Chapter 162 - Embers Of Revolution

Note : Chapters 163 and 164 have been written and added to the queue !

Chapter 162

Red Sands Desert, Principality of Rebirth

Dungeon Factory, Third Floor

Allya swore viciously as she leapt back, narrowly avoiding the fanged mouth of one of the cobras, stumbling as she slipped the in the half swamp.

She'd known the third floor would be hell. Before they'd had the advantage of every monster having been carefully studied and documented by adventurers, but now they were practically heading into the unknown.

Which was why after wiping the floor with the second floor's boss they were getting their asses kicked by some base golems of the third floor!

"Watch out!" Called out Pyn, and Allya ducked, feeling the displaced air from the cobra's tail whipping through where her head had been…only for a second cobra to hit her head on, turning itself into a battering ram.

The baroness went flying through the air, her already battered shield shattering under the impact. She landed more or less gracefully, slipped, fell under, and got up, cursing as she spat out a mouthful of swampy water.

"I fucking hate this place! Pyn, can you pin them down?"

"A little-" The elf dodged out of the way of a leaping spider golem. "-fucking-" She shot it, and smacked another one off course with her bow. "-busy right now!" She finished as she fired at one of the more basic golems, covered in algae and gods knew what else to blend in, charging at her with a spear.

Allya shook her head, and grimaced. Everyone was too occupied, pinned down by the ambush, while she had to face three cobra golems and she was a rogue that couldn't-

She was Knight Valiant, trained in modern warfare, who had just received a fully automatic, drum fed shotgun, and she was a fucking idiot, she realized in a flash as she reached into her spatial bag, and pulled out the weapon. At least she'd positioned it to be easily and quickly drawn.

The first cobra charged up at her, fangs bared…and flew backward, its tail trashing uncontrollably as eight nine millimeter pellets went through its open mouth and ripped its brain and core systems to shreds.

There was a brief moment of silence as the deafening boom of the shot echoed in the stupendous room, and Allya smiled as she shouldered the gun, and kept firing.

*****

"Okay, reminder to self: now that I'm distributing guns to the adventurers, I should really plan on how to survive them. Especially on the earlier floors." Said Alexandra aloud as Allya began ripping through her golems like they were made out of butter.

TO-DO LIST UPDATED

"Probably should have thought of that earlier." Commented Emilia.

"Yeah, probably." It felt obvious now that she thought about it, but then again, so far she'd more or less had a monopoly on firearms in her dungeon, outside of the handful the commandos had brought in which had given her gunpowder. That might change in time, once the Tarkians actually started selling stuff to people other than the baroness' people, but it hadn't gotten to that point yet. "That's going to be an easy fix for the fourth floor, it is tailored as a firearm battlefield, but it'll be a pain for the others. At least it's something I can counter, sort of. What the hell are those daggers doing to just…disappear like that?"

"Phase daggers. They're…sort of in another dimension and come back out when activated." Emilia shrugged as Alexandra gave her a curious look. "They're very rare. And high tech."

"I was more wondering about how they do that. I mean, it's not the same as teleports, right?"

"No, they use something like a spatial bag. Well, tesseract really, but few people mention that. It tends to worry people."

"Given what happened to the tesseract network, that's unsurprising." One of the suspiciously convenient crisis that had brought the world back down once it looked like it was recovering technologically was the so called 'Great Tesseract Crisis', where the tesseract network, a gigantic assembly of nested pocket dimensions all linked together to allow for fast transport across the world, had been overrun by something called 'The Blight', which had then proceeded to destroy most major cities, slaughter a good chunk of the population, before being beaten back and sealed into the remains of the network. "I imagine anyone with even a passing interest in history would wet themselves if they were told that."

"Yep, pretty much. But that tricks allows them to ignore most armor, except some enchanted ones and some of the higher end materials."

"Like Mythril?"

"To some extent. Adamantium? Certainly, but mythril depends on the type of dagger, it's enchantments, that of the mythril armor…"

"Yeah, I see, this as complicated as regular armor penetration, if not even more so."

"Yep. My tutors could argue for hours about this sort of stuff. It was…"

"Practical when you wanted a break from mind numbing lessons?"

Emilia smiled.

"Precisely. Similar experiences?"

"Sort of. I never had private tutors." Unless you counted Arcadia, and she wasn't sure an insane AI hivemind she ended up a part of counted as a 'tutor' anyway. Besides which she'd never been sure whether the AI had been simply passing the time, flirting, genuinely teaching her or trying to manipulate her. Knowing her, probably all at the same time. "But at the naval academy, you could pretty much get the lecturers into a segueway about old war stories. Most of them were veterans of the Hegemony War, or the Interplanetary Wars. They were pretty entertaining and at least they sounded motivated while telling them. Some of them looked like you'd breathed life back into them when you asked them about practical examples they'd witnessed or done!"

"I didn't really have a lot of military instructors, but those I did thought of their teaching jobs as boring retirement, so that doesn't surprise me."

"Isn't your family famed for it's battle mages?"

"Yeah, and so we rarely get into fights because no one has the balls to attack us! There's a reason mom was apoplectic."

"Speaking of which, wasn't she sending reinforcements?" Said Alexandra as she nodded towards the two maids.

