Notes :
Me resting means me forgetting to set up the patreon chapters constantly it seems, sorry about that.
Nothing to update on, which is 'no news is good news' really.
Chapter 441
Red Sands Desert, Aurorean Empire
Dungeon Factory, Command Center
"Fuck." Said Sarah, the vampire maid summing everyone's feelings rather nicely, though Alexandra wasn't going to say it out loud.
"My thoughts exactly." Said Trira.
Alexandra looked at Emilia.
"Okay. Before we all start joining a chorus of 'holy shit', Emi. How screwed are we?" Said the dungeon core. "Because I am going to be honest. I know very little of that core. Crap I don't even know their name. The little I know about them is they started the first United Dungeon War, founded the UDC, and I remember one of our advisor guests mentioned they used golems?"
"Not golems. Well, not just golems. Old World technology in general." Said the vampire advisor, before sighing, and Alexandra saw her visibly switch to 'scholar' mode. "The reason you don't know their name is because it has changed a few times. They have been called Trevan, Ilvor and Yralep. At least that's the main ones history recalls. Currently they're called Matis."
"That's a fair few names." Remarked Allya, and Alexandra smiled.
"I can't exactly criticize them for that." Said the dungeon core, and Ghost smiled faintly at the joke at their own expense.
"That's because they're called the many-faced-King. At least they were before they ceded leadership of the UDC."
"The many...Oh." Alexandra leaned back, and exchanged a look with Ghost. "That...Let me guess, they've had radical personality and behavioral changes over time, until it reached a paroxysm and they withdrew from public life?"
Emilia blinked.
"That's...exactly what happened. How did you know?"
Ghost grimaced.
"She knew because that's the primary symptoms of AI instability." Arcadia was in a constant, accelerated state of that. The difference for her is that through the hivemind and her willingness to create multiple networked nodes and CENTCOM cores, it had stabilized somewhat. Kind of like a dissociative identity disorder, at least the AI analogue. "When they reach the final stage they either pull through on the other side or they die."
Alexandra nodded, grimly. She'd studied the phenomena extensively, and even helped a couple of naval AIs in the early stages of it. Including a UIS one, when she was stationed near Pluto. Which probably accounted for the fact that when she'd met Ciel, the AI had been positively warm by her standards, which verged on the border of insultingly cold by human standards and downright hostile by Arcadia's.
AIs usually pulled through...usually. But that was with extensive support network, entire libraries studying the subject and legions of psychologists, meat or machine, who wanted to solve the problem and help those they could. That included Arcadia, who had poured a staggering amount of money into developing treatments.
If the UDC's founder had survived that on their own, with no assistance...they had to have had astounding resilience and be completely nuts at this point.
Actually...
"You weren't aware of it?" She asked Emilia, and the vampire shook her head.
"Dungeon cores who lose their advisors don't usually stay in the limelight for very long. If they...well, if they don't 'go berserk' and get killed after losing them."
Allya twitched at her tone, but didn't ask questions. Which was for the best, though she knew they were gearing up to fight the Church, she wasn't actually aware of what they'd found of the machinations of the God of Fire and his servants.
"Oh." Simply said Alexandra.
So the advisors served as stabilizers...kind of how Arcadia stabilized through adding humans, 'squishies' as she took to calling them, to the hivemind.
"If that didn't happen to them..." Ghost shot a look at Alexandra, and she nodded.
If a dungeon core going berserk was a handy self-destruct used by the Church, there was a reason they hadn't destroyed the founder of the UDC.
Given the amount of destruction the United Dungeon Wars had caused -some credited them with collapsing three forming large alliances and locking the Eris Empire into technological stasis via lack of competition-, not to mention the fact that they'd been caused by dungeon cores which they knew the Church had backdoor access into, they might be an agent of the God of Fire. Willing or not.
And probably hadn't been purged because they were more useful as a pawn than a martyr.
"I'm sorry, but I'm not getting the subtext here." Finally said Allya.
Alexandra exchanged a look with Ghost, then with Emilia. The silent conversation was short. She turned towards Trira and gave her a smile.
"We need to discuss a few things. Some of which Allya has already deduced for herself. I can include you if you'd like, but if you would rather not know..."
The spymistress raised an eyebrow, looking at the praetorian guards at the door, then back towards Alexandra.
"I can take some guesses at what you're about to talk about. I'll stay."
"Your funeral." Both the Empress and the spymistress flinched, even with her smile. Which...was fair.
After all, if she didn't take it well, it would be litteral.
And though she was loath to add her into the confidence...
Trira was already in too deep. And she was far too close to Allya anyway. Not to mention a staggeringly effective intelligence director, as her latest piece of information proved.
Alexandra stood up, and clapped her hands.
The lights dimmed, and praetorian guards moved into position.
"Let's start with some of our...discoveries." She said.
*****
"So. If the berserker cores are an artificial failsafe, and they haven't fallen prey to it, on top of being instrumental to one of those...collapses, it indicates they're in league with the Church." Said Allya, and Alexandra nodded.
"Or at least some kind of tool." Agreed the dungeon core, while trying not to look worried.
