[NR] Building That Platform - Chapter 548 (Patreon)

Overnight, Jason spent his free time setting up a platform for Rosha to snipe from. This turned out harder than he expected. Making the actual planks for it was easy enough, but figuring out how to set them on the roof was less than straightforward. After all, he hadn’t exactly built the building with a second floor in mind.

It would have been easier to make some attic space than it was to put a platform on the roof. In fact, Jason gave up on purely using the roof supports for this. Maybe if he could have built it at the bottom of the roof instead of the peak, it would have been possible with his current resources. Instead, he sourced two more sturdy logs to support the platform.

Jason figured he could manage with just a single extra log, but went with two so if one did get damaged, it would stay up. At least long enough for Rosha to jump off. The waves would go horribly wrong if she ended up in the middle of a bunch of monsters. To lose their ranged damage would be annoying.

That thought gave Jason a moment of pause. Though a viewpoint like that is almost unavoidable when dealing with situations without permanent consequences. It is part of why sects in his last life always left the chance of death in many of their competitions. If you cannot die, a person is more willing to do absurd things to try and advance. At the same time, it also built a weaker foundation for their willpower. Consequences are one of the major grindstones upon which willpower is sharpened.

At least in NeoRealm, while players don’t fear death, there are many ways to suffer permanent setbacks. Of course, just like in his last life, sometimes parents and organizations will blunt those consequences. The trope of the silk pants young master might tend towards exaggeration, but some people do end up like that. It can’t be helped when your backer has enough power and money to make anything you do free of consequences.

Jason shakes his head and focuses back on setting up the platform. To start with, it was a simple enough creation. All it took was effort to split some logs into planks and then smooth them. Sure, the planks weren’t uniform two by fours or anything, but he chose relatively straight logs and so they fit together to make a reasonable floor.

On top of that, coating a finger in Energy allowed Jason to carve across all the boards a pair of grooves angled so that they would be closer together on one side than the other. Simple enough, but when combined with a pair of straight sticks, prevent the planks from shifting around. That finished and the planks secured, there was only one thing missing, at least as far as most archers were concerned.

And it would stay that way. While it wouldn’t be the hardest to put up walls on the four sides to defend Rosha against ranged attacks. However, they both agreed that there was more value in keeping all escape routes open. No need to force her to jump over a wall to get out.

Besides, Jason was a bit biased against “mortal” defenses. Instead of having a wall between you and the enemy, it is much more effective to have something really sturdy that attracts ranged attacks. Any attack able to ignore that effect would have gone through an equivalent wall. And Jason would much rather notice an attack not diverting early on rather than only finding out the defenses aren’t enough when it crashes through the wall and spears you.

Either way, Jason doesn’t foresee any ranged attacks until maybe the last day. At least, as long as they don’t try and abuse height advantages too much. While the Deep Wilds aren’t active, they certainly can react and Jason could totally see a wave of flyers if everyone tried to just hide up a tree. In fact, he doubts that any defense would ever be enough to conquer an area without active fighting.

All he has to do is look at the kingdom’s settlements to see that. They have all the support they need and what happens? Out of the Deep Wilds, come tromping a bunch of giant beasts to rain on their parade. When there are undoubtedly Kaiju sized beasts hiding in there, you could actually see these much smaller beasts as the Deep Wilds going easy on them. Then again, the fact we can take any territory is a miracle in and of itself, because the Deep Wilds don’t have to follow NeoRealm’s rule. All it would need to win is a monster with over 499 levels.

Not to say that you should just stand in the middle of a clearing and challenge the world. Defenses clearly help lessen the danger. Plus, in a way, the defense you can put up, could be seen as a part of your strength, so not putting them up is like fighting with an arm tied behind your back. So yeah, an annoying balancing act where you have to guess how much is too much with very nasty consequences.

It would not shock Jason to hear that some of the fallen settlements got stomped by something much bigger after upgrading their defenses a wee bit too far. Though of course there is the flip side of the coin. Not everything will be staged fights. So, you do need defenses for normal monsters and such. And all of that was a bit more than Jason wanted to think about, so he went to bed.

And it was a peaceful night, well, nothing attacked. There was a bit too much tension in the air to truly be called peaceful. Still, it allowed everyone to get a full night’s sleep. Which meant they were up bright and early, ready for the challenges that would come that day. And breakfast. They weren’t exactly going to have time for lunch, after all.