“Okay… I—”
She cut Zac off. “Well, I would normally have time to answer some specific questions about the different buildings, but we’re out of time. Good luck, Zac. If you somehow survive this, remember me when you create your town!”
It seemed the time for the Outpost Tutorial was coming to an end. Abby seemed to hesitate a bit but then apparently came to a decision.
“You… You should really try to complete the quests within a month, or at least within two months. That would…” She didn’t get any further before a heavy pressure suddenly bore down on the camp. Abby’s pupil dilated, and red squirming veins appeared all over the eye. And suddenly she was gone.
Zac wasn’t sure, but it didn’t feel like this was how she was supposed to disappear, as she’d appeared completely without him noticing. He had been able to sense something that could almost be anger in the pressure that had descended. Had Abby been punished for what she said at the end?
“Complete the quests within a month…” he repeated, trying to glean any hidden meaning. Something obviously had happened because of those sentences. If the System punished her for lying, it could only mean Abby wanted him to run to his death like an idiot. But if it was for unduly helping, it might be an important clue to help him stay alive. That meant something likely happened to the world or the incursion after a month had progressed. Something that was bad for him.
He couldn’t figure out why the Stargazer would just help him like that, even risking the wrath of the System, as she had already explained it didn’t like her giving undue guidance. Zac couldn’t figure out any real reason for that yet and could only put it aside for now. Instead, he followed her instructions and thought, Outpost base.
A new window popped up in front of him. But while it still had the blue background and white borders, it reminded him more of a web store than an old-school RPG game. There were multiple categories of buildings and add-ons to choose from to the left and a seemingly unending number of products in the main window.
Zac took a bottle of now tepid water from the cooler the demonling had been rummaging through earlier and retreated to the camper. The suns were starting to set, which was a relief to Zac as it proved that at least the daily cycles remained in the world, giving some normalcy.
Unheeding of the bloody mess inside, he cracked open a tin of beans from the cupboard. Luckily, they had stocked the camper well before the trip, as they had planned to spend a week on the road, and most of it was nonperishables. He still had food and water for at least two weeks unless he gorged himself.
He sat down at the small dining area, and while slowly eating his beans, he started mentally browsing through the shop. Zac noticed that the prices were denominated in Nexus Coins, which he had 10,100 of now. He had gained 5,000 coins during the day, likely from creating the outpost.
If he was going to survive in this new world, it seemed the first step was getting the most out of this outpost of his.
10
Preparation
Zac woke up the next morning feeling sore, but his wounds had obviously healed even further. It no longer hurt much to put weight on his wounded leg, and he could actually turn his midriff without a blazing pain erupting.
The smell in the camper was getting pretty bad though, and he knew he had to do something about it if this was going to be his base for the foreseeable future. Gathering the bloody bedsheets he had fallen asleep on when he passed out from his wounds, he put them in a garbage bag. He didn’t dare throw it outside yet though, afraid the smell of blood would attract beasts.
He spent another thirty minutes cleaning most of the blood away with some detergent, making the trailer go from looking like the site of a vampire orgy to a serial killer’s hideout. The blood had badly stained multiple places, especially around the dining area, and it wasn’t something he’d be able to fix in the short run. At least it smelled a lot better now.
Finally, he decided to waste some water for a quick shower in the trailer bathroom, even though the water was limited. After some intensive scrubbing away of the blood caked all over him, the filth was mostly rinsed away.
He stepped out of the shower and donned another set of clothes, feeling like a new man. While showering, he had also noticed that he seemed to have actually gotten more in shape, with most of this gut gone and his muscles seeming, if not bigger, then harder and more compact than before. The stats apparently had some effect on his physical appearance.
Hopefully, an increase in intelligence won’t make my head larger and larger, he thought, picturing how ridiculous that would look.
After a quick breakfast, he was finally ready to head out according to plans he had made yesterday after browsing through the shop. There were a dizzying array of possibilities to choose from when building an outpost, even when most of the options were disabled.
Many of them he could understand or at least somewhat intuit the purpose for after a lifetime of playing video games. There were buildings such as an inn, a blacksmith, different types of stores, a bank and so on. Most of these required a town though. There was also something he was extremely keen on getting—the teleporter. If he built that, he might be able to beam back to his hometown in one go.
There was one confusing aspect of the buildings though, which was that there were often hundreds of versions of most of the buildings, especially the commercial ones. Even though they seemed to fill the same function, they were of different designs, with some minor differences in the description.
After a while he could only surmise that the different choices represented different factions or planets. It seemed that creating a store wouldn’t actually create some NPC-style beings, but rather move people here from other planets or intergalactic corporations.
A huge number of supporting buildings could also improve the offense, defense, or improve the town in other manners. There even seemed to be some sort of training facility able to slowly improve stat points without leveling. If possible, Zac would have gone on a shopping spree, but he quickly realized the harsh reality that roughly ten thousand Nexus Coins would only be able to buy a few of the most basic buildings.
He needed to explore some more before spending the few coins he had.
