Two weeks after I first crashed in the Dead Wastes, I was finally ready to move again. My new chassis retained many, many features from the Mk 1 Titan, but this time I had designed it from the ground up with direct combat in mind. To this end, I had integrated several new weapons directly into my chassis, or designed them as modular equipment that I could directly wield with the fully functional hands I included.

By far, the biggest breakthrough I made had to be the Proton Beams; solid slug weaponry had demonstrated that it was horrendously inaccurate over the ranges I might be fighting at, and there were two ways to deal with that. The first was to use guided projectiles like missiles, and the second was to use a shot that could travel much, much faster. The weapon I designed to meet this criteria was ultimately based on my third-generation Proton Piles, conjuring a decent sized chunk of Protonium inside a crystalized mana containment field which would ultimately direct the sheer nuclear fury associated with firing into C-fractional blast of plasma. I built three for my new chassis; two were retractable arm mounts meant for medium-range engagements, and the last was an absolutely massive rifle designed to brace against my chassis, kept attached by a carbon nanotube sling when not in use.

Still, Proton Beams on their own were far from the only weapons I equipped. There was also a significant chance that I would need to get into melee combat, and I would also benefit greatly from having indirect fire as a capability. Therefore, I also fitted my rifle with a viciously sharp bayonet, made sure I had a pair of backup knives with sheathes on my hips, and mounted a missile cell to my chassis' left shoulder. The missiles were equipped with dial-a-yield Protonium Warheads, meaning that the amount of boom they delivered could easily be adjusted to be appropriate for the situation.

As for defenses, I had learned firsthand just how deadly some of the things I might encounter here were, so I made a point of developing a new, significantly stronger alloy that I could use to assemble my chassis out of. Ultimately, what I hit upon was yet another variety of Vanadium Chromium Steel, but with several differences; namely that I had re-arranged the alloy's Carbon content into nanotubes for vastly increased tensile strength. Then I had saturated the alloy with mana until it couldn't take any more, amplifying its strength and toughness to frankly ridiculous levels. I also made a point of boosting the material's internal speed of sound, granting better resilience to hypervelocity impactors. Yes, my new alloy was horrendously expensive in terms of mana, but at they same time I had an utterly stupid amount of mana to spend, courtesy of all the cheap reactors I slapped down in my first few days here.

I also refused to take any chances whatsoever when it came to potentially being boarded by high-level adventurers. This is why I placed my entrance in my chassis' head, forcing anyone who wanted to enter to basically climb a rapidly moving skyscraper without any good handholds or footholds. I also turned my interior into an absolute death course, featuring legions of greatly upgraded clockworks, radioactive deathtraps of several descriptions, several other types of deathtrap, and a ventilation system that allowed me to selectively flood individual compartments with a mix of literally every toxic gas I could come up with that wasn't liable to explode. Superheated Cyanide derivatives were a particular favorite here, and I made sure to include them in all my defenses that worked by blasting someone with Proton Pile coolant. Admittedly the defenses were concentrated on my first and last few floors, but I needed to make some sacrifices for specialized rooms like foundries, Engineering Labs (for when I could summon Gremlins again), and other potential upgrades.

For a bit of additional decoration, I took the time to paint a large radioactivity warning symbol on my chassis' chest. I highly doubted anyone here would know what it meant unless I told them, but I felt it was a good way to distinguish myself at the very least.

With all my preparations complete, I finally bit the bullet and got up to move, walking unsteadily towards the center of the Dead Wastes as I got the hang of having feet again. As I did this, I reviewed the intelligence reports my surveillance UAVs had sent me about the stricken Titan of Bone. My target was lying on its face in a pitiful heap, reduced to siphoning off the occasional scrap of mana from whatever lifeforms occasionally blundered into its area of effect. It was the only reason I had been unmolested thus far while I rebuilt, and it was also responsible for reducing an entire region to uninhabitable wasteland. I would be putting this monster down now, so that the Dead Wastes could once more flourish with life.

It was a somewhat common rumor that Dwarves were descended from escaped Dungeon monsters, given their tendency to live far beneath the earth's surface in fortress-cities defended by horrific deathtraps and legions of experienced tunnel fighters. Their advanced machinery and total control over the terrain made most invasions by outsiders effectively pointless, and they were typically dug in deep enough that even the sheer destructive fury of Dragonfire posed no practical threat to a Dwarven settlement. You couldn't even starve the bastards out, seeing as they had somehow figured out ways to make their own sunlight for crops down there.

This posed a distinct problem for Supreme Leader Corenzite, as he found himself needing some Dwarf experts on very short notice to provide consultation on a certain Titan-shaped problem, and one of the main reasons that Dwarves lived underground in the first place was to keep from having to deal with dragons. Sure, it was on occasion done to pay the Dwarves enough to get them to send someone, but they tended to ask for ridiculous concessions like letting their experts go home after their contracts expired, and if you refused they were liable to fill the entire underground near your hoard with explosives and destroy the whole lot.

No, Corenzite decided, paying the Dwarves was not going to work, and it wasn't like he could fit his properly massive frame into the miniscule tunnels that Dwarves inhabited. He couldn't even send in the Drake Guard, or they would all be massacred by defenses that he was told made most Dungeons look like children's toys. Reluctantly, Supreme Leader Corenzite decided that he had no other option but to employ trickery. With great consternation, he called for both the Mage Academy's head of the transmutation department, and his most elite and disciplined unit of Drake Guard.

Even if this plan was quite straightforward, the Grand Dragon still found themselves fuming that not all problems could be solved by simply taking what you wanted through force.