Just as like a disclaimer or whatever, I do want to warn everybody that this is being written in my typical style.
That means first and foremost, zero planning has gone into this. All that's 'guiding' me right now is just under 150 words of the vague idea of what I want this story to become. I haven't planned out what features will crop up, what the waves will consist of in later levels, how exactly the stats that Skye has will affect her, none of it, I just put fingers to keys and started writing.
Secondly, I will be writing in my typical third-person past-tense style following one character, Skye. I will not doing any of that 'And now, in this shadowy room, witness people plotting against the main character' sort of thing, this story will follow Skye exclusively, but will never go into first-person, it's always going to be third-person. So, if that kinda style irks you, this story won't be for you, sorry!
Reason I mention it is because I don't like stories in first person, so I figured people might appreciate the warning ^.^ Enjoy!
Chapter 2
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Shuddering awake, the first thing Skye was aware of was the text box innocuously stuck on the side of her vision.
The next thing she was aware of was that while her face, ankles and body in general ached a bit, it was nowhere near as bad as it had just been. Opening her eyes, she realised two things at once. The first was that the sky was lightening, which meant she hadn't just been out for a few moments, she'd been on the ground for the entire night. And the second was that, as she lifted a hand over the left side of her face, her eye still seemed to be conspicuously blinded.
Sitting up, she glanced around, the stench of putrefying meat coming thick and heavy to her nose as she inhaled, prompting her to quickly pinch her nose to avoid at least some of the nose-burning reek. Sighing, she finally turned her attention to the text box. "Congratulations contestant! You have survived the first night. Total surviving members of your team: 100%. Total combat participation: 95% through towers/bound followers, 5% direct contribution. The second wave will begin in two days at 7pm. Please close this box to receive wave survival rewards."
Skye slumped back down to the floor, relieved that she had survived the night, her mind practically burning as she processed what had happened now that her thoughts weren't overlaid with a thick and heavy fugue of pure agony. She realised that what had hit her was exactly what she was worried about, the necromancer. It must have fired a spell at her whilst she was busy killing the second dog, and while that brought Bee's attention to where the necromancer had been hiding, it was far, far too late to stop the spell from hitting her. When thinking about it, she honestly could help but feel pissed off yet at the same time exhilarated at how fucking lucky she was to still even have a fucking head. The fact that the necromancer was crippled meant it was probably casting neutered versions of spells that lacked as much punch as proper ones.
She also realised that the sudden fire and heat that had struck the undead that pinned her was almost definitely the Lavaroot Spitters, who were conspicuously not visible around the flag, leading her to assume they were some kind of subterranean lifeforms that stayed below the ground until a threat came in range, upon which they would emerge and fire their attacks. It'd take more testing and observation to know for sure though, so she put it out of her mind.
Focusing on the box, she closed it, upon which another box instantly popped up.
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Night 1 Survived
Base Reward: 1 Stamina Potion - Low Grade, Global Chat unlocked
Survival reward: 250 Gold Coins for each 10% of surviving contestants split between the survivors. Total Survival Reward: 2,500 Gold Coins
Participation Reward: 30 Gold Coins for each percentage of participation. Total Participation Reward: 3000 Gold Coins.
Bonus Reward: Single-user survived entire wave and eliminated all enemies. 50+ enemies defeated by less than 10 active combatants. Total Bonus Reward: Store unlocked,
Overall Night 1 Reward: 5,500 Gold Coins, Store and Global Chat unlocked
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Skye saw as a pair of new icons appeared on her forcibly-opened interface, which looked like a stall and a chat message indicator respectively.
After laying down and just staring up at the sky in righteous aggravation at her entire situation, Skye focused on the stall option, upon which a larger menu opened which was neatly partitioned. There were icons that wouldn't be out of place in an RPG, like two crossed swords for weapons, a cuirass for armor, a ring for accessories, a book for skill books, an egg for creature eggs, and a few other similar icons.
Selecting the weapons, she was surprised to see another menu that similarly partitioned everything off. Exactly as expected, there were labelled icons for swords, spears, shields, bows, daggers, all sorts of typical weapons. But then it went into more fancy things, and not even just one-person weapons. There was a 'medieval artillery' tab, and her curiosity made her look at it, revealing that she could purchase catapults, trebuchets, ballistae, springalds and a few other kinds of artillery.
