With my friends completely on board with my plan, we got to work. The first step was laying out a basic outline of the space we wanted to work with. That particular task I assigned to Daniela. The woman dashed around the perimeter of the bunker faster than I thought possible. On her second pass she started to blast the ground. As a means of marking space, her Skill left small craters in the burned up earth where she thought our boundaries should be.

Before I had Sam join me on the second part of my plan, I told him to get better familiarized with his growing passive skill, as I'd decided to call it. The horticulturalist fanatic practically pounced on the few plants around the Bunker clearing that had remained through the blaze. With my friend occupied, and the occasional rumble from Daniela's skill in the background, I moved to the summoned stone spike.

The formation was about six inches at the bottom, tapering to a rough point after rising for three feet. It looked more like hard packed earth than stone, but it still took significant effort for me to break it when I pushed on it. Stepping back a few feet, I focused on the Skill and aimed it just to the right of my first spike. The spike rose perpendicular to the gentle slope and I realized why the first had been skewed. Without a target, it just compressed along the surface. Not only that, there was only a slight dip in the surrounding soil, so the spell had to be forming matter from mana. Somehow. I'll leave that question for Sam's big brain.

With that initial observation, and focusing past the stinging in my gut from casting the spell, I watched the second spike closely. It was about the same height, but the base was easily twice as wide as the first. A glance at my mana bar told me I had roughly 70% of my mana left.

I watched the bar rise slowly, a percent every few seconds as far as I could tell. By my estimation, it took 20% of my current mana to cast a stone spike. Thinking back on the pain from our last trip to the surface, there also had to be some inherent cooldown to using the skill back to back. Getting a better feel for that, learning it's limitations and figuring out how to mitigate the side effects could only be beneficial. Shaking my head to clear it of the academic aspects of magic, I focused on getting a feel for it. Over the next several hours I pushed my Mana to the limits. The sun was past midway in the sky when Sam came to get me for a quick lunch.

The man paused as he looked around at what I'd done. Summoning a wall of spikes via the most involved process I could manage. I'd used the ground for a good thirty feet to create mostly vertical spikes spaced two feet apart. With that portion complete, I proceeded to use on the spikes themselves. Alternating vertical and slanted cones of compacted earth formed a rough wall in front of me.

"Ronan... What the hell are you doing?" Sam asked.

"Working on the first part of our defensive wall!" I said excited, but quite tired. The discomfort from casting didn't even vanish completely after waiting several minutes, so I’d pushed through regardless. Mana fatigue was yet another thing to keep in mind.

"Right... Well, you look like you're about to keel over. Let's get you back to the lobby and get some food in you. Danny did the same thing as you and she is sweating buckets."

Without needing further prompting we made our way to the lobby. I blinked at the sheer madness of tomatoes growing in rows along one side of the squat building. There was one fully grown plant near the base of the building, and at least a dozen half grown ones with little green balls at the ends. Ripening tomatoes.

"Is this all from--" I started, but Sam cut me off.

"Yep. Nearly passed out a few times, but I think it was worth it. The side effects of my magic doesn't seem to get to me as much as yours or Daniela's. It might also have been because I didn't fully cast the spell, but it will take more practice to really figure it out," he said. "If these grow at the same rate as they do underground, we should have some cherry tomatoes within a week even without my intervention!"

I gaped at my friend's efforts and he chuckled all the way to the door. Inside, Danny was already crunching through one of the Insta-meals Ben had provided. When we walked in, she looked up with a ‘chipmunk face’ as we'd come to call it and our laughter restarted.

"Less than a week on the surface and already you are behaving like we are down in the Bunker," I scolded her jokingly. She swatted my wagging finger before taking a swig of water to down her food.

"I'm burning up. I've felt constantly hungry while marking out the space around the Bunker. Oh, I found the pond to the west, by the way," she said before resuming her meal.

"Maybe we ought to slow down on the magic a bit. I don't want anything strange to happen on the first day if we aren't cautious," I said, accepting the small tray with food. "We also need to check in with the Entity."

"We need to come up with an actual name for it. It seems to have a personality, so we should at least consider it a 'person'," Sam added, making air quotes with his fingers at the end. "Taking the time of day into account, I think it would be better if we do that tomorrow morning."

Giving the man a thumbs up as I stuffed my own mouth full of bland food, we ate in silence for some time. I mulled on the discoveries I'd made about our magic. Definite side effects to keep in mind, but benefits we still didn't even fully comprehend. Something I'd been doing while testing out my was prod at the part of my mind that seemed to hold the information. Considering we could call it forth without fully triggering the Skill, there had to be at least two parts to using magic. Not to mention the strange characters that appeared along with the skill. Even after staring at them for several hours, they looked like shifting scribbles.

"Ron. Ronan!" I blinked to see Danny and Sam staring at me. "You okay?"

