I perched at the top of the wall and gazed down, seeing Jen and three others clustered with their backs towards the wall. The other three were all taller than Jen, but more slender and clearly uncertain in their battle stances. From this position, I couldn’t see any sign of the landbirds, until I activated my erg sight. The whole forest glowed, but the signatures of the eight monsters, stalking closer, glowed even brighter.

I was still too far to properly scan them, but they definitely stood out clearly. “Stay safe,” I said over comms. “I’m going to deploy some defenses.”

Before anyone could respond, the lead of the landbirds surged out of the woods, leaping forward. Its colorful plumage contrasted with its almost reptilian head and those sharp talons at the ends of its feet. It slashed at Jen but she caught the blow with one gauntlet, before stepping in and launching a straight jab directly at the bird’s torso. It pushed off of the gauntlet and darted back away from the blow.

Before Jen could regain her footing, two more of the birds launched themselves at her and she was forced onto the defensive, as the five birds who had remained behind began to slowly circle around the four humans. I deployed two autorifles, channeling erg through the perk to make it function faster, causing them to instantly appear, mounted on the side of the wall.

The rifles locked onto the signatures of the landbirds, the fire control system and the targeting system unifying in their functions to first target the monsters before looking for anything else. The air cracked as the oversized bullets slammed forward, each managing to find their target and causing two of the flanking birds to be pushed back, punctured holes in their sides dripping blood onto the soil.

The remaining three instantly charged forward, each aimed for one of the untrained combatants.

I switched out my grapplespike, relying on my right hand to keep me perched in place, and began spraying spikes down at the remaining three, though my aim was much worse than that of the rifles. A few spikes did manage to scrape against the sides of the birds, but they shook off the attacks and continued forward. Jen spun to face the attackers, only for the first bird to launch at her back. It drove its claw into her, but the cut rolled along her side, drawing blood but not puncturing deeply.

Artemis’s shots rang out, three in a row, and those three attacking landbirds fell, their heads exploding into pink mist with every thudding impact. Jen had grabbed the leg of the attacking landbird in her armpit, and twisted her body to throw it over her shoulder with an audible crack of bone. The landbird went airborne with a loud squawk and Jen jumped into an uppercut, her gauntleted fist slamming into the soft underbelly of the bird. The instant after the impact, the spike launched from the back of her gauntlet and speared in deep, drawing a spray of viscera. With a casual flick of her wrist, she flung the bird at the other two that had attacked her.

Meanwhile, the autorifles had continued to fire, eventually taking down the two they originally targeted. With only two remaining, they turned to flee. One of the new combatants grabbed one of my spikes that had landed in the ground, holding it firmly in her hand before launching it with enough speed to break the sound barrier. It cracked into the back of one of the fleeing birds and it fell to the ground, though it was not visibly injured. Another of the new combatants called up a pillar of mud to grab the last bird, allowing the last newbie to flicker forward through the air and lash out with a pair of daggers, cutting through the bird’s neck from behind, with a splash of blood.

I switched back in the grapplespike and attached it to the top of the wall, before rappelling down to the ground on the outside. Before I had landed, Artemis appeared out of the shadows and rapidly checked Jen’s wounds. Jen hissed at the touch of Artemis’s fingers to her side, but murmured soft assurances to her girlfriend.

Seeing those two taking care of themselves, I turned my attention to the other three, now that the one with the daggers had returned from the woods. “Good fighting you all. I’m not exactly an expert myself, but it seemed like you’d be able to hold your own, at least one-on-one, against these things.”

After some grumbled disagreements, the three introduced themselves. The one who threw my spike was Aria, a [Javelineer], looked to be about eighteen, maybe a year or in either direction, with short hair (practically a buzz cut), and sharp, piercing eyes. Stacey was a [Mudslinger], apparently a path that was rooted purely around erg effects on the elements, and while the same age as Aria, Stacey was shorter, with long hair that reached to her mid-back, and a smile that showed off the gap in her front teeth. Finally, Ty was a [Flickerknife], and he was tall, a bit older, with a lithe build and the sort of presence that made it hard to look away.

They had all changed their paths after the meeting, though I gave Ty a side glance, wondering why someone with such an athletic frame had not chosen a combat path in the first place, why he had not been selected by Chad to join that circle of hunters. I briefly remembered Sarah’s words about spies, but put it out of my mind as swiftly as I could. Jen and Artemis were here, they knew this group better than I did, and I knew I could trust them.

