Chapter 16

Re-entering the planet's atmosphere went about as smoothly as could be hoped for, really. The ceramic heat shield mounted to the front of my escape pod handled the shock-heating admirably, superheated plasma sliding smoothly off the front of my current conveyance. Thanks again to a long time playing Kerbal Space Program, I had aimed for a fairly shallow re-entry trajectory, resulting in a fairly gentle deceleration as I streaked through the upper atmosphere. Seeing as I was coming down on the night side, I idly wondered how many people mistook me for a shooting star and wished on me.

Either way, my aerobraking maneuver was successful, and I quickly took active control of my descent again, diving through the cloud cover. Still, as I descended, the optical sensors mounted to the front of my pod began picking up... rainbows? A bit more brief examination indicated that no, this was more accurately described as rainbow-colored light. Soon, I burst through the bottom of the cloud cover, revealing what looked like a jagged cathedral of multi-colored stained glass, just floating in the air, a glowing point of light in their foundation.

I will admit I was fairly curious what this was all about, so I deployed my parachute well ahead of schedule. Remembering what I did to speak to the Titan of Bone, I sent the mass a message asking

Titan of Steel: Greetings! You wouldn't happen to be a fellow Titan, would you?

Aether Titan: Well yes, I am. I would say that 'fellow' might be stretching it a bit much, seeing as you're rather small to lay claim to that title.

Titan of Steel: Hey, I just got my chassis exploded by an enchanted bottle full of what I'd say was probably Dragonfire. To make a long story short, I thought building in orbit would keep Adventurers from raiding me. I was wrong; all it did was attract the attention of every party powerful enough to teleport to me.

Aether Titan: Wait, that was you!? What power source were you even using that could work away from the planet anyway? Even my planar rift requires fairly significant proximity to large concentrations of life to give me any useful amounts of power, and I'm less tethered to my power source than most Titans.

Titan of Steel: To be completely blunt, I'm using incredibly violent reactions powered by the conjuration of elements that should not be, and release incredible amounts of energy as they instantly destroy themselves. I prefer calling it nuclear power since it involves atomic nuclei, but as far as I can tell it's more commonly known as Dragonfire.

Aether Titan: Oh. That would explain it. So, was there anything else you wanted to talk about, or did you just drop by to meet me as you plummeted towards the sea?

Titan of Steel: I'll be completely honest; I didn't know you were here when I picked my de-orbit trajectory. Anyway, since I don't particularly feel like cutting my parachute until I actually splash down in a few minutes, we may as well talk. On that note, you mentioned getting your power from some kind of planar rift; mind telling me a bit more about that?

Aether Titan: Sure, I suppose. I've got a gash in reality leading directly to the collective unconscious of pretty much everything on the planet with a brain, a ridiculous amount of mana flows out of said rift, and I use it to power my chassis. Anyway, since we seem to be taking turns at asking questions, how long did it take you to get yourself mobile?

Titan of Steel: The first time, or on average? I'd wager I get my chassis trashed more often than the average Titan.

Aether Titan: The first time, I guess; that usually takes the longest, since new Dungeons usually have no idea how to go about procuring a suitable power source.

Titan of Steel: To be honest,it took me about a week to go from waking up as a brand new Dungeon to building my first Chassis to the point of being able to travel. Admittedly I promptly crashed the thing in the Dead Wastes since I had no idea how to fly the thing, but the point still stands. It's been about a month and a half since then.

Aether Titan: I call bullshit! No Dungeon is that knowledgeable about engineering and mana dynamics at such a young age! By all rights you should be a barely cognizant newborn! Seriously, it took me around twelve years to prepare for take-off, and I'm one of the faster Dungeons to reach Titan status on record.

Titan of Steel: Well, I'll happily tell you the truth, though I doubt you'll believe it. While I've only been a Dungeon for about two months right now, my mental age is a lot closer to twenty years, most of which was spent as a human in an alternate world where nuclear reactions were common knowledge, and there was no such thing as Dragons, or Dungeons, or any of this other bizarre stuff that I have no idea how to deal with and keeps trying to kill me! I just went to sleep one night and woke up as a Dungeon Core, and it's been one disaster after another since then! The only notable achievement of mine that will actually stick was killing the Titan of Bone, and they were literally a helpless target with no ability to actually harm me!

