Chapter 346 - The Cores of Magic

Note : Wow this streak is continuing, I...wasn't expecting that honestly XD. You can thank my girlfriend for that ^^.

Chapter 346

Kamiran Floodplains, Archduchy of Rebirth

Sarth-Asaria High Road

"Fascinating." Said Alexandra through the hologram as the captain was lead away. "I shouldn't have been surprised, but..."

"They're so dumb it's sometimes unpredictable?" Offered CQ, and the dungeon core chuckled.

"Something like that." She shook her head. Figured an essentially medieval army would consider handling logistics a punishment detail. It also explained why they used slaves for all the handling too, less chance for pilfering, just like with the southern army. Except when the 'punishment detail' was related to slavery. "It opens up opportunities."

"Wanna try turning the convoys?"

"It is worth a try." Alexandra grinned wolfishly. "And even if we can't, it's worth making the other side believe we can." She clapped her hands. "Clean up the site, make it look like they surrendered after a lot less combat."

"What about the prisoners?"

Alexandra gazed at the convoy and the assembled, disarmed soldiers. CQ had shipped out with ample reserves of mana and resurrection orbs, in case she stumbled upon slave soldiers she'd have to kill.

"...I believe they mean their surrender." Something inside those soldiers made her realize that Sunrise was a lot less monolithic than she'd perhaps believed. The duchy had clearly gone to great lengths in promoting slavery as a core part of its prosperity, culture and lifestyle, but it hadn't worked. At least not universally. These people weren't just uncomfortable with how things were going, they were outright against it, and not just out of pure human decency, since there were several intact formations that had been part of the convoy. Sunrise was a collection of different fiefdoms, and some of them were following their duchy more out of self interest or coercion than any kind of conviction. "But they won't be able to hold the pace. And we can't just get them into the care of the guerillas. They'll be massacred as soon as we're gone."

"We could hide them in the wilderness?"

"They'd run out of supplies. Even if they keep the stuff from the convoy. And Sunrise is going to send search units to find you out or any other raiders. And they're not exactly ranger material, they'll be found out. We need someplace else. Somewhere..." Alexandra's eyes narrowed. "Somewhere they won't be killed on sight, and be relatively safe from the guerillas and the duchess. And I know just the place. Kaidan, and our good old friend the Brigadier, who has mellowed a great deal since we made him run with his tail between his legs."

"Mom?"

"I believe they'll honor their word if we parole them, that they won't raise their swords against us again. And I'm not cold blooded enough to just execute everybody." For that matter Ghost would be rightly very concerned about it. And, hell, those people were probably the best example of humanity she could hope for in Sunrise, besides Rook's abolitionists. That wasn't even touching on war crimes for executing surrendering enemies, ones she had fully taken prisoner to boot. "So let's send them here." She smirked. "Let the duchess shit out a warehouse's worth of bricks over that, and give the signal to the other convoys that there is an easy way out. After all, we care about what they're carrying, not their people. Except the slaves, of course."

"And that'll make the duchess believe even harder that we're going to turn them?"

"Exactly. Which means the kind of frenzied leadership purges or attempt to bring people back into line that shatters coalition armies." Which, like any medieval army, was exactly what Sunrise's northern -not that it was very much north anymore- army was. And that was without adding the UDC ontop of it, which was its own special blend of that on its own. "I'm amazed they didn't do that already. She must have someone she trusts cooling her urges. That revolting bitch doesn't strike me as someone with restraint." At least not from the reports she'd gotten.

"Mom, language." Chided the boss, and Alexandra chuckled as she tried to pat her daughter's head. She'd made a point not to send an ambassador golem, to give her daughter full autonomy, so the hologram only glitched through her hair, but CQ leaned into it anyway.

"Sorry kiddo. Alright then. Let's make it so. Hopefully it'll buy us the time we need."

CQ tilted her head.

"Are you concerned?"

Alexandra grimaced.

"I underestimated them. I thought they'd be a lot more cautious, and the UDC certainly is, but whoever is actually commanding the army knows what they're doing. They're dispersing...well, to a level that would have been suicide earlier, but with our army so damaged we can't take advantage of that. But since they're no longer getting in each other's way..."

"They're catching up."

"Yep. Even despite all of our dirty tricks. Or maybe because of them. The soldiers have to want to end the attrition, even despite their losses during battles." Alexandra sighed. "It gives opportunity. I'm having my armored units harass them, but without the Mackie it just doesn't have the same shock value."

CQ smiled.

"So you want me to get you time for the new ones to arrive?"

"Exactly."

"Consider it done then!" Said CQ with a sweeping salute, and Alexandra chuckled.

"Very well then. I'm counting on you kiddo! Kick their asses!"

The war cry the boss and her golems let loose at that made the prisoners jump, and Alexandra smiled.

Sunrise had no idea what was coming for them.

*****

Alexandra sighed as she sat down in the lab.

Alright, CQ was buying her time. Now she just need to have everything ready by then.

Including her new airships, which were proving to be quite the headache. So much so that she was seriously reconsidering giving her vessels the ability to cast magic. There were just...so many unexpected issues and a small mountain of questions. Some could be solved with some work, others were proving more...fundamental.

