Museum Core Chapter 91: The Belfast

The HMS Belfast peeled itself out of the gloom of the jungle like a titanic beast, each piece slowly coming into view as Thomas’ monkey champion got closer.

It was a grand old ship, four massive turrets with three barrels each, ones wide enough for his champion to fit into, capable of freely rotating and delivering death to any point in the transformation zone … had they not been disabled and even sealed with metal plugs. That’d be the first thing he’d change.

The ship had been in near-perfect condition before all this, though the birdshit on the upper decks would likely have been cleaned away had it been in active service.

That … well, that wasn’t exactly its state at the moment. It had been solid enough to not get directly merged with anything, but that still left it covered in wood chunks and was slowly drowning in leaf litter, not to mention that something had taken, no, bitten, a chunk out of the hull, though the fact that said chunk was lying on the ground next to it meant that the action had neither been deliberate, nor was likely to be repeated.

The good old “bite first, spit out if gross” tactic.

Thomas already ordered Jan to pull out a couple of summoning tokens for machine spirits, threw them into the air, and sent the suddenly appearing translucent figures into the hull. It’d take a lot more to repair the ship, let alone move it, but he could already hear them start to go to work. Loud, muffled bangs as dents were being “hammered out,” a dozen clanks as the plugs were ejected from the guns, and bird shit was even sent flying, swept away by invisble hands …

There were a lot of places Thomas considered as a location for the core, such as the heavily reinforced magazines, the engine room, or just the deepest place in the bowels of the ship, even the flag bridge, but in the end, there was only a single location that fit the bill. The ship’s actual bridge. It was a tad exposed, admittedly, being on top of the ship’s tower, but he could always move it. For now, he felt the symbolism of the whole thing was more important.

So he sent the monkey clambering up towards that place, then in through a broken window.

Jan placed the core in the captain’s chair, and the System … well, just because Thomas had gotten used to seeing error messages didn’t make them any less disconcerting. At least not by much.

Error, mobile Dungeon Core not possible, Emplacement Incorrect …

Error Error, Museum-Type Subcore has been emplaced in a valid location …

Location is both mobile and a museum …

Checking historical data …

Dretolara System … no historical data found

Wyrmroost System … no historical data found

Checking …

Checking …

Checking Earth Composite System for historical data

Museum Core Category age … < 1 month

Historical data nonexistent

Novel solution required

Generating novel solution …

Generating novel solution …

Gen- … Error …

And then it looped, starting from the top again.

“Shit!” Thomas swore, already making the System window visible for Elias, in case the fairy had any ideas. “Now what do we do?”

“We wait,” Elias shrugged, the motion slightly unbalancing him. “If it was completely impossible to make work, it wouldn’t have been possible for you to place the core in the first place. The problem’s on a System level, this is not an issue of ‘magic doesn’t work like that.’ It’ll either undo it and give you back your core, or come up with a compromise, but you’ll get to choose if you acce- …”

Elias shut his mouth with an audible “click” as the System window’s text was suddenly replaced.

Generating Compromise …

Okay, the change was a good sign … but what on earth was he supposed to do with that? It still gave him zero extra information.

Compromise suggestion (can be refused, refusal will result in a sub-core refund):

Mobile sub-core creation will not be possible. would you like to create a brand-new being that steps around this issue?

Doing so will consume the core, fusing it with the structure of the mobile base (currently designated as: Museum Ship HMS Belfast), fill the C-Rank slot for a champion, and claim the area where the base is presently located for the dungeon (1 km diameter, centered on core’s current location).

Should it be destroyed, the ship can be recreated at this point, as long as the energy costs are paid.

However, your mobile base will not be able to act as a fully actualized sub-core, instead being given a power that allows the main core to work through it (standard restrictions apply).

Would you like to accept this compromise?

Y/N

Note: You may reattempt sub-core installation, however, there is no guarantee the same compromise will be offered again.

Right.

Was his response even in question?

“This seems pretty straightforward, I lose the new champion slot and it might get expensive to summon the big monsters on the Belfast, but in exchange, I get a warship that can respawn, and I can use all of my patterns on it, not just the ones that come with the new museum. Why on Earth would I refuse that offer?” Thomas asked.

It just seemed too good, too much of a “grab this offer right now before it goes away” kind of deal. And just in general, it was edging into “if something looks too good to be true, it probably is” territory.

