Explaining to Arlae about how to spend her EXP was something of a treat. She knew the common gaming vocabulary, which just made it that much easier. Who knew a brunette on the fast track of the military was also a gamer? Heh. I kept that comment to myself though.

I did have to show off a little bit by summoning my digger drone. It had been a steady workhorse ever since I built it, and it showed. It’s chassis was already dinged and nicked, and it was liberally coated in rock dust and debris.

Spending it’s stored EXP however cleaned that up nicely. I have no idea why that happens, but it is useful. Especially because it restores the Structural Integrity, which I’m just going to call HP, to the nearest full point. Free fixes for the win!

[Name: Excavator Drone #1. (Digger)

Class: Golem (minion).

Subclass: Mining.

Rank: F. (3 more EXP spent for F+.)

EXP Available: 0.

External Statistics:

Structural Integrity (HP) - 6/6. (No problem.)

Movement Speed (Spd) - 1.0. (No problem.)

Internal Stats:

Focus (CPU) - 0/0. (Non-sentient.)

Power Units (pu) - 17/25. (No problem.)

+1 Efficiency. (0.75 pu cost.)

Carrying Capacity - 0/0. (No problem.)

Feats List:

Efficient, Resilient, Eternal, Expandable.

Abilities List:

Mining II, Underground I.]

It’s stats were just slightly different from my other drones, but it still remains within the same parameters. I had to explain it to Arlae, and even showed her what I see in my mind by projecting it on the monitor within myself. To which I found that it is very different from her own User Profile.

Given we cannot share directly, all I could do was note down what she told me about her stats. It came out to be something like this:

[User Profile:

Name: Arlae Kristoph

Age: 24.

Race: Human (Alternative).

Racial Rank: D.

EXP Available: 4.4.

External Stats:

HP: 100/100.

MP: 120/120.

Movement Speed: 0.8.

HP Regen: 0.8 per minute.

MP Regen: 1.0 per minute.

Internal Stats:

Strength: 9.

Dexterity: 10.

Vitality: 8.

Agility: 11.

Intelligence: 12.

Wisdom: 10.

Feats:

Communicator; Learned; Persuasive; Determined; Otherworlder.

Abilities:

Sneak II, Scout I, Survival I.]

I guess that’s just how all biological profiles are supposed to be. I on the other hand completely break the mold. Probably a cheat, but I’m not complaining. I really don’t want to die out here in the middle of nowhere.

Still, it appears that she got half of the EXP I did for the mass murder of little green monsters. Not a bad take for not being directly involved, but I guess that’s how this universe keeps things fair. She was counted as part of my group, so she got her share of the spoils.

Letting her go through her EXP options gives me time to focus on everything else. I do go ahead and send the digger drone back to its job, cutting a tunnel to the underground river. At the same time, I have my other drones being busy little beavers.

My fertilizer barrel is reaching completion, with the top being welded on now. That’s taking both the hover scout and one of the rovers to do. My other rover drone is busy tending my garden. Or more specifically it’s scattering the leaking blood from severed limbs on it. Messy business, but I’m not complaining.

Heh heh. I’m not the one doing it. And I don’t have to look at it if I don’t want to. Yes, it is complete and utter denial, but whatever. No one ever told me I had to face the facts. Or reality for that matter. La-la-la… Bah.

In any case things are moving quickly. I’ve already started constructing a water pump and the associated plumbing equipment now that my nano replicator is empty. Going to need more resources input before they are done however. Then I’ll need to make more wiring for power and control. Then probably a water tank for storage.

After that I’ll need to find a convenient way to get rid of the waste water. I have the schematics for a stand-alone purification plant, but that’d cost too much to build right now. Not to mention the fact that I’m running out of hands.

Trying to do everything with just four drones is becoming annoying and time consuming. With Arlae helping out that should relax a little, but my drones are much more useful at the moment. I don’t have to yell at them to get things done.

Nor do they need bathroom breaks or to be fed. Haha. I don’t even need them to come back to recharge anymore. I have enough power generation to keep them constantly on a low level of charge through my Energy Domain ability.

