21: “War”

Some time later (a week maybe? I’m really bad at keeping track of time). The messenger returned.

“King Tyranoc demands this town pay taxes and submit to his rule. A governor will be assigned.”

“No.”

“You think you can stand up to our army?”

I’d already identified the commanders thanks to my fairy scouts, and didn’t want to just indiscriminately kill everyone, so I launched missiles at the commanders. It was four missiles, and about a dozen people died, or got seriously injured I think.

“What was that?”

“A warning.”

Wow, cowgirl guard is really good. She just seems to know what to do even though I’ve given no orders or commands other than standing guard at the gate. It’s like she somehow knows why the things I do happen. All the minions I’ve made seem to understand my intent somehow.

The messenger quickly ran back to see what happened. I have a feeling the army won’t be staying long… They aren’t leaving?

I sent out more fairy scouts and watchers to watch over a larger area and spot troops before they get here.

I wish I had a way to give more detailed orders. I need spies that can locate the one giving the orders. The one responsible for starting this stupid assault. I can kill all the soldiers, but that won’t really harm the one truly responsible.

Sadly, I don’t come up with any good ideas. For some reason, watchers can’t enter the towns or cities (or at least, I can’t order them to), and without them, I don’t get enough good information.

Fairies can enter, but they don’t seem to stay invisible, and have to be careful to not be spotted. It’s like there’s some sort of protective barrier.

Finally, a month later more soldiers have arrived, and they begin marching with clear intent to invade. So, I fire missiles and wipe them out. Not all died. I spread out the missiles to cause as much fear and chaos as possible, and stopped firing once it was clear the enemy was panicking. Hopefully this makes it clear that armies aren’t going to work.

22: Visitor

I finally decided to try building one of my crazy starmetal golem designs. A flying battleship. If I understand how it works properly, it should even be space worthy. 

Insufficient room. Cannot summon.

Oh. I guess I need to build a bigger room? Maybe construct a massive hangar bay with launch doors in the mountain? This might take a while.

“I’m here to destroy you vile creatures!” Eh? A hero came? Ew. How do I know he’s a hero? Weird.

“There’s no vile creatures here.” Yay! Great comeback!

“Don’t listen, they’re just trying to trick you!” Clearly the companion is trying to get the hero to do their bidding.

“Uh…” Hero seems confused!

“You may enter, but that one may not.” Oh, she’s singling out the one who’s clearly hostile.

“It’s a trap! They just want you alone so they can kill you!” Oh please. You just want to point the scary hero at your enemies and not have them think too much.

“I’ll, uh, take a look. See what it’s really like in there.” Oooh, a hero with a brain! Or maybe just foolish? No idea.

I set a fairy to follow him. I wanna make it easy to keep an eye on him and intervene if a problem happens.

“Woah! This is amazing! Running water! Working toilets! This is better than anything in the kingdom!” Yeah! That’s right! I made an awesome place! Just need TV, radio, and internet now. Oh, and phones… I can do radio. Not well enough to just supply it to everyone, but I could give a radio to all the cowgirls so they can more easily coordinate and stay informed. Yeah, gonna ask Lucky Cat for that.

23: Launch!

Okay, it was expensive, but I now have a proper hidden mountain hangar. Deploying battleship to scout. It’s the size of a small city. Capable of housing a population of several thousand. I don’t have anyone staying inside it, but I built it that way because I am silly. It’s so cool!

I made sure the hangar exit is on the back side of the mountain. Mainly because I don’t want it to be noticed by the city. I don’t know what’s on the back side. Time to find out!

For weapons, it’s armed with dozens of combustion cannon batteries. According to the description, they fire a substance capable of burning anything. They call it solidified fire law, or condensed fire essence. I don’t really get it, but a test shot proved it was pretty absurd. Burned the stone in my cave with no trouble at all.

Shortly after launch the ship got attacked by a flock of wyverns, which burnt up quite quickly under fire from the combustion cannon turrets. The projectiles look like balls of fire. Apparently that’s because it’s burning the air it comes in contact with. Atmosphere will limit the effective range because of this. As a result, they are most effective at close ranges and deal reduced damage at longer ranges.

Not that any of this is an issue. These things can still wreck targets at a range of 5km even in atmosphere. 

