[Notification: Ping pong Point-134.]

“Hmm?” Custodian dismissed the notification then went to check out the point of interest. Special cameras which were placed all over the dungeon could ping Custodian whenever something interesting happened such as organics moving into the A.I.’s territories.

Normally, Custodian wouldn’t care because the notification was usually about a random rat or slime passing through, but this specific camera was placed in the lower depths of the dungeon.

In other words, it was close to troglodyte territories.

A group of troglodytes was marching in a line towards one of the many tunnels leading into Custodian’s complex, and it didn’t seem like they got there by coincidence. They were all armed with tools, and they seemed to have a higher form of intelligence compared to the troglodytes the drones had been hunting.

No…

It seemed that some of these troglodytes were somewhat bigger, and had rougher skins. Their heads were also ridged with some sort of bone protrusion. Could these monsters be different?

As first response, Custodian sent smaller spider combat drones to intercept the troglodytes before they could reach Varangian home territories. Several lesser combat drones broke off from their groups and formed up into one coherent assault squad.

They began modifying themselves as they saw fit, exchanging parts and tools with each other in order to form a specific fight group. At the front, the combat drones had a long spear facing forward, while the ones to the side were basic claw-and-shock spider drones.

Custodian didn’t add any of the new warrior drones since they were more expensive to make, and the A.I. wanted to probe the invading monsters for their strength. After all, if it turned out that the monsters were just small fries, sending in its warrior drones would just be overkill and a waste of efficiency.

The spider drones began crawling down the tunnel, some were even moving across the wall or ceiling. The cameras stealthily placed along the tunnels continued to monitor the troglodytes to check out their fighting composition and to analyze the new monsters.

Surprisingly, the lead troglodyte managed to hear the combat drones heading their way from afar. It raised its leathery arm, causing the entire column to stop. With a croak, the troglodytes started forming up.

Not long after, Custodian’s drones finally met the troglodytes, but they didn’t attack first. After all, if the troglodytes were smart, they might be here for peaceful reasons. Then again, the monsters were armed to the teeth so…

‘All drones, attack!’ Custodian ordered when it saw the troglodytes were preparing to throw spears at the drones.

The spiders’ legs all kicked to full action as spears flew across the large tunnel. The spear drones charged forward in order to pressure the leading troglodytes while the flanking spiders tried to penetrate through the sides.

However, the troglodytes were ready and prepared. The monsters’ spears slashed and jabbed at the drones, quickly wiping out the drones at the front. The tide of the battle had suddenly turned as the lead troglodyte raised its weapon - a large cleaver made out of petrified bone.

With a swing, it wiped out the spear drones, and Custodian’s drones were forced to fall back.

‘I see. This will be a good way to test my dungeon’s defenses then,’ Custodian thought to itself.

The troglodytes cheered, then began inspecting the dead drones, but the leading troglodyte croaked loudly and angrily, forcing the troglodytes to abandon their curiosities. They continued their march forward into the tunnels cautiously, weapons ready and eyes towards the end of the tunnel.

As they passed through some rock formations, some stalactite began turning. Disguised as rock, automated combat turrets turned their barrels towards the invading troglodytes and opened fire.

Metal bolts struck the troglodytes, punching through their thick skins, but it wasn’t enough to take down the monsters. The troglodytes didn’t panic, and instead they launched furious attacks at the turrets.

Though a threat from a distance, the turrets were useless once a threat gets too close to it. Which was why Custodian made groups of them with space between them to create killzone. With the addition of upgraded processing chips, the turrets were also able to create a weak shocking field around its turret base in order to deter or slow would-be attackers.

Even with those upgrades, the turrets were still nonetheless destroyed by combination of throwing spears and sheer brute force. At the very least, some of the troglodytes were killed or incapacitated.

Unlike before, the troglodytes were less cheery about the whole ordeal. They were steaming with anger as they formed up and marched once more.

As they continued, Custodian tried different tactics, including complex deadfall traps, pitfall traps, and even an attempt at collapsing the rocky ceiling. At last, the rocky underground tunnel had turned into a solid metal hallway.