Gods, that ability would transform the world back home. Wireless power transfers are still not viable as a technology, especially for setups with high energy requirements. It’s like trying to shoot lightning bolts, super dangerous.

That said, it’s endlessly useful here for me. My Energy Domain will be even more useful once I’ve built what’s next on my list as well. A new Drone Bay! A small one, in any case. But it’ll provide me with another four slots for drones, which is the whole point.

Building it is going to take time though, and more resources. That said I can slim it down, which i’m already working on. The Drone Bay, according to its schematics, is a self-contained rectangular cube with batteries and re-charging station already built-in. I’m going to remove most of the batteries and the re-charging station, along with three fourths of its exterior plating.

I’m simply going to have my digger drone cut an alcove into one of the walls and then build it within that space. It’ll only require its front panel after that point. Taking out most of the unnecessary parts will also allow me to make the entire structure smaller and more compact, greatly reducing the literal ton and a half of raw materials I’d need to build it.

Sadly I still need the control unit that is built into the Drone Bay, because it is the only way I can increase my drone limit right now. I could do the same with the EXP option, but it simply costs way too much. It is not viable, and I definitely don’t want to see how it’d rearrange my insides without more testing first.

Time, time, give me time. Ugh. All this waiting is going to drive me nuts.

My attention is soon drawn back as Arlae suddenly lights up like a candle, and I end up waiting for her EXP spending to come to an end. Thankfully it doesn’t take long, and I cannot tell that anything is different with her when done. I’m not going to scan her just yet, as to save a bit of her privacy.

“Wow, that was a rush!” Yep, it seems that something has changed. Or her response to the EXP is simply vastly different than my own.

“Oh? What’d you get? And what did you feel? I didn’t feel much of anything during the process myself, outside of a headache.” Okay, so maybe I sound a bit surly there, but I don’t like pain.

“I added a point to both Vitality and Wisdom.” She says, not even bothering to stop grinning. “Vitality is tied in with body shape, and provides a boost to my Feats. Wisdom responds to MP regen.”

Okay, so that explanation works. I’d have thought she’d needed something like ‘Charm’ or ‘Charisma’, but I guess those aren’t viable options. Still, being pretty has its perks.

“And it felt like power was running through me. It was cool!” Yep, check on the secret nerd option here. Heh heh.

“That’s good to know. I’ll give you a full scan later to check on the physical changes. Eventually I’ll want to see if I can mimic the changes caused by the mana.” I just go ahead and tell her what I have in mind, but she doesn’t seem too nonplussed about it. Genetic engineering is a common enough thing back home.

“Fine by me. So what all are you working on here? I might as well lend a hand instead of moping.” Oh! She went ahead and offered to help, which is a great thing.

“Good, I was going to ask you to help out. I’m currently building a fluid tank, digging toward the underground river, producing a waterpump and plumbing supplies, and finally taking care of a garden. I’d suggest either help with the fluid tank or start throwing select resources into my nano furnace.”

Yep, so maybe I’m a harsh task master, but I’m not going to bother letting her get into anything else. Personally I’m not even sure she could help with the fluid tank, given what I plan to do with it. Most women are not known to be able to handle blood.

That, and it’s being built outside. Thus it is exposed and out in the open, so there’s always a chance she might get spotted. My sensors are rather limited at this point, so I can’t keep an eye on everything all the time.

I end up having to explain that to her, cause Arlae is entirely too nosey. When I ended up telling her my plans for ‘magical’ fertilizer, she got all pale and sweaty. Yep, told you so.

“Uh, I think I’ll just help out tossing stuff to you.” She finally says. See, being vivid works wonders. Lt. Kristoph is definitely not the fighter type. Otherwise she’d been in the Army or the Marines. Haha.

“Okay… Hold on. Toss your comm unit in here.” I tell her, opening the door to the furnace. I was originally going to tell her which resources to get, but doing all of that manually would suck. So instead I’m going to fix her comm unit first.

“I’m going to fix your comm so I don’t have to keep waggling with the work-around. It’s annoying and restricts the bandwidth.”

