Reinitializing.

Lucas? Is everything OK? I seem to have rebooted for some reason.

“Rose, everything is fine. You were just designated the Dungeon Boss for the Military base,” replied Lucas

I remember now. How long was I out?

“Maybe a minute,” said Lucas. “How do you feel?”

Pretty much the same as before I think. I don’t feel any different. Let me… never mind. Found it. I have access to Nanobots as an AI now. They are purely Dungeon Nanobots, but it looks like they are designed so I can modify the military base turned dungeon as I see fit. They won’t function outside the military base, but I can move walls, add doors, repair structures, and more using these nanobots. I also get notifications now too. While I was talking, I got a system pop up telling me I had a trespasser in the dungeon. I marked you as friendly, and that went away. Not sure what that is about, but I’m sure I will find out eventually.

The affinity I currently have allows me to make a few changes per day. I am going to go ahead and set the first change to be adding a door off the 6th floor into the tunnel where you found water. I am going to set the rest of the changes to start repairing the structure of the military base. We might not have any problems yet, but at 29% it is only a matter of time.

“I thought we were at 27% structural integrity…” said Lucas.

The Repair Bots managed to find a couple of weak columns and patch them up with the materials we had on hand. We’re at 29% now.

“Good to know. Anything else you want to tell me?”

The scan results came back before I rebooted. There are a few oddities. Everything above ground has been repaired. That means the exit on floor 0 is fully functional. With the resetting of the AIs hardcoded commands, I can disengage and engage it for you easily, and the locking functions work. The guns are still gone, but besides that it’s good. Somehow the AIs controlling the doors have had their core programming adjusted so that they just do whatever I wish. Besides that, everything is the same way as it was before the nanobot explosion. Do we call that a Nanoswarm?

“Hmm, seeing as I don’t know what to call it, we can go with that,” said Lucas.

Regardless, I’ve got the Comlink, Knives, Solar Panel, and Blueprint scanner lined up for manufacture at the Nanoforge. Looks like even as the Dungeon Boss I cannot control the Nanoforge without someone physically being present. You will need to provide a number of different materials on the 9th floor. Just toss the proper materials into the supply hopper, and the Nanoforge nanobots will do the rest. Building the items will knock three days off our total power supply and take two hours.

“What materials are required for what you want me to put together?” asked Lucas.

3500 grams of Circuit Boards for recycling, 300 grams of Copper,2000 grams of aluminum, 150 grams of plastic, 1000 grams of Composite precursors or composite material, and 200 grams of animal hide.

Hmm. That’s interesting. I just got a Dungeon Boss popup that says all those materials are available on the 8th and 9th floor in the storage rooms. Animal Hide on the 8th floor, everything else is in the Materials storage bins, but not the correct storage bins. Helpful and so very not helpful at the same time. I will send the Repair bot to start dragging down the materials I have up here to the material storage.

The materials will make one solar panel, one Comlink, one Scanner, and two composite daggers. The daggers are slightly better than the ones you have now, and they will hold an enchant which should make them even better. Once all the materials are thrown into the hopper, it will be about one and a half hours before everything is done. The Comlink, Blueprint Scanner, and the Daggers will be about 15 minutes, but the Solar panel will take a little bit to get right.

I would suggest that you get the new pieces of gear together, swing by the server room on level 3 and drop off anything you don’t want to take outside and then head up to the surface to check out the Solar array and complete your quest.

“Sounds like a plan,” Lucas replied.

Test, test. 1 2, 1 2.

“Yes Rose, the Comlink works. All we have left to do is test the scanner and enchant my new knives. After that I can go explore the surface,” said Lucas.

I am just making sure. Now that I can talk to you within the base I don’t want to lose contact again.

“I understand. How long until the door on level 6 is done? I need to fill up some canteens if I am going out.”

Not for another 8 hours or so I am afraid. The Nanobots are having to scavenged material instead of using stockpiled material which is taking longer. I am going to set both of the Repair Bots I have to organizing and repairing the Materials storage instead of splitting their focus. The Dungeon Nanobots can repair the structure.

“What about building more repair bots? If you set your bots to building more bots, then the workforce can grow.”

