The Thorn Demons dropped more exotic stones than the Sluggers.
Each Thorn Demon dropped 3 exotic stones.
Li Wei counted carefully.
There were 22 Thorn Demons in total, dropping 66 exotic stones.
[Exotic Stone Warehouse: 12→78]
There were many exotic stones scattered on the ground outside the wooden wall, as well as a large number of Slugger corpses, all of which the Thorn Demons hadn't devoured.
Originally, after upgrading the arrow tower to level 2, there were still 20 exotic stones left.
But in just a short while, the shelter's arrow towers had consumed a total of 8 exotic stones, almost as many as it would take to build a new arrow tower.
Taking advantage of the Slugger King being scared away by the Thorn Demons,
everyone quickly went out through the gap in the wooden wall and retrieved all the exotic stones on the ground.
To retrieve all the exotic stones as quickly as possible, Li Wei also went out of the camp, running and touching the exotic stones as he went.
[Odd Stone Storage...]
[Odd Stones...]
...
[Odd Stone Storage: 246→248]
After confirming there were no more odd stones left on the ground, he quickly ran back to the camp.
Looking at the notifications constantly refreshing the shelter panel,
Li Wei grinned from ear to ear.
This was only what he had stored by touching the odd stones himself.
The other odd stones he had collected were piled up to the side, almost forming a small mountain.
Jason waved his hand, pointing to the odd stones on the ground: "Boss, there are more here!"
[Odd Stone Storage: 248→324]
The pile of odd stones on the ground disappeared, and the storage room contained many more odd stones.
Compared to him, the others had collected far fewer odd stones.
After all, he could store them directly, but others had to collect them one by one.
He had tried setting permissions before, but permissions for buildings like the Odd Stone Storage couldn't be added to others at the moment.
Li Wei opened the Odd Stone Storage panel.
324 odd stones!
A windfall!
First, repair the damaged buildings!
2-meter wooden walls, three level 1 arrow towers.
Fifty stones vanished instantly from the stone warehouse.
The breach in the wooden wall was plugged, restoring it to its original condition.
The arrow towers on the west, north, and south sides were also rebuilt.
Everything was restored to its state before the Thorn Demon attack.
Li Wei noticed that some sections of the wooden wall, while undamaged, had suffered minor damage from the Shambling Demon horde's attack.
[Repairing the broken level 1 wooden wall cost 24 stones
.] Wow
. That's a lot.
The wooden wall must have been quite badly damaged.
After all, the Shambling Demon horde's main attack was only directed at a few sections of the wall.
24 stones disappeared from the warehouse.
After a flash of white light, the wooden wall was perfectly restored.
250 stones remained.
Li Wei clicked his tongue; 250 didn't sound good.
He looked at the four arrow towers surrounding the camp; only one was a level 2 tower, the rest were level 1.
Upgrade! Upgrade them all to level 2!
[Original Stone Warehouse: 250→190]
The three level 1 arrow towers turned into afterimages under the flashing white light of the original stones.
Upgrade direction: all attack speed.
Li Wei's original plan was to upgrade the outermost arrow towers of the camp to attack speed-type towers for clearing mobs.
The arrow towers in the middle of the camp would be upgraded to high-attack-type towers for dealing with elite enemies.
This way, whether clearing mobs or dealing with bosses, they would have strong defensive capabilities.
Now that the arrow towers have been upgraded, shouldn't the wooden walls also be upgraded?
Li Wei walked to the wooden wall.
[Upgrade Cost: 20 Original Stones/meter]
Including the wooden gate, the current length of the shelter's wooden walls is 38 meters.
That means that upgrading requires 760 original stones.
The required number of original stones is too many.
He only obtained a little over 300 original stones after killing so many monsters tonight.
Just upgrading the wooden walls would require dealing with two waves of attacks of the same magnitude as before.
"I'll think about it later."
The required number of original stones is too many, so the wooden wall upgrade plan has to be put on hold for now.
