The Station Core_A Dungeon Core Epic

by Jonathan Brooks

  Since it couldn’t fix itself, the drones that he had left behind when he had blacked out continued to follow their last instructions – which, fortunately, were to help him fine-tune his trap and reset it when it failed. Therefore, at the moment, the pit trap was ready for any other attackers – which was important because he had the feeling that more were coming. He put it down to luck that he hadn’t been attacked by anything as dangerous as the Scaly Bear or, heaven forbid, something that could jump or fly over his pit.

  Even though his leaking radiation wasn’t collecting in one place anymore, it had been accumulating in such concentrations for so long that Milton thought for sure it had wafted out of his dungeon and spread to the surrounding area topside. In fact, based on what he had learned from ALANNA about it during one of their early talks, there was no way to get rid of it completely except for waiting thousands of years – possibly more. That meant that the more he just existed – even if he didn’t do anything else – the radiation would continue to build and spread uncontrollably. His “filtering” system with the water was a great solution to avoid lethal concentrations, but it wouldn’t stop the spreading of his leakage.

  All that ultimately meant was that he had to prepare more defenses for whatever he could imagine coming his way. Even if he didn’t have his You Break, You Buy quest to advise him, he knew he had to do whatever he could to protect himself, and by extension, ALANNA. To that effect, he used his new, hard-earned Rudimentary Defensive Trap Design and Basic Mechanical Engineering skills to good use.

  First, he looked again at his pit trap with a new set of “eyes”, using his drones to make little tweaks here-and-there to improve the reliability and functionality of the defense. While he was there, he also had his drone travel down to the bottom of the pit and remove the decaying remains of the Greywiener, bringing it back to his Core so he could convert it and made it available to create as a Combat Unit.[12] The spikes he had created on the bottom of the pit looked like they had held up well, with absolutely no damage from the small critter who had fallen in. He expected that if a Scaly Bear or something bigger were to fall inside, he’d have a little bit of repairing to do.

  After initiating a more strenuous testing program for his trap – including activating it with a massive push, a slight tap, and even a makeshift attempt at pretending to try to hold on to it while falling – Milton determined that unless something deliberately destroyed it or messed with its mechanisms it would function correctly for quite a while. It would probably need regular maintenance to ensure it was working properly, but overall, he was a lot more confident in it and was happy with what he had accomplished.

  He determined that his next order of business was to create some more defenses to defend against creatures that wouldn’t be stopped by his pit trap. And, of course, that was when he was attacked by something that the pit trap wouldn’t stop.

  “Looks like you’ve got incoming, Milton. Check further down the tunnel from your fucking pit.” ALANNA told him.

  “Thanks, I’m already on it.”

  While he was contemplating the location and design of his next trap, one of his sensor orbs stationed throughout the tunnel caught a glimpse of something on the far edge of its range. This small movement inside his dungeon caught Milton’s attention, since there shouldn’t be anything moving down there – all his drones were near the pit trap. This disturbance was located about a hundred feet further in from his pit trap and around a turn, so he was sure it wasn’t something that he had a hand in. Sending his orb closer for a better look, he found something he wasn’t expecting.

  Pieces of sandstone had broken off the wall and were lying on the ground, scattered around a small opening in the uniform face of the tunnel. As his orb stayed watching, additional pieces of sandstone cracked and broke apart, as if something were punching his tunnel from the other side, looking for a way in. Wholly unprepared for an invasion from a different entrance point, he recalled his drones to his Core room while he continued to watch the progress of whatever was trying to break in.

  Thinking quickly, aided in part by his increased Processing Speed/Agility statistic, he looked over what resources he had in hand to work with.[13] Essentially, he still had leftover organic material from the cut-down trees, dirt and rocks from his excavations, and of course water. He had a bit of pure water stored away but had access to a whole lot more if he needed it in the form of his “filter”. Not much, but he knew that it would have to be enough if he wanted to create something to defend against this invader.

  Realizing that he didn’t have enough time to come up with a more permanent solution, Milton decided that the best short-term defense was to make something that his drones could attack with. While visions of arming them with guns or swords made him smile, it just wasn’t feasible at the moment based on his resources. Instead he came up with a three-pronged defensive strategy.

  He started pooping out parts for his drones to assemble into two portable weapons. With his new skills, he found it easier to determine what parts were needed and how to assemble them into something more effective. When he finished creating the different parts he had the drones start to assemble the weapons he had in mind.

  They were crude, but he thought they had a good chance of working. The first one looked like a short, two-wheeled, wooden wheelbarrow frame with handles and two wooden wheels, attached by hard stone axles and greased with a generous application of oil to allow them to spin. On top of the wheeled frame was a structure that had a heavy, long, sharpened, and two-sided granite blade that had a hole in the middle of it. The blade was placed toward the front of the structure, with a strong wooden pole running through the middle of it and additional pieces of wood and stone keeping it centered on the pole. Wrapped around and attached to the bottom of the pole was a very long piece of rope, which could be pulled and set the pole – and by extension, the blade – spinning quickly enough that it made a whistling noise as it spun. The handles and wheels attached to the frame would allow his drones to adjust the angle of attack so that it could slice into something closer to the ground if need be. In a sense, it looked like a lawnmower if you were to flip it upside down and have the blade situated toward the front.

