Archeologist Warlord: A Dungeon Core Epic

by E. M. Hardy

  From the dolls, Martin learned that his soul was in a pyramid buried deep inside the mountain face. He learned that the dolls were set out by the voice, the Custodian, to begin repairing what they could and salvaging the rest. They were to begin gathering mud to replace rusted metal components and weathered silicone conduits with ceramic transmission lines. They would shift the power transmission from electric to pnevmatic—allowing Martin’s soul to command them with a mere thought. All this to ensure that Martin’s soul would take over once the Custodian was shut down.

  And that purpose shook Martin out of his reverie.

  “What… what is all this? How is this possible? No, what did you do to me!?”

  “Yes. You… getting the h-hang of it. You control them, Mar-Martin Fuller. You control them all.”

  “You, whatever you are, you have to explain all this. It’s… it’s too sudden!”

  Static filled Martin’s mind, followed by garbled words. A bright surge filled Martin’s awareness, and for the briefest of moments, Martin ‘felt’ the Custodian struggle in its last moments as the dolls began disconnecting the last of the decayed conduits from the pyramid.

  “I… finally fulfilled my purpose.” It spoke clearly, without any of the stuttering. Somehow, this hammered home to Martin that he was, indeed, listening to the Custodian’s final words. “It’s all up to you now, Martin Fuller. Go. Go forth and learn what you can of this world. Your soul, the goodness in your soul… listen to it. You will need it to protect the people of this world against the coming doom. Please… save them. Protect them… against… the… e…ne…my…”

  And with that final plea, Custodian 4299 winked out of existence as its last memory crystal cracked and vented its precious contents into the empty air.

  Chapter 04

  Martin should have been supremely pissed at his situation, which amounted to forced conscription. Being ripped up from his home and then obliged to fight someone else’s war against an enemy he didn’t even know about? That malarkey about ‘goodness in his soul’ sounded nice and all that, but it still didn’t justify what he was being forced to do.

  Martin, however, was not the type to mope around. Getting back up again after taking his punches was a way of life for him, and this was one of those situations where he needed to get up pronto. When there is a problem in front of you, spend less time moping around and more time exploring your options. That is exactly what Martin did when the Custodian died out on him.

  The Custodian called them Shaper-class constructs, but Martin just couldn’t force himself to call them anything else except dolls. Sure, they were real nifty at repairing stuff, but they still toddled along like five-year-old kids with stubby limbs and roly-poly bellies. Heck, he caught a couple damaged ones playing with each other. It started when they slipped and fell while dismantling an old generator—breaking their legs in the process. They proceeded to slap their pudgy little clay hands together in a game of patty-cake while waiting for the other dolls to bring up paste to repair them. Watching two dolls slap their hands together, their legs all in pieces, left Martin scratching his head in amazement. Figuratively speaking, of course.

  It had been a busy week since Martin was dragged into wherever the heck he found himself in. His days were filled with creating dolls and then setting them to fix up the pyramid, tearing down the old facilities, and hauling up more clay from the tunnel shafts leading deeper into the mountain. Watching his little horde fascinated him to no end. They crawled all over the pyramid, replacing all the corroded electrical components and slapping paste all over the place. Anything the paste touched extended his reach, allowing him to ‘feel’ his way into the various facilities within the pyramid.

  As his dolls fixed up the pyramid and began restoring it back to life, he couldn’t help but dwell on what the Custodian had told him.

  “‘Protect the people of this world from the coming doom,’ huh? Well, that’s not vague or anything like that. What do you guys think?”

  The dolls shrugged as one before ignoring him and going about their business. He didn’t expect an answer, as the dolls seemed to be mute, but their antics and non-verbal replies helped keep him somewhat sane. Seeing through the eyes of hundreds of dolls still shook him when he thought about the impossibility of the whole thing. Nope. Nothing terrifying at all about suddenly being able to split your attention to hundreds of little dolls each doing their thing with but a mere thought from you.

