It took about another hour of walking for Loran and the others to make it back. Fortunately, there were no other surprises for the rest of the way, save for Yang's leg finally giving way to the debuff and breaking. It slowed them down, but she was able to bear with it and Alexx was able to support her easily enough.

"Finally," said Loran. After all that had happened over the past two days, the sight of the village's wall comforted Loran like he was returning home. "I'm just going to assume that announcements can wait until tonight at The Pit?"

"Yeah," said Soze, "there are some other things that need to be taken care of, but you can go sleep." He turned to the others, "honestly that goes for all of you, it's been a rough day and everyone needs to recover."

"You guys can rest," said Zed, stretching his arms wide, "I'm going to cool off at the field."

"You're seriously going to try training right now?" Loran asked incredulously. "Don't you literally have a debuff called Heavy Exhaustion?"

"That's kind of the point. You and Alexx are going to need a few days before the three of us can go ant hunting right?"

"Yeah, I'm probably gonna need a day or two for my HP to come back," said Alexx.

"And I'll need three for this debuff to wear off."

"Well my debuff only has a twenty-four-hour duration, and I want to see if I can get used to fighting like this," said Zed. "Never know when I might have to do it in the future."

"....Would you perhaps allow me to train with you?" Yin asked, drawing surprised stares from the others.

"Sis, you can't be serious?! Why do you want to train with this psycho?"

"Not to turn down your offer, but I'm kind of with your sister on this one," Zed said, "Why?"

"A few differing reasons. First and foremost, if Yang had not thrown me across the river when that pharaonic pack of Moss Wolves-"

"Phara-wha?" Alexx couldn't help but ask.

"Massive."

"Ah."

"Anyway, if she had not thrown me across the river, I would certainly have died today. I had no time to retreat and even if I was up in a tree, there were simply too many for me to strike down before they would be able to catch me. I was hoping to do some training for close-range engagements."

"Okay, but why Zed?" asked Loran. "And why now, aren't you tired after today?"

"I am not particularly drained, and I was hoping that Zed could offer me advice since our weapons seem to have similar weaknesses."

"How are a spear and a bow even remotely similar?" asked Soze.

"She means range and direction," said Zed, rubbing his chin. "Both weapons need to create a certain amount of distance to be truly effective, although one needs a lot more. And while other weapons like an ax can make sweeping attacks, spears and bows can generally only hit one target at a time."

"Also you are currently weakened due to your debuff," Yin added, "as... unnerving as you may be I do not think I will be in any danger at the moment."

"Careful, I might take that as a challenge," said Zed, a slight smirk beginning to form.

"Oh?" Yin wore a soft smile, but her eyes narrowed chillingly. "In your current condition, I do not think that would be wise."

"Haha! Alright! I'll see you in a bit then," with that Zed broke into a light jog, and although his movements were rather stiff due to his [HEAVY EXHAUSTION] he quickly pulled away from the rest of them.

"Damn Sis, since when do you make threats?" Yang asked, grinning at her sister's boldness.

"It was not a threat," Yin said calmly, "merely an observation."

"Alright," Loran took a step away from Yin, "well if you could not make any observations about me that would be great."

They continued walking, and soon enough they crossed through the gate, revealing the incredibly barren eastern side of the village. Once the bridge across the river had been finished a little over a week ago, players quickly got to work building up this side of the village. The wall was obviously the highest priority since there was no point in building anything before it could be defended, but those that took charge of the project had decided much more planning would be necessary.

As they were becoming more comfortable with their day-to-day lives in the world of New Eden Online, a group of players decided that they would start focusing on improving the living conditions of the village. To that end, it was decided that this new section of the village would be used to construct larger huts to replace the basic wooden shelters most of the players had been using up until now.

As Loran and the others walked, they could see a countless number of sticks jammed into the ground at regular intervals all over the unbuilt side of the village. These were the markers that the building team was using to judge the size of each hut as well as where they would go.

'Since the huts are going to be built on a grid, that should make walking around easier,' Loran thought.

The western side of the village was built quickly and haphazardly, causing the paths throughout it to become long winding messes. Navigating them wasn't too difficult, since the shelters were all short enough to see over, but these huts were going to be large enough to stand in, so that wouldn't be possible.

"Hm?"

"Is something wrong Loran?"

"I don't see any builders. Haven't they been working on the expansion like crazy recently?"

In the distance, Loran could see the point where the wall ended, which was almost halfway done. While the village's first wall was fairly sturdy, it had been made quickly in response to the discovery of the Spined Deer way back when. This new wall stands about seven feet tall, the entire length of the wall was to be constructed with nothing but the trunks of birch trees, laying sideways with supports to keep them standing on top of each other.

