. At first Austin thought it was a hostile hack attempt, attempting to steal all on board data, but then why was he still there? Why was he still functional while Austin was locked out of his own systems, he could not help but notice the severe boost in runtime he was experiencing. His Jerry rigged attempts at code and patchwork programs were optimized before sections were replaced with new code. Simultaneously, multiple terabytes of data were dumped into his system, housing thousands of programs he could not access. It only took them 3 seconds to do all this before fully returning Austin to control with a rather insane boost in processing power. He quickly ran a diagnostic along with several scans on his main AI code before comparing it to his code beforehand, along with the examples he had on file. Well, he did not have the time to fully analyze every section of code line by line, even with the boost. But he couldn¡¯t find anything to be concerned about with a cursory glance. He''d let the scans run in the background though as far as his own system records could tell. Well, if they could still be relied on, he was still himself, just not nearly as ¡­. Glitchy?


    As he reviewed the data logs of the attack, something stood out to him. At first, they had attempted a brute force hack before seemingly realizing his system''s layout and used an administration code to access his system. Annoyingly, he could not see which code had been used, whatever had access to his systems, had purposely deleted that from his records.


    He was a guardian class AI, the only people who would have access codes that could override him directly was his own captain, another captain of a ship carrying a guardian class AI of a battleship, super carrier, or super destroyer class, or a higher ranking official in Terran Fleet Command¡­. But that didn''t make sense Terran Fleet Command had been wiped out. Hadn''t they?! There were humans here, true, but their tech level was too low for this. Fleet command couldn''t still be active, could it? No, that wouldn''t make sense. No human could survive that long. He had been alone for over a hundred cycles, let alone however long he was offline for. No human could have, but how, how did they have those codes?


    ¡°Hello?¡± While Austin had been running those calculations, only a few seconds had passed in the outside world, but that was long enough for Sophia to regain enough of her bearings to try and attempt to use the still open line of communication. The barrier had more or less gone back to normal, it still had the distortion of the frequency bandwidth on it, but other than that it was about the same. Though Catherine''s staff had seen better days, though nothing beyond what a simple mending spell could fix. The gem on top was emitting sparks and the wood in the staff that held the gem was blackened and burnt. Upon hearing Sophia''s message, he lowered his clock speed so he could hear the rest.


    ¡°Hello, can you hear me? I, I don''t know what that was, but please tell me you''re still there¡±


    ¡°Affirmative you''re coming through clearly enough, though your signal''s not very strong, but I can hear you. Can you receive?¡±


    Austin was wondering how he was now able to understand them so easily when his communication database had not been fully completed yet. Until he realized once whoever it was had started talking, one of the locked files had opened up. Contained within was a basic translation index file for the local dialects, well, he guessed it was time to make proper first contact with the locals.


    ¡°Before anything else happens I just wanted to say thank you for helping us. Thank you for helping me. Thank you for helping my mother and thank you for everything. I, I don''t know how long I can keep this up for. I can already feel my mana pool waning so I just wanted to say that.¡± As Sophia said that she felt the familiar buzz and warm sensation of the system notifying her that she had done something. She tried to will her status screened open like she did with an appraisal stone, but unlike when whatever had happened earlier, her status appeared now projected on the barrier.


    [level up! You have now reached Level 3. Due to unique feats and achievements, multiple class choices have been unlocked. You have one open class selection available. Classes: Radio mage. You have used magic to tap into the realm of science in communications. While granting you unique forms of magic and spell casting, this class cannot be effectively used without exterior equipment. Empathic mage. Connect and communicate with the spirit of creatures, people, and in rare cases objects to form bonds or contracts. Techno magus. A variant on the artificer class that blends the standard mechanical and crafting nature of an artificer with the more traditional spell craft of a mage.]


    Catherine could barely believe what she was seeing, she was almost as baffled as the nearby guards, this was Sophia''s magic. No wonder she had never been able to figure out what the girl''s specialty was. She had believed it was a basic empathic ability. She had known a few mages that were some levels of empathic before, and usually they became healers or caretakers, or in the case of those that were too sensitive, child tenders or hermits. But unlike them, Sophia''s ability wasn''t just a side effect of her power. It was her power, and when it had been amplified by the barrier, it had been tapped into by something more. Something that was able to wield the system itself as its tool and use the poor girl. Though thankfully she seemed unharmed despite being used as a go between by the whatever it was and the spirit


    Because Sophia''s benefactor had to be a spirit because the only other options of things she knew were far more terrifying. She had once met the great guardian spirit that watched over and maintained the mage school she had gone to. It was ancient and it was powerful. In darker days it had held the walls of the school against siege engines and armies, and it had only been a mid grade spirit. Admittedly, one that had been imbued with great magics but still a spirit, nonetheless. And now Sophia, a young untrained human girl in a tiny village in the middle of nowhere, had not only awakened one but found a way to communicate directly to it and it spoke back. Something only the greatest of mages using powerful rituals could normally do, and she had done so with a barrier spell and her simple staff. If that had not been crazy enough, the girl had then somehow used the barrier to pull up her own status screen. Something that should have only been done, something like a status or an appraisal stone, or a magic tool.