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Once she was confident that Jen’s wound wasn’t too severe, Artemis started to lead the way back to the entrance. “I would say that you need to be more careful, but this is about as safe as we can get. And we all need to get stronger, and fighting monsters is the strongest way to get there.” She glanced over her shoulder at the three newbies. “Any of you get a level up?”

“Yeah,” Ty said. His voice was unexpectedly soft for a man of his size. “Those landbirds are pretty tough, but they also give out a lot of erg.” Aria and Stacey nodded in agreement.

“Good,” Jen said, “we’ve talked about where to spend your points, you all know the best thing to do with your level up.” She grinned brightly as she leaned against Artemis. “A few more levels and we’ll be able to start really digging into some team plays.” Her gaze slid over to me then. “Your turrets were pretty powerful, but your spikethrower is beginning to show its age.”

“Even with its improved rate of fire, it just doesn’t have the penetration to go after anything harder than a deerthing.” I sighed and tapped at the weapon. “The grapplespike remains a vital mobility upgrade though, and it’s nice to have something suited for rate of fire. I think I’ll need to make a mountable autorifle or seven, though, to keep up with y’all. In the meanwhile, I need to focus on getting more turrets active on the walls. Having this place as a fall back base will be really handy during your leveling sessions.”

“You’re right,” Artemis said. “I’d rather not have to deal with this particular emergency again, and having a nice line of rifles in a row should help keep it from happening.”

“Oh, that reminds me,” I said as I pulled out the comms from my inventory. I handed one to everyone present, switching out the unit I had equipped. “These have a multi-channel function, so that people can have whatever conversations they need to have. It also has an announcements channel, which overrides the others, so that people will know if an emergency happens.” I handed the remainder over to Jen and Artemis. “Could you see these distributed? They’ll trust it a lot more coming from you.”

I left the combat pathers at the gate, let them enter while I went back to work on clearing the route for the wall. I still had some time before night fell, but there was a lot of work to get done in that time. It was a meditative effort, at least, allowing me to drift into the repetitive motions and empty out my thoughts. After the last few days, having a chance to not think about things was a small blessing. The hours had dragged on long, and sense fell away, becoming a blurring passage of space and time.

Only when I finished the task did I realize that the sun had long set, and I had missed out on the first meeting that I had scheduled. It was fine, really, they almost certainly did a better job without my presence there. I was a stranger, and a strange stranger at that, someone with peculiar views and ideologies, and even more idiosyncratic abilities and resources. If I wasn’t me, I wouldn’t trust me.

I shook the sweat from my hair, before pushing it back into something resembling order. Hunger gnawed at my stomach, but that was best ignored until food production got into full gear. We would all be going to bed hungry tonight. Instead, I brought up the wall construction hologram and began painting along the route I had managed to clear, before bringing it to a close, trapping in a fresh expansion of space. I let out a low, pleased rumble of a breath as the process completed.

The satisfaction of managing to accomplish one of the more important tasks on my list temporarily assuaged the gnawing discontent in the back of my throat. Yet, the work still needed to be finished. First, I quickly added another gate on the far west part of the expansion, where the path had begun off from the road. Fortunately the path itself provided clearance for the next step, keeping me from having to continue to fill my inventory with timber.

I sighted the ideal location for the next erg condenser and deployed it, the structure slowly coming into existence from within my inventory, rather than the instant click of most deployments. Rather than worrying about what exactly that meant, I instead focused on getting the connections between the condenser and the central power grid set up. Once they all clicked into place, the condenser hummed into life. With my enhanced erg senses, I could feel the barely perceptible tug of the condenser drawing in ambient energy unto itself.

I exhaled a slow breath and took a seat beneath one of the still standing trees, turning my gaze up to the canopy of leaves and beyond, to the starry sky which seemed so bright, the visions of a world yet to come shining through that distant gloom.

The peace was shattered with a system message blaring into life in my face.

ERROR: Chosen

Quest Complete:

Power Supply (3/?): Create an ergonic condenser, attach it to the factory supply. and install active defenses to protect it.

Select reward:

Store

Processing Bay

Gym

Pharmacy

Advanced Processing Center

Entertainment Center

Command Center

The choice here was anything but clear, but I knew in my gut what choice I needed to make. I stared at the list for a long while, feeling my doubts creep in once again, worry about taking too much control wearing at me. There was no opportunity for more information about the choice, though.

I went with my gut.