  Multitasking—that was what he told himself to help settle him down. He simply thought about how his mom could juggle a few dozen thoughts at the same time, and that his situation was just like that—except scaled up by a factor of thirty or so. It helped him out a lot in ignoring the strangeness of it all, simply accepting what was happening with as much stoicism as his sanity could muster.

  But Martin couldn’t let himself be contained in this small mountain pyramid of his. The Custodian had tasked him with going forth and learning what he could of this world, so his first instinct was to flip him off and do the exact opposite. Thinking rationally, however, he still needed to check out his surroundings. It would still take some time to completely clear and repair the pyramid, anyway. He had also created more dolls that had nothing else to do except play tag, jump-rope, patty-cake, and all sorts of games. As adorable as they were to watch, he needed to do more than just bum around and wait for stuff to happen. So he sent the extra dolls out of the pyramid, exploring in all directions.

  He swore they grumbled in disappointment before they broke up their games and began marching out of the pyramid.

  If there was one good thing that came out of this whole ordeal though, it was that he no longer heard the shouts and whispers of tortured souls crying out for release. It was like living by the sea your entire life, hearing the waves crash on the shore day-in and day-out, only to move into a quiet village deep in the mountains. He almost didn’t notice, though. The voices of the suffering dead had taught him to focus on what he needed to in his day-to-day life. He learned early on to split his attention and screen out the stuff that didn’t matter; it made this whole affair of seeing through hundreds of ‘windows’ a lot easier to deal with. Guess those dead ghosts haunting him in his youth were preparing him for this new headache in his life.

  Soon enough, Martin discovered that the mountain range he found himself in, what the Custodian called the Qleb Sierra, was ridiculously treacherous to navigate. His dolls had a hard time finding a path through the mountains and ravines, so they often had to clear out the way before they could get anywhere. Breaking rocks, smoothing out inclines, creating paths, solidifying loose soil with paste—he was surprised at how effective they were at engineering, being extremely adept not just at breaking down their environment but shaping it as well. They definitely deserved their names as Shapers, as they ended up carving paths around the slopes of the mountains and reinforcing the slopes with retaining rock walls to prevent landslides.

  He was still going to call them dolls, though.

  Another neat side-effect of carving out paths through the mountains was that his dolls would sometimes stumble across metal and mineral deposits. They’d vacuum a few samples up, swallow them into their bellies, and pass information on to Martin that these resources would be worth mining out later on. He flagged them down, and kept them in mind for when the pyramid would be cleared out and the production facilities fully repaired.

  While his dolls were busy creating passages, he sent smaller bands of twelve dolls to scout out ahead. To the north lay jagged mountains that were just as devoid of life as the ones near his pyramid. While steep ridges corralled most of his dolls in, he found a relatively navigable route through a valley that wound directly north. The valley was filled with various mineral and metal deposits as well, giving him another reason to carve a path through them. He also found another rich source of clay—perfect for ramping up production when the factories would come back online. He sent more of his newly-produced
dolls this way to build roads toward the resources.

  The dolls he sent to the east didn’t get far, though. They ended up on a sheer cliff that extended for miles to the north and south. Jagged rocks lined the bottom of the cliffs, which were battered by large, violent waves that did not seem to let up at any time of the day. The two moons illuminating the night might have looked pretty, but they played hell on the tides as he observed ten-foot-tall waves crash into each other to form destructive whirlpools.

  To the west lay a wide, expansive desert filled with sandy dunes and rocky outcrops. He sent his dolls to explore further, and found a very interesting limitation to his control over the dolls. He noticed that they began to become sluggish when they travelled far enough from his pyramid. This sluggishness increased the further they travelled, and lifted slowly as he had them turn around back to his pyramid. That’s when he learned that his control over his dolls was limited to a certain range. It was something he kept in mind as the dolls in his pyramid sifted through the ruined facilities. Maybe there would be something there to help him extend his range of control?