Elias shrugged. “You shouldn’t, it’s a good deal, and a solid compromise. But it’s not what you expected to happen when you installed the core, so the System is making sure you’re okay with it.”

“So that’s what it feels like when things are actually working as intended …” Thomas trailed off, then mentally mashed the “yes” button.

A wave of power washed out from the core, flooding the surrounding area and suddenly claiming a vast swath of land nearly equal to his main core while, once again, a system status sheet blocked his vision.

Species: Wraithborn Cruiser (Belfast)

C-Rank

Powers

Unique Existence

Manifold Forms

Dungeon Conduit

Arcanum Core

Once again, these things weren’t something he normally looked at; he kept all that in his memory, but they did exist. He only really needed it because, well, he hadn’t made this new being, and as such, the powers had been externally assigned and therefore, he had no idea what they were. Because he hadn’t even seen a single one of those before.

Dungeon Conduit seemed to be the strongest available version of Dungeon Avatar, the power that allowed him to talk through his creatures, and/or fully control them beyond his domain, the way he did with Jan.

But what the “conduit” version would do … that was written elsewhere. In this case, it was on a separate status window he could pull up, so Thomas did so. Normally, he did this by feeling alone, but it felt like a ship required more of an “official documentation” approach.

Dungeon Conduit

The ultimate version of the “Dungeon Avatar” power, which allows the commanding core to control the Conduit as an extension of itself, irrespective of distance.

In addition, the controlling core can gain advancement potential from deaths occurring nearby (current range: 500 meters) and use its creation powers to manifest objects and monsters on the Conduit (must be in physical contact), at the cost of the core’s own energy and command limit.

So … exactly what he needed, if the Belfast was going to be operating elsewhere.

But what about the others?

Manifold Forms

As a creation of engineering, rather than evolution, the Belfast is rather easy to modify, compared to a living being. This power allows the controlling dungeon core to transform part of the ship into magical items, freely reshape it (it must remain a warship in general shape and function), and save various states to freely transform the ship into them (must occur at the home base).

One new form can be created for each rank, the original can never be forgotten.

Current forms (1/5):

Restored Original

So, not only was he freely capable of reshaping the ship, but he could even have several versions? That would not only leave him able to leave the ship as is as some kind of “Raid Boss” or the like, but also let him freely experiment from there.

In other words, the system was seriously spoiling him … so was the next one as good?

Unique Existence

The Wraitborne Light Cruiser Belfast is a unique being, forged from a combination of a museum core’s sub core and the conceptual weight of a dungeon’s champion, stabilized by this power and guaranteed to cause no further problems, including its ability to respawn at the site of its creation, as well as its ability to survive as long as the original dungeon core lives.

No, it wasn’t. In absolutely no way, shape, or form. Just a simple guarantee of nothing going wrong that no other creature had needed. Unless he ignored the various physique-type powers, but those partially provided the physics-breaking abilities they made use/survivable. And yes, guaranteed stability was worthy in its own right, yet compared to how powers normally worked, it just felt a little lacking, you know?

But he guessed an indestructible mobile dungeon core that could spawn monsters too would have to suffice … it was  invaluable even if the last power was just as “worthless.”

Arcanum Core

This power generates various forms of supernatural energy to power artifacts as needed, the amount is generally the average of what a human or other sapient species would have at this specific point on the advancement scale.

So … was it time to start cackling like a supervillain?

“Hey, Elias, if I tell you that the Belfast has a power called ‘Arcanum Core,’ what do you think it does?” Thomas asked.

The fairy grinned back at him. “I’d say you just got the power you need to let your creatures use magical artifacts.”

Even as they spoke, Thomas could feel the Belfast shiver as her engines began to chug to life, though all they did was uselessly churn dirt.

Yeah, that wouldn’t fly.

Thomas’ mana blasted out of him at a tremendous speed, sinking into the domain around the ship and erasing all the dirt around, replacing it with water. Water that, almost immediately, began to drain away, making him sigh, curse, and set up a concrete bowl at the edge of his influence, then refilled the mess.

Whoops.

But now it was done, leaving Thomas with two more tasks he could do in order to properly use his new warship.

Make a road here from his dungeon, and re-dig the river. Two tasks he’d known he’d have to do, and had therefore prepared for.