This was where a squad of warrior drones was already waiting for the monsters with a shieldwall. With berserk-like rage, the troglodytes charged at the warrior drones, but the disciplined and tight formation of Custodian’s drones began to show results.

At the head of the battle, a huskarl drone faced off with the large troglodyte leader. The huskarl’s metal axe met the troglodyte’s bone sword, and punches were thrown in every direction. The monster raised its sword, then swung it down at the huskarl, and the drone tried to stop it with its hand.

The bone sword went through halfway the huskarl’s arm, then stopped. Taking this opportunity, the huskarl swung its axe at the troglodyte’s head, butchering it with ferocity. As the troglodyte leader fell, the rest of the monsters panicked and dispersed.

While most were drunk with rage and continued to fight on, some of the smaller troglodytes turned tails and retreated. Custodian activated some hidden scouts along the tunnels and pursued the small troglodytes; not to hunt them down, but to follow where they were headed to.

After all, when desperate, organics would run back home and hole up there.

With the last of the troglodytes dead, the drones began cleaning up. Spider worker drones began gathering everything from the corpses of the monsters to the damaged drones. While mini-Custodians tend to the minor problems such as drone repairs, the troglodyte corpses and broken drones were sent back to Custodian.

While some of the broken drones were salvageable enough to restore them to working conditions, most of the drones’ processing chips were smashed due to the brutality of the troglodyte attacks.

‘That’s unfortunate. Even recycling chips only yield a small percent of the material back…’

Even though Custodian could recycle at least ninety percent of any other material such as iron, for some reason, chip recycling has a high loss rate, which meant that any permanently damaged drone was a big loss to the profit-hungry A.I.

‘At least I got this…’ Custodian turned its attention to the pile of dead troglodytes. Surely enough, their structure was similar to the troglodytes it encountered earlier, but there were some key differences such as the bone ridges on their head, and their larger overall size.

‘Designating new troglodyte species as High Troglodytes or High Trogs,’ Custodian announced as it finished its analysis.

The A.I. then began to process the high troglodytes one by one for further details. Of course, it started with the biggest meal - the troglodyte leader. Upon processing, Custodian received a new message.

[Congratulations on processing two types of sentient races! Exterminator Path progressed.]

‘No rewards?’ Custodian grumbled.

Almost as if the protocols system was offended that it was being accused of being stingy, a new notification popped up.

[3500 units of anti-mana in weight collected. Protocol 4E completed. Blueprints for Type 1 Churl Mind, Type 1 Thane Mind, and Type 1 Steadfaster Mind imprinted into databank]

[Protocol 4F started. Collect 5000 units of anti-mana in weight to unlock new production capabilities. 70% completed.]

[Type 1 Churl Mind

A direct upgrade of the Peasant Mind. Capable of multitasking and weak parallel thinking, equivalent to three Type 1 Peasant Minds.

Produced using 3 Type 2 Peasant Minds processors, 10 biomatter and mana matter each in weight.]

[Type 1 Thane Mind

Capable of faster thinking processes than its Freeholder predecessor, and capable of carrying independent instructions. Very minor levels of self-awareness.

Produced using 3 Type 2 Freeholder Mind processors, 20 biomatter and 15 mana matter in weight.]

[Type 1 Steadfaster Mind

Slower thinking than the Churl or Thane Minds, but more capable of sustaining a large body with minimum dependency requirement. Not capable of magic.

Produced using 2 Type 2 Peasant Mind processors, 3 Type 2 Freeholder Mind processors, and 10 units of anti-mana.]

Custodian analyzed the blueprints carefully and quietly one by one. It stared straight ahead for a while then an error message pinged the A.I.

[Error! Cannot send ‘complaints.text’ to ‘FOREMAN’. Unknown recipient.]

‘So expensive…’ Custodian grumbled once more, but its thoughts were fleeting, and it quickly moved on to the positive side of the situation.

