No Red Dragons Allowed II

From what she could gather from Morlan's father, copper coins were the equivalent of pocket change, with silver being used as the regular currency. A gold coin was on par with using a hundred-dollar bill, with platinum coins being only for the rich to hide away in some sealed coffer. This wasn't how she had set it up in her empire, with platinum dropping in worth to only one hundred gold now. This would allow anyone who bought something with the highest tier coin to actually get some money back instead of the shop keeps worrying about not being able to give back change. There may be further currency created in the future to mass transfer large sums to any other kingdom under her rule.

A coms request opened up that stated it was urgent from her military and security. She quickly swapped to it to listen in. "Ma'am, hostiles approaching from southwest heading northwest, winged bogeys verified." A quick check via ornithopters and a few weather balloons that were launched allowed her to see something that took her breath away. It wasn't fear that made her stiffen up though, but actually seeing a special creature for the first time. Two red dragons were flying just over the tip of the Boramar Mountains, somewhat majestically moving about. While they might have looked at peace in the open air, she was pretty sure they were anything but.

"Morlan, Elsei, have you ever taken on a dragon?" she asked. Both of them were surprised at the same time.

"Depends on the dragon. We've… I've… helped with taking on a young drake" Morlan replied as he kept eyeing Elsei.

"I have not had to steel myself against one of them yet. This must have happened before you found me" the elf replied.

"Know anything about red dragons?" Selene asked.

"They care about only their power and their wealth that they steal from others" Donovan's son replied with gritted teeth.

So, they follow a similar alignment system to Dungeons and Dragons, probably modified with karma from Yggdrasil. Ok, I can work with this. Chromatic is bad, usually in the evil category. Metallic were usually the good aligned ones.

"Launch interceptors" she commanded as SAM sites locked on.

"Fast movers outbound, closing BVR critical in thirty seconds, buster to angels 5" she heard from her security, the interceptors were already on flash 5 to be in the air almost instantly for a potential attack. The two dragons were probably looking for some place to strike, given the wealth now piling up in the treasury. It was surprising that two red dragons were even working together, as that might mean there was something in her valley that made them team up in hopes of overpowering it. She wondered if they could somehow sense the jewels and coin locked away in the vault, sniffing all of it out like bloodhounds. They'd soon be smelling something else…

"Shadows out. Bandits locked, cleared hot." Twin fighter jets, high end drone fighters, that looked quite a bit different from the ones stationed on Majesty's Grace. These were far more modern in design, a mixture between the looks of an X-Wing and a switch wing Pak-Fa for dogfighting with 3D Thrust Vectoring on all four engines and VTOL capability, giving unparalleled agility in the skies. It wasn't as if they launched all that often, only when the trajectory of an object was verified to be anywhere passing remotely near the castle. They were never meant to be seen by anyone, and if they were, whatever got that chance wasn't making it home to talk about it.

"Shadow 2-2, tone gained, fox 2." A missile was launched, hitting Mach six in a little under two seconds. The first dragon had a split second to realize it was being tailed by something smaller than it and highly aggressive, before the missile reached its target and detonated. The left wing was ripped off at the connection to the back as it plummeted towards the ground roaring, with the second one trying to dive and swing around, heading for the two interceptors that were way off in the distance, well beyond the range of any of her attacks.

"Good guns, bandit 2 maneuvering. Shadow 2-1 defending."

It shot as fast as it could towards 2-1, but unfortunately for the creature, it was fighting a drone fighter, smarter and well beyond lightning reaction speed. The fighter quickly launched a second missile upside down, still performing stealth actions to conceal the opening of its bays as the dragon realized it was attacked from a tiny dot in the far distance that was closing fast. It had a moment of clarity that whatever it was, it had the dragon dialed in and dead to rights. The missile flew right towards its open mouth as it thought the little thing was some transportation for another creature, not realizing it was an explosive package addressed 'to whom it may concern…'

Both dragons fell towards the ground, slamming into the terrain with sickening crunches and ending their suffering quickly. The previous kings of the skies were no match for the new kids on the block. They were packing far more firepower than anything the scaled beasts had at their disposal.

"Grand slam, bandits cleared. Capping the sector." The interceptors would patrol the airspace for another half an hour, making sure nothing else was coming up behind the two massive winged creatures.

