Abyssal Border Wall Protocol: Ch 6 (rough draft) (Patreon)

Chapter 6: Road to Power

5…

4…

3…

2..

1…

The world shifted as the slug monsters were pushed into this reality by the system. Strider and River were hitched to the cart up the road, far away from where this battle would happen.

The first and second slug monsters appeared where they had been the day before. I left them to the ditches and stakes I had dug and placed, searching for the two new additions to my fight for survival.

I spun on the porch searching… “There you are,” I said as I saw the third monster near the creek, a dozen yards away from the first.

The fourth was nowhere I could see, so I walked around the side of the house…

“FUCK!” I yelled, jumping back as a black tentacle almost lashed me across the face.

“Fudge, fudge, fudge… shit, okay…” I panted as I backed into the yard… that was close… too close.

I drew an arrow, and this time, with my heart hammering, I aimed, feeling the techniques from the skills activate. My focus zoomed in on the slug monster that was inching its way toward me. I shot, feeling the power from the bow release into the arrow with more force.

THUD…

It slammed into its milky-white eye, burying it up to the fletching. The thing squirmed and screamed its wet gurgling animal noise, “Reee”…

XP Gained: 30 XP.

One dead. I went into the yard and saw the slug that was coming from the right. I aimed, taking my time as it thrashed in the shallow trench I had dug.

WOOSH…

THUD…

The arrow hit the eye, the same skills adding their effects to the arrow. The fletching was gone, sunken into its body.

XP Gained: 30 XP.

I faced the creek, drawing another arrow as the black smoke of the monsters faded in the noon sun.

The first slug had reached the trench I had dug… It ungulated its body into the trap and impaled itself on two of the sharpened sticks I had jabbed into the side of the wet dirt.

It bled, thrashed, and bled more.

XP Gained: 30 XP.

Skill Gained:

Trap making: Level 1, Novice.

“It killed itself? And a skill, OH, heck yeah!” I said, aiming at the last monster. It inched itself into the trench, impaling itself on one stick.

I waited, arrow knocked, but did not fire. It took fifteen minutes with just the single spike in it, and as it was about three-quarters of the way to reaching me with its tentacles, I got the notification.

XP Gained: 30 XP.

Skill Increased:

Trap Making: level 2, Novice.

Total XP: 155 XP.

“Huh, that was easier…” I said, lowering my bow.

“Right, no point in staying around here. Time to leave,” I said, putting the arrow back in the quiver and picking up my bolted-together naginata and Old Bess.

“System, purchase another star and put it into mind,” I said, feeling the request happen almost instantly. My head started tingling like someone had shot novocaine into my brain.

It was apparent that after I got the sense skill, I was going to have to upgrade my mind at least a bit before I could handle any other upgrades. That single star had pushed me to my limit. The sense star had made it feel like I was juggling a dozen balls, and was on the verge of getting a headache every few minutes if a loud noise or bright light hit me wrong.

Almost immediately, with the increase in the mind aspect, I felt my control over my heightened senses grow, and the pressure that had been pushing on my mind was relieved to a noticeable degree.

The information I was getting from my senses now felt like I could actually process it and put it to use, instead of holding on to the bucking bronco of sight, sound, and smell for dear life.

I headed up the road to the fully packed cart and hopped up after hitching Strider to the back. “Come on, River, let's head out…” I said, gently flicking the reins.

The cart started forward, and the clip-clop of hooves on the asphalt filled the silence. I was leaving my home, leaving the safety of the place that would soon be overrun with nightmare slugs.

The sun was shining, and a slight breeze was blowing… Then—

DING…

A message appeared. A little number one next to an envelope in the top-right corner of my vision.

“Huh… weird,” I said, focusing on it and pulling the message up.

Elizabeth to Justin: Dumb Leaving. Build Traps. You can do this. Love you.

“Whoa…” I said, pulling back on the reins slightly. The cart stopped, and River turned her head around and shot me a very annoyed look.

“I know, I know, girl, but Liz just told me something important…” I said to River. The horse just huffed and looked forward.

