Unknown Force I

20th, October

(Recommended Song: Epic Score – Peacefully Drowning)

King Teiyan Erelius II sat watching the scene in front of his throne in enjoyment as he draped his legs over the side of the seat, his purple cloak falling off the other side and part of his silk robe open. Multiple pillows were placed under his blonde short haired head with a small table set next to him, a glass of wine with aged cheese and grapes ready for him to taste. His blue eyes watched as two combatants fought each other down the steps from the throne, one of them being a woman. The man was wearing full plate armor with a long sword and metal shield, while the woman… had barely some padded armor and a short sword with a buckler. She was cut up pretty badly, with the blood already proving who was winning.

The female warrior was at a clear disadvantage as she kept trying to defend against the strikes from the male soldier. A quick strike to the back of her left leg cut her hamstring, with a scream erupting from her lips. He grabbed her head and knocked her sword away from her as she tried to break away from the assault in vain. That's when he stuck his finger into one of her eyes. An ear-piercing scream erupted from her throat from the pain as he then ripped her chest armor off, exposing her to the few men watching the show. "I can already see who is going to win this fight, so please, do as you wish with the loser and dispose of her body carefully, I don't want to see another stain on these floors the next time."

The king got up and yawned a little, then left the throne room of his palace, just in the middle of Aureos, the imperial city of Artinia. As he left the room, he could hear the sounds of the woman being abused and laughter from the men, his own mouth curling in a smile. He liked rewarding the victors for their ruthlessness. "Your majesty, a word if I may be allowed" a man said standing near a door with his hand over his chest, black leather armor with engravings covering the different pieces, a long sword and dagger at his hip with a silver wolf's head as the pommel for both. His hair was brown and slicked back, with a full beard and two piercings in his right eyebrow. "You may speak Rogas, though I am heading for my harem right now." He continued walking with two slaves holding his long cloak as Rogas followed.

"I… have news of the army we sent to Gold Pine." Teiyan waved his hand nonchalantly in the air and rolled his eyes. "Have they finished destroying that pathetic place or are they so stupid they got lost?" he asked. "They're… um… they're all dead your highness. Not one of them survived." Teiyan stopped dead in the middle of the hallway, two maid slaves standing at a corner with their heads down, their bodies partly exposed. His young face, no more than eighteen, screwed up in anger. "Who." Rogas backed off a tiny bit. "We don't know your highness. There were no traces of the enemy, no bodies. We're… not yet sure what weapons they even used." The king growled, turned and raised his hand to backhand someone; instead of Rogas, he hit one of the maids. She squeaked as she turned her small face, a large welt showing on her cheek, a mark from one of his rings as well.

"Find out who it was and end them! I… this… this might be who I think it is who did this." Teiyan waggled a finger in the air as he started to think about who could have had the power to wipe out five thousand men. It couldn't have been Gold Pine, they were a bunch of dirt diggers with no defenses, completely on their own. Not even a group of adventurers could have defeated an army of five thousand strong. "It very well could be them" another voice rang out around the corner as another man walked out wearing a mixture of banded plate and leather etched with different symbols. His hair was salt and pepper colored and cut with a slick back undercut style, his mustache curled upwards and waxed with a large goatee with a white streak down the middle. "Nevil, it gets very annoying when you sneak around the corners like that around me." Nevil walked up with his hands behind his back. "My apologies my king. I'll endeavor to stop doing so in the future."

The three men continued to walk as the maid did her best to hold back her tears. As they continued around the corner, the blonde-haired man gave a cursory glance backwards. "If it is them, we-" Nevil interrupted. "We've received notice. We can now gain possession of the artifact." The king stopped and turned slowly around. "Nevil…" Teiyan said with a cold smile. "My apologies your highness, I will never interrupt you again." They started walking again. "Are you sure the Siren's Song bombs will work?" the young king asked. "I assure you, your majesty, they have been seen and function as the stories foretold."