Skye went back, looking further and seeing that far from being just medieval, there were renaissance-era artillery pieces available, as well as more modern artillery, then futuristic, within which were artillery types that quite frankly scared her. Just one example was a plasma projector which would fire huge globs of literal plasma up into the air, where it would then be...'decongealed' was the most accurate word for it, causing the plasma to spray down over a vast area which would melt literally everything it landed on.
Going back further, she went back to her main tab, looking through the other miscellaneous options, and realised that one option actually stood out from the rest. The unlabeled icon looked like a bank or something, but when she entered it, she realised that it was not some weird banking option, but was in fact buildings. And not just buildings, it segmented them out into residential, institutional, mercantile, industrial, storage and many other types of building.
Going into residential, she saw, quite surprisingly, that the cheapest option was a two-room building with the kitchen and bedroom in one, then the second room was a tiny little bathroom. That house cost 500 gold, which was equally baffling, until she realised that the chances were high that it was meant to be the starter house, and as such cheap enough that after a night or two most survivors would be able to afford it. Because she had nobody else with her, she got the entire 5,510 gold survival reward, which was why she could afford it after one night.
Rather than immediately spending money though, she made sure to look around at the different options and tabs available in the shop, sitting with her back to the well as she did so. After a minute, she spent a single gold coin to buy a note-taking pack from the shop, which consisted of ten notepads and several dozen pens. She used this to begin writing down all the different things across the shop she wanted to purchase.
Of very particular interest to her was the barracks-type buildings, a military option within buildings that supposedly would spawn soldiers of different eras to fight for her. However, they all cost a lot of gold and also required a certain residential capacity, which meant she couldn't really afford to support buying those sorts of things yet. What she could afford was also in the military options for buildings, 'guard towers'.
They weren't simply towers that would do nothing without barracks troops, they would automatically defend an area around themselves. Depending on the era that the tower purchased was in, it would do so with arrows, ballista bolts, rocks from catapults/trebuchets, then muskets, rifles, laser or plasma weapons, with a lot of different varying weapons in the later towers. The earlier towers were super basic, sure, but were also exceptionally cheap. The Arrow Guard Tower only cost 50 gold per tower, had a 12 shot per minute rate of fire and had a range that went from the wall half the way to the flag.
On her notepad, she noted down that buying twelve would be an optimal use of her gold, as that meant if she put ten outside they'd have a collective rate of fire of two arrows a second. Against a horde like last night, that many arrows flying out would easily whittle down all the dogs, and the undead wouldn't even get near the towers before dying out. She would then have those two towers protecting the flag.
Next, she looked at weapons and armour, which similarly went from crude wooden clubs and strips of hide armour to futuristic rifle and mecha-suits. She quickly located a nice set of leather armour with fur lining the inside and the rim, and articulated metal plates sewn between the leather and the lining that would stop pretty much any piercing or sharp attacks, though blunt weapons would of course still deal damage because they were built for handling armour. The best parts were that it was 'enchanted' to automatically slough off mess as well as being able to assimilate metal, leather and furs to repair damage, it came with a mask that was supposedly just as durable, but most importantly, the set only cost her 100 gold.
As for a weapon, she was...indecisive. Her Bloodied Ironwood Spear was good, so she wasn't sure whether or not to buy another weapon and start trying to learn it. Just from her little combat experience she'd gained and levelled a spear proficiency several times, so it was clear that picking a weapon to focus on was the best choice. After a lot of inward debating, she settled on noting down a damascus steel sword for 80 gold which had similar enchantments to her armour, then a heavily enchanted arbalest for a rather sizeable 200 gold.
The reason she was willing to fork out that kind of cash for essentially a big crossbow was twofold. The first was the simple fact that it was a ranged weapon, which was something she would certainly appreciate being able to use whilst up on the walls away from danger. The second was that the enchantments included a 'void magazine' which would automatically place a fresh bolt on the crossbow once it had been cranked back, as well as another enchantment which supposedly would make the draw-weight vastly easier to manage, such that even she could reload the weapon with her less than body-builder arm strength.
