Jake let out a deep sigh when the last of the raiders died, He streched himself out and just laid back on the couch for a while, staring up at the ceiling thinking about what he would do now.

The past 2 days he had been working harder than normal to make plans and set up defenses for the raiders. And now that he knew he and Denise would be safe for a little while longer he could finally take a moment to relax and rethink the last few days.

As soon as he had figured out the raiders were coming towards them he had set all of his drones to go out hunting, with the exception of one scout drone he used to keep an eye on the raiders.

When the raiders had arrived near his base and set up camp, Jake had known it was the ideal moment for an surprise attack. Not only would it be a good way to test the raiders strength without too much risk, but it would also decrease morale for the raiders giving them an even harder time. Not to mention he would be able to pick off and weaken the raiders with his attack.

After a successful attack though,he was kind of surprised at how easily the raiders had been thrown into chaos, this was all he needed to know that he would be able to easily trick the raiders into some traps.

After all any battle against another intelligent creature was all about information and mind games. Something these raiders clearly didn’t seem to understand as they just went in with overconfidence and brawler-type fighting styles. As if expecting their opponents would always fight a straight on battle against them.

He would definitely be able to use their simplistic fighting style to his advantage, they didn’t even try to be wary of someone that could attack them from afar!

So the next day when the raiders arrived at his base he had already prepared everything that was needed for a complete and utter victory against the raiders. First, he had put a hidden turret into the ground that he would activate to sow chaos and disorder in the group of raiders, he even set up a very simple pattern for the turret, he figured eventually some raider would figure it out and then think they had triumphed over his turret.

This would just be a trick to lure them into a false sense of security and superiority though. Next, he had added a bunch of landmines that he could toggle on and off at will, this way he could deal a big hit to one of the more important raiders.

After all he didn’t just want a bunch of underlings dying to a landmine, while the stronger or more influential raiders stayed safe, killing underlings wouldn’t stop them after all. So he would only toggle the landmines that were near the strong and influential raiders on.

And after one landmine would explode and damage one of the more important raiders surely they would take some time to disable his other landmines, unless they were stupid in which case it was still a win. But just in case they did dig up the landmines he had coated them in the poison rabbits poison. This way whenever a mine exploded it would spray poison around, and whenever a mine was dug up they would get poison on them.

Now it wouldn’t be a-lot of poison so the damage wouldn’t be big, but even the small amount of weakening the poison would do, would be a big help in the bigger picture.

Now after the raiders would have managed to find the landmines and the “pattern” for his turret they would “trick” his turret into staying underground. Trick in quotation marks as it was a weakness he had made on purpose to give the raiders some false information on the turrets and make them overconfident that i would be easy to defeat.

After the raiders had done those things and then found his entrance, he had already figured out one of the raiders had a detection skill, he would open it up for them. Making the now more confident and both arrogant raiders underestimate him even more.

Now the first room would be empty, he had just hidden a bunch of turrets in the ground and a barrier he would use to stop the raiders from escaping later.

In the second stone room he had made a bunch of holes in the wall, on the other side of which he had made poison dispensers. The room would be filled with an poison mist unable to be found by the naked eye. He had gotten poison from even more different poison monsters, after all he didn’t just collect mana stones from monster corpses but everything that he could make use of in the future, including the poison glands and sacks the poisonous monsters had.

Which he now used to make a room filled with poison, although it would probably not work on foes that were wary of him, but dumb and arrogant raiders wouldn’t even think to check if there was any poison gas in a room.

Now the third room was where he would flip the tables on the raiders, he would give them a chance to surrender. Not because he didn’t want to kill them, he just wanted them to regret everything they did in their last moments, regret they didn’t just accept his offer.

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He was fairly sure they wouldn’t take his offer after-all. And he felt like the raiders should die just a little worse after everything they,d done to others. It was only fair they felt fear and regret in their last moments too, just like Denise's parents probably had felt.

So after they would deny his offer he would activate the barrier he had set up and then let the turrets behind the barrier pop up, since they wouldn’t be able to destroy the barrier and thus wouldn’t be able to destroy the turrets they would get into a drawn out battle. Eventually though the poison would start working on killing the raiders, which would make them realize a drawn-out fight wasn’t one they would win.

Thus Jake was fairly sure the raiders would opt to run, except back in the first room another barrier would be up with even more turrets, completely trapping the raiders and making sure they would die without him even taking much of a risk. Just to be sure everything went as planned though he would send in a bunch of drones to kill the raiders.

He wouldn’t make the mistake of underestimating his opponents after all. In a battle one should always assume the worst-case scenario.

