Chapter 41: Traveling Deeper

Simultaneously, as this was taking place, Gramps passed out almost immediately on one of the other couches a ways away from us, leaving Alice and me to cuddle up together and talk. After chatting about this and that for some time, I decided to see how she was doing regarding what she witnessed today.

"Alice, how're you doing regarding what you saw today? I know it was a lot, so I want to see how you're holding up."

"I'm fine. It got easier and easier to watch and experience as it went on, so I believe when my time comes, when I'll have to do something similar, I'll be more than ready for it."

"Hmm, in that case, why don't you join gramps and I after we've gotten rid of the moleman king? I pretty much know what to expect from the molemen at this point going off of this trip, so I can basically assure your safety when we're in there."

"You really mean it?" She inquired excitedly, with a glimmer in her eyes.

"Yup, we'll jus-." Before I could finish my sentence, Alice excitedly jumped on me.

…

After dealing with Alice's excited state, I continued from where I hadn't finished. "As I was saying, we're just going to need to make you a heavy trooper suit, and you'll be ready."

"So, when are we going to make the armor?"

"When we've dealt with the moleman king so probably in the next several days."

After our conversation, we talked for a bit longer, got up, and proceeded to the manufacturing area to get some work done. Whilst Alice was doing her studying on her personal laptop, I was busy assembling more turrets to add to the ever-increasing defenses I had set up in the mine tunnel. A few hours flew on by when it was time to wrap things up and head home for the day.

I accomplished a substantial amount today. I ventured into the mine and cave system, eliminated thousands of molemen alongside the old man and my robots. On top of all that, I assembled 10 more ZBR-2 Laser Turrets in the last few whilst the robots were working feeding materials to the various automated manufacturing machines and handling their many tasks in the production area to keep everything moving at a smooth pace.

Finished and ready to head home, I wandered over to Alice, who wasn't that far off from where I was doing my work, and said. "Hey, Alice, I'm going to have the Multibots install the last turret and then we'll wake up, gramps, and go home."

"Okay, I'll wrap up my studying and follow along."

Calling several of my Multibots with the unique ability I gained recently, I had them take the turret I threw together moments ago and go install it with the other nine I had them install earlier, and in only 15 minutes they had completed the job I had given them. With everything handled that needed to be, I and my partner in crime made our way to the planning/relaxing area and woke up the sleeping bear, gramps, so he could take us home.

"What do you two rascals want?" Gramps grumbled out still half asleep.

"It's time to go home, gramps, it's the end of the day."

"It's been that long already, has it? Alright, let's pile into my truck and head home."

Piling into his truck, he dropped Alice and me at my home and took off when we waved him goodbye and had gone inside. Entering through the front door, we saw my mom was busy whipping up dinner in the kitchen, thus Alice and I walked in there and greeted her before joining her in preparing the meal. Following the large dinner we both assisted in making, we turned in for the night with the rest of the family.

…

The next day, after going through all the usual stuff that happens in the morning, we were back at the Genesis Foundry.

"Here's the plan for today. Gramps and I are going into the cave system to continue clearing out the molemen and if we come across the Moleman King, cool, if not, we'll keep looking until we do or it's time to wrap things up and head on back." I said, getting a simple nod of the head from gramps.

"As for you, Alice, you'll continue watching from here and studying."

"Okay." She replied simply.

Getting up from the couch in the planning slash relaxation area, Alice pulled me aside whilst sending my gramps ahead to plant a kiss on my lips.

"Quite aggressive today aren't we." I commented, smirking.

"Hehehe, only doing what a good wife is supposed to do." She replied sweetly in her usual soothing voice.

We shared a few words with each other before I detached from her and said my goodbyes. "Well, I'm off. I'll catch you later, babe."

"See ya darling, and good luck finding the Moleman King."

As Alice was waving goodbye to me, I waved back as I departed. Leaving the planning and relaxation area behind, I sped off to the armory to get kitted. Directly after reaching the armory, I made my way inside, meeting back up with gramps who had most of his gear on already. Not looking to have him waiting for me, I quickly reached where my own gear was located and began throwing it all on.

Getting my armor on as well as the rest of wearable gear, I grabbed the three weapons I was using yesterday, yet as I was slinging the FBLAR-1 Laser Assault Rifles onto my back, a thought occurred to me.

I ran out of ammo for my NPDM the previous day. Maybe I should swap to something else… I would take the 5.56mm minigun, but the 1,000 round backpack mag is just too small for my liking. With its current capacity, I would only be able to fire the weapon continuously for 15 seconds before emptying the magazine in its entirety. Hence, that weapon is out at least until I make larger capacity magazines for it.