    Who had then been granted a class, most didn''t unlock their first class till Level 5, and usually it was a very basic class, and only one, sometimes if they were particularly gifted, 2. The girl had three, three freaking advanced classes. 2 of which she''d never even heard of, though from what she could read in the description it was basically a more powerful version of an artificer. She had known mages and Smiths, some of them elves and dwarfs, who had much longer lives than a mere human who had spent the majority of that life trying to get that class. And the girl was being offered an improved version of it for her first choice. Humans, humans weren''t supposed to be gifted like this. They were the shortest lived of the races, the physically weakest, and the least magically inclined of the races. That''s why they were usually treated as servants or lesser. This, this was something you''d only see in the truly talented of the nobility of the higher races. Not some random girl and some far-flung human village, this just didn''t happen.

 User access LV1

    Sophia read and reread the descriptions of the various classes she had access to, something she could really only do with the status screens. As like most of the villagers, she was only taught enough reading to get by. Catherine had started teaching her more advanced stuff, but they hadn''t gotten very far just yet. With that being said even with the system helping her along with this, it didn''t change the fact she didn''t quite understand what each class was. So, she did the only thing she could think of and asked Catherine.


    ¡°Um, Catherine? What do these classes actually do?¡± Sofia asked, looking over at the very stunned and disheveled Catherine, snapping her out of her spiraling thoughts.


    ¡°Ohh well uh mmgh. I don''t recognize the first one, and I have no knowledge as to what a radio is. The second one I would not recommend, as most mages who develop powerful empathic abilities have a hard time controlling them. However, since it seems to be your main ability, you might be able to get around that. Though, I can''t say anything for certain about that, and I do not have the materials to try and research it properly. The last one, however¡­ Well, while I do not know what techno means, I do know that a magus is a more powerful version of a mage. In terms of hierarchy, they go mage, magus, archimage, archimagus, then master archimage, and master archimagus. So, the fact you''re being offered a magus class this early on is kind of terrifying but also extremely good. I also know for a fact that a lot of very, very powerful people, mostly elves and dwarves, have spent a lot of their lives trying to get the artificer class. So, we can assume that since this is a variant, possibly an upgrade on that class, it will likely be, at the very least, equivalent to or even better than an artificer. With all that said, I want to make it clear that I don¡¯t know much about the three options. But since radio mage specifically states that it requires equipment to be used, and we''ve established that empathic mage is more likely to be a hindrance then not¡­¡­ I look in all honesty, without all the information I can only guess. But I personally think the third one would be your best option, but I simply don''t know enough about the others to make more than an educated suggestion. Since you have empathic powers as your base ability, it will likely show up again. So even if the techno magus class isn''t your ideal first class it will definitely help you get a jump start on whatever actual class or vocation you wish in the future.¡± Catherine explained desperately wishing she could get some of her books out of her house to try and help her figure out what the heck was going on. But she did not have the time for that. She could already tell Sophia¡¯s mana was waning it wouldn''t be too much longer before she had to take over managing the barrier again. Between this and the spirit or whatever it was Sophia had found, they had no choice but to put their fates in the hands of this small girl at this point, so they couldn''t afford to wait and deliberate the choice properly.


    Sophia nodded, giving the options a final read through before selecting techno magus.


    And that''s when things got weird. Most of the time, when someone selects their first class, they undergo a small change. Woodcutters may notice an increase in muscle tone, weavers may notice their fingers grow thinner and more dexterous. Mages usually receive some form of a wide array of changes, but usually, it was minor; their eyes might glow in the dark, or their hair might change colors.


    Sophia''s changes weren¡¯t minor. She screamed as her arms began to burn and bleed, silver circuits fusing into her skin. Catherine had to quickly grab the staff out of her hand. The barrier nearly vanished when Sophia let go of it, forcing Catherine to focus on restoring it. As such, she was unable to help the poor girl as she collapsed to the ground, clenching her arms. After a few agonizing seconds, the pain finally started to subside as her arms healed at a rapid pace.


