The final few weeks had passed without much fanfare or events. He just continued making his traps until finally the timer counting down his days soon reached zero. He had kind of expected the system countdown to give him hours after the day timer had finished but apparently not. Perhaps the system just wanted to keep fucking with him and have him continually guess how many hours were actually in a full day.

  “At least the system didn't magically teleport all the armored buffalo on top of you. With how much you talk about it being a little shit I could have seen that happening.”

  “The only thing making me think it didn't automatically do that was because it didn't think of it first.” he grumbled while throwing a glance around to see if the system would now take that opportunity to do so. When nothing happened he nodded satisfied and carefully made his way back to the makeshift wall he had constructed.

  It took him several hours even with running at his top speed to get back to the safety of his territory. It really went to show just how many traps he made and how much distance he had covered. He definitely wouldn't have been able to get this far if he hadn't been pulling quadruple Duty with all of his manifested arms helping with the trap making and working at all hours.

  He had even leveled up “explosive art” and “trap making” again because of it. He did have to wonder though if the skill “surprise attack!” would trigger when the traps did or if it would even count as a surprise attack if the buffalo were to expect traps happening. Questions for later.

  He stuck to his original plan of putting lethal and non-lethal pit traps along the center and explosive traps along both the sides of the strip. Hopefully with all the explosions happening he would attract several of the E grade monsters from the E-grade zone to find out what all the commotion was and that could hopefully help take care of any Buffalo that might accidentally run into the zone to dodge an explosion.

  “ Speaking of monsters. That weasel is still staring at you.”

  He looked over and saw the weasel standing on a branch in one of the trees in the E-grade Zone continually glaring at him so Quill decided to call out. “Hey, if any of the Buffalo try to run around my little barricade and step into the E-grade Zone you'll get them for me right?”

  “Don't talk to it!” Grey complained.

  The weasel let out a small sneeze and shook his fur which could have been a no or a yes as far as he knew. Either way he would hope for the best.

  “Alright.” he spoke more to himself than anything else. “Time to get ready.”

  “ Oh no.” Greys voice took on a dreaded tone “Please tell me you aren't thinking about using that thing.”

  “I read the instructions and it seemed pretty straightforward. Plus with my energy manifestation, I can easily use it without the need of any potential extra people.” he responded as he started looking through his storage ring

  “It's not a question of if you're able to use it, it's a question of if you're able to hit anything.”

  “You are going to look mighty silly when I one shot the buffalo herd leader and continually kill Buffalo from a distance.” he proudly declared as he pulled out all of the components needed for the repeater scorpion along with a ton of big, heavy duty bolts for it.

  All of these materials that made up this contraption were of high-end f grade material with even some e-grade parts as well. There were even enchantments according to the system shop that increased its power, range and penetration. This bad boy was going to put in some heavy work!

  “Remind me to petition the system to increase your insanity ailment to extreme. Doesn’t your earth have a saying about the definition of insanity means doing the same thing over and again and expecting different results?”

  “Blah, blah blah. That’s all I am hearing. Now let me set up my scorpion in peace before the buffalo get here.”

  He finished setting everything up including equipping all of his scorpion bolts with something called explosive jelly. According to the description they would give off a fiery explosion when lit up. Naturally he wasn't going to light them now but he did have them stored in bags that he'd already tested would explode after a certain amount of time. Plus his own skill “explosive art” allowed him to delay the explosion at least a little bit.

  Also, as it turned out, explosions were not just subjected to fire. Apparently the system classified other things as an explosion too and thus allowed his skill to work. There were also electrical explosions, force explosions, air explosions, poisonous explosions, watery explosions and probably a bunch of others that he hadn't found or tested yet. However most of his explosive traps were fire, air or electrical in this instance.

  Fire seemed like it would do a lot of damage in general, electrical because the Buffalo had an outer layer of metal but they're insides still seemed like flesh and guts. Granted he was assuming that the metal was highly conductive but fingers crossed. The air explosions was just heavily compressed/pressurized air that emitted a ton of force when released. And while that didn’t sound that greatest on paper because of how heavy the buffalo likely were. When the traps were built along the very edge of the Cliffside he didn't really need them to throw the Buffalo far, just a little bit so they would plummet down into the ocean. Plus he had actually managed to rig up the air traps so they would reset themselves after a certain period of time which gave him all the more reason to set them up as he did.

  So with all of that said and done he looked back out over the strip, straining both his eyes and his ears to see if the buffalo were on their way. Still seeing no sign, he manifested his pillar to shoot up into the air and tried to see if he could spot any signs but still nothing.

  Scratching his chin he went back down to the wall and contemplated briefly. The timer wasn't overly clear on when the Buffalo would actually arrive just that the quest would start. Perhaps the quest indicated when the Buffalo would start migrating over as opposed to when they would start showing up? That felt like it was within the realm of possibility.

  Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

  “Or perhaps the Buffalo or migrating from a different angle and they're about to show up on the opposite end of the territory.”

  He just let out a snort. “If that is the case then there is no point in defending this territory because it will be literally impossible. If the system has decided to do that then oh well. All that's really going to happen is I lose a piece of territory that I didn't even know what to do with in the first place. Nothing of value would be lost.”

