The Season of War was fast approaching, and the fear it brought hastened them a lot, and as a result, Aunt Lin ended up making 10 ten meter long ropes which where sturdy and strong as the word themselves could get, whilst Uncle Min and Dara completed the digging of the third ring…

[Time Skip]

Dawn the next day…

This was the final week of peace before the Season of War, a period of time when the light from a distant star finally shines on the Grey and Dark Lands, and everyone could finally farm, or harvest their crops, herbs and spices…

A period of time when all the beast, monsters and humans of the Grey and Dark Lands could finally come out and bask in the sun, to gain some fairness to their skin color…

But duo to this outpour of humans and animals, it also served as food source for the beast, monster and even the Obun's, making it a time when they all come out of their hiding to hunt human settlements and feed on fresh meat; something they have not tasted all year…

Thus, it is called the Season of War, because humans would fight other humans to plunder their resources, or fight back against beast and monsters to defend their lairs, whilst the monsters and beasts would also hunt themselves for food, or defend their caves, hives and nests from the humans who come out in full force to hunt for meat that would suffice them till the next Season of War…

Thus, this was a time where battles would be fought all over the Grey and Dark Lands…

It is a time when you can be taking a dump behind a tree in the jungle and one would get snapped up and eating by giant serpents, spiders or even other beasts and reptiles…

Even fishing is always extremely difficult in these times, since the sea and river monsters would all come out in their masses to join the continental bloodthirst…

With the knowledge of that in mind, Dara, Uncle Min and Aunt Lin began to build their defenses first…

Uncle Min chopped and smoothened the trees into six inch thick wooden slabs that were about 20 inches wide, whilst the rest of them constructed the defense and other things…

Dara had also heard the presence of ultraviolet light that would shine upon the lands in this upcoming season, and he was not going to miss out on using that sunlight to create a farm of their own very close to the plateau wall…

They started at the logged area, as Min Hong drilled holes into the edges of the of this five foot long slabs, and did the same to the ten feet tall height he had told Uncle Min to cut the trees from…

He would then place a wooden slab on the tree, and put in a stick shaped exactly like the hole he had drilled to secure the slab to the tree [See How Log Cabins are built without nails]…

He used about seven slabs of wood between two tree trunks which were only five feet apart, creating a fence…

Min Hong repeated the same thing round the outermost ring of the area, which was where they logged, and with that, a third line of defense [The fence of wooden slabs] were created in two days…

Dara then placed wooden spikes in the gaps between two stacked wooden slabs, and began to pour wet soil into the space between the outer and inner slab than made up the fence…

[Picture the fence as nailing a wooden slab to both sides of two trees, and the pouring concrete into their middle to make a concrete/wooden fence which is way sturdier and can absorb more vibrations than concrete or wood only…]

Whilst Dara filled the fence with wet soil, he drew the body parts of the wheel of an hydroelectric generator for Uncle Min and Aunt Lin, something which blew their mind when they saw…

They knew whatever parts they were making out of woods, was to make something that doesn't exist in the Grey and Dark Lands, and though they felt strange that a little kid can have all this construction ideas and creations of different shapes and sizes of parts…

For instance, the wall of the 'Village of Sang' was made by simply burying logs of wood into the ground, and doing that all around the village, using thousands upon thousands of trees in the process and insanely massive work load...

But in Dara's case, he simply used the existing trees around the plateau as a natural fence, and smartly used slabs of woods to join them together and create a fence...