The king stepped up to a set of double doors as they were opened for him, inside was an orgy ready to start with Teiyan as the main benefactor of pleasure. "Then you better get to work on gaining those little things to stop those lost wretches once and for all." The king entered with hands reaching up at his legs while he unrobed, with the doors closing. "Can we be sure the bombs will work? They were only used on slaves; how would we know if they could function against… them?" Rogas asked. "They will work for one reason. They look like us; they can act like us, and if the stories are true, they can breed like us if need be. That tells me these will work on their temptations." Both members of the Ghost's Ash division, the assassins and scouts of the Artinian kingdom walked briskly down the hallway and out of the palace.

"So, we capture them, yes?" Rogas asked as he stepped down the steps after his commander. "What, just to have pathetic spawn bred out of them? No, our project is reaching fruition thanks to our majesty's connection to… her. I still can't believe he was able to make contact with the summon." Rogas looked around at the guards as they patrolled the grounds. "Do you think the project will be a success?" Nevil stopped and took a breath. "Did you not read the notes I sent you or are you so pathetic your puny brain couldn't grasp what they mean? Imagine the strength of a team of those! She was helpful indeed in figuring out how to turn them into those… creatures. I only hope our king has enough control over her to stop all of the blood from our people being spilled to sate their lust for power. There have been too many sacrifices already to nourish her." A guard kicked a slave and proceeded to beat her while she was on the ground for some reason or another. He didn't stop until she was no longer moving.

Both men left the premises and walked through the streets of Aureos, through the market and towards their waiting horses. The market had all manner of items, drugs, slaves, food, even some "magical" weapons, if they could be called that. The enchanting was strong due to the wizard's academy stationed in the corner of the city, but most of the magical enchantments were still far too pricey for what was offered. A little extra luck, sharper edges, unending durability even seemed to be the standard. Very few items stood out, not like the Crimson Rose sword that Nevil had at his hip. It had the special magical effect of draining the lifeforce of an enemy pierced by it and feeding it into himself, even if he wasn't hurt, increasing his health and stamina each time. Given he was the leader of the assassins in Artinia, that was quite often.

"Are we heading immediately to the rendezvous site?" Rogas asked as he saw some rather beautiful high elven slaves chained to a board, bruises and small cuts on their legs with scraps for clothing. All elves seemed to have an unnatural beauty to them, some well beyond even the most gorgeous human woman. His lecherous thoughts were cut short as Nevil mounted and pointed at him. "You are going to the rendezvous point, I am heading back to headquarters and seeing if I can get the rest of the men ready. Once everything is prepared, we will supply and await a chance to use those bombs. Do not lose them or I will have your head on a pike!" he ordered as he rammed the spikes of his heels into the haunches of his horse and pulled on the reins, turning it and charging out of the huge city.

"I'll do as you say." Rogas brought his hand to his chest in salute, then got on his own horse. He had a package to receive.

Meanwhile

Selene had spent the past six days working on installing fortified walls cutting across the Azaltos Mountains and Boramar Mountains to protect Gold Pine and seal the road from Glass Dale. Once a trader got through the main gates of the wall near Glass Dale, they were one hundred percent safe for the rest of the trip to Gold Pine, with a freely provided escort the entire way. The road was improved from a well-worn path to concrete with a secondary path to the side for horses without horseshoes. The path up through the Azaltos Mountains was found and had a wall built to protect against anyone who would try and attack from the rear. There were a few other paths that lead up to the mountainside, but none of them crossed over into the Mirian Valley. Military patrols were a welcome sight for the citizens of Gold Pine, with Security holding the walls much further out, letting the townsfolk do their own thing while they were protected. A minor goal of hers later was, once Glass Dale was rebuilt, install something no one here has ever seen along that path between both towns. She was going to build a railroad system. That would increase travel speed by multiple orders of magnitude, also allowing her to rapidly move from place to place without teleportation, or her citizens.

The Empress had found out something new about the security models compared to the military models. At first, she thought they were a better grade of automaton that just did everything better, but the security models had a drastically improved efficiency when working behind fortifications, easily having pin point accuracy when on walls or using any sort of turret or mortar. Their defensive ratings increased immensely as well, making sure that if they had the chance to build up a fort, they were almost uncrackable by any force. Military did far better while mobile, allowing a compliment to the security forces, being a yin and yang of each other. Military fought, security made sure there were places to come back to after the fight. The civilian models were very good at keeping the castle grounds taken care of and clean, with the automaton maids being considered attractive by the townsfolk of Gold Pine before they were recalled back to the castle.