  And finally, to the south lay a lush jungle. It looked promising at first, until a camouflaged creature snapped up three of his dolls, a gigantic pitcher-plant snared one, a flying creature carried off two, and a huge bear-like creature trampled the rest of the scouting squad—all within an hour of entering the jungle’s thick undergrowth. Martin was becoming attached to the little tykes and they faced their ends stoically, but seeing them torn up so horribly like that disturbed him more than he’d admit.

  It took about a week of hard digging for the dolls to broke through a collapsed tunnel and reveal what seemed to be an archive. Row upon row of ruined machines lined the walls of the room, tall as two men and stacked with various data storage devices. The vast majority of these banks were quite thoroughly ruined, the information stored in their components corroded beyond recovery. Three databanks, however, were still operational. Martin promptly sent a team of dolls carrying paste to see if they could recover the information within. One thorough pasting later, and Martin could ‘see’ what they contained.

  The converted databanks held schematics for new ceramic constructs. One of them was the Loader, which looked a lot like that cow-box thing that he had encountered during his trials. These four-legged constructs could transport significantly heavier loads than their smaller doll counterparts, up to three tons each. That was a lot of weight considering these constructs were about as large as a cow and carried the entire load on their backs. Martin, of course, refused to call them by their official designation of Loader-class constructs. To him, they would forever be cow-boxes.

  The second new schematic covered these little orbs that were about a foot in diameter. The plans told him that these orbs could float about and came equipped with higher-grade optics than most other constructs. They could also operate significantly further away from a pyramid than his dolls, functioning at distances that would render other constructs inert. These properties would make the Drifter-class constructs useful scouts, zipping through the air and eyeing points of interest. The optics and the spherical shape, however, made them look more like huge eyeballs made of clay. They also let him see a lot further and wider than what his dolls could. He could even squeeze their sight to magnify distant objects, like a telescope. And so in true Martin fashion, he decided to call them as he saw them: eyeballs.

  The third schematic didn’t concern new constructs, though. Instead, it contained plans for an obelisk of some sort. These obelisks weren’t just simple pillars of clay or stone. They housed small little transmitters that served to extend Martin’s ability to control his constructs. He could plop down these obelisks every dozen miles or so, and he’d be able to send his dolls an equal distance before they started to get sluggish. They needed power though, so Martin would have to task his dolls with laying down lines of paste from his pyramid to these obelisks.

  All three schematics proved to be of immense use to Martin. His cow-boxes made transporting resources a lot faster, even to the point where he began storing more mud than he could convert into usable paste. This overflow accelerated when his dolls finished their roads to the mud-mines to the north. His dolls began repairing other factories to help bring production on par with the resources being hauled in, which allowed him to build even more dolls and cow-boxes to further ramp up pyramid repairs and construct production. Obelisks allowed him to extend his range of control, meaning his dolls and cow-boxes could gradually reach further away from his central pyramid. It took some time to set up the obelisks and their requisite power lines underground, but the tireless efforts of his doll swarms made the task a lot more manageable.

  His eyeballs though, those were the constructs that completely changed Martin’s perspective on things—literally and figuratively. They could operate nearly a hundred miles further than their doll counterparts, which coupled with their ability to simply fly over terrain brought in valuable information on Martin’s surroundings. They would scout out the way and help him plan ahead while his dolls were busy laying down roads, power lines, and obelisks.

  Even now, their extensive range allowed Martin to gain a clearer picture of the area all around him.

  The mountains off to the north only got more rugged the further he got from his pyramid. His eyeballs, however, helped spot easier routes for the dolls and cow-boxes to build more roads into. A few weeks of steady expansion, and Martin eventually broke through the mountains and into a new land. Thick swamps revealed themselves, filled with vast reserves of mud that would be useful for creating more constructs. He could also spot a few peat bogs, which would come in handy in the future.