You came to the wrong neighborhood, motherfuckers.

"Did… did your military meet a dragon?" Morlan finally asked during the silence.

"Two actually, looked to be full grown wyrms. They handled the situation." Selene simply gave him a short smile as she continued with one final paper. He was shocked they killed them so easily and she had gone back to writing.

"That's bloody incredible, your majesty" Donovan commented, speaking for his son who just couldn't get a word to escape his mouth.

"I'd like to hope it sent a message to other dragons, except nothing lived to fly away in terror. Oh well."

"What message would that be?" Elsei asked, also surprised by the turn of events.

"Don't try to touch my stuff." She yawned and stretched at the same time, checking over the child labor law that abolished them being employed until a certain age, and only at limited hours per week. "I need to get some sleep."

While they might, might have been nonhostile, I'm not about to take that chance with dragons. Bad news bears for you guys.

"The immigration laws have a few typos in them" Donovan said as he finished his tea. Selene silently swore and shook her head to clear her mind.

"Well it was obvious it would happen when I'm sleep deprived. Was that the only issue?" she asked. He nodded and slowly stood up, pressing on his lower back and wincing. "Then I believe we can slow down and get some much-deserved shut eye, unless you two have anything else to add." Elsei looked at Morlan, wondering if he needed anything else.

"I… was going to ask if we might have a little chance to spar in the future… however… with the rescue of Princess Silara… I'm not too sure I want to request that…" Morlan spoke up as he looked away from both women. Artinia looked up to him as a hero, capable of defeating anything. Now that he had seen Hrist and Selene in combat no longer shackling themselves to hide their identities… he realized how small he really was.

"You could always spar with Antoine or his students, they could learn a thing or two from a legend." Donovan's son chuckled.

"That is true. Maybe we should pay them a visit, see how their martial training is coming along… if they even have martial training to be exact."

"That I've seen, Professor Falksworthy has started courses to help instill confidence and courage, with part of them being swordplay" the empress replied.

"No magic?" Elsei questioned.

"That… will probably be either a guild or another academy in the near future."

"Your mother is working on the details right now" Donovan explained to his son.

"Mother is going to work there?" he asked. His father shook his head.

"Just helping with the policies and procedures for training required. Our empress would like certifications for magicians and wizards to practice their craft. Your mother is trying to make sure those who are gifted can make use of their magical talents without paying through their noses." The dev cracked her neck and got up from her desk. "The empress is being very pragmatic without clamping down on those with the gift to cast spells. Give them a chance to learn their craft, without putting the safety of the people at risk. Either learn to control your abilities or we will control them for you."

"We can check through the work later; these are just the drafts obviously." Morlanion glanced back and forth between his father and the auburn-haired woman.

"You spent a whole day working on drafts?" Selene looked at Morlan then at Donovan and blinked.

"Well, it's not as if everything can be done on the fly. Laws have to be written and evaluated for any inconsistencies, loopholes and counters with other regulations. I'd rather your father catch what I've done right now before it gets printed and distributed where some new noble figures out how to play my empire like a fiddle. Why?" the empress asked. The two heroes sitting in the room looked at each other and blinked, elf and human.

"Better prepared than King Teiyan, I can see that already." Selene let out a dry laugh.

"Not that prepared. I swore there wasn't going to be so much red tape blocking the people, but now I'm starting to see some of that is for their protection. Rules and regulations are sometimes needed to keep others from being abusive to those below them." While the thought had occurred to her to get a judicial system set up for corporate issues involving suits or discrepancies, any criminal activity would be handled by an automaton casting [Truth From Lies]. The reason it needed to be one of her mechanical creations was that for some reason… no one else could learn Arcanic's Wizardry spells.

At first, she had thought that the farmers that were taught how to replace the nutrients in the soil had learned [Nutrient Replenisher] from her, but after a little investigation, they had gotten some help with a tier magic spell taught by a traveling magician to "cheat." It turned out they were afraid to tell her due to the fact they believed she might smite them for not learning to use her gifts provided. With a few other experiments, she was able to verify that the people seemed to be stuck on tier magic, unable to figure out the dimensional system required to adapt to her spells.

