Chapter 287 - Deploying the defences (Part 1)

Fuck, not now!

I couldn't afford to lose my grip before all the beast will be eradicated!

Even if the tower defences are tough, they can only hold for so long! If those damn attackers won't cease their attacks, I have no idea if this tower will not crumble at some point!

But the reality didn't listen to my wishes.

After forcefully cutting the flow of my mana to the fire orb, all the amassed energy was enclosed in my body, while the continued supply of fresh mana still followed its momentum, quickly overflowing my capabilities.

Normally, I would be terrified by the amount of entropy that would enter my body in this way, but considering the fact that I was using all the mana in the world without the slightest care for the consequences of doing so, making it pointless to worry about this point at this moment.

Since it didn't kill me so far, there was no grounds to believe it would do just a moment later!

But what I didn't account for, was that accepting too much mana at once wasn't dangerous only because of the entropy.

Considering the fact that most of the mages, if there were any at all in this world besides me, would succumb to the entropy almost right away, there was no way anyone would know about the other consequences of such an event.

I guess I was about to pioneer the research on this topic right now!

Compared to the insane pain of my body dissolving, the feeling of overflowing energy wasn't that bad in its core. If not for the fact that my body felt too heavy to move it by any means, I would actually feel better than any time in the past!

But I didn't have much choice.

After how my fireball changed, I couldn't use my shockwaves to push myself off the ground. The last thing that I wanted was to demolish the tower from the inside and render all my efforts to save Eve pointless.

No matter what, I had to somehow spend mana!

After filling me up over the limit, the continuous flow stopped, with the energy already escaping from my system, but the speed of this process was far from satisfactory.

With my body physically bloated to its limits, I pushed with my hand against the floor with all my might… Only to fail miserably.

No matter what I wanted to do, this weight was simply too great!

With no other option in my hand, I started casting barriers.

Barrier after barrier, I continued to amass them to the point when my vision started to blur… only to cast even some more!

It took me five minutes of continuous casting to get rid of enough weight to finally at least twitch on the ground. Only after an additional while, I managed to move up to my feet.

Slowly crawling towards the window, I finally saw the remaining mass of the monsters, slowly regaining their morale as they started to pound on the tower again.

It was because of those bastards that I was in such dire straits!

While I wanted to blast them into oblivion with yet another surge of my fireballs, I already learned that I couldn't control my intake of mana for now. If I didn't want to risk the previous situation reappearing, I had to find some other way to get rid of them!

Wait… I was in a tower?

A tower that was besieged?

So in other words, I was taking part in the tower's defence?

Didn't the earth propose a viable solution for that problem already?

As soon as this thought struck my mind, I immersed my consciousness inside the stronghold creation tool.

Thinking about this, since my castle already existed, shouldn't I rename it into stronghold edition tool?

Diminishing this though with a wave of my imaginary hand, I took a look at the energy limit of my parasitic core.

I guess if someone could see me inside this tool, he could finally achieve the real action event of someone's jaw literally dropping from the skies to the ground.

One thousand, seventy-two?

Is this some kind of madness?

It killed entire area worth of vegetation almost as far as my eyes could reach from the vantage point, yet it only yielded a bit over two hundred sixty, yet just by killing some of those small fried, I managed to more than quadruple this number?

I guess I can't complain about not receiving the exp points anymore. Considering how powerful and cheap the upgrades of this tower were, as long as I focused on developing it, I might even drop the idea of growing stronger myself!

Scrolling through the endless list of the possible additions to my tower made me realise that even despite the diluted time inside the tool, it would take me ages to find exact things I wanted.

I guess, the only thing I could never complain about when it came to Bonger, was the multitude of options it always offered!

Bonger, can you sort those add-ons by their type or designated usage?

"B...p"

"Ue hng!"

Despite the gibberish response, this previously one-dimensional list turned into a two-dimensional matrix.

Starting from traps, through defence improvements and external wards, it offered a vast variety of usefull rooms like an alchemical laboratory, cultivator chamber, bathroom or even a room that looked like a Jedai masters council when I looked at its preview!

No matter how interesting those rooms and implication behind their possible use was, I had to focus on the items of war for now.

After searching through the possibilities for a while, I finally realised what was the price behind this huge variety of choices.

What a fun game of words… The price was actually… the cost of using them!

Even the cheapest external ward with the weakest defences and attack power cost one hundred energy points!

No matter how loaded I was now, there was no way I could just spend them in the spur of the moment!

Deciding to stick to the highest absorption rate was the right choice, I guess. I didn't even want to think what would happen if I had only reached the required number of points for the hibernation chamber now, forced to fight my battle with those beasts on more equal grounds!

After searching through the options for the best opportunities, I finally found something that piqued my interest.

"Name: Advance Tower"

"Description: Increases the reach of stronghold influence, while serving as the core of the expanded area. Possess basic attacks against invaders and a huge boost to its defences. Recommended using as the central point of the expanded area.

Additional perks: Provides a boost to the productivity rate and attack power of the defensive mechanism in the designated area.

Limitations: 

- Only one Advance Tower per area

- Losing the Advance Tower means losing all the mechanism, population and development of its corresponding area"

Who can claim that this isn't the best thing ever?

Even with its steep cost of two hundred fifty energy points, that actually was greater than the most important hibernation chamber, it was just the right thing for both my current and the future situations!

But while I wanted to rush and plant it in the place, I realised that just this tower alone might not be enough to hold back the attack of all those beasts.

Only after scrolling through the list some more, I found simple fire towers, capable of spraying fire arrows at the incoming enemies in range.

The real problem appeared, when I looked towards the placement window with the intention to deploy the advance tower along with five, fifty points worth fire wards, only to realise that most of the places all around the main tower, were covered in the red mist!

With the rich gaming experience I got, I didn't need an explanation of what did it mean.

Just a single look at the map and easy projection of the real world made it obvious that for some reason, I was unable to deploy anything in beast infected lands!

Only the place that I cleared out before with my fireballs was marked green!

Even if deploying those external tools would lift some of my burden of chasing those bests down if I were to use my fireballs again on the other side than before, it didn't change the fact that I would still be subjected to the overflowing mana after ceasing my attack!

That's when yet another, insanely expensive tool came to my view.