The Start of an Empress I

AUTHOR NOTE: There are three songs recommended for scenes in this chapter, I suggest looking them up on YouTube or other sites to listen to during each event for mood music. Thank you.

10th, October

Selene had spent the past four days upgrading, expanding and installing new features for the Clockwork Castle. The walls were extended out to a ten-mile half decagon with reinforcement now placed on the mountain range to keep any mud slides or avalanches from ever occurring. The trap walls were removed entirely, with no need for them anymore, using the resources and some paneling to build standard emplacements. Outside the walls, whatever ventured nearby was most likely dead if it was deemed hostile. Inside the walls, however, there was a second water silo installed, a filtration station connected to that for purified water, along with a distillation station for distilled water to drink.

Packed near the mountain side was a one-kilometer orchard, now well seeded with maybe half of it untouched yet, fertilized and provided a greenhouse thirty feet tall, with a second floor above it installed for a standard farm at fifteen feet tall. A third floor was built for the herb garden, with farmer drones with mana available that could cast Nutrient Replenisher and Growth Spurt; mana batteries were installed in the corners for the drones to replenish that would use electricity converted from a generator. Below ground, beyond view of anything, was a tree farm growing that had a height of almost four hundred meters, enough for the "roof" to never touch the top of a tree, even if it was a redwood. Each farm had installed artificial sunlight racked on the ceilings, a full irrigation network and even mist sprayers. There was an elevator and a staircase connecting each floor.

Outside of the stack farm was a large Molecular Converter, the size of a building, about roughly the height of the dev's house but twice as wide. It was made to start processing raw materials that weren't in demand right now, or that she had a massive excess. To keep the excess staying stable, there were one hundred fabrication units in a third inventory she had now made that just manufactured Light automatons, then another one hundred units to dismantle them for the resources she took out of the crafting process with the Crafting Cost stat. For the most part, this worked extremely well, keeping her well stocked with all materials required to keep her stations pumping if need be. As an added bonus, it gave her a chance to upgrade all her crafting stations to newer versions, the foundry was the only one that was updated beforehand. Her alchemy stations were improved to chemistry labs, blast furnaces for the foundries were upgraded to induction furnaces using power provided by ten large generators below ground, with one reactor planned for the future. There were capacitors and battery backups installed throughout the place now, with full electric lighting.

The mine was cleaned up as well, with even more efficient conveyor belts installed to replace the mine cart rail lines. The Drillers were now on light duty with orders to not disturb the fish or ecosystem in the glowing cavern. Apparently, one of the Drillers found a second cavern about two hundred meters lower and to the North, again sealed off from the outside. Nothing that was hostile could be found after a full examination, which started to turn it into a research location. There was a nagging question in the back of Selene's mind as to how the fish were glowing so much, as well as what they were ingesting to cause it. Until she could get around to it, that would have to wait, as her research stations were already in full swing to give her more bonuses or drop maintenance for equipment even further. She now had twenty-five of the things, each had a project going at least once a day when she could remember to change out the samples or prototypes. Given she now had so many different stations going, it was difficult to keep up half the time and work on her new castle.

The foundation was now complete for her brand-new home, along with the reinforced concrete that was enameled with a brand-new marble she was getting from the Molecular Converter. She had another ten in her inventory, but it was useful for the specialized drones to place ore into it by themselves without her needing to supervise all the time. The main advantage of the converter was that it could turn whatever she had into whatever inorganic material she needed. If it was organic, it involved enchanting essence solidified, at least one of each color gems, green and silver. It still did not get used on something living, just things like hide, grass, bark, wood, or even seeds with limited success. The disadvantage was that it wasn't the most efficient with the materials provided, with some fine tuning being needed. One hundred copper ore could be turned into marble slabs easily, which didn't make sense, but it could also be turned into… one "bronze" ore, not ingot. It was like the different materials were already mixed together and just needed to be smelted into a brick, but the problem still remained, it wasted so much ore just for one of a higher tier. In a lot of ways, it was far cheaper to just smelt the ingots separately provided she had the materials. She could also make different mixtures of bronze without having to worry about it not being strong enough, as the bronze was still useful for placards and ornamental items.

