Chapter 362 - Archduchesses

EDIT (Important) : Section about the nukes has been changed. Should have been, but forgot to do it because of the aforementioned chapter mixup.

Note : Chapters 363, 364 and 365 have been written and added to the queue !

Managing to write despite the ringing, but it's not easy. Gods I really hope the doc has a way to make it stop.

Bit of a panic as well as I realized chapter 362 was up and not 363, so had to correct that at the last minute.

Chapter 362

Red Sands Desert, Archduchy of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Shipyard

"So...what should I call you?" Asked Emilia as she sat on the railing, her legs dangling in the void. That made Alexandra vaguely anxious, but it also was something that Emilia would have considered 'beneath her dignity' before. "Because, well, you know."

"You can call me Alexandra, as you always have." The dungeon core leaned against the railing, looking at the ships finishing assembly. At last, she was going to have her next wave, despite the...hiccups. "Besides, it would be weird. Not just for Ghost, but, well..." She gestured between them.

"Right. Too close."

"Yeah." Alexandra chuckled. "I love my parents, but they weren't overly blessed with imagination. Called my brother Emile, didn't see a reason to go far afield for the little sister. It's why big bro and sis called me Alex."

And why Arcadia had ended up settling on it as her 'new' name. With both of them dead, it wasn't like it would be a known quirk now.

Alexandra's face darkened, and Emilia smiled hesitantly, clearly trying to find a way to cheer her up.

"Right. I guess that's okay, calling you Emily would just make you look like an even bigger dork."

"I-Excuse me?"

"You heard me."

"I'm not a dork!" Said the dungeon core, as she bonked her girlfriend's head with a fake karate chop.

"Argh!" Emilia theatrically recoiled.

They looked at each other, and burst out laughing.

Alexandra shook her head as the laughter died down.

"Look at us. A pair of idiots."

"Yeah...what are we now? Just...not like physically or philosophically, I mean to each other."

"I don't see any reason why anything should change."

Emilia waggled her eyebrows.

"Despite some of the flashes I had? I know a lot more of your...weaknesses now."

"That goes both ways darling." Answered Alexandra with a wolfish smile, and Emilia suddenly looked a lot more worried. "But we're still who we were to each other."

"Until you finally stop messing around with that ring in the workshop and give it to me." Emilia gave her a brilliant smile. "And before you say anything about memories, I knew before you ever called me for that talk."

Alexandra looked away.

"You know you can't rush art, Emi."

"Awww. Looks like I'm finally having an influence on you after all."

The dungeon core rolled her eyes, but she didn't argue.

They stood there in companionable silence for a few minutes, watching the whirlwind of activity below.

"What do we tell the girls? Allya and Pyn, I mean." Alexandra looked at Emilia as she spoke, and the vampire shrugged. "They're our friends. And we're all in the same boat, more or less."

The dungeon core sighed.

"I don't know. I don't know if I trust them that far just yet. Not for the full truth anyway."

"So?"

"So we do the usual. Partial truths, being clear that it's partial."

"I agree. Let's just do it around a regular meeting, not another jaccuzzi ambush."

Alexandra smirked.

"Still got that one sticking in your throat?"

"Continue being that sassy and I'll stick something in yours Alex."

"U-Understood."

"Good girl."

*****

"No rope burns. I guess I win."

Alexandra blinked as Allya sat down, smirking as Pyn disbursed a handful of tokens.

"What...What?" Managed the dungeon core. They were currently inside of her conference room, that once again was ladden with food. She was alone with the two, Emilia being currently busy going over all of the projects that had thus far been hidden from her, with both maids in tow trying to at least understand what was happening.

Well, most of the projects. Alexandra wasn't willing to show her the nukes just yet. Especially not without her doing it in person.

"Well, you see, we made some bets." Continued the archduchess, pocketing the tokens. "I bet you had something to tell us about, and not that Emilia had just whisked you away into your bedchambers. Since you're not covered in the marks of that, I win."

Alexandra opened her mouth, then closed it, before pinching the bridge of her nose.

"You girls bet on my love life?"

"No, we bet on why you'd basically gone dark for several days."

"Right. Fair enough, I-" Alexandra blinked. "Wait, what are you even betting with?"

"Tokens. We redeem them to get the other to try stuff."

"The only way you can impose your will on Pyn I see."

"Get your mind out of the gutter, we usually do restaurants or stuff like that." Allya blushed slightly. "Usually."

"Uh huh. Of course. Anyway, I called you here to tell you that there have been some...developments."

"Of what kind?"

Alexandra licked her lips.

"As you know, Rook's stunt affected more than just slave brands. It affected magical contracts, some variety of control systems...but it also affected dungeon monsters."

The married couple froze.

"Are you saying...?" Started Allya, too horrified to fully voice the thought.

"That my golems could turn against us? No. But some levels of what kept dungeon monsters as they were is just...broken. Not what keeps them loyal to their cores, but what made them into unfeeling automata."

"So they're just..." Allya frowned. "Regular monsters now?"

"Yes."

"That's...a massive change."

"Agreed."

"Does it affect you?"

Alexandra grimaced.

"I genuinely don't know. I don't think so, since I can program my golems and their behavior. But there's been...anomalies, though I'm looking into them and there has been a recent breakthrough."

"That's something at least. But that's going to cripple the UDC."

"At least for a bit, yeah. Hopefully it'll keep them running. I was afraid they'd regroup within the Kingdom, but with this they'll probably get all the way back to Tivaro."

"You would have crushed them easily."

"My army is spent. And I'm going to need everything I've got to get the east back on its feet and help Amelia. You know that."

"That I do. Was that...all?"

Alexandra looked away.