In total, her purchases would cost 980 gold. If she added the two-room house to that, then she'd end up at 1480 gold total, more than a decent chunk of her previous earnings. However, as these purchases were investing in her survival for the next few days at least, she bit the bullet and purchased each item, having them appear in her inventory. When it came to the house, Skye was very curious to see how exactly the process would be handled.
As it turned out, all it did was put a wooden box in her inventory, and once she brought it out and followed the hint to drip yet more fucking blood onto the seal on the box, it folded out and started to literally assemble a house in front of her. Curiously enough, the ground itself changed, aligning the house to face the path that led from the flag to the gate, making a small sub-path that led right up to the front door.
At the top of her vision, Skye was surprised to see a bar appear. Focusing on it revealed more information. There was a population count/population capacity marker, then a few numbers for resources of various kinds like wood, stone, metal and the like which all read as zero. Finally there were three other zeroes which were job types, listed as soldiers, builders and workers, presumably grouping together larger swathes of job types into those three types, with soldiers doing the fighting, builders doing building or repair work and workers doing jobs inside of the base.
However, for right now she couldn't possibly sustain something like that, so she put it out of her mind, instead heading into her new house and investigating it. She already knew what the interior was like from the preview that was provided, but actually walking around it was still different, like viewing pictures or videos of a house then actually walking around inside it.
Once satisfied, she picked herself out of her mangled clothing, wincing at the copious covering of blood staining the front of it all as she made a mental note to find a good place to wash them...or just burn them. Skye stepped into the bathroom, looking at her own face, more specifically at her left eye. Around it blossomed a puffy white scar, making it obvious where exactly the spell had impacted, and as she lifted her hand up to her eye, she could feel the eyeball beneath. When she opened her eye, instead of the blue she would typically see, it was like someone had put a cue ball into her eye socket, because it was completely blank and featureless, not even any veins running through it.
With things to focus on that didn't actually use her vision properly, she had managed to forget, just for a few brief minutes, that on her very first fucking night she had already gotten an eye burned out of her head and a big scar to draw attention to it. Her ankles were ringed with similarly puffy white scar tissue, though without a close inspection it'd just look as though she'd had anklets on for a long time and the marks were tan lines.
She stepped into the tiny little shower, curious to see whether it'd work since as far as she was aware there were no pump stations or sewage/sanitation buildings in the shop that she had seen, and was pleasantly surprised when the shower actually kicked on and began to spray her with water. As she showered, Skye was going through the shop, purchasing a bundle of basic body-care supplies which included razor blades, shampoo, conditioner, face cream and all manner of other assorted cosmetics.
Sure, it was an unnecessary indulgence, but she felt like after the night she had just gone through, she had earned even just a little taste of home.
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After enjoying a nice long shower, Skye took out her new set of armour and laid it on the bed, examining it closely.
It looked...honestly pretty fucking good, at least in her eyes. The fur would keep her warm and comfortable whilst the metal and leather would protect her from attacks. The mask also looked and felt fairly sturdy, so hopefully it would be able to stop an attack from smacking her in the face again. Rather than putting it on straight away though, Skye opened the shop again and looked for more regular clothes, something she could wear when she wasn't going to be fighting but was instead doing things in the base, since she didn't want to always be walking around wearing full armour.
There were a few options, so she made a mental note to pick something out later. As it stood, she did intend to go out and potential get into fights, because she now had two days of time before the next wave, and she fully intended to make the best use of that time. As such, she donned her armour, then headed outside and scooped up her spear, turning her attention to the corpses that littered the ground.
She had honestly been somewhat hoping they would just fizzle away into nothingness, but apparently she wasn't that lucky. She couldn't just leave them there, obviously, they utterly reeked and were a real health hazard. As she walked closer to one, pinching her nose as the smell intensified, she bore witness to a small golden ball that formed and then hovered above the corpse.
Poking it with her spear did nothing, the weapon simply passed through it, and so, rather cautiously, she reached out and poked it with a gloved finger. "Loot obtained: 2 Gold Coins, 1 Leather Boots." A text box appeared, depositing the money and item into her inventory. When she closed that menu in satisfaction, she then had to hop back with a surprised yelp as the corpse was set ablaze in blue flame, flashing into ashes that quickly disintegrated into nothingness, leaving no evidence that there had been a corpse there.
