Poison God's Heritage

The price of each turret is about a thousand points, I could buy at most ten, but that is too expensive. I can also buy towers that can be used to carry these turrets, I'll feel safer with the towers acting as a barrier to protect the turrets.

"Then I would like to buy a few turrets, two of each, flame ice and lightning turrets. I would also like to buy six stone watch towers for five hundred each."

"That comes at a total of nine thousand points. Where do you want them placed," he asked.

"There," I pointed, at the gate and then gave him clear instructions on how I wanted them positioned.

The merchant snorted as if he expected this and didn't argue, but that was enough for me to understand a lot of things.

Basically, the freedom of putting the turrets anywhere comes with a cost. I mean, whoever created this trial knows well that cultivators would pack loads of these turrets near the gate's exit, spawn killing any monster that would appear. So, this means that the beasts have a way around this, perhaps they'll have some creatures that can destroy the towers as soon as they manifest.

But that isn't an issue for me. After all, the merchant clearly stated that as long as I buy something I'm free to modify it however I want.

So I immediately flew to the six towers, they each had one turret placed on top of them. The watch towers weren't in the best condition to take on a heavy blow, but I wasn't going to allow that.

With the eleven remaining unmodified puppets, I had them help me build around the towers a big metallic wall that would force anything coming out of the gate to only move forward in a packed manner. Funneling them forward like pigs in a slaughterhouse.

The turrets then will start raining down hell from above, while my improved puppets will hold the only exit.

But that wasn't all, as I began adjusting the turrets themselves.

Since the turrets were inscribed. The formation allowing them to function was easy to modify, so I began by adjusting the output of each turret and included several missing features.

First of all, I improved the destructiveness of the turrets by adding more Saint Qi crystals that they can use to fire. And then added an improved aiming system and increased the rate of fire. I also adjusted one of the ice turrets to not only shoot, but occasionally act as a cooling system in case the other turrets begin overheating.

The work I was doing didn't take me more than a day and I was done before the merchant would even mention that I needed to prepare for the next wave.

And just as the gate opened up, the six turrets began reacting, as three wolves rushed forward only to find themselves in a steel-walled cage that they had no way to jump on top of due to its height, nor destroy it due to the lack of power. There was one path forward and it had four puppets standing there waiting for them.

As soon as the first wolf took a step, the turrets above began firing their spells, eradicating everything that moved. Destroying in the process all enemies that were coming out of the gate.

More and more creatures emerged only to die immediately afterward, and not even a dozen seconds later, the wave had all died down and the merchant announced that I was done with the second wave.

I smiled at him saying, "That was pretty easy," I said.

"It sure as hell would be, after all, I can upgrade your turrets but you did that yourself, no, you even upgraded them far more than what I could even do with so few available points at the start of the trial. Sigh,"

"What's my point at?" I asked.

"You gained 19880 points," he said.

"And when is the next wave starting?" I asked.

"In one day," he replied seemingly a bit frustrated.

"I see, show me more materials, I said. And then began buying more stuff, mainly even more towers and turrets and bought one smelting facility which I'll be needing.

Now with ten towers standing in total, I didn't have to worry about any incoming waves for a moment, so I'll need to start building something while I still have time. Something that will help in the upcoming waves.

Using the smelting area, I began creating fire arms. Since Saint Qi stones were readily available from the mines that the puppets were working on, I'll need to create a small force that can be relied upon to defend the base in case a breach were to happen.

So, instead of making smaller handguns, which are too intricate and will take too much effort, I opted into creating cannons and artillery. They were far easier to make and manufacture, especially since the puppets given to me have the ability to follow orders and mimic what I do.

By making cannons and having the puppets man them, I can be sure that my second line of defense can easily stop anything that could bypass the main line up front. I also had enough points to upgrade the base itself, transforming it from a small shack to a fortified pagoda.

And that came with a surprise, as five more puppets appeared as soon as I upgraded the base.

"Oh, I didn't know that you get more puppets by upgrading the base," I said to the merchant.

"A bigger base needs more workers," he said.

I thought for a moment and said, "Good enough for me, I think I'll need to upgrade more puppets, once I'm done with making more cannons though," I said and began working on forging cannons using the smithy and teaching the puppets how to use it and make their own weapons.