She ends up tossing it in there just like so, and ten minutes later I spit a brand new one out for her. Thankfully the nano-tech is the ultimate in recycling, so I didn’t have to add anything to do so, even though it was rather banged up. That said I did download some extra coding for my own convenience. Such as a tracking beacon. Not that I’m going to tell her that.

“Okay, let’s get started! I’m downloading which cube I need and the order. Your comm will light up when you pick up the right one.” Yep, easy peasy for my human worker! Mwhahaha.

Okay, so maybe I need to clamp down a bit on the megalomaniac tendencies there. It’s a facet of my personality which has been coming out more and more often these days. Probably due to the lack of hormones and physical suppression for a human body.

Not that Arlae’s powerup from using her EXP does any different. She’s been bouncing around on her feet the entire time while waiting. Sort of cute, but also annoying. Like she has too much energy.

“I’m already tapped out on the number of drones I can control, so the next order of business is building a new Drone Bay. That’ll give me four new hands to use. The security coding for the drones is something I’m not able to break through just yet.”

Okay, so maybe I’m also feeling a bit chatty. I can’t help but just tell her what I have planned. At least she is also listening, which is nice.

“Huh, I can see where that’d be a problem. There’s just too much to do here.” She finally says after tossing a cube of iron into the furnace, stopping long enough to wipe the sweat from her brow.

“Exactly. I have all of the schematics for building a self-sufficient research base, and I can literally make new schematics depending upon the circumstances and our needs. But we’re limited in power and resources. Building up infrastructure takes forever, and until now I haven’t had to worry about the human needs side of things.” I tell her.

“Yeah, the U.T.M. survival guide was very specific on what is required to remain alive in hostile environments. A stable source of freshwater, food, and shelter. And a working comm unit to act as an emergency beacon.” She starts going off with what she remembers from training, while looking at the comm unit on her wrist with a somewhat bleak expression.

It’s kind of hard to mount a rescue in a parallel universe. I totally get that. I just don’t say anything though.

“Indeed. You don’t have to sleep on the floor anymore though. Got that taken care of already. And your own bedroom, which is basically just like my cave here.” I tell her, trying to draw the topic back on track.

“In any case I already plan to expand our cave system here. I’d really like to move deeper into the mountain myself. Being so close to the surface is unsafe…” I start to say, then stop as another idea comes to mind. An idea that makes me laugh out loud once the thought has bloomed completely.

“Hahahahahaha! Oh, that’s just great!” Okay, so I can’t help myself, causing Arlae to jump at the obvious glee in my loud laughter.

“You’ve played games, right? Ever been Dungeon diving?” I don’t even give her enough time to respond before I start throwing questions at her. That half-embarrassed look that comes across her face at my off-the-wall questions look cute on her though.

“I have, so what?” Oh, she finally snaps back, much to my amusement.

“Well, I’m not easily mobile, so I can’t go hunting the goblinoids for EXP right? And it’s really dangerous to let you go out by yourself.” I start off, even as the ideas keep swirling in my mind. “So why don’t we draw them here instead? By building a dungeon.”

When I finish Arlae actually gasps, going wide-eyed at the idea. I cannot help but snicker out loud, and if I could I’d be bouncing around with excitement. Heh heh heh.

“Dungeons are a real thing in this universe. Places of concentrated mana that influence local creatures and whatnot. There may be only a handful on this entire world, giving its lacking nature though. But we can mimic the same thing by building it by hand.”

Well, it won’t really be a true dungeon, but that’s not the point. I can build traps and defenses easily enough, and also rewards. Daggers of steel and basic armor is easy to pump out through my replicator. Maybe use some of those gemstones I found that I have no use for right now.

“Mainly we just need to draw in groups of the natives. We need the EXP and the biological materials they have. It’s quite difficult for me to create biological compounds even with enough resources, which we will need to keep the farming going.”

I’m not exactly bullshitting Arlae there, but I’m not telling her the whole truth either. She has yet to see me ‘recycle’ a body yet, which I’m a little afraid to show off. That sort of thing is not ‘normal’ even for the Directorate.

“Okay, I get what you’re saying. Basically make it a big trap. Going to take a lot of work though.” She finally says, after taking a few minutes to think it through. I really wish I had a head, so I could nod.