He’d had several interesting aquatic creatures in the museum when he’d claimed it and never been able to use so far, but he’d still leveled a couple on the livestock he’d had brought in, given them powers designed to rip through soil, and set them to work digging into the wall, ripping off dirt and carrying it back towards the Belfast to have it be absorbed, while he continued to create water underneat the ship to keep the whole filled. It’d take a while, and eventually, he’d have to move the ship to keep ahold of the diggers, but he had the time.

And as for the road, that was even easier. He had a couple of sauropods with the Titan Physique power gained from the snake heart Abrams had given him. In addition to giving the middle finger to the square-cube law, it also increased the size of the monster based on its rank, to the point where it had turned a snake that was normally around the size of a king cobra into one that practically qualified as a kaiju. Slapping that on top of one of the largest land animals to have ever lived definitely created a true monster, a true titan, even just at F-Rank.

Thomas had almost immediately decided against using anyhting bigger, since at that point, his actions would have been noticed via satellites and set all sorts of alarm bells ringing across the globe … but that hadn’t stopped him from making them.

He’d taken advatage of the fact that physiques didn’t have to be the first power a creature received by applying it to a variant of his dragon t-rexes and then taken them out of circulation because a fire-breathing, earthquake-causing dinosaur the size of a goddamn cruise ship wouldn’t fit into any room he could create for a good long while. But it would be one hell of a weapon if he needed it …

For now, though, he’d stick with having Jan sit on the head of a huge camarasaurus that turned any tree it so much as touched into powder as it advanced. It’d go back and forth a few times, then he’d tell the BPA about the Belfast and ask them to lay a proper route.

And now … now, he could do the thing he actually wanted to do.

***

So, this was the HMS Belfast, Town-Class light cruiser, under his control, ready to be upgraded in any way he could imagine. Now, what did he want to put on it?

Enhancing organic creatures should have been a thousand times harder, but, perversely, he could do that with a mere thought when Champions were involved. However, that was purely down to the fact that Thomas’ core was built for that, not to mention that all it took to get the entirety of an organic being’s “blueprint” was a single cell.

Technology was theoretically simpler, having been created by intelligent minds rather than forged from millions of years of evolution, but any changes he made needed to be fully fleshed out before he applied them. There was no “make it happen” option here.

However, the Belfast’s unique circumstances meant he could take his time and revisit the topic whenever it was necessary. And the biggest, most involved alteration, which would have been enlarging it, wasn’t actually necessary, as the Belfast was already plenty large.

Sure, the term “light cruiser” evoked an image of a fairly small ship in the modern mind, but that was by and large the fault of science fiction, which had countless ship classes’ sizes separated by an order of magnitude, if not several.

However, the term “light cruiser” was just a shortening of “lightly armored cruiser”, meaning a regular cruiser with less armor, and cruisers in general were larger ships designed for endurance and long-term missions, a quality that passed over to the Belfast.

Battleships were larger, yes, but by a lot less than you’d think. Contemporary British ones, for example, had only had around forty meters on a Town Class light cruiser like the one he had at his disposal. At one hundred and eighty-seven meters in length, the Belfast was as long as most skyscrapers were tall. Plenty of space to work with.

Adding armor was an easy fix, and getting blueprints for modern engines to make up for the added weight shouldn’t be too hard.

Plus, being designed for long expeditions, there was a lot of space for provisions and sleeping quarters that Thomas could scrap and replace with something more useful. He could even cut the fuel tanks by a sizeable margin since he could magically top them up anytime the ship wasn’t in combat.

And he could add a ton of extra guns. There was only limited space available on the deck, especially if he wanted to keep the field of fire open for the main guns, but he could add some guns into the hull itself, the way an age of sail vessel had. Or as a random book on old-fashioned ship design book he’d found in the Belfast’s museum shop called, casemate-mounted armament.

Now, there were plenty of reasons why no one did that anymore; guns in those points represented weaknesses in the armor, were directly exposed to salt water spray, and therefore required constant maintenance, not to mention that they were badly limited in their available fields of fire.

But maintenance was, once again, not an issue; only more guns with limited fields of fire still meant having more guns, and as for the armor … the Belfast had very few vital bits of machinery that needed to be protected, like the munitions storage, engines, and fuel tanks. Which he could add even more armor onto. Taking hits anywhere else was pretty much fine.

