Josh stood on top of the wall, watching the Jungle. Behind him, on the ground, Ruth worked on the citystone.

The red teardrop gemstone was three meters tall, pointed end straight up, covered in rough facets and angles. It looked like it had been carved by someone who gave up before they finished polishing it. It floated a meter off the ground, rotating in place.

The walls were impressive too. They had ended up doing a triple-layer defense in several key areas, especially here around the citystone. The inner wall was made of interlocking stone, almost all of which had been done by Josh personally. It was the smallest layer, but had still required multiple mana potions to get through it. The second layer was the original wooden palisade, basically just a bunch of sharpened tree trunks stuck into the ground. He had helped repair it pretty much immediately after he took the mayor position.

The outermost wall was new. Well, it wasn't a wall. It was a type of defense that Mary had called “Toblerone Lines,” but that the System named “Dragon's Teeth” when he got the blueprint. He liked that name better. They were basically just a bunch of little stone pyramids, meant to channel the bigger enemies into easier firing lines. They were so easy to make that he didn't even have to make most of them manually. He'd just use [Instant Crafting] on a giant piece of stone, and a couple people with a high Strength would carry each one into position.

All told, Josh thought it was a pretty solid defense. Combined with the large number of ranged combatants they had gathered on the wall, he thought they had a decent chance of handling the horde before they even breached the wall. The biggest danger was the monsters circling around and attacking from one of the less-defended angles. Monsters weren't smart, but they didn't have to be. If there were enough of them, they'd find the gaps by sheer force of numbers.

“Ruth!” he called. “You ready?”

“Ready when you are, boss!”

He turned to Anna, who was grinning from ear to ear, and Mary, who was scowling. Anna had found a crossbow somewhere. It was covered in glowing runes. “Ranged fighters ready?”

“Ready and waiting!” Anna said loudly, even though she was right next to him. He was about to complain, when everyone gave a light cheer. They were ready for this, and it did well for morale to show confidence in them.

“Healers ready?” he called, louder than necessary.

Darius looked annoyed, but nodded. “All support units are ready.” Behind him, Josh saw Sarah nod as well. She stood next to a big rack of potions, a toothy grin on her face. For once, he could see the resemblance with her sister.

“All right.” He raised his voice. “One last chance for anyone to back out! No questions asked!”

No one moved. The dozens of fighters stood ready, eyes practically shining. He had given them all the worst-case scenario. Told them all that this was the exact thing that had killed Gilroy. They stood strong anyway. Ready to do what they could, one way or another.

Above all else, they thought they could do this. Whether it was faith in him, faith in each other, or both, they believed.

All he could do was return that.

He nodded. “Oi, Ruth! Let's get this started, yeah?”

She laughed. “Comin' up!”

He recognized the exact second that she finished. The massive citystone stopped its slow rotation, and a glow built up inside it. As Ruth slid out from under the stone and climbed up on top of the wall, the glow started flashing faster and faster. It went from beating like a heart to flashing like a strobe light.

It built to a crescendo, looking for all the world like a bomb about to explode. Instead, the flashing light suddenly stopped, as sudden as if a switch had been flipped. A heartbeat later, chunks of red crystal fell from the citystone, crashing to the ground with a sound like shattering glass. The shattered pieces dissipated into white mist that soon evaporated.

What was left behind was a slightly smaller, slightly more regular floating red crystal. It looked polished, like how you would cut a ruby to show off its best luster. A moment later, a breeze blew out from the citystone. The wave of gentle power reminded Josh of nothing so much as a perfect warm summer day. Just like last time, he breathed in deeply. Just like last time, he swore he could smell flowers and moist dirt after a light rain.

You could be reading stolen content. Head to Royal Road for the genuine story.

It felt like home.

He shook himself out of his stupor. “We have a couple minutes before we start seeing monsters!” he called. He had a sneaking suspicion that they had exactly eight minutes, even though he hadn't timed it last time. “Keep sharp!” He jumped down to the citystone.

