. . . . .
Sector Designation: 000-R | "HYPOCENTER"
Threat Level: Low
Core Status: Operational | Structural Integrity: 100.0% (approximate)
Sector Status: Under Attack! (0.0% damaged) | Wave: 10/20
Wave 10/20 approaching in 0:25.
Looks like the enemy faction was finally starting to take the AI a bit more seriously.
The AI has been fending off the smoky wolf-like creatures for several waves now. Initially, the creatures were only sent out individually, not unlike the "scout" that appeared in the first wave. Also like the "scout", these individual creatures were quickly corralled by the Hails and torn apart by the Salvo bullets, both of which happened more efficiently than before now that the Sharded AI and the targeting system knew what to do and where to shoot.
Then, beginning from the fifth wave onwards, the creatures started appearing in pairs, then in small groups starting with the last two waves. Both formations were still manageable, but keeping them corralled with the Hail shells has been noticeably more difficult, especially for the groups. Realizing that the creatures would likely be appearing in ever-growing groups from now on and that keeping every single creature away from the walls of its base would become harder over time, the AI decided to build some Arc turrets along the walls of its base to help deal closer-range damage in case some of the creatures got past the Hails and reached the walls. Arcs are small white-and-blue turrets that are vaguely arrowhead-shaped and, like their name implies, fire arcs of electricity at enemies. While their range certainly leaves much to be desired and they can't target aerial enemies, Arcs are one of the few turrets in the Core Database that onlyrequire Power (albeit a lot of it) to operate and fire. Combine that with the turret's decent firing speed, high damage output and strong synergy with water, you get a very potent and surprisingly affordable turret. To compensate for the Power cost of firing each Arc turret, the AI had also built more Combustion Generators and an array of Batteries to act as a power buffer for the Arcs. The last thing the AI needed was for the Mend Projectors to shut off in the middle of a wave because the Arcs drew too much power and caused a base-wide blackout.
Sure enough, the AI's prediction played out just as it had expected: As soon as the creatures started appearing in groups of four or more, some of them began to out-maneuver the Hail shells and Salvo bullets and got uncomfortably close to the walls. Not that it mattered very much, though, as the Arcs locked onto the creatures as soon as they got close enough and quickly dispatched them with their electric...well, arcs.
As the AI was building some more Batteries and thinking about how it was going to acquire sand, a new alert goes through its system:
Wave 10/20
6 enemies left
Guardian approaching in 10 waves.
…Ah. Apparently, this world had Guardians. Or, at the very least, something comparable to them. That certainly put a damper on the AI's mood.
Guardians have been a thorn in the AI's side almost since the beginning of the Sharded-Crux War. They were always Units from a higher tier than those encountered in waves, were given "special treatment" in the form of higher health pools and higher damage output, and always came with additional lower-tier Units as backup. All of those facts combined meant that the AI had no shortage of grievances and peeves when dealing with Guardian waves. In its first few Guardian encounters during the war, the AI did the tactical equivalent of flailing around a whole bunch and screaming, spamming walls and turrets along the assault route in a panicked frenzy. It admittedly didn't always work, but in the few times where it did, the AI was almost always barely scraping by with the integrity of its Core firmly seated in the single digits. As the war went on, however, the AI stopped "flailing around" as much and devised more effective strategies for dealing with Guardians, ranging from using status effects and turrets that synergized well with each other to (occasionally) employing Units of its own to directly attack the Guardian. Nearing the end of the war, most Guardians were nothing more than very big, very beefy, very slow, very tanky and very high-priority nuisances.
Unfortunately, since the current wave had literally just started and these wolf-like creatures were significantly faster and more agile than the Crux Units that it had fought in the past, the AI couldn't really afford to take its attention away from the assault to implement any of its anti-Guardian tactics. For now, the AI would have to exercise what little patience it had left, wait for the last enemy of the wave to be killed, and hope it had enough time between waves to put something together before the Guardian arrived.
...Gods, waiting was painful.
