"So... this can enchant stuff? Seriously?" Sam asked as he looked at the black obelisk now standing in his office. "How does that work? Isn't that a whole complicated process for you?"

  Ashton shrugged. "It's complicated for me, but there are beings and people that can enchant things much more easily. Hell, someone with the 'Enchanter' class will have a much, much easier time than me as well, just because of the skills that they get. This thing will give a random enchantment at a random strength, somewhat proportionate to the amount of mana you put in."

  "That's really cool. Can I give it a shot?"

  "Have you awakened your spiritual sense yet?"

  "... Maybe?"

  With a smile, Ashton patted Sam's back. "If you can figure out how to manipulate your mana directly, then you can use it. Being fed mana is the activation condition. Since your skills use mana, you should figure it out relatively soon, especially as your 'Spirit' stat increases more. But... be careful. Some of the runes are very destructive."

  "Destructive? Like, dangerous?"

  "No, like, literally. I got the 'destruction' enchantment before. Everything enchanted with it will literally fall apart into dust. And, well... people can be enchanted, technically. So if someone was enchanted with destruction, they would, at best, lose a couple fingers. At worst, they would disappear without a trace beside a pile of sludge where they once stood."

  Sam felt his throat tighten up. That was... terrifying. "So what do we do if that enchantment shows up?"

  "Hm, I would say just hold random objects against it that you don't mind being destroyed until the enchantment is fully used up. It won't jump from that object onto the person holding it, so that's not too dangerous," Ashton explained. "Well, actually, there are some uses for that enchantment depending on the material. If you hold something made of wood against it, it will literally fall apart into the finest wood dust imaginable, so it's not useless. If you have the choice and that rune appears, hold something metallic against it and immediately drop it into some kind of bucket or something to collect the dust."

  "... Sure. But which one is the rune? Or should we just stay away from it without you around?"

  "I'll write down a list of all the elemental runes I know and what the effect of the corresponding enchantment should be, plus what the best item for it would be. I do actually want you guys to use them, because the more someone uses magic items, the easier it gets to awaken your spiritual senses." Ashton headed back to the door, finally set on actually heading outside. "But for now, come with me, I want to talk about what kind of walls to build."

  "What do you mean, 'What kind of walls to build'?" Sam asked confused, and Ashton just grinned at his friend. He took the bottle of whiskey from the Drunken Bear, and quickly called the spirit into his vessel. It was much easier to get the bear outside like that rather than walking downstairs and squeezing through the van again.

  Once downstairs in the lobby, Ashton quickly introduced Sabrina and Sam to each other. Sam seemed a bit taken aback hearing that she was a 'Gambler', but even Ashton was surprised by this.

  "... Why does a class like that even exist?" Sam asked, a bit confused. It wasn't something he asked directly to Sabrina's face, but rather just whispered to Ashton on the way out.

  Of course, that was a valid question. Why would the council make classes like 'Gambler' available to people when, what they really wanted, was for people to survive the apocalypse. Gambling wasn't exactly a valuable skillset either, all things considered. Ashton had asked himself that for a while, and though there was no clear confirmation for this anywhere, he was pretty certain this was the case.

  "I don't think the council made the system, they're probably just hijacking it for things like this," Ashton said. "The system, in general, is most likely just something that should exist alongside a society, so 'Gambler' being a thing would make a lot more sense then."

  "Oh... That... That makes sense, I guess..?" Sam let out, clearly not sure how to feel about that. Knowing that there were people in charge of this that made the active choice to put them through this suffering, rather than all this being a force of nature that the council was merely guiding them through, was a pretty big pill to swallow. Of course, people were already realising that the council wasn't some benevolent entity, and that they weren't actually being given some kind of 'opportunity', but this was still a whole other deal.

  Ensure your favorite authors get the support they deserve. Read this novel on the original website.

  Once back outside the barricade, Ashton looked around. The building was fairly new and had been constructed just a couple years ago, and you could really see it, too. The rest of the nearby buildings were relatively old, and the people within them had fallen victim to the monsters already, or tried to flee when everything first went down.

  The main reason why the people in Calibur's building survived was because Sam insisted on staying inside for the first wave of attacks. This area didn't have a lot of living spaces, so people most likely wanted to try their best to get home to be with their families.