    Sophia gingerly sat up, blinking away a few tears as she looked down at her arms. She gently used the hem of her shirt to wipe away the blood. As she inspected the silvery circuitry patterns that arched to cross her arms. She carefully bent and flexed her arms, finding that the circuits easily bent and moved with her. She then raised her right hand up to inspect it. In the center of her palm, she found a? A well, not quite a hole in her palm, but it was transparent enough that light passed through it. It almost looked like crystal or glass, but it felt warm like skin to the touch. However, when her mana passed through it, it felt like something was missing. It moved like it did when she used Catherine''s staff, but something was missing she just wasn''t sure what.


    ¡°Are you OK Sophia?¡± Frederick asked, trying to help her up.


    ¡°Yeah, I wasn''t expecting that mmmh, that really, really hurt.¡± Sophia whimpered as she wiped away the few remaining tears.


    ¡°Sorry about that, Sofia I knew about the changes classes could cause, but I never expected them to be that dramatic, and usually the changes are done over several years, not all at once.¡± Catherine bit her lip, considering something for a second before turning to Frederick.


    ¡°Did the guards retrieve my mage chest already?¡±


    ¡°Yeah, though I can¡¯t get it open though don''t know why you sent us after that thing its freaking heavy despite its small size.¡± Frederick side before grabbing the chest for her.


    Catherine rolled her eyes at Frederick¡¯s annoyance. She quickly reached into her shirt to pull out the key, a small magic stone no bigger than the tip of a finger, but it fulfilled its role well enough. The reason the guards couldn''t get inside the chest was because it was magically locked, and the weight was due to it being a magical storage item.


    Magical storage items, unlike holding items or inventory items, did not cancel out the weight of the item stored within. They were basically the cheapest and most easily made of the three. So, despite the small, somewhat ornate box appearance, it held most of her most valuable magical items within, along with the few magical tomes she had. Though she didn''t have time for that, she just hoped she could find what she was looking for.


    Now while she primarily preferred her staff for spell craft, she still had her old wand from when she was at the Academy, and after a bit more digging around, she managed to retrieve the wand from the chest, handing it off to Sophia. With her new class, she¡¯d likely be able to make use of it. The gods knew they could use another mage right now, even an untrained one.


    Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.


    [Sufficiently sized magical fuci detected. Would you like to assimilate into onboard system? Y/N.]


    The system window popped up the moment Sophia touched the wand. Sophia could only blink in surprise before asking Catherine what it could mean. Catherine quickly explained that a magical focus was a wand or staff that made it easier to cast magic but was not specifically needed to do so. Some mages even preferred creating simplified one time use focuses like cards or talismans. While others used their own bodies or tattoos as focuses, imbuing their bodies with powerful spells and elemental abilities, but wands and Staffs were the easiest to manufacture, use, and maintain and thus were the most common.


    After explaining this, Sophia accepted the prompt, and the wand basically exploded.


    Wands were created using three traditional catalysts a metal catalyst, an organic catalyst, and a magical catalyst. The metal catalysts were used to give it shape and protected it from breaking though they were typically made with softer more conductive metals. The organic catalyst that acted as the conductor was usually made with specialized wood or bones and sometimes claws and horns, though those were far more expensive and rare. Lastly was the magic catalyst, which acted as an amplifier. Usually, a mana crystal or core or, more often, some combination of both. The mana crystal acted like a combination transformer and battery up stepping the output and lessening the spell¡¯s cost until it ran out of power. The mana crystal would recharge slowly over time as the user held the wand or staff. While cores made the spells easier to cast and depending on the core, it might imbue some kind of effect. Any creature that could use magic would develop a core or a crystal of condensed mana. These cores, while extremely fragile, were some of the best components to be used in magical spell craft as they made controlling spells possible. The easiest way to get them was by cutting them out of monsters; however, in some cases, families would harvest cores from the departed, though there were very, very strict laws on this practice. Not because of any taboo against the act of using a part of a person to create a magical tool or artifact, no, but to keep mages from hunting down other powerful mages to make said magical tools and artifacts.


    Catherine''s staff used the core of a moss tortoise, a large Omnivorous tortoise that lived in swamps and marshes. Some could grow to be larger than a wagon, and their cores were particularly valuable for long sustained, magic¡¯s, but they weren''t the easiest to get as most moss tortoises took a very long time to mature and we''re not the most easily killed creature due to their incredibly thick hides and shells. It didn¡¯t help how fragile the courses themselves were, any attack powerful enough to kill the moss turtle likely would shatter the core as well. So often, the easiest way to retrieve a core was just to let the tortoise die naturally.


    The wand, however, used the core from a storm wolf. Catherine had never liked its core, finding it too unstable, and it discharged spells violently, making it hard to control, but it was the best she could afford at the time.


    The core of that wand was now floating in front of Sofia before the strange crystal construct in her hand opened up, allowing the core to float inside before sealing up again. It didn''t fit quite right, though. It was small, almost too small, as even with several tiny metal prongs holding it in place. Sophia could feel the core rattle around inside her hand. Despite that, the empty feeling in her hand was now gone.


