Apocalypse Architect: A Tower Defense LitRPG

Chapter 63: You’ve All Gone Soft

Dawn broke over Mount Sepulcher, shrouded in a veil of gray mist. A fine, chilling drizzle drifted down from the leaden sky, pattering against the concrete walls of the fortress.

Jax woke to the sound of the rain. He stretched, his joints popping, and moved to the reinforced window.

“Rain,” he muttered.

The common area was quieter than usual. He scanned the room. Kaleb was there, nursing a bowl of steaming millet porridge, and Annie was tidying up near the storage crates. But Silas and Gareth were missing.

Jax took the bowl Annie offered him. “Where are the other two?”

Kaleb slurped a mouthful of hot porridge, wincing slightly. “Outside. Taking a shower.”

Jax paused, the spoon halfway to his mouth. “In this weather? Are they trying to catch pneumonia? Or is this some new form of torture?”

Kaleb sighed, shaking his head. “I don’t know what got into Silas last night. It was my turn for the second watch, but he insisted on staying up. Said he wasn’t tired. Turns out, the idiot saw the rain starting and decided to stand in it all night.”

“And Gareth?”

“Woke up, saw Silas soaking wet and staring at the sky like a monk, and decided to join him.”

Jax massaged his temples. “They’ve lost their minds. Is this about Awakening? Do they think getting hypothermia is the secret to unlocking superpowers?”

Kaleb set his bowl down and dusted off his pants. “Desperation makes people do stupid things, Boss. Speaking of which…” He stood up and headed for the door. “I think I’ll go join them for a bit.”

“Holy shit,” Jax groaned. “Is it contagious?”

He turned to Annie, who was watching the door with a strange intensity. “Don’t tell me you’re thinking about it too.”

Annie’s cheeks flushed a faint pink. She looked down, fidgeting with the hem of her shirt. “I… no. I won’t go.”

Jax’s gaze lingered on her clothing. Her shirt was threadbare, the fabric worn so thin in places it was nearly translucent. If she went out in that rain, she wouldn’t just be cold; she’d be putting on a show for every man in the outpost.

“Good,” Jax said, his voice firm. “Don’t be an idiot like them. Awakening isn’t worth dying of fever.”

“Actually…” Annie mumbled, her voice barely a whisper. “Being an Awakened seems pretty amazing. I mean… look at you, Jax.”

Jax opened his mouth to argue, then closed it. The lecture died in his throat.

He didn’t care much about the status or the label, but he couldn’t deny the reality. In this wasteland, power was the only currency that mattered. They looked at him and saw a god who could summon walls from thin air and slaughter armies with a wave of his hand. Telling them “it’s not that great” was the height of hypocrisy.

He turned back to the window. Outside, three figures stood in the drizzle, shivering violently, howling at the sky like lunatics.

Jax shook his head and went back to his room.

That evening, the System chimed.

Jax sat on his bed, reviewing his resources. The defense test with the maze had been a resounding success. The Rodent-Maw Creepers hadn’t stood a chance.

“One hundred Stardust Stones in the bank,” Jax mused. “Finally, I have some breathing room. Now, what to upgrade?”

The Walls were holding fine. Tier 1 Barricades were durable enough to route the enemy AI. Upgrading them now yielded diminishing returns.

“Offense,” Jax decided. “The best defense is a bigger gun.”

He pulled up the [Bounty Protocol] interface. The daily cooldown had reset. A new F-Tier mission pulsed on the screen.

[F-Tier Bounty Protocol] [Cost: 10 Tier 2 Cores] [Objective: Eliminate 300 Tier 2 Rodent-Maw Creepers & 500 Sandworms.] [Time Limit: 60 Minutes.] [Reward: Unlock Tier 2 Sentry Tower Upgrade Permission.] [Failure Penalty: -20 Bio-Score.]

Jax stared at the numbers.

“Three hundred Creepers? Five hundred Sandworms? In one hour?”

The difficulty spike was brutal. That was nearly triple the volume of the previous wave. And the penalty—losing 20 Bio-Score would cripple him physically, maybe even kill him.

But his eyes drifted back to the reward.

Unlock Tier 2 Sentry Tower Upgrade Permission.