This might have been due to what stage of development the people were in, given the fact they didn't come from a technologically advanced society that even theorized different dimensions beyond the physical. Ignoring that hypothesis, she didn't know why they couldn't fathom how to use her spells. If she created scrolls with Arcanic's Wizardry spells written on them, they could be used, however the actual casting from the person was beyond their capability it seemed, at least for now.

It was also possible this was the same problem with the new Runecraft that the dwarves could perform in Kaldanas Mountains. Bronze Team had slipped in while cloaked and remained hidden while gaining as much intel as possible. Most of what they heard, saw, and detected was thrown out due to it being regular day to day activities of the average joe, however there was quite a bit more gleaned about their civilization.

It seemed that runecraft was mutually repulsive to tier magic, at least when it came to enchanting. She had no real information yet about runecraft being used as an actual magic system, though Bronze Team had found no evidence it could be used as such. It seemed to always require an object etched onto, in order to activate whatever special feature was expected. Casting without an item enchanted in such a way was still an unknown so far. These weapons or tools were still extremely rare, even for the dwarves, given tier magic had become prevalent.

The dwarves that lived in the mountains seemed to not really hold any ill will towards humans, regardless of the ones they knew about from Artinia or Tal Salunbal. However, most of the reason behind that was simply because they could take on Artinia pretty effectively and even laughed at the pitiful attempts of Artinian soldiers to ever pick a fight with them. While they didn't have impressive mechanical creations or automated construction, not even steampunk equipment, they did have magical stone and metal golems as well as some idea of mechanical assistance. Ratcheting gears and cogs were used with pulleys to move large batches of molten metal around underground, with mine carts on rail systems. It was more than what Artinia had. The golems, while somewhat impressive, were slow and nowhere near as effective as even a civilian model automaton. They seemed to be built for a sort of moving wall and slow heavy attacks.

Their soldiers all seemed to have the standard equipment, with every single one of them having a full suit of plate mail armor and a battle axe with a shield. The shields themselves looked like miniature tower shields for the size of the dwarves, covering from head to toe to protect against everything on their left side. Their city was massive underground, with a network of towns and villages chaining off from it. One of them supposedly was almost directly under the Eld Horn Town, which while it was fairly deep and could be considered harmless, did worry the empress a little.

"Alright, I'll see you all, or not, after I get some sleep." Donovan headed to his guestroom, while Selene headed up to her royal bedroom and got undressed. While very little had happened for five days involving action beyond the red dragons just now, she at least did get quite a bit done to keep the empire running smoothly.

Eight Hours Later

Selene woke up to a request from the prison captain automaton. The coms kept ringing in her head lightly as she rolled over and rubbed her face, checking the clock in her Hud. Eight hours had past, but it felt like only twenty minutes to her. The dev debated ignoring the call, then finally relented and opened it up.

"Apologies ma'am, but a prisoner wants to speak with 'whoever is in charge.' They believe they've been held for a crime they didn't commit." She groaned and looked up at the canopy of her bed, blinking and taking a deep breath.

"Is it one of the adventurers?" she asked, a little groggy.

"Yes ma'am. A woman, late teens."

"Oy… tell her… tell her the crime is attempting to bypass our borders illegally and an investigation is underway."

"I will do so ma'am." The coms ended and she tried to go back to sleep, getting another hour or so in if possible. Twenty minutes later, another call came in. Her eyes shot open annoyed.

"What."

"She is still requesting to speak to someone higher in the chain of command ma'am."

"Request denied."

"Yes ma'am." Again, the coms line ended, and she tried to go back to sleep. The time was roughly 6 pm, which meant she was going to have a late dinner by herself. As she tried to slip back to sleep, a knock on her door rang out a little. Selene rolled to her side and slid out of the sheets. It was clear she wasn't getting any more shut eye.

"Enter." Hrist walked in with Brynhildr and stood at the door while the empress put her robe on.

"You were not at lunch; we were worried you were not feeling well" Hrist said quietly. The dev just sat there on her bed and blinked away the sleep.

"I'm fine, I just pulled an all nighter with Donovan making a full pass of laws and regulations for the empire. There's still more to come." She yawned and stretched, then scratched her nose and shoulder.

"Ah, I see. As long as you are alright" Bryn said.

