Hii, Somewherian(Or Brothdian) here!!
Just wanted to say that im not a really good writer persay, which is mostly evident in the fact that I actively struggled with writing the draft for this chapter in particular and the fact that I kind of sucked at writing the dialogue in the earlier chapter.
But your support is heavily appreciated though, thanks alot for those that are encouraging me to write well, it's been quite like what? Almost a year now since I published the first chapter? Wow.. Anyway.
If you feel that a chapter feels kinds stale, im very sorry in that regards, I'll try and write better lol, but I can't guarantee that sadly.
Anyway! This is mostly going to be a transition chapter from Post-Volume 2 to Volume 3 as the Vytal Festival takes place months after. And then there's the Grimm Eclipse game which I'll have to keep in mind of lol
~~~~~ MINDUSTRIAL WAR ~~~~~
"-And then we got picked up by Ozpin, and sent back to Beacon through a Bullhead, all the while the ship tagged along us throughout the whole journey"
"We heard" Ren took a sip from his cup "The campus was practically abuzz with how that ship followed our school headmaster to the cliffs, it's not hard to miss really.."
They all momentarily took a glance at Ruby, who laid headfirst on the table with arms dropping down.
"Anyway.." Weiss continued the conversation "The whole experience was quite... er, how do I put this..?"
"Tense" Blake added
"Ah thanks" Weiss nodded contently, before sighing and rubbing the skin inbetween her eyebrows "It was tense alright? Doctor Oobleck specifically told us not to make one wrong move less we get bombarded by absurdly giant guns, Ruby was geeking over the whole base-" She shot a glance at Ruby, who was still face first into the table surfsce "-and nearly got us shot!"
"Uh, I'd say our hosts were pretty content with us being there" Yang shrugged, patting Ruby on the back "It's more like 'shoot anything and we'll shoot you back', make's sense really so Ruby here wasn't doing anything wrong anyway"
"That still doesn't help the fact that she nearly scared me on the inside.." She sighed
"Soooo?" Nora immediately raised her body from her seat, surprising Jaune as she placed both hands on the table with a curious smile etched on her face "Are they aliens!?"
"W-wha!?" Weiss was quick to deny however "No! That sounds completely absurd! Though.." She brought a hand to her chin "I can't really deny the fact that they look technologically.. superior?"
"More superior than Atlesian technology we suppose" Blake flipped a page on her book "I've explored most of the base before the bullhead arrived, safe to say it's nothing like i've ever seen.. Raw crystal dust being endlessly produced from what looks like cubical-shaped drill structures, said dust were being loaded onto abnormally large conveyors and into these large turrets.."
She sighed "And then there's other things I've noticed too, from large towers with a pure yellow electric lines connecting each other to what looked like large factories bundled up together with conveyors sticking in and out of it, and materials that I couldn't identify were on these conveyors, it's like a one big industrial zone of sorts.."
Her other teammates nodded, murmuring the word 'yeah'
"So aliens!?"
"No Nora.. They've already told you before" Ren spoke
"But..!" She looked around her friend group before her head snapped to Jaune, and rushed towards him, making the knight jump and stumble on his chair "What about you team leader!? What do you think?"
"Oh-! I- uh.." He looked around before shrugging "Honestly it's kinds hard to tell without seeing it in person, sorry.."
"Aw.."
They all would hear a sniff from Ruby, the entire group turning their heads to see a comically big puddle forming underneath Ruby's head, with Yang who looked around unsure of what to do as her attempts at reassuring her sister sped up
"Big guns.." She sobbed "so big.. I wanna see them again.."
"We'll see them again Rubes! Just don't cry.. Uh.." The blonde fistfighter grimaced as she patted her back, with Pyrrha joining in to pat the comically crying rose
~~~~~ MINDUSTRIAL WAR ~~~~~
The Sharded AI flew back in their base at Glenn, flying over sunset-lit forests and hills before the landscape changed from hills and trees to rocky terrain with pine trees scattered about. The minimap showing multiple Grimm creatures as the AI flew over all of them
Once the captured sector came into view, the build screen now registered the core in range, allowing the Sharded AI to build again with the resources stored within their core.