While it would be nice, I currently do not have the energy to recharge their batteries. Once the Spare batteries you found are dead, the repair bots are dead. Additional bots would require Energy to construct and would deplete our energy reserves faster. I also do not have the automated facilities currently constructed to repair or recharge the bots. I would need to construct those before we increase the workforce. Two repair bots can change each other’s batteries. More and well, it becomes difficult to manage.

“I guess what that all boils down to is that I will be going out with the water I have, which limits my surface time.”

That’s OK though, you’ve been at it for 8 hours already. I’d suggest you take a short walk over to the solar array, see if there is anything wrong, and then come back inside. We can talk about that 10th domain after that. I will have the remaining nanobots under my control start construct a bedroom in one of the offices on level 0 for you to sleep in, and for us to talk.

“OK, that works,” replied Lucas. “I’m going to try and Enchant these daggers, and then I’d like to test the Scanner before I go up top. I’m going to need your advice on any required repairs.”

Let me know when you are ready to test the Scanner.

Walking away from the Nanoforge, Lucas took the ramps up to the empty eighth floor, wanting to escape from being watched as he struggled through learning how to enchant.

Warning!

Enchant Failed due to improper process

While this object is eligible to enchant, please put your mind in the correct frame of mind in order to imprint an Enchantment on an object.

“Ugghhhhhh!” growled Lucas. This was the 11th time that this notification has popped up. Enchanting sucked. “I have failed four times at the health enchant, three times at the endurance enchant, and now four times at the mana enchant,” said Lucas to himself. ‘I’m done. I’m going to try the Luck Enchant. I just hope that I get lucky and manage to enchant this dagger with Luck. As many times as I have failed, unless I get lucky, it won’t work anyway.”

Pressing his Nanobots into both daggers, while hoping he got very, very lucky, the enchant completed.

Surprised and very happy, Lucas started to inspect his new composite daggers to check the stats. Right after it popped up, he received yet another notification that popped over his open notification.

Critical Success

Enchant Succeeded!

Due to single-minded focus on the intended attribute, you have proc'd a critical success.

Item upgraded one durability level.

Effectiveness of Enchant doubled

Composite Knife

Rare

Durability

90/90

Nanoforged Combat Knife, Enchanted by Lucas.

9-20 damage per hit

+2.1 Luck

“I’m going to go ahead and take that,” said Lucas. Quickly dismissing the other skill up notifications, Lucas decided to go ahead and test the scanner before he started on his way outside.

Activating his Comlink, Lucas asked, “Rose, are you still reading me on the Comlink?”

Yes.

“Is the Comlink connected to the Scanner? I’m assuming they are connected somehow. Otherwise, I will have to manually upload the data to you,” asked Lucas.

Your assumption is correct. The Scanner shunts all its data through the Comlink for processing. Technically the Comlink is a tiny Cell Phone with an extremely fast data transmission rate, but the only cell tower connection that I can make is the booster control on top of Level 0 by some of the solar panels. The scanner sends me the data and I shunt it through a processor on this side, before I send back the results to the scanner.

“Can we test it?”

Yes. I am ready for a scanner test. Go ahead and scan something.

Setting down his Humble Backpack, Lucas scans the backpack.

Hmm. This is very interesting data. I can now manufacture this sort of bag. It requires a significant amount of mana to activate the weight reduction enchantment though. And the Nanobots that gather that Mana would be permanently affixed to the bag.

“So, I am not making any of those anytime soon. Can you at least repair this one if it is damaged?”

If parts are missing, then yes, I can repair it as long as the Mana is not removed. But I think you are forgetting your cleanse spell. Worst case we transfer the Mana from one bag to another.

“You’re right,” said Lucas. “I haven’t used it yet, so I completely forgot it existed. As far as the transferring of mana, is that a thing?”

Yes. Sentients with the ability to manipulate Mana can pull the Mana from one object using disenchant and push it into a new object. You will not learn the enchant if you do this, but you can move it from a damaged item to an undamaged item. Not all enchants require a loss of nanobots to create, but the most complex ones will.

“That’s pretty cool, useless to me at the moment, but pretty cool,” said Lucas. “I think it’s time for me to check on the solar panels.”