Each maid automaton had two spindly legs that looked like a ballerina dancing on their high heeled toes, with anti-gravity fields emitting to help them float when not standing in one spot, making them look like fairies moving from place to place. Though they were made of metal, the features were pleasing to the eye and calming when they spoke, asking if she ever needed any assistance. They never needed to sleep, always working diligently to keep the area clean, her clothes washed and folded, food prepared at a moment's notice. Now that the castle was complete, it was awe inspiring, being twenty-five stories tall and showing almost entirely white marble or silver and gold etching into the paneling. Most rooms had an almost velvet carpet installed, with royal furniture finally crafted and placed meticulously by Jeeves himself commanding the butlers. The throne room had high columns raising fifty feet tall, with hidden defenses if anyone attempted to attack the empress. In the event of an emergency, the cylindrical panels dropped open from the columns revealing auto turrets and tesla pylons, with the whole area having built into forcefield systems and a personal shield emission system around the raised throne. The throne itself was huge, made of constantly moving gears and cogs with a glass paneling overlay, large plush seating installed with spare pillows readily available and a raised foot rest. There were even ornithopter vents in the walls that could constantly pump in spare aerial forces.

There was a red carpet leading to the entrance of the throne room, heading down the dual staircase entwining a circular room and heading outside to the main courtyard, with a second set of staircases moving down to a large garden of roses bushes and hedges. Beyond that, reinforced gates that led to a marble bridge arcing over a man-made river with some fish and lily pads inside, well filtered to keep the water clean for the little creatures. A marble gazebo was at the end of the bridge with a large table surrounded by chairs, allowing sunshine to filter through for morning or afternoon tea time, or maybe breakfast. There were hallways branching off in six directions under the staircases in the circular entryway, with one allowing multiple guest rooms, the second heading to another small courtyard with a varied garden beyond roses and a tree purposely grown for shade, the third hallway heading towards one of the kitchens of the palace. The fourth hallway led towards the library that was currently empty, along with a music room and "party room" for balls to be thrown if she ever felt like it. The sixth hallway wrapped around the palace, allowing further connection to many other areas. The top three floors were like this, with the remainder sealed off from anyone else as personal space for the empress, either for her own use or for potential future personnel. Though it was a lot of space for one person to have, she didn't care, as if she was going to be an empress, the palace was going to be grand.

The whole thing was massive in scale, with constant assistance in what should be placed where by a brand new Super Civilian model Constructor automaton she decided to name Juliet. "She" oversaw all construction for the castle, expansion, and even helped control the Drillers for the mine, working on architecture for her building teams for towns and cities as well. Multiple other mines were now opened throughout the West side of the valley, which had her command the drones working in them. Her alter ego, "Romeo" was a Super Military Combat Engineer in control of all military installations that would soon be built, including the new airstrip, about to become an airport if the need arose. Bi planes were used through the skies to ward off any potential attacks from over the mountains, despite there being no known hostiles detected anywhere nearby due to the new scanner towers installed in the mountains, guarded by small platoons of Military Lights and SAM systems. The missiles were basically upgraded spider mines with fin control, making them deadly for everything dragon and below. They would probably take out anything even beyond a dragon, but she didn't know of anything that large beyond future airships she wanted to make.

