Chapter 185 185 Parkade



Once everyone was inside, Wolfe went back outside with a ration pack for their favourite Sentinel Bush.

"You can eat inside if you want. The boxes make a good table, and I'll take your turn to watch. [Detect Hidden] can see much more than most eyes anyhow." He suggested.

"Thanks. It will be good to get up and stretch for a while." She giggled, then removed the brush from her disguise and left it on top of her spot to keep the heat from the vent in.

She moved inside the front room, but Wolfe knew she could hear him, so he kept talking while she had dinner.

"I think we will be building scout bunkers soon. When there were two of us, it was easy to hide. But there are three hundred of us now, maybe more, so we might as well start building some permanent fortifications.

Small hills with a slot for the scout shouldn't attract too much attention, and we can build some into the cliff face as well."

Her response was a bit garbled around a mouthful of food, but she sounded excited. "Three kilometres away are the ruins of an old tower beside the lake. It would be a good spot to repair for a scout. Our people hide there all the time, but a spot with a roof would be nice.

There are lots of spots like that. Either to scout for monsters or to sleep. Humans might as well be blind. They never notice anything, even with their fancy doodads. But the monsters can smell you, and they are much better at finding you when you're sleeping."

"So you're saying that the village scouts would appreciate it if we scattered a bunch of monster-resistant hiding spots around the region? I think we can do that. If every spot is different, it also eliminates the chances of having our scouting positions discovered by pattern recognition." Wolfe agreed.

"What's that mean?"

"It's when you recognize something because it looks like something else that you know. Like how family members look similar, or how you can recognize a uniform from a long way off."

Wolfe heard the sound of a meal pack being pulled open as the heater finished its work. "I understand now. You're right; different is better."

Wolfe scanned the area while the scout finished her meal, but there wasn't much to see. During the twilight hours, most days were silent, with the daytime creatures settled in for the night and the nocturnal ones not quite active yet.

It was just after dark when he spotted something moving in the distance. It was bipedal, but that was about all he could tell at this distance. He tracked it for most of a minute before he could get a clear view in the moonlight.

The person had horns on their head, and they were wearing an army coat. It was almost certain to be one of the local scouts, so he just made a note of it and waited for the witches who had been working on designing the garage to be done with their work so they could start to move these vehicles inside.

After a series of design alterations, the garage ended up having its entrance three hundred meters away from the main entrance, down by the river, so that vehicles could exit down the rough shale shoreline instead of into a muddy field during the summer.

That also allowed the first portion to slope upward so that water didn't run in, and then the entrance wound down to the actual garage so that attacks from the entrance couldn't hit the vehicles.

It looked like they had a talented engineer on the team because the new garage got a large hinged rock as a door that blended into its surroundings. Wolfe enhanced it with a gravity reduction inscription so that a magic user that knew the door was there could open it using only two people, and the entrance was deemed ready for use.

"Why did you leave it so heavy?" Ella asked when she saw the witches struggle with the door.

"So that magical beasts don't figure out the inscription and open it. This is heavy enough that it would take dedication to comprehend." He explained.

"But you can use magic to open it on your own, can't you? So only we struggle?" One of the witches asked.

"That is true. Should we increase the counterbalance weight to make it easier?"

The witch shook her head. "No. This way, it takes long enough that the vehicles won't try to pull into the garage in an emergency. They can stop somewhere better and have a rescue team clean up before they park."

That was a good point. It would be a mess if someone led enemies to the largest possible entrance to their compound.

The witches designed multiple defensive points into the tunnels while they were upgrading the space for all these additional residents, including the classic spiral ramps that made sword fighting much more difficult for the attacking team and gunfire a very short-range proposition. But there was still the chance of being overrun.

They weren't far into the Frozen Wastes, under thirty kilometres from their old position on the front lines, but that only made the position more dangerous since monsters would gather in the area to be closer to the abundant food supply in the woods to their south.

While it did make their living situation more dangerous, it also increased their food supply. With so many options available, Wolfe planned to start with the most aggressive of edible species first and then move on to the opportunists like the rhinos that only attacked when annoyed.

After the witches thoroughly tested the door to be sure that two of them could manage it without adjusting the gravity spell on the hundred-ton stone door, the confiscated vehicles were brought inside and parked in neat rows along the walls, ready for deployment should a mission require them.

The dirt bikes weren't moved, though. They remained near the front door, ready to be wheeled out for anything and everything since they were easily rechargeable and quiet enough to scout while riding.

"That should be it for the night. The witches said that your bedroom is your own again, and they thank you for the loan." Katrina, the little scout who usually hid under the bush by the entrance, informed Wolfe while he watched one of the new arrivals clean up the traces of inhabitation outside.

"We will take over from you as well, little one. Head inside and get some sleep. We will use invisibility magic to keep guard." One of the scout team informed her with a smile.

"I'm not a guard. I just pass messages since my mom was a witch, and I just stutter around them instead of making animal noises." The little scout whispered carefully.

"You should still sleep inside sometimes. It's good for your health. There's a spare cot right by the door if you don't want to go far." The witch offered.

"Go ahead and relax. I'll be up anyhow in case the other teams bring news or more rescued prisoners." Wolfe added with a pat on her head.

"Good enough for me. I'll be nearby."