Looking warily at the spot the corpse had been in, she shook off the painful memories of last night that came to her mind, moving to the next corpse and repeating the process, heading to each corpse in sequence and receiving an assortment of...well, crap honestly. The gold was more than welcome, but the actual items were garbage, since the best thing she received was a chipped steel shortsword. The dogs didn't give her regular loot, but instead they added 'food' to the to-bar she had, something that made her really rather disgusted considering the state of those mangy animals.
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The necromancer she left for last, not just because she wanted to but also because he was in a right state. Bee had literally crushed him into mulch, and sure, she hated him and wouldn't even piss on him if he was on fire, but it was still disturbing to see a human body that had been crushed to such an extent. Reaching out, she pressed her hand against the small golden orb. "Loot obtained: 37 Gold Coins, 1 Necromancer Robe, 1 Liber Bubonicus, 1 Unholy Codex, 1 Spellcraft Skill Book."
Surprised at the rather generous-sounding reward, Skye looked in her inventory, taking the Liber Bubonicus out and allowing it to fall to the floor without touching it. Sure, she was curious, but she also wasn't stupid. She didn't know what Liber meant but Bubonicus was very close to Bubonic, so probably some kind of plague-based book. Considering the rotting state of the undead and the dogs, this book was likely related to their states.
She levered the book open with the tip of her spear, and only after she was confident in trying to touch it, she reached out and tapped on it, immediately recoiling as she examined her glove, checking it over and around to make sure it wasn't rotting or something. Emboldened, she reached out again and flipped a page over, retreating again. When nothing happened, she started to read the first few pages, realising quite quickly that it wasn't actually a spellbook, it was an academic-style text on rot, decomposition and plenty of other nasty things related to corpses.
Taking out the Unholy Codex, she similarly allowed it to fall to the ground and cautiously checked it as with the Liber Bubonicus before reading it. This one was in fact a spellbook, containing an assortment of 'corrupted magic' like raising the dead, performing occult rituals for power, things like that. She found one attack spell, Soul Shot, which supposedly would track the target and strike them with a burning shot, which she felt was the most likely attack that the necromancer had used on her, since it was a low-level spell that pretty much any mage was supposed to be capable of casting.
The fact that only dogs and undead were attacking her and nothing bigger or scarier was evidence that the necromancer was really casting the most basic of basic spells possible, since raise dead was supposedly capable of amalgamating corpses together into bigger and more terrifying enemies. Ten human corpses could be merged together to form a Crypt Horror, effectively a monster that stood as high as her walls and could crush a human flat with a punch. But the one casting Raise Dead had to be able to actually cast the spell at that level, which evidently the necromancer wasn't.
Putting the book away, Skye debated taking out the Spellcraft Skill Book. Her last experience with a skill book was really painful, but she realised only after the fact that the only reason she had survived last night was that she had used her spear at least slightly proficiently. Before, she would have probably just tried to stab it forwards vaguely which would have let the much more dexterous dogs evade her strikes, but because she had assimilated that book, she knew that she could use the momentum of the dog against itself to make it impale itself since it was already in the air.
And what was way, way more important was that the book wasn't a spellbook, it was a Spellcraft book. That implied that rather than just using spells, she would learn how to make them. The Unholy Codex dictated how to cast spells, but it used terminology she didn't understand, as if half the book was written in a different language, just because she obviously didn't have an education in magical terms and thus even if they were bog-standard magical words, she just wouldn't understand them, even if they were translated for her. So, being able to make her own spells would be vastly superior.
Really, the only drawback was that she suspected it would hurt like fuck, and considering the agony she had gone through the night before, the pain that she recalled from when she assimilated the other book felt really muted and bland compared to that pain. So really, there weren't any real drawbacks as far as she was concerned. She already had a mana pool, so all she needed was spells to cast and she would be golden.