She was seriously starting to wonder about cores, the invisible, magical kind, and where the hell they came from. Everything seemed to have them. All biological life, from plants to animals, probably not bacteria but she hadn't checked. And it seemed like any sapient being, be it CQ, Jared or her AIs, hell, even newer ones like Jumper, had them.

The problem was that they were so intertwined with everything that it was going to be hard as hell to find what was happening, especially absent some 'uncontaminated' samples. For one thing, she knew that biological life, seemingly by design, withered and died without mana. She knew that not only had that not been the case on Earth, it hadn't been the case on Alcheryos before the gods arrived. It was entirely possible that her AIs would shut down without it too, though given the fact that all of her high end electronics were magitech made that impossible to test.

She'd...considered making a biological lab. If life was changed to such a base level there had to be some kind of genetic engineering involved. But she'd rejected it almost as quickly as it had come up.

For one, she had next to zero biotech expertise. The closest she had was neural mapping and cybernetics, and only because both related to AIs and how she could get her fellow squishy meatbags to better use and maintain all the machines she was building. The European Federation Star Navy had mandatory implants for, well, almost everybody, but it was a hard requirement to serve onboard any of the new warships. There was simply too much complicated, high tech and above all finicky hardware for it to be any other way.

And then...well, official genetic research had more or less been inexistent during her life. There had been enough to counter the effects of the horrors spawned by the Terran Hegemony, then the field had more or less ceased to exist. Part of that was the reaction to the Hegemony's atrocities, another was the fact that more or less all genetic engineering information had become secret and sharing it was punishable by, at minimum, ten years in some forgotten asteroid prison. And last but not the least...

She'd been more lab made than anything. With her parents' genome this damaged, there was no choice. But she was at the tail end of what humanity had been ready to accept in terms of engineering. She hadn't been a 'super human', but she'd been free of effectively any genetic condition -at least any they could track down-, and had a small mountain of minor 'beneficial traits'. Some natural, a few engineered, like an enhanced resilience to any form of DNA altering radiation and an immune system capable of actually slowing down most known bioweapons instead of just getting steamrolled.

The problem was that many scientists hadn't stopped there. Usually not out of actual malice or will to make some kind of 'master race', but mostly trying to genuinely give the next generation the tools to survive the horrific world theirs had spawned.

It hadn't ended well. It only took a few bad apples to spoil the bunch, and effectively every government on Earth had undergone a purge of their genetic sciences. The kind of purges that ended with big tribunals and firing squads.

It had taken several decades afterwards for the Pan-Asian Confederacy to restart limited genetic experimentation, for a variety of purposes, but mostly to adapt to alien environments, perfect the low gravity genemods that kept belters relatively healthy, and last but not the least, enhancing the human lifespan beyond the roughly century and a half medical science had been able to give before.

They'd been exceedingly careful, but...but they had their own renegades. Renegades that had eventually congregated with some who had gone to ground during the purges, and found backers willing to fund their operations. The kind of backers that believed to the hilt in the superiority of certain genomes over others. Died in the wool eugenists, the kind willing or wanting to wipe out all 'inferiors' and do anything at all to create their beloved 'master race'.

Those people had found a backwater, a forgotten colony, once a keystone in the Pan-Asian Confederacy's power in the outer system, and now a half forgotten, bitter and disillusioned place that had declared independence without much fanfare, after the discovery of hyperspace had crushed all economic development as more promising worlds around other stars were given the investments from Earth once meant for them. A place ripe for this kind of project to grow and fester, as they sat in plain sight of everybody and yet utterly beneath notice.

They'd found Europa.

The rest was history.

So, genetic experimentation and mapping was out. There were some ghosts she didn't want to raise back from the dead. Which meant that she was going to have to take a closer look at her own core, and her AIs'. What produced essence, especially, interested her. She knew it could be done artificially, through a 'synthesis technique', which meant that it was a replicable process. And she was ready to bet that if she found the 'natural' way of making it in a core, she could spin and twist it for production elsewhere. She just had to find it.

But first, magic and spellcasting. And the problem was that the greatest spellcasters she did know weren't only ordered not to help, but also undergoing a particularly vicious schism, even if behind the scenes. The de facto approval of several dungeon advisors for the kill team sent for her and Emilia had made the duchess go ballistic. Political considerations be damned, she refused to let anyone attempting to assassinate her daughter go.

It was, quite probably, why the UDC's plans had gone from 'kill that psychotic dungeon core' to 'capture and contain, pray we don't all die'.

Thankfully however, she did have a certain archmage, that her dear apparition had been squeezing like a lemon for arcane knowledge. It was high time she paid her 'guest' a formal visit. One where the woman wasn't just passed out from the shock of knowing who she truly was.

Better set the stage carefully though. And get some carrots. When one came to visit, it was only polite to be bearing gifts after all.

It would only be enhanced by the implication that, had she not needed the archmage, she would have been perfectly willing to murder the would-be dungeonslayer. Where, like her comrades, she would have just...disappeared, as those who had sought to kill her were in no hurry to make that fact public, and were in fact quite happily trying to kill each other still over it.

Something she might need to think on, in relations to what the guild was planning in Rebirth. She'd have to schedule a meeting with Trira at some point.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

Alexandra smiled. Well, some things never changed...

Now, time to see that archmage for herself.