Legendary Traveler: By Earning Progress Points I will Become Supreme!

Having finished Operation Cave Door, as Aoni aptly dubbed it, the Lad's mind shifted drastically as he moved with purpose around the inside of the combination stone and wood wall surrounding the platform.

One of the many key points hammered into the minds of young Travelers is that of how precarious a situation they will be in when the barrier drops.

As such, they are briefed on a multitude of different strategies as to how best to combat these scenarios, all of which include some structure or walled barrier to be set up to fortify the immediate area surrounding their Flume.

From digging trenches in the sand to stabbing sharped trees into the ground to forming a wall, the Academies touched upon all of it, and Aoni had gone above and beyond all that.

Not only had he toiled away moving boulders and chiseling them into foot square blocks, but at the base of the wall, about a foot and a half away, were stakes pointing out and up at a 40-degree angle.

The theory behind this action was that anything that tried jumping from the mountainside up over the wall would instead be impaled; whether or not it was going to work that way is to be seen; however, that was the idea behind his creation.

Walking along the perimeter of the camp and allowing his fingertips to run across the rocky wall, Aoni's eyes stayed locked in on his Crafter's Display.

Unfortunately, reading what he was, the Lad was a little disheartened to realize that it wasn't showing up as a singular option in his list of crafted items.

Instead, what he read was…

1: Crude Stone Block

'Either it's too large for me to upgrade in one go, or it's not connected properly…' Turning his eyes away from the display, the Lad's eyes focused on any light shining through gaps in the wall, as this could be further proof of some type of disconnection, and before he knew it, he'd come to the…gate.

"Oh…huh, I guess that would make sense." Staring at the wide open space roughly 12 feet in width, the only thing that made it resemble a gate was the two posts and logs blocking access, emulating what he believed to be a Ranch Gate.

"I thought so long as it was closeable, that would make it a singular structure, but I guess not… in that case, what am I missing?" Turning to face the open space with only a few logs blocking the path leading out of the camp and down the mountain, Aoni sat down and stared blankly forward in an attempt to figure the issue out.

For several minutes, he sat…and observed…sat…and observed until eventually it hit him.

"There's no overarch connecting the two walls, I fucked up." With a grunt, the Lad bounced to his feet and ran over to the Crafting station.

Ranch Gates are made of two basic components, the first being a large arch that can either hold a signpost or be used as a means to connect the walls into a singular structure and the gate themselves.

Sure, more often than not, these gates would be fixed to the arch and were only as high as a normal fence, but given his resources and strength, the Lad wanted to make something more akin to a giant castle gate.

So, with the idea fresh in his mind, he set to work drafting up the plans…

- 8 Days Until the Barrier Drops –

For two days straight, while Glacia and Nyria were hard adventuring and, well, playing around, Aoni could be found in a state of disarray.

At first, he believed that crafting something similar to a Ranch Gate would be relatively simple; however, drafting up a blueprint and bringing its contents to life proved to be two VASTLY different projects.@@novelbin@@

Finding a way that was both functional with his wall and stable enough not to blow over in the wind was his primary objective, and without a means to "Tie it down," he ended up nearly obliterating the entire wall and starting from scratch.

One has to remember that before now, the wall was a four-foot-tall collection of stacked rocks. There was no mortar holding it all together, no glue making sure the thing was stable; if anything, it was mainly gravity keeping it together.

The idea behind crafting it in such a way was that he could simply add points and evolve it, but that was proving to be almost impossible…almost.

After two days of toiling and a whole lot of effort, the once cobbled-together barricade was beginning to look like a real structure.

"Gao….Gaooooo,"

"Yeah, it's almost done; calm down; you can go outside in a minute," rolling his eyes, Aoni slammed the last hinge bolt into place with his homemade sledgehammer before stepping back and admiring his finished product.

"chhHHHHEEEE!"

'It looks finished, brother; I can't find any holes or gaps,' Flying above the camp in a large circle and using her Dynamic Vision Passive, Nyria, too, had been hard at work, spot-checking everything her Lord had done from start to finish, while a certain floof lazed around like a sloth being unproductive.

Where before was a mix-matched pile of resources, now sat a wall too tall for the Lad to casually peek over, a large circular stone ring that fits right to the edge of the platform and enclosed the entirety of the camp. Your next read awaits at My Virtual Library Empire

It had been a process, to say the least, as instead of starting from scratch, Aoni, with the help of Glacia and Nyria, tore down segments of the wall before reassembling it using a paste formed of different saps and some clay from the underground Cavern.

Since he was putting the two to work, of course, the Lad made sure to give them plenty of attention and rewards in the form of snack breaks or small trinkets to decorate their beds.

Then, there was the last piece of the puzzle, which had been the most difficult part of the entire structure: the Ranch Gate. Having reassembled the wall, Aoni was able to work it into the actual structure this time around after crafting a large wooden archway that breached the top of the barricade in an imposing manner.

Finally, the gate doors were set in place, which had taken the combined strength of Aoni and the floof.