"The problem with making the sanctuary more easily defendable is that it's always growing" says Siobhan. "We don't actually need to defend the entire sanctuary" counters Lulu. "We just need to defend its core." "That is true" says Joel "but perhaps we should wait for the sanctuary to move it before we plan anything." "can't we just set up defenses around the current area?" asks Lulu. "That way no matter how much the sanctuary grows we can still use it as a fallback position." They mostly all agree that this makes the most sense, with a small minority saying they should build the defenses well in advance of the sanctuaries growth that way the defenses will already be there when the sanctuary finally expands out that far. Several people are quick to point out that there is no guarantee which direction the sanctuary will expand, and that the sanctuary wouldn't be able to help defend things outside its border which defeats the whole purpose of taking refuge in the sanctuary. This discussion continues throughout the meal. After which they decide to try and work out where the border currently stands.

They don't seem to be having much luck though and the best that they can do is a rough guess, which is almost correct. That night as they head downstairs to go to bed several of them notice the weapons and shield and incorrectly assume the sanctuary wants them to aid in the defense instead of it being the last resort defense that Logan had intended. "A misunderstanding like that was bound to happen eventually" he sighs. Now though he definitely doesn't want them going off to fight someplace where he cannot at least help them. With this in mind he takes it upon himself to at least show them where his borders currently are. Taking some of the stone from his inventory he built a half meter high wall all the way around his boarder which used up most of the stone he had gathered. Hopefully it would be enough to get their attention and let them know which idea he thought worth pursuing.

As morning approaches, he checks and sees that he finally has enough to buy one of the cheapest spawners available and the cheapest one that could possibly be used as a food source. With a thought he pays a ludicrous amount of mana and buys the chicken spawner. Seeing as he intended it to be a food source, he places it in the underground area and watches as a fully grown chicken pops out. It stands only about 30cm tall. This is fine he decides as he never intended it for combat anyway. The residence get a bit of a surprise when they first wake up although only the one chicken has spawned thus far. At first there is some debate over what to do with it or if it should be ignored but then someone points out that it is the only spawner placed underground and it was placed near where they sleep. This seems to split the group in two between those who think it means the sanctuary trusts them and those who think the sanctuary intended it as food. "Just once I'd like to do something nice for them without causing a debate about what it actually means and what my intent was" he groans to himself. Realizing a similar argument might erupt when they finally get to the surface. He briefly wonders if this is what those strange figures meant when they said that applying their power directly would cause more harm than good. Eventually a compromise is reached in which those who think it is intended as food will stay behind to cook and eat it while the others go about their daily routine on the surface. The reasoning being if the dungeon runs them out then it wasn't meant for eating and if it doesn't then it was. Getting to the surface some of them gather some firewood and head back down while others carry on going about their day. The stone wall is not noticed right away because of the height of the grass and other weeds. When they are spotted however this, much to Logans surprise and delight, doesn't actually cause another argument. Although they do decide after a brief discussion to ignore it for now because the only source of stone is underground, and even if that other experiment wasn't taking place right now, they still don't have any pickaxes. The group that volunteered to eat the chicken doesn't come to the surface till about noon because of how long it took to clean, prepare the meat, and then cook it. They haven't been chased off and the rats and other sanctuary defenders aren't attacking them, so everyone takes that as a sign that the chickens were meant to be eaten. On that note Logan buys the level 2 upgrade which he correctly guessed would cause them to start auto spawning. With that debate finally settled they decide that a small group should be in charge of preparing the chickens for each day's meal. They decide that it should be the two with the most cooking experience. To everyone's surprise one of the younger members of the group, not much older than Siobhan, decides she wants to help cook.