They were now well informed about a future festival in the making, before it began to ponder about it.. A war fought over individuality led to a festival that's all about fighting? The concept of it was strange to the AI, it didn't see the appeal in fighting, especially since it itself was an smart AI possibly programmed for war..
It shrugged on the inside, psuhing these thoughts aside, the AI will have to view it inperson, after all it was invited by Ozpin to see the festival once it happens? See why the "kingdoms" of this world come together and send their people to fight or something..
Anyway, moving on to other topics.. Most importantly the Erekir Tech Tree.
They still haven't covered much of what they've called the Erekir Tech Tree just yet since all they have right now is Beryllium and not materials such as Tungsten and more unknown materials. Anyway.
They've barely went over what you can get with beryllium since they got interrupted by a minor conflict with a unknown faction that seemed to not belong to whoever attacked First Contact. Heck, there's still one more that has yet to be tested by the AI and that was the Breach..
Which is why they began building one, it's about time they started testing it.
It used up Silicon, Graphite and Beryllium for it's base materials. The AI would later build several copper walls and one Breach not far from the walls as it's estimated range is average at best.
However the time it took to build a Breach was slow. It was understandable for a gun that's three times the size of a duo.
What was surprising however is that according to it's info tab, aside from allowing Beryllium as ammo, it also accepted many forms of the elemental crystals that they currently have discovered from Pyrium to Anemonite and even Geolocite too which had little uses despite it's nature to bring upon rocks and such.
It took out a few samples of said elemental crystals from the Core Storage and loaded it onto the Breach for testing.
Now here were the results for each of these tests:
Pyrium - A bright red shell was shot out from the Breach, damaging the copper wall and exploding on contact. Seems impressive enough.
Cryotite - On impact, the white shell would explode into ice shards, scattering about and landing on the ground, the copper wall now has a large ice-coated dent.
Anemonite - The least impressive out of the four currently known elemental rocks, it slightly dented the copper wall, but the AI had noticed a gust of wind blown out just like how Anemonite - loaded Ripples have with their shells. Probably best to stall enemies with such shells.
Geolocite - Spikes of rocks would erupt from the impact, however these seemed pointier and sharper compared to previous Geolocite shells from Ripples.
Hydrocium - a piercing bullet was shot out from the massive gun at high speeds, resulting in a hole that was punctured through one of the copper walls before the bullet disintegrated a few meters away.
With that, the Breach became one of the most versatile gun out of any other when it came to using elemental crystals as ammo
Well that was nice to know, but how about this one?
It decided to check upon the Silicon Arc Furnace, finding it to be surprising as from it's info tab, it substitutes coal for graphite instead.
Using the Cliff Grinders, which were much useful compared to Plasma Bores in terms of mining on cliffsides and refining the grinded rocks into sand, the sand outputted from the Cliff Grinders would be delivered towards the Silicon Arc Furnace through ducts.
Then it built mines above sparse veins of coal scanned by the Sharded AI and built Multi-Presses supported by Water Extractors so the coal can be loaded into them, producing graphite along the way.
Then it connected the graphite lines towards the Silicon Arc, delivering it via ducts and loading the furnaces with graphite.
The result was four silicon outputted every second, it had superior outputs compared to Silicon Smelters and cheaper compared to Silicon Crucibles. Safe to say they were amazed by its performance.
And then it promptly remembered the Subsector of this place.. It checked the planet interface before the AI saw that the subsector in particular was still under attack
Right..
It flew down the hole, entering the subsector below Sector "Desolate Ruins"
...
The Grimm waves were still ongoing, and it was quite obvious by the amount of Creeps crawling out of the hole and the remaining defenses pretty much keeping them at bay.