Wave 13/20 approaching in 0:07.
The group sizes have been growing by a larger margin ever since the eleventh wave. So to remedy this and hopefully make the later waves less painful, the AI had decided to build a "kill hall": a narrow hallway lined with turrets designed to overwhelm enemies with a continuous barrage of bullets when they enter and travel down the hallway. The power infrastructure had been expanded, turrets had been set up lining the walls of the hallway, and the supply lines had been expanded and routed to keep the additional turrets stocked up on ammunition.
The AI was still aware of the approaching Guardian wave and was setting up more Salvos and Hails in preparation for it. Normally, the AI would've used a strategy that relied on turrets and ammo types that synergized well, such as using Arcs on water-drenched enemies or using explosives on frozen enemies. Unfortunately, though, all of the synergy-based strategies required the use of liquids, which in turn meant having to use Metaglass to build the turrets and infrastructure needed to actually use said liquids. Metaglass is a glass-like composite material made by mixing sand and lead together at very high temperatures. Metaglass had very low durability compared to other materials, but it is unmatched when it comes to safely transporting and containing liquids. Although the AI had a decent amount of Metaglass stockpiled in the Core storage, sure, but it wouldn't be abl to replenish said stockpile for the exact same reason it can't replenish Silicon: it didn't have access to sand and it couldn't find any Scrap to pulverize into sand.
The AI already disliked the fact that it couldn't yet replenish the Titanium it was spending to build the Salvos, but at least Titanium could be replenished by simply mining it from a vein. So, instead of using one of the synergy-based anti-Guardian strategies, the AI decided to use a strategy that instead relied on sheer firepower to pelt the Guardian with as many bullets and shells as possible. It wasn't as efficient, but it wouldn't cost any Metaglass.
Keeping an eye on the timer, the AI paused its building and quickly flew its ship back to the Core to prepare for the oncoming wave. As the timer finally hit zero, the familiar alert blared throughout the AI's system:
Wave 13/20
11 enemies left
ERR:COUNT_CHANGE. Correcting.
Wave 13/20
0 enemies left
Wave 14/20 approaching in 2:30.
$ input("wait what-")
Huh. That's new. For the first few seconds after the wave started, the alert reported twelve enemies before rapidly dropping to zero and saying that the wave was over. The AI didn't even catch a glimpse of the incoming creatures, nor did any of the turrets target or fire at anything. Understandably, the AI was taken aback and felt more than a little bamboozled. Unsure if there had been a glitch or malfunction in the system, the AI decided to continue building the chokepoint hallway while staying on guard, internally expecting an ambush even as the wave timer continued silently ticking down. Eventually, the timer reached zero and the familiar alert went through the AI's system:
Wave 14/20
14 enemies left
ERR:COUNT_CHANGE. Correcting.
Wave 14/20
6 enemies left
And there it was again. An initial value was reported for a few seconds before mysteriously decreasing. Sure, it didn't go to zero this time, but it still decreased by a not-insignificant amount. The fact that it decreased without the AI's intervention or the turrets' involvement made it all the more confusing. Still unsure if there had been a glitch, the AI silently waited behind the walls of its base for the attacking party to arrive. Sure enough, when the wolf-like creatures finally arrived and began their assault, there were only four of them present instead of the ten that were originally reported.
Not entirely sure what was going on, the AI stayed on guard and watched as the approaching creatures tried (and catastrophically failed) to breach the base's defenses. Something weird was going on.
Wave 19/20
22 enemies left
ERR:COUNT_CHANGE. Correcting.
Wave 19/20
15 enemies left
Guardian approaching in 1 wave.
Okay, something weird was definitely going on.
For the past few waves, the enemy count kept experiencing that odd drop that the AI had noticed earlier. The AI initially thought that there may have been a glitch in the system the first few times, but now it knew that something else was at play. Someone, or something, was either distracting or killing some of the creatures before they reached the clearing. This thing, whatever it was, was now an unknown variable, and the AI really didn't like unknown variables, as they could easily throw a spanner in the works and cause an abrupt change of plans. Granted, this variable has been consistently working in the AI's favor, so it wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth.
