* * *
A world raid boss creature has just entered within a 100-mile radius of the guildhall.
* * *
Damn it!
I pulled back the bedcover I had just gotten comfortable beneath and brought up the watchtower’s interface.
There wasn’t much information except for the level and type of the creature that was coming our way. But that was all I needed to see in order to understand what we would soon be facing. I quickly sent a warning into the guild chat.
* * *
Invader Level: 61
Type: Dragon (Raid Boss)
Distance : 99.9 miles
ETA: 1 hour and 17 minutes
* * *
I had seen most of the beasts that my father had kept chained up for situations such as destroying whole settlements. I had hoped that it wouldn’t have come to this so soon, but knowing the ferociousness of the dragon he was sending here, there was absolutely no way around it.
“What’s wrong?” Artemis replied in the chat. “Did something happen?”
“Not yet,” I said, cursing my luck. “But we’re under attack. Or we will be soon.”
“Under attack by who?”
“Probably my father, though it seems he’s not coming himself,” I said, as I started pulling my clothes back on. “He rarely does any fighting. But the dragon he’s sending is no joke. It’s a level sixty-one raid boss dragon.”
“You really know how to treat the goddess of the hunt,” she said. I could picture her wicked smile. “This will be my biggest hunt yet.”
“Same for me,” I grinned, knowing full well that telling her to be careful would only fall on deaf ears.
“What’s the plan then?” she asked.
“The mortals won’t be able to do any damage to such a beast,” I said. “You should round them all up and make sure everyone remains behind the walls.”
“What walls?” the huntress asked, confused.
“The walls that I’m going to raise within the next hour,” I explained. “I’m also going to build a couple of defensive buildings, but those are probably going to be controlled by an interface of mine or fully automated.”
“I’ve got a better place to hide the mortals. Also, all these things are going to cost a lot of MP,” Artemis warned.
“They will,” I said, nodding, “but we need every little bit of an edge we can get in this fight. And saving some MP now won’t matter if we all die.”
“I’ll go round everyone up,” she said. “Shall I find Aphrodite too?”
“No, I’ll let her know personally,” I said and began to jog to the hot spring I had seen her go to.
“Make sure you come out of this alive,” she said.
I knew Aphrodite would hate having her bath interrupted but it couldn’t be helped. If we were to fight this terrible monster, we needed a buffer. I found her sleeping in a cozy nook of the hot spring, mostly obscured by the rising steam.
“Aphrodite, there’s a level sixty-one raid boss dragon incoming toward our city in around seventy minutes,” I said loudly, startling her awake.
“You really need me to fight it?” she replied with a sigh.
“We do,” I admitted.
“I’ll be there in an hour,” she said.
“You do realize that we may all die, don’t you?” I said, slightly irritated by how casually she was treating this.
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“Is there something I can do to help you in the meantime?” she asked opening her eyes slightly.
“No, not really,” I said immediately, “but we need you with us before the dragon arrives.”
“And I’ll be there,” she said confidently. “I’ll give my all for you, but at this very moment, I’ll enjoy my bath. You just said it might very well be my last one.”
I couldn’t argue with that logic so I just told her to enjoy her bath and left to see Artemis running around the settlement, ordering people to follow the miners into one of the deepest caverns they had discovered during their expeditions. She was absolutely right, it was a better place to hide.
The worst thing that could happen to them was that they could get caught in a cave in and not be able to leave the cavern again. But it would be easy enough for us or the mana workers to get them out once the danger had passed. If they were on top of the mountain when the fight began—or even worse, if we were all killed—there was no way my father’s dragon would spare them. They would die horrible deaths and there would be no gods to help them.
“Artemis,” I called out to her on the guild chat. “What about the people of Dion?”
“They’ve all been warned and are making their way to the portal right now,” she replied. “They should all be up here within thirty minutes.”
“You think the whole of Dion will fit into those caverns?” I asked.
“With room to spare for even more of them,” she replied confidently. “The cavern complex inside Mount Olympus is truly a wonder of nature.”