And as the raiders came the second day, he just watched on as his plans worked out almost perfectly, almost everything went as planned. With the exception of the poison being more potent than he had expected and the raider leader being able to survive the explosion from his mine.

He hadn’t expected the raider leader to have two defensive skills. an earth wall and some sort of body armor skill. Besides that though the battle went kind great, in case they could have broken the barrier though he had added a bunch of explosives into the wall which he would've blown up in their faces, just in case it didn’t go as planned.

Maybe it was paranoid to prepare so much, but he had the mana and it was his first real battle against other humans, so he didn’t know much of what to expect. For all he knew they had some sort of anti-barrier skill or even anti-poison skill that they hadn’t shown when he surprise attacked them at night.

Happy he didn’t have to resort to such a point he ordered his drones to start cleaning everything up and take anything that was useful.

He laid back down on his couch and decided now was a great time to see if he had leveled up

Required threshold reached..

Leveled up to level 6…

Leveled up to level 7…

Skill Create drone has leveled up to level 3..

Skill Weapon creation has leveled up to level 2..

He stared at the messages in silence for a while, he was kind of shocked at how much he gained from this battle. Deciding to take a look at how much Xp some of the raiders had given him that made him level up so much.

Awakened Human (Earth warrior) level 5 killed + 1204Xp

Awakened Human (Archer) level 4 killed + 995Xp

Awakened Human (Tank) level 4 killed + 1007Xp

Awakened Human killed…

The list kept going for a while, almost every one of the raiders had gotten him over 500Xp no wonder he had leveled up twice. Plus he had been close to reaching level 6 anyways after killing more creatures to get the mana for his defenses.

Excited at everything that had changed he quickly opened up his status.

Name: Jake Miller

Age: 23

Class: Technomancer

Level: 7

Mana: 6400/6400

XP: 1783/19200

?̶̫͍͙̬̜͛̿?̵̡̩͖̩͍̓?̷̨̠͎͇͑̕͜ - Locked

Skills:

Create drone lv3 [!]

Construction lv2

Program lv 1

Weapon creation lv2 [!]

Traits:

Builder ll

Jake couldn’t help but whistle at seeing the amount of mana he naturally had now, with this he could finally start on making his home more homey, right now only his kitchen and bathroom were fully furnished and actually looked accommodating. The rest was just walls.

His living room only had a tv and a couch! His bedroom having just one bed, and Denise still hadn’t gotten her own room! And to be honest he was getting tired of sleeping on the couch. He almost felt like he was married and his wife was angry at him.

And he still had to make a good vault to store all his valuables. Not to mention setting up an internet connection so he could gather information about what was going on in the rest of the world (and didn’t have to be so bored while waiting for tasks to finish or his mana to regenerate)

For today he made it his goal to finish up his and Denises bedrooms and the living room.

Before he forgot about it though he quickly opened up his status again to check out the changes made to his skills when they leveled up.

Create drone [Info] [Skill changes] [Variants]

1. Scout - 100MP [Variants: 1]

2. Worker - 300 MP

The first thing he noticed right away was the variant option, before he decided to even start figuring what that was though he opted to check out the skill changes first.

Scout: - 100MP

Max speed:150 km/h -> 200 km/h (125Mph)

Max drones: 20/20 -> 20/50

3 minutes of video -> 10 minutes of video

[New] Variant: Stealth - 1000MP

worker: - 300MP

Max speed: 50 km/h -> 80km/h (31Mph)

Max drones: 5/10 -> 5/20

Max weight: 100Kg -> 200Kg (220lb)

Type of mechanical arms: Claw, Drill

Number of arms: 4 -> 5

[New] Storage: 50cm2

Jake took a moment to read it all over a few times, that was… a lot. He decided to just figure out the changes one by one. It seemed like an overall increase in capability with everything just getting an upgrade. Then there was the new option for an arm his worker drones had. Ordering over one of his worker drones which all had 5 arms now somehow, guess they upgraded even though they were summoned huh? Anyways he ordered the drone to swap out one of its arms for a drill arm.

The arm retracted into the drone's body and when it came out again a drill was at the head of the arm. The drill looked more like a spike with little nubs on it than anything though.

Now according to the skill changes the drones also had some sort of storage ability and although it could only store about a backpack's worth of stuff it would still be extremely useful. He would need a little testing to figure out the details though.

Moving on to the biggest and most exciting change in his opinion. A variant option for the scout drone called stealth. If he had to guess it would be a scout drone but with a higher summoning cost and some sort of stealth ability. Which again would be extremely useful. Not only could a stealth ability be useful for scouting and spying, it could also allow him to attack and sneak attack better with his scout drones.

He was very excited to see what the drone would be able to do.