  What really caught his attention, however, was this strange pull he felt from his eyeballs. They seemed drawn to something deep in the swamps, something tugging at the link connecting the eyeballs to Martin, and he decided to send them off to check out the source of this signal. It was at the very edge of Martin’s ability to control the eyeballs, and it would take the dolls much longer to reach as they needed to build a path around a deep crevice blocking the way to the swamp.

  He couldn’t spot it at first, being so well-hidden by vegetation and virtually swallowed up by muck. Upon closer inspection though, Martin could make out the crusted tip of a pyramid peeking out from the swamp mud. Once his eyeballs got close enough to the pyramid, Martin could suddenly feel himself expand. Or rather, it was his awareness that expanded beyond what it used to be. He eagerly linked up with the pyramid via the eyeball, hungry to discover what it contained for him.

  And he promptly deflated in disappointment.

  The pyramid was mostly dead, with water from the swamp claiming the vast majority of its interior. Anything not submerged in water was rusted or corroded away by the elements, what with the cloying moisture of the swamp getting into all the pyramid’s circuitry and machinery. Only a beacon at the very tip of the pyramid functioned, and even it showed signs of damage. It finally broke down when Martin’s consciousness connected with it, resulting in his awareness suddenly winking out and reverting back to its limited state.

  It did, however, give him a project to work on. He began dedicating most of his dolls toward building roads and obelisks toward the pyramid to the north. If his first pyramid was any indication—the one hidden in the mountains of the Qleb Sierra—then perhaps this sunken pyramid could hold facilities or archives of great use. It would take a lot of time, though, and he wouldn’t be able to explore further without the obelisks extending the range of his eyeballs.

  While the swamp pyramid was intriguing, his other eyeballs exploring the deserts west found something else of interest. The desert near the mountains was mostly inhospitable sand, but his eyeballs spotted huge sandstone formations off in the distance. Upon closer scrutiny, Martin noticed that these red behemoths were filled with ridges intricately patterned into waves—evidence of this land once being home to an ancient lake or river of some sort. He even d
iscovered a few springs where water still flowed from deep underground up to the surface, along with the familiar ‘pull’ of what he expected to be a pyramid hidden near one of these springs.

  It was during his exploration of these sandstone ridges that one of Martin’s eyeballs found his first sign of human life: a group of rag-tag individuals hiding under the shade of one of the ridges. His first human contact in this strange land!

  Martin’s curiosity buzzed within his mindscape. He tore his attention away from more than a thousand windows, and zoomed his focus upon this small group.

  Those were apparently travelers, what with their light bags and camels herded in an alcove, though they looked worse for wear. They wore loose-fitting robes filled with rips and tears, thoroughly browned by dust and dirt. The scarves covering their heads were grimy and just as dirty as the rest of their apparel. They were crowded around a single waterskin, and they looked like they were rationing out the liquid within the group. However, the man holding the waterskin waved everyone off soon enough and brought it to someone lying down on the ground—someone injured, Martin noted when he adjusted the optics of the eyeball. His arm and a portion of his head were bandaged, though he appeared to be conscious despite his injuries.

  “Well, these folks look like they need a hand,” Martin said with great gusto to no one in particular—hoping that he could finally find some answers from someone who wasn’t going to die in the next five minutes. “Now… do these eyeballs of mine have a speaker system of sort?”

  Chapter 05

  Prince Suhaib Ma’an was not a happy prince at that moment. How in the fiery pits of Jahannam did the cartels discover his excursion, he ignored. Maybe one of the emir’s advisors had leaked his plans to find an alternate trade route, an overland one that the cartels couldn’t strangle with their fleets of pirate cutters. Maybe one of the many servant spies in the palace was keeping an eye out for suspicious movement, and had discovered him preparing for a journey. Maybe one of the street urchins watching the gates couldn’t resist making a few coins and had tattled to the nearest informer.