Chapter 372 - Beach Episode

Note : Chapter 44 of Manaforged Robotics has been written and added to the queue !

This was fun to write. Trying to avoid and yet embrace them. I hope you guys will enjoy it !

Also, results for the contest I wrote the fashionbot special are in, and I didn't even get a single vote. Not gonna lie, that was pretty ego bruising. I don't think I'll participate in one of those again.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy the mandatorry Beach Episode !

Chapter 372

Red Sands Desert, Archduchy of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Vacation Room

"You know, when I said I was in, I didn't expect this." Said Raika as she looked at the room.

Alyssa and Thomas were with CQ, Alexandra's daughter gesticulating animatedly at a smiling Subtlety while miming what appeared to be the Battle of the Breach, all of them shin deep in the water. Emilia was simply soaking up the artificial sunlight with Ella, apparently content to engage in something she would have never been able to before bonding to a dungeon core, and Ghost was holding court with the remaining AIs and Fernand, currently in between volleyball matches, as Jared deftly moved between the various groups, keeping everyone's favourite drinks or pitchers thereof topped up and supplying them with snacks and hors d'oeuvre.

Alexandra and her former party leader were sprawled on pool chairs, the dungeon core sipping on a drink that was like and simultaneously unlike bissap. It was potent and refreshing, which at this point was all Alexandra wanted.

Everyone had been careful to give her space. Rank hath its privileges, and also Emilia had threatened to rip the head off of anyone unduling bothering her girlfriend.

Raika, of course, was brave and naive enough to ignore the warning.

"You came in at a bit of an odd moment. Been preparing this for a while." Well, actually, promised it for a while and then made a mad dash for it once her daughter reminded her of it. "Besides, I needed a break. Work hard, play hard, all that good stuff. Besides, what franchise doesn't have a beach episode?"

Raika tilted her head, and smiled.

"It's one of your terran sayings, isn't it?"

"Something like that." She could show the party leader some examples from Seraph's library of what she meant by that, but better not to. Plus, it was Ghost who'd more or less said it, though she did qualify as terran. More than Alex herself, really. "You do look preoccupied."

"Sorry, just a bit...nervous. Honestly I kind of expected to leap right into the thick of it."

Alexandra chuckled.

"Even during the short time we were together, I'd pegged you for a woman of action. Honestly? I can relate." She took a sip of her bissap. "Though admittedly I'm used to being in the back of it."

"Well, I suppose you've had enough of said action for ten lifetimes."

"And then some." She had before she'd arrived on Alcheryos, as a matter of fact. "Plus, beach time or not...I'm going to be real with you, nothing's going to be happening for a while. Hell, we don't want anything happening for a while, especially as the summit gets underway and we start bringing back order to the east."

Raika winced.

"I sympathize with the people there, I really do, and I've dreamed of crushing the Void Blades' skulls until they screamed for mercy and I could feel their gray matter oozing between my fingers...but I'm still horrified by what happened there. I mean many of those killed were slavers, but they couldn't be all guilty."

Alexandra looked at the former party leader, and then back at her daughter, that now seemed to be engaged in a water fight with the two adventurers and shamelessly cheated using her short range teleportation.

"No, they probably weren't. And neither were all the guys I killed when I came to help the slaves in the army. But sometimes...sometimes you have to break however many damned eggs it takes to make the omelet."

Chihiro was right about that at least. Though drawing from the wisdom of such a psychotic megalomaniacal scumbag, even a fictional one, was somewhat...troubling, to say the least.

Raika cleared her throat.

"Well, I guess we can be glad it wasn't as bad as it could have been. I've heard tales of the fall of the Orlov Empire, this is nothing like that."

The 'yet' was unspoken.

"Yeah, and I aim to keep it that way. Which means a whole load of things. The crown can manage their own sectors once we ensure basic security-" Or rather, try to negotiate with the freeholds there, who blamed the crown for what happened to them. Wasn't that gonna be fun. Man did she dump the most thankless task possible on Philia's lap. "-but according to our agreement, we're gonna have to take some measure of control of Kaidan and Lorenz." Alexandra sighed. "But that means getting an administration together, a bureaucracy. Which is gonna be its own can of worms."

Raika chuckled.

"Eh, so long as it's merit based and not the unaccountable shitshow of the Empire, I think you'll do fine. Far better than what even the Crown had anyway."

Alexandra laughed. It was a transparent attempt to change the subject, at least to some level, but she certainly was going to take it.

"You don't know the first thing about administration. Do you know why no lasting bureaucracy is merit based?"

"No?"

"Let's say you judge bureaucrats on the agricultural output of their region. Not the regular pencil pushers but directors, overseers. Those with some measure of control. What happens when that output falls short of expectations, either those of the higher ups or at least that bureaucrat's perception of them?"

"They get demoted, and someone gets the post. Or they clean up their act."

Alexandra looked into her eyes.

"They. Lie." Simply said the dungeon core. "They lie. They falsify the reports. Just a little bit. Not by much, not enough for it to be too obvious."

"And? That's why we have margins of error isn't it?"

"Yes. And now you extend that philosophy to the whole apparatus. The one taking in the data, the one processing it, the one collating the reports..." She watched as Raika's face fell. "Do you see where I'm going with this?"

"It all adds up, doesn't it?"