Technically, this bit could wait. In fact, it might be better to let Ruth use her sigils, like she did with the Gilroy stone, to prepare for the fight. But Josh didn't want to wait any longer. He wanted to be sure this would work.

He put his hand on the stone. A window immediately popped up.

Citystone: San Juan Bautista. Improved-tier. Options: Rename. Check mana balance. Check influence map. Check addition slots. Build structures. Access inventory. Access area map and scanning. Access quest list.

He mentally clicked [Slots].

This stone has 1 addition slot. This stone has 1 empty addition slot. You have appropriate permissions. Would you like to fill an addition slot with one of your spells?

He breathed a sigh of relief. This was the whole point of upgrading the citystone. There were a few other things that got unlocked at higher tiers—the ability to buy citystone seeds being the most famous—but what really mattered were the addition slots.

Josh clicked [Yes], then navigated through a few extra menus to choose what spell he wanted to add. His first instinct was to use [Instant Crafting], but he realized that probably wouldn't work. There was some way to make it work, but he didn't have time to figure it out. Best to go for the simpler option. He picked [Hands-Free Crafting].

Select blueprint.

This was expected. He had hoped that once he selected the spell, the citystone would be able to use any of his unlocked blueprints, but it was never that easy. He chose his wooden palisade blueprint. His stone walls would be tougher, but there was basically unlimited wood around. Stone was harder to come by.

He confirmed the selection, and the citystone accepted it. He took a deep breath. Now for the moment of truth. He'd never actually had this level of citystone access before. Even when he was the supposed king of the City's black market (and hadn't that been a ridiculous exaggeration), he had never received this kind of authority. The legal half of the City did not play around with giving the illegal half that level of power.

He opened up the additions menu, and clicked on the spell. Immediately, his senses fell out of his body, like he was suddenly floating a hundred feet in the air looking down on everything. This was how it felt to use the Map function. More importantly, he could feel his [Hands-Free Crafting] ability, just like when he used it himself.

Well, almost. When he used it himself, everything was very instinctual. He had to feel where to put the blueprint, and let the spell auto-build it. He'd never made a mistake with placement, but he still felt like he was going to end up dropping a literal ton of bricks at the worst spot at the worst moment.

With the citystone, his view was overlaid with a simple way of visualizing the changes. The area within about a hundred yards of the citystone—sixty-four meters, the System supplied—was subtly shaded blue. Everything beyond it was shaded red.

When he looked around the blue area, a blue wireframe blueprint of his wooden palisade appeared. He placed it at the edge of the blue area, outside the walls that they had already built. He put more mental focus on it, hoping that he would receive more information before he had to confirm.

Build Wooden Palisade? Cost: 20 mana.

He almost laughed out loud. It was clear that the citystone wasn't taking his stats into account; with his ridiculous Sensitivity score, this blueprint would cost him one mana. Of course, with his hilariously low Capacity, he didn't have much more than that to play with. He still wasn't entirely sure how the costs were calculated before his Perception and Sensitivity were brought into play. Tools available and time required both seemed to have something to do with both spells. They had stacked up all sorts of saw benches, pulleys, carts, and everything else they might need next to the citystone, in the hopes that this would reduce the mana cost. He still couldn't tell if it had worked.

The citystone, thankfully, had significantly more mana than he did. It slowly leeched mana from everything in its range, and its range was larger than just the sixty-four meter build radius that he was allowed. Even after Ruth had burned most of that mana advancing it to the next tier, it still had over two hundred mana to play with.

Josh let out a breath. Perfect.

He stepped away from the citystone. They didn't need more walls right now. They had prepared as best as they could.

“Make sure you patch any holes where you see them,” Josh said to Baara. “There's enough mana for about ten walls. We've got the mats for more, so use your own judgment.”

She clutched her father's Pyrolance. “I... I...” She took a deep breath, then nodded. “Yes. Understood.”

Josh nodded, then climbed back up to his place on top of the wall.