As for sticking more guns on the deck … that would be tricky, since the turrets actually extended deep into the superstructure, and there was also a very real risk of the recoil of a full barrage straight up capsizing the cruiser. Granted, it would be far less bad if it happened to the Belfast in her current configuration than to a ship with actual people on it, but it would still not exactly be fun to try and get it right side up again. Especially in combat.

And the same went for trying to fix things if alterations to the superstructure managed to snap the vessel’s spine in half. Or keel. Whatever was the correct term was.

No, for that kind of redesign, he’d need actual plans, and he knew exactly where to get them.

So he sent a raptor out of the door but still kept it within his domain to ask one of the door guards to take a message.

“Good afternoon, I was wondering if the British government had access to the full plans for the Yamato-class battleship of Imperial Japan, or, perhaps, the American Iowa- and Montana-classes? And if not, would it be possible to get them, in anticipation of the expedition to the Pacific transformation zone?”

And with that, the raptor turned around with a flick of its tail and walked back in.

The requested ships were all battleships with various design principles.

For example, the Imperial Japanese Yamato was the purest form of battleship, the most heavily armed and armored warship in human history, designed to rip apart any other battleship in a one-on-one duel, while being a little light on air defense, that was supposed to be handled by the escorting carriers.

Which was fine … if the navy actually had the carriers to send, which it hadn’t at the time when the Yamato had finally been sunk, ripped apart by the American air wings and effectively ending the age of the battleship.

The Iowa and her sisters, in the meantime, were the most modern battleships to actually be constructed, designed with only three turrets with three sixteen-inch guns each to keep the weight low so that it could keep up with the carriers they were meant to be escorting. However, despite being supposed to stick with carriers, they also had significant AA capabilities of their own.

And finally, the Montana-class had only ever existed on paper, drawn up as a more powerful but slower version of the Iowa, with a fourth turret and heavier armor, though the added mass would also have left it too slow to keep up with carrier groups, which would have a bit of a problem, but that never really mattered, since no one built battleships anymore as the Yamato’s resounding defeat had rather thoroughly proven that the future lay with carriers and air power.

Thomas still didn’t have the engineering skills needed to combine these plans or the like, but using them to recreate battleships like that? Should be easy enough. And by asking for all the plans, he’d be able to pick and choose whatever he wanted.

But then, after thinking about it for a couple of seconds, he sent the raptor back out to ask for the plans for the Bismarck as well. Perhaps someone would like to turn a replica into scrap metal or something.

That particular ship had been a tad interesting. Most people referred to it as a “battleship,” but it was more of an absurdly overpowered commerce raider designed to trash the target while shrugging off the fire from any escort ships that may be present, so long as they weren’t other capital ships.

Which left the Bismarck with an absurdly heavy armor belt, but comparatively little armor elsewhere, even compared to the speed-focused Iowa, which was still faster. The German “battleship” also had only two guns per turret, so despite having one more turret, it also had one fewer gun than the American ship, and these guns were of a smaller caliber to boot.

Though the thing that really made it a “bad design,” in Thomas’ mind, was the fact that the Bismarck’s air defense had been rather poor. And as a solo commerce raider, she would never have had escorting carriers. Not to mention that Nazi Germany hadn’t had any carriers in the first place.

Plus, the ultimate design fail of knocking out one’s fire control radar via the shockwave of one’s own guns firing, well, that was just embarrassing.

Still, take the Bismarck, strip the secondaries, remove the AA guns, leave it all made from standard metal … that should make for a fairly “fun” and even fight.

Overall, the plan would be to take the ship and create one version for a Raid in its present location, then make a second version fully enchanted to take to the Pacific.

No, actually, do the in the opposite order.

And then, recreate one of the battleships once he got the plans and enchant that.

From there … actually go wild, tack on guns until something breaks, then reset and try it in a different way.

But once again, Thomas let himself get distracted by yet another concept, another idea.

The Belfast wouldn’t work in any kind of “normal” dungeon setting for a whole multitude of reasons, including its size, the requirement of water, and the fact that it was simply absurdly powerful.

So he needed a different way of making people engage with it. Instead of setting the cruiser up to fight small groups as often as he could respawn it, he’d make this a once-a-month event where as many people as wanted to participate could challenge the ship in whatever configuration he ended up settling on.