"Oh no, far worse than that, it multiplies." Alexandra shook her head. "Entire nations have fallen into famine because of this kind of mismanagement. And that's just food. The most basic thing human society is built on besides water. What about industry? Metal production? Shipbuilding? The more complex the production chain, the more people needed to run it, the worse it gets." She sighed. "And the bigger the nation, the more centralized it is, the more layers of oversight you have to add. That's why the Eris Empire's bureaucracy is a pile of unaccountable bastards. Because, by and large, their reporting is accurate." She waved. "Oh, not entirely, and some level of corruption will distort the data in particular directions, but they're reliable enough that an Empire containing half of the planet's damned population and industrial capacity can run at all."

"How did you do it on Earth?"

"Technology. Some of it which you have, either through your own progress or magical alternative. Long range, nigh instantaneous communications, at least on a planetary scale, interlinked datanets, mass transit... And most importantly, automation."

"Golems?"

"No. Programs and AIs." Alexandra took a sip. "A program is dumb, but it can't lie unless it's reprogrammed. You can eliminate most of the data processing layers with them. Then you can work on the others. AIs aren't perfect and they can be subject to the same failings of humans, but they're far easier to correct in those departments and you can control their initial parameters. You can't exactly know or direct a regular, biological person's upbringing. Combined, those two will solve a lot of problems. Not all of them, not by a long shot, but it gives us some underlying trust and reliability. We also have a remarkably clean administration here in Rebirth, and we can use that as a stable foundation to expand from." For some definitions of 'clean' at least. Allya was definitely corrupt by some standards, but she used it to grow her domain, not for her personal fortune. Though one may argue that wasn't corruption, and just how you played the game. "We can also deputize some of it, rely on more localized, and thus harder to deceive, actors. Actually, to be more accurate, we'll have to deputize most of it. At least at first, then gradually bring it back under central control as the administration expands."

"I don't know if people'll be happy with that. I mean I'm no politician, but I know villagers bitch when the lord of a nearby town start reaching towards them."

"Oh, they'll be unhappy alright...unless we provide a carrot. We intend to provide whole baskets of them. Subsidies, industrial development, dungeon branch offices...you name it. But first, we have to get these regions administered, and not left on their own. Having to reel them back in is a good problem to have, since that means you have something worth reeling in to begin with."

"Huh. That's one way of looking at it." Raika met Alexandra's gaze. "I knew you were pragmatic, like we'd talked about it, but I didn't think you were so...Machiavellian I think is the term?"

"I haven't had much of a choice. It was either that or get destroyed." And she was running on an Arcadia kernel, and Arcadia was megalomania made manifest. Plus her own traits of course, which probably weren't holding those tendencies back overmuch. "But thank you."

"I'm not sure I meant it as a compliment per se, but you're welcome nonetheless." The adventurer bit her lower lip. "Man, these guys really put you in like, the worst position possible from their eyes, huh? I mean, no doubt you could have unleashed your stuff on the continent eventually, but I don't think you'd have gotten this far this quickly as a regular adventurer, or hell, even an archmage."

Alexandra smiled.

"No, probably not." She finished her drink. "It was the single greatest mistake the Order has ever made, and I'm going to make them choke on it."

Raika filled Alexandra's glass and raised her own.

"To their demise then! May these fuckers rot."

Alexandra echoed the toast, as their glasses met, before both downed their drinks.

Toasting to your enemies' demise on a sunny beach with your friends and family. Who had ever heard of a better vacation?

*****

Alexandra waved as Ghost popped out of the room, and stretched.

Well, that had been some relaxation worthy of the name. But it was time to get back to work. She brought up the menus to shut the place down and-

The dungeon core froze as she felt two arms encircle her, and the soft contact of Emilia's bikini clad chest against her back.

"We're not leaving yet, are we my love?" Purred the vampire as she embraced her girlfriend.

"W-Well, there is so much to be done..."

"It was supposed to be a day of relaxation love. A day. We started in the morning. We will...end in the morning." The vampire must have been standing on the tip of her toes, as Alexandra felt the nibble of her canines against her neck, and suddenly her knees went weak. "Does my math check out?" Said the vampire, before licking her girlfriend's neck.

"Y-Yep!" Squealed out Alexandra, and she could feel Emilia's smirk through their link.

"Good~." She purred out. "Then be a good girl, and go back into the waves. I've always wanted to do it on a beach, with the waves lapping around us..." Alexandra squealed as the vampire bit down slightly on her neck. "Besides, we were interrupted last time, and never really resumed..."

"S-Sorry about that.."

"Nonsense. They were your team. Besides, they're quite sweet, in their own way. Now go." Emilia let go of her girlfriend, and Alexandra started forward with a yelp as she felt a sharp smack on her rear.

She barely made it a step before she felt a tug at her back, and her hands flew to her chest as her bikini top became undone.

"Go on. It wouldn't be a true beach episode without some wardrobe malfunctions, now would it?"

Alexandra began mentally cursing and vowing vengeance upon Ghost, who had no doubt talked to Emilia, and-

"Get moving." Said her girlfriend, and Alexandra gasped as she her rear was stuck once more, on the other cheek, making her hands fly away from her chest, allowing her top to fall down onto the sand. This time it wasn't the smack of Emilia's hand, but the sharp sting of a riding crop. "Or else~."

"Y-Yes mistress!"

"Good girl~."