...Not yet, at least.
By this point, the AI had implemented its "firepower"-based strategy as much as it feasibly could. It had built even more Hails and Salvos at the "front" of the base since that was the side that all of the creatures had been attacking up to now. It had also built even more Graphite Presses to meet the ammo demands of the added turrets and physically could not build any more on that side due to that entire side of the base reaching the edge of the clearing and having no more available room to expand.
With nothing else to do for now, the AI watched as the new group of attacking creatures rushed forward toward the base, presumably to try and accomplish what the previous groups couldn't. Most of them were quickly gunned down and ripped to shreds by the recently added Salvos and Hails, but a few still managed to reach the base and piled through the open hallway. As soon as the last one had piled in, the AI remotely closed the Door at the entrance of the hallway and sat back to watch as the utterly obscene number of Salvos and Arcs lining the hallways opened fire on the group and reduced them to smoking piles of evaporating meat chunks. In less than 5 seconds, the "assault" had been completely snuffed and the wave was officially over.
Wave 20/20 approaching in 5:00.
Five minutes. To some, five minutes may not seem like a lot of time to prepare for an onslaught or final push from an enemy faction. But to the AI, five minutes was plenty of time, especially since it had been preparing specifically for said onslaught since the start of the twelfth wave. The AI immediately began zooming around the base and checking on each part of the base as a final preparation. It checked on the Combustion Generator grid and Battery array to make sure they were still producing and storing power. It checked on all of the Arcs, Hails and Salvos it had built up to this point to make sure they were ready for action. It checked on the Graphite Presses to make sure that ammo for the Salvos and Hails was still being produced. It checked the Mend Projectors to make sure they were still active. All of them came back with a clean bill of health and were fully functional.
Everything was in working order. After the checks, the AI quickly checked the timer to see how much time it had left before the wave arrived.
Wave 20/20 approaching in 4:07.
Huh...the checks actually took a lot less time than the AI was expecting. Well, now the AI was stuck thinking of what to do while it waited. It couldn't really add more walls, the base was taking up almost the entire back of the clearing as it was. It couldn't really expand the clearing to give itself more space to work with, either, since A: it didn't have a way to remove the trees and free up their real estate, and B: it wanted to avoid tampering with the forest as much as possible. It couldn't even try adding more turrets to its defenses, as there was no more physical ground available for the Generators or Graphite Presses required to support additional turrets.
Continuing to work its way through the list of possible things to do, the AI suddenly gets pulled from its thoughts by one- no, three notifications from the Core:
RES_UNKNOWN_001 storage 80% full. (approx.) Build Containers or Vaults to increase storage.
RES_UNKNOWN_002 storage 75% full. (approx.) Build Containers or Vaults to increase storage.
RES_UNKNOWN_003 storage 76% full. (approx.) Build Containers or Vaults to increase storage.
With all of its focusing on preparing for the Guardian, the AI had completely forgotten about the crystals it had been mining and collecting up to now. And now that it finally had some free time, the AI realized that it could make good on its promise and start researching those strange crystals.
