I woke up, still groggy from the previous day. Looking around the Library World and seeing Ava still wasn’t entirely normal for me. Nevertheless, that wasn’t going to stop the world from continuing to move forward without me. I needed to get out of bed and plan for the future as well as talk with Ava.

“Good morning, Robert! You were able to get a nice amount of sleep this time, it’s been almost 10 hours, but only an hour has passed in the outside world. It’s nighttime out there again, but that shouldn’t affect you too much. I can sense that you’re ready to talk and have some questions. I’m happy to answer anything I can for you.”

I looked at the orb and created a couch to sit down on, having her connected to my mind was still disconcerting.

“Well Ava, I think my first questions are gonna be about what you think I should do going forward.”

“I think you need to prepare to defend this area first. Right now, no one has noticed that anything is different about your home. However, it will not be long before someone notices something off about the place. They’ll either hear machinery, notice lights on, or see one of your other creations in action. That’s why I think this should be your first priority, to ensure our safety and the ability for you to develop yourself with the system.”

“Yea, that makes sense. I kind of had that plan already, but I wanted to get your input before making any decisions.”

“I’m glad that you wanted to include me Robert, but remember I’m basically just an assistant for you. You can do whatever you want, and I will trust your judgement on the situation. You were chosen as a Host for a reason.”

It was nice to have someone that trusted me with full confidence. You would always have strong interactions with people in your life, but you can’t always tell if they’re genuine and true. With Ava, her life and existence depend on mine, so without me she would cease to exist. She also has a connection to my mind so she can tell exactly how I feel and my thoughts on a subject without the need for me to put it in words. I think the only reason we’re communicating verbally currently is because she knows it provides me a sort of comfort.

“I think I’m going to set up walls around the property, sort of like a castle. I know that will make people take notice of the area a lot faster, but I would prefer to have total control of entry and exit to the property than have fewer eyes on the area. I have more superior firepower available to me than pretty much anyone else in the world. So, I’m not really worried about them noticing something is off once I’ve got my defenses in place.”

I decided to work on the actual defenses I planned to use before setting up the walls outside. I should be able to create the blueprint for what I want and save it in my mind until I’m ready to start creating them.

I pushed the stacks back and created an open area in between them. I visualized and created a 3D map of my home and the area around it. Looking at the map, I’m going to be reaching into the neighbor’s properties with my walls, but I want to have a compound with the ability to expand in the future. I chose an octagonal pattern for the walls, with each side of the octagon being a thousand feet in length. This would have me creating almost 2 miles of defensible front around the property. It shouldn’t take me long to get the frame of the walls created if I make them out of simple concrete. However, I would like to make them fairly thick to enable traversal inside of them and the installation of defenses behind hidden compartments.

Luckily, I will have the cover of night to get most of it done. I moved closer to the areas around where I was placing the walls and placed a pin at incremental intervals all along the walls. This would help me plan where I was going to put the automatic defenses on top of the walls for optimal coverage. I would need three to four turrets to cover each side of the octagon without losing coverage and allowing them to overlap control with each other by a small amount.

Now that I had an idea of my framework, I needed to create a design for my turrets that would be able to operate without much intervention on my part. Thankfully, with my interest in Korean novels, I had looked into the defenses on the border of North and South Korea. They utilized a system here created by Sumsong that was utilized by South Korea to make up for their deficit in military personnel compared to North Korea. These automated turrets relied on a thermographic sensor to identify any incoming heat signature and fire upon them unless a recognizable voice command was provided. These systems will decide between using a siren, firing rubber bullets, or varying more lethal projectiles based upon how close a target was to the defense position or if they continued towards the position upon being warned.

These would be very mana-heavy machines to create and I wasn’t even sure if I could create one whole with the amount of mana I had available to me. I would need to test it out once I created the walls and decide on a plan for them depending on if I could or not.

“Alright Ava, I’m going to head out and get to work creating the walls around the property. Is it alright if I leave Greta in here?”

“Yes, that’s perfectly fine. I like having the feline here anyway, keeps me from feeling as alone in the library without you.”

Thanks, I’d much rather her be in here safe from everything outside until I’m sure that everything is safe.”

