Jax stared up at the crumpled piece of paper in his hand, reading the bold text printed beneath the grim sketches of their faces.

[WANTED NOTICE] [CRIMES:] Assassination of Redrock Bastion Officers. Annihilation of an Iron Spear Syndicate Squad. [DATE:] Wasteland Year 11, July 23rd. [STATUS:] Kill on Sight. [REWARD:] 500,000 Credits (Per Head). [ISSUED BY:] The Sprawl Administration, The Guild Hub.

The official red stamps of the government and the Hunter’s Guild glared back at him from the bottom of the page.

Jax felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. A cold weight settled in his gut, heavy as lead.

“Fuck!” Jax crumpled the paper in his fist. “Does this mean I can never go back? Five hundred thousand? What the hell kind of mess is this?”

Silas shifted his weight nervously. “Boss, there’s more. I dug around a bit… the reason they’re flipping out is because an Awakened died.”

Jax narrowed his eyes. “An Awakened? Are you sure? Who was it?”

“The intel is solid,” Silas said, scratching the back of his neck awkwardly. “I didn’t get a name, but they said it was a Captain from Redrock.”

“A Captain…” Jax muttered. “It had to be Sterling.”

Jax hadn’t seen Sterling die, but he knew the man was dangerous. He remembered the Captain’s precision with a rifle—every shot a headshot, even against the erratic movement of the Rodent-Maw Creepers. Taking down a man like that wasn’t easy.

“I didn’t think Pike had it in him,” Jax mused, a grudging respect forming in his mind. “That unremarkable guy actually took out Sterling. Interesting.”

It had to be Pike. The man had Awakened an Assassin-class skill. A knife in the dark was the only way to kill a sharpshooter like Sterling.

But where did the woman go?

Jax shook his head. It didn’t matter now. The bridge to The Sprawl was burned to ashes.

“Damn it,” Jax cursed under his breath. “I finally saved up enough Cores to buy a nice house in the city and live the easy life. Now I can’t even step foot inside the gates.”

He looked at Silas. “Is your cover blown? Will this blowback hit the Dire Wolves?”

“No, Boss,” Silas shook his head quickly. “No one is looking at us yet. But we’ll need to be careful next time we make a run.”

“They must have tracked my [Decoy Clone],” Jax sighed. “I wonder if anyone from that convoy made it out alive… Forget it. Silas, we head back in two days. When you go, sniff around. See if there’s a backchannel with The Helios Syndicate. Maybe we can pay them off to revoke the bounty.”

“Got it, Boss.”

Jax pushed the worry aside. Panic wouldn’t solve anything. If he was stuck in the wasteland, he’d make the wasteland his fortress.

He distributed the tools Silas had bought—shovels, pickaxes, and wheelbarrows. Under Jax’s direction, the team began hauling stone and earth, constructing a series of low walls across the valley entrance to create his “Maze of Death.”

They worked until their muscles burned and the sun dipped below the horizon. It was grueling labor, but as the last stone was placed, Jax felt a sense of accomplishment. The maze looked solid enough to disrupt a charge.

“Whew. Good work, everyone,” Jax wiped sweat from his brow. “Let’s eat.”

The team cheered, dropping their tools and heading for the campfire.

Dinner was the usual fare: roasted Sandworm meat and a thick, grainy Sandworm porridge. Jax forced it down, the taste growing more repulsive with every meal. He silently cursed himself for leaving the supplies at Outpost 15. If he had just tossed them into his storage space, they’d be eating canned peaches right now.

Midway through the meal, a mechanical chime echoed in his mind.

[System Warning] A large wave of Winged Ravagers is approaching. Action Required: Replenish Energy Shards for Defense Towers.

[Quest Triggered: The First Test] Objective: Eliminate 300 Hostiles. Reward: Tier 1 Barricade x20, Unlock Tier 2 Barricade Upgrade. Failure Penalty: Builder Class Level -1.

Jax let out a breath. Winged Ravagers? The name sounded intimidating, but if they were just upgraded Sandworms, they were big targets.

“Perfect test subjects,” Jax murmured. “If the maze can stop a swarm of big bugs, it’ll definitely stop the Rodent-Maw Creepers.”

He stood up, wiping his hands. “Heads up. We’ve got company. Sandworms incoming.”

The team froze, spoons halfway to their mouths. They looked toward the valley entrance, two hundred meters away. The floodlights illuminated the kill zone, but there was nothing there. Just empty dirt and shadows.

“Uh… Boss?” Silas squinted into the dark. “You can see them? There’s nothing under the lights.”

Jax paused. He looked again.

Silas was right. The illuminated area was empty.

Is the System glitching?

Jax focused, extending his senses. He could feel something out there, way beyond the lights. He pulled up the stats for the newly upgraded Bastion.

[Tier 2 Bastion] Perception Range: 400 meters.

“Ah,” Jax realized. “The upgrade doubled my radar range.”

He didn’t bother explaining the mechanics. He just pointed into the darkness. “Wait for it.”

Seconds later, a low, rhythmic sound drifted on the wind. Skritch. Skritch. Skritch. It was the sound of thousands of chitinous legs grinding against rock.

The noise grew louder, swelling into a cacophony of hisses and screeches.

Suddenly, the darkness writhed. A massive wave of monsters surged into the light. They were Sandworms, but bigger, meaner, and faster than before. Their carapaces gleamed with a dark, metallic sheen.

“They’re here!” Kaleb hissed, gripping his weapon. “They’re hitting the maze!”

The team watched with bated breath. This was the moment of truth. Would the stone walls divert the swarm? Would the monsters be forced into the kill zone?

The lead Ravager slammed into the first stone wall.

CRASH.

There was no resistance. The dry-stacked stones exploded outward like a tower of children’s blocks. The monster didn’t even slow down; it simply plowed through the debris, followed by hundreds of its kin.

Rumble. Crash. Boom.

Wall after wall toppled. The “maze” was flattened in seconds.

Gareth coughed awkwardly, clearing his throat. “That… uh… that’s not my fault, Boss. Without mortar or cement, those rocks were just… sitting there.”

Jax didn’t get angry. He just felt a wave of crushing disappointment.

“It failed,” Jax sighed, watching his hard work turn to rubble. “All that effort wasted.”

The makeshift walls were useless. They needed structural integrity.

Suddenly, Jax remembered the system rewards. Tier 1 Barricades.

“Wait,” he thought, his eyes lighting up. “The System structures… the walls around the Bastion. They’re indestructible until their HP runs out. I’ve been using them defensively, but what if I use them offensively?”

Back when the Sandworms first attacked, they had targeted the Sentry Tower, ignoring the Bastion walls unless they were directly in the way.

Jax slapped his thigh. “I’m an idiot! Why am I stacking rocks like a caveman when I can deploy System Barricades?”

He watched the last of his stone walls crumble into dust. The experiment was a total failure, but it had given him the answer.

“We worked in vain all day,” Silas muttered, looking at the approaching swarm with dread.

“Not in vain,” Jax said, a grim smile forming on his face as the Sentry Tower began to spin up. “We learned what doesn’t work.”