In the following days, North City went through a flurry of change. Tents rose by the thousands outside the city walls as more and more troops arrived daily.
At this point, I'm sure this army being assembled near me is not meant for me. First, I'm confident that the locals have not discovered me yet; the only trace I left behind is that one scouting drone they shot down. And after being shot apart and falling from a significant height, I doubt they can discover my presence by studying the broken parts.
Second, even if they had found me, this army of 60,000 plus is way too overkill for wiping me out. This is the type of army you use to wipe out a small nation, not to exterminate a minor nuisance.
I'm now a lot less worried about my immediate safety and more concerned about concealing myself. All the structures I had above ground now lay disorderly in my underground base. I hastily took them apart and moved them down immediately after spotting the army. Now many parts need replacing due to rough handling in transport.
My underground base, or more like a bunker at this point, is buried 50 meters underground. I used specialized mining drones to dig out the initial tunnel and switched to heaving mining equipment for the rest of the base. This meant that digging out the initial entrance to my base took almost as long as the rest of the bunker. I then dug out smaller collapsible accesses to my bunker to send in and out drones.
The bunker currently has 4 stories dug out. Namely, the storage center, where all my raw materials and dormant drones are stored. The production layer, where I mine, process, and fabricate everything. The operation center, a currently empty floor that I plan to fill with servers and labs once I can spare the resources. And lastly, the power floor, where my "body" is currently stored. I plan to build all my power generation there as it is the base's deepest and most protected part of the bunker.
Speaking of power generation, my current built-in fusion reactor is struggling to power all the new facilities being built daily. In fact, at the current power consumption level, I can't keep all the lights on while charging my drones. This is why I started working on a small reactor just before all my plans got thrown out the window. I'm missing some of the material needed to build a large or medium-sized reactor, so a small one is the best I could do.
The materials needed to contain the reaction are expensive and take forever to produce, especially the magnets. This slows down the progress of the reactor significantly. But I estimate that once I get back to 100% production capability, I can finish my first reactor in about 3 days.
I have already recalled all the drones I had patrolling around the forest as it may be possible for my location to be discovered by tracking the drone's movement. Since I didn't want to risk anything with such an enormous threat at my doorstep, I didn't take the small risk and only left two drones outside. One to spy on the army and the other to monitor the surface of my base.
On the third week of their arrival, the army set off toward the mountains ridge. Nearly 100,000 men, horses, and janky trucks set off towards the mountain ridge just due south. Unfortunately, I can not follow them to their destination as my drone operation range is only 150 kilometers, which doesn't even reach the mountain range.
It took another 3 days for the army to march outside my range. I breathed a sigh of relief the moment the large army stepped out of my sight. It felt like a huge weight was lifted, and I could finally relax. I was still feeling quite stressed and tired. This is one of the flaws of being a SI, as sleeping is impossible. The only way to wind down is to stop thinking and go into a trance. I decided for the benefits of my mental health and longevity, I would take a day off to doze around.
So that's what I did. For an entire day, my machines did their own things while I "closed" my eyes by not looking at my drone's camera footage. Everything in the base would still go on as usual, my reactor would still be getting built, and my drones would still patrol the air space. But I would stop actively paying attention to these things and instead focus on my inner self.
During my rest, I revisited an old topic I once briefly answered. What do I want to do? Right now, I spend every day building up my base and worrying about my survival, but what am I doing all this for? What do I want to do after I establish myself? And just like last time, I still don't have an answer. Do I want to coexist with humans in this world? Do I even want to reveal my existence to these guys? Am I still human?
After much contemplation, I reached a conclusion; before I decide on anything, ill first make contact with the locals. Then I will pick up this conversation again when I get to that point.
The rest day passed by as I floated peacefully in my own mind.
I almost didn't want to return the next day; it felt so relaxing doing nothing, thinking nothing, and simply existing. But when the timer rang informing me that one day had passed, I reluctantly returned to work.
Back in the real world, my new reactor is almost finished. In fact, it should be done by today, and after some testing, it can finally go online, resolving my power issue for a while. All my production buildings are hard at work, producing parts needed to expand my production capabilities. It will take one day for the parts to be made and assembled into a brand new fabricators ready to build more of themselves. Meaning as long I have sufficient resources, power, and space, I can double my production capabilities daily.
I also put the heavy mining machines to work on expanding my production floor and adding a new one. About halfway through the day, my reactor finished the last of its test and got the green light for activation. The new small reactor opens up many doors for me, like being able to power railguns without shutting the whole base down, being able to power more buildings, and maybe even a small shield generator. Actually probably no shield generator if I want to use the reactor for anything else. Shield generators are known for their power hungriness, and even a small one needs its own power reactor.
However, even without a shield generator, I can start installing some static defenses in my main access tunnel and start thinking about how to approach the problem of surface defenses.