Taking the book out of her inventory, she was unsurprised when it flashed golden and a headache began hammering away at her mind. Sure, it hurt like absolute fuck still, but she had the advantage of perspective of having experienced a way worse pain, so a harsh headache was honestly not a big deal any longer. It still worried her significantly that the headache was potent enough to cause a nosebleed, as the other book had similarly done so, making her wonder exactly how it did so.
But she put that out of her mind as the pain disappeared, and unlike her Basic Combat Skill Book, this one put knowledge directly into her active mind instead of giving her reflexes and instincts. Without researching it, she knew how to wield mana, how to sculpt it and bend it to her will. More importantly, she understood how to channel it into actual spells, instead of just using gusts of pure mana which was hyper inefficient.
Immediately she could see a dozen uses for her mana, ranging from compressing a ball of air into a tiny point and then releasing it, essentially an air explosion, up to creating a channel of electricity in a shifting current which would essentially create a magnetic field, accelerating a ferrous metal to hyper velocities in the same way a typical railgun would do. However, the first one was something she felt she could pull off, but she knew instantly and instinctively that making a magical railgun would take way more mana than she had available, even if she had no frame of reference. After all, being able to make a railgun on her second day would probably be just the tiniest bit too extreme, even if she had gone through hell to get that book.
Deciding it wouldn't hurt, Skye extended her arm, instinctually focusing on herself, more specifically on a small orb of her own mana which she felt was located behind her belly-button. It was weird to think that she had possessed this energy inside of herself since the moment she got it, but only after she knew it was there could she actually sense it. She drew out a strand of mana from the core, coaxing it around itself over and over again to form it into a big but thin ball.
Once satisfied, she expelled the ball through her arm and out of her hand, where it expanded to be about the size of a yoga ball. A thin strand of mana connected the ball to her fingers, granting her control over it, which she used to fill it with a regular atmosphere, then began to compress the ball. As she shrank it, she added more mana to the outside and folded back what was already there, thickening the surface of the ball as it shrank, making it stronger to cope with the increased pressure on the inside of the ball.
After about a minute of compression, Skye winced and covered her ears as the ball burst, sending a loud thunderclap and surprisingly enough a wave of scorching heat outwards. The failure she was honestly prepared for, but the heat was unexpected, though as she thought about it she realised that it was due to the heat of compression. As she condensed the air down, the molecules moved more rapidly, generating heat.
Inspired, Skye began to work her mana again, this time creating two small plates of mana, one from each hand, which she rubbed together at high speed, causing heat to be generated through the expenditure of mana. However, what she was doing wasn't really spellcraft so much as student-level mana exercises. For example, taking mana, infusing it with necromantic energy either from the body of the wielder themselves or through the environment, such as a crypt or graveyard, then shaping that infused mana into the desired form, that was what consisted of casting an actual spell.
For Raise Dead, that meant shaping it into a fine mist which, in high enough concentrations, would revive the dead. For Soul Shot, that meant latching the spell onto a target with a strand of mana which would bind the spell to the target and cause it to track them unerringly until either it hit or ran out of mana. However, that was just for necromantic energy. There were literally hundreds if not thousands or more potential types of energy that mana could be infused with.
Light, Darkness, Cold, Heat, Lightning, Electricity, Earth, Metal, Stone, Glass, Lava, Water, Rot, there was practically an endless list of different energies that mana could be infused with. Her own little exercises were entirely devoid of any actual energy, basically like waving a blank canvass around as if it were art. However, her Spellcraft Skill Book helped with that, since if she didn't even know how to nature mana she'd be fucked trying to make spells.
The two ways were through using her innate energy, which in layman's terms would be her affinity for certain energies, which would allow her to use those types of spells even if she was away from any source of that specific energy. However, to do that required the user to essentially funnel that kind of energy through themselves, increasing their affinity for the energy and making it easier to recreate mana which matched that energy.
Secondly, and much more commonly was by basically shoving her mana through something which had the kind of energy she was looking for. If she wanted mana natured with earth, she would just run her mana under the ground, and as long as she wanted it to, her mana would absorb that type of energy, becoming natured with that specific energy and thus being able to be moulded into a spell which utilised it. For air it would be even simpler, just running the mana through the air around her, whilst choosing to not also gain a wind-type energy.