  His second portable weapon was like the first, with a wooden wheelbarrow frame and front wheels. On top of that, however, was a small ballista, complete with bow pieces made of shaped wood, strong rope for the string, and a stone channel that the bolts could sit in. Overall, it looked like very crude giant crossbow that was sitting on a cart and shot stone-tipped bolts fletched in leaves instead of feathers. The aiming could be adjusted by raising and lowering the entire contraption – not the best solution, but it was the best he could come up with in the short amount of time he had left.

  Speaking of which, with the time it took to assemble his weapons, the invader had finally broken through the wall of his dungeon and climbed out through the hole it had made. It was much smaller than he had expected, especially with the amount of strength he assumed it took to dig through the dirt and break through his stone wall. It looked like a small badger but instead of fur it had a hard, yet flexible, exoskeleton surrounding its body. It also had some large, serrated, and lethal-appearing claws on its paws – which explained how it had broken through the sandstone structure supporting his tunnel. Does everything have these killer-looking claws, or did I just happen to be unlucky enough to find them? he questioned internally.

  His drones had just finished his third defense and scrambled back to their weapons by the time the Clawed Badger made it around the last turn in the tunnel. He had positioned his ballista out front so that he’d be able to get some ranged damage in and potentially destroy the threat from a distance. His primitive lawnmower was placed right behind his ballista in case his bolts didn’t work.

  The Clawed Badger didn’t even react to the sight of his weapons as it slowly ambled its way down the tunnel toward his Core room. Of course, that could be because there was no light that far down a
nd the creature was most likely blind if it spent most of its time underground. Either way, it didn’t react until the first bolt rebounded off the top of its body, doing very little damage but pissing it off. A high keening sound emerged from the badger, causing Milton to want to cover his non-existent ears and distracting him from the fight for a few precious seconds.

  In those few seconds, the Clawed Badger had rushed forward toward his ballista and sliced into the framework of the weapon. The wood practically disintegrated under the blows until there was nothing recognizable as a ballista. His drone wasn’t even able load another bolt before it was forced to retreat under the enraged-badger onslaught, scuttling back into the Core room to relative safety.

  As it continued its mission to reach the source of the radiation it was sensing, the Clawed Badger approached and paused as it heard his lawnmower start up. Safely behind the contraption, he had two drones working together to operate the weapon – one to pull the rope setting the blade spinning and the other to move the entire structure. Angled downwards, the quickly-spinning blade cut through the air with a high-pitched whine as it was shoved right into the face of the attacking creature. As the badger tried to back away in uncertainty, it wasn’t fast enough to avoid the sharp granite blade as it sliced into its nose and jaw. Dark blood erupted from its destroyed nose and the blade scored a lucky hit as the lower half of its mouth was cleanly cut away, leaving the wounded creature to start its keening again – which ended up cutting off as blood filled its breathing passageways.

  Choking on its own vital fluids, the badger panicked and started attacking everything around it with its claws. Unfortunately for Milton, his drones had kept up the attack and when his spinning blade connected with the razor-sharp claws it was sliced apart in seconds. With nothing to attack the badger with anymore, his last two drones scuttled back to his Core Room.

  Continuing to attack in a frenzy, the Clawed Badger demolished the rest of his lawnmower until it was lying in pieces next to his ballista. With nothing else hindering its way, the bleeding and wheezing beast trudged toward its original destination. Milton could see the badger from his own Core room, about a hundred feet down the tunnel. With nothing impeding its progress, he watched as it lumbered forward, literally tripping over the tripwire he had placed along the corridor.

  With the tripwire activation, a huge section of ceiling came crashing down, landing on the Clawed Badger and sending out shards of sandstone as it impacted against the floor.

  Congratulations! You have defeated Clawed Badger! You gain 50 experience!

  Congratulations! You have increased your Combat Level!

  Current Combat Level: 3

  Experience: 753/1500

  By raising your Combat Level, you can choose to prioritize the development of certain statistics. In addition, your Combat Units will receive a 2% (per Combat Level) increase in their own attack and defensive abilities.

  Current Points to Allocate: 3

  Current Combat Unit A/D Increase: 6%

  He thought he heard a faint *pop* as the badger was squished flat, which he instantly brought up on his sensor orb replays and, sure enough, there was a *pop*. He so wasn’t looking forward to cleaning up the mess from that.

  Chapter 13 – Trap design 2.0

  Despite feeling like I’m flying by the seat of my pants, at least I’m improving. In addition to increasing his Combat Level during that last “fight” and obtaining two more points to allocate to his stats, he also received an additional skill and skill-ups.

  Congratulations!

  You have upgraded the skill: Rudimentary Defensive Trap Design (Level 2)

  Allows the design and creation of rudimentary defensive traps using available resources. Also provides the ability to create blueprints of any previously created traps so that they can be created again by your drones without supervision. Create additional defensive traps to upgrade this skill.