"Yes, but what she means by that can be anything from a couple of maids travelling incognito via fast courier like they did, or a heavy cruiser with a platoon onboard. Or anything in-between. And before you ask, yes, she refuses to be precise about it to me too."

"Eh, good to know." Allya looked at the screens, and sighed. "Well, since our baroness has discovered the joys of the 'if I can fill the entire room with lead, you can't dodge' philosophy, I think them making it through the normal encounters of the floor is a foregone conclusion. Doubt they'll tempt fate by facing the boss however. Let's prepare their congratulatory gift basket and go meet them for the end of their delve."

"Gift baskets don't usually have military grade weaponry."

"The fun ones do!"

"Admit it, you enjoy messing with that woman."

Alexandra only smiled, although there was a deeper purpose as well, one she was sure the baroness would discern.

*****

"This is insane." Said Amelia Loveheart, general of the Elkisian Republican Army, as she gazed at the gigantic camp through the window.

A few months before, such a sight would have filled her heart with martial pride.

Now it only filled it with dread.

"I agree. But we can't stop it." Answered Malcom. The brigadier still could only walk with crutches, but he was recovering amazingly well all things considered. The fact that his expertise in logistics was desperately needed and he had been prioritized for treatment helped, of course. "They've already sidelined you, and they're watching me too."

Amelia nodded. She was still nominally in command, but it was no secret who was truly calling the shots here, although they had to be careful not to be too direct about it.

It wouldn't do for the troops to feel like the senate guard was taking complete control after all.

Not that it took a genius to realize what was going on anyway. The senate guard had taken control of Erakis' modest fortress and supply depot, and they behaved as if they were expecting a siege.

The only problem was that they were expecting one from her troops, not the dungeon's.

"Of course they are. But they need you." She chuckled grimly. "I'm afraid I have outlived my usefulness to them."

"Ma'am, I-"

"Don't say it brigadier. There's no need for you to fall with me. I'm sure they'll discreetly 'disappear' me once I'm of no use as a figurehead, or they think they can get away with it. They might even haul me to the capital for a show trial and execution for my 'incompetence'."

Only silence answered her. What could Malcom possibly say to that after all.

"Fortunately, that would be a critical mistake." Continued the general.

"Ma'am?"

Amelia turned around and smiled. There was something…wolfish in her smile, for the lack of a better word.

"Here." She said as she tapped a small chest, and it opened. Malcom frowned as he saw the cigars. He'd been aware the general offered them to others, but why-

The question died in his mind as Amelia tapped a precise sequence on the lid, and the bottom of the chest folded, revealing a stack of documents. Which should have been impossible, the box wasn't large enough for a hidden compartment.

A dimensional bag, thought the brigadier, as the general brought out the documents.

"These files contain everything you'll need." Said Amelia. "Contacts, deeds, codewords, decryption keys, bank details…everything you'll need to finish what I started, and restore the Republic to what it was always supposed to be."

The brigadier stared at the stack of files, suddenly understanding why the general had asked him to bring a secure briefcase with him, the kind used for blackops, for every meeting they'd had since they had returned to Erakis. To hide this transfer.

"Ma'am…I don't know if I'll succeed."

"Nothing is ever certain in war. But trust me, this will help. Of course, you could choose to hand it over to the senate guard, earn yourself a hefty reward and place yourself above all suspicions when the purge comes."

"Never!"

Amelia smiled.

"I know Malcom. And this is why I'm giving this to you. Give the signal, and half a million people will answer your call. You just need to find the right time. You need to make it count."

She slid the files over.

And Malcom took them.

"I will, general." He gave her a parade ground salute, and she returned it.

*****

Colonel Orzal Vek paused the recording, and looked at the spy in front of him.

"No one gets wind of this. No one, you understand?"

The spy nodded. And Orzal knew he would be obeyed. All of the men under his command were handpicked, not for their skills, but for their absolute loyalty to him. Each owed him, be it their lives or that of their loved ones.

And after what happened to Opal and Neptunite, they knew he would take care of them no matter what.

"Then dismissed." Said the colonel, and the spy saluted, before leaving.

Orzal waited for the door to close and the privacy enchantments to come back online, before triggering the device on his desk for the second time today. He felt his hair stand up as something was in the room, then vanished. He did not truly understand how his blood mage had created those surveilance devices, and truth be told he didn't want to know, but he knew that they were almost impossible to detect or neutralize through normal means, hence the…thing he had just activated. They were, however, extremely hard to produce, even on a small scale. So much so that in all these years since they had started working on the project, only five had been made for him, and he had used one of the remaining two to spy on Amelia.

The other three had netted him the information and blackmail to get himself where he was now. With his head firmly in the lion's mouth.

He could bring this to the senator. Get him to crush this plot before it went further. But Amelia knew about Neptunite and Opal. And more importantly, he worried that acting now would trigger a civil war that would put the entire Republic to the fire and the sword.

And in the deepest part of his mind, he knew that he was only making up justifications.

Because deep down, he agreed with the general.

But he would do what needed to be done. After all, there was still a chance for him to win this, even if he'd have to keep being that snake senator's accomplice. He would keep this recording, for when the time was right.

And if it gave him an insurance policy should things go as wrong as he was afraid of…then all the better.