The Discarded, Half-Eaten Apple Core New Life
Such is reality. Yesterday's boss is today's random encounter.

After Róta's lesson on divine piety, the rest of the people gave us no trouble. If anything, it showed we had the strength to back up our claims. And so, I proved to them I would put my cannon where my mouth was. Wait, that came out weird.

A robotic Vulcan autocannon turret sprung into existence in 5 seconds. It started to rain down bullets on the Infernali prowling the ground. Meters away, in an abandoned subway station, a napalm bomb went off, incinerating a blistermice nest, and burning the mutagen before they could eat enough. Oxygen was Replicated, fanning the flames and increasing the temperature to that of a steel furnace.

Dozens of small scout blimps defended key intersections as they fired their PD lasers at the demons. More autocannon turrets appeared to keep the Infernali from coming back. A garage turned into an inferno as napalm rained on Spinehounds. From above, a Railgun pierced the skull of an Arsohlebambi buck with a majestic set of antlers.

Hell had arrived for the... demons prowling the streets and underground of Atlanta. The din of autocannon fire was a constant for the last four days. People walked the cleared streets picking up the Mana stones I left behind for them, praising my name. Families with small children begged me to take them to Speranza. The only way in or out of my inner world was through me. There was no portal linking that Demiplane. The only portal, actually, was the one leading to the World Tree Park demiplane. That one I had under lock, key, and a solid yard of steel in the front wagon.

I had the Hugging Momma blimps above the city, beaming beacons on the surface. Each beacon could cover a circle of about 2.5 square miles of area. it cost a lot of DM but I was generating millions every day. This operation only slowed down my projects that required DM, like building my robot army.

*

*

I brought the fifteen Rangers and Róta. The power armor kids ended up unlocking the Ranger Class and vice versa. I now had three teams of color-coded teens and one Valkyrie.

"You, the original rangers, will be themed after mythic wolves. You are Ranger Garm. Ranger Cerberus. Ranger Hati. Ranger Skol. And you," I turned to the only girl in the first group," Will be ranger Lupa. The she-wolf who nursed kings."

She beamed, proud of her codename. I moved to the second team of rangers.

"Now, you will be named after dinosaurs. We need to have dinosaur-themed rangers. Triceratops, Tiranousaur, Pteranodon, Ankylosaur, and... why not..." I mumbled to myself, then decided: "Velociraptor."

Finally, the third team of power armor rangers. They would go after mythical beasts. "Ranger Minotaur. Phoenix. Unicorn," I nodded at the girl," Kraken, and Eddie."

"Contractor, I think the latter doesn't share the same origin as the former four," Larry noted.

I shifted to the cockpit speakers. "I know, my little furry water mammal with an electromagnetic nose. But this is my team and I'll give them the names I see fit. We need a bit of heavy metal in our lives."

I shifted to the outside speakers. "As for you, Róta. You are the white warrior that often pops up to complement the group of five. You shall be Ranger Dragon."

I sent the kids in their Grilled Tex-Mex power armor to fight on the streets, get some real combat experience and build up their teamwork.

*

*

A week passed and only a few pockets of Infernali remained in the city outskirts. I didn't eliminate these for a simple reason. I didn't want the people to feel the city was too safe. Securing the urban area would require me to dedicate a lot of resources, including Dungeon volume. I didn't want to commit that much. Instead, what I really wanted was that they would move into Speranza.

I made sure the worshipers that moved in, the early adopters were given the triple-A treatment. After a few days, I made them record video testimonials urging their friends and acquaintances into moving in. It had a huge effect. Soon, only a couple hundred diehard cantankerous people remained in Atlanta. I did good on my promise and walled the building they would live in, giving them automated defenses, a DCSC hub to keep it connected to my defense network, and some living amenities like a hydroponics farm on the first floor, inside the walls and thus benefitting from my Dungeon powers, including double growth for all plants.

Finally, I reinforced the building's structure and added armor plates to the outside. It should endure some tentacle lashes from a Jabberwock now before crumbling. I also removed the buildings nearby and flattened the land, making sure the guns had plenty of line of sight to fire on undesirable critters. Leaving these dissenters behind was actually a good thing. I didn't want them seeding discord in Speranza. And in the grand scheme of things, two hundred old people were nothing. Good riddance.

I went to the airport. Hartsfield-Jackson it was called in the day. Rusted airplanes littered the tarmac. I absorbed them and learned about their circuits. Robotic airplanes would soon follow. But the airport and the airplanes, no matter how nice they were, weren't the real prize.

The area southeast of downtown Atlanta and around the airport had dozens of shipping companies, courtesy of the busiest airport back in the day. Cars also. A lot of travel meant a lot of parking space. I absorbed them and learned more about the electronics that went into an early XXI century automobile. Then the warehouses. All sorts of goods got shipped to this airport, then split up and shipped elsewhere. They really emphasized the "port" part of "airport". Consumer goods, clothing, and lots and lots of books preserved in their shipping containers. Finally, the real treasure. Crates of smartphones and modern computers that were never shipped to the retail stores. Absorbing these devices unlocked the final components I needed to Replicate all of the early XXI century technology.

There was also something about 3-D printers, but... why would I need 3-D printers? Oh, well. Perhaps the meatbags would like one. I took it.

I stared at the notifications, not believing the windfall. Forget the touchscreen LCD. I now had quantum computers. Just a few of the NASA files and GitHub projects dealt with that. I would need a lot of time to research what I could do with these. The next-generation processors were a godsend. I could double or quadruple the processing power of my units. And the GPU? They would shorten the time I needed to train my AI models by hundreds of times. They were even more useful than the quantum processors, for now.