    [Core identified. Compatible focus detected synchronizing core. 12%32%58%83%99% Core synchronization complete. Core meets minimum requirements, O.S. boot up in progress. O.S. integration complete displaying status.]


    [Name: Sophia Anith. Class: Techno magus. Race: Human. Current core: Storm Wolf. Skills: dodge LV3(makes it easier to dodge and notice incoming attacks.) Empathic communication LV5/locked. (Allows the user to sense the intent of others and send their intent back.)-(Currently level is locked due to the lack of progression on techno magus and can no longer level up.) Mana sense lv2. (The ability to sense, detect, or otherwise comprehend mana in your surroundings.) Spell craft lv1.(The ability to understand, comprehend, and create spells) Spell cast lv1. (Assists the user in the casting of crafted spells.) Absorb material lv1(the flesh is weak, but metal is too unfeeling. Humanity once held the capability of melding metal and flesh to create beings beyond both nature and science. You have taken the first step on this path. Your body will passively absorb materials from its surrounding environment and use them to reinforce itself.) System access lv1. (You have gained User level access to the system. Current access is level 1.) Spell list: Shape earth. (Barely comprehend) spark. (Barely comprehend.) Create flame. (Barely comprehend.) Manipulate water. (Barely comprehend.) Assemble. (Innately comprehend.) Disassemble. (Innately comprehend.) Transmit two way. (Innately comprehend.) Shield -> force field. (Innately comprehend.)]


    Austin watched the Ongoing battle with a steady, somewhat annoyed indifference. it wasn''t his first fight; heck, it wasn''t even close to his hundredth. He¡¯d fought in battles and huge wars on far greater scales than this. But he''d never been this week before, his mechanical ants; we''re putting up a decent fight, and we''re in fact making a right mess of themselves.


    Sure, he had faced several losses, but that was to be expected; they were both acting as a distraction to take the heat off the village and clear a path for the cable. He was quickly burying it as they worked their way to the village. He had to, unfortunately, pull back his most powerful military asset, the prototype beetle. Its weapons were far more numerous and powerful than anything else he had on the field, but the turrets in the village would soon run out of power. Unfortunately, its power source was not enough to keep the defenses of the village active. Though it should at least buy them a bit more time, so he had the construction bot he had left in the village currently hooking it into the power network. Despite this, even after rerunning the calculations multiple times for the best and worst case scenarios. The defenses would run out of power at least a good 15 minutes before his bots would arrive to supplement it. The biological ants had gone underground as soon as this whole mess had started, so they wouldn''t be much help even if he could somehow find a way to direct them. The humans could apparently handle the majority of the airborne threats well enough on their own. Though he knew very well that they wouldn''t last long if the walls came down, and while they could likely last long enough for his drones to reach them, he would definitely lose most of the turrets in that time. Whatever was coordinating the monsters wasn''t particularly bright but was smart enough to understand what was killing its forces. So, the moment the turrets stopped shooting, they''d be overwhelmed. The few bots in the settlement probably could continue the fight. The construction bot, in particular, was turning out to be rather skilled at dismantling The Beatles with its multi tool. But other than that and a few aerial drones, it was all that was left, as it would take the beetle at least a few minutes to free itself and continue the fight, but regardless, he was just simply out of options.


    That was until a new friendly signature popped onto his tactical map smack dab in the middle of the village. Austin quickly ran a check on its I.F.F., finding no codes or anything to designate it. He then ran a diagnostic and scan on the various programs used in generating the tactical map and found no issue with them. So confused at the unidentified friendly signature, he tried the next most obvious step and pinged it with a communication request.


    ¡°Ahhhh, what?¡± Sophia said, hearing a ringing in her ear. Not like what you would get with an explosion but closer to what we and the modern day would recognize as a ringtone. Of course, not understanding that she was startled and smacked her own ear accidentally answering the call.


    ¡°Unknown signal, identify yourself!¡± Austin said on the other end of the line.


    ¡°Ohh um, I''m Sophia. Who are you?¡± Sophia said, getting odd looks from Catherine and a few surrounding guards.


    ¡°The girl from the village? Well, we spoke earlier, but I don''t believe I properly introduced myself. My designation is A427i9. Though most referred to me as Austin.¡±


    ¡°Ohh, so that''s your name? Um, why are you in my head now?¡± Sophia questioned, turning to look in the direction of where she knew the Cave and likely where Austin himself was.


    ¡°I do not know. I detected a new friendly signal and attempted to make contact.¡±


    [two way direct link connected would you like to learn the skill hologram Y/N.]