This is an automated archive made by the Lemmit Bot.

The original was posted on /r/hfy by /u/MrIzuarel on 2024-10-31 15:43:11+00:00.

Chapter 103

I was ready for the worst possible outcome, but I wasn't able to run toward the problem. I was struggling with the black pieces in my hands and didn't dare to let them fall to the ground. At the same time I wanted to find out what happened, so I forced myself to sit down on the ground, interlock my four hands together around the crystals and then use my possession skill to look at the trouble that had caused my girls to act out.

The dangers were severe, but it wasn't life threatening. There were about fifty orcs that had spawned in and were now engaging in a battle with my forces. A quick look around, and I found some goblins shooting at my girls from some distance. Cowards, in my opinion, but maybe I was one too for not engaging with my actual body.

I released my summon and woke up. The shock made me almost drop the black crystals in my hands, but I managed to prevent it.

A few minutes later, the fight was over. After some thinking, I decided to spread my girls evenly throughout the city in strategically advantageous places. I wanted them to observe properly what was happening and then clean up the trash.

I picked one of the pieces in my hands and threw it on the ground. A few girls reacted, and I could confirm that just one of these crystals spawned a few monsters in one go. About eight of them, to be precise.

I tried to understand what the crystals were, only to get no answer out of them. All I could say was that they spawned monsters. I mused that the stone I had brought in had forced the three structures here to pop out of the ground, making them visible to me.

Then, I remembered my chemistry classes in school. Our teacher had explained to us that smoke was actually a solid, not a gas. I looked at these crystals and remembered how monsters spawned from smoke. Could these be the concentrated version of that smoke?

I tried to make sense of what I was learning at that moment. One of the questions was actually how my system played into this situation.

I tried to understand how the dungeon worked but could only speculate that the effects of these structures were somehow limited by my dungeon difficulty settings. Now that I had triggered this event, the limitations were lifted, but at the same time, "Gaia's mercy" prevented it from overwhelming me. The small crystals here didn't simply dissolve and created as many monsters as possible in one go.

In its own way, it was a merciful event. Instead of getting crushed by the monsters inside, I could slowly reduce their numbers without putting myself in too much danger.

We managed to kill the monsters that were taking the space in my hands, freeing me from this accidental emergency.

During this process, I noticed a few details about the black crystals. They were unbreakable, but the moment they touched something, be it the ground, the wall of a hut, or even a plant, they would dissolve and release the monsters inside. The only exception was the touch of other crystals or my fingers.

As for their indestructibility, I even tried to bite into one, just to almost break my teeth on that thing. There were not even bite marks on that thing after chewing on that thing for a while. I didn't dare to try and eat it as these pieces were about as small as a pinky, also thinner, and had a surprisingly pointy end on both sides. I feared that if I were to swallow one of them, then the crystal might start to wander around in my body instead of finding the exit the normal way.

I looked at the construct at the center of the city and realized that it was definitely not stable. A mild wind or a passing monster could accidentally cause its collapse. At the same time, I was not in a position where I  could stabilize it.

I was almost as big as the average adult man of this world, and that spiraling wave had me beat by at least two body lengths. One wrong move and the thing would break apart and cause me much trouble. It was definitely the crapiest Jenga tower of my life.

I knew I could not start from the bottom or middle, nor could I afford to accidentally let parts of it crumble. I had to pick the pieces from the top, which created its own set of problems.

There was nothing around it that could support me in that task, so I had to find that something or build it.

I tried to find a stable foundation, and for a short amount of time, I thought I had it. A bunch of crates were stacked against multiple houses. I didn't even care what was inside of it, I only needed them for the support. Unfortunately, I quickly found out that those crates were not built uniformly, which caused my first construction to be wobbly.

We decided to strengthen that construction with the bones used in one of the huts nearby. Since those bones were used as the main structure of the hut, this meant that we had to destroy the hut.

All this took almost three hours to do. I could not allow this to cause a collapse of the crystalline structure, so precautions were necessary. I even used the leather of the hut as additional safety on the construction by nailing it to the ground and wrapping it over the structurally weak places. The nails actually were screws from my engineer job and had become as big as stakes at the current tier.

I carefully picked up a few pieces from the top and felt relieved that the entire thing didn't simply crumble down.Then I told my girls to prepare themselves. Ambushes, confrontations, advantageous placement. They could choose for themselves what to do. I tossed the few pieces I had to the ground, far away from me, and waited for the response.

I didn't even need to wait for the reactions. Not too far from me, a small goblin spawned and started his patrol. I saw him, but he didn't notice me.

I was about to ask for help or even climb down from my boxes when he got too close to one of the huts there. I could feel how a few of my girls had been waiting inside that hut. All I could see was how a hand suddenly came out of one of the windows of it, grabbed the goblin under its chin, and yanked it inside. The poor thing tried to scream, but all I could hear was gagged noises before it died. Agent 47 would be proud of that.

It didn't take even one minute to kill all the monsters that had spawned. I realized I was taking too long to kill them. It wasn't the fighting that was slow. It was me with the careful picking of the pieces that caused this to be unnecessarily long.

I grabbed a handful of them, and then an idea struck me. Why not create a castle defense scenario. Show these green skins how to properly defend the city.

What followed was the complete dismantling of every infrastructure of the city, creating proper defensive walls and a simple ramp that let monsters leave the city but not return. It took us about two days to do so. Everything was being prepared for a great castle defense battle.

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OP note: the ink isn't even dry. Have fun with it.