  Current skill level allows: Improvised single-use defenses, planned reusable defenses

  You have upgraded the skill: Basic Mechanical Engineering (Level 2)

  Further imparts the knowledge of basic mechanical engineering for use in defensive structures and traps. Additionally, the skill provides information regarding materials, movement forces, and testing procedures. Continue to use your current engineering knowledge and expand on different ideas to improve this skill.

  Congratulations!

  You have acquired the skill: Primitive Defensive Weaponry (Level 1)

  Allows the design and creation of primitive defensive weaponry, i.e. your “lawnmower” and ballista. Further creation of different types of weaponry will upgrade this skill, giving access to additional weapon features.[14]

  Fortunately, other than a relatively minor download of information that incapacitated him for about ten minutes, his new knowledge didn’t knock him out like before. He put it down to the fact that it didn’t contain a vast concept like engineering that he had very little knowledge of before. He now better understood the mechanics of how the weapons he created worked and could see some potential uses for them in permanent defensive traps.

  But first, he had some cleanup that needed to be done. Sending his drones back out from his Core room, they cleaned up the mess that had been made by the Clawed Badger. Breaking up the giant piece of sandstone that had fallen on the badger, they reassembled it on the ceiling, attaching it to the rest of the tunnel and creating a flawless corridor once again. Two large columns of clear quartz, which were holding up the cut piece of ceiling and were slit just enough that the attached tripwire pulled and broke them, were recycled in his Molecular Converter. As for the remains of the badger, it had smeared across the floor of the tunnel, pieces of it severely flattened and unrecognizable. Scraping it up took a while, even for his drones, but they were able to feed enough of it to his molecular converter to acquire its pattern – even if there wasn’t enough from the remains to completely make a new one. Fortunately, he had enough Bio Units available that it wasn’t a problem.[15]

  At 300 Bio Units, the Clawed Badger was at the limit of what he could produce. It also would put him over the limit of what he could effectively control at one time – which was currently capped at 500. Fortunately, he hadn’t spent his points from his Combat Level increase, so he decided to throw them all into Processing Power/Intelligence. He did this for two reasons: 1. To increase his control limit to 800, effectively allowing him to create a Clawed Badger and 2. Hopefully shorten the debilitating effect learning new skills had on him.

  With his new control limit, he created his own badger and was about to set it to guarding the area around his Core when he thought about how he would be able to feed it. In fact, what does it eat? If it lives underground, it probably doesn’t venture up top very often. Before doing anything else with it, he ordered it to act naturally and to feed itself, hoping that he’d be able to see where it got its sustenance.

  Within seconds, it had turned to a wall in his room and started scratching at the sandstone, leaving huge dents with each swipe. Milton didn’t want his new home destroyed any more than needed, so he ordered his new Clawed Badger to stop and wait for one of his drones to carve a block out of the wall further down the hallway. Once it had removed and set aside a large enough block of sandstone, the badger practically flew to the wall when he released it and started digging its way through the dirt.

  Milton was surprised at how quickly the badger traveled through the dirt – somehow it flew through faster than even his drones could. With the thought that he would check in later when it found something to eat, he got his drones back to work cleaning up the failed weapons and converting them back to resources inside his shell. Once that was all cleaned up, he got started on creating new defenses.

  Even though his weapons didn’t perform as well as he would have liked, their concepts were still something that could be utilized and improved upon – especially in a more permanent installation. To this end, he sent his drones toward the first turn i
n his tunnel near the surface to install a few wall traps that would hopefully decimate anything coming down the corridor.

  First, he had his drones hollow out a room on opposing sides of the tunnel, leaving five slits in the sandstone about 4 inches high on each side. In each hollow room, his drones placed a large, tall, wooden shaft that contained five 20-foot sharpened granite blades, which, when they rotated, would extend out 10 feet into the corridor on each side. This would effectively cover the entire tunnel, since he alternated their placement so that all levels were covered. The only way through was if something timed it perfectly during its occasional rotation switches and/or was able to somehow jump or fly through the gaps. It was possible, but he thought it would be extremely difficult – especially for most of the creatures that would come down here.

  Instead of having it activate when something got near, he instead decided to have it constantly rotating. It took him a little while to devise how to do this and his solution wasn’t perfect – he would have to get one of his drones to reset it every couple of days. Essentially, what he did was connect the two wooden poles together using a very, very, very long strand of braided rubber which he connected and wound around their tops. One was wound clockwise and the other counterclockwise until they were stretched to their maximum and then let go. Each would spin, releasing the rubber strand and eventually using their momentum to gather up the strand and wind itself up the other direction. This would cause a stop in their rotations at that point until they started unwinding in the opposite direction.

  To reduce friction, he tapered the base of each pole into a point, added a smooth stone cap, and liberally oiled up the stone and concave base until it rotated with a minimum of centrifugal momentum loss. Again, it wasn’t perfect, and the momentum would slow down enough over a couple of days that he would need to have his drones wind them up again. Overall, however, it looked like it would work for what he had in mind.