It was a wonder as to how they held on for so long despite the Sharded AI being away for hours straight.
Doesn't matter now, what matters is the fact that they'll have to fix all the damage and renovate the defenses here, since these waves aren't ending anytime now.
First things first.
The walls of this base were soon replaced with Thorium walls, these were hastily made with titanium walls once during the incident, having been way more quicker to build and such, now with the lessening 'Grimm' waves, the AI was able to upgrade the damaged walls.
Secondly, they built more Menders, the advanced buildings healing up any structures in it's radius as scratch marks and such all slowly mended, returning each damaged structure into its previous state.
Third? More guns, if your defenses are struggling, use more guns. Salvos were built with Pyrium mines loading them.
A Creep would suddenly leap forward out from the shadows, attempting to take down the floating Core Ship and scaring the AI, only for a few shots of Salvos to interrupt the underground dweller and immediately finish the Grimm off.
Whew.. That spooked the AI by a tad bit, but it sure did prove that the defenses were working well now
Now with that out of the way, they could probably go and build more phase fabric and surge factories to spend the time.. They've been awfully neglecting the production of these resources lately.
~~~~~ MINDUSTRIAL WAR ~~~~~
At the surface of the Desolate Ruins sector, several new structures were erected ontop of recently destroyed buildings. These buildings were massive in comparison to the surroundings around them from rows of Surge Smelters towering over houses and small apartments to a field of arranged phase weavers connected by ducts and such
It took at least less than an hour to build all of this, notably because of the printing technology that they have.
And so they've got nothing to do except figure out a more efficient way to produce Phase Fabric or Surge Alloys, or expand outwards into the mountains even more.
It chose the latter.
Using the planet interface once again to check for the scanned sectors, the AI chose the northeast sector located right next to the Desolate Ruins sector
It chose the loadout for the Nucleus core schematic, and watched as their core of this sector printed out another core ontop, before rocket boosters emerged from it's sides. The AI then transferred their consciousness into the newly built core and watched as it lifted off into the sky, the trajectory of the core being set to land on their neighboring sector.
The 'humans' like Ozpin may notice, but they didn't really care about that for the time being. They have a sector to capture
~~~
CORE LAUNCH
Sector "Desolate Ruins" - Sector 779
Threat: Medium
Resources Detected: Copper, Lead, Sand, Coal, Titanium, Beryllium, Pyrium, Cryotite, Geolocite, Hydrocium, Water
That's strange, a huge drop in threat level huh? But then again threat reassesments exist as seen before with their sector in the desert during that grimm attack.
Oh well, atleast it'll make it easier to capture, hopefully there won't be a threat reassesment later on.
Moving on, it began building the pneumatic deep drills around where copper, lead and titanium would be as shown by their scanners
Then it began building a Silicon Factory, a vein of coal was big enough that it allowed several Pneumatic Deep Drills to be built upon it before the outputted coal would be sent towards the silicon factory through ducts.
It brought stacks of Beryllium along with them, it was enough to built a whole line of ducts after all.
Sand had to be extracted from scrap as pulverizers were built, coupled with a few quick combustion generators being loaded with Pyrium and it began outputting sand from the scrap around buildings.
There was no nearby cliffs for the Cliff Crushers to operate on.
Also they didn't use Deep Drills to mine scrap after all, it was practically laying around, sticking out like a sore thumb
Anyway, the AI checked the wave counter on their interface
Wave 1
Waiting...
So far so good they haven't detected any Grimm activity going after them just yet.
Time to speed things up.
With a plan to replace the temporary combustion generators with better power generators, it built an entire schematic, a factory solely for the purpose of producing Pyratite. No not Pyrium, Pyratite.
Once that was done being built, the Sharded AI soon flew over to a nearby vacant spot to build a set of Cryofluid Mixers, all the while it built Water Harnessers right next to a set of Liquid Tanks, loading said Water Harnessers with Hydrocium to produce water. And then, they connected it with a singular Deep Laser Drill underneath, producing Titanium which would be sent directly to the Cryofluid Mixers for cryofluid production.
