[Pioneer 0 defeated Evolved Hivewarrior | +900XP]

[Pioneer 0 defeated Evolved Hivewarrior | +900XP]

[Pioneer 0 defeated Evolved Hivewarrior | +900XP]

[Pioneer 0 defeated Evolved Hivewarrior | +900XP]

[Pioneer 0 defeated Evolved Hivewarrior | +900XP]

[Pioneer 0 defeated Evolved Hivewarrior | +900XP]

[Pioneer 0 defeated Evolved Hivewarrior | +900XP]

[Pioneer 0 defeated Evolved Hivewarrior | +900XP]

[Pioneer 0 leveled up]

[Pioneer 0 is now level 24]

[Pioneer 0 received 1 unallocated point]

[/Low_ammo: 14/70]

[/Requesting_ammo_resupply]

Pioneer and the colony defenses cease fire after seeing the Evolved Hivewarriors and Hivewarriors unable to advance anymore as their dead body parts clogged up the blood and shrapnel covered tunnel and their number dwindled from hundreds down to a few dozens after spending an hour trying to get past the sudden obstacle on their path. The small, yet active nest of unknown species of 4 legged metal spewing golem has survived the first wave of the attack, and without resting Pioneer and the Battle Drones immediately moves up carefully while the General Purpose Drones resupply them with fresh ammunition before clearing a path for them and bringing bits and parts of the dead bug back to the colony for processing.

[/Nexus_reporting: Hirudocrystallus reserve is low]

After one hour of fighting the bug swarm, Pioneer and the colony defense has nearly depleted their Hirudocrystallus reserve, that mean soon only Lightning rods are the only thing they can use against the bugs as they run out of HE filling and propellants as well as the material needed to produce them.

Pioneer orders Nexus to expand the main colony Crystallus production as soon as possible by finding as many mineral-rich veins as they could to plant down Hirudocrystallus shards and let them grow into harvestable Hirudocrystallus node, for Viricrystallus just laying down the collected biomass and planting as much Viricrystallus shards onto them should be enough. And to make sure that the Crystallus formation will be monitored 24/7, Nexus is ordered to build Hirudocrystallus Control Node and Viricrystallus Control Node near their respective crystallus formations.

Meanwhile, Pioneer orders the construction of a large amount of Armoured Arc Towers and Magical Energy Reactors to make sure the base will have something to defend itself once its ammunition reserve ran out. Then it takes some resources and walks all the way to the guarding drones on the other side of the tunnel to build an outpost behind them, since Pioneer don't want other lifeforms to tap into its valuable resources, it only constructs Magical Energy Reactors for power supply, Nanite Hive Factory and Service Depot to keep the drones up and running properly, and finally a Data Relay Facility and Energy Relay Facility to distribute data flow and energy flow between the drones on the border. Since the amount of resources needed to build them all is quite a lot, Pioneer has to move back and forth for 7 trips to get it done alone since all the General Purpose Drones are busy collecting the dead bugs' parts and helping Nexus doing expansion works.

"What the heck is it doing?"

"I don't know...Maybe it is making a hive..."

"Undead don't make hives, idiot!"

"Yeah?. How can you be so sure?"

"It's common knowledge you idiot, undead don't make love, living being do!"

The adventures on the other side of the blood covered tunnel whispers to each other as they watch Pioneer doing its work, Erika at this point is asleep in her tent behind the newly constructed earthen wall, it has been a long day for the Paladin.

As Pioneer moves its temporary body's head slowly and looks at the group on the earthen wall, everyone becomes silent as they stare at the eerie being, they are getting somewhat used to this as the drones seem scarier and threatening with their odd weapons and motionless guarding stance, it's almost like they are statue erected there to keep adventures away from the area.

[...]

The core quietly constructs two more Magical Energy Reactors and four Armoured Arc Towers to reinforce the area, it also raises a 1m high wall made out of Structural nanite, the wall is not for protection much as it is only 10mm thick, rather it is just something Pioneer mimicking the adventures' action, thinking it will deter them even more and ensure the outpost safety for now.

On the way back to the colony, the core wonders why and how it got a level up so random earlier, it tries looking into the un-analyzed chunk of data waiting in its data drive, after spending a few minutes studying them, the core finds out that one of the power Nexus showed it earlier, the Servant of Pioneer, is the cause of that anomaly, according to the limited information it got from using the expand command line in the debug console, Servant of Pioneer is granted to Pioneer's creations and followers, or slaves if Pioneer takes it bluntly, the power allows Pioneer's creations and followers to 'inherit' some of its skills and powers, in case of Nexus, the machine received Nanite Evolution Core which is a scaled down version of Pioneer's Advanced Evolution Core and can't evolve like Pioneer's core. The skill also takes 60% of earned XP from the user and sends it to Pioneer, in another way of speaking, each time a drone kills something, Pioneer will receive 60% of the original XP, quite convenient for Pioneer.

The core also asks itself if its creations can be leveled up or not as it pings Nexus and sends it an order, the order is to collect status data from all the drones and facilities to analyze them all and return the desired result to Pioneer once it's done.

As the core returns to the colony, it quickly notices the base has been expanded and now 75% larger than its original size, with 150m tunnel length used and 60% of them are Crystallus growing fields, the satellite colony is also expanded and used up 40m of the tunnel length, but only 5m of them are Crystallus growing field, the small tunnel connecting the 2 colonies has been widened and reinforced with structural nanites, it also has turned into a busy drone highway as the General Purpose Drones carries materials back and forth at full speed between the 2 bases on the smoothened road.

However, to achieve this feat, Nexus has used up 90% of the stocked resources in the colony, and while it has successfully expanded the Crystallus formation in the number of nodes and how big the nodes are, it still gonna take a while for those nodes to grow up to the desired harvestable size.

As the core looks at Nexus who is quickly moving back and forth in the colony to manage the area, it receives another anomaly warning from the sensor facility, more bugs are swarming down toward the satellite colony, and report does not end there, a group of unidentified signal is approaching the 'border' outpost, it's a good thing that Pioneer has reinforced the area earlier. The core will need all the improvement it can get to survive this challenge, for now, it needs to come to the satellite colony on the other side of the tunnel to prepare it, Pioneer only has a few minutes left before the battle begins.

Pioneer decides to build a 1 m tall, 20mm thick wall in front of the Battle Drones' defensive line to prove it some general protection and create a small obstacle for the bugs, then it places down some sharp, point spikes made out of structural nanites in hope to slow down the bug by somewhat before it falls back behind the line, with up to 50 Battle Drones lined up and readied for intercepting the swarm and defending the colony, they are also backed by multiple Armoured Arc Tower as Pioneer's last line of defense so the machine wants to make sure that power won't be a problem in this fight.

'Screech'

Before Pioneer could calm itself down and stop the high-speed data flows running back and forth in its processors, the bugs arrived, and it brought new friends that the machine had never seen before as well. The machine couldn't tell what those unknown bugs could do, but Pioneer was certain that they were hella pissed.

The Battle Drones calmly hold their fire as they wait for the bugs to get a bit closer to get the most out of their last few hundred shells in their ammo racks, and when the threats are in maximum threat removal zone, the Drones turn on their threat remover module and start deleting their threats with no mercy as the eerie song of loud muzzle blasts mix with the mechanical joints feeding the gun and dull, wet explosions as the bugs get ripped apart violently. The second battle for the satellite colony has begun.

[/New_objective: Hold the line]