Thanks to high quality sensors and other observation gear, this flying battleship has an effective sight range on my map of about 5km. I immediately gain awareness of a massive amount of territory. Time to scout the entire world!

24: Power Overwhelming

It doesn’t take long to discover that most of the world is wilderness, and there’s only a few kingdoms. The most interesting things I saw though were what I think must be the demon castle, due to the lack of actual city around it or any recognizable nation, and the tower that I saw stretching up over a mile high. Both are surrounded by monster filled wilderness.

The other thing I realize, after my flying battleship takes down a few dragons and other large fantasy creatures, is that I’m probably the most powerful existence in the world right now. I could probably take over the world if I wanted to, but when I think about it, what’s the point? If I can already do anything I want, and no one can stop me, then I basically already rule, right? Rule is probably too strong a word. It’s not like I’m passing down any rules other than: “Don’t make me shoot you.”

Well, now that I’ve got a flying battleship, time to start launching satellites. 

Oh, and while I wasn’t able to duplicate the computer systems and network systems Lucky Cat tried sending (they were alive, and I didn’t want to kill them) I was able to copy the components that didn’t have any soul yet, and created golem versions. Do golems have souls? It seems like maybe they do.

So now I’ve got computers and televisions and internet in my city! The hero is refusing to leave now. They like it here too much. Reminds them of home.

Since I can build portals, and transport people and things long distances easily, I started setting up new connections to other kingdoms to allow both trade and immigrants to flow easily. This has been helping the place grow quickly.

Alert: Inbound invasion. 24 hours remaining until invasion begins.

What?

25: Help!

I thought that I’d become powerful. Like really powerful. Like, unstoppably powerful. Then my battleship got cut in half. Seriously? How? The invasion appears to be just three people. Just cutting down whatever they see.

Dungeon 404: Someone just cut my flying battleship in half! T_T

Space Master 9000: You need warp deflection fields to defend against sword law and space law. A domain amplifier can also help a lot.

Tracker Nine: I don’t think domain amplifiers will work without a deity level cultivator to use it. 

Stellar Fairy: I hear you can summon friends, right? Add me, and I’ll help! Just build this thing for me! I’ve been trying to get people to build it, but no one wants to bother, they all have more important projects.

Stellar Fairy sent me a design for a mecha? I think I can build something similar with a starmetal golem. I guess I’ll have to get to work.

Some time later:

“Whee! This is awesome! Just what I wanted!”

She’s flying a skyblue mech spilling a light mist everywhere. At first it seems like little more than an attempt to hide her position as she dodges attacks from the invading cultivators, but then as the invader ends up surrounded by mist (I’m not sure how they prevent it from getting closer to them) lightning bolts strike out at them from the mist. Did she just fill the place with thunderclouds?

Eventually all three are taken down, but I ended up having to summon her a total of three times, and there’s only one kingdom still standing. Refugees have been flooding into my city, and I’ve been really busy with expanding. It feels like the majority of the world’s population is now in my gigantic ever growing underground city.

Achievement Unlocked:
Ruler of the World

Eh? The world is mine now? What’s that even mean? … did I win? I’m confused.

26: Other stories...

Dungeon god’s view: 

This is ridiculous. The reincarnation god just completely changed the balance of power in the world. It’s a little difficult to believe their protests that it was necessary to save the world from invaders. In the past invaders have always matched the power level of the world. It’s probably Dungeon 404’s absurd power that led to such powerful invaders!

I suppose this means no one will need to fear the demon king anymore. Dungeon 404 is too powerful for the demon king to even threaten them.

Hero’s view:

Get summoned to another world. Get told about evil demons needing to be destroyed. Get sent to a dungeon. Find a wonderful city full of modern conveniences. This must be another otherworlder somehow. 

Decided to stay a while. Got to know some of the locals. Made some new friends. Learned that pretty much everyone can get a small apartment for free, even orphans. There’s no real government that I can find, though a few community councils have sprung up, there’s nothing big. Reminds me of old jokes and stories about fully automated luxury communism. Though I wouldn’t really call this communism. It’s closer to anarchy: there’s no proper government. 

We don’t own the means of production. This place just provides most things freely. There’s no real government, though I’m pretty sure someone is designing things. Some people have started to worship them, though I don’t think there’s an agreed upon name of any sort. 