One converter was already shoved into a research station to see if she could get a more efficient version of it, but one thing she was happy with was gaining two new spells, which she hoped she'd never have to use. Those were Lesser Resurrection and Greater Resurrection. Lesser could be used on anything below human, like an animal or fish, even non-talking creatures like a gryphon if needed, so it didn't ostracize mythical beasts. Greater seemed to work on anything human and above, allowing anything that was capable of communication with her to be brought back from the dead. She was no dummy, she knew about resurrection in Yggdrasil taking levels and experience, which was why she gained the Arcanic's Wizardry versions which required a payment provided to the "ferryman" either by the dead, which could potentially be two coins on the eyes just like in myth or paid by the caster. The payment, if Selene must unfortunately do it, was one percent of her coin each time, which didn't sound bad… unless she attempted to resurrect a whole village, town or city. Luckily, there was the capability to loophole the thing, simply providing two gold coins to the eyes and preparing the body. The coins were given to the family of the deceased, allowing them to "own" the money and staying near their dead family member until the resurrection was complete. It had to be two gold coins, nothing lower would be accepted.

To top it off, she researched both scrolls of those spells in a research station, which gave her a new project to be crafted by a fabrication unit. It took one week to craft one, regardless of Crafting Time or anything that sped up Steampunk equipment due to the fine tuning. It was called a "Lazarus System," a once per hour resurrection tesla tower. Somehow, it healed the body and prepared it in a certain way to allow the soul to be reconnected back to the corpse, but it had to recharge each time and took a good ten minutes to perform. This meant it could only resurrect a small amount of people each day, but still useful due to it not requiring mana, only electricity. It just took too damn long to make though, but the dev already had one in production, just in case. As a side use, it was fully capable of obliterating an undead army within one kilometer of it with a massive pulse. The resurrection was a targeted ability on one person.

There was a mass resurrection spell that could be learned, but the problem was there were huge debuffs provided to the newly living to their bodies and annoying issues that came with it, one issue of which… her mana bar wasn't high enough yet and no mana battery worked to balance it out. She was going to learn it, it was already in crafting for a scroll, she just couldn't make much use of it as a learned spell until she focused on upgrading her magical prowess, which was somewhat taking a back seat compared to everything else. Right now, she wanted, no, needed, to build a palace. She was already getting the first floor constructed with a courtyard and gates, along with the start of each room. The palace didn't take up the entire area of the walls, however she didn't know how large some castles could really be. She remembered hearing about one castle being five miles in size, which seemed massive… but cool. Selene could always expand even more if need be, with surprisingly very little need to cut down the forest much further. The forest she lived near seemed to be roughly one hundred miles in size, spread out and facing only a quarter of her home, so it was pretty easy to not do too much damage to the biome.

Unfortunately, the past four days she had spent the entire time cooped up in the brand-new walls, just building and expanding. At least one of those days was just getting the walls up with specialized construction drones helping hold materials up or leveling the area. She had military models patrolling the valley, in which they had found another mimic, and promptly devastated it. She had enough warning to acknowledge they found a hostile, heard the weapons going off, then heard an all clear from them. That was the extent of the scary mimic problem.

"That's it, I'm going stir crazy. I've been laying these walls and setting up the courtyard for rosebushes and hedge rows… haven't even finished the palace, can't even think of the furniture yet… I need to relax." Bronze Team was sitting around at a table, seemingly doing nothing. "Hey, I gotta ask, what do you guys do to stay busy while I'm asleep or doing this?" They all looked at each other, with Ethan looking at the ground. A small holographic picture appeared, showing… mine sweeper. "You guys are playing games?" she laughed out. Jorge was playing what looked like solitaire, Turnie seemed to be playing some sort of skiing game, Deacon was playing some sort of asteroids game, with Orlo working on new ones. He was the mastermind for all the fun little programs they were using to pass the time. "Sorry ma'am for being unprofessional" Jorge said sadly. "Oh, no, don't worry about it. You guys aren't doing this in the middle of a fight or before a fight are you?" she questioned. "Absolutely not ma'am, we would never think about it."

"Unless we're stuck doing recon, then I'm gonna see who can fuck up the Nazis the most in the next shooter" Deacon quipped. For Selene, she just knew they were thinking faster than she was for a lot of things, so letting them play games to keep them occupied was perfectly fine. She was just surprised they were making games just like Earth played. The dev was happy they understood and communicated in a way that reminded her of people from Earth, even knew memes and jokes that only someone from her home world would understand. She figured they must be getting pre-programmed with knowledge from both worlds to be able to work so efficiently for her. It was immensely helpful, not just physically for protection, but because she now had friends she could talk to. Selene missed home, her real home, her family and her human friends, but this was her new life, with it probably never ending until the day she dies. It was either get used to here or be depressed. The woman chose the former.