Quickly flying the Evoke back to the Core, the AI picks up a few red crystals for testing and takes some initial observations. All three kinds of crystals had a faint glow to them, but the red crystals in particular seemed to be giving off heat. Going over to an open space outside of the base's walls, the AI built a new Combustion Generator, deposited a few crystals into it, connected it to the power network, and watched the its power output. Using the red crystals as fuel produced considerably more power than Coal and almost as much power as Pyratite, a highly flammable compound made by mixing Sand, Lead, and Coal together at high temperatures. After about thirty seconds, though, the Generator began to billow plumes of smoke and glow red, causing the AI to panic. Billowing smoke and glowing red-orange were symptoms associated with feeding Blast Compound to either a Combustion Generator, a Steam Generator, or a Differential Generator, usually followed by the afflicted generator violently exploding and starting a fire shortly after the symptoms first appear. Fearing that that was exactly what was about to happen, the AI quickly and frantically moved the Evoke away from the Combustion Generator and got its repairing beam ready in case the explosion caused a fire outbreak. Instead of exploding like the AI was expecting, however, the Generator simply sputters loudly and shuts off, still glowing red and still angrily billowing columns of smoke. Hesitantly, the AI approached the smoking Generator to try and find out what happened, treating the Generator with the same amount of respect as a bomb that failed to detonate. The AI was surprised to learn that the Combustion Generator had apparently overheated and couldn't be re-activated until it had cooled back down. Until this point, the only generator that the AI knew could overheat was the Thorium Reactor. Even in that context, "overheating" was still basically synonymous with "about to explode", so seeing the Combustion Generator reporting that it "overheated" instead of exploding confused the AI.
Actually, now that the AI thought about it, why did the Generator overheat in the first place? Pyratite produced more energy and arguably burned hotter than these crystals did, yet Combustion Generators could handle Pyratite just fine. So what happened?
Before it could continue that train of thought, the AI is pinged by an alert:
Wave 20/20 approaching in 2:37.
Right, it was still on a time limit. Temporarily leaving the overheated Combustion Generator, the AI decided to quickly move on and start testing the crystal's capabilities as ammunition. Approaching a nearby Hail turret and Salvo turret, the AI swapped out their Graphite ammunition with the red crystals, landed its ship on the ground behind the walls of the base, and transferred its consciousness into the Salvo to assume manual control. Aiming at a bare patch of dirt some distance away and taking care to not aim at anything that could potentially be considered a "target", the AI fired a single bullet from the Salvo and watched as the bullet flew through the air. When the bullet struck the ground, the AI was startled as the bullet "exploded" into a burst of flames that left the ground a little scorched. Needing to confirm its findings, the AI transferred its consciousness from the Salvo over to the Hail and fired at the same patch of ground, watching as the shell arced through the air. Like the Salvo bullet, the Hail shell released a burst of flame when it hit the ground. Unlike the Salvo bullet, however, the Hail shell created a field of flames around the impact site that lingered for several seconds before dying down.
Needless to say, the AI was surprised. So the red crystal could create bursts of flames. They created a fireball upon hitting a target when used in a bullet, but created an area of flames when used in an artillery shell. Then, the AI makes a connection: Even though Pyratite had more energy than these crystals, Pyratite released its energy in a sustained and usually controllable combustion, whereas these crystals seemed to release all of their energy in a singular instantaneous "burst" upon consumption. Maybe the Combustion Generator from earlier overheated because the crystals kept releasing all of their energy at once instead of over time, not unlike what happens with Blast Compound.
The AI's thoughts were disrupted again by yet another alert in its system:
Wave 20/20 approaching in 0:41.
Ah. It was running out of time. The AI knew that it still had two other crystal types it needed to test, and if the red crystals were of any indication, the other two crystals may have a lot of potential. But given how long it took to test just one crystal and how there was already less than a minute left before the wave arrived, the other crystals would have to wait for later. Just to make sure its findings wouldn't be forgotten, the AI quickly updated the red crystal's entry in the Core Database and added its observations.
$ coredb modify resource
Core Database ready. Input entries to modify.
$ {oldName="RES_UNKNOWN_001", newName="Ignitite", notes="observations_001"}
Completed. 1 entry successfully modified.
$ input("thx")
Wave 20/20 approaching in 0:47.
With that out of the way, the AI made a final check of the turrets just to make sure that everything was still ready. As it was checking on the turrets, the AI had a last-minute idea and quickly modified the ammo supply lines for some of the Salvos to change their ammo from standard graphite to the newly christened Ignitite crystals. It also quickly built some more Mechanical Deep Drills over the underground Ignitite veins and some Unloaders to move Ignitite out of the Core and onto the supply lines to compensate for Ignitite's apparently abysmal "Multiplier" rating.