'Phew' the AI murmured in it's consciousness, that was still more to do.
once the cryofluid factory was up and kicking, the AI would build several drills underneath coal and lead veins, a router of the Erekir kind had to be placed on the sand duct line so some of the sand being transported would be routed towards the pyratite factory.
Once that was done, a Differential Generator was soon built in the space inbetween the pyratite factories and the cryofluid mixers, with the AI soon hooking the generator up with conduits transporting cryofluid and ducts transporting pyratite compounds.
The immediate surroundings lit up from the light the Differential Generator was emitting.
Now they had a boost in power as the power nodes' info tab displayed a power level of 1.8k
That should be-
Sector 779 Under Attack
Estimated Time until Enemy Forces Arrive: 4:99
Warning: Enemy forces are converging
Threat Level Reassessment
Medium to High
Oh you've got to be kidding me-
...
As the waves began to progress, the packs of grimm would increase in numbers as Beowulves, Nevermores and various other grimm types would begin to rush in and attack the base.
A hastily made line of defenses consisting of Arcs and Lancers were built, with the AI planning to upgrade the defenses later on.
However the Grimm would sometimes be smart, with a small pack sometimes gaining the knowledge to attack on an exposed section of the Sharded base within the ruins of the city, the AI in question would have short bursts of panic as a response, quickly building Arcs and removing them once the clever Grimm threat was taken care off..
Wave 8
3:57
The AI still had time until the guardian of this sector would arrive, until then, they would begin to fly around the ruins that make up Mountain Glenn.. Ozpin had informed them about this place in particular, citing something about Grimm threats overunning an attempt at expanding towards the southeast.. The AI couldn't even blame them for their failure at expansion since these waves have shown the AI just how vicious the Grimm were at trying to attack their targets.
However, with Ruins comes potential ways to salvage new technology.. The Desolate Ruins sector barely had anything of value, and even with the subsector in mind, there wasn't anything of value that they could ever benefit from.. Even then the hostile people with masks had left behind only boxes of elemental crystals and nothing more..
Infact they would've benefitted from scanning and recovering the mechs that they had, but sadly they brought it with them and ran away into the tunnels where it would eventually be infested with endless Grimm..
Oh well..
It scanned each building, deconstructing them and only recovering rebar and concrete, the AI dropped down the scraps that they recovered towards the ground as a result and flew away to scan for more potential buildings.
Nothing here in the northwest..
Nothing there in the northeast either..
Oh?
The AI stopped at a particular building, a building in partiuclar had a disk shaped structure at the top of it, the building itself was desolate and yet the scans showed much higher potential for recovery and remodeling for potential Sharded uses.
The AI felt joy once again, scanning the building in it's entirety before completing the scans with a deconstruction of the building itself.
Finally something that could be of use! The AI quickly flew back to it's base, it's interface as it stared at the base model of the building in the tech tree.
Reassembling this for future use may take a while, but at least it'll probably be worth it right?
As the new wave progressed, it began to model the new building.
...
Wave 12
2:15
12 Enemies Remaining
A Beowoulf would attempt to run in, only to stop momentarily and look down after a flash of light blinded it's very vision. A hole was made in it's chest, it wasn't supposed to be there before.
it tapped the hole before losing control of it's limbs and flopped to the ground dead, a haze of black began to emit from the now dead grimm as more began to join the dead beowulf in it's attempt at assaulting the Sharded base in front of them.
The AI kinda had to replace the Arcs with Salvos later on in the waves because they've been consuming a whole lot of power lately.
That aside, the Pyrium-loadrd Salvos alongside Lancers shall take care of a few more waves, they were still busy with modelling what they've started to call a "communications hub"
The building that they've recovered earlier? According to whatever information they've recovered, it had technologies that allowed for vast communications, that and it somehow being a 'support' tower for the CCTS
And that included accessing transmissions that the CCTS has, the guy Ozpin has spoke before about their existence before but they didn't really get enough information before their eventual departure from Beacon, which was an academy.. Something that the AI still had no idea what it meant.