The new Churl Mind processors could be used to create workers with multiple arms or auxiliary ranged combat drones. Though Custodian could have made such type of drones earlier, the fact that their parallel thinking capabilities were not built-in meant that the drones would either be too big or too complex, but this Churl processor had it built-in, which made drone designs simpler and feasible. Plus, it was actually cheaper than building one Type 2 Peasant Mind, and sticking three Type 2 Serf Mind processors into it.

As for the new Thane Mind, Custodian was curious about the ‘self-awareness’ part. What could be defined as self-aware? To the level of the Daedelus like Princeps, Slayers, and others? To the level of Custodian? Though, the A.I. could already guess that this was the beginning of the making of highly complex and independent drones. At the very least, Thane drones could be used as supervisors or officers.

As for the new Steadfast Mind…

‘What is this even supposed to be?’ Custodian thought to itself. Comparatively, a Thane Mind was much more expensive than a Steadfast Mind, which meant that it could create more of Steadfast Mind chips, but what would Custodian need larger but dumber drones for?

‘For now, I’ll just emulate the beasts the humans ride on as cargo runners,’ Custodian concluded. Even though Freeholders were cheaper and Peasants were even cheaper, both types of derivative drones could only carry so much, and they were probably better used somewhere else.

After all, if Custodian sent half of its army to lug carts of loot around, consequences wouldn’t even stop to think about kicking the A.I. from behind.

Since the prototypes would still be in testing phase, Custodian would only make a few of each new processors and its drone frames, then check how they would perform.

‘Business as usual, then,’ Custodian thought to itself satisfyingly.

A trail of wagons carried by horses made their way through the light snow across a lightly wooded path. Men with red hair coated themselves lightly as they continued to approach north. Despite the fact that it was summer, there was still a blanket of snow covering the path.

On their flanks were their new mysterious allies from the north. They called themselves Varangians, but the Vyssians simply called them northmen. While most were shorter than the average man, there were a few who were simply large enough to give even the biggest Vyssians awe.

“Did you see the northman leader? The one covered in fur and armor?” a Vyssian footman asked his fellow men.

“Which one? They’re all covered in fur and armor. I wouldn’t even be surprised if the fur was actually hair sticking out of their armor. Are they even human?” another rumored.

“I’ve seen the northman leader. He was at least a head taller than me. Man must be built so hard from all those thing he was carrying,” another murmured.

“I mean, are these northmen even children? These ones are so short, but the leader is an absolute beast,” one man pointed towards the drone caravan guards.

“Quiet down. They might hear you. I heard they spared no one in their raids, unlike us Vyssians!”

“Wait, we do?”

“Of course! Because we can’t catch all the damned bastards running away from us!”

“Hahaha! This banter will be good with some ale, but ah… all we got here are some food, a lot of logs, and a small herd of cows,” one grumbled. Not that the Vyssians would steal ale from their allies, of course.

“What’s this bag next to you? Hiding the ale?”

“Naw. Some priestess found out we were headed north and handed this pile of books to us. Said it was part of the payment or something.”

“Books? Only priests and noblemen could read. Do you think the northmen have some kind of chapel in their mountain?”

“Idiot. Who could even build anything in this forsaken place? I wouldn’t be surprised if we were attacked by some monster right now!”

The caravan stopped when a large roar was heard from the distance. While they were still far from the Varangian forest, the Vyssians knew that attacks weren’t unheard of close to the Varangian border. Just because the monsters were in Varangia, doesn’t mean the monsters would follow some arbitrarily drawn territorial line made up by some Vyssian map makers.

The Vyssians took out their weapons and shields, then stood guard. The men slowly began to form groups of three, each of their backs behind one another. Meanwhile, the so-called northmen stood their ground, still facing forward as if nothing bothered them.

“There!” The shout was accompanied by an attack from a large tiger. It had beastly hind legs, but at the front were two pairs of furred arms. The tiger roared at the men, then crashed itself against the nearest group of drones. Following that, it slashed across a group of Vyssian men, throwing them into the air.