  “ Once again I can't help but feel like a whole bunch of people within this material plane would be having an aneurysm over such a statement.”

  “Textbook definition of not my problem.” He did briefly consider heading back out onto the strip and trying to make more traps. However it would take him a few hours to even get to where he needed to go. Then it would take a little bit of time to start making more traps and the last thing he wanted was to get caught flat-footed or stuck in a position where he was in the middle making a Trap and the buffalo were on their way not giving him enough time to get back to the wall. It just made sense for him to stay here.

  He didn't bother calling over his automatons just yet because they moved far faster than he could run and could easily make it to the wall in just a few minutes the moment he spotted any sign of the buffalo in the distance. That was assuming they didn’t sneak up on him somehow.

  So without anything else to do that he could immediately think of, he decided to start working and pursuing a new hobby of his. He quickly pulled out a bunch of ingredients and some cooking utensils before striking up a fire to get some heat going. He was definitely thinking of stew today.

  He still hadn't bought any food above F-grade but the idea of eating something that's E-grade and potentially in the future D-grade did make his mouth water uncontrollably. The hope and ideas for future delicious Foods was what made him take up cooking to begin with. Hell, the system even thought to reward him for it as well. As he had earned a skill and an achievement a few months ago from this pursuit.

  Cooking (Lvl 3)

  There are many traits and skills that benefit those who do not wish to see combat. Cooking is often considered highly valuable yet so very rarely pursued to the higher levels.

  This skill scales with skill level. Potentially increases the positive health benefits and taste of your dishes

  Congratulations you have earned the achievement “food connoisseur”

  Chop, Chop, churn, churn. Hope you made something yummy or at the very least, not poisonous.

  This achievement is earned through creating four or more dishes that you are truly satisfied with.

  He had obviously leveled up cooking a couple more times since he had gotten the skill and it actually inspired him to start experimenting more with foods that he didn't know about or were weird looking. Some were successful and had even ended up in his rotation of delicious foods. Others not so much. He hadn't made anything to the point that he felt like throwing up but there were certainly some dishes that would require a stronger stomach than he possessed.

  As he started to cook the stew from all of his ingredients, he jumped back up onto the wall and once again tried to see if there was anything at all but sadly still nothing. Knowing that there was a large fight that had a very real possibility of his death being just around the corner but not knowing when it would be seemed almost worse than what the actual fighting would be like. Too many unknowns and of course his mind started to race and question anything and everything.

  It would have been really nice if Ssevinac and the rest of the rat kin actually showed, whether it was before the battle or hell he'd even settle for during it. Just some extra help or maybe even somebody to talk to would be nice.

  “What am I? Chopped liver? You can talk to me!”

  “Somebody I don’t actively hate and want to get rid of.”

  “See, you keep saying that but I feel like this is more just you trying to convince yourself more than anything.”

  “You know you keep saying that but I feel like you're just trying to convince yourself that I apparently have feelings for you which are non-existent. You know if the system calls me insane so I can't imagine what kind of insanity ailment status you have.”

  “ I don't have anything with the system.” was her only response and that gave him some slight pause.

  “Wait, you don't have a menu or the system trying to get you quests or anything like that?”

  “Nope! When I got here I basically beelined it towards you. I don't think the system had a chance to even register me before we merged.”

  He frowned a little at that. “And the system decided to show up shortly after you did…Don't tell me you brought the system here to Earth.”

  “ It's a possibility that I won't rule out. I'm pretty sure I caused the system to freak out when I came to this material plane and it started chasing me but obviously was a little too slow.”

  He sighed. In truth he always kind of suspected she was responsible for the system showing up in one way or another so he wasn't as outwardly angry at the confession. Though calling it a confession would probably mean she felt some remorse which she clearly didn't. However there was one other thing she said that bothered him.

  “So you mentioned coming to this ‘Material plane’. Are you implying that there is something more than this Multiverse we're living in currently as the system calls it?”

  He could have sworn he saw her grin from ear to ear. “Didn't I mention that there was more to this little so-called Multiverse then you could ever possibly imagine. That's all I'll say on the matter for now.”

  He wanted to argue but he knew she wouldn't budge on this matter. She likely got off on the idea of dangling potential information in front of him and then yanking it away just to tease him. So he wasn't going to play her game. Instead he decided to just focus on the stew which was just about ready.

  “Aw. Not even going to beg for a little bit? You're no fun.”

  He just shrugged and pulled out two bowls, dishing one for himself and then dishing the other before heading over to the E-grade zone where the weasel was.

  Said weasel continued to glare at him as he got closer. After manifesting a pair of elongated tongues and having them hold said bowl so he didn’t risk accidentally crossing the border. He carefully placed the bowl just inside the E-grade zone.

  The weasel went over to the bowl and quietly sniffed at it for a second before chuffing like it found the very meal to be below its high standard. Still it did eat with some enthusiasm which Quill took as a compliment as he made his way back to his own bowl of stew.

  “ Still can't believe you're trying to feed that weasel when you should be trying to think of ways to kill it.”

  “It's pretty adorable and in its own murderous way. I quite like the guy.”

  She didn't comment at that and Quill got to eat his food in silence for once.