There was a long pause before I received a reply.

Aether Titan: Huh, never thought I'd get to meet another reincarnate. Admittedly my past life was native to this world rather than wherever you came from, but I understand at least part of what you're getting at.

Titan of Steel: Sorry for shouting at you; I really needed to vent, and doing it to Minions doesn't really work since they're kind of a part of me. Wait, what did you say about reincarnating?

Aether Titan: Don't worry, I understand that feeling. And people getting reincarnated as Dungeons is a known thing that happens around here, though it's extremely rare. Anyway, you look to be getting a bit close to the sea there; do you want to keep in touch, or shall this be it for now?

Titan of Steel: I would really like that; I've been keeping in touch with a Shepherd named Seth who helped me get going the first time, but he doesn't really get the whole Dungeon thing, you know?

Aether Titan: Yeah, I really do; meeting up with my past life family was awkward until we eventually called the whole thing off. Oh, good job taking out the Titan of Bone by the way; basically all of us Titans wanted a crack at him once we learned what he'd done, but none of us had a power source that could keep us going inside the Dead Wastes long enough to finish the job. Thank you for that.

With that, a glowing blue object flew out of the Aether Titan's jagged crystalline chassis towards my pod. I opened the door to admit the fragment of crystal, closing it just as I touched the waves. With that, I sent the ignition command to my parachute, and the nitrocellulose fibers I'd woven into it reduced the canopy to so much ash, erasing most evidence of its presence. The next step was simply making a beeline for the seafloor, before digging myself a new facility where I could prepare my next chassis. Diving through the water went fairly quickly, and I made it about 500 meters down before I thudded gently on the bottom.

Very quickly I hollowed out a room and got ready to move out of the pod I had descended in, setting up reactors and other such things that I would require in order to successfully launch. That said, I intended to stay here a fair bit longer than would strictly be required; before I tried doing anything else, I wanted some kind of anti-teleport mechanism, and I had an idea for getting some on-the-ground intelligence that I wanted to put through its paces.

Honestly, landing on the moon had proven easy compared to what the free Gremlins were having to deal with after arriving, as far as Shart was concerned. First on the list of issues was securing a supply of food, water, and breathable air; with fixed conjuration devices and the output of the several dozen reactors that had been repaired, the last two were easy, but food was proving a bit of an issue. After some trial and error, nutrition bricks that technically fulfilled all of a Gremlin's dietary requirements had been developed, but there was a growing consensus among many that if they had to eat those things for the rest of their life, they'd walk out the airlock without a suit.

Then there were the construction issues; without free-form conjuration being an option, everything needed to be built the hard way. Admittedly manpower wasn't too much of an issue thanks to plenty of Construction Clockworks, but it was still proving annoyingly time-consuming to get a significant habitat space set up. Said habitat space was still depressingly barren, seeing as it still wasn't easily doable to conjure organic matter.

On that note, many had come to the conclusion that they didn't want their new civilization to sputter and die as its founders reached their maximum life expectancy, and had taken to making sure there would be a next generation of Gremlins to succeed their starting population of around a hundred thousand. This had involved quite a lot of rather messy experimentation at first, but now the biggest question related to that topic was how to deal with the upcoming wave of children. It was still completely unknown to everyone involved just how long the resulting pregnancies would take, along with how long childhood would last, and the best way to educate young Gremlins.

Yes, it had been three months of toil and hardship for the new Gremlin Lunar Republic, but as the newly elected President Shart looked over a bill from the council suggesting acquiring farmable crops and livestock from the planet below, she couldn't help but think that it would all be worth it in the end. Thus, with a stroke of her pen, she authorized the launching of spaceplanes loaded with Clockwork Soldiers to surreptitiously acquire suitable stocks of both seeds and livestock.