Despite my confidence in what I was going to purchase, the decision-making process had not been simple or easy. With such a large amount, there were two main options for things I wanted to purchase immediately.

  First was the seven hundred and fifty cap improvement to the walls that now surrounded the Headquarters. Given the large price, as well as some of the description, it was clear this would be a significant upgrade, getting rid of any issues with the current wall and improving it even further. While having a wall around the HQ had been reassuring, I had grown disillusioned with its current state rather quickly. It was, after all, relatively easy to climb over, especially for a human. Yes, it would likely keep animals out, but the more I looked at it, the less I trusted it to keep us safe.

  After purchasing the upgrade, I would use the remaining caps to improve the entrances, upgrading them to legitimate, secure passageways rather than just scrap swinging doors.

  On the other hand, I could buy the third upgrade to the Barracks, which would vastly increase the number of soldiers I could hire. With more soldiers, I would be able to keep a small team behind the HQ consistently to defend it. Eventually, when I filled the barracks, I could even have two groups going out to scavenge and explore around us.

  The problem was that if I bought that upgrade now, I wouldn't be able to buy any of the actual soldiers. Each basic soldier costs two hundred caps, and I would only have a hundred and twenty-five four caps left after buying the upgrade.

  That meant that, while yes, the barracks would be ready and waiting for the next bit of income, since purchasing it would drain my reserves, it would be useless at the moment.

  Ultimately, after some consideration, I decided to improve the quality of our walls. It was the most immediately rewarding and would finally make me feel comfortable calling us safe while we were behind our walls. With any luck, next time we went to Megaton, or our merchant friend came through, we would be able to not only buy the barracks upgrade, but a few of the soldiers as well.

  After finding the tablet for the general Headquarters, I purchased the defensive upgrade, as well as spending the remainder on improving the doors. After giving the upgrades a moment to settle, we went out to examine them.

  The previous wall of stacked rubble had been replaced with a three-foot-thick, rebar-enforced concrete barricade. On top of being completely smooth on the exterior, meaning no footholds to climb with, the walls were four feet taller, now around twelve feet, meaning that you couldn't just boost up the sides by standing on someone's shoulders. The sharpened rebar had been replaced by your standard rolling swirl of razor wire, which engulfed the forward edge of the wall, to make it nearly impossible to pull yourself up.

  Considering the next upgrade was two thousand caps, this was likely the last upgrade I would be getting for the wall directly. There were, however, several additions that I could purchase for the wall, now that it was more than just a stack of rubble wedged together. This included things like observation towers, which I could place along it and which had their own upgrade tree, as well as an option to charge the razor wire with electricity. For another thousand, I could push the razor wire forward, so it was more of a climbing deterrent than a climbing-over deterrent, while also placing a five-foot walkway along the top of the wall, complete with defensive crenellations like an actual medieval castle, minus the stonework.

  I would likely invest in quite a few of the add-on upgrades eventually, especially as the number of soldiers I had available went up, but for now, I focused on the entrances. The three doors went from junk, hammered and welded together, to legitimate metal structures, built into the concrete of the wall. Not only were they significantly stronger, but the fact that the wall continued above them meant they were no longer a massive weak point in the protective barrier, where people could easily get through.

  After a thorough examination, I concluded that I was very happy with the level of protection we now had. My next goal, which would likely take some time to move towards, was a level of active protection, specifically places for a shift of guards, and perhaps some automated turrets, the latter of which was one of the purchasable add-ons. For now, however, I was satisfied, especially for the amount of caps I had spent.

  "Does this mean your next purchase will be the next level of barracks?" Carlos asked as we walked around the new walls, inspecting all four sides for any potential issues.

  "Absolutely," I said with a nod. "While doing things like increasing our quality of life and upgrading our equipment are both important, having another eight soldiers would be a godsend. We could form two groups, or take shifts on guard duty and active duty. Having two teams of six for simple looting runs, with four soldiers staying home to work on projects and defend the HQ if needed, would be a fantastic upgrade.

  "How much do you think the next upgrade after that will be?" Joseph asked, squinting to look into the distance before turning back to me.

  "Well, if it follows the current pattern, hopefully not that much," I said, crossing my fingers and holding them up. "The increase in the number of people I can summon seems to be every other upgrade, so it might not be that much more than a thousand caps… but even that will hurt. It could be as much as three and a half thousand caps to get to the next size upgrade…"

  I trailed off as I realized that, before shaking my head. There were other options for upgrading our effectiveness, like power armor or robots, and while I didn't know where those options would appear, I had to imagine they were in the quasi-tech tree system we were using. While I would definitely need to eventually push to the fifth level of barracks, there was no reason to worry about it now, especially when I hadn't even reached the third level yet.

  Once our check-in around the wall was done, we went back and, working together with the whole group, cleared the few issues we had spotted. Mostly, it was just clearing out a few piles of debris and scrap that were too close to the wall, but we also had to pull back a whole car that was too close to the wall for my comfort. Joseph and Carlos, who had seen just how destructive some of the pre-war vehicles could be, were just as concerned by it as I was, so we very carefully dragged it back several dozen meters. We didn't stop until I was certain that an explosion wouldn't contaminate the HQ or damage the structure of the wall.

  Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon.

  When we returned inside the walls, I decided that we would take the rest of the day off. John, the only one who hadn't come with us to our meeting with our neighbors, felt a bit bad getting another day of inactivity. As a mostly teasing joke, he agreed to help make dinner, but since all of our meals came pre-packaged in MRE-like packages, it mostly involved running around, opening people's bags, and breaking the seals on their bottles of water or whatever drink they got.

  It was funny, and John took the teasing well.