“Yep. Not to mention the chance to take a few captives for… research purposes.” I could have said that better, but it’s basically the only way I could say it. “I have the plans to build both a physics lab and a biology lab, so getting more in-depth information is a must. Plus these goblinoids are primitives. If we can breed some in captivity, we may be able to teach and train them.”

That may be a far fetched thing for my part, but possible. The goblinoids are a type of monster, but they are considered a type of sentient creature. Very low of the totem pole of sentients, but still on there. They aren’t animals.

“On that note I believe our Learned Feats come from the high standard of education in the Directorate. From what I understand, the technology and learning environment in this universe sucks. Only nobles and wealthy merchants can afford it even on the more developed worlds, and most of that is Elementary Education level. Plus magic, but that’s a different type of study all together.”

I’m rambling a bit off-topic, but at the same time I’m sharing some of the knowledge I received. It’s only the most basic level of stuff, but at least it explains the basics for this universe. And some of magic, which will be helpful.

“Speaking of magic, you can try to do some of that later. If I can quantify it, I may be able to learn some of the sigils or out to cause the same effect through technology.” Okay, so maybe that’s my real goal for mentioning the subject, but it isn’t as if it is a shameful thing.

“Okay, I got you. So we build a dungeon, draw in the natives, then what? There are likely only so many living beings on this planet.” Arlae finally responds after taking a few moments to think it through, and once more I want to nod my head.

“That’s true, but there’s another thing. Portals and Gateways. They are both similar, but Portals are used around a single world, but Gateways are used to cross between different worlds. According to that information stuffed into my head, occasionally an already explored planet will be revisited to cull the population of monsters.”

I end up having to explain about how the other races regard such things. If a monster population gets too big, they can give birth to Leader or even Boss type monsters. Which make the entire group far more deadly. So every now and then, groups of adventurers, basically mercenaries, are sent to various worlds in order to reap EXP and cull the population.

I do not believe that this planet is not on that list. So eventually others will show up. Thus the Dungeon can be used to attract them, too.

“I see. That’s an interesting idea. Plus it isn’t as if we can go to a different planet anyway. All it’d take is someone who can see our Profiles to know that we are Otherworlders.” I really wish I could nod now, but I’ll see about fixing something up for that later.

“Exactly,” I say, even as I point her toward the next cube to be tossed into my furnace. “So we need to make the best use of what we can find here before others show up. A new dungeon is likely to attract a lot of attention… although I’m going to have to mimic the functions of a dungeon somewhat to make it realistic. It’s going to take a lot of mana crystals to increase the ambient mana levels here.”

It really is going to be a long time project, but there isn’t anything else that really makes sense. Hiding and growing silently would just take far too long, and the chance of accident discovery would ruin it. So we might as well make part of it public and hide everything else.

Work, work, and more work. Jeeze. Finally though I spit the brand new water pump out, along with some five hundred feet worth of piping. And more wiring. Arlae was a bit surprised when the pump clanged on the floor behind her, but I just laugh it off and tell her it won’t be damaged by such a fall.

In fact I’ve been spitting out a lot of things lately. It’s just too much hassle to get a Drone over here to pick the stuff out of my replicator. Maybe eventually I’ll have it automated, but for the moment this is just the way it is.

“Now we just have to wait for the digger drone to finish mining out a route to that underground river and open up a space. In the meantime, I can start working on a water tank and the new drone bay. The water tank is going to be the same sort as the one outside, so it is simply sheets of metal coated on one side to make it corrosion resistant. The Drone Bay is a much more costly and complicated endeavor.”

Yep. I estimate it’ll take a day’s worth of time to produce all the parts for the Drone Bay, followed by its assembly. By then though everything else should be good to go. The fluid tank outside is already built, and a neat pile of severed body parts are already on top of it so the blood will drain into the thing.

Eventually I’m going to have to move the garden and the blood tank, but that’s for later. But things are already looking up, and for some reason I’m enjoying watching Arlae work. Heh. Never considered myself a voyeur before, but there isn’t much else to do at the moment...