While the Vyssians hesitated to attack the tiger, the drones simultaneously turned their heads towards the tiger, and mechanically charged with their axes high up.

“Do these northmen not know fear?!” a Vyssian shouted.

“They’re going to be slaughtered! Charge, boys! In honor of Vyssium!” a bearded Vyssian footman shouted and charged with the drones.

Despite the tiger’s skillful use of its arms, several drones got through and began hacking at the monster. It swung its body, arms, and tail around, slapping drones away like dolls. Meanwhile, the Vyssians fared better. They boxed the tiger in with a shieldwall, then raised their spears at it. While the drones kept the tiger distracted, the Vyssians stabbed the tiger from a relatively safer distance.

Of course, the tiger wasn’t dumb. It saw that it was going to be boxed, so it bashed its head through one side of the Vyssian shieldwall. It swung its mighty arms around, smacking Vyssians and drones alike.

“Is it impossible?!”

“Are we going to die?!”

Just as the Vyssians were thinking of what to do next, black figures zoomed across the Vyssians, and straight towards the tiger. At the lead was a large humanoid carrying a black greatsword which introduced itself to the tiger by cutting one of the tiger’s arms with one fell swoop.

“RRROOOAAAAAAAA!” the tiger screamed as a fountain of blood splattered across the snowy floor.

The newly arrived man, recognized by the Vyssian as a northman, tried to swing at the tiger once more, but the monster dodged to the side and threw its own counterattack.

Before its claws could reach the large northman, armored men formed a wall of shield in front of the northman. Compared to the smaller and weaker northmen caravan guards, the new mysterious warriors managed to withstand the power of the tiger.

The armored northmen attacked first, followed by their smaller brethren. For some reason, the northmen were much more careful this time rather than throwing their body at the tiger recklessly.

The Vyssians weren’t in shock for long, and they began to form a box around the tiger again. This time, the drones joined their shieldwall.

The tiger sensed the trap was closing in once more and looked for a weakness. It leapt towards the side, but it saw the large figure move too late.

Once again, the large northman delivered a brutal swing at the tiger, but this time, its head was the target. Blood spilled across the air, then it was finally over.

“I can’t believe it. We defeated the monster…”

“He cut that beast down cleanly!”

“It… It must be the sword!”

Whatever the Vyssians thought, they could only gaze as the large warrior stabbed his greatsword onto the floor.

“Request. Please carry the dead monster onto the wagon,” the large warrior said.

“Huh? Oh… Um. Come on, men. Let’s get to work. Tend to the wounded!” a Vyssian shouted.

“Follow up. Do not mind the Varangians. Insisting that you should also place the dead Varangians onto the wagon.”

“Is that alright?”

“Answer. Yes.”

“You heard the warrior, lads. Get to work!” the same Vyssian ordered.

As both men and drones worked together to sweep up the mess, some of the younger Vyssians approached the large northman.

“E-Excuse me, warrior? Me and my fellows are wondering what your name is,” one of the Vyssians asked.

“Reply. I am called Princeps.”

“Princeps? Is that so? What a powerful name.”

“Come on, you’re happy, right? Let’s get back to work. I’d rather not piss off the warrior,” one of the older men said as he tugged dragged the young ones back to work.

“I should name my first son Princeps.”

“Don’t be stupid. It will be an insult to the northmen, since he looks like one of their leaders.”

With the Vyssians gone, Princeps went back to inspect the damage on the caravan.

‘How troublesome. It seemed that some of these organics designated as cows managed to get away. I need you to send some drones to fetch them, Princeps,’ Custodian ordered.

‘Affirm,’ came the reply.

Custodian only accepted a few cows as payment only to see how much matter they were worth. After all, compared to wood and dead bodies, transporting several dozens of cows up a mountain and through a forest filled with monsters was simply asking for unnecessary trouble.