Ergo … he set up another notice board, except instead of trade requests, he was offering rewards for those who wanted to fight a goddamn posessed warship.

“The Raid on the Belfast will be held once a month, on the 15th, at noon and lasting one hour, barring emergencies such as war or assassination attempts.

“Participation will earn you experience as per your Class/System, as well as physical rewards based on achievements as follows:

Participate and survive: 1 rank-appropriate potion of healing or energy restoral

Participate and cause damage: 5 rank-appropriate potions or one rank-appropriate uncommon piece of gear

Participate and break one important piece of gear (defined as a gun other than the main turret, the rudder, or one of the propellers), or cause one hull breach: 15 rank-appropriate points or one rank-appropriate rare piece of gear

Do the above 3 times in a single battle: 5 rank-appropriate points and either a further forty-five potions or one rank-appropriate epic piece of gear

Break a vital piece of gear (main turret or engine room): 35 rank-appropriate potions, 1 legendary piece of gear / one-third of a legendary weapon (tokens are non-transferable) / half of a full epic set of armor (can be handed over directly or as a token)

Sink the Belfast: 1 legendary weapon, 3 legendary pieces of gear / 1 complete set of epic armor, 50 rank-appropriate potions of any variety

All rewards will be handed out here, once the Raid is finished.”

Part of him wanted to create a tier that required someone to pull something crazy, and then offer something like scaling weapons, but just because that would work didn’t mean he should actually do it. Being too effective at enticing people in and getting too many killed would bite him in the ass in the long run.

Besides, going down a further rabbit hole when he could instead build a magical warship, and turn the Belfast into an honest-to-god battlecruiser

Also, he had a ton of magical shells to make.

The first was a relatively basic armor-piercing design, with a standard tungsten-carbide tip but with high-rank iridium as a core to add as much weight as possible, allowing it to hit as hard as possible.

The second was designed more along the lines of a dum-dum round for anti-monster use. Normally, no one needed one that large, but considering htat the Belfast might have to fight massive monsters, he could use it.

And these things would be nasty. Regular dum-dum bullets were already “hollow points-war crime edition,” but the ones he was now making were going to utterly wreck whatever they hit, due to him slapping a power on top of the whole thing.

Monster-Shredder Round (D-Rank, rare)

A 6-inch shell for the main guns of a town-class cruiser, enchanted to have armor-piercing properties upon initial impact, then come apart inside the target and rip apart its innards.

Energy draw: medium

It just plain felt weird to be able to make something like this for himself.

But then, he continued the process with the armor-piercing shell.

Devil’s Pinball (D-Rank, epic)

An armor-piercing shell designed for the main guns of a town-class cruiser, made from tungsten-carbide jacketed iridium, enchanted to frictionlessly ricochet off the inside of a monster’s skin/external armor.

Energy draw: high

In other words, this shell would punch straight through a monster’s outsides and then start pinging around its insides until it ran out of momentum, turning anything it passed through into strawberry jam.

And to round out his standard loadout, he created a high-explosive variant as well.

Devil’s Pinball (D-Rank, rare)

A 6-inch shell for the main guns of a town-class cruiser, filled with high-rank explosives whose force has been magically enhanced.

The explosion can be shaped or given any kind of conditional trigger, this has to be set prior to firing.

Energy draw: low to control, medium to enhance

Basic, boring, and packed a wallop like a pissed-off rugby forward. What else did he need?

He could have further increased the rank of his shells, and once he was done, actually created C-Rank equivalents if he had the needed materials, but doubted he would, since he had to power the shells himself and his mana wasn’t unlimited.

But he obviously didn’t end things there, and kept adding enchantments to various sub-systems until things got a little crazy.

HMS Belfast (C-Rank, unrankable)

A town-class cruiser transformed into a unique dungeon creation capable of freely touring the globe while also spawning dungeon creatures, now enchanted to the nines.

This storied warship has gained armor that can be magically hardened beyond anything it was ever capable of achieving, as well as regenerating said armor. In addition, its magical radar can sense and track virtually anything that comes within five kilometers, and its hull’s drag can be magically lowered to near zero while its engines can be overclocked to make this vessel the fastest thing on the ocean.

Energy draw: tiny to immense, based on the number of activated systems

So yes … now all he needed was someone to actually go into the transformation zone, and that second anchor beast heart would be his!