But to make their own fence even more durable, he was pouring wet soil in between the gaps to seal up every space within the fence and hold the wooden spike- [that were protruding outwards from the fence]- in place…

Since the wet soil would drain, and harden due to the absence of water, it would make it similar to having true concrete wall that was rock hard, but still flexible enough to withstand and disperse the vibrations into the ground due to the presence of the woods…

It took Dara an entire day to fill the fence all around with wet soil, and by that time, Uncle Min and Aunt Lin were already done preparing the wooden parts needed for the construction of the waterwheel [Or Undershot Wheel]…

Since the waterwheel was going to be too large, the built it on the ground, and raised it into its rightful position over the water ring, by using the long ropes, Aunt Lin had weaned earlier from thick vines…

Uncle Min clawed his way up the plateau with one end of the rope in hand, whilst the other end of the vine was tied to the top of the waterwheel, and whilst Uncle Min used the natural energy to develop enough power, he pulled on the rope, whilst Dara and Aunt Lin help pushed it erect from the ground…

Their waterwheel wasn't made out of single wooden slabs, but three slabs joined together to form a makeshift square bucket, which they sealed using the sticky liquid being ejected by a specific type of tree in the jungle; something Aunt Lin found out when she was out gathering vines to wean more ropes...

As a result of that, by the time they erected the waterwheel, the fourth day of the last week of the peaceful month had been well spent, and due to having a protective fence around them, the  trio decided to sleep in one of the empty ditches they had dug within their landscape…

Because it was ten meters deep, they were kept warm from the harsh winter on the outside which simply blew past the ground level…

But there was one problem, the billowing plumes of grey energy was even stronger, thicker and more corrosive down there, but they were able to solve it by lighting fire warming fire within the ditch, something that was barely visible to anyone or anything looking towards the plateau from outside the fence…

The fire pushed back the thick grey energies, and kept them warm all through the night, so by the next day, they were able to work with as much time as possible, since they didn't need to return back to their home anymore…

The morning of the fifth day was about creating their second line of defense which was to simply bury some long spiky wood into the ditch, before they covered the top of the ditch by lining several log of wood across the surface of the ditch, covered them with leaves, and finally pour sand over it to make it look like a normal ground…

Furthermore, because Dara dug the edges of this ditch, the trees were able to slot into this depressions and maintain an equal alignment with the ground level, thus, no one would be able to tell that a ditch filled with ten feet tall wooden spikes was present there until they have stood on it and fallen into it…

The work was not much, so it took the trio half a day to finish it, as they looked at what they have created over the past eleven weeks…

They now had a spiky, sturdy and flexible fence as the first line of defense, as well as an entire ten meter wide and ten meter deep ditch filled with lethal wooden spikes as their second line of defense...

Furthermore, Dara had told them that the second ditch which was the one between the Ring of Life [water ring] and the Ring of Death [spike ring], was going to be filled with beast or monster blood and carcasses which were all explosive and flammable substance to create a Ring of Fire…

Thus to get to the plateau, one would first need to scale the spiky sturdy fence which is unbreakable because anything to barge through would face the threat of being impaled by the sharp spike protruding from the fence…

Then after that, the person would need to survive the ring of death, which was the spiky ditch, and finally they would have to cross the ring of fire, before they then reach the ring of water, which they would have to swim through if they can, and then reach them atop the plateau…

But all that was already done, and they only had two days and a half of hard work to finish everything…

Thus for the remainder of the fifth day, they ensured that the massive waterwheel was working, and they used it as a means to transport themselves to the top of the plateau like an elevator, by simply standing inside one of its buckets…

Since the waterwheel was so close to the plateau, all they needed to do was to jump about a feet off the bucket they would land at the top of the plateau…

Once the wheel was in place, Uncle Min removed the massive rock he had used to block the spring leak, as the water gushed out ferociously, and surged into the bucket on the waterwheel with aggressive force...

The buckets on the waterwheel would then scoop water, and get pushed upwards due to the neighboring bucket getting pushed by the aggressive water pressure…

That way, a water fetching system, and an elevator system was born, and this gave the couple a lot of joy as they rode the bucket of the wheel over and over again to get themselves accustomed to transporting with it, but Dara had an even better plan for the waterwheel;

He was going to make it a 'Pulley System', by building a smaller wheel at the top of the plateau and using the thick vines to link it to the bigger wheel,  using the resultant force to transport building materials from the ground to the top of the ten meter high plateau…