Dr. Gynoid, Volume 1, Chapter 13pt2 (Patreon)

“Boom! Hahaha! Boom! Hahaha!” Ryza verbalizes the sound of her shotgun each time she pulls the trigger, following it with a maniacal laugh.

My barrel is smoking just as much as Ryza’s, the shells held in the weapon’s magazine having all been expended. I quickly replace them with more, but I don’t raise the shotgun back up for another shot.

“Excellent. They’ve gathered up, just as expected.” I pull a black sphere out of my inventory, its size and weight comparable to a small bowling ball. “It’s the perfect chance to test this.”

Back on Earth, my ability to propel a bowling ball through the air would only result in it crashing to the ground a few steps from where I stood. Considering what I’m holding, such an outcome would be undesirable, to say the least.

But I’m not on Earth any longer.

“Would you two-legged lizards like a shotgun that shoots 360 degrees all at once?” I pull my arms back as I prepare to throw. “Not like you have a choice in the matter.”

At my level, I’ve grown enough that even a small bowling ball can be hurled over the heads of my golemite army, past the front line of slith warriors, and into the mass of lizards in the back.

The metallic sphere smacks into the thick chest of a slith, making the creature grunt. In terms of damage, the ball has virtually zero impact, hitting the ground and rolling along the stone as the warriors kick it around in their attempt to reach the battle line where the fighting is taking place.

“Hmhmhm. You fools.” I pull my goggles down. “Three, two, one…”

A burst of light floods the enemy troops, followed by a booming shockwave that reaches us a blink later. The bomb had been kicked around so much that I had no idea where it ended up. But the massive explosion helps clarify the issue without dispute.

“What an unexpected fortune.” I watch on as a group of slith mages drop all at once, their leathery bodies peppered with shrapnel.

Despite the explosive power of the bomb, the true danger doesn’t come from the shockwave. Relying on pure power while in an underground cave system would only result in undesirable reshaping of these tunnels.

Most notably, from the inevitable pile of rubble that would be left over after the ceiling collapses.

To avoid such misfortune, I had Miss Smith construct a bomb that relies on shrapnel to deal most of its damage. It’s like firing a shotgun that shoots pellets in every direction.

Except the strength of the two weapons can’t even be compared. Although a slith can survive a blast from my barrel, even they can’t withstand a blast from such a powerful bomb.

“Let’s do it again.” I retrieve yet another sphere the size of a bowling ball. “It’s important to have multiple data points when experimenting, after all.”

As the second bomb flies over the heads of my golemites, I take the time to examine the battlefield again.

Although the sliths are bigger, stronger, and smarter than the goblins I wiped out near the cave’s entrance, they can still be considered primitive by human standards.

They carry spears, but they’re made of bone, stone, and simple metals.

They wear armor, but it’s thrown together from bones and animal skins.

They fight together, but they have no coordination or tactics.

But the same can’t be said for my golemites. The General Golemite doesn’t lead from the back. He stands on the front line with the Commanders, becoming a wall that even the powerful slith warriors can’t break through.

With the connection each of them have with each other, the golemites act more like a hivemind instead of individual soldiers. Since all information is shared in an instant, the General can shift the battlelines and change tactics faster than any single slith can exploit an opening.

No matter how many times the lizard warriors attack, all the progress they make is seemingly undone in a blink as the golemites reform and reorganize to meet the next threat.

That’s not to say we haven’t taken losses. This is a battlefield, after all. But the difference in momentum between the two armies can’t be denied.

As soon as a volley of slith magic appears from behind the warriors, the Evoker Golemites raise their little wands, their pointy hats drooping backwards as they look to the sky.

The air between us and the slith mages becomes blurry, like I’m looking through a thick pane of glass. Barrier magic comes in many forms, but the one the Evokers use is great for controlling a battlefield.

The slith spells hit that blurry pane, sending cracks racing through the glass-like barrier. One volley earlier, the sliths managed to shatter it. But this time, the Evokers manage to block every last ball of fire and shard of ice that’s hurled our way.

“This is the result of my unexpected fortune!” I recall the bomb that happened to roll near the mages before exploding. “And with this, the tide of the battle has truly turned.”

“Take him down!” Ryza pulls on the double-barrel of her shotgun, the empty casings flying out.

While she reloads, the golemites near her obey the command, breaking off from their perfect formation to intercept a slith that had its eyes on Ryza.

“Interesting. So that’s how it works.”

The golemites move with a speed that even they shouldn’t possess, their weapons hitting harder and quicker than they were before.

“So Miss Secretary was right. Ryza has Oration Magic.”

Although I’ve given Ryza some limited command over the golemites while she’s staying with us, some of her control over them has exceeded my expectations. At first, I thought I had made a mistake in how much command I’ve allowed her to have, but that wasn’t the case.

No, Ryza simply has a rare kind of ability that allows her to influence the world with words alone, Oration Magic.

“Perhaps I can put this to use.” I look back over the battlefield and see that for the first time, the sliths are beginning to waver. “Ryza.”

“What is it?” She finishes unloading her next two shots into a slith that has the misfortune of being too close.

“Order the golemites to charge forward and end the battle.”

“Sure!” Ryza raises her shotgun overhead, the double-barrel still smoking. “Everyone! Let’s finish this battle right now! Forward, charge!”

The effect is immediate. The golemites become stronger, faster, and somehow even more motivated. The force of their push breaks the slith line almost instantly, the lizard-like creatures finally losing what’s left of their morale.