"I'm going to head to Gold Pine and work on some stuff for them." Jorge stood up, towering over everyone as they got ready for a trip out. "You guys, and gal, can stay if you want to. I was actually going to just ride over, fix up a water pump and head back after talking to people." They all looked at each other. "Ma'am, unless we're on a mission, we'll stick with you" Ethan said as he nodded at her. As she saddled Asterion to get him some exercise, Bronze Team piled into the SF APC and rolled out after her, with ornithopters flying through the skies just above. She had upgraded their frames with aluminum, not normally gained from around the castle due to no bauxite mineable from the area. It required a tropical or warm location, which might mean the swamp with the alligators. Her main source of aluminum was just converting steel into the metal and gaining a decent amount of the ingots to install upgrade modules into the fabrication units. It wasn't nearly as strong as steel, but it was much lighter, giving a noticeable improvement in speed and agility. New materials were already in the works, including plans to test Mithril once she got a fair amount of it, Orichalcum, Adamantite even. Giles had given her a small list of the different metals he knew of, but Selene now had access to an entire array of standard metals, New World metals, alloys and even some steampunk mixtures.

If she could get her tech up enough, there was a guarantee for graphene armor, potentially even a theorized stronger material called Carbyne. While Adamantite was strong, unbreakable even, it could be super-heated and melted. Graphene and Carbyne didn't really care about heat due to the dispersion characteristics and how it was created, along with being very light, though Graphene would probably be not on par with Adamantite. Two layers of Graphene was harder than diamond, with Carbyne theorized being twice as strong as Graphene, though the information was old with newer atomic models created since that was open to the public. Composite armor with a mixture of different materials would be the most effective. None of this stopped her from attempting to create her own metals, but that would take some serious work, with a full lab working on the project. Newer custom metals also weren't in her normal schematics, so plenty of research would be needed. One of her research stations was constantly working on projects for newer materials for automaton frames and building, with so far aluminum steel alloy being a standard for fliers.

She was barely at the cusp of Industrial Era, despite working so hard on adding new features to the Clockwork Castle. Her only real need was to travel to Gold Pine, add new piping to bypass the water well, install the water pump, and everything would be ready for a tech up; in a backup situation, she could enchant the pump, or faucets in houses with Unending Flow. If it wasn't, a little trading and checking up on the villagers would finish it. There was no need for money right now, excluding one thing that she was willing to ask Giles to give in exchange for lower end coin. What the woman wanted was that platinum coin he had stashed away. If he was willing to give her that, she could start minting them in large quantities, given there was one vein found deep underground, probably a small blob of it. Gold was a non-issue now, with well over ten thousand coins readily available and more on the way, with the converter seemingly able to turn a few of them into a pile of silver coins as well. There was spare copper she was minting now for coins too, but that was a minor thing so she wouldn't argue about change with any traders that come by Gold Pine.

Once she reached the village, she met up with Giles who helped her test the water pump as well as seal the well. "There, no need for that old thing, this will bring up dirty water, which will flow here into the filtration block, which will give you clean water. Sound good?" she said smirking to him. "Amazing. It looks so simple too." Selene chuckled. "It is simple, none of you knew how to build it really, that was the only problem. Well it's fine now, it won't be perfectly clean water, but it will be drinkable without causing any issues. If mayor Stafinson has someone set a fire under it, it should boil the water and kill anything that can harm you."

Giles ran his hand over his hair and blew air out of his mouth while blinking. "To think, we could have stopped some diseases just by doing this." Selene looked confused with her eyelids half closed and a furrowed brow. "Is anyone sick right now? What do they have?" The smith looked up at her and blinked again. "Oh, no one is infected now, but there was a scare of a really bad plague a long while ago, I heard about it. Something… something black was the name."

The Bubonic Plague?! It was here?! Oh god, that normally is curable with any modern medicine if caught very early, but it probably wasn't for these people! Hope Cleanse Greater Infection works on it, but holy hell… I should probably make some antibiotics on the double now that I know about that.

