They spent most of the next six days working on buildings.

  Patrick came down after his interview with the Council and brought Jerry and Oakley with him. Frederica came with Oakley, though there wasn’t a lot for her to do while they were building living quarters.

  Cirdor sent a group of Unktehila along with Patrick to help with the construction as well as lots of pipes. Instead of making only a single room for people to stay in, the design became more complicated, with each room now having its own bathroom attached to it.

  The reptile men were larger than a human. Even the females were at least six feet tall. Both genders sported a set of horns on their heads like a sheep, with the males' horns curving around the sides of their heads. They each had a tail, which they used as a third hand at times.

  With almost twenty earth or metal affinity Tanks answering to him, Patrick was able to design three-story apartment buildings that were stacked in a row perpendicular to the barrier on either side of the safe zone in the thirty-first column. There were only ten of the twenty-by-thirty-foot rooms on each floor, with the outside wall of the bottom floor of each room earmarked for a portal to each square.

  Based on the previous loop, Penelope knew that there would be ten groups that were going to eventually be running on the floor. Each group would have forty-eight people in it, minus the main team, which would only have four teams, for a total of twenty-four people. That meant that without the workers, they were going to need places for almost five hundred people to stay on the floor and the apartments were only going to house three hundred. Patrick had plans for another complex once they cleared 32D and 32E, but that wasn’t something they could focus on at the present.

  Most of the enchanters came down to help Eldri and Penelope with the lights. Each room needed an enchantment on the ceiling in the middle of the room as well as a control enchantment to turn the light on or off. There were also two large water tanks on top of each line of buildings that required a heating and a cooling enchantment. Cirdor sent a pair of Elves down to take care of those.

  By the time all of the leveled Humans made it down to the fourth floor; most of the apartments were done. Being able to raise a ten-foot-long wall of stone in less than a minute allowed the basic structure of the rooms to be finished quickly; then it was just a matter of connecting all the pipes and putting in the facilities. Thanks to access to the town, they had actual toilets, sinks, and faucets. A septic system had to be created for all the waste, but the enchanter Elves had things to keep that mostly clean.

  With the living quarters situated, they began preparing to head into the squares. The gear they had access to was only as good as the stuff they had on the third floor, but Cirdor had gathered a team to make sure they were all in as much electric-resistant gear as they could wear.

  There were only five pieces of gear that gave resistances: head, chest, belt, pants, and footwear. Having each of those pieces at epic rarity gave everyone a flat 40% resistance to electric damage. Penelope had stuck with wearing a leather jacket and boots instead of a robe and sandals. The extra upgrade in rarity also allowed for two lines of stats, which allowed her to stack even more stats than she had when they faced the bosses of the third floor. The morning of day sixty-seven found her just outside the barrier of 31D, waiting for the others to arrive.

  “Those storms are going to be brutal.” Patrick grumbled to her right. “Even with our stats, one hit from those could kill us.”

  The crashes from lightning hitting the ground somewhere on the floor were almost constant. Most were fainter, but the ones that happened in the squares surrounding the safe zone made people flinch for days. Some of them still hadn’t gotten used to the noise or their hair standing on end as the electricity dissipated into the uneven ground.

  “We’re going to have to go from cave to cave and hope there’s enough room inside to fight off the monsters.” Ula took a deep breath. “And we need to prepare for what happens if the storms don’t stop once the barrier comes down.”

  Support creative writers by reading their stories on Royal Road, not stolen versions.

  Penelope glanced over at the apartment buildings. A lightning rod had been placed near each end and in the middle of each one. The forty-foot-tall metal columns were hopeful that they’d save the apartments from being destroyed if the storm did come into the safe zone.

  Not that it’s going to. Penelope had wanted to stop the team from making all of the columns, but there was no good reason why they shouldn’t be proactive. She couldn’t tell them how she knew the storms wouldn’t come into the safe zone.

  “We’re moving away from fire on this one.” Patrick broke into her thoughts. “Earth and Nature here?”

  “The fire damagers will do more because of their mastery than using earth or nature attacks.” Penelope sighed. “The only people who need to get effective attacks are metal, electric, and poison.”

  “We have any of those on the front line?” Patrick looked at his menu. While he didn’t have access to the main list of people, he had found a way to make notes in his menu about people. “Nina and Whitney are both electric…” He looked over at the brunette on the other side of Penelope. “Circe! You get Whitney some earth skills?”

  “We don’t have an earth Archer, but Kaden let us copy some of his skills, which works since they’re both Quickshots.” Circe referenced the nature Archer as she pointed a finger gun at the monsters on the other side of the barrier.

  “How do we want to do this?” Ula looked at the uneven, rocky landscape.

  “The lightning strikes are kind of on a rolling pattern.” Penelope pointed at the raised places. “We should be safe if we can get to the caves, but I’m not sure how big they are. We might not be able to fit more than one team at a time.”

  “Which means each team is going to have to run from cave to cave and fight the monsters they run into along the way.” The Hispanic grandmother rubbed her chin. “What if we made lightning rods to stand around?”

  “Point out the radius of the strikes.” Jeru pointed at the ground a little ways off.

  “There’s still residual electricity that travels across the stones.” Penelope pointed at where lightning had just hit. “See?”

  Ribbons of electricity spread out like waves from the center of where the lightning had hit the ground.

  “I’m not sure what’s in these rocks, but it conducts electricity somewhat.” Penelope picked up a piece of flat, black rock and broke it apart in her hands.

  “Which means that if the monsters have area electrical attacks, then it’s still going to get us.” Patrick shook his head. “I could make a stone floor for us to fight on, but…” He gestured at the rubble over near the corner by the outer wall. He’d started to make a wall over there like they had on the previous floor, but the first lightning strike had blown a hole in it. A few days later and there was nothing but gravel where the wall had been.

  “It’s not going to last long, but it might be worth it if we have to stand out in the open and fight.” Ula sighed. “I’m not sure I want to get stuck in one of those caves either.” She looked over at Penelope. “Pen, are you sure it’s going to be safe?”

  “I can see that one.” Circe pointed at one of the caves facing them. The rock on the floor inside is different. The electricity doesn’t spread in there.”

  “Well, that narrows that down.” Ula took a deep breath. “I have a feeling clearing one of these squares is going to take a lot longer than we’re used to.”

  “It’ll go faster once they can hit it from two sides.” Penelope glanced at the other three groups. Frederica’s group was to her left, with Archer’s group one more over. Allis was in charge of the group to their right. While they had a lot of groups, those four were the ones that were going to be pushing the E row so all the other squares could be fought on two sides. Because of that, the four teams standing in front of the barrier were going to clear all of the 31 column on their own.

  “We get to be the guinea pigs.” Patrick grumbled as he hefted his shield. He looked over his shoulder, but most of the other groups weren't bothering to pay attention to them. Since no one else was going to fight on the 31 column, whatever weird or unique thing the monsters did wouldn’t be of any use to them to learn about. At least, that had been the argument when Patrick had tried to convince everyone to watch them.

  “It’s going to be fine.” Riva knocked her fist on his helmet. “Not like we haven’t been on the front lines since the first floor.”

  “She just had to jinx us.” Circe muttered under her breath.

  Penelope took a deep breath. After a week of building, it was time to fight again.

  Rating, Review, Follow, Favorite, or Comment does wonders to boost my morale. If you want to help support my writing or check out advanced chapters, head over to my .

  RR Writer's Guild