"Oh yeah," Soze said in realization, "that's because of Demeter's announcement last night. She's asking for more help with her field."

"Really?" asked Yang. "It didn't seem like she was in much of a rush before."

"She said that she greatly overestimated the potential output of her existing field," explained Yin. "A much larger area will need to be cultivated if we want a harvest large enough to feed the camp."

"That's... damn, we really needed that to work out," Loran said, concern creeping into his voice.

Soze shrugged. "There's only so much we can do about it. As far as I'm concerned the best we can do right now is focus on expanding the field and seeing how much food we can get from it in the coming months."

Turning forward, Loran walked past the prototype hut, the only other thing built on this side of the river. It was created by the building team both to show everyone else what they were planning and to get a physical estimate of what they would need for the rest of the project.

The hut had a basic framework made from wood that was then covered with mud and left to dry. Meanwhile, the roof was made from a mix of thatch and leafy branches, lightweight but dense enough to keep out the rain.

Beside the hut was the bridge that connected the two sides of the village. The bridge was made by jamming Birch tree logs into the riverbed and having them lean against each other to create supports. On top of the supporting frame was a crisscrossing web of branches, held together by thick leather straps and interlocking joints; and on top of THAT was the actual walkway of the bridge, constructed from roughly made wooden planks.

Loran couldn't help but think that it was the ugliest piece of construction he had ever seen, but he could not deny how sturdy it was. When it was finished, the building team spent a solid three minutes jumping on it just to show everyone how safe it was.

'I mean,' Loran thought, 'at least it's better than-'

Loran's thoughts were cut off as he and the others were quickly surrounded by nearly two dozen players. Thanks to Loran's message, which was extremely lacking in details, everyone in the village was extremely curious about what happened to stop Loran and Yang from returning. People had seen the party walking back from the other side of the river, and a crowd began forming on the other side of the bridge.

For a moment, the party just stood in silence as they were bombarded with so many questions that they couldn't even attempt to answer any of them. A few members of the crowd were silent, just trying to get a better look at the dead Iron Ant in Soze's hand.

"CAN ALL OF YOU PLEASE SHUT THE FUCK UP!" Yang roared. Her patience was already at rock bottom from the last two days.

Soze stepped forward. "All of you should know by now that we will be giving an explanation tonight at The Pit, and all of us are tired, injured, or both."

"SO FUCK OFF!"

The crowd was silent for a moment before beginning to disperse. A few seemed like they were going to try and ask more questions, but were quickly silenced as the party marched past them.

"You think these people would've learned by now," said Loran, "it's been nearly two months."

"Yeah," a voice said from beside them, "but it has also been a while since anything really big has happened."

Turning to the voice, Loran saw a male player sitting on the river bank. The player was wearing only his default player pants and was soaked in water from head to toe. He had long, straight black hair that he was currently wringing the water out from, along with some light stubble on his chin.

"Hey Alan," said Soze, "just finished your check-up?"

"Yeah," he said, now pulling his hair back into a ponytail and tying it back with a leather strap. "Everything is holding tight and has been for the last few days. Honestly, I wish everyone would stop being so paranoid about this thing already."

"It's not paranoia when you have a track record of shitty construction," Yang said, smirking.

Alan was part of the building team and the one that designed the bridge. He didn't have any real experience with construction or carpentry, but ever since he became a part of the village he had been improving himself through sheer trial and error. Most of that came from his attempts at building himself a log cabin, which collapsed on his first attempt but was shockingly sturdy after his second attempt.

Many assumed he would make some kind of mistake on his first attempt at the bridge as well, and sure enough, it nearly did.

Just when the bridge had been about 90% finished, one of the supports gave out and took most of the bridge with it. After a day of examination, Alan and the other builders said they found the problem and went right back to the building, but the rest of the village was made even more skeptical. By now it had stood long enough for people to start using it, but only the hunters and builders were willing to cross it, and most of them still wouldn't use it in large groups or with heavy loads.

This was why Alan was currently soaking wet. To try and convince people that it was fine he regularly checked the bridge to assure that everything was perfectly safe. It had practically become his full-time job at this point. He even promised that when everyone started to trust it more he would still make sure to check it weekly just to be safe.

"I still don't get why everyone's so afraid of it," Alan complained. "Even if it did collapse again, almost everyone has enough HP to survive it. There's practically no risk."

"That doesn't mean people want to be standing on a bridge when it goes down," Soze said.

"And it certainly doesn't help that the thing looks like trash," Yang said.

"Yeah, well, good luck fixing the food problem without my bridge," Alan shouted as he marched off.

"He has a point," said Loran as he began walking off. "Anyway, if you guys don't need me I'm going to go take a nap. See you all at The Pit."