There were 190 strange stones left; they could keep them for later.
Li Wei picked up the heavy shield and put it back in the warehouse.
However, unlike before when it was casually placed, this time he carefully leaned the shield against the wall.
After all, it was a hero who had defended the camp.
After three waves of attacks from the Slugger Demons and the Thorn Demons, there weren't many bullets left in the warehouse.
The group silently reloaded their ammunition and returned to their battle positions.
Li Wei stood on the watchtower, silently watching the direction the Slugger Demon King had fled.
The crisis was not over.
The Slugger Demon King had only escaped under the threat of the Thorn Demons; it wasn't dead.
With its intelligence, it would definitely return.
Li Wei originally intended to upgrade all four level 2 arrow towers around the camp to level 3.
However, after some thought, he realized
that if he upgraded them directly, the Shambling Demon King might not attack after seeing the camp's defenses strengthened.
Upgrading the arrow towers after the Shambling Demon King returned and launched another attack would catch him off guard.
He might even be able to kill the Shambling Demon King on the spot!
When he killed the Crawling Demon Lord, not only did it drop rare items and a Doomsday Map, but it also dropped a considerable amount of Strange Stones at the time.
He wondered what good items the Shambling Demon King, who was much stronger than the Crawling Demon Lord, would drop.
Moreover,
even if he couldn't kill the Shambling Demon King, he could still gain from killing a large number of Shambling Demons and obtaining Strange Stones.
Time passed slowly.
In the distant gray fog, the figures of Crawling Demons and Shambling Demons appeared intermittently.
Several times when Shambling Demons appeared, Li Wei's eyes lit up.
But he quickly realized that these were just wild Shambling Demons wandering in the darkness, attracted by the sanctuary.
Without even firing a shot, the arrow towers and torches were enough to handle it.
After waiting for an unknown amount of time, the Staggering Demon King still hadn't appeared.
Seeing this, Li Wei had no choice but to shout to the others,
"You all go and rest. I'll call you if anything happens. We have other things to do tomorrow."
The others looked at each other and nodded to Li Wei.
"Okay, boss."
After the arrow towers were upgraded, the role of the people was greatly reduced.
Even with rifles, shooting consumed ammunition.
Once this batch of ammunition was used up, the rifles would probably be completely retired.
At that time, the role of the citizens in the shelter would no longer be as defensive units.
Li Wei sat on the platform of the watchtower, gazing absently at the endless darkness around him.
He recalled that just a week ago, he was still wandering the streets here.
Now he was the lord of the shelter.
He would have to fight monsters that seemed to come from nowhere at night.
The thick fog kept churning and rolling, the impenetrable darkness obscuring the sky, and he didn't even know if there was a moon.
He had no shirt.
The night wind carried a slight chill, but fortunately, his body had been strengthened, so it felt quite comfortable.
Li Wei looked up at the sky; the torchlight, like an eggshell, protected the shelter.
Hopefully, no more flying monsters would appear.
Li Wei's thoughts wandered.
Suddenly, a crawling demon emerged from the darkness and entered the gray fog.
It cautiously probed the edge of the light circle, making a rustling sound, as if it could smell the human flesh and blood within.
But it feared the light, so it frantically crawled back and forth outside the circle.
Li Wei suddenly smiled. In
the first few nights, he and Jason had used the rustling sound to locate the crawling demons, then dragged them into the light circle and killed them.
That must have been how the crawling demons behaved in the thick fog back then.
Time continued to pass.
He didn't know how much time had passed.
The oppressive feeling of the night dissipated, disappearing into the horizon like a tablecloth being pulled away.
Dawn broke.
Li Wei slowly rose from the watchtower, stretching his stiff back from sitting for most of the night. He had spent
the latter half of the night anxiously waiting for the Sluggish Demon King, even setting traps for it, but it hadn't appeared by dawn.
Perhaps it was frightened by the Thorn Demon?
He wasn't sure.
