We make a few more stops along the way, though we keep them short. One is to visit Mom, who is still stuck in the library with the kids. I bring her breakfast and we chat for a bit. She still hasn’t picked a class, so I make her promise she'll consult James as soon as the boy wakes up.
“Okay, fine, I promise,” she says. “There, are you happy now?”
“Yeah.”
“Will you stop going out to fight monsters?”
“No.”
We leave her, and we pay a visit to Kurt next. His temporary lab is in a basement with thick walls, and just to be sure, they cleared out the structure above him as well.
As we enter, we find him busy with work. He runs around between glass tubes, burners, and vats, combining chemicals in what seems to me like a random order. The substances change color once in a while, boiling and frothing as he adds various powders and solutions to the mixtures.
“That looks dangerous,” I say after I watch him for a minute.
“Very,” he says. “Don't touch anything.”
“Wasn't planning to.”
We talk for a bit, but since he's busy, we keep it short. He picked an adept class called Bomb Maker, and after the expeditions last night, he got a few levels to unlock the first three class skills.
Since then, he's been feverishly working to make as many bombs as fast as possible.
“I have a few prototypes there,” he says, pointing at a table in the corner. “Handle with extreme care. That’s both a piece of advice and a direct quote.”
I go over, pick up the explosives, and throw them straight into my inventory. Kurt explains some details about them and, after I promise I'll report back once I try them out in the field, we leave.
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Emily and I work on perimeter defense for a few hours, fighting the occasional group of monsters coming our way. It's nothing too exciting, but I watch the experience counter like a hawk.
I can't wait for another level-up.
Pops drops by at some point, but his visit is short. He's just going around, seeing how everyone is doing.
“I'm sure as hell glad we finally figured out the food situation,” he says, grinning at me.
“Yeah, yeah,” I grumble. “What was William's angle with the meeting? Why did he leave me up there all alone?”
Pops chuckles. “That's a conversation you'll need to have with him. It's not my place to put words in his mouth.”
Up above us, Emily lets loose on a few arrows. They whizz through the air and hit a handful of monsters in the distance, killing all of them instantly. She's gotten a few more levels, slowly bridging the gap between her and the rapidly evolving monsters.
Her little display reminds me of another conversation I need to have with Pops and William. They clearly know something about her that I don't, and while they've given me indirect warnings, they haven't broached the subject yet.
I’m more than a little curious about my companion, but this is neither the place nor the time for it.
Pops takes his leave a few minutes later, and I'm left waiting once again.
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It's around eleven in the morning when William finally comes looking for me. I'm itching to go back out there and chase the leads from Jessica, but before that, I have a few more ideas I want to discuss with the man.
I pull him aside, and we get to talking. We have the manpower and coordination now to attempt expanding the safe zone and encircle the apartment buildings. That would solve a few problems at once.
First, it would give us more living space. We're in pretty desperate need of that, especially if we'll bring more people in. Second, the park would give us a nice, open space for various activities such as butchering the monsters for food. Right now, we're stinking up the streets with blood and guts.
Third and last, the apartment buildings would make a great fortress of sorts in case of another breach.
“Elaborate,” William says as I bring up that last point.
“We barricade the ground floors and send the non combatants up,” I explain. “Then, they're all in a single safe area while us fighters take care of the monsters. No more running around in panic like the last time.”
“But if the fighters all die, the non combatants will be stuck in those buildings surrounded by monsters.”
“If we fighters all die, the others will die anyway. That they'll be in those buildings or spread out in the safe zone won't make a difference.”
“Cold,” William remarks with a grin.
“Maybe, but it's the truth. Our best shot in case of a breach is to have as small of an area to defend as possible.”
William isn't one hundred percent on board, but he decides it's at least worth a shot. We plan out the operation, and while I'll help them get started, I'll head out with a small team afterwards.
The monster gathering closest to us is a few miles up north, and the other one is down south, closer to Mike's safe zone.
“Tell Jessica to contact my brother,” I say as I get up. “You two try and convince him to send out a team of his own to check the other potential boss. The sooner we end the siege, the better.”
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“Will do,” William says, getting up himself.
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As per our agreed upon plan, I go around gathering the necessary workers and tools. We have plenty of the former, but as it turns out, not enough of the latter. While a few of the stores did sell shovels and spades, we need hundreds of them.
For now, I decide to turn the deficit into an opportunity. If we have more workers than tools, we can cycle the workers in and out as they get tired. Hopefully, that will raise morale and get people to work faster when it is their turn.
I get some construction workers to oversee the efforts, a few of which used to be my co-workers only days ago. Our old boss would be better suited for the role, but no one's seen him around. He's either dead, or he wasn't in Stelver when the integration started.
We draw a crude map of the safe zone and its surroundings, and I add the new walls and trenches we need to build in pencil.
“Why are they all angled?” One of the guys asks.
“To act as funnels and break up any potential hordes,” I answer. “It doesn't have to be perfect, but try to keep at least somewhat close to this plan.”
He nods. I add a few more things to the map, such as potential mine fields in case Kurt's explosives will be ready in time, and we get to work.
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I end up spending a few hours with the crews, digging trenches with a spade that slowly deforms in my hands. My increased attributes make the work trivial, but the tools can't keep up with the strain.