"Eh, yeah. Why, what's up?"

"You finished eating like fifteen minutes ago. You've just been staring at your tray," Sam said with concern.

"Oh, sorry. I was just thinking about magic stuff," I said, shaking my head and realizing I was extremely tired.

"Well. That does it. If Ron is tired, then we need to call a break for now. We can try to do some manual stuff later before the sun goes down," Daniela said, crossing her arms and leaning against one of the counters in the lobby.

"I'm fine. I was just spaced out." When I tried to rise to my feet, my legs wobbled. Maybe not entirely fine...

"No sir. You've been going non-stop since we got to the surface. If you are tired, then Sam and I are probably going to feel it soon. When the endurance machine breaks, you take a rest," Danny quipped while shifting to get comfortable against the counter.

"You know Ben gave us sleeping bags, yes?" Sam said, holding up the cushioned polyester tube.

A wave of exhaustion ran through me at the prospect of sleep and I realized that my friends were right. Plus, a little rest would let my subconscious work on understanding magic. I laughed to myself for a moment before accepting the bag from Samuel. "Just one last precaution. Can you please hold the door open, Sam?"

He lifted an eyebrow in confusion, but moved to the door regardless. I focused on the space beyond, eyeing spots where Sam hadn't planted some of his tomatoes. With the sharp pain in my gut to mark the casting, I raised two stone spikes in an X in front of the door. With that last expenditure, I dropped onto my sleeping bag. The slight hiss of air as my weight deflated the cushions brought out a sigh of comfort from me. "Just in case..."

My friends shook their heads at my antics before settling into their own bags. Within moments, I was asleep.

The sound of nails on a chalkboard that we'd only ever heard in video records snapped me awake. A lingered on my wrist as my eyes adjusted to the light. How long were we asleep... The thought didn't linger long as another round of grima reached us. The sound sent goosebumps along my body and I focused on a flickering in the light coming in from the doorway. Flicking a lantern set on the counter, I woke Danny and then Sam. I placed my hand over their mouths to keep them from screaming, holding a finger to my lips to signal silence.

My senses strained as I watched the light flicker and listened to the muted rustling of grass through the door. I'm not certain how long we were poised and alert, but thankfully it paid off.

The only warning I got was a loud sniff, then a snarl before we heard one of my stone spikes snap. My fist tightened as I realized the strength necessary to do that, considering I'd cast the thick-based spikes. More snarling sounded outside as the unseen creature attacked something. Not wanting to waste the slight distraction, I focused on the slight spacing at the bottom of the door. With the intent of aiming at whatever was beyond, I triggered .

A yowl of pain was the only response we got to my attack. Hissing and snarling followed, but they couldn't have been due to my spike. We remained poised at the door trying to discern the strange encounter on the other side.

As the minutes ticked by without any further sounds, I crouch walked towards the door. In the subtle light of the lantern I saw both of my friends holding their Skills at the ready. With a finger count of three, I pulled open the door. Dawn light spilled into the room, but there was nothing beyond my stone spikes. One of the two was broken partway down, while the other had deep claw marks along its length. Considering there were easily two inches between each claw, I didn't want to meet whatever they belonged to. The best sign was the crimson blood marks dotting the ground and the very tip of my third spike.

"How did we sleep this long? And what happened to my tomatoes!?" Sam blurted out in surprise as we peeked over my makeshift barrier. The rows of growing plants were trampled to the ground. Signs of combat dotted the space around the entrance, and I wasn't sure from what. Clearly some large cat had been prowling around, but it had engaged with something else. The display, even knowing I had access to magic, really put the fact that humans weren't at the top of the food chain anymore into perspective.

I motioned my friends back inside and shut the door. "Okay, thoughts. Obviously something huge is living nearby and it likes coming by at night."

My two friends frowned at my words. Without prompting, Sam went to rummage in one of our supply bags and handed breakfast rations out. Grits, jerky and disintegrating crackers. Munching loudly, Daniela brought up some points. "We need to get the crystal back here. As soon as possible. I imagine that whatever it was doing to keep murderous critters when we passed out and talking to it will be invaluable in setting up. Not only that, we should try to find more things to hunt."

"How are we sure that the stuff we hunt isn't going to kick our ass?" Sam asked, swiping at some of the inevitable crumbs from the crackers.

"I don't think we can know for sure. But if the Attributes are right, it should be plausible for us to fight directly against stuff. The 0.1 growth is insane. I feel impossibly fast already," Danny said, twirling her spork in the air.

"I agree with both of those points. Before we head out I think we should fortify the Bunker exit. I might have been a bit ambitious with where I started to build our wall," I said.