Zac had seen a hill the day he had been forced to go out to gather firewood, and he planned to scale it to get a better lay of the land. Donned in a fresh set of clothing and with his trusty hatchet, he once again set out into the woods.
Soon, he reached the hill, hunkered over to not be spotted by any potential threats. Luckily, the hill was filled with lush bushes and even a tall tree at the top, making for some simple protection. Unfortunately, the hill wasn’t tall enough to give a complete overview of the surroundings, with the crowns of larger trees still obscuring the distance inland. Still, he could see his trailer and further across the ocean.
He had wanted to see whether he was actually on an island, or if the System had teleported any type of civilization in the vicinity. It would be a bit insane if he lived as a transient mountain man in the trailer if a town was just a few kilometers away.
Swinging the axe and embedding it slightly in the tree, he started climbing it for a better vantage. Zac once again marveled at the improvement of his constitution from his increase in stats. He felt like a gibbon, almost effortlessly dragging himself upwards along the branches with his arms, something that would have been an impossible workout in the past.
Before long, he was almost at the crown of the tree, afraid to continue up any further as the branches seemed inadequate to support his weight. A quick glance around unfortunately realized his fears.
It very much seemed that he was on an island without any civilization in sight. However, he couldn’t be completely sure, as there were actually mountains off in the distance. They weren’t gargantuan, but still large enough to solidly block any visibility of what was beyond. It would be quite odd to have steep mountains right next to the ocean, but Zac guessed that was what happened when the
System pressed the randomizer for a world. The good news was that there was land in sight in the distance, though it looked like a few scattered islands rather than a solid landmass.
The island—as Zac decided to call it until proven wrong—he was on was huge, and he couldn’t properly assess the size. He and his trailer were on the far edge of it, while the ever-shining red beam of light was almost on the opposite side, in a vale halfway between the center of the island and the mountains. He guessed that the reason why he still only had encountered one of the demon dogs was that they mainly spawned scattered around the incursion itself.
Zac didn’t have time to analyze the situation any further. A branch in the periphery of his sight suddenly exploded into movement and instantly was upon him. Before he had time to adapt to the situation, a brown snake had wrapped itself a few loops around his torso, leaving only the arm he used to hold onto the tree for leverage free. The snake seemed to be over three meters long and slightly thicker than his arm.
He immediately felt an intense pressure on his chest, the air leaving his lungs and the wounds on his side screaming in protest. Zac strained until his face was red with exertion, but was unable to free his trapped arm at all. The snake had him in a vise, and even with his improved strength, he could not get free. Its head slowly rose towards his, hissing.
The air all but squeezed out of Zac’s lungs, his consciousness started to get fuzzy, and lights flickered in his sight. Zac knew he was running out of time. It was time for a Hail Mary. He suddenly let go of the tree with his free hand, grabbed the head of the constrictor, and bashed it with all the force he could muster into the tree trunk.
The slam obviously had an effect on the snake, as it slightly released him from its grip. With newfound strength from a ragged breath, he smashed the snake’s head twice again into the tree with even more fervor.
However, just as Zac was feeling jubilant about escaping death’s grasp, he felt the branch he stood on give way, and both he and the still-entwined snake came crashing down.
11
Upgrades
Zac woke up with a jerk, which caused a pained groan to escape from his mouth. There was not a single part of his body that didn’t feel battered and broken. A quick look around showed that he was halfway down the hill, his whole body full of scratches. The snake lay lifelessly a few meters away from him, seemingly having uncoupled from him somewhere during the tumble downhill.
Not daring to take any chances due to negligence again, he ignored the screaming protests of his body and dragged himself toward the snake. There was a rock roughly the size of a head on the way, which he ripped out of the ground. Finally, he arrived in front of the beast, and with a snarl, grabbed the stone with both hands and slammed it with all the power he could gather right in the forehead of the snake. The long body convulsed slightly but seemed not to react further than that. Zac wasn’t done, however, and with guttural grunts from deep within his throat, he kept slamming the stone down again and again, each time eliciting a wet thud. After a few hits, the body’s death throes stopped, but Zac kept going until the bloodied stone finally slipped out of his hands. By then, the head and neck were only a mess of broken flesh and brain matter.
The grunts gave way to sobs as Zac collapsed next to the headless snake, his whole body shaking. He had messed up; that had been way too close. Not finding any more demons the last two days had made him complacent, barely looking around for threats. The Stargazer had even warned him just yesterday about the world changing due to absorbing Cosmic Energy, but he hadn’t even reflected on what that meant. There shouldn’t have been snakes of this size in the woods where he was, but the energy in the world had not only increased its size and strength but made it more aggressive. Had that been a venomous snake instead of a constrictor, he would be a bloated corpse by now.
He finally understood that there was simply no such thing as safety in the wild, and he had to start taking things more seriously. Not even the last near-death experience had really woken him up, as the stats and quests made him subconsciously consider it all a game. But this was life and death, and he had to treat it as such.