Gold Pine had started to get used to the improvements that were being planned for their larger town, with the roads cleaned up a little more, lamps installed everywhere, a fire department set up, hospital built and the general store upgrading to three floors. There was even a dentist and barber now open. Faucets were now installed with Unending Flow, with an after system attached. The unlimited water came from something that looked like a garbage disposal, not the actual faucet, allowing a heating unit to be installed above the piping for washing dishes. All torch sconces were replaced with oil lamps throughout the town. Of all the townsfolk, two were taught how to cast Nutrient Replenisher due to a light affinity to magic. They wouldn't be magicians, but they could at least help the rest of the farmers, greatly increasing the yields of vegetables and wheat, even Flax for linen clothing. The quality of the linen wasn't anywhere near what Selene could make, but it was getting better with some of the refugee women from Glass Dale now opening a sewing shop. The bathhouse was enjoyed by everyone, keeping hygiene taken care of, along with pantries added to each house that were fully sealed. They wouldn't keep things cold or hot, but they did keep rats out… which became very rare given the little group of lightning mines hiding away, ready to fry some rodents when they showed their little heads.

The two openings in Boramar Mountains and Azaltos Mountains were being scouted for potential sites to build a naval shipyard. Having some steampunk frigates and destroyers roaming around was going to be interesting for the dev, even some cruisers and battleships if she wanted to make a few. The thought had occurred to her that she could make aircraft carriers, allowing overwhelming force projection from the ground, air and sea. Between airships, aircraft carriers and X Heavy autos, which she was working on getting to but hadn't yet reached its predecessor, there wasn't much of a chance for anything to fight back, let alone a middle ages kingdom. If she threw all of her time into building a massive army, there was a very real possibility of taking over the whole world and even beyond. That thought process would have to wait, as there was no guarantee there were other kingdoms that acted like the people were nothing but dirt. There had to be some governments out there that cared about their citizens.

"Almost done with the fitting" Jeeves said as he put another pin into the clothing Selene was wearing in front of three standing mirrors. The dress wasn't being made for any real purpose, just seeing what could work for a varied wardrobe. She was going to need to start looking the part of an Empress and not some trader or warrior. While her clothes before did let her blend in with the residents at the town, now she needed to look like a true ruler. She finally got around to upgrading to Elite quality tier for equipment, which also went for clothing. Her standard look was that of light banded plate scale mail chest plate that was gold bronze polished, but underneath it was a composite mixture of Steel Tungsten alloy. While the armor was relatively light, it still could keep up with hard strikes against any paneling, which was where the tungsten came into play. Under that was a layer of ceramics with a heavily padded piece underneath made of fine fur and cotton with a silk trim, making it feel very comfortable to move in. The top of the chest wrapped around her neck like a halter top. The chest piece had a matching plated skirt that had a small drape at the crotch guard, with black shorts underneath. Meeting just above the knees were a pair of black stockings with similar gold bronze plate thigh high boots with medium heels and spacers on the edges for better balance.

The pauldrons were sloped and slightly angled with gears and cogs etched into them, a few small gems found where carved and embedded on the edges. To compliment them, black arm gloves were worn with gold bronze plated gauntlets reaching up to her elbows. To wear on her head, there was an open skull helmet that flowed along the sides, with a visor sticking out the front that half of which also locked down and acted as a face mask. All of it was enchanted heavily with health increases, dodge, block, parry, movement speed, stamina and even regeneration and rejuvenation. She had found a trick she could use, given she didn't want to look too ostentatious in front of others, which was to install rings inside the gauntlets themselves, along with rings attached to touch panels in the boots for her toes. All combined, along with three amulets installed into the chest piece, she had thirty-two parts to her armor set, all of which were Elite tier, the same equivalent to high tier for Yggdrasil. Her rings were crafted with resistances in mind, then enchanted with more resistances to magic. With all of them combined, her magic resistance for all forms of attack were at five hundred percent, well over two immunities worth. If there was a spell that could naturally cut through immunity or resistance, it would cancel out the first one, but the second immunity would kick in after, nullifying the spell. She didn't know how high a tier the people on this world had from Yggdrasil, but she knew of some spells that ignored those defenses. Divine Apocalypse features were allowing these high resistances thankfully.