Allya and Trira had taken it...weirdly. She knew the Empress well enough to tell that she was incandescent beyond words, but throwing herself at the problem to stop herself from blowing up.
Trira was harder to read, but she seemed to be doing something roughly similar. Though her anger was colder and had a harder edge to it.
Pyn...Pyn was just in the corner, staring at the floor and basically unresponsive.
All three of them, to some degree or another, knew she'd been gearing up to fight the Church, and had come to terms with it. The fact that they'd been even ready to accept it for a religion that more or less controlled the planet implied some fairly disturbing things. Then again, the Adjudicator and her merry band of inquisitors had behaved like a wrecking ball when they visited, and it seemed that the Church in general only had the faintest idea of what silk gloves and carrots were. They had 'softer' sections, every temple trained legions of healer like Alyssa, and undertook the duties of bringing life back to the wasteland, but most people seemed to remember the Inquisition and the Temple Guard over them.
Honestly, Alexandra was wondering if there wasn't more at work. She wouldn't put it past the Order to have done a slow erosion of the Church's image and righteousness. It would take a while, but if one could manipulate entire nations into war, changing school curriculums should be decently easy. Especially as the Church's religious education limited itself to healing, combat and some druidism, and even that last part was outsourced. They didn't really control what people were taught nor really seemed to care.
That was...a glaring oversight, and combined with everything she'd gleaned from their code addons to the dungeon core matrix, she was seriously starting to think that the God of Fire hadn't so much as been sent by the rest of the Pantheon to deal with the 'unfathomable heresy of the Great Night' as the only one who had interacted with it.
She had no idea how reliable the archives she'd acquired were, since the Sagitarius Empire's opinion of the Gods was rather skewed to say the least, not to mention the fact that most of the data she'd gotten had been encrypted, damaged or both, but they indicated that when the Gods had first come to Alcheryos they'd rolled out the red carpet. They'd brought gifts, overhauled everything. Yet they also seemed to have kept their distance enough to let something like the Sagitarius Empire build up to oppose them.
Here it seemed like a military expedition had rolled up on the planet, flattened everything, did all that their officers could think of to keep a lid on things, then left a rear guard out to dry and left.
Frankly...she was starting to wonder.
Why was only the God of Fire there? The God of Light was having an influence as well, certainly, but he kept to the shadows. Sure, a scheming god, why not.
But what about the rest? They couldn't all be scheming in the shadows. The Pantheon had seventy or so Gods! Well, the one currently venerated anyway. The Sagitarian archives on how it was before the Great Night weren't helpful on the matter.
Alexandra blinked as Ghost pinged her, realizing she'd spaced out, and seized thankfully on the small rewind of the conversation her other self had sent.
"If he's a tool of the God of Fire...does that mean the Church is making a move against us?" Had said Allya, her voice tense, and Alexandra shook her head in response, as if she'd been following.
"I doubt it. If they wanted us dead they could just drop a kinetic, or hell just a normal nuke, and blame it on Old World remnants. I mean hell, the Hammer of Eternity and its cohorts did nuke the city once."
Then she had nuked it herself again, by blowing the supply ship to kingdom come to cover her tracks.
"That would be too obvious." Said Trira. "You underestimate how many people would rise up if that happened."
"And you underestimate how psychotic these guys are. If they had an inkling of what I was preparing and that I'd overridden their software, they would hammer me into the dirt instantly."
They knew she had been 'Alexandra Rousseau'. But they might even know of her previous identity before that as well.
Frankly if they knew who she had been before, she probably should have been executed immediately, failsafe or not. She certainly would have done it in their shoes.
Though the God of Light seemed to have gone through a lot of trouble to get her here. And the Adjudicator hadn't sounded too pleased when she'd said another deity had been responsible for her rescue. Mmmmhhh...
"That is fair." Said Trira. She was more snappy than usual, and clearly doing a visible effort to appear calm. "But this changes everything, doesn't it?"
"In the short term, not really." Said Emilia. "Matis seems to be keeping to the shadows. So long as they do they can try to maneuver but their real power is their reputation and their direct military power. Which perhaps is why they're hesitant to use it?"
"They certainly seem eager enough to enter the fray." Commented Trira. "It's not like taking their time with it will give them much advantage."
Alexandra frowned. Then froze.
"Yes. Yes it will." She said, before standing up. "You're right. Matis joining the fray unofficially doesn't change anything in the short term, beyond the black ops which we've already been dealing with. But in the future? They're holding back because they can make any negotiation attempt fail. Publicly declaring their support will give the isolationists a massive boost and keep them in the fight for a lot longer. A full second wind even."
"Why?" Alexandra blinked, before realizing it was Pyn who had spoken, the elf lifting her face to look at her, seemingly having kept pace with the conversation despite how distraught she was. Honestly she was probably far less shaken up than the dungeon core had thought. Tough cookie.
"Because..." She paused. She wasn't sure, actually, and-
She saw Ghost become pale.
"Because they want to use us." Said her other self. "Because we've already left a giant swath of destruction in our wake. That's why they tried to throw us at the Eris Empire. The Church wants us to be the next Purge."