Now all that is left is to provide or find a source of water and Logan can finally stop worrying about his residence as much. He also needs to move his core sooner rather than later. Deciding that the water can wait for now since they are clearly able to find water as they don't appear to be dehydrated at all. He decides to save up for another underground expansion, mainly because the residence have basically taken over the main room underground, and mainly because he intends to leave that floor for his residents. Even with all those residents feeding him mana the underground expansion is so expensive it takes a few hours for him to build up enough for the expansion. Finally, though, he saves up enough and buys the expansion. He wastes no time in extending the stairs to within four centimeters of the bottom of his territory. Then he begins digging out a room to the south of the stairs with a one and a half meters wide hallway running between that room and the stairs. The room itself is just three meters by three meters and two and a half meters tall for now. In the center of the room he creates a slight recess for the core to set in, so it doesn't roll around. After briefly checking the core, he is glad he did because it is now only slightly smaller than a basketball. He has a few of the dire rats not part of any horde take it out and roll it to the stairs. How to actually get it down the stairs without damaging it was something he hadn't considered. Luckily though one of the residence saw what the rats were doing and came over to help. Letting the rats guide him to the new spot he gently placed the core inside it.

Now he takes the stone he just acquired and applies it to the wall he created around his border earlier. Each time he runs out of stone he extends the hallway. When he runs out of room he changes direction until he has a hallway going each of the four cardinal directions. He then creates rooms three by three meters each with hallways separating every other room. Slowly but surely as he digs out this new area the wall gets built using the new stone. After that he creates an open archway the middle of the north and south walls. Doing this might seem counterproductive but the hope is that by giving enemies an obvious entrance to attack he can control where they concentrate their forces. He does plan to add doors later but for now he leaves it open. Creating a few small steps leading to raised platforms just tall enough to let people see comfortably over the wall he decides that the basic layout is finished. It still needs a lot of work, but the design is there. He is trying to rush things a bit because the other orcs must be wondering why those two never returned, and the elven slavers will surely be looking for their lost slaves.

He decides to expand to the north yet again and this time he sees a small step at the edge of his property that looks like it could be attached to a large structure. This was done for a few reasons, first was that he never intended to stop expanding and the second more immediate reason is that he wanted to actually see what was attacking him and he wanted to be able to send out troops to meet them if need be. He then went to the top floor of the underground area and created a hallway running east to west intersecting the two previous hallways beside the rooms. After this he proceeded to dig out several three meter by three meter rooms on the opposite side of the stairs to the main area, with hallways every so often to make travel between them and the main area easier. He used this stone to thicken the wall on the north side to make it at least a full meter thick. By the time all that was done he had saved up enough for another expansion which he immediately bought, this time to the south. He already has enough private rooms for now, so he instead creates a large training area with a raised surface for combatants to stand on while sparing. Once again using the stone that was removed to thicken the wall, this time thickening the south wall.

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Taking a break, he checks in on his residents and sees some are harvesting oranges and tending to the wheat. Thankfully the accelerated growth continues without his input. Only now does he realize that he was just assuming they would know what to do with the wheat. A few of them are experienced cooks though so maybe they actually can use it once they start growing enough of it. A few others, the ones with actual shields and weapons, have taken to standing guard at the two entrances. As much as he doesn't want them putting themselves in danger, he gets the feeling they're just glad to have a home to protect. The rest are doing other things outside his perception.

After that brief break he has enough mana to expand east, this time surprisingly enough getting him a gopher spawner. He isn't really sure how good they will be in combat but at least it's better than not getting a new spawner. He goes ahead and buys the level 2 upgrade to start the auto spawning. Then it's back to business as usual. This time though while digging out the underground area he decides to just extend the main room, leaving a half meter wide wall in the center with a one and a half meter opening at either end to act as a divider and separate the space a bit. Once again he uses the newly acquired stone to thicken up the wall on the eastern border. As he waits for his mana to reach the level where he can expand again, he looks over the area he started in and how little he knew back then and can't help but marvel at how lucky he was to only fight a few orcs one at a time instead of an entire scouting party. "Do orcs even have scouting parties?" he wonders to himself. He realizes his knowledge may not have expanded as much as he thought it had since he first arrived on Thana. Still, he knows more than he did.

Finally, he has enough for the next expansion so he purchases it without delay and doesn't get much but now he can see all the way around his defensive wall. Once again he goes back to digging out three meter by three meter rooms in the top floor of the underground area. His residents don't need them right now, but he is hopeful that they will be needed in the future. As usually he takes the newly acquired stone and thickens the west wall. This time however not enough stone was removed so he has to go to the second floor and make another row of rooms with connecting tunnels. The residence have taken to using them to both sort and store various items. From the items obtained by the orcs to feathers, furs, and even bones. Apparently, none among them are skilled at leatherwork which would explain why none of them had armor.