She thought back to the small hamlet she found with no one alive, just skeletons lying around. That was probably what ended their lives. This meant fleas were around at one point that carried the disease, which meant she needed to keep a look out for rats. Luckily, she was testing out new designs for automatons and smaller mechanical creatures, including the spider mine now had a cousin, the lightning mine. It didn't blow up, just latched to things and fired ten amps of current with a voltage of roughly 250, enough to kill a target without making much noise. This allowed them to be christened as a Special Forces piece of equipment to stealth kill or incapacitate high profile targets. They were also nice to have as a miniature battery system to plug into for weapons or even a mini fridge. Oddly enough, Bronze Team could inject limited amounts of drinks and food into a port just inside their neck, allowing them to "taste" consumables and burn it off with a miniature incinerator hidden inside near their power core. They couldn't get drunk off beer, but they could at least enjoy it. That made her wonder if a mini fridge might be an interesting picnic item to hide in her inventory for when they wanted it. If they work hard, they get to play hard, given they now had small inventory hoppers systems attached to their arms connected to her fourth inventory set just for them.

Selene had now started to spread out her inventory and organize things, with spare resources and useful items in her first inventory along with food to not spoil, her second inventory was manufacturing, her third inventory was resource production that could feed into second inventory, her fourth inventory was Special Forces exclusive and her fifth was for military applications and security usage. She also could auto sort with tags placed on certain items and they'd just move automatically. Her search feature allowed anything from any "tab" to be found regardless.

"Huh, I'll uh… let me know if anyone gets sick in the future ok? Especially what happened before." Giles nodded and smiled. "Will do lass, will do." Her thoughts were on setting some hunter killer lightning mines on search and destroy for rats hiding in the buildings while throwing a small party for the villagers. They'd easily clear out any infestations given they could also be equipped with invisibility field emitters. That was a scary thought for anyone that tried to sneak up and cause problems for Gold Pine, a thief or serial killer sneaking through the pass through Azaltos mountains only to get jumped by one of these and zapped to death.

They both walked back to his smithy, with her dropping off some "spare" ingots for him to make use of, no need for payment. She got invited into their home and got to see the paintings Abby was making, which made her realize she keeps bringing things for Giles, not for his wife to make use of. "Hey Ab, how about the next time I come by, I bring you some interesting paints, would that be nice?" she asked. Abby jumped up from her stool and looked between Giles and Selene, confused as to whether she should question her or smile. Instead, she just gave her a hug. "I'd be forever grateful. Any colors you bring would be nice to have." That did it, the dev was going to bring her an entire paint kit next time she visited. From what she saw, the paintings she made were beautiful with the limited colors she had available; she could only imagine what she could make with her talent and better tools and mixtures.

The entire village was warned by the mayor to attempt to buy any interesting seeds for Selene if any traders came by, with her paying them back. She had provided a small bag of coin to the mayor for spare funds if she wasn't there to do it herself. They were all more than willing, given that it expanded what she could trade to them, at a much lower price for much better goods. The silk sheets the alewife wanted were completed, along with a silk dress she was too embarrassed to wear, given it showed a decent amount of skin. For her husband, it looked fantastic, but it wasn't something to wear outside in her eyes. The dev didn't think it looked like lingerie or a negligee, but people were a little prudish here, so she didn't argue.

"So, you got the shovels and pick axes all finished?" Selene asked Giles as they all sat down for a light glass of ale. One of the new spells she had learned in the past four days was a really easy one, almost considered a quality of life spell given what it did. Since she already had Spark Finger to light torches and campfires, it stood to reason to also finally get "Frost Finger," cooling things down or freezing items if need be. This allowed her to cool down the cups or heat them up, which made her impatient for the apples she recently grew to ferment correctly and turn into spiced alcoholic cider with some bourbon that she was working on at the still. Given the fact she didn't need to cook much anymore, her free fun time was involved in making different alcoholic beverages and playing with the wolves who were in sore need of some attention. The day before she took them on a hunt even though there were already hunter drones ready to work, just because it helped keep them in shape. Blue and Ash got to enjoy the pool as well with her during exercise, while Luna was learning her dog paddle with some steampunk floaties. The woman couldn't stop laughing at the sight of the white wolf swimming around with those things on. She eventually got the hang of it, which allowed her to take them off.

"I did, got them ready for the new people who moved here. They said they were miners, figured they could set up a mine nearby and get some ore in here. I told them they'll never bring back better than what you give, but they want to at least be useful and it's a job. It also brings flagstone and clay to be used to keep the roads in working order, build small stone fences for expansion and help with ramps." The dev nodded in acknowledgement as she took a swig of her ale. It was better now than the last time she tried it. The alewife, Brilne was her name, had made a much stronger batch. The lighter ale was probably for summer, the last dregs of it.