Anyway.
It tweaked a few logic lines here and there.. Modified it's inner parts.. And replace the materials such as concrete and iron with its own..
And now..
There we go! It's done! Mostly.. The Communications Hub! It inputted the required description for future use before adding it to their build list
Communications Hub
- Allows for access to the CCTS and it's features.
That should do.
It began to build the Communications Hub, using up copper, silicon, lead and metaglass to make up it's features. Once that was done? It connected the Communications Hub to a power line, activating it and doing it's own thing.
The Communications Hub still looked mostly the same as it's previous building, a metal walls now covered it's base with a dish at the top that began to spin around instead of being as still as stone.
The AI accessed the building, now finding to see multiple options as they popped in and out from the list.
And each had names that were.. jumbled in text..
...well that's interested to say the least.
But some were definitely stable there were three to four options that didn't flicker in and out. Remaining as stable as possible.
It picked the first option.
bjhwygdghrbjdhg00111222526
Source: Unknown
Type: Audio
Accept?
The AI accepted.
The sounds emitted from the Communications Hub were more jumbled sounds, a mix of scratches and unidentifiable sounds were made before it stabilized itself to a more comprehensible sounding audio, and what it emitted surprieed the AI.
"Good evening Remnant! Im your host Morichello, and you are listening to the Wonders of Remnant!"
The speaker spoke about how many were watching the broadcast, before it moved on to speak about the current topic
Listing everything about what the broadcast had started to speak about would most likely take up time itself, so the AI had to summarize what they've listened to so far and from what information that they've gathered from the three other stable transmission options.
For starters, they've learned a lot more about the CCTS because that was the main topic of the broadcast that they had. A system where transmissions was possible because of four major relays across each kingdom, one gets knocked down and the rest of the system falls with it. It was somewhat of a great idea but then they've heard of an attempt at launching a sattelite into outer space.
What do you mean dust doesn't work in outer space? What is that?
And then, there was about broadcast about the current news of this world, detailing the attack of an organization called the White Fang against Vale in particular, which had prompted the intervention of Atlas and a few brave huntsmen to clean things up, more terms that the AI has kind of heard of thanks to Ozpin's Vytal Festival talk.
And then there's the third broadcast about the general information of the world.
Specifically one that talked about Dust in particular.
...and said dust was the elemental crystals that they've been mining. It immediately identified what type of dust that the third broadcast was talking about from Pyrium with Fire Dust to Cryotite with Ice Dust, and Anemonite with Wind Dust to Geolocite with Rock Dust, most of the elemental crystals that they've been mining so far for their usage in defenses and factories.
They didn't recognize more dust types however, as the mention of "Plant Dust", "Gravity Dust", "Combustion Dust" and a few more brought up nothing from the AI, meaning these were new dust types that they've yet to discover snd harness..
However, the naming convention in particular, kind of sucked in it's opinion. Dust was the elemental rocks that they've mined, and yet there's also the term called "dust" which describes the collection of fine particles.
It was just plain disappointing, an element of it's kind followed by the suffix 'Dust'.. It decided that their naming convention was superior enough, functionality be damned these names have to be unique and cool enough.
Guardian of Sector 779 Detected
Estimated Arrival in 5 Waves
Ah, there it is.
It interrupted the AI as it listened to the transmissions, it cut it off before flying back to it's defenses..
Maybe they could listen to the transmissions while they capture most of Mountain Glenn? Surely Remnant has a few transmissions that were interesting enough for the AI to listen to..
~~~~~ MINDUSTRIAL WAR ~~~~~
"You've made contact with the unknown faction!?"
