Chapter 17:

I took a deep breath, and I thought to myself, 'there is going to be a light shower in round about 2 hours, till then I can probably train myself to sense the water in the monsters blood, that will maybe give me a slight advantage.' Then I proceeded to try and sense my own blood for the next 30 minutes. I made a small amount of progress, it seemed with continued use of runes, I can learn to use my other runes faster.

"Joseph, how's the planning going?" Symin asked.

"It's going as well as it can, can you spread weapons around the front of the tech lab?" I asked with a smile on my face. "My use of the magnesis rune has made plenty of progress, I can control up to ten different weapons at a time, so it's a somewhat viable attack method. Also can you spread water across the ground?"

"The water is the easier part, we reinvented that device you were talking about in the first few weeks you were here, the pump. So we can just take water from that, and spread it around the place." Symin said while walking towards what's next to the farm, a pump, "The weapons are the hard part, we only have a few proper weapons, and everything else is just tools. Is that all right?"

"They'll do, it's just that we'll need more of them… *Sigh* because our tools aren't very durable, at least in comparison to properly forged weapons." I said sighing mid-sentence, "Now if we had more time, we could have put up proper defences around the land, but then again we only have so many people to work on said defences, so that idea is not viable. Now then let's prepare. Be sure to place the weapons away from the water." As soon as I said that I picked up a few bucket and filled them to the brim with water, after doing so I placed them in several different spots, in small cluster of 3. My plan passed through my head, a grin appeared on my face. We made a small outpost a few minutes down the hill, to put some ground between the enemies and the final lines.

The time passed quickly, Symin and I chatted about possible uses of my runes, then a horn blared out from town, pretty impressive that it reaches all the way here. We prepared to fight. It turned out nothing was going to happen for the next 20 minutes, when the first monster was visible going up the hill, I pulled out two arrows. The enemy is a black Bokoblin, I throw them as far as I can manually, due to lack of a bow, so that the Bokoblin will underestimate me, allowing for a quick and easy kill.

The Bokoblin walked up the hill, quickly nearing our small outpost, it spotted Symin and happened to pass the arrows I threw earlier, and as soon as it drew its weapon, I propelled the arrows deep into the back of its skull. The sound of penetration filled the air, a solid thunk and a small squelch, was all it took to end that Bokoblin's life. I walked over to the dying Bokoblin, and activate my extraction rune, I hid the essence orb, and dragged the corpse over to the side of the road, after that I laid 10 arrows around the road.

Another Bokoblin walked up the pathway, alongside two other Bokoblins, I shot the arrows towards the base of the neck, if they're anything like a human: then this will put them out of commission forever, or at least until they revive with the next blood moon. I watched as I saw them fall harmlessly to the ground, I walked towards them, they started to scream, I took out my sword and cut their heads open, extracting their essence. I carried their bodies off the road, I piled them onto the last Bokoblin, to calm my nerves I looked at the blue flame.

There was a scream that filled the air, a small horde, numbering around 6, of Bokoblins, with one Moblin, ran up the hill towards me and Symin. I pulled out my sword from its sheathe, corrected my posture, and threw some custom made caltrops on the ground. The monsters ran towards me ignoring the things I threw on the ground, only to end up with their feet having puncture wounds and a hole through each of their skulls, R.I.P monsters.

I carved, *cough*, harvested their bodies for anything of worth, Moblin and Bokoblin guts, their horns, and their weapons. Because who's going to look a gift horse in the mouth, and a spiked Moblin bat does more damage than my sledgehammer, if you ignore the almost useless bats that the Bokoblins use.

I almost couldn't wait for the next wave of enemies to start.