Ultimate Gamer System: Factory Must Grow!-Chapter 45: First blood

The set of notifications that swarmed Theo’s vision…

Didn’t match the reality around him, for nothing of significance appeared to happen.

No loud growls or beastly cries came to haunt him from beyond the limits of his walls, nor did a noise of something attempting to storm them appear.

By every means possible, this just… continued as they were, save for the blaring red "invasion" part flashing at the top of Theo’s vision.

’This doesn’t feel like much of an invasion at all,’ Theo thought, gritting his teeth as he tried to ignore the stinging pain of his wrist. ’And that reminds me…’ He looked down at his hand while making sure to rest the butt of his arbalest down on his stomach. ’I really need to find a better way of baiting the monsters out, huh?’

Then, it happened.

At first, it came like a whisper.

A distant echo, a distorted version of a sound that didn’t resemble anything Theo could think of.

Yet, as seconds ticked by and those cries grew louder, less distorted, things slowly started to grow more and more… familiar?

’It’s like… a mix of a hyena’s laugh, a dog’s growl, and… a parrot’s cry?’ Theo squinted his eyes, struggling to make sense of this weird sound.

Yet, regardless of whether he could make sense of it or not, those cries continued to grow bigger, louder, and most importantly… closer.

’They are coming,’ Theo thought, standing up from where he had ended up sitting as he waited before picking up his arbalest, bolts ready in his hand and teeth, as he started to walk around his underground trench.

In his hideout, the sounds only had the openings of his bunkers to come through. And that, as weird as it might seem, made the task of pinning down the general direction they came from all the easier.

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Bit by bit, Theo continued to walk around the perimeter of his defenses, judging by his hearing alone whether or not the cries grew louder than expected or, on the opposite, remained constant.

’It’s coming from here,’ he thought once the cries turned weirdly constant, forcing him to turn around and retreat to the bunker he had left behind just now.

There, Theo squeezed through the narrow and rather low short entrance, only to enter a space barely a meter by a meter wide and long, only a meter and a half high, making it impossible for him to stand up properly.

This place wasn’t built for comfort, though. What it lacked in terms of accommodation, however, it paid back more than enough with its sturdiness, simplicity… and the small window, merely a quarter of a block high and wide, just big enough for Theo to aim through.

Pretty much as soon as Theo got to his position…

His towers finally came alive, as the sound of the metal strings snapping filled the air, followed by a faint whistle of something rocketing through the air, and finalized with a silent sound of the bolt crashing and some trees falling over.

’That strong?’ Unable to see the impact itself with the trees around his perimeter and then the stone wall erasing any and all possibility for Theo to spot anything from his spot barely above the ground, he could do nothing but observe the situation just like he did the approaching challengers— with his ears and ears alone.

The snapping sound, the whistle, and then the increasingly loud noise of the bolt lancea crashing into its target soon turned from a novelty into but an element of the background… while, quite noticeably, not a single change came to the health bars firmly etched into the bottom of Theo’s vision.

’Worthless, huh?’ he thought, daring not to utter his complaint out loud.

The last thing Theo wanted right now was to insult his system, only for it to get its justice in ways Theo couldn’t even begin to predict.

Snap! Whiff… Thump!

Snap! Whiff… Bang!

Snap! Whiff… RAWR?!

Finally, the lanceas found their target, as evident by the pained and surprised cry that came from the distance, followed by one of the ten health bars fading away, while two others decreased by a third.

’Splinters?’

Theo squinted his eyes, struggling to understand what could’ve caused the secondary damage.

After all, those lanceas that his siege ballistas were shooting, while heavy and iron-reinforced… were single-target projectiles rather than explosives.

Yet, upon closer inspection, it wasn’t the weird distribution of the damage that quickly took over all of Theo’s attention.

Wrathhounds (Level: 142)

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’Did their level just… increase?’

