Lewd Dungeon, page 14
“Well, it is true. But don’t worry, the Swarm is no threat. Not anymore.”
“What do you mean?”
“Simply put, millions of years without the System, or the hive-mind, or any of that? It has caused a devolution of the Swarm ‘invaders’, which are little things, smaller than a human tissue cell. We call them mitochondria, these days, and they are in almost all life on Earth. The only ones missing out, other than some single-celled monsters, were those beings who lived so far from breathable air, or any air at all. Those creatures developed differently, but it was hard to find one of that little subsection without sounding why my brain hurts just trying to listen to the archaeology geeks and their knowledge on such things.”
“So, there isn’t a concern of the Swarm just showing up again?”
“No, if these devolved Swarm still possessed any of the ancient powers they had, we would have heard about this Swarm before now. There would have been a hive mind, or at least some attempt to get one started. And the Swarm would have gotten mobile by now. No, the Swarm as they knew it is dead, and there’s no way of bringing it back. We’re all safe from that, much to the relief of everyone who knew we were threatened.”
She sighed, and nodded. “I wish all my troubles solved themselves like that. Anyways, Kuronoth, you’re not as ‘divine’-sounding as usual. Something happen?
“Ah, well, I’m actually splitting myself quite a bit to ensure that no one thinks I’m playing favorites. The Tech-Knights are no longer a problem, and I’m currently speaking to representatives from all the members of the Security Council. Plus you, of course. I did bring the Germans a case of very nice alcohol and other treasures to distribute to the captain and crew of the ship I borrowed, though, since I robbed them of a show.”
“Yeah, figures that it is something like that. But the Tech-Knights aren’t going to go around summoning their war machines?”
“Don’t worry about it. I have that all under control. Though I expect that the Eltaran government is going to start getting a bit antsy, waiting for their return. Unfortunately, that is going to step up the testing’s urgency, which is why the Tech-Knights are currently recovering just enough to not skew the data before the next round.”
Zygrash shuddered, and decided that she most definitely did not want to know about whatever it was they were doing.
Chapter 298 – Testing
Of course, testing the viability of whether or not the Eltarans were able to breed with humans was a tricky prospect. I mean, it wasn’t like I had a genetics lab in my dungeon or whatever. No, I had to go about such things the ‘traditional’ way, which was complicated by the fact that I only had six test subjects, and only four of whom were females of breeding age. That meant I needed to get creative.
First, I had to be able to do the tests without violating any of my agreements. This was actually the easiest part of the whole testing setup. I simply allowed the incubi who were fucking the tech-knights to continue on until the girls were in a near stupor due to all the pleasure. Then, I presented them with new contracts to sign. They were too addled to think, and so signed them without reading.
This allowed me to start in on the big part of the project. I transported all six Tech-Knights into separate chambers under a time acceleration field. I’d used them in the Breeding Halls for what seemed like ages, now. They allowed me to speed up the local time inside the field, which meant that a pregnancy that might take nine months would be done in less than a day, on the outside.
Sure, that meant that the girls were trapped in an endless cycle of relentless breeding until a pregnancy was confirmed, watching their bellies swell, and giving birth, before having a bit of a breather before it happened again. But I was annoyed that they’d come here with the goal of wiping out life on Earth if they actually found the Swarm. I liked the Earth just the way it was, since it had most of my stuff.
While the initial tests had been done with demons, out of necessity, I needed humans to do the rest of the testing. Yes, the half-demon children from the first batch certainly were viable offspring, but the goal wasn’t creating half-demons, it was to see if human DNA could be used to repair Eltaran DNA. So, I needed actual humans to start breeding with the Eltarans. Fortunately, I had a supply of humans ready and willing to do whatever I told them to.
Of course, I couldn’t use dungeon creatures for this. They might look human, but creatures created by a dungeon were inherently different from normal creatures. Even dungeon bound creatures, like some of my goblins and floor bosses, were made different from normal creatures of their type. So, I couldn’t use them as a real example. I needed actual humans, who weren’t bound to my dungeon.
Which is why the men of the Jadesins mercenary group that served me received a special mission. Namely, I needed them to repeatedly knock up the tech-knights, so that they could give me enough data for my completely nonscientific study. The men took one look at the Eltaran women and, with a heavy heart, went about their duty with all the exuberance of a bunch of sailors on shore leave hitting a brothel after a long deployment at sea. Truly, a difficult task, but I knew I could leave it to them.
As for the Eltaran men? Well, those guys were actually quite a bit better off. They didn’t need as much down time between breeding sessions as the girls did, after all, and didn’t have to deal with all the physical issues that came with repeated breedings. The tough part was finding women not bound to the dungeon to take part in the ‘study’.