  The building was surrounded by a small car park, to the right and back, though just a portion was encompassed by the barricade. To the left and front of the building were the adjacent roads. The road to the left of the entrance continued both alongside and away from the building, so there were essentially three directions you could go from here. At the same time, this was a good setup that allowed Calibur to take up a fair amount of space once just three walls were built, one along each of the roads.

  However, they had different ideas. Sam walked with Ashton to the other part of the car park, explaining that they wanted to take up this area next.

  "Why are you stopping here?" Ashton asked, a little confused. "Just build walls there, there, and there." He pointed down each of the roads. But Sam quickly shook his head.

  "We seriously don't have the materials for that. We could go into the other buildings here and take tables or furniture from there, but even then, I'm not sure if we would be able to build something solid enough. Rather than flimsy walls like that, we want to make smaller, extremely solid walls here."

  "Ah, okay, yeah that makes sense. Well, it's nothing to worry about for now, though." Ashton squatted down on the ground and placed his hand onto the road's asphalt. Quickly, the dark-grey gnome climbed out of the ground, and Ashton picked the elemental up with a smile.

  He also held forward the bottle of whiskey, and watched as black smoke climbed up from the ground, forming the body of the Drunken Bear, before dissipating and revealing the spirit's fur.

  "Okay, Drunken Bear, I'll make the bricks, you start building up the walls." Ashton cracked his knuckles as the bear nodded happily, but Sam seemed confused.

  "What do you mean, you'll 'make bricks'?"

  "Exactly what I'm saying. I'm going to use the gnome's help to make some bricks for a rudimentary wall. The only issue is that we don't have a proper adhesive yet, though we'll fix that later," Ashton explained. "For now, I'm going to make bricks that can be sort of slotted into each other for a stable base. A little bit like... lego bricks."

  "... Excuse me?"

  "Not exactly like that, obviously, just a little. Just so that the wall itself is stable enough to not fall over on its own, I'll make sure it's solidly set in place to hold off against monster attacks later."

  Sam didn't seem fully convinced, but he figured that Ashton knew what he was doing. "How do I help?"

  "I guess just help lay the bricks in the same pattern that the Drunken Bear does. Actually, if you can get the people working on the barricade to help out, we can get started with a second wall. The bear can work on one of the walls, and then the rest of you take a second."

  "Can the bear really take on on their own?"

  "Oh, yeah, definitely. The bricks will be pretty big and heavy, so the bear has an advantage there," Ashton squatted down. "Oh, but I'll be tearing apart the whole area. Can't really use the asphalt, but I'll repurpose the bricks from the car park and from some of the adjacent buildings."

  "Do you have to use them? The buildings around here, I mean... Like, what if the owners come back, and-"

  "Sam. The owners are most likely dead. Plus, most of these are office buildings, not living spaces, so I wouldn't even mind tearing them down completely for parts. But the vertical space they offer is too valuable for that, so I won't. For now. Then again, before long, a lot of the buildings here will collapse anyway..." For a few moments, Ashton was lost in thought. "Anyway, I'll use some materials from the car park, the buildings, and... yeah, probably part of the footpaths, too. Now, let's get started."

  While Sam went around to collect others that could help with the bricklaying, Ashton started preparing the road itself. He used the gnome to pull some of the concrete out of the ground until he reached some dirt. Usually he wouldn't dig this deep, but considering Ashton's plans to make the walls stay solid, he had to do it.

  He stacked up the asphalt on the side. It wasn't heat resistant enough to be used for a wall, so it was too much of a risk to use this. If there was a monster with fire magic, then the whole wall could collapse in on itself. With how strong some of the monsters here would get, it was already at risk until some more magical fortifications were added to the mix. In a perfect world, Ashton would enchant each of the bricks, but the materials he would use weren't the best for that, anyway.

  There were chances for this later on. This wouldn't be the last wall to be built, anyway.

  Ashton made a metre-thick strip going from wall to wall on each of the roads, leaving just a small strip in one of them where a 'gate' would be built. It was safer to have just one, especially since you could get around this area pretty easily with the surrounding roads.

  He walked to the car park and used the gnome to pull out the bricks. These ones could be taken out individually with the gnome's earth magic, but Ashton wanted to make bigger, heavier ones. So, he used the elemental's magic to fuse multiple of the bricks together while reshaping them. Now, three of the bricks, side by side, should fit perfectly into the strips that Ashton made in the ground.

  With the first of the bricks made, Ashton instructed the Drunken Bear on exactly how to lay them, and the fortification of this camp quickly got started.