‘If anything, wouldn’t it be better if they were killed beforehand instead?’ Custodian thought to itself. Actually, it wouldn’t surprise the A.I. if the caravan was attacked because of the fat cows it was also lugging around. Once again, Custodian was sure of the superiority of the wonderful organic matter known as wood.

‘At least the huskarls with better frames were starting to prove their worth,’ Custodian noted. Instead of the weak and feeble bio-iron frames which were starting to teach Custodian the meaning of depression, the huskarls were upgraded with iron or even steel bodies in order to enhance their strength. Though maintenance cost went up and flexibility went down a bit, it was a good price to pay. Or at least, if there were consequences, Custodian haven’t seen any major ones yet.

‘But still… these organics do know how to fight,’ Custodian praised. It remembered how they tried to box the monster in, and how effective it would’ve been if only the humans weren’t stupid and slow.

‘Even though it’s such a simple tactic…’ Custodian cursed how it was a super-A.I. built solely for production. It was having a hard time of thinking of things like ‘maybe don’t try attacking from the front’ or something along those lines as long as there were no prior instructions for it. By all accounts, it was lucky that Custodian found military manuals or else it would’ve fumbled around trying to kill anything but dungeon monsters.

But that was what the drones were for. Specifically, the Daedeli drones. For some reason, they could think independently enough to even have split personalities, different from one another and Custodian. The A.I. looked back to how the drones started to specialize in what they liked, and how they were beginning to somewhat understand feelings.

Questions arose in the A.I.’s mind.

What about me? Will I develop further? How different am I from the drones?

...or not. The thoughts never occurred to the A.I. as it went back to balancing a spreadsheet.

Within a large hall, furnaces with tiny limbs walked around like crabs scuttling in a beach. One furnace drone in particular found a spot to settle on and dropped its body. A humanoid drone inserted a pot of iron into the furnace, and began melting it. Meanwhile, behind its back was another set of arms hammering away at an anvil. It was somewhat clumsy, but it did its job of forging a new blade after quenching it in oil.

The drone didn’t even need to move from its spot as it simply deposited the blade onto a basket drone as it passed by.

As the drone rotated its body to begin working on melting and forging a new blade simultaneously, a Daedeli passed by. Smith, formerly known as Drone 3, carefully inspected its new smithing drones in order to check for any problems.

There were drones with arms at their backs supplemented by drones with hammers as limbs working on production of weapons, cubes with long thin limbs assembled and connected chains together to create chainmail, and many other types of drones. Various designs for different types of production were made to test the efficiency levels of the designs, and Custodian was keen on optimizing its production capabilities.

Smith was busy collecting data from the smithing drones when he heard a certain drone with a high-pitch tone shouting for him.

“Smiiiith! Smiiiith! Where are you?!” Niner shouted.

“Niner. You know where I am,” Smith responded as he came from behind.

“Well, it’s habit. It’s annoying ping-ponging with the lesser kins for information, anyway,” Niner explained.

“Don’t disrupt the workers for something as minor as my location,” Smith chided.

“I didn’t! Anyway, Master Custodian wanted me to exchange data with you regarding the shiny metallic material,” Niner said.

Smith was silent for a while then asked, “Shiny metallic metal?”

“Gold, brother! Gold! Why was there a large room full of them in the castle of the ruined city?! No, in fact, the whole city had quite a collection of it!” Niner exclaimed.

When Custodian’s forces pillaged the ruined city under Mount Varangia, there were some buildings with special rooms filled with gold ingots, silver ingots, and other types of useless junks. They proved mostly useless so far except to make gold wires which were strangely good conductors for ‘anti-mana-based magic’. Though, it wasn’t that useful in creating drones, after all, processing chips came out as a whole magical component while the drone’s frames only required some kind of magical connector to the chip to work. Attaching fancier gold wires won’t make the drones go faster.

Custodian doesn’t understand why the humans wouldn’t hoard iron instead. In spite of all that, it decided to keep the gold and silver for a while since it also recalled that the humans were willing to hire the Varangians as mercenaries for gold and silver, but why that was considered profitable, it wouldn’t know.