Her amulets were crafted with armor rating increase in mind, with enchanting following the same mindset. While there were certain attacks that would hurt due to no Attribute Points being spent on Pain Tolerance or the health bar, she'd survive without much issue. Her stats were already increased by ten percent across the board due to Elite quality, with modifications she was adding providing some bonuses to the stat boosts. Her crafting of the armor allowed all sorts of different things to be done to it, with hardening done to the plating, enhancing, imprinting the armor to her now that it was a stat boosting armor, which allowed her to improve stats by another three percent. The armor was custom fitted to her as well, nullifying all mobility penalties she might have had with any previous armor. Her earrings when wearing the suit were created to provide a polarizing armor effect, making most metals naturally deflect from hitting her, melee weapon or otherwise. While it wasn't perfect, it did add to dodge, parry and block capability, making it somewhat difficult to land a straight blow to her.

To top it off, there was a thin film she was able to research that allowed immunity to tier one spells. While she didn't know if that would work on Arcanic's Wizardry spells, she somehow had a feeling there weren't any other people who knew those in this world, given she had seen a few traders casting Yggdrasil spells along with that wizard she had killed from the bandit army. She was hopeful in further research projects to figure out how to block tier two and tier three spells as well, potentially getting up to the tenth tier, or even super tier. The capability to ignore some of those would make her feel a lot safer, especially Reality Slash. The film was already being inserted into the frames of the automatons, even the Civilian models and maids. It wouldn't stop much right now, but it was better than nothing, with the armor still doing most of the work. Her Heavy Armor skill was at fifty percent, providing a boost to defense while wearing anything considered heavy; even though the armor she had created was light banded plate scale mail, it still fell into the heavy range.

"Your majesty, we have a bit of problem" she heard through coms as she continued being fitted for her lounging clothing. She already had a silk robe made up for her, along with slippers and comfortable pajamas, but now she needed something that didn't intimidate or make her look like she just woke up. There were going to be three different attires at the start, with far more clothing options later as she got the chance to see designs and styles throughout the continent; there were simple sets of clothing she could use to bum around in as well. The three attires right now were casual, professional, and ball gown, with the ball gown probably never being worn. The professional was going to be a skirt and blouse with flat heeled shoes, a tiara and earrings with a necklace and two rings. She didn't really like wearing a crown and given the fact she didn't have enough gems just yet to craft one that would make most kings cry tears of joy, it was on the back burner. Juliet had already found a decent spot to drill down, finding a few rubies along the way.

"What's the problem Jorge" she asked plainly as Jeeves put another clothes pin to hold a fold. "Gold Pine has something odd happening. Miners just came back carrying some injured from Azaltos Mountains, said something… someone attacked them. Ten in total, the hostiles left after scaring them. One of the miners might not make it, he's been pretty cut up… update on that, he just past away." Despite Jorge not breathing, she could hear an audible sigh from him. "Wait, what? What about the hospital? The auto docs? Surely, they could have stopped that from happening? Where's Turnie? We've got combat medics in both security and military, what are my drones doing? Why didn't they respond to the attack?" she asked, confused as all hell.

"There was something blocking healing from happening, it wasn't poison we know that much. Orlo is looking into it, his theory is it might be a strong curse of some kind originating from somewhere. They did what they could to bandage them up, but in the end, we have at least one casualty. By the time the QRF reached the mine, the hostiles were gone." That got Selene worried. "Where are they mining? Did they hit a ceremonial burial site or something? Did you guys see anything roaming around? I haven't received a single report from the military patrols that anything was around to do that." Ethan chimed in. "Your highness, there's been no sight of anything hostile throughout the valley. Whatever this is, it came in fast and hit hard, then disappeared. We think we might have some spots to investigate, but it's going to take a little time." The dev acknowledged with a sigh. "Keep me in the loop on what you find. Until we figure this out, the miners aren't to go near their tunnels, understood?" Both acknowledged. "Oh, and one more thing. Unless speaking in public, stop with the majesty and highness bullshit. This is just us talking. Ma'am is fine." Jorge acknowledged and cut coms.

Damn it. We just had six days of nothing happening, things were getting better around here. No armies coming to retaliate or search, no brigands, mimics are wiped out in the valley, no disease. Now suddenly this. I wonder what the hell attacked them?

