927: Traps

Traps

Emery went back to the burned-down settlement that had been ravaged by hordes of Abyss creatures and started to rebuild the place. He began by forming a tall and thick wall that surrounded and protected the settlement from all directions, the wooden palisade alone was far from enough to face the threats on this planet.0

The reason he rebuilt and reinforced this wrecked settlement was that the place would be a midpoint to gather the survivors that had been rescued before moving them to the main base near the transport.

After the wall was completed, Emery proceeded to make deep pits in a few strategic spots around the settlement. By the time he was done, Arcana had returned bringing more Abyss creatures in tow. 

As expected, being enchanted by Arcana's skill, the creatures entered the pits Emery had made like brainless fools.

Unfortunately, even though the pits did serve their intended purpose, the Abyss creatures who fell slowly made their way out by climbing, causing both Emery and Arcana to rush their way to clean up those who weren't caught by the traps. 

"We should try a different kind of trap before luring more of them here," Emery said to Arcana, after they finished off all the Abyss creatures, beckoning him to work.

This time, Emery made the pits deeper with the wall steeper and leaned inwards. He also grew thorny vines in it to entangle the Abyss creatures that fell, so they couldn't easily climb their way up. Added with Arcana's skill that led them straight to the pits, the traps were finally able to successfully contain the creatures.

With this idea proved to be effective, Emery maximized the prowess of his Earth spells through the combination of [Soften Earth] and [Undermaster] to create bigger pits to trap more Abyss creatures.

By the next day, the two of them had managed to trap tens of thousands of Abyss creatures, ranging from stage 1 to stage 3. All of them tried their best to climb out of the pits that trapped them, but Emery's design successfully stopped them.

When he saw the cluster of Abyss creatures, a gasp escaped Arcana's mouth and a glint of desire flashed across his eyes. "There are so many of them already, we should kill them now!"

Once again, Emery ignored the kid-looking acolyte's words, because he had planned to keep these Abyss creatures for the other acolytes to farm for points, while at the same time gather as many Abyss creatures roaming around the settlement as possible. That way, the risk of danger would be greatly reduced when the survivors started their journey to this place.

But then, he realized too many of them had gathered. He couldn't possibly keep all of them trapped inside the pits like this, therefore he needed to step up his plan.

Turning his head to Arcana, Emery said, "We need to change the plan. You can kill every creature of this batch."

Upon hearing that, the kid-looking acolyte quickly became excited. Without further ado, he used his [Eye of Mistra] to control as many stage 3 Abyss creatures trapped inside the pits as possible and immediately ordered them to slaughter all stage 1 and stage 2 Abyss creatures around them.

Arcana's eyes lit up and a wide grin appeared on his face as he watched his point total skyrocket, increasing by hundreds and thousands in a matter of minutes. In the end, the stage 3 Abyss creatures also died by killing each other, courtesy of Arcana's order.

"Let's do more!" Arcana said excitedly, greed evident in his words.

"No," replied Emery in a stern tone. "This time, I need you to lead them to the shrine."

The place Emery mentioned was the peculiar Abyss nest where they managed to kill a stage 5 Abyss creature. It was actually situated just a hill over from the settlement.

Emery made his way to the Abyss nest and, with some modifications made to its entrance, it quickly became the ideal hole to trap and house a large number of Abyss creatures.

"Arcana, you can now proceed to lead as many Abyss creatures as you can to this place." Seeing the disgruntled look on Arcana's face, Emery calmly said, "Do it, and then I'll allow you to be the one to clean up the place later."

It seemed Arcana wasn't too happy with Emery's idea, he wasn't sure how much points he could get later, if he had to share the Abyss creatures with the other acolytes. However, on the other hand, he couldn't refuse Emery's order either. 

With this thought in mind, despite being conflicted and dissatisfied, the kid-looking acolyte still went ahead and began doing his part to contribute to the platoon.

At the same time, Emery saw the first group of survivors was starting to arrive at the settlement. Those who came were led by Yuri and his squad, and it didn't take long for the place to start to become noisy as it was crowded with people.

***

[Day three has passed.]

[Personal Points Ranking]

[Rank 6 - 355,495 points]

[Squad Points Ranking]

[Rank 31 - 976,225 points]

Emery had been busy making and setting traps, he himself had not earned many points since he killed the stage 5 Abyss creature on the first day. However, it seemed the Mineralized Warriors were really effective at getting him points, so he had managed to keep his rank.

In the span of 3 days, Klea and the others should have cleared a total of 18 Abyss nests. This meant that Emery's Mineralized Warriors managed to earn him an average of 15,000 points from each nest. This also meant that when his companions had cleared all 40 or so Abyss nests, he would pass the total points a privileged acolyte had to acquire.

As for the squad points, however, good news for his friends' group, but bad news for his own group. The fact remained that there were only three people in Emery's group including himself. They wouldn't be able to match the accumulated points of a 30-man squad, leaving them dead last on the leaderboard.

[Squad points ranking]

[Rank 1 - Squad 01 Eesho Nephilim]

[Rank 2 - Squad 02 Jinkan Nephilim]

[Rank 3 - Squad 11 Zach Talon]

[Rank 4 - Squad 04 Armand Nephilim]

[Rank 5 - Squad 12 Vida Themary]

[Personal points ranking]

[Rank 1 - Zach Talon]

[Rank 2 - Esho Nephilim]

[Rank 3 - Jinkan Nephilim]

[Rank 4 - Rofos Tigerson]

[Rank 5 - Vida Themary]

[Rank 6 - Emery Ambrose]

The squad rankings were overwhelmed by the Nephilims as half of the top five were occupied by them. The faction must have prepared something on their sleeve in order to make this happen.

As for the personal ranking to be led by the dragon bloodline Zach, it was something to be expected.

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