Seeing that the demon wasn't coming, Li Wei didn't dare let his guard down and remained seated on the watchtower. After all ,
it offered the best view, overlooking both the camp and the outside world.
The people in the cabins hadn't gotten up yet; they had all stayed up late guarding the camp. Li Wei climbed down the ladder from the watchtower and left the camp. The sun slowly rose from the horizon. The warm sunlight shone on him, and Li Wei exhaled the suffocating breath he had accumulated during the night. It was just that there were quite a few Sluggish Demon corpses killed by the Thorn Demon last night, spoiling the scene. Monsters don't disappear when killed by their own kind, nor do they drop strange stones. So how do I clean up these corpses...? "Hmm?" Li Wei turned his head and noticed that the corpses of the Staggering Demons on the ground seemed to vaporize and gradually disappear after the sunlight rose. That makes things easier. Moreover, the disappearing corpses left behind strange stones. So that works too. Anyway, I got the strange stones. Li Wei walked over and stored the strange stones one by one. Perhaps because of the large-scale monster invasion last night, all ten animal traps had strange stones left on them, plus the harvest from last night's traps. After a series of notifications on the shelter panel, 70 more strange stones appeared in the strange stone warehouse. Not bad, not bad, quite a harvest. Suddenly, he felt as if he had stepped on something. He lifted his foot and looked at the spot where his shoe had just been placed. A small, yellowish-green grass seedling broke through the soil from underground. [Eternal Night Grass] [A weed that still grows strong and lush in the endless night] Li Wei stared thoughtfully at the Eternal Night Grass, then looked up and looked outside the shelter. His shelter was located in a park. This park was once lush with vegetation and had a pleasant environment. However, after the first night, it was completely eroded away. Now, scattered patches of Eternal Night Grass are sprouting on the land outside the shelter. The plants are reviving. Li Wei couldn't help but think this. However, the regrowing plants were completely different from the original ones. Perhaps soon, the ecology of this wasteland would be restored. Li Wei looked back at the shelter surrounded by wooden walls. Four arrow towers stood beside the walls. In the center of the camp stood two towering buildings. He opened the shelter's control panel. [Level 2 Shelter] [Lord: Li Wei] [Buildings] [Level 3 Torch: Enhances the torch's weakening effect on monsters, inflicting minor, continuous burning damage on monsters within the torch's range] [Production: Level 2 Workbench *1, Level 2 Farmland *2] [Defense: Level 1 Wooden Wall *38, Level 2 Arrow Tower *4, Level 3 Arrow Tower *1, Level 1 Wooden Gate *1] [Civilian: Level 1 Wooden House *4] [Other: Level 1 Stone Warehouse *1, Level 1 Citizen Management Office, Level 1 Watchtower] [Stones: 260] [Citizens: 8] [Upgrade Requirements: Have 20 Citizens] A week has passed since the apocalypse. The shelter's buildings have evolved from a single Level 1 torch to a camp protected by wooden walls. He took a deep breath, a sense of satisfaction welling up within him. This was his shelter, his territory. Footsteps gradually echoed through the camp. Li Wei turned back to the camp and found everyone already up. "Boss!" "Boss." Li Wei nodded to everyone. After last night's thrilling battle, Li Wei noticed that everyone in the camp seemed different. He didn't know how to describe it, but it was as if they were more united. "Are you all hungry? Grab something to eat." Everyone went into the storage hut, picked out some of their favorite flavors from the pile of canned goods, and ate for breakfast. The food reserves were plentiful; based on the current consumption, it would last at least a few months, if not half a year. That is, if there were only these people in the shelter. If the population increased, the time would be shorter. Fortunately, the first plot of farmland had already been planted; they could expand the planting area once it matured. It just seemed that eating potatoes all the time would lead to malnutrition. However, since the plants were slowly recovering, they would definitely be able to find more suitable crops to grow in the future.
Li Wei looked at the two farmlands beside the wooden wall.
