Vritra's excitement and enthusiasm were off the charts, so I let him roam about the area as he wished for a wee bit. Several minutes flew by as he explored and investigated the area to his heart's content, and after said minutes had elapsed with him causing all the nearby critters and other wasteland creatures to panic and flee like their lives depended on it, the young drake finally got the giddiness out of his system and returned to normal.
"You had your fun, big guy?"
"Nn."
"Alright then, let's head that way." I said whilst showing where I wanted us to go with a point of the finger.
Even though my boy didn't look my way, he instantly knew where I was pointing thanks to his magical perception; hence, he turned and started lumbering over the mountainous terrain as the various mutated species began running for their lives once more. I had a mission lined up later today with a certain proposal that needed doing and a bit more work that I wished to complete once I made it back to base. Meaning we didn't have any time to waste on the local wildlife, so Vritra just kept pushing onward to our destination.
Due to my Juvenile Colossal Monster Drake's massive proportions, nothing was dumb enough to even attempt to step in our path, let alone attack us, so we cut across the mountains and headed down the road, not all that far off from the army I dispatched to Undercity 7. As we were gaining on my forces tail and coming ever closer to catching up, my thoughts went to the draconic reptile I was riding atop of.
Vritra sure has grown massively in the handful of years since he left the egg... He's honestly growing at such a rate that I doubt his new accommodations will be enough to handle his accelerated growth for more than a couple of years. And in that same line of thinking, Cornerstone Stronghold, although large, isn't really designed for a going on 4 story tall and 9 story long reptile. Because of that, I'm going to have to figure out where I'm going to put him next because there's no way I'll be able to house him inside there forever.
Unless of course I want to have the facility undergo some major reconstruction... Yeah, those resources could be better used elsewhere, so something else is going to have to be done. Maybe I should build him a massive dome in the valley and set it up however he wants. But something of that scale would definitely be noticeable from space; thus, it would be wiser to hold off on building anything massive such as that… At least till I've fully reverse engineered stealth pack technology and can reproduce it on mass.
I feel like I've been getting close to a breakthrough on that front as of late, so I'll give this more thought after I've handled the raid on Fort Kern and secured the military installation.
Tossing those thoughts to the back of my mind, I enjoyed taking in the rapidly changing scenery around us from atop Vritra as he continued galloping and closing the increasingly shortening gap between us and the rest of my forces. My colossal lizard's speed was probably in the ballpark of 60 miles per hour, which was twice the speed my army was traveling at, so it didn't take us long to catch up to them. And once we had the gargantuan draconic reptile I had been traveling upon reduced his speed and linked up with my returning forces but off to the side of them, so he wouldn't tear up what was left of the brittle sun-bleached remnants of the roads.
These roads are going to need to be entirely overhauled, but later me can worry about that.
Our arrival was expected, so no one gave us a second look and kept moving forward at the same speed they had been maintaining for most of their journey thus far, though that was only until I had us ramp it up. I had work I wanted to make a bit of progress on before I headed off to Fort Kern next with the girls, so we raised our collective speed now under the effects of my stealth field and made our way home in less than half an hour's time.
"Haa, home at last." I thought aloud as I rode into the loading area of the Cornerstone Stronghold.
"So this is our new home?" Vritra chimed telepathically through our established bond.
"That it is. I'll show you to your new room once I've checked in with the Gramps and the boys."
"I can't wait." The big reptile responded excitedly.
Hopping off Vritra's back, my robots moved in and unmounted the saddle I had mounted on him earlier as I made my way over to the squad. "You guys going to catch some zzzs now?"
"That's the plan." The old man answered for him and the boys, who all looked exhausted from the sudden conflict they had taken part in snuffing out back at our birthplace, Undercity 7.
"Alright, take it easy and have a good rest. Hopefully, I'll see you guys way later in the day instead of earlier."
"I hope so, but if not, let us know." Gramps said last before I waved them off and returned to Vritra, who was waiting where I left him and just as excited as before.
"You ready to see your new home, buddy?"
"Yea!" The colossal reptile answered loudly in my mind with a bit of tail wagging behind him.
"It's right this way."
With an incredibly eager drake following my tail, I led him through the loading area and down a large hallway. After venturing through the large hall that was meant for moving bulk material and robots, we arrived in front of a large bulkhead door that was sealing off my pet's newest abode. Vritra was just as keen to see it with his own eyes as he was moments ago, so I didn't keep him in suspense and opened the door via | Mechanical Domination | right away. As soon as I set off, its opening procedures, its internals thumped, and the next thing we knew, the set of massive doors was retreating to the sides.
What was revealed to my Juvenile Colossal Monster Drake, and me was a massive artificial habitat stocked with flora from the undercity as well as a number of mutated flora species I had transplanted from the wasteland. Besides the new greenery, which featured a wider range of colors, there were a few new amenities, but only one of them had caught my large friend's attention from the looks of things.
"Ahh, I see the pool has grabbed your attention. Why don't you go ahead and give the waters a test?" I suggested to my scale-covered friend.
Vritra turned and looked at me for a second before running off and launching himself into the large pool of water I constructed in his second home.
It's a damn good thing I had the levels below reinforced majorly. If I hadn't, I might be watching the floor give out under Vritra's massive weight right about now.