Zac shakily got to his feet and started to make his way to the top of the hill again. His hatchet was still left in the tree, and he refused to go anywhere without it again. It felt like he had been hit by a truck, but he could only grit his teeth and trudge on.
At the crest, there were fallen leaves and broken, bloodied branches all over the ground. Luckily, it seemed that the snake had taken the brunt of the damage from the fall; otherwise, he might not even have survived just from the height. He didn’t want to linger at such an exposed location, so he quickly ripped the axe out of the tree and made his way back down the hill.
When he reached the snake once again, he hesitated for a few seconds, but then gripped the reptile and wired it around his torso a few turns then put the end up on his shoulder. He had to think like a survivor now, and the snake might both give food and its scales could be fashioned into some sort of protection.
Any other exploration would have to wait. He needed to get back to base. On the way back, he walked with much greater care, trying to avoid stepping on twigs and staying close to the trees for shelter. However, the only sound from the forest was the sleepy rustling of the trees, only occasionally interrupted by a distant roar. After another fifteen minutes, he was finally back in the camp.
He had planned to go over his strategy for the town once more but currently felt intensely unsafe right now, and decided not to drag things out any longer. He brought up the base-building interface and bought an [F-Grade Small-Scale Illusion Array] for two thousand Nexus Coins. Suddenly, as if it had always been there, a small wooden box appeared in front of him. Zac opened the box, and inside were eight intricately carved wooden poles. They were each roughly thirty centimeters long and three centimeters thick, with a glossy black coating. One end was sharpened down to a needle point while the other was completely flat. The carvings were in a golden hue, and it seemed they were depictions of intricate fractals rather than words or pictures.
When Zac picked up the poles, suddenly, eight small yellow pillars lit up around the camp. He wasn’t surprised at this, as the shop had mentioned the usage method. When holding the poles, or flags as the System had called them for some reason, the System would guide him where to place them. As soon as all the flags had been placed, the formation would activate. There also was a cheaper alternative of the same array, but it didn’t have the guidance system, leaving the user to figure out the correct placement according to energy flows and ley-lines. Zac quickly placed down the flags according to the instruction, and suddenly, a translucent dome shimmered into being around the small campsite. It initially looked like uneven glass, distorting the outside, but soon turned invisible. Not sure if it had any effect, he walked outside the camp and took a look.
What met his gaze was just a normal-looking forest, albeit slightly denser than around it. The trailer, campfire, and car were completely gone. Even the bloody smell from the snake was removed, replaced with only the fresh earthy smell of the forest. There were some thorny bushes between the trees, looking almost like a natural wall, which would hopefully encourage nearby enemies to walk around the camp rather than straight through.
That was the disadvantage of the illusion array, and why it was so cheap compared to many other defensive options. Anyone could simply walk through it if they desired, as it provided no stopping power. As soon as someone knew where to look or just was passing by, it simply had no value. Also, it didn’t work on stronger individuals, as they could sense something was wrong with the Cosmic Energy in the area. However, it was a cost-effective alternative right now, which left Zac with more coins for other buildings. Later, he would see if he could get some physical bushes transplanted at the edge of camp to dissuade any roving animal or monster from taking a path through the camp even further.
Zac was not done with that, though, and he made another purchase, which s
pawned a box similar to the first one, but slightly larger. Inside were twelve poles, this time white but still engraved in gold. They were slightly larger than the illusion flags and had a different fractal engraved, but obviously, they had the same purpose – to create an array. It was the [F-Grade Small-Scale Mother-Daughter Gathering Array] and cost Zac a whopping 7,500 Nexus Coins, almost cleaning him out. The gathering arrays for sale in the shop were designed to gather Cosmic Energy from the void and increase the density of it within its borders. This would improve the cultivation speed of the cultivators and was likely a must for any town of repute in the Multiverse. This normally was of no use to Zac, as he wasn’t a cultivator and instead had to kill monsters to gain levels. However, the array he had bought had a special function, which was highly desirable to Zac. The Mother-Daughter in its name referred to the fact that it actually was two arrays.
One of them was the normal gathering array, which was referred to as the mother array. The other array was actually a necklace, which looked a bit like a small ship’s wheel from a medieval ship attached to a silver chain. The unique function of the Mother-Daughter Gathering Array was that most of the energy that the mother array gathered did not increase the density of Cosmic Energy within the array, but was actually transferred to the daughter array.
As long as Zac wore the amulet and was within fifty kilometers of the mother array, Cosmic Energy would continuously be transferred to the amulet, and from the amulet into Zac. In other words, the array essentially turned him into a cultivator who continuously drew energy into himself, as long as he was on the island.
The downside of this type of array was that the gathering efficiency was far lower compared to a similar F-grade Gathering Array, which would result in a far more sparse concentration of Cosmic Energy in a town. However, this didn’t matter to Zac, as he had no citizens that he needed to take into account, at least not for now. He quickly followed the instructions and placed the twelve flags around the camp.
Defiance of the Fall: A LitRPG Adventure Page 6