home

search

chapter 34

  I show Freja and micha? to their room before bringing the weapons we got from the pawnshop to the armory. I will only keep the American 180 and the Wild West sniper. With the two weapons under one arm and the knight's helm under the other, I go to my room to put it all away.

  The rifles find their temporary home in the corner until I can make something to mount them to the wall, and the knight's helm goes next to the copper kettle. I look at my new items and remember I have one other as I pull the pocket watch out of my pocket, and something else falls out. I placed the watch on the desk and picked up the coin that fell out of my pocket. It takes a minute to realize what it is, but when it clicks, I can't help but feel stupid. “We forgot about the upgrade token,” I say and go out of my room and go back down into the atrium to find Monty still sitting at he base terminal looking through the massive list of available atrium projects. I look at the screen and ask, “Found anything good?”

  He nods and answers, “A couple of them are good, like… this one: the machine shop makes a large number of items in a short time, such as machine parts, weapon parts, or armor. But it would need twenty people to operate.”

  I nod. “So our problem is personnel. Wait, how did you know how many people we need?”

  Monty opens the machine shop blueprint. “Every dot represents a person, five per machine shop, and we need four of them for the special upgrade, so twenty.”

  I ask him, “And what about the other four we looked at earlier?”

  “The command center needs one per spot, so four. The recreation area needs nobody to work there unless you count cutting the grass, the trading wharehouse needs three per spot, that means twelve people and the guard statoin needs two but i dont think we get a specail upgrade for having fou,.” Monty explains

  I looked at the options. The machine shop needs many people, but maybe we could upgrade the armory to a similar function once we fix the door and wall lockers. But it's now between the recreation area, the command center, and the trading warehouse. The guard station is not useful enough when there are only two of us.

  “Do we need a recreation area? Having some grass would be nice, but we're going to have a hydroponics room soon. we could just put some chairs and tables there to sit at.” I say

  Monty looks at the requirements for the three we are considering. “The recreation area needs a level three water filter were at level one, the command center needs a server room and a level two generator, and the trade warehouse needs a functional elevator.”

  I shrug and tell him, “Let's look at the materials tomorrow. I’m exhausted.”

  Monty nodded and turned off the base terminal. “Yeah, you're right. I can already hear it.”

  “Hear what?” I ask him.

  “My bed calling my name. Good night.” He says before going up the stairs and into his room.

  I take a look at the hydroponics room and get the screen again

  With that,t i follows Monty’s example and goes to my room and falls into my bed.

  The next morning, I woke up to knocking on my door. I open it and find Freja. She says, “Good morning. I'm sorry to wake you, but is there another washroom I can use? The ones upstairs seem to be getting disassembled.”

  I rub the sleep from my eyes and tell her, Yeahh, sorry, the goblins that lived here before trashed the female shower room. You will have to use the male one. The last two showers are fine; just use the last one that still has a door.”

  “This used to be a goblin nest?” Freja asks

  I answered, “Yes, and it took a long time to get all the trash into the recycler.”

  “What's the recycler? I have not heard of such a room before.” She asks.

  “I’ll show you after your shower. i need to check on somthing anyways.” With that freja leaves and goes to the shower i go to monty’s room to find him already gone i look around and find him in the kitchen backing some propper bread with the yeast we brought back and tell him “im going to see what we need to fix the elevator, and freja is using the shower so you know dont go there right now.”

  This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author's work.

  Monty nods and says, “We're going to need the elevator soon. I doubt the stuff for the atrium upgrade is light.”

  I head over to the base terminal and turn it on.

  Grant looks at the surprisingly short list. What does putting the engine in Y mean? I don't know, so I go to Monty and ask, “Monty, what does it mean to put an engine in Y configuration?”

  Monty stops cooking, turns around, and says, “What? How should I know? I don't mess with electric engines. I tried to figure one out once and got shocked hard enough that I was missing a piece op my finger. It wasn't even bleeding; it got burned close.”

  After Monty’s great example of why I should turn off the electricity before working on it, I start by turning off the elevator's power, but I find it already off.

  Then I have to open the elevator doors on the first floor and climb the ladder up to where the elevator is stuck.

  As I reach the bottom of the elevator, I see something stuck where the elevator doors open into. i yank it out but cant see what it is so i keep moving upwards until i reach the top of the elevator and stand atop it do i turn on my flashlight and look up at the place where the electrical engine is suppose to be and climb up onto the platform infront of me is a large engine and a very charred corpse.

  I look at the thing in my hand, and it's a charred arm. I drop the arm and wipe my hand on my pants before taking a closer look at the corpse. It's a goblin or was a goblin. What did it do?” I look at the severed arm and see it's clutching a small metal strip.

  I take the strip and bend it until it's straight again. Before searching what it was used fo. I look at the engine and find another plate just like it, connected to two prongs with one more to the left. I unscrewed the nut on the middle and left one before placing the straightened-out strip perfectly in place. I close up the engine as best I can as the goblin smashed the top of it to pieces. I have to tape the lid onto it.

  I summon the base screen and see if it counted.

  I guess the foreign object is the goblin, so I yell down the elevator shaft. “MONTY!” After a moment of silence, I'm about to shout again when Micha? answers, “Hello, is everything okay?” I ask him, “Micha?, could you do me a favor? Bring a large trash can to the elevator door on the entry floor.” Micha? replies, “Okay, I’ll be up in a moment.”

  I begin to lower the charred goblin onto the elevator and wait for Micha? to get up. After a while, I drop down into the elevator and open the doors from the inside. The moment I step out of the elevator, Micha? comes up the stairs with the trash can, out of breath. He says, “It’s good you’re fixing the elevator… that’s too many stairs.” I chuckle at the soldier and ask him, “Could you hold the trash can in place while I lower it into?”

  He nods, not suspecting anything wrong. I climb back through the hatch in the elevator roof and first throw the arm into the trash can, to which Micha? asks, “Was that an…” He isn’t able to finish his sentence when I begin lowering the charred goblin corpse down and say, “If you were going to say charred goblin corpse, you’re right. If not, I don’t blame you; I wasn’t expecting to find this here, either.” When the corpse is close enough to the ground, I drop it into the trash can and climb down the hatch before quickly catching my breath.

Recommended Popular Novels