"Don't overdo it, I don't want to find you passed out at your desk" Hrist told her in a scolding manner. Selene raised an eyebrow and stared at Hrist with a smirk. She stuck her tongue out at her playfully.

"I'll do what I need to do to get the job done Hrist, I'm not some little child." Bryn smiled amusingly as she watched them argue a little, with her sister worrying about the empress's health. It was cute watching them, the empress being oblivious to what she had already noticed.

"Both of you, calm down please. We came here for a reason after all" the blonde said as she put her hands up, not really one to mediate, as that was usually Skuld's choice of action.

"Fine, what, what is?" Selene asked. Hrist crossed her arms over her chest, staring down at her, a little anger showing in her face, but her eyes told something different.

"Skuld has asked if we would bring her new Pegasus to the academy, as well as observe a class of students who are learning martial skills."

"Ah…"

"Is something wrong? You seem out of it" Bryn asked concerned.

"Just been a busy week, that's all. I still have quite a few things to do now that I'm awake again. Um… does she want us to head there today or…?" the empress questioned.

"Well, she asked if we could go there tonight to stay for the entire event tomorrow morning and… it was just us two." Bryn winced at telling her that. The empress wasn't exactly invited, not that she needed to be.

"Ah, I see. Well, in that case-"

"Sorry."

"What? No, that's fine, it helps me in the long run. I can't always be everywhere at the same time. In that case, I'll have some time to finish a few more projects."

"You aren't mad?" The shield maiden asked, raising an eyebrow and still wincing.

"Why would I be? I can go there anytime I want; I built the place after all. Besides, you three need to fly together for a little bit; go, I'll be fine."

"Can we take… the wolves with us?" Brynhildr questioned. Selene looked at her in confusion. "The students… it's like a badge of honor to have the royal… hounds? No, royal wolves it is… to have them visiting."

"Not the empress of the empire?"

"I didn't mean it like that! They consider it almost good luck to get a chance to pet one of them, for their studies and exams."

"They better not attempt that on Selene" Hrist growled out, both her sister and the empress looking at her. "What? That would be improper." The empress sighed and smiled with an open mouth.

"Go, I'll be fine. I never expected running an empire would be easy. I'll hold the fort while you three have some time together."

"Thank you, Selene, we appreciate it" Bryn said beaming.

"Nah, don't worry about it." The Valkyrja left her bedroom as she sat there with the drapes closed on the windows. A sigh came out of her mouth as she got ready to do a few more things before dinner. As she got changed into a black easy flowing dress covering her arms, the dev stepped out and downstairs just to see Donovan and Melsia heading out as well for the night. "Dinner out and about?" she asked. They both turned around and looked at her.

"My wife wanted to see what Gold Pine had turned into, there are apparently a few restaurants that have opened now. We're eager to see some of the sights. I'm… sorry, your majesty, we won't be around until late." An XLRV was sitting outside, pretty much an unarmored taxi service.

"I see. No worries, go enjoy yourselves. I hope Gold Pine shines for you." They both smiled, bowing and curtseying to her as they left. For the most part, beyond Jeeves as well as the maids and security forces, the palace was once more all to herself, at least for the night. Despite that, it felt a little lonely, especially without her wolves to stick around with her.

Regardless of the palace becoming empty, at least of all but one organic being, it was time for her to finish up on some experiments in the research lab, one of which was the new scanner. As she left the palace to head on over, she checked the status of dinner for one. It was already in the works, a steak with greens and some red wine.

The dev quickly entered the lab and headed through the myriad security doors, not simply to keep anyone from entering, but to keep structural integrity and seal off any experiments that went wrong. The sprinkler system was designed to spray an inert mixture of gases and solutions to stop any fires or chemical compounds from further causing damage, with secondary blast walls that would raise and lower depending on the lab. This was why most of the counters, desks and chairs were a good two feet from any wall, to allow spare protection to lock into place. She already figured she might need some of it for what she was expecting.

Once she reached the respective lab that had all of the equipment ready, she tested all of the suppression systems and emergency measures to make sure they would function correctly, then got to work. With mechanical arms, she attached multiple parts together into not a magnifying glass, but something like a crystal ball except cube shaped with a metal latticework surrounding it for handles. Adding in a few pieces of electronics that hopefully would handle the explosion she already knew was coming, and it was almost complete.