They may be primitive, but they’re intelligent enough to know when they’re beaten.

“Now, let’s make sure we get as many of their delicious monster cores as we can.” I pull out several more bombs. “Take these.”

I hand them off to a few golemites that I’ve ordered to stay behind. Since my commands override Ryza’s, they’re not affected by her Oration Magic.

The golemites grab the bombs that are as big as their own bodies, running off into the fray. Unlike the others, these ones won’t explode into shrapnel. They have a less destructive effect, only leaving a sticky goo in a wide area where it blows up.

But for the slith who are trying to escape, getting stuck in the glue-like substance is as much of a death sentence as standing next to a shrapnel bomb as it explodes.

Only a half-minute later, several explosions can be heard in the near distance, each one spreading that sticky goo at the main exit tunnels the sliths use to move in and out of their camp.

“Now we can be sure that I’ll get as many levels as possible from these walking bags of experience points.”

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“Excellent.” I hold up a shining blue chunk of metal. “This mithril is far purer than any we’ve managed to find. With it, my domain will grow exponentially stronger!”

I toss the metal back onto the pile I took it from. It’s stacked so high that it nearly comes up to my chest, with each piece being some of the purest unrefined mithril one can expect to find.

“They didn’t use mithril in their weapons,” Ryza says. “They probably didn’t know how to refine it. With all the mithril ore we’ve been finding in their huts, I’d say they used it as a sort of currency.”

“How astonishing.”

“What? That the sliths had a monetary system?”

“No, that you discerned it with so few clues.”

“Hey! I was tutored by some of the best people in the kingdom, you know! Everyone kept telling me how intelligent I am, too!”

I rub my chin. “I suppose you did evade the bandits who captured the city. Though the method you chose to do so was quite questionable.”

Ryza no doubt imagines how she was dangling in the closet, trying to look like an empty dress. “Well, it worked.”

The large pile of mithril is obviously a vault of sorts, as the entrance took a bomb to blow open, whereas almost everything else could be opened with just a little brute force.

As Ryza said, we found a lot of mithril scattered around the slith encampment, giving us enough to begin production on several large-scale projects I have in mind. But the highly pure mithril ore isn’t the only reward we gained for conquering these two-legged lizards.

Stepping out of the vault, I see a group of golemites pulling a cart filled with various other materials, some of questionable value and others a necessity for my upcoming plans. The slith’s warehouse is several times larger than the vault, meaning we’ll have to make several trips here to bring it all back, even if I carry some of it in my inventory.

“The new materials are all accounted for.” Miss Secretary flips the page on her notebook. “For the next course of action, I suggest creating a priority list for the new construction and manufacturing projects we have available with these new resources.”

“Excellent idea, Miss Secretary. First and foremost, all efforts should prioritize increasing our battle power for the upcoming re-capturing of the city. Miss Smith already has a list of weapons and technologies I requested for production, and the only new construction should be on war machines.”

The pearl-skinned gynoid writes on the new notebook page. “Affirmative. I will create a production schedule to have everything you need finished by the morning after tomorrow.”

“Thank you.”

With my recent creation of a warrior-class golemite, there’s become a clear differentiation in tasks between them and the ones who normally do the digging and construction.

From the very beginning, I’ve had a few, specialized golemites, like the Evoker. But with my higher quality monster cores and stronger materials, I’m able to make such creations at will.

The only problem is…

“Not enough GP.” I check my status and frown.

“That’s what you always say!” Ryza takes a bite out of an edible mushroom. “Some spices would be really nice.”

She holds the mushroom to her own shoulder, where Stubby mimics her by taking a bite. Bits of the fungus fall from the golemite’s stone mouth, as it has no digestive system.

“Something to spice up the city battle, you say? I can think of a few contraptions.”

“That’s not at all what I said.” Ryza takes another bite.

A telescope golemite wobbles up, escorted by several warriors. The little arms attached to the telescope wave around, recounting what it saw during its recent expedition.

“Another tribe of sliths, is it? More of those creatures means more levels and experience. How fortunate for us.”

“Are we going to go blow them up, too?” Ryza makes a motion as if she were shooting her shotgun, though the weapon isn’t even in her hands.

“Yes, but we won’t be joining them.”

“Eh? The golemites will be going alone?”

I hold up a monster core. “The slith lord who ruled this nest left me a fantastic core. And with all the other slith cores from the battle, I can make an army several times stronger than the one we used to conquer this tribe.”

“Oh! So you’re going to do that thing where you say weird stuff and laugh a lot while making the golemites appear out of nowhere!”

“Precisely.” I lower the core. “However! I shall abstain from such actions for today, as I lack the GP to fund the creation of another army. And if I wait until we refine some of our new ore, then I will have even stronger material to enhance them during the creation process.”

“Then what are we going to do today?”

“I’ve already decided.” I turn toward the nearby group of warrior golemites, who are recovering their energy after the recent battle. “When you finish your rest, explore the nearby caves and look for more slith tribes. Avoid battle with them and prioritize scouting while clearing the tunnels of any monsters you encounter.”

The General Golemite salutes, his cracked shield slowly repairing itself right in front of my eyes.

“As for us…” I turn back to Ryza. “We’ve got our own equipment to upgrade, and now’s the perfect time to do it.”

“I want four barrels instead of two!”

I pull down my goggles. “That is within the realm of possibilities.”