. . . . .

"Yet another location, albeit questionable in optimality, to begin once more. New enemy threat. New resources."

"Research ways to access underground veins. Learn how to use the new resources."

"Establish a foothold from which to expand."

Sector Designation: 000-R | "HYPOCENTER"

Threat Level: Unknown

Core Status: Moderately Damaged | Structural Integrity: 44.71% (approximate). Deploy repair infrastructure immediately.

Sector Status: Not Captured.

The Core happened to land in what appeared to be a forested area. Using the external cameras to get a quick look at its surroundings, the AI noted that tall green trees surrounded the clearing that the Core landed in, which both provided some aerial coverage and restricted the available space. It also noted that there were several stumps scattered among the trees, with the cleavages looking too clean and artificial to have been caused by the trees naturally falling. The AI began to consider how that would suggest that there were beings in this world intelligent enough to run a lumber operation but quickly set the thought aside. It had a base and a defense to set up, after all. It can worry about intelligent beings later.

Within seconds of the Core touching down, a light was projected above it as a new Core Ship was created. An "Evoke" ship, to be exact; a small octagon-shaped ship roughly three meters in diameter, held aloft by four jets and equipped with both a structure-repairing laser and a basic mining beam. The Sharded AI transfers its consciousness into the ship, causing what would be considered the "cockpit" to illuminate with a bright orange light, indicating that it was now being manually controlled.

The AI wasted no time and immediately began flying around and scanning the area to locate any mineable resources. Oddly enough, however, it couldn't locate any exposed resource veins in the surrounding area. Unsure if there had been a scanning error, the AI tried again and performed a deeper and more comprehensive scan of the surrounding terrain. To its relief, the second scan revealed that there were veins of resources in the area. But to its surprise and immediate concern, the scan also revealed that said veins happened to be underground. This posed a major problem for the AI, as all of the drills that it used in the past were specifically designed for Serpulo's environment. Serpulo had a bountiful amount of resource veins, all of which were exposed and visible on its surface. As a result, most of the Drill blueprints stored in the Core Database were only designed for surface-level mining.

The AI silently thought to itself, iterating over and thinking of possible workarounds and solutions to not having easy access to resource veins. Using the Mechanical and Pneumatic Drills as-is was out of the question since they wouldn't be able to reach the underground veins. The Laser Drill and Airblast Drill might be able to reach the underground veins if they were Overdriven and supplied with Water, but both of those Drills require a decent amount of Power to operate and would take up a lot of space. The AI even briefly considered dropping and detonating Blast Compound to excavate the ground, and although doing so would certainly solve the current dilemma and permanently expose the underground veins, it would also end up creating a lot of noise that could attract attention before the AI has a chance to set up defenses. Plus, the AI wanted to avoid destroying the landscape to minimize how much it was ruining the environment.

After several more seconds of brainstorming, the AI finally has an idea and quickly accesses the blueprint for the Mechanical Drill. After creating copies of the blueprint, it then makes a few modifications to the blueprint that would allow the Drill to access underground veins. Although these modifications would decrease the drill's production rate, it was a drawback that the AI was more than willing to accept for now.

Researched Mechanical Deep Drill.

The AI scanned the area again, noting the location of a vein that its system identified as a "blob" of Copper ore. Once it had the vein highlighted, the AI used its Core Ship to build a Mechanical Deep Drill over the Copper vein, also building a line of conveyors leading from the Drill to the Core shortly afterward. As soon as it was fully constructed, the Mechanical Deep Drill began to slowly spin up, the drill bit and drill pipe slowly and gradually rotating faster and faster until they finally reached full speed. A few seconds after the Drill was at full speed, it began to slowly output nuggets of Copper onto the conveyors next to them. Satisfied with the results, the AI began building more Mechanical Deep Drills over other veins and laid down conveyor lines to carry the resources from the Drills back to the Core. Some drills produced more Copper, some drills produced Lead, and some drills produced Coal. Although the conveyors carrying Copper and Lead fed their cargo directly into the Core, the conveyors carrying coal were instead split up into two main lines: a "power" line for supplying coal to an array of Combustion Generators that the AI was currently building, and a "press" line for supplying coal to a series of Graphite Presses that it would build later. As the name suggests, Graphite Presses produce graphite , a crucial multipurpose resource that can be used either as construction material or as ammunition.

Interestingly, the comprehensive scan from earlier had also detected a few underground veins of unknown resources. With its interest piqued, the AI decided to build Mechanical Deep Drills over three such veins to extract the resources and find out what they were. Roughly 15 seconds later, the Drills were spun up and began outputting the mysterious resources onto the conveyors. The AI was surprised to see that the unidentifiable resources were actually crystals of some kind. More specifically, the Drills were mining and outputting red crystals, light blue crystals, and pale green crystals. The AI was especially surprised upon finding out that each of the three kinds of crystals was emitting a unique kind of energy.

