The enemy wave burn, hack and slash at our walls. They try to climb it, but moments later I surprise all the ones that got too close as I reach into the living container and drag my very meager and precious Life resource. It takes a lot of life to make something that will only store a fraction of that, but even a single extra percent of a resource such as Life is invaluable and I didn’t have just one percent.

Qi explosions of thin roots envelop the enemy set off by sparks of Life. Wasteful in the strict sense of the resources spent, especially without the required training and fine tuning that only long practice could provide, but it gets the job done.

Dozens, hundreds of ensnared enemies, even as the seconds tick by and the shamans trail in a flat out run for our position.

Three minutes to go and the enemy gets got a massive upgrade in power.

They array two hundred meters away even as I try to empower a mana disruption runic array. But while tangling their mana with my Qi disrupts their first two group attacks, they simply start launching individual spells.

Mostly fire comes our way, but there is a bit of lightning from what I assume to be their senior Shaman if not the very Arch Shaman.

I push sections of shield out anywhere I feel they do the most good while letting the less dangerous attacks through for the roots to soak but while my attention is limited and my mana stores in the inner world continue dropping precipitously, while it lasts it might as well be infinite.

Two minutes to go and the enemies grow more desperate, seeing the end of their time. They feel they likely won’t be able to breach the defenses and have the time to kill each and every one of us, so their attacks concentrate on a few smaller spots and get more exoteric, including a mana blade that bypasses the few normal mana shields like they are nothing. Luckily we are saved by two layers of Merlin’s genius with his countermeasures being infused on my shields and even the mass of roots. But even as the shaman's foggy attacks hit our defenses, the runes push the strange phenomenon out.

They try and try with no results until they start grouping again ahie a few try to keep my mana disruption to a minimum.

One minute to go.

They start earnest building magic.

With no effort waste on the defense of their common troops, Merlin’s magical attacks reap dozens of lives in each move while my seeds have an easy time ensnaring them ones in the edge of his attacks.

But even as I grit my teeth at the loss of life, something warns me. A similar sensation to the focus for a lightning storm that Ahjrahh, our Arch Shaman used to attack us, except there is nothing in the sky and the flavor is different. I get ready, reaching out to the world and trying to feel what they were bringing to our piece of reality.

My skills connect to the sliver of nothingness and impressions rummage through my skull, all loose and disconnected. Nothing that I can make heads or tails of. Tens of thousands of enemies rush past my outer detection layer. I prop the headache inducing effort just as I cling to our one advantage.

The one thing that I can make sense of.

Time.

The climax is moments away as they gaze pierce the meter thick wall of roots aimed at me, I know their goal. Opening a dozen portals from the inner world, and flooding it with my Qi, I summon barriers of water, dirt and wood reinforcing the pair of shields, even before the main one that I turn past its maximum power.

Their attack blazes through it all in an instant.

Each layer of defense is like tissue paper. But enough tissue paper could have stopped even Chicxulub’s crater meteor that killed all the dinosaurs.

The attack crosses meters of contiguous material and it cracks the last layer of shields surrounding my skin. I feel the black energy nearly dispersing and fairly loose, clinging to me.

My health drops for an instant, but before I lose even 10 percent of my HP, it ends, drawn back to the Aether. My skin turns dry and hard, but I survived with a lot more health than just about anyone else could have hoped and most important of all: the fight ends.

Lights cover each and every single one of the attacking army.

All attacks from both our sides are snuffed out before they can do any more damage and I feel the system pushing them out.

I expect a ripping of space as they are teleported out but they slowly retreat on foot. Though that makes sense these are inhabtants of the HLZ, not mobs being summoned from elsewhere. A few are reluctant like the Golbin chief, but the system is inexorable and they march back, slowly but surely.

Sighs all around, especially from the people that didn’t see a lick of combat given the enemy didn’t break through our defense with anything more than a single magical attack.

Richard looks all around and starts to speak before the system interrupts him.

“Well…”

Successful defense.

Conditions:

100 to 1 numeric disadvantage

No injuries on defenders

No damage to buildings

17.2 Reward multiplier

Rewards:

1720 System points.

Three special rooms become available for purchase.

1 System point per hundred people to visit the Castle.

17.2 months of protection from attacks while in the Castle.

“Well, this sounds nice,” Greg says even as Alex stares at his spear and spins it in his hand staring and ignoring the world.

So we will explore the place. Or rather, they will with a little help from a quick map I drew. I have other things to worry about: like how will I go back to Earth?

If there is anything that should help me with that in the castle, Merlin ought to uncover or at least recognize it.

