A Robotic Overmind for a Dungeon

Around two hours later, the subway train slowed down and docked to the new station. I stand up from my chair as all the doors slide open and my hounds rush out and begin sweeping the station for any feral drones. Stepping out myself, I assess that there is none and so I walk over to the, near identical, "Employees Only" room. Checking the door I find that it is surprisingly unlocked as it swung open with a slight push from me.

Looking over to the same two machines that were present in the previous station, I find that they are in slightly better condition than the last two but were still needing repairs. I decided to call over the small spider repair team from the warehouse outpost. While I waited for them to arrive I walked up and out of the station and had the squad of hounds I brought with me set up the perimeter in case anything unfriendly showed up.

Thankfully they do not take very long to reach us and so I send the group of three spiders to begin restoring the machines to tip-top shape. While they do their thing I decide to take a few of the hounds along with my veteran to go visit the nearby outpost. Surprisingly Paisleigh requested if she and her two guards could come with so I thought why not? and gave them the okay.

Walking over to the outpost did not take much time at all so we were quickly standing in front of the four large warehouses that made up the compound. Looking around for the garrison of the outpost I find that there are only two hounds and a scorpion left defending this place. Deciding that this garrison needed an upgrade, I walked over the resident drone works of the outpost.

I order up a total of three more hounds and a batch of five hornets which should be more than enough to deal with any large feral attacks at the very least. I also have the small drone works here begin pumping out another two rat scout squads to help mapping the area out since they were not able to the last time I was here. With those all ticking away I hop out of my vessel and drifted back to the new subway station and my spiders repaired it. They seem to be almost done with the repairs and would be able to recharge the train soon enough.

As I slip back into my vessel drone I begin to hear Paisleigh conversing with my veteran hound. "-t normal for him to just stop moving?" I hear Paisleigh's question. My veteran hound was about to nod in confirmation when I answered for them.

"Yes, it is normal. I was just checking on something." I respond while standing back up and taking a look at the freshly made rat squad.

Goodnes they fabricate quickly. I order them to begin scouting out the general path towards the last MAI outpost in preparation for any future incursions. As they scamper off, I see Paisleigh watching them with a hunter's gaze. She seems to snap out of it once they scuttle behind a building and out of view. Paisleigh also seems to notice me looking at her and say, "What? They look tasty."

Chalking it up as a feral hound thing, I decide to send the hounds I brought with me back to the subway station since I and the garrison would be fine without them here. I decided to let my veteran show Paisleigh and her guards around the outpost if he would like, which he did not but was nearly dragged away by the quite adamant purple hound.

Paisleigh's guards dutifully followed the pair around but did decide to converse with the garrison hounds who were more than willing to get away from guard duty and its accompanying boredom. While they all do their things, I prop myself up against a wall and hope back out of my vessel again to begin checking up on the factory and mining outpost.

First checking the factory, I see that the spiders have been doing good work on the walls as they look considerably more sturdy. Floating around for a bit I remember something while at the resident drone works. Floating up to one of the small drone works, I opened up the menu for it and saw the thing I was looking for. As I click the button to upgrade the small drone works, a handful of the wandering spider drones immediately rush over to the drone works and storage room.

I watch as they begin to strip parts out of the machine while others weld presumably better components in. I pull myself away from the spiders as I order them to upgrade the other drone works once they are done with this one. Drifting away from the factory I drop back into the mining outpost which is as busy as ever. I could see lines of small drones carrying small chunks of ore out of the mine shaft and into the refinery.

Many of the scattered drones wave at my invisible form as they work while others doing more important tasks just nod to me. The garrison seems to be doing just fine and in fact seems to have been scavenging the nearby buildings in their free time. Looking deep into the mines I find that the moles working there have been digging an extensive network of strip mines. Back on the surface I also find a steadily growing stack of alloys collected from the mines.

The stack of materials was enough to fund the construction of another entire attack group of hounds and hornets, which is about ten of each. Hopping back over to the factory I order up another few transport moose while sending the already constructed one to begin the process of bringing all those alloys back to base. While I am still back at the factory I quickly check the solar panels on the roof to see if they too can be upgraded, which they are and thus are added to the list of things my spiders need to do.

Speaking of the upgrades the spiders are doing, they have just finished with the first small drone works and have moved on to the next. Checking the newly furnished drone works I can see immediately that the machine has gained significantly more mass and has a multitude of tubes and antenna. Inspecting the menu of the drone works, I could see that the upgrades have increased its fabrication speed by thirty or so percent. It also seems to have unlocked the modification function but unfortunately it seems that I need a specialized machine to begin designing modified drones.

Checking my blueprint list to see if upgrading my core automatically gave me the blueprint for that particular machine but I quickly saw that it did not. However it seems that it did give me a different blueprint. Looking at it now, it is called a "Equipment Fabricator Bay" which is exactly what it sounds like. Diverting my spiders for the time being, I order them to begin constructing this new building in one of the empty rooms since I probably will not be producing many drones for a while.

The swarm of spiders finish constructing the machine quite quickly and have all gone back to upgrading all the drone works. The fabricator was quite large, about as tall as a bunk bed and just slightly more wide and long. Opening up the screen for the fabricator, I see that it already has a bunch of pre-designed things available like extra plating for my torso and other such limbs. Seeing as I have a considerable amount of alloys being shipped over to me, I decide to order one of the rectangular blast shields, a half dozen custom throwing spears with a satchel to carry them, and a sling pouch for some extra carry capacity for repair supplies incase I need it. As I order them, the moose that was delivering those alloys arrives back and so they drop off their load.

I order them to wait until those stuff finished fabricating and when they do they should take it to the subway station to have it shipped over to me. With that in mind, I order the spider's working on repairing the station at the warehouse outpost to start up the train and send it back to the first station. I float around for a few moments longer, checking around for anything left to do and seeing none, I hop back over and into my vessel drone.

As my robotic eyes begin functioning once more, I see that Paisleigh and my veteran hound, I really need to name him if I am going to continue to bring him with me, are about to finish their tour. I could see from the look on my hounds face that he was getting desperate and needed to get away and take a nap or something so I graciously got up from my sitting position and walked over to them. My veteran, seeing an opportunity to escape from the grasps of Paisleigh, quickly breaks away and falls in line behind me.

"Hello there, how was the tour?" I ask with a friendly voice while ushering my hound away to safety, to which he looked at me thankfully before scampering off.

"Oh, it was quite pleasant. I quite enjoyed my time with your subordinate." Paisleigh replies. "So, where to next?"

I think for a moment before responding with a "maybe we should go bac-" before I am cut off by a message from the scout team that was moving towards the final MAI outpost. The message reads that they think they have found the current location of those nomadic robots that I met a while back. They say that the robots look worse for wear and seem to be moving in the opposite way from the outpost. Ordering the scouts to follow the nomads, I turn to face Paisleigh.

"Do you want to check out some bots with me?" I ask the purple hound who looks complentive for a few moments before answering with a "Sure".

I rush over to the small drone works stationed at this outpost and order a few more spiders to help with any wounded. I also grab a couple of the garrison hounds as extra protection just in case, I set off towards the direction of the nomads. According to my scouts it should only take a dozen minutes to reach them. Let's just hope nothing bad happens before then.