As the Dobhar began moving into the new shelter, NSLICE-00P calculated. The Dobhar were now settled with a secure home base, and Uscfrea had been designated her liaison and granted directives for the Dobhar. She had one last order of business to conduct before she could return to Castra Turannia.

She needed to establish a means of long-range communications, so that she could remain in contact with the Dobhar while searching other parts of the Empire.

At present, NSLICE-00P had not detected any electronic communication infrastructure in her vicinity. No cell phone towers, no satellites, nothing that could relay a signal, which meant NSLICE-00P’s convention communication methods were restricted to tactical ranges. She did now have additional NSLICE units she could communicate with, and hypothetically she could spread them out to form a network that could relay information and communications. However, this method had numerous drawbacks for this use case. NSLICE-00P would have to summon new subordinates every time she moved out of range of the latest, leading to ever-increasing demands on her maximum mana as she moved further away from the Dobhar. Likewise, these subordinates would have to be left alone at their positions in the network, leaving them vulnerable to assault as she would not be close enough to provide reinforcements, which would also threaten the network itself should one of them be terminated. And leaving multiple subordinates at each node for defense and redundancy would only increase the scalability issue. All in all, the NSLICE units had not been designed to replace adequate communications infrastructure and so were not an efficient solution for this task.

Likewise, rebuilding said communications infrastructure was not possible at this time. NSLICE-00P was not designed for that task, and had few protocols relating to it. At best she had some technical data indicating where to attack a hostile’s network towers. But that did not include the instructions for manufacturing a new one from scratch, nor for fabricating all the components and parts necessary to build one. And she didn’t have access to the raw materials required either.

So, NSLICE-00P decided to explore alternative methods.

She sent a message to the subordinates in her monster hangar.

“Request: Do any friendlies have intel regarding long-range mana-based communication methods?”

And fortunately for NSLICE-00P, Lilussees was just waking up. She stretched her limbs and shook her body awake.

“Ahhhhh…I needed that. Ah, like, what was that, boss? You, like, need to talk to someone far away, or something?”

“Affirmative.”

Lilussees gave a salute with her leg.

“Got it, anything for you, boss! Let me think, like, who exactly do you want to talk to, and, like, how far away will they be, or something?”

“Reporting Requirements: This unit will need a reliable method to contact Dobhar units at varying and indeterminable distances. Communications must be two way so that Dobhar units can report on the status of their search.”

Lilussees rubbed her mandibles.

“Ok, so, like, let me see if I got that straight, or something. These guys are, like, staying here. You’re, like, going to wander around. But, like, you need a way to check in on them and hear from them, or something?”

“Affirmative.”

Lilussees continued rubbing her mandibles.

“Hmmm, like, let me think. I know there’s, like, communication artifacts and spells, or something, but I don’t know anything about those. You can, like, already give commands to subordinates, but you wouldn’t be able to hear from them, or something. Hmmm…oh, like, I know! Why don’t you, like, make a subordinate dungeon, or something?”

“Requesting Elaboration.”

Lilussees tilted her head.

“So, like, I’m kind of going off instinctual knowledge here, or something, so, like, this might not be right? But, I know you can have, like, multiple dungeons, or something? I think that’s, like, why dungeon masters would subordinate each other to begin with, normally? But, like, I think the dungeons would be, like, connected, or something. So it, like, should be possible to communicate between them, or something. Otherwise there, like, wouldn’t be a point.”

“Analyzing…”

NSLICE-00P went into the foreign system and indeed found something relevant:

Subordinate Core Perks

Name

Cost

Description

Create new Subordinate Core

points

Creates a new dungeon core that can be planted to create a subordinate dungeon