While none of the women from Jadesins were willing to give up their bodies for the cause, I did find some people who were willing to make a deal. Nothing terribly spectacular or shocking, honestly. They were women who were willing to give up a year of their life experiencing the entire process of being bred, carrying the child, and giving birth, in return for a good sum of money.
Honestly, it was basically the same as surrogates from before the Apocalypse, but with the benefit that only a day would pass in the world outside the time amplification field, allowing them to quickly get back to their real life and enjoy the money that came their way. All while being treated to all the comforts and pleasures my dungeon could provide for them.
Some of the girls apparently loved the experience so much that they told friends. By the time the Eltaran women were done with their fourth round of Eltaran-human crossbreed samples, I had over a hundred from the two men. Thankfully, that was enough to show proof of concept, so I could end things there, before I wore out the women’s bodies beyond repair.
Now, it was time to go over the basic results. The tech-knights were once more in my reception lounge, and they were definitely looking different than they used to. The four women had haunted, defeated looks in their faces, and their bodies looked weaker than they had been. There were a few reasons for that, beyond the obvious of having five children effectively in five years. They had all been athletic before, but their main form of physical activity these past five relative years had been sex, either with a human until pregnancy was confirmed, or with some tentacle creatures that I’d placed in their rooms. I’m sure some of their skills had atrophied, as well, since they hadn’t so much as touched a weapon in over five years by the end of this little trial run.
Of course, a healthy person needs more than physical activity. Unfortunately, time fields made mental stimulation difficult. In the end, their only real source of mental stimulation was the internet, but they couldn’t interact with people because even though a response might take days, maybe even weeks, from their perspective, the truth was that, outside their time field, only a few minutes had passed. So, by the end of the fourth round, they were always eager to see anyone coming into their room, even if it was just for their regular breeding.
The guys, on the other hand, were far more confident than they had been. The relative years that they’d experienced had given them an impressive boost to their self-image, and they had actually bulked up a bit with the exercise they’d been doing. Clearly, being away from the women in their team had been a positive experience for them. They even converted to my faith in the second relative year of their test.
Of course, I hadn’t held them in isolation. The six team mates were in effectively separate floors of the same apartment block. Yes, the men had a bit more freedom to roam than the women did, but that was only to be expected. Couldn’t have the women accidentally on purpose hurt the children before they could be tested for viability, after all.
The few times they had interacted with the men, the way they had been humbled, while the men looked fitter and stronger, served to pressure them. And the men weren’t shy about laying out their grievances against their teammates, or their society. Finally, after the fourth group of samples (since the original batch of demon kids didn’t count), the green tech-knight broke down to the pink one, asking if there was anything she could do to make the tests stop.
She didn’t know that I’d already planned on stopping there, of course. The pink tech-knight knew, and had actually been on his way to share the news, but he got a bit of an idea in his head. Quickly conferring with me, and the yellow tech-knight, they put a plan together, which I eagerly agreed to, since it would make things so much more fun.
Gathering up the team, the pink and yellow tech-knights proceeded to lie through their teeth, saying that they had bargained with me, on behalf of the girls, and come to a compromise. They said that they could get the girls out of their contracts, but they had to convert to my faith, and the girls had to submit to being the slaves of their men. If they did that, then they’d be able to get them out of their contracts, and head back to Eltara with the data they’d collected.
The girls were too downtrodden and desperate to see that they were being played. They also didn’t realize that, while I never told a lie, I did not put any such restrictions on my followers. Telling the truth was not part of my scripture, but rather it was a way to disarm potential troubles before they became problems, making myself look better than just some murderous hole in the ground. It had grown into a core part of my schtick, but it wasn’t something I insisted others replicate.
Once the collars were on their necks, of course, it was too late. Incidentally, the pink tech-knight claimed the green and blue ones, while the yellow tech-knight claimed the red and black knights. Both men were very happy with the way things worked out.
“Well,” I said, getting all eyes on me. “You’ll be happy to know that the expedited research program has born fruit. Of the one hundred and twenty-eight hybrids born, all of them were healthy children, and there is no sign of incompatible genes or anything like that. Analysis with specialized System tools suggests that they are all free from any genetic disorders, as well. More importantly, while the hybrids do have mitochondria, there is no sign of any kind of influence or hive mind forming. Testing will need to be done at another site, away from Earth, just to be sure, but I think we can call this a successful test of the breeding project.”
I paused, and then said, “Incidentally, the ratio of male to female was forty-seven to eighty-one. Unfortunately, the sample size is simply too small to say whether or not the overall breeding program will average out to something closer to a fifty-fifty split, but it is decidedly more than your current efforts allow with natural births. Which my [Biologist] skill tells me indicates possible environmental factors in the discrepancy.”