"This particular...problem made me look into the loyalty systems of dungeon monsters." She gestured, and a hologram, identical to the one Ghost had shown her, appeared. "This is the loyalty matrix, and this..."

"Sunrise's slave brands." Allya's eyes flashed. "I'm going to take a guess. They match, don't they?"

"They do."

"...the Church?"

"Possibly. But more probably the Order."

"Or the UDC."

The dungeon core nodded.

"Or the UDC."

"Do you intend to use it?"

"No. Not yet. Making that information public would create complications. I'll use it once I've regenerated my forces, but right now..." She sighed. "The slaves would clamor for vengeance, one I couldn't give them. Because since the Order would be unknown to them, and the Church beyond accusation..."

"They'd demand the UDC's blood."

"Yeah. Which will be all fine of dandy when I'm capable of actually giving it to them. Especially since I'll probably have to get through the Sapphire Kingdom to get to them."

"If the UDC is linked to the slave brands, they'll have serious problems justifying helping them."

"Perhaps, but that doesn't mean they'll let us attack one of their largest cities."

"That's true enough."

"Any news on your end?"

Allya shrugged.

"Just the usual. There's actually some order starting to emerge in Sunrise, in the port district."

"Business must go on?"

"Actually no. They're pulling together rescue expeditions."

Alexandra's eyebrows rose.

"Rescue expeditions?"

"Every slave carrying ship had a full blow mutiny when their brands broke. Many of them were, well, slave traders, whose cargo has no idea how to handle the ship. They've started taking what ships of Sunrise's fleet are left to go look for those they can save."

Alexandra nodded. Sunrise's fleet had once been the pride of the Kingdom's navy. As in 'the only naval formation worth a damn'. It had fended off the Saphire Kingdom, time and time again, and even had some imported Tarkian vessels.

The fact that the Kingdom had transfered those ships to Sunrise's fleet was part of why the Hegemony had been willing to help Rebirth and didn't move a single pinky when the civil war exploded. That and the Crown didn't even have ending slavery on the agenda until Allya and her speech at the Assembly.

But that once mighty fleet was now a mass of burned out hulks, when they weren't at the bottom of the ocean. The slave troops onboard had usually not been able to overpower the trained sailors, who had access to all the heavy weaponry, but they'd certainly been able to take their vessels with them. The only ones which hadn't been destroyed had been at anchor. There they'd either been overpowered by the slave complement, with most of the free crewmembers on shore leave, or overrun when the mobs of freed slaves spilled over into the naval base and overran it.

"A worthy endeavor."

"Indeed. There was also some economic updates that might interest you. See, Gorromar has a proposition..."

*****

"Well, if there's something to be said for your stunt, is that I at least solved a mystery." Said Ghost as she popped into the workshop.

"Hi Ghost. I'm doing good Ghost, what about you?" Alexandra smiled as she looked up from her prototype. "One day we'll start a conversation like normal people."

"When I do tie me up and ask what happened to the real me." The apparition shook her head. "Anyway, I thought you'd want to see this."

She gestured, a hologram holding pages of code popping up in the air.

"That's..." Alexandra tilted her head. "A hivemind matrix?"

"And the answer to the riddle of why the golems were evolving. As far as I can tell the dungeon systems take a tiny bit of 'us' and put it in whatever you make. CQ is an extreme version of that. That's why there's...emergent behavior. They can learn and are mutualizing that whenever they're inside your influence. But they don't have the bandwidth to actually be a hivemind, they can just share protocols. I'm not...certain what most of the code within them is. If I'm being honest the dungeon code seems more like malware than anything, intended to take over whatever a dungeon core creates. Which is why this happened as well, since Arcadia is, well..."

"More or less malware as well. Or certainly acting like it." Alexandra stared at the code in fascination. "So a bit of our code got thrown in, and basically started to evolve and made its own nest?"

"Precisely. Or rather, as far as I can tell. There's a lot of grey areas in it, but I think the golems are starting to develop...not exactly intelligence, but something close to it. Awareness? The basics of sentience, just no sapience. Yet, at least. It's also why golems that are staying close to you seem to become 'individuals' faster and faster. They're already building off of something."

"They're not...that individualistic beyond Jared."

"hat's because they try to avoid it around you."

"Hiding it?"

"Actually I think they just realized it creeped you out every time it happened and are keeping it low. Plus, like Jared, they don't seem to emote a whole lot."

"...fair enough." After all if Emilia could feel her emotions through the link, the golems might get something as well. "Well. Thanks, I guess. I assume you reviewed our hivemind protocols and that's why you stumbled upon this?"

Ghost nodded.

"I was taking a look, just in case you decided to do something like this again."

"I don't intend to."

"You were on standby for the maids."

Alexandra shrugged.

"It was the only logical option." And it was. They didn't think the maids would have the same failsafes or loyalty protocols Emilia had, but they couldn't be certain either. Thus Emilia had talked to them while Ghost stood by with the jaming systems and Alexandra ready to pounce with more direct solutions. Also known as a reverse engineered neutralizer.

The fact that they ended up being clean -which they had double checked with some direct measures using said neutralizers, with their permission- could indicate that Emilia's mother wasn't a stone cold bitch ready to throw her daughter to the wolves. Nevertheless, Alexandra wasn't holding her breath. Not when so many signs pointed the other way.

"Alright, I'll hop back to the salt mines. Which you should do as well."

The dungeon core gestured at the workshop table.

"What does it look like I'm doing?"

"It looks as if you're toying with an infantry portable grenade launcher because you don't want to venture in that particular nest of horrors." Her expression softened. "But you can't avoid it forever."

Alexandra sighed.

"No. I guess not. Alright, I'll do it." The dungeon core rubbed her eyes. "This is going to suck."