See, in order to get as much efficiency out of resources as possible, turrets that use resources as ammunition have a built-in "partition" subsystem that can convert a single "clump" or "item" of a supplied resource into multiple bullets. Because the exact number of bullets manufactured per item varies depending on both the resource and the turret, the Core Database (and, by extent, the AI) uses an Ammo Multiplier rating scale to neatly quantify the item-to-bullet conversion ratio: The higher the rating, the more bullets made from a single "item". Based on the earlier experiments, the AI found that Ignitite crystals had a Multiplier rating of 1. In other words, one crystal produced one bullet. And considering how relatively quickly Salvos could fire and how many Salvos were currently set up, that conversion rate might be too demanding for the current production infrastructure to handle.
Right as it finished building and configuring the last Unloader, the AI's system was pinged by the long-awaited (and somewhat dreaded) alert:
Wave 20/20
27 enemies left
Guardian Health: 100%
The AI was about to question why the enemy count didn't drop this time, but its train of thought was quickly derailed as the attacking group broke through the tree line and entered the clearing less than a second after the start of the wave. Looking at the group of wolf-like creatures, the AI almost immediately noticed a much larger wolf-like creature in the middle of the group with even more spikes and even more bone-like armor on its body than its smaller counterparts. The AI immediately assumed that this newcomer was the "Guardian" and parked the Evoke ship above the Core, silently watching as the Salvos and Hails along the perimeter turned to aim at the group. The group charged forward and ran toward the base, dodging the Ignitite-imbued Salvo bullets (with varying degrees of success), weaving through and around the rain of Hail shells (again, with varying degrees of success), and rushing past the initial line of Arcs before piling through the comparatively unguarded entrance to the hallway. Just like with the previous two waves, as the turrets along the hallway made quick work of the creatures that entered and reduced them to bits.
There was just one small problem, though. Actually, there were three problems.
The first problem was that the Guardian hadn't approached with the group.
The second problem was that on top of apparently recognizing the additional firepower, the Guardian was currently standing just outside of the range of the turrets and looked like it had no intentions of getting closer.
Finally, the third problem was that the large creature wasn't focusing on the base or the turrets. It had shifted its gaze away from the turrets to stare directly at the Evoke that the AI was currently piloting.
With a howl, the large creature broke into a run and began circling the base to attack a less guarded side of the base that wasn't as obviously lethal as the front. The AI watched with a moderate amount of concern and began hastily building more turrets to bolster the side's defenses as the creature eventually stopped circling and began sprinting toward the walls shielding the Generator array, ignoring the Salvos and Hails that immediately began firing at the creature when it began its approach. The Guardian moved between the incoming projectiles with more speed than the smaller creatures, closing the distance between itself and the walls at an alarming pace, and to the AI's still-growing concern, the creature even tanked some of the Salvo shells and seemingly shrugging off the fact that it was now visibly burning and on fire in some parts from the Ignitite-laced bullets.
Guardian Health: 74.6%
The AI continued watching and building conveyor belts to supply the newly built turrets with ammo as the creature finally reached the walls and the Arcs started firing electrical arcs at the creature to keep doing damage. The AI's concern quickly escalated into full-blown panic as it saw the creature leap up and start rapidly scaling the walls, only moderately slowed and annoyed by the electrical arcs. The Salvos closest to the base (which were thankfully not loaded with Ignitite) were still firing at the rapidly climbing creature , but the Hails had automatically stopped firing since the angle was now too sharp for the shells to hit the creature without also causing significant collateral damage to the Combustion Generators near the wall and running the risk of triggering an explosive fire outbreak.