"Ok, secondary walls up… shielding online… recorder system tracking mic… this is scanner mark II going forward with final build, going in three… two… one…" she focused all of the essence she had stored up the day before, preparing just for this moment. This time, however, she steadily fed in a slow stream of both essence bars, keeping track of the stability with sensors inside. "Almost… almost…"

Before she could even react, the whole thing detonated, a mass explosion contained within the walls and rocking the area, nearly knocking the dev off her feet as she stood at the console behind the several layers of transparent Carbyne armor, looking just like plate glass. She was sure the palace maids and Jeeves had noticed the tremors.

"Madam, are you alright?! We just detected a massive explosion in the-"

"I'm fine Jeeves, the lab held. Holy shit, it did a number on the project though…" she replied as her eyes scanned the inside. The electronics had fused with the crystal, sparking a little here and there with no apparent power source to allow the electricity. The metal latticework was blasted off and strewn about on the ground, with logged footage showing most of it had pinged off the shielding inside and ricocheted multiple times. The walls themselves were not damaged much thanks to the energy shielding, however the blast was registered in the upper triple kilotons in an area the size of a bathroom. What she had just witnessed was a nuclear bomb going off in her face… at least behind multiple defensive layers.

No fires had broken out, but she was a little bit afraid of walking in there just yet. Selene set the system into backup security mode to add extra layers of shielding as she moved through the door and headed inside, slowly making her way to the cube waiting there. "You can do this Selene… just grab the thing and shove it in your inventory… very quickly…" she muttered to herself as her feet really wanted to take her back out.

This really isn't a good idea to do this without at least Hrist or Bronze Team around! Maybe I should just go eat dinner and have a quiet night… god I am being so stupid doing this alone…

The empress winced as she stuck her fingers out, noticed an arc hit them, and realized the lightning damage wasn't as bad as she thought. However, her Hud battle log did inform her that normally the electric shocks she was experiencing, without resistances kicking in, would be enough to flash fry her right then and there. It was like she was reaching for a downed power line flailing on the ground. A very quick thought shot through her mind of what her fire resistance would do if she picked up a cake pan from a heated oven without oven mitts on her hands, then disappeared due to the task at hand.

As her fingers grabbed onto the cube, it jolted a little and felt slippery to the touch, like it was covered in silicone lubricant and underwater. The facets seemed to pulsate and warp with every finger touching the sides as she picked it up carefully and put it into her inventory. A long exhale of relief erupted from her mouth as she realized the potential threat was over… one that she created. "Done." Her Hud seemed to warp for a moment as the new scanner connected… though it did take a good minute compared to near instantly for the old one.

Is this one defective? Shit, I'm the only one here! What if it installs some corrupt weird virus or something in my head!

She tried to calm down and control her breathing as the Hud swiftly corrected itself once the scanner had a chance to start working. As soon as she started looking around the room, she was getting material compositions of every piece of equipment, every wall, ceiling and floor, even blueprint layouts. Granted, she knew how to make all of it anyways; in her mind, it was probably trying to help with shortcuts as to a damaged piece of machinery with those schematics and how to repair it right off the top of her head.

"And… nobody to use it on… great…" the empress whispered out to herself. "Stupid stupid stupid stupid… don't fucking do something like that again you idiot… not without someone else nearby…" Jeeves ran in with a maid right behind him and looked around.

"Madam, are you sure you are alright?"

"I'm fine Jeeves, thanks for worrying. I…" she trailed off as she saw quite a bit more information toggle on about her butler, his level and skills. He had abilities, she already knew this, but she was receiving accuracy for the numbers to the fiftieth decimal point on some of it, even sound vibration information of his footsteps. It was a little too much info in many ways. "I think I just need to stop playing with stuff until Orlo and Turnie get back…"

I dodged a bullet back there…

"Best not to tempt fate madam." The empress set auto clean on the lab and headed back to the palace with her butler and the maid, trying to figure out how to turn off certain features of the new and improved scanner. There was just too much info pouring in, with coordinates and detailed knowledge of everything around her. She was honestly worried she might have something like an epileptic seizure from too much firing at her at the same time; it was a complete information overload.