I take out a chair and a couple of tables to surround me and cover it all with dozens of large sheets of paper before starting on the next iteration of the portal runic formation.

We are still relying on my perception field coupled with the innate space sense to find addresses for the new instance. Most of the advances also revolved around that. For now, that is a step we can’t skip if we could do that at all. Not without years or decades to understand how the runes interacted with each other and how they warped space.

But just because I couldn’t take myself entirely out of the equation, doesn’t mean there weren’t a lot of improvements to be made before we fully understood this field of research.

Worst of all, I had to deal with the fact that I now only had exorbitant prices at the end of each month to pay and my most precious resource, time just got shorter.

But there is a hint that I have an actual shot blazing in my chest. Something that I might not have the time or understanding to implement, even if all my assumptions are correct. But each time I felt the effects of space warping runes and the system blocking ones working in concert the other side of the coin in the space-time equation gets… funky.

From everything in my book of knowledge, it was absolutely impossible to make a true hyperbolic time chamber. But if I could tap into real space, I may be able to stop the slowing of time in a small space and would effectively be the same while I was inside the instance. And although there were trade offs, I would not be quite as restrained as in my class trial.

I dare to let a hint of hope bloom in my heart. Although the automaton had in no uncertain terms told me that I had no chance to escape I don’t think that is the whole story. It is a monumental task that I no longer had the time for and but this potential solution kicks in the back of my head.

I shake my head and stop my wandering thoughts until the others start gathering.

“These system points seem to be only about unlocking the rooms, at least for now. Kinda like the special rooms we unlocked on the town hall.” Richard says.

“Are they even gonna be useful? Besides the treasury and the map room, everything we unlocked in the town hall is very limited.” Point out one of the researchers.

“I think so.” Merlin says “We have laboratories for magic testing, training areas, and even a library to unlock, which is a far cry from the pantry and other storage options in the town hall. Even if half of them don’t bring anything, the rest is useful and we may discover something invaluable.”

“Should we bring in people by the thousands to gather points?”

“Let’s unlock a few first and go from there.”

Minutes later and with great stinginess, they unlock just two rooms for a decent sum of 185 system points.

A magical lab and a library. As the transformation of nearly empty trap rooms becomes something else, I stop and run over.

I feel a single bookcase with anything of interest, but even before passing the door, I’m already deep into reading the books.

Only a single shelf has anything on it and the 17 books don’t fill it properly, but I get every smidge of knowledge that I possibly can from the books with the perceptin field.

Reading them all, even as the others take turns fumbling with the books, teaches me a lot. I add a few more runes to my repertoire and best of all this knowledge is not restricted like the books we got from the book source in the villages so I can share it widely. But while this sates my insatiable desire to learn for a moment, it is in truth barely an appetizer. Two hours and I haven’t only read them, I have gone over and dissected everything to build on everyting I learned.

An amazing snack, but definitely not a full meal. I feel mana draining from another room, as Merlin tests one of his meta magics in the lab, and a strike rumbles the castle. Nothing that would threaten to knock it over, but enough that even the others with incredibly lower perception stats in comparison, can still feel the vibrations past their feet.

Something gets in the corner of my eye. Attention, a judging of actions that are not aimed at me, something that without well over 200 perception points and a lot of experience I would never be able to detect. At least when aimed at someone else.

The system’s gaze locks on Merlin. Faint and cursory, but a moment later, an eighteenth book shows up on the shelves.

“Ohh, perhaps this won’t be quite so bad after all. This isn’t a one time meal, it is a tree of knowledge. We just have to feed it.” I say appreciating the advantages this could provide us.

Murmurs of agreement go all around and I lay back, in a chair balancing on two legs with the ease of an acrobat as my plans for the future shift ever so slightly.

Although I planned to base around the new space research center in the middle of the forest and away from anyone that didn’t understand how dangerous it was, I could also come here regularly and run smaller experiments on this lab which should be a great help in expanding the library. Each book that I read from it would help push my own book to reveal more, generating even better experiments in a cycle powering the engine that would take me out of here.

The others all keep going for another couple of hours. No contact with the village is possible given we are well outside the network, that should be taken care of soon enough, especially as hundreds of meters underground a thin tendril is extending all the way back relentlessly to the rest of the instance powered by Aspen and a few other of the more experienced and less wasteful seeds.

I start work on the next step in earnest. If I can affect space why couldn’t I do the same with time?

Plans on top of pans follow and even a few basic experiments go on in the lab, driving the library to generate new content.

Time is elusive and from the hints in my book, it has very few select applications in the long term, but it is my one real shot to get out of here back to Earth so I will pour my entire being into the effort.