"Considering most of the garden I was setting up is mulch, perhaps I should move it closer to the pond. Maybe I can figure out how to make a small canal system to do some serious farming," Sam said, pointing to the four foot tall tomato plant inside the lobby. I felt relieved that he'd had the foresight to leave the original plant inside and used the cuttings to seed his magical garden. As I considered that, the fact that none of the plants had dissolved into particles struck me as strange, but I just added it to the pile of questions to ask the Entity when it was functional.

"I'll keep blasting a trench around us then and see if I can spot any more of those squirrels," Daniela said. "No sense dillydallying. If any of us are in trouble, two quick shots from the pistols. Preferably at the target of said trouble." The woman gave Samuel a look and the blond scratched his head sheepishly. She made sure to rib him about his accuracy at every opportunity.

"That's a plan then. If something seems to be out of hand, run. If we need to retreat to the Bunker or regroup, or something, then so be it. None of our lives are worth anything we build or make on the surface."

Finishing the rest of the meal in silence, we got to work. With some difficulty I broke through the stone spike defenses I'd set up outside of our door. The base of the spike remained, but we all stepped over them. They were a minor inconvenience to walk over, but they would allow me to have set spots for future ones.

Danny joined Sam on the walk to the pond, hoping to help him set up the garden and keep an eye on his back. Once the two were past the original outer perimeter I'd hoped to mark, I eyed a twenty-ish foot radius around the lobby. Cracking my knuckles, I braced myself for the gut wrench of magic and started casting.

Over the rest of the day I made an inner perimeter. With only a brief break for lunch, I pushed through my discomfort from using . While I felt like a used rag that had been scrubbed on basalt rock, I'd made a discovery.

Between each casting of my Skill, I'd kept the spell just at the edge of my mind. While keeping his magic at the surface, but untriggered, Sam could enhance the growth of the plants under his care. My ability allowed me to consolidate and compress the ground around me.

During one of my exhaustion breaks, the passive effect of my magic presented itself. Markedly in the discomfort my rear end experienced when I tried to plop on the once-soft earth.

As the day was drawing to a close, and I worked on using my consolidating abilities within the semi circle of spikes I'd created, a whistle drew my attention. While it hadn't been the agreed upon call, I brought up my gun on my right and my Skill on the left. With quick steps, I peeked between a gap in my spikes.

Making their way slowly up the slope were Sam and Danny. After watching them carefully for a few seconds, I holstered my gun. They'd just been signalling their return. Walking to one of the two wide openings I'd made in the perimeter, the one facing northwest, I smiled at my friends.

"How was the planting?" I asked, motioning to both of their mud encrusted pants.

"It went great. I didn't realize we were going to come back to some primal stalagmite fort," Sam said. The two of them were gaping at what I'd accomplished within the day.

"It wouldn't have been so surprising if you two had come back for lunch. I didn't see you grab anything when you two left, other than the shovels."

"I stuffed myself full of roasted tomatoes. Oh! I found out what my ambient magic does, Ron!" Danny said excitedly. She pulled out a trio of cherry tomatoes and I saw the ring for her magic blink into existence. A second later, the sweet and sour tang of tomato drifted in the air and she tossed me one of them. It was grilled on the outside.

"That's amazing!" I moaned through the gush of flavor. The prospect of surface grown food had me immensely excited. There was only so much hydroponic grown vegetables and fish you could stand.

"And that's not all!" The woman held up a fist-sized skull and another grey cotton blob. "Snagged another squirrel. Sam didn't even hit it when I blasted it out of the sky, so I finished it off. I'm almost to my third Quotient!"

I gave my friends a hug in excitement. Pulling back on the instincts my uncle had ingrained in me, I coughed a bit awkwardly and disengaged. Thankfully, my friends were kind enough to simply accept the gesture. I hoped it made my feelings about working together clear.

As terrible as the previous night had gone, the day showed we were determined to survive and thrive.

Showing off my own discovered passive ability, I compressed the mud on their pants. The clinging clay and sand crumbled away and drifted in the wind after some hardy pats from my friends. We spent some time relaxing and catching up on the fun mishaps of the day.

As the sky splashed orange and blue, our mood sombered. We shared a look and slowly made our way back within the lobby. While the two openings the perimeter had would allow most things inside in its current state, I hoped it would discourage any violent engagements right outside our makeshift home.

Giving the setting sun one last look, I slammed two spikes in an X again to bar the door. Sleeping behind the Bunker doors would probably be safer, but we were liable to suffocate, since I'd seen no ventilation. After a quiet dinner, I suggested making a guard rotation. Just in case. My heightened Perception had allowed me to stir when our night time visitors arrived, but I didn't feel comfortable leaving our security to just my tired body.

My friends wholeheartedly agreed. While they slept, I mulled on how we could transport the Entity Cluster back to our growing abode. Engrossed in possible solutions, Danny startled me with a tap and a nod to my bedroll when my watch was over. . The rest was lost to the darkness and blissfully dreamless sleep.