Shit, she is right… I thought, standing up on the cart and looking back at my house. With the star in mind, I was thinking clearer, and a plan formed rapidly.

“System, the monster spawns, are they focused on me or the first monster to spawn?” I asked, focusing on the help feature of the system.

System help answer:

Abyssal incursion spawn coordinates:

First monster is localized to one hundred yards of abyssal border wall warrior location. Subsequent monster spawns are localized and placed one hundred yards from the first incursion monster. If border warrior fails to travel the 48 miles but travels more than .5 miles by noon from initial incursion point, monster spawns are re-centered on abyssal border wall warrior location.

“Right, so if I stay in the area then the monsters spawn in the same general area…” I turned the cart around and headed back to my house. I stopped by the tree that marked the front driveway to Liz’s and my house.

I hitched the horses and went to old man Tom’s garage. I needed to grab his long engineer's stake tape measure. It would stretch to five hundred feet.

“There you are,” I said as I pulled it from behind a box.

“Right, let's map this out. Liz was right, the traps killed most of the monsters last time, and I can get more XP from them. Who knows what monster I would get if I left.” I said to myself and to Liz and my mom, who I knew were watching.

I placed the stake at the end of the tape measure in the ground where the first spawn would appear, then I started measuring out the area where the monster would appear, as long as I did not travel more than .5 miles from this location at noon.

It was one hundred and twenty-five feet to the porch, and after laying the tape measure out through the back sliding glass door, and out into the front yard and down the drive, the three hundred foot marker was about three-quarters of the way up the front drive to the paved road. Strider and River looked at me like I was crazy, but what the heck did horses know anyway.

I placed stick markers a hundred yards out from the first monster spawn, forming a semi-circle around my house and Liz’s. It went just past the apple trees to the right, around the front of my house and into Liz’s portion of the back yard.

With the monster spawn area mapped out, I placed the tape measure in the cart and got out the shovel, hatchet, axe, hammer, and other tools I had pilfered from Old Man Tom’s.

“Right trap making, first I’ll make the few trenches I had better then start on some new ones,” I said, looking up. Mom, Liz, and Butterfly mush were counting on me.

“Okay, no pressure,” I muttered. “Just redesign the yard into a death trap before noon tomorrow.” My voice sounded ridiculous. The horses flicked their ears. They didn’t respond. Horses don’t do pep talks.

I checked the trenches I already had; the one by the creek and apple trees had worked, so I would start there. I expanded the trench by the creek, ensuring the semicircle covered a wider area. The work went remarkably fast with digging skill and the clean-cut earth technique.

“Okay, that should do it for this one,” I said thirty minutes later. I fixed the bank where the two slugs had ungulated over on top of it and fixed a few of the stakes. I would need to cut more and place them, but I was going to have to do a lot of that. Luckily, the slug’s skin did not seem overly tough if just a sharp stick could break it.

Next, I went over to the long trench line by the apple trees. After a few minutes of clean up the trench and piling the dirt to one side, it was ready for more stakes. But first I had to get these trenches dug.

Dragging the shovel in the dirt, I mapped out the area I was going to dig new trenches in. From the porch I would dig a large V shape, with the right angle connecting to the apple trench about three-quarters of the way up it. The left side would get a bit of a steeper angle and would go all the way to the creek in Liz’s portion of the backyard. In the front yard, just past the one hundred yard marker stick, I would make another V that would enclose my house and run into the large wedge trench in the back yard that went to the far end of the creek.

The work came and went as I focused on my task, the skill digging gaining levels as I worked.

The trenches were very uniform; if I stood in the low side, the high side came almost to my hip and would be quite the barrier for the slugs to crawl over. Oh, I had no doubt they could make their way over the banks, but when I placed stakes in the ground and any other surprises I could come up with, it would force them to impale themselves.

The soft ding of skill gain notification chimed as I worked.

“Ding.”

Skill increased:

Digging, level 10, Novitiate.

Second Technique unlocked: Earth Haul.