I packed up my dirigibles and went away from Atlanta, toward the northeast. I knew from the residents there that a lot of people lived in Florida, in the ruins of a huge theme park but going that far south and then back was a hassle. The eight hundred miles round trip (through swamps and marshes nonetheless) would let me hit all the ruined cities along the east coast and reach the former capital.

While I studied the new components and wrote code to integrate them into my technology base – the damn processors need BIOS code, the peripherals needed drivers, and the OS needed to integrate with these drivers, it was a mess. While all that happened, the land train went east, toward the South Carolina coast. Getting people to move into Speranza now was an easy, routine task. We learned what worked and what didn't.

*

*

I kept installing weapons bases along the way. The ones further west were being used and some of the APC merchants even went back to trade for more bullets. Whether they used the autocannons on people or not, was a mystery... NOT! Because the targeting computer I put on the cannons also took pictures of what was shot at with them. So I knew if they attacked people or just defended themselves from marauding Infernali. The ones who did kill people... Well, they lost the ability to directly affect other people, permanently. Yikes.

We moved forward. I could see the ocean from my blimps. And then, the city. Charleston, I guess. Eager to get more people, I sent the dirigibles ahead.

I lost one of the scout blimps. I also found one of the escaping Boboyotyes. It was toying with a community, slowly turning city block by city block into crystal forests. If you told me that this is how the damn monster reproduced, the crystal shards were its eggs, and they needed human despair to hatch, I would believe it, no questions asked.

Whenever the humans attempted to flee, the Boboyote would breathe a shower of crystal shards to keep them pinned in place. By the number of shards all over the city, this had to be going on for months. Upon a closer scan, I found how the people had survived this long. They were using the basements and mirrors to cultivate potatoes and other sturdy vegetables.

I was wrong. The Boboyotes hadn't fled for their lives. They had just abandoned a lost cause and spread through the land to cause as much suffering as they could. It would be easy to finish this with the Railguns. In the last three years, I had improved on the first designs by leaps and bounds. Instead, I conceded the ground and called the Mecha Pilot squad.

Fifteen teenagers and one Valkyrie sortied out on their giant robots. Sixteen against one, with me covering their backs and ready to intercede if things went south.

"Onward, to Victory!" Róta shouted on the comms. The ground shook as the humanoid robots dashed toward the monster. Raindrops was also a major upgrade on the original Ranger Ork. Faster, more responsive, and better armed and armored. Just the fact this design took advantage of my latest armor rating was already a huge boost.

I used Bless on all of them. With the shoulder-mounted cannons, they also counted as artillery units, which granted even more bonuses to them. Sᴇaʀch* Thᴇ NʘvᴇlFɪre.ɴet website on Gøøglᴇ to access chapters of nøvels early and in the highest quality.

The Boboyote, who wasn't dumb, noticed the robots from a mile away. It howled a challenge and charged.

"Fire!" Róta ordered. "Die, foul beast!"

She raised her Mecha's hand and started to cast as they advanced. "Winds of Niflheim!". A massive blizzard formed around the crystal monster. Snow and hailstones fell on the creature, making his crystal colder and more brittle.

The sixteen Mecha fired their shoulder-mounted railguns. Most of them struck the four-hundred-foot-long monster (hard to miss that fat crystal ass). I counted twenty-nine hits. The secondary explosions shot the armor-piercing penetrators deep into the monster, spreading cracks all over the crystal. Chunks of transparent solid flesh fell off the creature.

Róta's Raindrops reached for the back and a steel lance fifty feet long was deployed. It latched to her robot's arm and was a unique addition she requested. "Gungnir!" She called the command word and the spear electrified. Two hundred thousand volts gathered around the insulated pole, causing sparks to ring from its tip as the air around it ionized into plasma. At the same time, around the other arm, a circular shield formed out of plates in the shape of pizza slices. They were angled to deflect the projectiles.

Róta rose the shield to protect the torso and head of the Mecha. The Boboyote opened its huge maw and spat a shower of crystal shards. I shone a beacon upon the charging Mecha. I imposed a law.

Steel is three times tougher, harder, and more tenacious. It also put them in my Domain, which weakened Infernali. That, combined with the cold debuff from Róta's spell might be the thing to tip the scales of this battle.

The shards shattered against the shield and the Mecha's fuselage, doing way less damage than they should. Róta broke through the shard shower and skewered the monster between the neck and the left shoulder. "Thor's Judgment!" She used a Perk as the spear made contact.

Fueled by her Mana, the electrical charge on the spear multiplied tenfold. It surpassed the resistance of the monster's body and grounded through its paws, lighting the crystalline creature from the inside. Róta disengaged her Mecha by engaging the jump jets and then reversed it with another burst of burnt propellant.

"Baldr's Valiant Charge!" She used another of her Valkyrie's perks. Or Skill. I had no access to her Status to tell.

The Mecha blurred forward, ignoring Physics-Chan complaints about the conservation of momentum. The spear hammered once more at the same spot it had wounded the beast before. The front-left leg broke off and the Boboyote howled in pain. Róta engaged her jump jets again and vaulted to the side.

"Rangers! Alpha Strike!" The red leader commanded. All the fifteen Mecha braced and fired both shoulder-mounted railguns.

Once they all hit the target, I issued a command. "Fire for Effect!" My Perk increased their rate of fire and soon a second salvo of thirty railgun rounds finished the beast.

Hell yeah. And all the rangers gained two levels, which was great, given they were all above level seventy now and opportunities to level up were scarce.

The inhabitants of the coastal city quickly agreed to join us in Speranza. I teleported them and Róta went around town, searching for worthy souls. While the dead didn't count as people for the Quest, they counted as worshipers which granted me another set of bonuses.

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