  The following morning, and for the next few days, we spent most of our time working outside the walls, clearing another circle of buildings around the Headquarters. Our primary goal was still medical supplies, as it was our best way to make money at the moment. We were producing a pretty decent amount of food from the grow hut, and even with us occasionally dipping into them for our own consumption, we had a good chunk to sell. Unfortunately, I wasn't sure how much we would get from them. If the amount was decent, then the grow hut would likely end up on the short list of things to upgrade, as the next step up would increase production speed, amount, and variety.

  Our secondary objective was to hopefully recover any tools and equipment that would allow us to forge the coins from the Horizon world. Personally, I was pretty sure we would need to unlock a machinist's building, or something similar, in order to get everything we needed. However, that didn't stop me from poking around, hoping we would stumble on some sort of garage or repair business. It might be unlikely that we would find everything, but miracles had happened before.

  We did end up making a trip back to the Horizon world, or at least four of us did, this time carrying several bags of trade goods we managed to finagle out of the Medbay. Soft cloth, glass containers, scissors, and several other bits and pieces, all created relatively cheaply since they weren't medication or drugs.

  We also confirmed that salt tablets were available for purchase, but it was unfortunately not the gold mine we were expecting. It seemed that somehow a nearby tribe had access to salt, meaning it wasn't nearly as rare as I had assumed. I suspected this village had stumbled on a minor salt vein and was mining it by hand. That said, it was also possible we were closer to the coast than I thought, and they had formed a relationship with a caravan or something along those lines. Either way, Oakenrest had access to salt in decent quantities, and while we could likely convince them to trade with us instead, it meant salt was not the money-printing opportunity we had hoped for.

  We made about four hundred caps from trading with the Oakanrest, though it was, of course, in coin form. Almost more important than that, however, was the fact that Joseph managed to get a look at the coin storage for the tribe during the trade process. Unless they had a secondary storage somewhere in the village, it appeared that they had around two to three thousand caps worth of coins in storage. With any luck, we would be able to extract a chunk of that before starting to replace them with forgeries, therefore poisoning the well, so to speak.

  If we could get even close to that from all of the villages on the road, I would call that a huge success, and well worth the cost to buy a machinist workshop, or whatever equivalent I would need.

  After about five days of scavenging and exploring, clearing buildings and looking for anything worthwhile to bring back, we returned early after Maxwell called us back on the radio. Apparently, Adam Farli, the trader we had worked with, was on his way to Megaton and asked to stay within our walls. Thankfully, we weren't too far away and could pull out from the building we were looting to return.

  "Connor, good to see you," the merchant said with a smile, his group stationed along the westernmost doorway. "I have to say… this is impressive work for just about two weeks."

  The merchants and guards from the group, at least those not occupied wrangling their three brahim or keeping a lookout, were studying the newly upgraded wall. They were understandably surprised, and I could tell that Adam was fishing for more information.

  "The powers that be back home decided to turn this into an official base," I explained with a smile. "A construction crew from back home came by and put it all together for us."

  "Still, even with a large team of builders... I can hardly believe the progress you have made..."

  "We managed to get a pre-war quick-cretWalle plant up and running, so building something like this is actually pretty easy, especially since we use scrap at the center of the wall, meaning we need less crete," I explained, lying through my teeth. "Transportation is a hassle, but with pre-war equipment, supplies, and construction bots working through the night, you would be surprised at how much work can get done."

  My hope was that, between a bit of gaslighting, my nonchalant attitude, a healthy dose of "not my problem", as well as the promise of constant caps, any disbelief or suspicion they had would be dispelled. Besides, as long as they weren't so weirded out that they stopped doing business with us, I really didn't care what they thought.

  "Impressive, I'm glad to hear you will be sticking around," He said with a nod, eyes trailing over my soldiers, who were waiting silently behind me. "Listen, I hate to be a burden, but would you mind sheltering us for a night? I would rather stay here, with proper walls and a roof, than at the Megatons caravan campsite."

  "Of course, we cleared out and reinforced these buildings specifically for travelers staying here," I agreed, gesturing to the building beside the western entrance. "We also have more to sell you…"

  "I plan on bringing the medical supplies back to Canterbury Commons, where we can ship them out better, and make more of a profit," he explained, shaking his head. "We will pick it up on our way back."

  "Ah, but I have something you might want to sell in Megaton," I explained. "Why don't you come inside and settle in? While you're doing that, we will gather our offer."

  Adam nodded, and we opened the large metal doors, letting the caravan inside. Joseph and a few others guided them into the cleared buildings, while the rest of us gathered some of the fruit and vegetables that had built up in the grow house. They were all perfectly ripe, as they essentially remained in some sort of stasis while being stored in the grow-hut. We managed to fill two duffel bags full of food before carefully carrying them to the temporary housing along the wall.

  Technically speaking, I could sell the produce myself next time we went to Megaton, and in the process, probably make a lot more money. However, I already had a verbal deal with the Megaton hospital, and while hauling so much medicine would take effort, hauling it and so much produce would be significantly harder. On top of that, selling produce would likely take more time and be a bigger hassle than just selling the medical supplies to one or two groups, and I was happy to let Adam deal with it.

  Later, when we had better transportation, or if we became a place people came to buy things like food, we could reconsider the concept. With any luck, selling the food would bring us one step closer to a graduated barracks and a few more soldiers to work with around the Headquarters.

  Carlos, Leon, and I headed to the temporary caravan space, while the rest of my people headed back out into the wasteland, planning on finishing the gas station we had been in the process of clearing and looting when Maxwell called us back. There wasn't anything particularly special about it, but I wanted to get it done so we would move on next time we went out.