'Threat level, check. Time of the day, check. Hunger and thirst meters, check.'

Theo took a deep breath.

"Time to get to work."

Emerging from the endpoint of his main steps, Theo took just a little longer to look around, opting not to fully rely on his threat detection alone.

Thankfully, be it through his system or through his eyes, no threats appeared to be present in the sun-basked border between the open plain and the edge of the forest.

And so, wasting no further time, Theo came out from his hole and rushed straight back to the center of his project.

'First, the corners.'

Theo started by digging out his standard, one-by-one-by-three blocks holes in each of the four corners of his projected structure, only to then happily fill them up with stone. Then and only then did he dish his shovel out and start to dig shallow, merely one-block-deep trenches that connected each of the corners with both of its neighbors.

'And that marks the outline of the whole thing. So, I guess, I can move on to building the walls!'

While not the perfect, logical, and reasonable manner of building given the lack of proper, deep foundations for the walls, if there was one thing that Theo had to guarantee above everything when focused on his project—it was his own, personal safety.

And for that safety to amount to anything, creating a proper enclosure for the project was the very first step.

That's why, rather than digging out all the blocks necessary for the trap to be completed, Theo whipped out the first of his stone stacks before setting on the job of filling the trenches he just dug out.

It was a simple task, yet it still forced the young man to use up nearly two entire stacks of stone blocks just to make an outline for his walls. A cost that then quadrupled, bringing the total cost of the above-ground walls alone to just a bit over nine full stacks of stone.

Or, a total of ten full stacks when accounting for the inner walkways and makeshift stairs Theo dotted around the place to gain access to the upper surface of the finished walls.

'Damn…' After making the habitual check of the system threat level, Theo took a moment to look over the more-or-less finished wall before sitting down on the bottom of one of the steps and sighing out.

'I might need to get to digging the hole proper quite a bit sooner than I expected…'

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Even with Theo's commitment to finish his project before the end of the day—a goal he soon changed from the end of the day to before he goes to sleep again—it wasn't something that could be done all that easily.

After all, those four-block-high walls were only good enough to stop an average human from peering inside of the stone square Theo erected. When it came to stopping said average human, however, Theo was still at least one, or more likely two meters short.

"And it's not like I can expect that Oilrat to only be capable of what a human would be. So, until I put a roof above my head and reinforce my floors with stone to stop it from digging into the structure…" muttering to himself, Theo shook his head before clasping his hands at his face.

As a child of a modern age, Theo wasn't really used to doing stuff that he could track the proper progress of. He was much more used to the idea of just mindlessly repeating the same task over and over again, not to anyone's benefit but merely to fulfill the fiscal and bureaucratic requirements of the company he used to work at.

On one hand, now that he could reliably track the progress of the goals he set for himself, he should be filled with motivation, and yet…

'Seeing just how much it takes to build but a slight part of what I want to construct…'

Shaking his head, Theo sighed away yet again before standing up from the steps and getting straight back to work.

First, he threw several more stacks of stone to bring his walls one more meter higher into the air.

They were still not high enough to stop a monster determined to jump over them… but, to a degree at least, they provided Theo with a benefit nearly as important as his actual safety—a certain degree of peace of mind.

'Now, not to make things harder for myself down the line… How do I go about building the roof? Or should I even bother at this point?'

With just the construction of the walls, Theo's supply of stone blocks dwindled by over half. Adding up the stone needed to reinforce the walls by doubling their thickness, the stone he needed to create the frame for the roof, all the way to the stone necessary for the trap's payload and the lining of the trap's walls…

"I guess it's time to get back to digging, huh?"

Daring to utter but a slight whisper, Theo shook his head before—as opposed to forcing himself to make constant trips between the surface and his base—he used just a sliver of the wood he had stocked on to create another crafting bench first, before using it right away to craft a total of sixteen storage chests.

'Now, for the fun part,' grinning to himself, Theo oriented himself over the location of his main steps underground, before walking off as close to the wall as he could… Only to then start digging down a short trench, three blocks long and one block wide, starting with the block directly underneath the wall and continuing into the structure.

A process that he supplemented by adding up a block of stone directly underneath the wall, then attaching a chest directly onto the stone foundation… and then using the remaining, third block of the hole to repeat the whole process and go one block further down.

'For a trap eight meters deep, I need to excavate sixteen layers of dirt and stone. Counting the blocks within each layer, I will need just a bit more than a single storage chest to fit all of those blocks in. So…' Theo smiled to his own thoughts as he continued to shovel away, removing one block of dirt after another while preparing himself for the bulk of his task.

The one task he would be more than happy to use his zone ability to complete, fully aware of just how long and boring it would be.

The job of unearthing over twelve and a half thousand blocks necessary to make his trap happen.