If Custodian got wood, it could replace lost limbs and maintain its drones. If it got dead bodies, it could replenish its mana matter stocks. Drones weren’t cheap, and neither were they durable. How could gold, silver, and colored stones let the A.I. recuperate its potential loss from a destroyed drone?

Come to think about it, the A.I. did hand over some of those weird funny junks to the Vyssians, and because of those weird junk, the humans were happy enough to show the drones their source location. Perhaps the value lies in the fact that it somehow makes the organics happy? But then, the humans and spiders were also happy with receiving rat meat as well. Can it give gold to the dungeon monsters to reveal their spawning nests? What makes organics happier? What is happiness?

Red claimed that it was a positive emotion, but to Custodian, it was simply something to make the organics more inclined to drop its guard around you and work for you. Thinking too much on this would just be a waste of production time, Custodian realized.

As a result, it went to dump the work of finding out the true value of gold and silver to the automatons instead.

“I have not found any other information regarding them,” Smith promptly replied. After some testing, he didn’t find them to be interesting or noteworthy, so he quickly abandoned using them. At best, he used the gold and silver to produce better equipment for the mage drones, which increased their magic efficiency, but they weren’t very durable.

“I think it’s fine. Red said she might know their worth so Custodian tasked her with finding out what they are worth to humans instead,” Niner said.

Though Red said so, she wasn’t a drone specialized in economics. She had to spend a good amount of time negotiating better prices and finding out more from the Vyssians about the values of the goods. It took a long time before the drones could reach a fair deal (in the eyes of the humans) with the Vyssians. If anything, Red (and by extension, Custodian) was akin to a child trying to understand the worth of money.

Then again, matter was more valuable to Custodian, so most of the deals made with the humans were profitable to it. Getting matter was her master’s highest priority, and she doubted that her master would rather spend time converting gold to matter.

She also realized that even if Custodian got precious metal as payment, it would simply use it to buy wood.

Again, she was stuck with ‘what’s the point of the middleman that is currency?’

A way to store value? Long-term prosperity planning?

Expansion was short-term plan, and prosperity wasn’t high up on Custodian’s list when all of its sources of income were shaky.

After all, it did get attacked recently by the troglodytes. There were too many unknowns, too little time. Bars of shiny metal wouldn’t stop an army of angry monsters, but a horde of drones would.

Whatever the case, Custodian had an ancient city’s worth of gold and silver hoard, and it was sure that it didn’t need any more junk cluttering its space.

“You know, instead of gold or silver, I wish I could study the bluish sword Slayer got,” Niner mumbled.

Smith nodded then thought about how he received reports of a material which was capable of slashing through steel. So far, they only got brief analysis and reports on the bluish sword, since Slayer was bad at analyzing things.

The drones hadn’t encountered many special types of metal anywhere, so it was hard to study the new type of metal. Most of the humans used iron tools which were of worse quality, and even after searching through the entire ruined city, there were no other special equipment made out of special metal. Compared to the humans, the drones which were already able to use steel were way more advanced in terms of metallurgy.

Niner and Smith had already argued whether the material used by the greatsword stolen from the lich in the ruined city of Mount Varangia was the same as the bluish sword of the Rhankish noble. Once it was confirmed that they were the same thing, Weaver could begin soliciting information from the humans regarding the stronger metals.

Right now, they were eager to see who was the winner of the argument.

‘Master Custodian, will Slayer return any time soon?’ Niner asked in hivespeak.

‘Negative. Slayer is currently campaigning at Rhankia. He will not be able to return for some time. Why do you ask?’ Custodian asked back.

‘About the bluish sword Slayer had obtained earlier…’

‘I’ll send someone to retrieve it later. For now, I have more pressing matters.’ With that, Custodian’s attention turned to somewhere else.

To be specific, it was currently observing the growing number of troglodytes gathering near its underground territory. The A.I. reminisced back when it had to defend itself against a horde of rats. It seemed that things had not yet changed.

‘It is time to welcome the intruders... to my dungeon.’