Honestly, I'm gonna need to resolve this issue sooner or later since I can't be running out of ammo for my primary weapon and being left to akimbo two FBLAR-1 Laser Assault Rifles as cool as that is. To resolve this dilemma of mine, I can go about this a few different ways, one I can just make a significantly larger backpack magazine, or two I can take the gatling laser design I have on hand that's currently implemented in the Crusader robot design and modify it to fusion breeder power, or three I can make a whole new weapon that specifically fulfills my needs and wants.

Hmm, or I could do all three, going down that route will give me more versatility and give my growing arsenal more selection that everyone part of my group including myself to choose from… Yep, I'ma go that route and it's not like it would take me all that long to do all three so why the hell not.

Plans to expand my armory's selection even further, I pulled a bunch more NPDM drum magazines and placed them on my war belt, nearly doubling my ammo capacity as compared to the previous day. Taking my NPDM into my hands next, I put the sling over my head and rested the light machine gun on my front before walking for the armory's exit the very next second.

Meeting back up with gramps who had finished gearing up before me, the two of us set off for the mine tunnel entrance. We quickly arrived at the huge armored doors I had blocking the entrance to the mine tunnel faster than yesterday since we were pretty gung ho about getting in there eliminating the moleman king.

Joining my robots that were already there armed to the teeth and ready to go on another moleman killing spree, we quickly left the facility behind us and entered the incredibly dark cave system again, that was sparsely lit up by luminescent plants in certain areas.

Deciding to backtrack through the same route we took the day before to the main chamber, we encountered molemen once again on route, although drastically fewer compared to the previous day. Quickly taking out whatever we came across, our group made record time and reached the passage to the main chamber again. Continuing forward, we met the heaviest amount of resistance in the tunnel we had experienced thus far throughout this entire molemen extermination mission.

Over the next several minutes, we killed and slaughtered a whole shitload of molemen while we tanked dozens of rounds from them that did absolutely nothing to us when their bullets met our armor. Dispatching the last of them, we pushed onward into the main chamber and came face to face with the chamber filled again with plenty of molemen, so with the target rich environment we had for ourselves we pointed our guns in the direction of the crowds vermin and opened fire repeating the massacre we committed the prior day.

I don't know how long it took, but we had refilled the chamber with well over a thousand molemen corpses. Thus, with nothing else left to shoot here, we stepped over the many bodies strewn about as best we could, blood splashing about at nearly every step we took.

Thank god I got my helmet on and it's fully enclosed. The stench has got to be something else, with these bodies leaking all sorts of fluids and that's not even considering the mass amounts of burnt flesh our laser fire caused.

Crossing the corpse covered cave floor, we continued our journey on a path that led deeper into the cave system. The reason we were going this way instead of taking one of the many other passages was because this route led to a comparatively smaller chamber deep within the cave system that I believe has a pretty high chance of being the moleman king's lair.

I have nothing to go off of to say if it will even be there other than my intuition but it is the deepest chamber so might as well go check there first to see if he's taken up residence in what could be considered the safest place in this entire system.

Right off the rip, we immediately began having to fight large numbers of armed molemen, leading credence to the idea that we were going down the right path. Traversing the expansive cave system, we fought tooth and nail with the many molemen that inhabited this part of the cave network and entered into melee combat with the molerat folk more than a dozen times.

With all the melee combat I've been doing, I'm going to need to expand my firearm upgrade to include melee weapons, too. My gramps old combat knife just ain't cutting it with this many enemies.

Another weapon added to my growing arsenal upgrade, I ripped my gramp's old combat knife from the now deceased moleman's flesh whom I had just killed moments prior. Before the blood could start spraying from the dead moleman's neck and dirty my armor any further than it already was, I kicked the body back, sending it flying into the group of molemen we were currently fighting it out with. The dead mutant's body struck three of its kind and took them down to the passage's floor, and once they were down, I raised my NPDM and fired off a three-round burst, one bullet for each of three lucky molemen.

Those four molemen eliminated, I raised my weapon and continued to slaughter and dispatch one hostile after the next over the hours, with my prospectron scanning all about for resources. After said hours, we finally began closing in on our destination and as we got closer and closer to it, we encountered even heavier resistance, as if that was even possible. Pouring lead and laser fire down the passage, our rounds and beams impacted the many molemen that were charging towards us, ripping through and burning sizable holes in their bodies.

When the last of them dropped dead and collapsed onto the cave tunnel's floor, I looked at gramps and said. "That appears to be the last. Let's go see if that moleman king is truly down here."

"Lead the way then, kid." The old man responded in his usual rough and masculine sounding voice.

Leading the way forward with gramps following right on my flank, ready to take out whatever we come across along with my small robot army, we climbed over the bodies and moved the ones blocking our path out of the way and closed in on the entrance.

Reaching the entrance, we forewent stealth and pushed inside since there was no reason to stealthily peek inside to see what the situation was when we had more than already announced our presence to whoever and whatever was inside with all the killing we were doing.

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