However, for more...special natures such as vacuum, the energy was typically achieved by merging other types of energy-infused mana together. Merging Earth, Wind and Fire together would form Metal, just as an example. Then there were the reductions, removing Fire to achieve a baser source of magic, Heat. It was all very complicated and slightly more in-depth than Skye was really equipped to go into, so she didn't bother.
No, her first goal was to make a cheap and efficient spell she could use in combat. Her immediate option was an 'Air Blast', which would just mean making essentially a wave of mana, infusing it with Air Energy, then sending it towards an enemy. Of course, at first it would just be a mildly powerful gust of air, but with practice and experience she should be able to decrease casting time whilst increasing the power and magnitude of the spell.
But first, she had to actually make it. And the issue with that was that she had vastly overestimated what 'Spellcraft' would actually let her do. It didn't mean 'crafting spells' in-so-much as she made new spells, it meant crafting spells, as in, being able to follow the plotted-out spell designs of other people who had actually made those spells in order to cast said spell. She had no idea how to actually craft a real spell from scratch and spellcraft didn't give her the real way how.
Instead, it basically gave her a bumper pack on controlling mana and basic information that she presumed any mage should know as well as instincts for controlling mana that she felt likely took years to learn the normal way, but not the information on actually making an easily-castable spell. The way she did her previous experiments was wasteful and highly focus-intensive, she had to take a full minute to actually go from drawing out mana to casting her spell, which was completely fucking useless to her in an actual fight, so for the time being, she'd have to shelve her plans for creating magical railguns or black holes.
Though she did still make sure to note down those spells for future inspiration.
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It only took her up until she reached the treeline to remember that she had completely ignored the last unlock that surviving night 1 had given her.
Skye opened up her inventory and opened up the option beside the shop, immediately seeing a rather complicated chat system. It seemed that she by default was in Village Vermillion, and then there were available literally hundreds of other villages of equally hundreds of colour variations. There was also a main chatroom, a trading chatroom, then an option for opening her own chatroom. Getting curious, Skye entered the two chatrooms, upon which she quickly saw that they were both bustling with activity.
The main chatroom was filled mainly with people inanely boasting about what they had achieved the night before, whilst the trading chatroom was more orderly, with different people putting various items up for sale, making it clear that either they had already gone out and foraged a bunch, or more likely than not they had different types of waves to her, since she saw no necromancer-based items appear in the list that she scrolled up.
Deciding it wouldn't hurt, Skye took note of the basic format for each trading offer, then put up the necromancer robes she had acquired. The robes themselves gave a 25% increase to mana regeneration, but honestly, she did not want to wear something like that. Sure, it was a bit stupid, but she just wasn't able to ignore the fact that a necromancer had worn them, it just wasn't something she would be able to wear and simultaneously focus on any kind of spell.
It took her a while to decide the value of the robes since nobody else was posting anything similar, but eventually someone posted a ring of minor mana regeneration, and said deal instantly was leapt on by multiple people who all offered varying amounts of items and seemingly tiny amounts of gold. The ring in question gave a 5% increase to mana, which caught Skye by surprise. If they thought that ring was so valuable, that meant anything related to magic would probably sell really well. If 5% was worth that much to them, accounting for the increased percentage and the seemingly rarity of magical items, she felt that her own item wouldn't be too out of place.
Dragging the robes from her inventory into the trading chat, it copied the item title and the stats, she then sent the message off. For about ten seconds she felt a bit worried that maybe they knew the origins of the robe through the name and weren't going to even consider it, and was quickly proven wrong as she received public and private messages of people making bids, asking questions about the item and even a few who outright threatened her to give them the item or they would 'invade her village and take it by force'.
Thinking fast, she opened her own private chatroom and linked it to the trading channel, telling them that they could make bids in there and she would simply choose whoever offered the most. That however fell through fast as several people made offers of varying amounts that all seemed tempting, making it instantly clear to her that they had literally pooled together all the best items from all the survivors of their villages to make those offers. There was more than just gold being offered, there were potions, weapons, armour, kits for several defensive structures, seedlings, people honestly went rather bananas for the robes she had offered, making her double-check out of curiosity as to whether they were better than she realized.
