Every team that came back that evening brought with them four points worth of completions, and a lot of boar meat. Over eighty boars in total were returned to the Academy, and Kalli sighed as she realized that they didn’t have nearly enough people to eat them all at the rate they were gathering them.

Sure, they could prolong the quest, and not have everyone complete it. But the armoured boars were enormous.

Even if only a few groups every day finished the quest, just enough to ensure that they got the reward for protecting their tubers, they would still end up with far more pork than they could ever hope to eat, and Kalli’s storage would rapidly fill with nothing but boar meat.

They could likely hard cure the boars, or perhaps use it as bait to get more crab meat, or just leave it in a climate controlled storage room of the Academy until they could find more people.

But they were going to have a lot of it if that quest kept showing up.

Kalli found herself routinely looking toward the dorms, where the resurrection pod was set up in the spare room. It was technically an "Event Room" for parties and such, but it wasn’t normally used for anything during the rest of the year. All that it had was a bunch of chairs stacked along the walls, and now one resurrection pod in the middle of the room.

Honestly, if they had all the students here, she would have considered getting more of them, just to be safe in case of a disaster.

But first, she would have to set up base defences, make sure that they had tradespeople available, and hopefully find a way to rescue some more people. The more that they could build their enclave, the better that their result for this mission was likely to be.

Actually, that was something that she should ask.

"Hey Temple. I don’t suppose that you guys had a trade of some sort before all this, did you? You’re at least a few years older, so I’m assuming that you’re graduates and not still students."

The blonde man nodded. "The others did. I’m actually a Priest, an ordained Minister. But I didn’t get the Priest Class, I got Paladin. I suppose it’s only right, given the circumstances."

"Do you know what the others did for work? If it was a skilled trade, we might need them around the base, and I can help them get set up."

The big man laughed and shook his head. "Unless you’ve got a Robotics Lab, I don’t think that..."

Kalli shushed him with a finger on his lips. "Take me to the tech nerd. I believe that I might have work for him."

Temple laughed as he turned to lead her to where the new arrivals were staying, just down the hall from Kalli’s own room on the second floor.

"Kalli, this is Sinn. He used to run the largest Robotics development lab in the entire nation. He’s also a grad of Marimgar Academy, as I’ve noticed that we all are. But what did you need him for?"

Kalli smiled and brought up the image of the automated turret that fired shotgun shells.

"Can you make these? I know we’ve got a few robotics students here as well, but you’re the one with practical work experience. It needs to track targets only within a certain range of motion, preferably differentiate humans from other targets, and fire the shotgun shells with reasonable accuracy to say fifty metres."

"That’s going to be... loud."

Kalli nodded. "I am certain that it will be. But a shotgun turret will stop any small monsters from approaching and climbing the walls, which will give us a bit more defensive leeway.

I can obtain more shotgun shells, using System Points.

So, the question is if you can actually make these, and if you can make them safe enough for us to mount along the walls."

"If we’ve got the parts. There are some things that I can’t just fabricate out of nothing. But if we’re just talking basic radar tracking with a size signature, I can do it with scrap electronics. If there is some left in the city, and there likely should be, even though it’s mostly overgrown now, it should give me enough parts to make these.

Give it a few days or a week, depending on how long it takes to get parts."

Kalli nodded. "Make a list of everything that you need, and we will add it to the scavenger hunt that the teams go on every day. More eyes are better, after all."

"If you can just buy it, why not do that?"

Kalli laughed. "That model is fifty System Points per unit. Three per wall, and that’s an even dozen. Most of the Heroes get a maximum of five points a day, and it’s a point for every case of shotgun shells. I could burn through my points and buy them, I will if things get dire, but I’d rather have you build something from scrap and save the points for things that we cannot get."

"Oh, I get it. Yeah, that actually makes a lot of sense. Build what we can, reinforce the Academy, and save the points to get things that help the heroes grow.

Now that we can get points, we can start getting skills from the skill tree too."

Kalli nodded. "Before I forget, I will give you all a set of gear and a weapon to bring you up to the standard of the others. We can’t have you dying again and taking another loss. If you’ve got an uncommon grade weapon with you, please let me know, so I don’t waste points."

They all shook their heads. "We didn’t have that to begin with."

Kalli gave all but Temple a {Light Composite Battle Armour} suit, and then splurged to get an Uncommon Grade heavy version for Temple, who was clearly an accomplished tank if he had held off the monsters alone to the bitter end.

Then, she got him an Uncommon Shield and Flanged Mace, before turning to the others.

"Uh, I don’t know what you prefer. The tank is easy."

"Yeah, you have him down to the letter. You even found his favourite weapon. He was using a sledgehammer before. But we will take daggers, they’re more friendly to our class, and I suppose that Lillian will want something else."

Kalli nodded, and handed the healer a staff with a dragon shaped Ankh on the top.

"That one’s specifically for healers. And here are daggers. Consider this a loan, and try not to let Temple smash his gear all to pieces, the Tinkers will cry if they have to do that much repair work."