Technique effect: Loose soil, clay, gravel, and cut earth can be lifted, shifted, and thrown with less wasted effort. Larger loads remain stable during movement.

I stared at the message, then looked down at the shovel in my hands.

“Oh, thank God,” I muttered. It had not taken much to get the skill to the next threshold, but with the clean scoops of earth that were now larger and wider than was strictly possible, the task became almost trivial.

The last trench I dug was along the side of my house where the thread or fourth slug had spawned, digging another line that connected the long run trench to the edge of my house, effectively boxing that slug in. I would not be surprised by that one again.

“Now the real work begins…” I said, leaning the shovel up against the house and getting some water. 

I went to the cart and got out the hand saw, my hatchet, and ax along with a mallet and chisels. It was time to start cutting stakes, lots and lots of stakes to ram into the uphill side of the trenches I had dug.

I made a little work area in the back yard and started felling the trees along the creek. They grew like weeds along the muddy and wet soil of the creek. They were straight, and the largest was only the size of my leg. There were larger trees that grew there too, but I had nowhere near enough time to process those into the sharp, pointy sticks I would need.

“Ding,”

Skill Gained:

Axe wielding, level 1, Novice.

The skill came when I had swung the ax a dozen times as I cut into my first tree by the river.

When my first tree fell over, I got another, “Ding.”

Skill Gained:

Lumbercraft, level 1, Novice.

It was later in the afternoon, around five, when I had cut and dragged enough of the smaller river trees into my yard and deposited them at the work area I had set up. I was sweaty and starting to get tired, but I knew a drop of sweat now could literally save my life tomorrow.

That was definitely all the motivation I needed to keep going until my legs dropped out from under me. Reaching level five in each of the skills helped.

Skill increased:Axe Wielding, Level 5, Novice.Technique unlocked: True Bite.

Technique description:Axe strikes gain improved edge alignment, bite depth, and force transfer. Reduces glancing blows against wood, bone, shell, bark, and dense hide. Repeated chopping actions cost less stamina when the user maintains a steady swing pattern.

Skill increased:Lumber craft, Level 5, Novice.Technique unlocked: Fell Line.

Technique description:Grants instinctive awareness of tree lean, crown weight, trunk tension, and likely fall path. Improves control when felling small and medium trees. Assists with dropping timber toward chosen ground for hauling, processing, defensive work, and trap construction.

The next swing felt different.

Not stronger. Not magic, at least not the flashy kind. The axe just knew where it wanted to go, and my hands stopped arguing with it. The blade bit into the pale creek wood with a hard chunk, deeper than before, sending a wet curl of fresh sap down the cut.

“Oh,” I said, staring at the notch. “So that’s what using an axe is supposed to feel like.”

Then Fell Line settled into my head, and the tree in front of me changed.

Not changed. I changed. I could see the lean in the trunk, the bend in the crown, the way the weight wanted to fall toward the creek if I let it. I shifted two steps, changed the angle of my cut, and the next tree dropped into the grass instead of the mud.

I stood there sweating, breathing hard, hatchet in one hand, axe in the other.

“Okay,” I muttered. “The apocalypse has tree math.”

With the light fading, I started in on my large pile of trees, branches, and decently sized sticks. I used the hatchet to start whacking the limbs of the trees off. Any that were twice the thickness of my thumb got thrown in the keep pile, and any small ones, which I was sure would break even against the weak skin of the slugs, got discarded.

My trap skill helped with the process, to a small degree, but since it was only level 2, it barely did anything except increase my understanding of… This stick good for poky, this stick no good for poky.

Twilight came in an unnatural wave, the world washing to the dark shadows dime light hazed with orange and purples. I had gotten through about a quarter of the trees by that time. I went to River and Strider, making sure they were in a comfortable spot, and gave them each a rub down with a brush. Some oats and made sure they had water.

I went inside and ate what could ostensibly be called a meal and passed out on top of my childhood bed. I lazily waved to the ceiling and said, “Love you,” before I passed out hard.