"Oh, that reminds me, um… can I ask you for a favor?" Selene asked Giles. "Anything lass, anything." She twiddled her thumbs a little. "Can I offer to trade one hundred gold coins for that platinum coin you have hidden away?" he looked at her a little surprised. "Well, sure, I… you really want it?" he asked. "Yes please, if you're wiling to give it up." He got up and walked into the smithy, checked the hidden stone and pulled out the box. Once he was back inside the house, he dropped the coin right on the table. "It's yours, lass." The dev pulled out one hundred gold coins, then added an extra five to the pile. Giles looked at the glinting and then at her. "You're always so generous lass. I doubt anyone would want you to pay with a platinum coin in the future though." She picked it up and looked at it. "I'm working on other avenues instead of trading with it." Both sides had different symbols again. Somehow she had an odd gut feeling that those symbols would become useless in the not too distant future.

"What's that commotion outside?" Abby asked as she leaned near Selene and looked out the window. "Maybe the mayor wants everyone to understand the usage of the new water pump" Giles muttered out loud. "It's not difficult, you just have to push down and pull up on the lever, water comes out. Then you pour that water into filtration block and let it do its thing. I wonder if I can get a faucet made for everyone, that might be on a schedule though." Giles chuckled. "You keep trying to make life better for us at no cost. Truly a miracle you are lass."

"I don't think he's calling people to see the water pump, I think they're just gathering around him. Oh god, I hope the tax collector isn't back again." Selene jumped up along with Giles as they looked at each other, with the red auburn hair of the dev flailing as she shot out the door towards the crowd with Giles hot on her tail.

Motherfucker, if he's back I'll end him right now!

She stormed towards the crowd as they parted like the Red Sea for Moses, she stepped up right to the mayor and didn't see the stage coach anywhere. Stafinson looked somber as he read a scroll unrolled, then looked up at her. He sighed. "Here ye! Here ye! The Artinian kingdom has declared the village of Gold Pine to be rebelling against the divine power that is king Teiyan Erelius II. The heretics have refused to pay taxes required of all decent working men, for the preservation of the lands and keeping of order. By order of his majesty, the village will be… smited… for its actions to thwart his highness's divine rule." Everyone was whispering to each other, scared about what was happening. "That's it then, no negotiations, no attempt to parlay. Damn that man! Damn that blasted king!" Giles started shouting as he pointed towards the scroll. The mayor looked amongst the people there, including the miners, who had just moved here for a better life. Now that life was in danger. He finally looked at Selene. Everyone looked at her after that. "What can we do? We can't fight, we don't even have a militia."

"I've seen what kinds of armies he sends to stop rebellions once… only once…" one of the miners spoke as everyone laid eyes on him. "You're looking at around five thousand strong, maybe ten thousand if it was a large town… I dunno what you can call this place now with more people living here. They… they might… gods almighty save us…" he nearly broke down as his friends put their hands on his shoulders. That's when Stafinson stepped closer to Selene and showed her the scroll, which she couldn't read. "I know we have no right to ask it of you, but we're now just an abandoned village. You stopped the bandit army before, and we are without a kingdom now. Of what kingdom would you call yourself? Would we… could we be allowed to join you?" he asked. Everyone was silent. This was a massive question looming over her.

"I renamed my fortress, it's now called The Clockwork Castle. These guys…" she sighed and looked at the miners and everyone else. "They won't stop it seems. Going after a village that is barely coming into its own as a town just because you can't pay right now is… this is bullshit. Look, I dunno how good I'd be as a… what, leader?" she ended with a question. "You'd be our Queen" Abby hinted. "I don't like the sound of Queen. Queen is just…" she was trying to find the words she needed, but it was getting all garbled up in her head. She finally just snapped. "If I'm going to be in charge, I'm being an Empress, because if I'm being declared war on by being in control of this village, then I'm fighting back and taking them out with overwhelming force. Are you my citizens? Say so now." They all put their hands up in acknowledgement, not one of them walking away, even the miners. They had heard stories about her, with today being a chance to see what she could really do. "The Clockwork Empress Selene. Let all who lay eyes on her know that name and refer to her as majesty or highness. Her divine light will shine everywhere and cast the darkness that is the Artinian kingdom away" Giles yelled loudly for all to hear, accepting the name and letting everyone know it. She actually liked the title. This was the start of the Clockwork Empire, with one village.