I walked over to Greta, still laying on the bed taking a cat nap, and rubbed her softly before opening the doors to exit the library.

Once outside I proceeded to the area at the rear of the property. I wanted to start on the areas furthest from the road to prevent people from noticing what was going on as long as possible. Once there I visualized the creation of the first section of walls, and mentally issued the command to start production. The mana started to drain from my body slowly as the creation of the walls consumed small amounts of mana while they formed from the ground up. I created them with a thickness of seven feet and a height of fifteen feet. This left me with a five-foot gap between the one foot of solid concrete on the inside and outside of the walls. This should be plenty of room to maneuver around inside the walls and place defenses in the future if needed. The entire process used almost 130 mana to create one section of walls, so I would need around twenty minutes to refill my mana after creating each one. I should be done within three hours as I work my way around to the front of the property.

It was another lengthy process in just creating the walls, but much faster than the weeks or months it would have taken to do this with conventional means without the system. Anyone who had been through the area in the past would definitely notice the large new structure. I had to get my defenses in place before the morning arrived.

I stepped away from the final side of my octagon coming into view and sat down on the grass. I was glad that was finally over with, but it was time to perform some tests on the creation of my automated turret system.

I clambered up the stairs on the rear of the walls and approached the first area I wanted to install a turret system. I tried to visualize the full creation of the first set of turrets and selected to start the process. However, unlike any of the other times I had attempted to create an object, there seemed to be a force pushing back on me during the process. The creation just blinked in and out of existence as a notification appeared in my vision.

Host doesn’t have the mana required to create this object.

Seemed I was right, I wouldn’t be able to create these turrets as a whole and would need to come up with a way to get them working piece by piece. I broke the blueprint I had for the machinery down into three categories: Weaponry, Electronics, and Framework. I decided to create the framework for all of the turrets first, this way I could ensure my placements looked accurate from the model earlier and it would allow me to create multiple without having to wait on my mana to refill for each one.

I went along the wall creating the framework for each, totaling twenty-four different emplacements. Once I had that process done, I started on the weaponry next. These took slightly more mana as I needed a light machine gun and grenade launcher for each one. I was only able to complete two sets before I had to wait on my mana to refill. This gave me plenty of time to ensure everything was installed on the frames while I waited though.

After another four hours, I had finished the creation and installation of the weaponry. It was approaching daylight and I wasn’t finished with my defenses yet, but I felt a lot safer at least having the walls in place. No one should have the means readily available to penetrate the walls, and I would notice any attempts to climb the walls with ladders before they could enter the premises.

I went to the first turret I had created and started the process for the electronics formation. I would need multiple systems for this to work and it took almost my whole mana bar just for varying systems, so I could see why I wasn’t able to create these as a whole now. It was going to take me eight hours to get all of the turrets up and running, so I finished the ones facing the road first. That should allow me a little more comfort while I take the time to finish all of them.

After almost an entire day of working on the machinery, I had finally finished the turret systems and my walls were entirely protecting the property. This left me with an internal area of almost five million square feet and a width of roughly half a mile for expansion. This should be a decently sized compound and would handle pretty much anything I needed to do for the foreseeable future.

I headed inside and created a control room out of one of the bedrooms in my home. This would provide me a good area to view anything going on outside and control any of the 24 turrets around the compound. I could control them manually, and issue any verbal communication through them from here comfortably.

I set an audio warning for them to anyone it detected approaching the compound, warning them of lethal force being taken once they approached within two hundred feet of the walls.

Content with what I had completed so far, I opened a doorway to the Library World and proceeded inside. Tired from all I had done today, I went over to the bed and plopped down ready to pass out, but I noticed a notification in the corner of my vision.

Host has worked with mana considerably within the past 24 hours and Mana has been increased by 10.

I opened my Status Page and checked the new values before going to sleep for the day.

Strength

3

Health:45

Mana:150

Stamina:25

Intelligence

16

Skills

Quick Study: You are able to read and comprehend knowledge better than most.

Information Construction: You can use known data to recreate tangible items at the cost of mana.

Vitality

5

Dexterity

4