Guardian Health: 26.5%
In the space of a few seconds, the smoking and battered creature was on top of the wall. Keeping its sights firmly fixed on the Evoke and letting out a loud growl, it leaped off of the wall, claws extended and limbs reaching out to try to grab and tear the ship apart. The AI jerked the ship and reflexively tried to shoot the ship's weapons at the creature to knock it off-course, but was immediately reminded that the Evoke model wasn't built for direct confrontations and thus didn't have actual weapons on board. Despite knowing that it technically had an escape route and could move its consciousness back to to the Core if the ship got destroyed, the AI continued to panic and quickly felt like it was cornered once again. Just like when it traveled through the temporospatial anomaly that brought it to this world, the AI froze in panic as time almost seemed to stretch and slow down around it. Each passing millisecond felt like hours as the creature reached its claws out to the ship, millimeters from touching it and ripping its claws through it like a piece of tinfoil.
The moment was then abruptly shattered as the creature suddenly and unceremoniously gets viscerally ripped apart and launched back over the wall by four simultaneous sprays of lead flak.
Guardian Health: 0.0%
Sector Secured.
The ship didn't move for several moments as the AI, still very much experiencing the digital equivalent of an adrenaline spike and a fight-flight-or-freeze response combined, tried to process what the hell just happened. It gets snapped out of its stupor by the loud whirring and hissing made by the Scatter turrets winding down.
...Oh. The Scatters. So that's what happened. Because it had jumped off the wall, the creature was airborne long enough for the Scatters to identify it as a "target". Truth be told, the AI had legitimately forgotten that it had built Scatters in the first place, mainly because they hadn't seen usage in any of the waves until now.
Right now, though, the AI didn't care about that anymore. It didn't care that all of the creatures were now dead. It didn't care that the wave was over. It didn't even care that the sector was now secured. The AI was ready to crash from the sheer amount of stress it just went through and felt what the archives called "needing a drink". But because it was a digital entity and not a biological being, it couldn't exactly do that. So instead, it opted for next best (and arguably healthier) option.
$ input("I need a goddamn minute")
$ clock(mode="egg", length=7200, action="wake")
Timer set. Duration: 2 hours, 0 minutes, 0 seconds.
As soon as the timer had been set, the AI immediately shut itself down to disconnect itself from reality and, in some sense, "sleep". The only sounds going on now were from the drills still mining, the leaves rustling in the wind, the Guardian's tattered and unrecognizably mutilated corpse evaporating into smoke, and the occasional bird singing somewhere near the edge of the clearing.
Peacefulness and tranquility had finally taken over the former battlefield, and those were two things the AI really needed right about now.
Author's Notes:
Hi.
...Yeah, it's been more than a hot minute since I updated this.
With academia having kicked back into full swing, work-related stress at an all-time high, and financial concerns getting worse, I ended up forgetting that I had this in my documents unfinished.
I'll be honest, this chapter was kind of rough for me to finish due to work and studies leaving me feeling exhausted and burnt out. I tried to not let those bleed into the work, but I'm still worried that some of it may have slipped in and I was just too exhausted to notice. If the quality feels lower compared to the other two, that might be one of the reasons why.
"Those just sounds like a bunch of excuses", I know, but...it's the truth.
Also, if you read the story over on AO3, you may have noticed a couple of discrepancies between the two versions of this chapter. That's because Fanfiction's formatting system is a lot more restrictive than AO3's. Fanfiction doesn't let you use strikethrough or right-side alignment (which were ESPECIALLY bad for this chapter since parts of the chapter actually used strikethrough and right-side aligning as part of the storytelling) and keeps purging all of the "Less Than"/"Greater Than" symbols and the "slanted line" characters that I normally use as decorations and borders for the AI's system-related messages. As a result, I had to add a short "error code" line every time the enemy count abruptly changed in this version of the chapter to try and clarify what was actually going on.
But that's Fanfiction's system for you! Screwing you over without a care in the world and making it that much harder to actually tell your story in a creative way.
If you want to experience the chapter in its "true" intended form, go read the AO3 version of this chapter at archiveofourown-dot-org/works/51505297/chapters/132306142. Replace the "-dot-" with an actual period.
Anyways...
As always, feedback is appreciated.