I change the spade once when it starts resembling a spoon, then I change it once again, but in the end, I resign myself to digging with my hands. Each tool I ruin is one less tool the workers can use.
Even with my bare hands, I'm faster than the classless men and women.
Progress is slow, but steady. We take a page out of Mike's book with the design of the dirt walls, making them in layers that, once done, will surround the safe zone. Our first priority, though, is to add the apartment buildings to the fold.
A few earth mages help out, digging long stretches of trenches with their skills. Then, they take the excavated dirt from us as well and reform it into walls. Ice mages come up behind them, spawning ice spikes on top of the newly erected walls that will melt. The water will hopefully help pack the dirt tighter.
With the rotation of workers in place, nobody gets too tired either. If they'll work throughout the night as well, which they will, the safe zone's expansion should be done by tomorrow morning.
Jessica swings around at about three in the afternoon with news. She reached and talked to Mike, and together with William, they convinced him to send out a scouting team and look for the wave boss closest to them.
That only leaves us to do our part. I tell the guys I'm leaving, and together with Jessica and Emily, we go to assemble a team of fighters.
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“That's definitely a wave boss,” I say as we all observe the monster gathering.
“Shit,” Jessica growls.
It only took us about half an hour to reach the town's periphery as we rode out on Jessica's pets. There are ten of us in total, but besides her and Emily, I only know the healer. She's a stocky woman about Jessica's age named Delilah, and after the two outings the other day, she's been going out with teams pretty much non-stop to level herself up.
The others are a mix of melee fighters and gunmen, all between levels 10 to 15.
The monster gathering is in a wide clearing in the forest, near the lumber mill. Said clearing was made through logging over the years, so there are no structures except for the lumber yard and the processing plant off in the distance.
We stop half a mile away and take turns looking through Emily's binoculars. There are about a thousand monsters here, and while I can't get close enough to use analyze on them, the wave boss isn't hard to distinguish from the others. It's about seven feet tall, standing on two thick hind legs. A bushy tail balances its hunched posture, and two white stripes run down its back, offsetting the otherwise black fur.
It's a skunk of some sort.
Every once in a while, it lets out whimpers and screeches. The sounds it makes attracts other monsters in the area, who slowly file out of the woods to join the horde. They only come in handfuls at a time, but over a few days, the numbers are adding up.
As we watch, some of the smaller monsters have growth spurts. It only happens occasionally, and only to one or two monsters at a time, but just as with the size of the horde, it adds up in time.
“What's it waiting for?” Jessica asks.
“Not sure, but I might have some ideas.”
I go on to explain my encounter with the Marrower, and how my own actions triggered that particular wave. The most likely scenario is that the wave bosses are waiting until they have enough monsters to attack, but that interference with the process can set off the wave early.
“What do you think? Should we do something?” Jessica asks.
I think about it for a minute, unsure of how to proceed. Allowing them to build up their ranks means we’ll get hit harder, but if I trigger the wave now, we won’t have time to prepare. It would only take the horde about two hours to reach the safe zone, though we could send a single person back to warn everyone. Then, the rest of us could stay behind to buy more time. If Kurt’s explosives will work as advertised, I’m confident we could slow down the horde for another hour or so.
Maybe even kill the wave boss.
I go into my inventory to check out the explosives again, like I've been doing all day long since I picked them up. One of the details gives me pause, though I don't know what to make of it. Unlike the other items, these things stack.
Is it down to them being crafted by a system enabled individual? Is that why most of the things humanity made before the integration phase don't stack?
I shake the thoughts away and refocus on the problem at hand.
Item: Kurt’s Boom Rods (x5).
Description: A volatile mix of unstable chemicals infused with Mana and wrapped in paper, these hand held explosives were crafted by a fledgling bomb maker named Kurt. Each rod will explode with the force of a pound of dynamite. Handle with extreme care.
Damage: 1-500 (dependent on distance from the blast).
Item: Kurt’s Pound Mines (x5).
Description: Designed with mass casualties in mind, these powerful landmines will eradicate any opposing force and sow chaos in their ranks with highly potent explosions. However, the simple trigger mechanism is prone to premature detonation and failure. Handle with extreme care.
Damage: 1-500 (dependent on distance from the blast).
From what Kurt told me, both the boom rods and the pound mines have an explosive power equivalent to about a pound of dynamite. The difference is in their size and crafting costs. The boom rods only weigh about four ounces, while the pound mines weigh a little over a pound. But the boom rods are much slower and more expensive to make, as besides the material costs, they also require a lengthy mana infusion process.
Both kinds are highly unstable, though. Kurt can't get rid of that trait just yet, he's too low leveled.
The boom rods have short fuses that would, in theory, give me ten seconds to throw them as far as I can. The pound mines, on the other hand, have simple pressure triggers that Kurt rigged together from scraps and bullet primers.
We could strap the boom rods to Emily's arrows, light them up, and send them flying at the forming horde. Then, we could plant the mines between here and the downtown safe zone to further whittle down their numbers before they hit.
It's a good plan on paper, but I learned first hand how easily things can backfire. Not to mention that it's not my place to make a call like this. For better or worse, we have to go back and report our findings.
I give the order to do just that, and after a short argument about it that's mainly spearheaded by Jessica, we get going.