The big lizard was having a blast splashing and frolicking around in his very own pool, so I left him to it and departed to my workshop, which I hoped to have replaced with a much larger one in the not so distant future. I reached it shortly thereafter, and when I did, I wandered through the doorway and over to the cushy chair placed in front of my desk. Plopping down, I checked the time and began recalling what I'd accomplished these past 5 days.
Okay, it's 6:00 AM right now, so I have a couple of hours to work with before I need to go and retrieve the three sleeping beauties. But before I get back to the never-ending grind, let me quickly run over everything that was accomplished over the last 5 days.
Getting comfortable, I leaned back in the office chair and rested both of my hands behind my head.
Hmm, where to begin... I guess I'll start with the construction projects. So, this area has seen a ton of progress, probably the most out of everything I've been working on as of late, like all the machines and production lines I designed back on the 12th getting completed no more than an hour or two after I passed out for the night. When I came to the next day and heard the news from my crew, I was plenty happy to say the least, but that was only the first wave because when I found out about the equipments' stats, I was practically over the moon and jumping for joy.
Their production capacity was so damn high that the brand spanking new medium arc furnace my crew built with an ability to churn out 5,000,000 lbs of metal per day was entirely negated. I was a bit annoyed at the time I learned I was once again back in the red in regards to metal production, so I got a little overzealous and ordered the immediate construction of 9 additional units to get us out of the red and back in the green... And hopefully keep us there for a while.
I would've been content then, but I ran into another issue with my skyrocketing metal reserves. My stock of ore was depleting at a massive rate of -47,000,000 lbs a day. It wasn't the end of the world or anything, seeing how there were over 10,000,000,000 lbs of ore and minerals sitting in reserve. But I didn't want to cut into that stock if I could help it; hence; I needed to resolve this issue asap, so I had the newly upgraded robot manufacturing machines focus on churning out Prospectrons to stabilize the situation.
And man, did they quickly bring me back into the green with their daily 100,000-pound mining rates... Though that required me to pull guys off some of the other projects, so they could assist in assembling more of their fellow robotic brethren, even I jumped in to lend a hand. All in all, it only ended up taking 2 days to resolve the negative production rates.
Recalling the productive chaos, I couldn't help smirking before moving on to the other completed projects.
Beyond the significant advancements made in the manufacturing sector, the loadout armory on the ground floor has finished construction, along with the main armory on the level just below. Which has been getting stocked with all the excess weapons and munitions my production lines have been producing. That said, it's nowhere near capacity, so we'll be able to continue sending all the extra down there with no further expansion required for quite a while.
In addition to the new weapon storage, the many mechanical workers under my command dug out the shooting range, concreted it all, reinforced its structure, added an extensive array of sprinklers and vents, and connected it directly to the main armory. This now gave me and everyone else staying here at Cornerstone Stronghold the ability to train their shooting skills to an elite level without any of my future adversaries being none the wiser, minus explosive weaponry of course because the last thing we needed was the goddamn ceiling and the ground above collapsing on us.
But that aside, no expense was spared on the range, so anyone utilizing it will be able to up their skills massively with the wide array of conditions it can mimic, meaning all future troops I recruit and train here will acquire the skills to fire accurately no matter the weather and environmental conditions they may face out there in this fucked up world. Obviously, it can't mimic absolutely everything under the sun, but it should be enough to put me and the rest of my group above every other force out there.
As impressive as the progress on those construction projects sounds, they're not even all of it. My tireless workers also made major progress on the perimeter wall and have framed the whole thing, filled it with concrete and alloy rebar and started the installation of heavy armor plating to raise its durability by another level. And even though they've made a hefty amount of progress on that wall, the installation of the plates is a big undertaking given the size and weight of them, so there's probably another week remaining on that project before it's finally wrapped up.
I honestly can't wait for the day they're done because the underground expansion has only seen one level added since my guys below started work on it. I mean, the pace isn't particularly terrible or anything, but I know with that freed up workforce we'll be able to get it knocked out lickety-split one, two, three.
Which will then allow us to begin working on tunneling and linking up with the insane number of metro tunnels that crisscross this state and the rest of the former United States. However, now that I'm on the topic of workforce, I'm going to need a ton of it for another project I've been wanting to do, that is the turret plan I came up with on the 12th of August.
Recalling my plans of burying and setting up tons of S-3 Trapdoor Turrets across the territory my forces and I cleared, that would be indistinguishable from the environment once set up, I couldn't help but start thinking about the logistic issues I would face whilst attempting to tackle all these major projects at the same time.
Mm, setting up thousands of S-3 Trapdoor Turrets across the 269 square miles of cleared territory is going to take a shitload of multibots, vehicles, machinery, and other robots to implement. I do have numbers in the thousands, but I don't have the numbers required to take on that many major tasks at once.
So, if I want to make fast progress on both those fronts, I'm going to have to come up with a better plan... I did have the idea of creating some heavy mining and tunneling machines not that long ago, so if I set out on designing and creating something that can clear tons of rocky material quickly and efficiently, I should be able to pursue both of those extensive projects with minimal delays or even none whatsoever.
Having said that, I want to continue working on figuring out the stealth pack tech; thus, work on this will have to wait till I return from my raid on Fort Kern.