“Please be careful not to disturb Lucky’s remains. I’ll pick them up on the way back. See you around, Edge.” Trapper waved and then disappeared into the tall grass, following Blue’s trail across the prairie. He had to admire the woman’s courage. Heading out alone after coming so close to losing her life took guts and nerves of steel.

She must care a lot about her beasts. He looked down at Lucky’s shredded carcass, feeling bad about his role in the creature’s demise. Edge sighed and then shrugged. It hadn’t been his fault, not really, and he had done everything that he could to save them.

He had gambled with his life to take out the monsters and rescue the crew. And though it had been touch and go for a while, he’d won in the end. Now it was time to go back to town, scour himself with running water, eat till his stomach was ready to burst, and then sleep for a day.

Before he got to any of that, there was one last thing that he needed to do. Harvest the reavers’ remains so that he would have some credits to his name when he made it inside the walls. He was bone-weary and ready to pass out, but it was too good of an opportunity to pass up.

When he opened the knife Trapper had given him, Edge noticed that the blade shimmered strangely in the sunlight. It must be made of some high-grade material that I’m not familiar with. Extracting the monsters’ beaks, talons, and claws turned out to be a lot easier this time around.

Using the peculiar knife was a dream compared to the piece of shit starter blade the wardens had included with his kit. He was able to retrieve the natural weaponry from the fiends in just a few minutes of labor.

He briefly considered harvesting their feathers, before deciding that it wasn’t going to happen. They were the source of the reavers’ foul odor, and he couldn’t bring himself to touch their oily nastiness. Besides, it would take far more effort than he had to give right now, and he doubted that they had much value anyway.

When he was done putting everything into his backpack, he took the bandage that Trapper had given him, smeared it in his blood, and then wound it across his chest. Then he turned and followed the road leading to the southern gate of Puppet Town.

Edge followed Trapper’s crew as they all limped their way toward the gate.

Or the three of them limped at any rate. He was completely healed already, although he was trying to keep that fact to himself. It meant that walking wasn’t a problem, though he was weak and weary, and his pack was now far too heavy to comfortably carry.

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On top of that, he was starving, sleep-deprived, and covered in the filthy rags that had once been his clothing. Not to mention dead broke until he sold the various objects jingling in his pack. So, he supposed that everyone had their problems.

The hunters had a considerable head start on Edge, since he had stopped to harvest the reavers’ resources. He almost caught up to them by the time that they made it to the gate and were waved inside by the deputy on duty.

As he crossed the final stretch of roadway, he looked up at the protective barriers that covered the town, awash in the most profound sense of relief that he had ever experienced.

At long last, after enduring the most trying days of his life and nearly dying more times than he could count on one hand, he stood before the gates of Puppet Town. His joy was so intense that it brought tears to his eyes.

The thick metal wall that skirted the settlement was famous on the feed. Its base was formed of high-grade steel and mana-fortified cement. This durable foundation was reinforced with a variety of materials harvested from beasts and monsters, increasing its durability and resistance to a wide range of elements.

Edge ran his eyes across tiles of red shell, interspersed with purple chitin plating. There were layers of leather, scale, bone, and dozens more that he couldn’t even begin to guess the origin of. It was customary for each new generation of tourists to add something that made the barrier even better than when they’d found it. A tradition stretching back hundreds of years.

Thanks to the valuable resources and devoted craftsmanship that had gone into its construction, the wall had never been breached in the history of Prison World, although this was in part due to the other defenses protecting the town. Two of which were pointed at Edge right now.

Jutting up beside each gate loomed a pair of automated turrets, built to deter the occasional kaiju that wandered onto the plains from more dangerous biomes. Their power was more than sufficient to vaporize any of the stage-one-and-two threats that inhabited the region, be they monster, man, or beast.

He had never seen the big guns in action. The details of each settlement’s defenses had been censored on the feed for obvious reasons. He’d heard that the magtech weapons were a sight to behold, unleashing high-grade plasma that looked like searing bolts of cerulean flame.

Above the wall, he could see some of the town’s taller buildings stretching toward the sky, including Ann’s General Goods, the Pioneer, City Hall, and the crafting collective known as the Forge. Arching above the top of them all buzzed the town’s third line of defense.

Edge took in the faint green glow that marked the boundary of the dome. A potent magtech barrier that protected the settlement from hostile magic and unauthorized teleportation, preventing infiltration by jailbirds or anyone else on the Sheriff’s shitlist.

A tri-layer defense combined with a cored deputy manning each gate meant that no one could sneak into Puppet Town or climb over the wall and let themselves in. It was expensive to run the defenses that kept the settlement alive on a deadly outlaw world, and the Mayor took exception to anyone who tried to circumvent paying their fair share of the bill.

Maybe things were different now that the anomaly had trapped everyone in their puppet bodies for the rest of their lives. But for now, it was better to play it safe.

Before he could enjoy the protections he’d inspected, Edge needed to check in at the gate.