Jeeves finished placement of all needles and clothes pins and helped her get undressed. "I'll have the clothing ready for you by the end of the day your majesty." She thanked him and put on some cotton run arounds, then walked off out of the room and headed towards the treasury vault. There were six Military Heavies guarding the door, with heavy auto turrets that looked more like a tank's gun mount. The armor paneling for them now had magnetorheological layering added, with a brand-new layer of Titanium Tungsten alloy as the standard material used. Combined with the other defenses installed, polarizing armor, sonic defenses, microwave emitters and even Foucault current systems just to name a few, and it was surprisingly difficult to harm them. They even had reactive armor plating installed. While there was no energy shielding quite just yet, it was coming. Testing showed long rod penetrator shells couldn't punch through the armor paneling with all defenses on, couldn't even come within a foot before most of it was slapped away or destroyed.

The main gun for the auto turret was a 40mm Autocannon, not the thing she had previously used to fire grapeshot at bandits, but a fully auto Vulcan cannon that could potentially be used as the spinal mount for old fighter jets used for close air support and anti-tank combat. They used specially hardened armor piercing and magic piercing ammunition with hardness rating on the Mohs Scale of roughly 12 specially researched, with an absolute hardness of well over 2500, causing the barrels to have limited anti-gravity fields so they wouldn't just fall apart from the bullets flying out and shredding the metal. If they fired, there was a good chance the solid walls behind her would be vaporized, along with anything standing between the walls and the bullets. The vault opened for her, detecting her as the creator immediately, allowing entrance to the huge open cavern that was the treasury. The ceiling reached up to roughly one hundred meters, but it wasn't the height that mattered in here, but the number of floors going down. There was an entire extra palace below ground set just for the coin she had access to now, with no piles of money, just small vaults with organized cases and coin slots. The treasury could be easily expanded as needed, with a new project already being researched to spatially dilate the floors, allowing "condensing" of space to make it larger than it really was.

This place is gonna turn into the Tardis. It'll be bigger on the inside!

What she knew she had right now was well over one hundred thousand gold, with another five thousand platinum; some silver and copper was also available when needed. All her coin was completely replaced with newly minted ones, with the workings of a clock stamped onto each one. The quality was quite a bit better than the old currency used, harder and more difficult to chip or damage. While in her head it might be interesting to insert paper currency to the economy, she doubted the citizens of the Clockwork Empire would take to it very well until there was a far larger populace, and a banking system governmentally controlled. Gold Pine had its currency changed to her own now, given they were her subjects. The coins could be injected into her inventory at any moment, so there was no real need to go down into the treasury unless she was checking on artifacts or special objects stored down here.

As she walked towards a certain brand-new dais, the latch system unlocked at her presence and allowed the Orb of Experiences to float above it with help from an anti-gravity field. "Alright… let's see just how much you've built up these past… few… days… whoa…" she trailed off as her eyes stared at the orb. There was a new color building up from the bottom, a deep blue that couldn't decide if it was going to be a fine powder or a carbonated liquid, so it looked like both at the same time. As her Hud scanned the object, her eyes widened in surprise. Every drone that was working right now was connected to it, excluding the Supers as they weren't drones and had personality cores. Her Civilian models were working in the farms, mines and constantly cleaning or building or taking care of her, the Security Models were patrolling the walls and maintaining watch over her castle as well as Gold Pine and the road down, the Military models were mobilized and moving throughout the valley, trying to find targets to eliminate, with Honor Guard… standing in the Throne room looking good or placed throughout the castle to guard. The amount of experience and action points the thing was carrying due to their actions was… astounding.

The total number of experience it had was well in excess of two hundred levels easily due to the number of things all the automatons did. Even combat for the drones was deemed higher exp compared to the constant trickle from the Drillers and Woodcutters. The Action Points could easily make her hit another five tech tiers right now without even trying, probably more towards seven or eight. The next normal tech tier was Pre-Atomic Age, which was pretty much World War II level technology. Having drone versions of a P-51D Mustang flying around or mixtures of war planes steampunked would be amazing as a replacement to her bi planes. While bi planes would still have a nice use for scouting and light reconnaissance, the turbo props would be damned effective in the sky against any aerial threat, with potential to even bypass those and adding early jet fighters like the Gloster Meteor.