It took her a moment to realize that it wasn't just the mana regeneration they were after, it was the necromantic nature of the item. Using that, if they could learn Raise Dead, they could literally bring back corpses to fight again. Sure, using it on the deceased was pretty abhorrent, but in a fight for survival, that would quickly be put aside in favour of practicality.
Eventually, Skye picked the highest offer, which consisted of two Skill Books, one in archery and the other in shield-wielding, three arrow tower kits, one catapult tower kit and one Tanglefoot Seedling. Said person seemed pretty ecstatic that they had made the best offer to her, quickly putting their items into the trading window. Skye in turn put the robes into her own slot and after both windows went green she confirmed that all items she wanted were in their side and they similarly confirmed on their end, upon which she found herself the proud owner of those items.
She closed the window and ignored the messages that she had received, most of which she assumed were threats or insults that she hadn't picked their offers, and instead she simply took out the two books, enjoying the wonderful headaches they caused, then turned her attention to the tower kits. She now had 15 of the things as well as one catapult kit and hadn't actually deployed them, so she got up from where she had sat against a tree and walked back to the gate.
One thing she had realized was that it seemed for the moment at least that gold was much rarer for the other users and used just as a type of fiat currency to help them have a valuable item they could trade between themselves. From the chatter in the main room she was able to figure out that the gold had come from the corpses as well as a few dozen coins from the victory rewards, as well as the fact that nobody ever mentioned the shop, nor their stats or anything like that, hinting at her that she hadn't just gotten the assistant from it, her interface and the shop might have also had the hand of her 'balancing measures' pushing them along.
Bringing up her inventory, Skye took out one of the arrow tower kits and examined it, then nodded and took out another 9 when she saw that it came in the same form as her house had, laying each box down with an equal space between each tower, five heading to the left from her gate and five going right. Her eventual intention was to have towers all the way around her base to protect from all sides, but right now the biggest threat was enemies going through her gate, so that was what she had to focus on. She included her new catapult tower kit, except this one she placed closer to the wall than the others, holding it back to avoid it being in the line of fire.
When they were all laid out neatly, she took her spear out of her inventory and used the tip to cut herself, testing to see whether it would mess with her stats whilst at the same time letting blood drip out onto the sealed boxes. She saw no change in her stats, so either it had no effect or the change was so small that her stats didn't record the change. With a squeeze, she dripped a few drops of blood onto one box, watching as it unfolded itself and began to form a wooden watchtower, with a crossbow mounted on the very top that started to swivel around randomly.
It was a bit small, but then again, it was the most basic tower available, so that wasn't surprising. She quickly walked along her wall and built the other nine towers, then headed back inside of her base and placed the last five in a star formation a short distance from the flag, creating a protective cordon that would stop any singular enemies from just waltzing up to the flag.
Just as she dripped blood onto the final box, she realised that she hadn't actually eaten in...well, over a day. Not that she felt the hunger, but she never really did have more than occasional sharp pangs when she went more than a day without eating, so she knew she needed to get herself some food. Fortunately the store had that covered, there were various meals available for purchase. Some, like rice and peas, were incredibly boring, whilst there were some exotic things like century eggs which were nasty.
But no, she was looking for something nice and easy, so she picked a bowl of simple noodles and a bottle of water. The water was actually the more expensive of the two, it cost a full two gold coins whereas the noodles only cost one, but that didn't matter too much, food was not going to be an issue considering the prices of the store were so skewed towards combat-based purchases. Obviously whatever had set it up didn't want the contestants worrying about anything but fighting the wave, though why exactly they would do that eluded her.
Who knew, maybe she and the others were just some form of weird entertainment for other beings to observe in amusement?
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Writing this before uploading the second chapter, so I'm honestly quite curious to see what people think.
It's actually quite funny that having already uploaded 38 stories over on Fanfiction, I'm not honestly super nervous or worried about how this story is received, probably because I started 11 stories before I made War Dog, my most popular one, so I know that it's more likely than not that this story won't get popular and will possibly end up like The Watching Rose or Crimson Dovah, just left behind as I write stories I enjoy more.
But hey, who knows, maybe this story will get super popular...yeah right xD