He had previously developed the farmlands in the western part of the camp, and last night's monster attack hadn't damaged the crops at all.
Otherwise, a dozen or so Thorn Demons would have destroyed a lot of the potatoes planted there.
He opened the farmland panel.
[Level 1 Farmland]
[Planted: Potatoes]
[Distance to Maturity: 1.8/100]
[Upgrade Cost: 10 Exotic Stones]
The progress bar showed an increase of 1.5 from yesterday noon to this morning.
It seemed that the 100 on the progress bar didn't refer to days, but simply progress.
Calculated this way, it wouldn't take a hundred days at all; about seventy or eighty days would be enough.
However, since there was a progress bar
, upgrading the farmland might speed up the crop growth. Anyway,
he had enough Exotic Stones now, so he might as well upgrade and see.
[Original Stone Warehouse: 260→250]
[Level 1 Farmland→Level 2 Farmland]
[Level 2 Farmland]
[Plant: Potatoes]
[Distance to Maturity: 1.8/100]
[Upgrade Cost: 20 Original Stones]
The farmland remains at four square meters, unchanged.
Even the full progress bar is still at 100.
[Please select upgrade direction]
[1. Slightly increase crop growth speed]
[2. Slightly increase crop yield]
[3. The farmland can plant more types of plants]
Li Wei looked at the upgrade direction panel that popped up on the farmland.
As a building for planting crops, the farmland offers a direct improvement in both growth speed and yield.
Looking at the third option, he pondered for a moment.
What did "more types of plants" mean?
Did it refer to planting cash crops?
Logically, the farmland building only provides a piece of land for planting.
What to plant is up to the person planting.
But this farmland is, after all, a building constructed from original stones.
And the shelter's construction panel also displayed a sentence.
[Crops can be grown]
This means that if other types of plants are planted on the current farmland, they probably won't grow.
Therefore, the third upgrade direction is to unlock more things that can be grown on the farmland.
This upgrade direction will only be needed when the shelter develops and starts to require cash crops.
In other words, it's not very useful at the moment.
Li Wei crossed out the third option and began to ponder the first two.
After thinking for a moment, he chose the first direction.
The immediate priority is to plant a new batch of potatoes to expand production.
Upgrading crop yields can wait until the planting scale expands later.
After Li Wei finalized the upgrade direction, the farmland's illusory form solidified.
Everyone was already used to the sudden changes in the buildings within the shelter. However, each building upgrade resulted in a change in appearance. Why was the farmland still exactly the same as before? Li Wei was also a little puzzled. Aside from the panel, he couldn't see any difference from before. But considering that the farmland itself was just a pile of soil, any changes would
n't be noticeable . Li Wei spent another 10 exotic stones to upgrade another farmland, choosing growth rate as the upgrade direction for both. While he was upgrading the farmland, everyone had finished their canned food, solving the breakfast problem. "Boss, what's the plan for today?" Jason asked after finishing his meal. "Let me see." Li Wei took out the roller from his pocket and slowly pulled out the Doomsday Map. The yellow dot in the south direction of the map was still there; he wondered if there had been a monster attack last night. However, since they've survived for so long, it's worth a visit to the shelter. His gaze shifted to the top of the map. Since mining the strange stone vein, the northern part of the map had been completely empty. But just now, upon opening the map, he was pleasantly surprised to find another strange stone vein icon about 800-900 meters above the yellow dot of the shelter. However, this icon was smaller than the previous one. He observed it closely; not only was it smaller, but the color was also lighter. Li Wei pondered for a moment, figuring it was probably related to the vein's yield. Perhaps this strange stone vein didn't yield as much as the last one. Regardless, he still had to go. After all, it was still a strange stone gain. One kilometer east of the camp, there was a blue line—the Los Angeles River. Currently, the camp's food could be replenished through farmland. But water was entirely dependent on captured and previously looted bottled water. Every bottle consumed was one less available. Moreover, planting crops wasn't a one-and-done affair; it also required a lot of water. Even though the water in the warehouse was enough to last a long time. However, to be on the safe