I’m pretty sure the ladies in taoist robes are all creations of this place. They are the only ones getting such valuable clothes, though cloth has been made available to people. Then there’s the fact that when I ask them about their past, their memories don’t seem to go back very far. 

I make a point to talk to traders and travellers so I can learn about what’s been going on outside the city (I honestly don’t want to leave) and I keep thinking I’m glad I didn’t listen to the bastard trying to convince me to attack this place. I doubt I’d actually be strong enough to win, and now that I’m hearing stories of a giant flying hunk of metal that, after looking at a sketch of it, seriously looks like something out of a sci-fi game I used to play, I’m pretty confident whatever otherworlder is running this place, is vastly more powerful than I am. 

I’m not sure why I got summoned anymore. Greedy kings? Why would gods bother to allow it if that’s all it is?

… then a bus suddenly appeared and crashed into a building. Thankfully no one died, and potions are plentiful enough to fix the injuries (seriously better medical care than any place I’ve ever been to before). However, after seeing a random bus clearly from Earth, show up, and talking to the very confused people in it, I realize: There’s something seriously wrong with this world.

27: Hero’s journey

Hero’s view:

I spent the next several years hunting down the 13 keys of Babel. A great tower said to lead up to the heavens where the gods reside. Supposedly, if someone makes it to the top, they can talk to the gods themselves. 

By the time I found them all, and reached the tower, I’d managed to end up with three other companions.

A powerful woman almost as strong as I in a fight, but even more talented with offensive magics.

A guy who loved fighting, and was better in a straight fight than I, if magic wasn’t involved.

And… uh… well, the last guy was kinda fun to be with, but nothing really stood out. He just always seemed to know things when we needed information, helping us find all the keys. If this were a video game, I’d guess he’s the rogue? I’m not sure. I tend to lose track of him during fights.

Anyway, we used the keys to advance through the tower, defeating everything in the way… and solving a lot of really annoying puzzles. Finally, we reached the top:

“So, you’re saying something went wrong, and now you are trying to speed up the development and advancement of the world by bringing in people from earth.” - Hero

“Yup. We’ve sent about 42 people so far. Sadly, we may need to revise our methods. It’s not been very effective. The greatest success was something the reincarnation god did, but that broke a bunch of rules and we aren’t allowed to do that again.” - some god

“Who or what is setting those rules?” - Hero

“I’m not sure how that works exactly. I think he said his name was Alfred. Apparently he’s in charge of many worlds, and is some sort of god above the gods or something. Said the original creator of our world is now busy elsewhere.” - some god

I guess I know what’s going on now… what do I do about it though?

28: Solutions

Knowledge god’s view:

The hero’s suggestion of transferring libraries is a good idea. However, as I was working out how to handle the logistics of that, something ridiculous happened.

Dungeon 404’s view:

A portal opened up in my chambers. I’m pretty sure I have portal and teleportation jamming, along with spatial reinforcement active. This shouldn’t be possible unless the creator is really strong.

“Greetings! I’m Stellar Fairy! Actually, my real name is Sylvie! We finally managed to get a lock on your coordinates, Dungeon 404! Time to establish a new forward base!”

Eh? She’s still online!

Dungeon 404: Sorry, but this is the only way I can talk. I have to use the message app. 

“No problem! We’re gonna setup full network connection soon, and then we can help get this world ready to fight off future invasions! Plus, there’s a lot of crazy ideas we’d really like your help in making. It normally takes a really long time to convert low grade materials to higher grade, but you can do it so fast!”

Dungeon 404: Sounds good!

Someone I can talk to! I mean, I could chat over the chat app, but I couldn’t really meet them regularly. Now though, I can talk to them and they can do things! This means I don’t have to be some random anonymous city planner in the world anymore! I can send messages! Give lectures! … actually, I don’t think I’m likely to do any of that. Still feels so nice to have someone near me that I can actually communicate with. So wonderful.

Knowledge god’s view:

Oh… I guess the problem is solved. Connecting that world’s network to the network Dungeon 404 already made will allow the world to advance very fast. Though it’s a completely different power system, there’s enough similarity that it should work out well. Besides, it’s clear Sylvie plans to set up a permanent gate connection. While this wasn’t supposed to be a cultivation world, it looks like it will become one.

***Author Note***

I wasn’t expecting the story to end so fast. Well, I guess Sylvie now has two universes to explore.