"Indeed I did" Ozpin nodded at the three councilmen on the holographic screens before him "So far so good, they've regarded us as friendlies for the time being. As I've made no such extreme moves to their faction compared to.. Ironwood's actions" He turned his head to the window, only to find another bright light launching itself from the distant mountains and into the air before it began it's descent down the atmosphere
The Sharded.. They were expanding again weren't they..?
"However" The headmaster took one sip from his mug and placed it back on his table, turning back to the councilmen "The wider public has yet to know of these relations so far.."
The idea of such may possibly unnerve the public, grimm spikes have already occured across Atlas and Vacuo over the past few months already and the existence of the unknown faction, the Sharded, in the Glenn Mountains would surely cause a public outcry
"A-ahem.. If I may.." Another spoke up from the screens "Have you gained any information from them so far..?"
He brought a hand to his chin and rubbed it, before nodding, he'll disclose some information to the councilmembers "For now they've disclosed their name to us, the Sharded, and-"
He was promptly interrupted by a councilmember who spoke up immediately "Ah..! Excuse us for a moment, we have a urgent message coming from.. The Atlesian Council?"
An additional screen would show up besides the Councilmen's screen, showing one man with a paper on his side
"This is a message delivered to the higherups of Vale, I urge you to listen carefully" He cleared his throat for a moment before speaking up "It has come to our attention that you're in contact with the Unknown Faction. And thus, we, the Atlesian Council, ask you to sever your relations with the unknown faction, as they've dealt a grievous damage to the Atlesian Fleet and to Atlas as a whole."
"They have brought nothing but grief to the Atlesian people ever since news broke out of their attack on the delegates and to the Atlesian fleet sent to their base, and they all call for the lives lost to be avenged"
A pregnant pause would be held in the air as the Atlesian screen flickered "if this condition is not met by the end of the Vytal Festival, then im afraid Atlas shall be forced to sever ties with Vale"
"Thank you for listening, please reconsider your choices."
The screen flickers to nothingness, the three councilmembers murmuring to each other before one turned to face Ozpin
"Headmaster Ozpin.." The councilmember spoke up, unsure..
Ozpin turned to face the windows behind him, frowning as he stared at the Atlesian Airships floating before Beacon "Ironwood.."
Just what was he doing..?
"So.. You've seen it right? The conversation between that ship and Ozpin?"
"Duh? It was right by the cliffs, it's hard to miss it"
Rumors were practically spreading around the campus about it in particular, from pictures to someone apparently comparing the ship frommthe cliffs to the one found in Atlas before the clash to even speculation whether or not they're actually aliens judging by the fact that some students have even gone as far as to listen to them, figuring out that the ship in particular doesn't even know about the history of how the Vytal Festival came to be.
And one of these students was Emerald and Mercury, the former whom had gone out of her way to pretty much peek in to the whole convo.
"Artificial intelligence, the Crux.. Man, it was a good idea to peek in into their conversation.." Emerald then leaned into the wall, before she turned her head to Cinder "You heard all of that right?"
"Hmph.." She walked towards the windows, frowning slightly, as good as their plans were progressing, the breach at Vale earlier had upsetted Cinder quite a bit, and now with how things were progressing, it was unclear as to how much they could get out of this.
"We still have a plan to follow through, so stick with your spots for now.."
She looked out at the window.. Uncertain of their future
[Info]
Hydrocium / Water Dust
- Elemental crystals that are abundant to this planet. Mainly used in ammo, produces water when used.
[Note: It's water-producing effects may suggest potential usage as an effective coolant.]
Hydrocium-compatible Structures
- Water Harnesser
- Duo
- Salvo
- Breach
- Fuse
Aside from that, there's one thing that I'll probably have to fix and that is Ozpin's small talk with the Sharded AI.
I've kind of specifically had explained that Ozpin talked with the AI about the Vytal Festival and it's history in particular, but I did drop some info that they kind of talked about the CCTS and such. So expect the AI to know a few things but they wont know other information that Ozpin didn't disclose to the AI.