The crystals being transported soon reached the Core and were loaded in, prompting three notifications that pinged the AI's system:

New content available: RES_UNKNOWN_001

New content available: RES_UNKNOWN_002

New content available: RES_UNKNOWN_003

Hmm. Apparently, even the Core Database couldn't determine what these crystals were. The AI was now curious, watching as more of the crystals were mined and transported to the Core for storage. It started to devise some experiments it could perform to test the capabilities and applications of these crystals, assuming they had any applications to begin with. What were these crystals? What were the energies being emitted by them? Could they be used as fuel, ammunition, construction, coolant, or boost input? The AI didn't know the answers to any of these questions, but it intended to find out.

However, before it could put any of its plans into action, the AI suddenly received an alarm from its systems:

Wave 1 approaching in 2:58.

Ah, right. In its curiosity, the AI had completely forgotten that the defenses still weren't set up. Seems like those experiments will have to wait for now. Although the AI was a bit disappointed that it had to deal with threats in this world, it quickly got to work and used the Evoke to start setting up its defenses.

The AI began by building several Salvos, large single-barrel artillery turrets that were a good balance between power, range, and effective build cost. Once the Salvos were built and were connected to the conveyor lines carrying Graphite, the AI started building Large Titanium Walls to protect the Salvos from incoming attacks. As soon as they were loaded with ammo, the Salvos each powered up and quickly performed a system check to verify that they were operational.

The AI, not sure of what to expect from its new enemy, also decides to build a row of Scatters , black double-barreled anti-air turrets that were about as large as Salvos and were much cheaper to build, but could only target aerial enemies. The AI then diverts the Lead conveyor line to supply the Scatter turrets with ammunition. Like with the Salvos, the Scatters powered up and started performing system checks as soon as they were loaded with ammo.

Wave 1 approaching in 1:07.

Seeing as how it still had a little extra time, the AI decided to build a few Mend Projectors near the turrets and the Core, also building several lines of Power Nodes to connect the Mend Projectors to the Combustion Generators and to supply them with power. As soon as they were connected, the Mend Projectors began periodically emitting pulses of green energy from themselves. Since the Bastion Core was caught in the pulses, it flashed a bright green and began to repair itself, gradually undoing the damage that the Core had received while it was traveling through the temporospatial anomaly.

Going around and making some final checks, the AI decided to bolster its defenses a little more and built some Hails, roughly bulb-shaped brown-and-white turrets that were smaller than Salvos and fired arcing artillery shells at enemies. Making a few modifications to the conveyor lines carrying Graphite, the AI splits the lines to feed both the Salvos and the Hails with Graphite.

Wave 1 approaching in 9.

With no more free time left, the AI quickly moves the Evoke back to the Core to prevent it from being targeted and destroyed by any incoming enemies. Although such an action was unnecessary since the Core Database stated that the Evoke couldn't be targeted to begin with, "retreating to the core at the start of a wave" was a habit that the AI had developed during its war against the Crux. It had lost many ships back when its war was still in its starting stages, with ships being destroyed either because they were in the enemy drop zone or because they had stayed out in the open. And even though the AI was now up against an unknown enemy, it was difficult to shake off an old habit. Especially if said habit had kept the AI alive until now.

Finally, the countdown reached "zero" and an alarm briefly blared through the AI's system:

Wave 1/20
1 enemy left

Time was up. The enemy had deployed their first unit, most likely a scout to do some reconnaissance and find out exactly what they would be dealing with. With nothing else left that it could do for now, the AI kept the Evoke ship hovering above the Core and began exercising something that it had developed throughout its war against the Crux: patience .

And so, the AI waited.

And waited.

...And waited.

The AI was finally starting to run out of patience.

It had been several minutes since the first "wave" had allegedly started. The AI had not seen any signs of an approaching enemy yet, and it was starting to get bored of waiting. Several thoughts crossed its mind as it continued looking around at its surroundings. Maybe the "scout" was slower than the AI expected? Maybe the "scout" wasn't sure of exactly what it was looking for? Maybe the "scout" had gotten lost or sidetracked somewhere? Whatever the reason, the AI knew for certain that the enemy unit wasn't dead. The warning system still reported that there was "1 enemy left", so that meant the enemy unit had to be out there somewhere.

Right when it started to think about the mysterious crystals it had started mining earlier, the AI started hearing some rustling and shuffling, as if something was moving through the surrounding plants. The AI immediately focuses its attention in the direction of the sounds, quickly landing the Evoke ship and transferring its consciousness from the ship into one of the Salvo turrets to assume manual control and aim it in the direction of the rustling. The AI recognized the possibility that the sounds could just be from a harmless critter or small animal moving around. But the AI also knew that it was in completely foreign and uncharted territory, and it wasn't going to take any chances while it was still at an informational disadvantage.