Taking a moment to go over everything he now possesses he struggles to decide what to do next. He still needs to procure a reliable source of water. He wishes there was a way to magically create water, but there doesn't seem to be any way to do it without some type of creature with water magic and most of those require a water source for their spawner to be placed in. It looks like his only hope is for a random spawner upgrade to produce a creature with water magic. With that in mind he upgrades the gopher spawner, he doesn't expect to all of a sudden get water gophers or something, but you never know. What he does get is a gopher with black fur except on its head which is strangely white. Focusing on the new gopher he discovers that it has the ability to instill fear in any target of its choosing. He was about to buy the fourth level of the gopher spawner when a commotion from the north gate caught his attention.

Apparently, the last group to return just barely managed to avoid running into an orc patrol. They don't know the sanctuary exists from what the group could tell but they know that two of their scouts disappeared around this area. Also, from what the group could tell there is about 10 of them plus their commander all in iron armor. The group believes it's only a matter of time before the sanctuary is spotted. "Time to see if those preparations paid off" he thinks to himself while moving the large dire rat swarm, two large normal rat swarms, and the fire mantises to the north gate. It's just a patrol but still it'll be the largest force they've fought so far. He brings the fear gopher inside the wall to cast fear on any enemies that make it past the gate. He had thought of using it to cast fear on them as they arrive, but he doesn't want to give them a chance to leave and report back to wherever they came from. Only now does he realize what the veterans at the homeless shelter meant when they would say that anticipation of the battle was sometimes even more tense than the battle itself. While he waits, he goes ahead and throws another upgrade on the gopher spawner mainly hoping for a more combat focused gopher but also because he was planning to do that anyway. All he gets instead in a spawn rate increase. He does still want to max out the spawners at some point if that's even possible. While he is pondering future upgrades one of the human lookout signals that they spotted the orc. He does his best to keep everything hidden, not wanting to tip his hand to soon. For a moment Logan is worried that the humans are going to just go charging out into battle, but they seem to be taking their cue from my troops. Soon enough they come into perception range. Two columns of five with their leader front and center. cautiously they approach the gate while he has two more large normal rat swarms leave through the south exit and travel along either side of the wall to get behind them and cut off their escape. Once the orcs are within a meter of the gate he sends in his wasps and have them focus on splitting the group up. The dire rat swarm makes short work of the few that manage to become isolated. Then all of a sudden, the orc leader yells charge, at least he thinks that's what the leader yelled because they all ran towards the gate after that. The fire mantises of course where waiting for this very moment and promptly lit the entrance up. Seeing the skin peel away from the intense heat of suddenly finding themselves inside an oven made Logan glad he no longer had a nose. The few that could still move tried to flee but were met by the rat swarms blocking their escape. All that was left now was their leader which the humans, who to their credit had stayed back, promptly charged. Logan held his own forces back and just observed. This was something that they had to do on their own. They didn't want to constantly need to rely on the sanctuary and he could respect that. The first human jabs at the orc with his spear which the orc dodges by spinning out of the way. the orc then tries to bring his sword down for a counter strike but is blocked by the shield of a human on his right. Before he can react to that however another human on his left attempts a shield bash causing him to half to raise his other sword to defend. As he does though a pair of clubs strike his chest. They hit his armor and do almost no damage. At the same time a spear from behind aims for a bit of exposed skin. The orc notices and manages to move just enough to avoid getting impaled. After which the orc swings one of his swords which is deflected by a shield. followed by an upward stabbing motion with his other sword which is stopped by a well-timed shield bash which sends the orc stumbling sideways. Before he can recover a couple of spears find their way into his flesh. The orc then swings at a nearby human only to have the sword deflected by a shield yet again. then a second sword swing is also blocked, this time by a club. Another club lands on the side of the orcs head hard enough to send him tumbling, where a spear to the throat ends the fight.