Currently, his Sentry Towers were glorified crossbows. Useful for sniping stragglers, but they lacked the stopping power for swarms. A Tier 2 upgrade could change the entire meta of his defense.

“High risk, high reward.”

Jax tapped [ACCEPT].

Ten Tier 2 Cores vanished from his inventory. He checked his reserves: forty Tier 2 Cores remaining, and over five hundred Tier 1 Cores. He was rich enough to gamble.

He walked out to the main platform. The team was huddled around a heater, drying their clothes and looking miserable.

“Heads up,” Jax announced, clapping his hands. “We’ve got incoming. Big wave tonight. Don’t get comfortable.”

The group looked up, confusion written on their faces.

“Boss,” Gareth wheezed, sneezing into his sleeve. “Can’t the auto-turrets handle it? I think I’m dying.”

“Yeah,” Kaleb added, yawning. “Is this another ‘watch Jax be awesome’ show? Because I’m exhausted.”

“Serious question,” Silas grunted. “When does this end?”

Jax stared at them, unamused. “Focus. This isn’t a skirmish. The numbers are massive. If the line breaks, we’re dead.”

Annie spoke up from the corner, her voice quiet but piercing. “Jax… how do you know?”

The room went silent.

“How do you know the exact numbers?” she pressed. “And the types? And the time? It’s like… it’s like you’re the one releasing them.”

Jax stiffened. It was the question he had been dreading. He turned to face her, keeping his expression neutral.

“Why would you think something so dangerous?”

“Because,” she stammered, intimidated but standing her ground. “Because you always predict it perfectly. Down to the minute.”

Jax let out a short, dry laugh. “I used to be a fortune teller. Believe it?”

“You read insect horoscopes?” Kaleb snorted. “Can you predict when they’ll go extinct?”

“Enough,” Jax waved a hand, cutting off the interrogation. “If you want to sleep, go sleep. But don’t blame me when I have to drag your corpses out of bed to fight.”

He pulled rank. It was the only way to shut it down. Thankfully, they were too tired and too dependent on him to push further.

Minutes later, the ground began to tremble.

Even through the rain and the darkness, the vibration was unmistakable. It wasn’t a few stragglers. It was a tide.

BOOM.

The Howitzer Turret roared, spitting a streak of fire into the gloom. The shell arced through the rain and detonated in the distance.

[System: Tier 1 Sandworm eliminated x1] [System: Tier 1 Sandworm eliminated x5] [System: Tier 1 Sandworm eliminated x3]

The kill feed scrolled so fast it was a blur.

The team stood under the awning, watching the explosions with the casual detachment of spectators at a fireworks show. The terror of the apocalypse had faded, replaced by a strange, callous boredom.

“I bet they don’t pass the fourth wall,” Kaleb said, leaning against a crate.

“Fourth?” Gareth scoffed. “You’re dreaming. If they pass the third wall, I’ll clean up the carcasses tomorrow morning. All of them.”

“I’ll put ten Tier 1 Cores on the second wall,” Silas grunted. “The Howitzer is chewing them up.”

Jax listened to the banter, shaking his head.

“You lot have gone soft,” he muttered. “Gambling on your own survival? You’re hopeless.”

As predicted, the Sandworms were cannon fodder. They swarmed blindly into the choke point, clustered up, and were vaporized by the splash damage. Not a single worm made it past the second layer of Barricades.

The shooting stopped. The team yawned, ready to turn in.

“Not yet,” Jax said sharply. “Phase two. Rodent-Maw Creepers. Incoming.”

“Seriously?” Kaleb groaned. “I’m broke, Boss. I lost the last bet.”

“No bets this time,” Silas said, squinting into the rain. “The mud is deep. I can’t tell if they can dig in this sludge. It might slow them down.”

“Coward,” Gareth teased. “I’ll bet ten Cores they don’t pass the fourth wall.”

Jax looked at the radar. Three hundred red dots were converging on their position. The sheer mass of the swarm was unlike anything they had faced before.

“I’ll take that action,” Jax said, his voice cutting through the rain.

The team looked at him, surprised.

Jax stared grimly at the horde emerging from the darkness.

“I bet they reach the base of the platform.”