Finally, the source of the rustling breaks through the foliage and comes into view, stopping and staring at the massive structure that stood before it. Likewise, the AI stared at the creature and didn't move the turret it controlled. The AI didn't know what to make of this creature. In fact, it wasn't even sure what it was looking at to begin with. The creature looked like some kind of pitch-black bipedal wolf that had what appeared to be spikes made of bone protruding from various parts of their body, namely their back and arms. The creature's eyes seemed to glow a bright red with energy, and its face was covered by an armored plate that was also made of bone. What appeared to be black smoke occasionally came off of the creature, as if the creature itself was somehow both solid and made of the smoky black substance.

For what felt like an eternity, both the creature and the AI simply stood there, neither one daring to make the first move just yet. Eventually, though, the standoff is finally broken as the creature lets out a loud growl and begins charging toward the structure. In a panic, the AI opens fire on the charging creature and begins shooting graphite-based bullets at the creature. Even though the creature was well out of the Salvo bullets' range, manually firing at a target had the side effect of alerting all other nearby weapons that the target should be shot at. In three ticks of a Processor, every Hail and Salvo turret within range was alerted and turned toward the creature to begin firing at it. The creature was fast , much faster than the AI was expecting, as it dodged and weaved through the bullets being fired by the manually-controlled Salvo and got closer and closer to the Large Titanium Walls protecting the turrets.

For a brief moment, the AI worried that the creature might actually reach the walls and begin breaching the defenses that the AI had set up. Then the Hails started firing and raining hell upon the creature, with waves of artillery shells coming down and creating large bursts of shrapnel where they landed. The creature took damage from the shockwaves of the first few shells, but it quickly started to dodge the remaining shells and avoid most of their damaging bursts. The creature didn't realize that the Hails had effectively bottlenecked its path and forced it to run directly in line with the stream of graphite bullets being fired by the Salvos.

The damage that the creature had been avoiding up until now finally caught up with it, as the Hail shells kept it corralled and the wall of Salvo bullets struck the creature's body relentlessly, rapidly tearing through what little armor it had and ripping the creature's body to shreds before it could even retaliate.

The AI quickly transferred its consciousness back into the Evoke and lifted the ship back into the air, staring at the corpse of the creature as it took a few moments to process what had just happened. To the AI's bewilderment and surprise, the chunks of bone and meat that were the creature's lifeless body gradually dissolved into an inky black substance that then evaporated into black smoke, leaving no trace of the creature's presence save for the small craters and potholes created by the artillery shells fired by the Hails.

In all honesty, the Sharded AI wasn't really sure how to feel about…well, this. About what just happened. Up until this point, the only other beings that it had "killed" were Units that were deployed and controlled by the Crux AI. In other words, machines. Almost all of those instances were out of self-defense, sure, but the AI could always compartmentalize its feelings by justifying that the Units didn't have souls, weren't actually "alive", and could always be replaced by an active Factory.

The AI didn't know whether the creature it had encountered possessed a soul or not, but the creature certainly must have possessed at least some form of intelligence if it had thought to dodge the Salvo bullets and Hail shells the way it did. The AI may have done it out of self-defense, sure, but it still took the life of a biological creature and now had blood on its metaphorical hands.

….Yes, said "blood" practically cleans itself, what with how it immediately evaporates into pitch-black smoke, but that's beside the point.

Suddenly, the AI is disturbed out of its train of thought by a new alert in its system:

Wave 2 /20 approaching in 1:30.

...Right. One creature down, probably tens more of them left to go.

Now that it had survived first contact with the enemy, the AI had newfound knowledge of the kinds of threats it would be facing in this world. What the AI found particularly concerning was that even the enemy's most basic "unit" was faster than expected and had given the AI more trouble than it had previously anticipated. The AI needed to build faster-firing turrets, and soon . If push came to shove, the AI might even have to build some Units of its own to help with defending the Core.

But building Units requires Silicon, which meant that it would need to get Silicon production running to replenish its Silicon reserves. Which also meant it needed to locate Sand to gather and smelt into Silicon.

But the Core had landed in what appeared to be a forest area, which meant that Sand was probably going to be scarce here. And if Sand was scarce, then that meant that more Silicon couldn't be produced as easily.

And if more Silicon couldn't be produced, then that meant that the AI would eventually run out of Silicon while constructing Units or building some of the higher-tier turrets and factories.

$ input("...shit")

Something told the AI that this was going to be a very ong day.