Having had no time to think about it earlier, Theo now turned his attention to the level discrepancy between what he could see above the health bars and the level displayed in the area information. And while the latter didn’t change…

"Oh, I get it," he whispered silently to himself as he shook his head not to lose his focus. ’Wrathhounds. Hounds that live on wrath, aren’t they?’

The snapping noise of the ballistas shooting continued. And before long, two more health bars vanished from Theo’s visual overlay, with one more further reduced to but a third of its original state. At the same time, however…

The level of the Wrathhounds worryingly grew above two hundred!

’That means, now each of those beasts is quite a bit stronger than that oilrat, huh?’

Gulping his saliva down, Theo continued to do what he had been doing ever since the invasion began… and waited in silence, not moving a single muscle.

The siege ballistas continued to shoot… but produced no further results before suddenly all turning silent at the same time.

And judging by just how close those weird cries of those hounds became, Theo didn’t need anyone to explain to him why.

’They are at the wall.’

A terrifying realization in its own right, but one Theo could do absolutely nothing about.

With all of his active defenses centered around this one point of resistance he manned, his walls… became nothing more than an obstacle those hounds would, sooner or later, breach.

Be it by outright destroying them, digging out a tunnel, or maybe even jumping over, they were going to make their way to the space between the stone wall and the palisade, soon to appear in Theo’s direct vicinity.

’It’s about to get started, for real this time,’ Theo thought, taking one last calm breath, only for a thump coming from worryingly close up ahead to confirm his thoughts.

Out of everything… it was this powerless waiting that got to Theo’s mind the most, irritating his mind like an itch located just outside of his hand’s reach.

Contrary to that kind of itch, however, all he had to do to scratch it was to pull with his finger, releasing the lock of his arbalest to send the bolt toward the target…

But with no target to aim at, doing so would be just a waste of a bolt.

’Wait, or is it…?’

Shocked by his own realization, Theo suddenly felt the weight of the bolt he kept at the ready in his teeth, pretty much right as more and more thumps followed the original one, only for his siege ballistas to speak out again.

Snap! Swish!

BANG!

Now that their targets were much closer, the sound of the lanceas crashing into the trees turned from but a distant noise into a thunderous roar, only hinting at the kind of power those supposedly massive bolts carried with them.

With the targets much closer and unsteady from however they had passed through the wall, however, the ballistas finally proved their mettle, decreasing the number of health bars to just four, two of which were only hanging by a third of their original state.

Yet, Theo was done waiting. And as happy as he was with his automated defenses taking off such a massive portion of the task off his shoulders… he, more than anyone, knew of the massive flaw those siege ballistas came with.

For, judging by just how loud the results of their attacks became, they maybe had just one more shot before the beasts would cross the point of their minimal range, rendering half of Theo’s towers useless.

’Hurry it up!’

Clumsy due to the self-caused injury to his hand, Theo removed the original bolt from the bed of his arbalest before replacing it with the bloodied bolt he kept in his mouth as bait.

Originally, he aimed to just keep it at the ready, to direct where those Wrathhounds would attack him from…

But now, he found a much better use for it. One that would give him just a little bit more edge that, as he was starting to believe, seeing how the levels of the remaining four Wrathhounds grew to over three hundred, he was going to be in desperate need of.

’It’s all or nothing,’ Theo thought as he finally inserted the bolt into the heavy crossbow’s slit, took aim… and pulled the trigger, sending the bolt right into the side of one of the trees located well within his view.

’Now, speed is all that matters!’

Pang! Swish!

BOOM!

Theo’s siege ballistas spoke out again… only to grow perfectly silent, their last salvo yielding no results whatsoever.

At last, the battle for Theo’s manor was about to enter its deciding phase… a phase where Theo would be forced to take an active part.

’If only I thought about getting more of those towers…’ he lamented in his thoughts while pulling on the string of his crossbow back into a ready state, only to then quickly replace the bolt and raise his weapon up…

Only for the tree where he inserted his bloody bait to suddenly explode into pieces as a lion-sized hound of hell-born look leaped at… and through it.