side, they still needed to check the riverbank. Levi finalized the tasks for the day. First, send people to the location marked by the strange stone icon to the north to dig for strange stones. Second, find a drinkable water source at the river location to the east. Third, scout the area near the shelter to the south to see if the two sides could communicate and exchange what they needed; even better if they could trade what they needed. After finalizing the tasks, Levi began assigning tasks. He gathered everyone around him, pointing to the map and saying, "Philip, Winnie, your task today is to go here." Levi pointed to the newly appeared strange stone icon. "A strange stone vein has appeared here. You've seen strange stone veins before, the kind you dug up." "Bring guns. It's okay if you don't finish mining; just be careful." Winnie noted the location of the icon on the map and nodded slightly. Philip placed his right hand on his chest, bowing politely to indicate he understood. "Boss, don't worry, I will execute your mission perfectly." "Okay, I trust you." Winnie gave Philip a strange look, as if to say, "It's just mining, is it really necessary to go to such lengths?" Philip subtly withdrew his movement, adopting an expression of attentive listening. He didn't say much to Winnie's puzzled look. In the initial stages of the shelter's establishment, everyone needed to work and contribute their value. He believed that as the number of people in the shelter increased, some would need to rise from frontline producers to managers for easier management. Those of them, the early adopters, would be crucial candidates for shelter management. The better they performed now, the greater the rewards would be later. As for whether the shelter would be destroyed by monsters one day , Philip didn't think so. Last night's perilous situation had been averted by the boss. Not only had it been averted, but the shelter had become even stronger than before. He believed that the Butcher Gang's previous shelter couldn't have withstood last night's monster attack. Growing stronger in the face of crisis was a symbol of strength. He had graduated from a prestigious university, but instead of joining a well-known corporation like his classmates, he proactively joined a three-person accounting firm. He saw in the firm's owner a confidence befitting a strong person. So he loyally assisted him with his professional knowledge and talent. Subsequently, the company expanded step by step and eventually went public. He rode this wave and became the firm's second-in-command. Li Wei coughed lightly and continued assigning tasks while looking at the map.
"Taylor, Jonathan, Jamie, you three go here." Levi pointed to the yellow dot at the bottom of the map.
"This is a shelter. Go scout it out, take your guns, and see what the situation is like. Try to be friendly and see if you can communicate with them. If they are hostile, don't force it. Make sure you stay safe."
The three memorized the location of the yellow dot.
Levi looked at Jonathan and instructed him, "You're a good shot, so be careful. Don't gamble on someone's friendliness in the apocalypse. If there's danger..."
Levi made a firing motion.
Understanding the meaning behind Levi's words, Jonathan nodded vigorously.
"Jason, you come with me to the river. It would be best if we could find a water source."
"As for Matteo, you just stay at the camp. The farmland still needs your care."
Levi suddenly remembered something: "Oh, right, I'll give you access to the wooden city gate."
The wooden city gate cannot be opened from the outside unless someone opens it from the inside. Otherwise, it can only be entered by sabotage.
There are two ways to open and close the wooden city gate: one is to open it manually from the inside.
Another method involves controlling the switches via a panel.
Originally, only the shelter lord could operate the panels, but with the establishment of the Citizen Management Office, this authority can now be granted to citizens.
After last night, Philip and the others had already spent two nights in the shelter.
Becoming citizens of the shelter grants them permissions.
Levi had initially thought he would need to stay in the shelter for a full 48 hours.
It turned out he only needed to survive two nights.
He opened the wooden gate panel on the shelter's control panel and granted the others the authority to open and close the gate.
Anna was still a child, and fearing she might wander off to play, Levi didn't grant her that permission for safety.
Everyone enthusiastically controlled the wooden gate's opening and closing.
After assigning tasks, everyone except Matteo left the shelter with their missions.