Skill-Eater: Prison World Saga-Chapter 145: Silo

The crew went to bed early and woke up before sunrise. Nothing vicious had come calling during the night, although Riller reported that a pack of scavengers had been sniffing around the perimeter. The man moved into the barn to get some sleep while the rest of the hunters went to work.

It was time to prepare the field, take out the padamas, scout the borderlands, and get the fuck out of the Breadbasket before their luck ran dry. Trapper’s alarms still had a few hours before they would dissipate, so the crew began their day by performing a thorough inspection of the site before finalizing their plans and putting them into motion.

Trapper, Blue, and Sasha left to scout the surrounding terrain and make sure that there weren’t any surprises. Meanwhile, Edge, Jumo, and Violet began inventorying the buildings, in the hope of finding materials to supplement the supplies they had brought with them. They found a fair amount of timber, ropes, and tools, which would let them construct devices that didn’t have a limited duration or were a design that manifest trap couldn’t create.

After poking through the final structure, they dragged everything out to the wagon. The others returned not long after. No predators were nearby, and they hadn’t found further signs of the creature that had broken into the silo. Now that Trapper was back, the crew began analyzing the farmstead—deciding what types of traps would work best and the ideal locations to place them.

With that out of the way, all that was left was to finalize their plan of engagement. This situation was different from the defense they had constructed on the butte. This time, they weren’t trying to protect themselves from being ambushed, they were trying to take the padamas down. Preferably in a manner that would leave the remains in a sellable condition.

Trapper said that her acid glue wouldn’t work regardless. There was a good chance that the lizard would smell the caustic substance contained within the release sacks and realize that something wasn’t right, preventing it from taking the bait.

The spike-lined pit traps were still viable. The crystalline needles wouldn’t be able to kill a creature of that size, but they could cause painful injuries to its legs if it fell into one—impeding its concentration and hampering its mobility. She had a few more ideas that she wanted to try out, although she was limited by the duration of manifest trap and the fact that they didn’t have any mana-seeds.

Trapper would wait until everything else was ready to use her signature skill, so that the devices would last long enough for the predator to take the bait. But there were still plenty of conventional traps that the crew could set, including a complex construction that was intended to turn one of the grain silos into an oversized deadfall.

Riller woke up and climbed into the adjacent silo, where he could use eagle eye to spot anything besides the padamas coming from miles away. Trapper set some fresh alarms while installing the nonmagical devices, occasionally activating sense life in case their prey arrived ahead of schedule. That left the rest of the team to handle other tasks.

After everyone helped to flip an overturned farm wagon, Sasha, Violet, and Blue started combing the fields for intact crops, which would help them catch animals to use as lizard bait. Meanwhile, Jumo and Edge made their way into the designated silo.

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It was a good fifteen feet wide and thirty feet tall, made of a combination of wood and metal plates. It was heavy enough that if it landed on the padamas, it would do some real damage, despite the beast’s impressive size and physical attributes.

It turned out that Jumo’s knowledge of engineering wasn’t limited to transport vehicles. He knew a fair amount about structural engineering too. Enough to control the direction of the fall and tinker with the supports without bringing the silo down on their heads.

While he told Edge what to do, the man explained what he had in mind. “The trick is to take out enough of the supports that the building will topple the way that we want it to. Knocking out too many would make the silo collapse instead. To keep that from happening, we’re going to replace the beams one at a time with something that will be stable enough to keep it standing for now, but weak enough that it will give way when the padamas’s weight trips the mechanism.”

Jumo handed Edge a sledgehammer that they had retrieved from a storeroom, then told him to take out a big wooden beam running up one side of the silo, which he had sawed in two places about three feet apart.

“You need to clear out that section, but don’t damage the adjoining wood. Once you hammer out the segment, we’ll plug the gap and move on to the neighboring beams until the entire side is undermined. I’ll saw the ones on the other side too. They will still handle vertical weight but not offer any structural support once the rest give way. Try not to hit anything that you’re not supposed to. There’s no point in tempting fate. This mission is dangerous enough already.

“Once everything else is ready, we will create a mechanism that will pull out the beams you manipulated. Then all that’s left is to place the trigger in the kill zone, right in the middle of everything else that Trapper is setting up.”

Edge made sure that he understood what he was supposed to do, then walked over to the beam Jumo had pointed out. He raised the sledgehammer over one shoulder, took aim, and went to work.

Wham. He took it easy with the first few swings, prioritizing his aim and technique over dislodging the beam. Once he was sure that he could guide the heavy tool where he wanted, he raised the sledgehammer and then brought it around with the full Power of his body behind it.

Whack. The wood shook beneath the impact but barely moved at all. Even though it’s cut, it’s held in place by the weight above it. Old Edge wouldn’t have had a chance of popping it loose, but thanks to the progress he’d made over the last few weeks, new Edge wasn’t worried. He just wound up, took aim, and gave it another shot.

Five minutes of slamming away later, the piece was almost free from the support beam. Three more good hits, and it gave way beneath the force of his blow, leaving a three-foot gap. He let Jumo know that he’d managed to do it, then listened as the hunter explained the next step.

“Good job. Now we’re going to fill in the gaps until it’s supporting some of the weight again, then we’ll tie a rope around the middle. Stack squares of lumber to plug the empty space. They are flat enough that we should be able to tap them into place. Once you’re done, do the same for the rest of the beams on this side.

“While you’re busy, I’ll remove the metal sheets on the side we want to topple, so that the building comes down on the location we choose. This isn’t going to be a precision job by any means. But if we can get the lizard to walk over the trigger, it should be good enough to drop the structure on top of it.”

Edge followed Jumo’s instructions, careful not to use more force than was necessary. Noon had come and gone while the hunters were hard at work. By now, it was obvious that it was going to take one more day to get everything ready. While it increased the chances of something finding them, the delay gave Trapper an opportunity to hunt for a mana-seed, which would increase their odds of success.

Just as they were starting to lose the light, Edge finished the last beam and Jumo tied some ropes around it, leaving Trapper to place the trigger.