“Excellent news, my lord,” the pink tech-knight said. “Having these results to bring back to Eltara will definitely cause quite the stir amongst the people. The chance at actually fixing the birth rates is something most people have long given up hope on. We were a dying race, even if no one said it out loud.”
“Well, I am certainly pleased that I could help. Now, can you tell me any more about the environmental conditions on Eltara? Or in the birthing centers?”
The yellow tech-knight nodded. “My mother works in the birthing centers, so I have some familiarity with them. Being an industrial world, pollution is a problem, of course. But the world itself has a higher-than-average radiation count, thanks to the star’s activity. The early refugees further altered their genome from the state it was in after the war to better resist that radiation.”
“M-master,” the red knight spoke up, hesitantly. When the yellow knight nodded to her, she said, “You wouldn’t know, since you don’t go out into the nature preserves, but the 1 to 100 ratio of males to females is fairly common throughout the animal species of Eltara. That is why everyone just accepts it.”
“Interesting,” I said. “A remnant of an early survival adaptation, I would guess. If you’re going for best chance of survival, and don’t care about the happiness of anyone involved, then you only need a relatively small population of males mixed with a larger group of females to ensure genetic diversity and the continuation of the species. If conserving resources or shelter space was an issue, then I could see something like that happening in the world. The Eltarans escaping the war obviously felt the same, which is why there were so few males on the refugee ships.”
The blue tech-knight spoke up. “But why, then, are humans, or the other races with similar body types that we’ve encountered in the galaxy, not like that?”
“Ah, that is easy enough to deduce, at least for humans. The fifty-fifty ratio humans have is largely due to the fact that there was little biological advantage one way or the other in male or females. Yes, there are differences between the sexes, but they are largely moot when it comes to the primary means early humans fought, and hunted. Persistent pursuit predation does not require abnormally great strength, or speed.
“Combined with human pack-bonding, and early domestication of animals, and so on? The resource pressure wasn’t there, like it was for something like you see with a lion and his pride. A male lion only hunts ten percent of the time, while the lionesses do most of the hunting. However, the lion is the primary guardian and defender of the pride, marking territory and patrolling for threats. So, the resources spent on the one male are worth it, evolutionarily speaking.”
Looking around, I could see that only the blue knight was still interested. Not that I could blame them. If I hadn’t had the [Biologist] skill, and had to do some research for this project, I wouldn’t have cared, either.
“All right. Let’s talk about how to send you knights home, and establish a more extensive testing regime.”
Chapter 299 – New Tech
Sending the tech-knights home was actually a more problematic task than you would have thought. After all, they had over a hundred babies to bring back as material evidence of what I had to offer. That meant they couldn’t just hop on their one-person vehicles that didn’t even have an enclosed cockpit and open up a wormhole.
The obvious solution would be to get a ship to take them back. However, with the sheer distance between Eltara and Earth, a ship running with just the standard FTL drive, or even the Stitch Drive, would take centuries to cross the distance, at the very least! Naturally, that was unacceptable.
A Gateway would take too much time to build, and a matched Gateway would have to be built in Eltaran space for it to be used. That, obviously, wasn’t an option. Which was a pity, since it was the quickest way to get there, and would be the easiest on the children.
The Darkspace drive would take almost as long, if not longer, than the FTL drive. And there was no way that I was sending those children through Hellspace. Even if I could ensure that they would get to the other side without temporal shenanigans going on, the energies of hellspace would ruin them as material evidence, if the children survived at all.
No, there was only one way to get these kids back to Eltara in any timeframe that wasn’t measured like continental drift. The Wormhole Drive. Oh, sure, the tech-knights couldn’t take the kids on their vehicles, but there was more than one way to skin that cat.
The tech-knight vehicles were the key, in fact, to what I was going to do. They were six perfect examples of the Wormhole technology miniaturized to the point where it could be mounted on such a small vehicle, with an equally miniature power supply. Reverse-engineering should be possible, right?
Wrong. See, it turned out that the real problem with the Wormhole Drive is that the power and size requirements increased exponentially with mass. By some quirk of physics and the system, distance wasn’t a factor in the equation, just the mass being moved. These one-person craft were small enough that the Wormhole Drive was actually practical for them.
However, once you scaled up to even the size of the Bloodhawk, the ship I’d stolen from the bounty hunters, the power supply and drive necessary to open a wormhole would be almost as long as the ship itself, if we went with conventional construction. So, the reason that the big, established powers in the galactic core were able to use the Wormhole Drive was because they had been in space far longer than the rest of us, and had managed to increase their technology accordingly. That didn’t help me, however, so I was going to have to find some other way of dealing with the problem.
I was going to have to cheat.