“Okay, keep at it and let me know if anything out of the ordinary happens,” I said, taking my mind off of the mortals for now. If Artemis said they were going to be okay, I believed her. She would make sure that all of them would remain safe while we fought off the dragon.
But we still weren’t quite ready to protect ourselves. There were a few things I needed to build first, so I opened the list of available projects.
* * *
Available Construction Projects:
Tent (31/80)
Storage Shack (1/4)
Farm (8/16)
Lumberyard (1/1)
Mining Camp (1/1)
Blacksmith’s Workshop (1/1)
Melee Fighting Barracks (1/1)
Ranged Fighting Barracks (1/1)
Walls (0/1)
Mana Generator (1/2)
Magic Thunder Coil Defenses (0/2)
Warmage Academy (0/1)
Academics and Research Institution (0/1)
* * *
Most of the buildings that were showing a zero were already under construction but their immediate fulfillment would not benefit us at all in this. The things that would prove to be a lot more helpful than anything we had so far were those I hadn’t even started building yet.
I focused on the walls and brought up the window of construction information.
* * *
Name: Walls
Resources Needed: 4000x Lumber Unit (40,000 MP)
Construction Time: 3000 minutes (1,800,000 MP)
Description: A wooden wall that surrounds the entire settlement. Although the wall is not made to hold any people or allow for patrols along its top, it is a great defense against normal-sized enemies.
* * *
Without thinking about it at all, I spent 40,000 MP to purchase the lumber units and then immediately proceeded to instantly construct it, which meant spending a whopping 1,800,000 MP. And this was just the beginning of it.
I was stunned at how the pieces of lumber took shape and form, flew with great speed in all directions around the settlement, and dug themselves deep into the ground, creating a long wall of thick wooden spikes. The whole length of the wall must have been huge, but the project had been completed withing a few seconds.
The wall standing before me though was only level three, which meant the guildhall had outgrown it by one level. It also meant that I would be able to upgrade it further. I almost lost my cool when I saw the cost.
* * *
Name: Walls
Level: 3
Level-Up Requirement: Settlement Level 4 (Met)
Level-Up Cost: 1000x Lumber Units (10,000 MP)
15000x Stone Units (150,000 MP)
Level-Up Time: 7680 minutes (4,608,000 MP)
Description: A wooden wall that surrounds the entire settlement. Although the wall is not made to hold any people or to allow for patrols along its top, it is a great defense against normal-sized enemies.
* * *
Upgrading the walls instantly would mean spending more than six and a half million MP… not that I had any other choice of course. I needed to keep the dragon at bay and raising high walls was one of the most efficient methods of doing so.
Grinding my teeth at the hit the guild core’s pool was about to take, I materialized the lumber units all around the settlement. When I selected the option to completely skip the hundred and twenty hours needed to upgrade them, the pieces of stone and lumber started adding themselves to the existing parts of the walls, reinforcing them and making it wide enough for the guards to walk along.
There wouldn’t be any guards patrolling the walls right now, of course, but if I was able to run along them with Artemis, attacking the flying dragon while Aphrodite hid behind them, then this upgrade would have served its purpose. Perhaps if we had enough time to upgrade the guild core one more time, the next level of the walls would have even included defenses against attacks from the air or something of the sort.
The truth of the matter was that level four was the absolute best we were able to do before Cronus’s beast reached us. There was nothing we could have done to prepare ourselves better and I found a small amount of comfort in the knowledge that we had done everything we could. After constructing the lightning defenses, of course.
I focused on the only new project that I hadn’t yet initiated and looked at what was required.
* * *
Name: Magic Thunder Coil Defenses
Resources Needed: 10x Lumber Unit (100 MP)
15000x Copper Units (150,000 MP)
15000x Iron Units (150,000 MP)
Construction Time: 1920 minutes (1,152,000 MP)
Description: A gigantic metal coil-like structure with the unique ability to condense the mana in the atmosphere and release it in a burst of energy against enemies. The coils built in the guildhall of Mount Olympus use the element of their patron deity, the thunderbolt.
* * *