In his shining Mythril armor, Ben stood outside his keep with his blood red fur cloak fluttering in the breeze that poured over the surrounding stone walls. These stone walls had now caught his attention and it was finally time to improve them.
His plan was to use all the concrete produced thus far. With a decent amount of steel and concrete now stockpiled, he would erect concrete and steel rebar defenses.
From what the system had told him in the past it was possible to deconstruct walls and building, but he would lose a portion of the resources used to build them along with all of the gold he invested in it.
This meant it was possible to deconstruct the stone walls that surrounded the top of the plateau. Even though it was possible after some thought, he decided he would leave them there. His line of thought was that if his walls were to ever come under attack this three-foot layer of interlocking stone blocks would work as a shock absorber.
If a large stone or a powerful spell was directed at the fortress walls those stone blocks could provide an additional layer of protection until they were destroyed or the attackers were driven off.
The Build Menus [Defenses] category allowed him to draw out where the new wall would be built with the concrete and rebar wall tools. With this tool option, he began to draw out what the new walls would look like.
Ben's Build Menu provided him a window of the area that looked exactly like he was looking at a camera projection on a monitor. The options allowed him to zoom in and out or to pan up and down on the surrounding area. There was even the same option that the road menu used which allowed you to view down on everything from an aerial view.
This view reminded him of playing his city and castle builder games which had an above view allowing the player to look down at the city while building.
Using the camera to view the walls from the outside of the fortress, Ben began with the concrete tool. He used it to cover the outside and inside surfaces of the current stone walls. This would help make them stronger by cementing them together and give them a smooth appearance.
He was thinking that if the outer walls were smooth any attackers couldn't use the joints in the stone blocks to help climb the walls. Ben could remember watching movies where the attackers would drive spikes into the block joints and use them as handholds to climb walls or use crossbows to shoot bolts in between them for the same purpose.
Ben figured the latter was more movie magic than practical, but he figured it would be better to just remove the option all the same. This was a world of cultivation and magic so the physics of what were possible on Earth were thrown out the window here.
Using the rebar tool next he placed a grid of steel rebar against the inside and outside of the stone walls which covered them from top to bottom all the way around.
The steel rebar used by the build menu was made of circular steel rods about an inch thick than ran from side to side up and down making what looked like a large grid of interlinking steel bars.
With the steel rebar grid pressed flush up against the stone block walls, it would prevent the individual blocks from shifting if they were attacked.
Once he was happy with the reinforced interlocking block walls, Ben began to design the concrete wall. He marked an area out on the screen twenty feet wide and thirty feet high with the concrete and rebar wall tool.
[Concrete with Steel Rebar Walls]: Solid concrete walls that are reinforced with an internal grid of steel rebar. [locked until; built a concrete plant and steel mill]
[requires: concrete and steel]
On top of the walls battlements, he also made concrete parapets that looked like a bottom row of teeth. These parapets would provide cover for any troops manning the walls from incoming projectiles and spells.
Ben's twenty-foot thick concrete wall was laid out to have rebar grids every five feet inside of them. Most walls only had one grid of rebar in the center of them, but since these walls were so thick he had a good amount room to improve their durability.
Before he finalized the construction of the wall, Ben used the Concrete and Rebar Tower tools to build forty-foot high towers all along the walls. Since the walls were thirty feet in height he made the interior tower floors each 10 feet high.
[Concrete Steel Rebar Tower]: A concrete tower reinforced with steel rebar. It can be built with multiple levels with options for staircases or ladders internally. It can also be built with a flat top or a roofed top. The tower interface allows the host to create custom designs and add additional options like windows, arrow slits, doors, and many other options. [A custom menu allows for the construction of towers in any shape or size]
[locked until; built a concrete plant and steel mill] [requires: concrete, steel, and wood]
Each tower was designed with four floors inside and a flat top with parapets that archers could shoot between. The bottom three floors of each tower would be protected by the wall but the top interior fourth level floor was flush with the top of the wall and would have arrow slits that allowed archers to shoot from inside the tower in any direction.
Just like the small tower out in the forest these towers would have thick wooden ladders bolted to the walls that allowed troops to climb up and open a steel hatch in the fourth-floor ceiling to gain access to the outside top of the tower.
Each tower would also have a steel door at the ground level of the fortress. If you walked through the tower lower ground level steel door you would see a wooden staircase that led to the next floor.
On climbing the tower stairs you would see every floor would have a staircase on the opposite wall of the other. When you reached the tower's fourth floor there were two solid steel doors that stood opposite of one another. These two steel doors would allow you to gain access to the top of the wall's battlements. If someone wanted to walk all the way around the top of the walls they would need to go through each tower to accomplish it.
Ben split the walls up like this to limit the movement of any attackers who made it onto the top of his walls. Every steel tower door could be barricaded with two solid steel bars from inside the tower.
Any enemies on his walls would need to bash down those barricaded steel doors or jump off the wall to the ground inside the fortress which was a thirty-foot drop. Jumping off of these concrete walls would be equivalent to jumping off of a three-story house onto a stone paved street. Unless you could somehow fly you would break your legs or even your neck attempting it.
When he had a decent model designed for the walls and towers in the custom interface menu, Ben walked over to the gatehouse and crossed the drawbridge to where everyone was working on the road. He had everyone gather around and explained what was about to happen.
He had them all take a break and sit down on the inclined road behind him for now. Ben did not want a repeat of what happened with Rayner and the drawbridge. If someone were too shocked by what was about to happen he didn't want them backpedaling off the edge of the road and falling forty feet to the rocks below.
Ben deconstructed the stone block Gatehouse and began to model a new custom concrete and rebar gatehouse fifty feet high into the walls and towers model.
This time around instead of using the iron grate portcullis, Ben modeled two massive solid steel squares which were both connected to their own portcullis electric winch systems. These massive steel squares would block off the entire entrance and exit of the new gatehouse and could be lifted or lowered into place.
He also used this same concept for the new drawbridge which, he designed to be a three-inch thick solid steel plate that would make it impossible to get through once it was raised.
This fifty-foot tall gatehouse was fashioned with ten-foot-high interior floors providing a total of five floors from the ground up. From the second floor to the fifth floor there were arrow slits every three feet on the wall facing the inclined road. This would allow five archers to shoot arrows toward the road leading to the gatehouse from every floor.
This would allow twenty archers to shoot at anyone who approached the gatehouse from inside the Gatehouse. If an enemy came up the narrow inclined road and attempted to somehow cross the deep ravine that the drawbridge normally spans they would be sitting ducks for the protected archers inside the gatehouse and from the two towers that stood to the left and right of the gatehouse that also allowed archers to attack the inclined road through arrow slits.
Everyone was still patiently sitting down behind Ben for the past few minutes while he finished the gatehouse model on the custom design menu. They were all quietly talking among one another wondering when the magic show would begin.
Once Ben placed the steel doors that would allow access to the wall battlements on the gatehouse model, he began the construction of the walls, towers and the new gatehouse all at once.
Just like he had seen before the blue mist marked out the ground area where everything would be built. This blue mist that, Ben assumed was a mass of gathered mana slowly began to climb up and take the shape of everything he just made a model of in the Build Menu custom interface.
Everyone behind Ben, began to "ooh and aahed" for the next twenty minutes as they watched the mist shape out the new massive gatehouse, walls, and towers. Then before they knew it, the mist gradually faded away leaving behind glass-smooth concrete defences.
With an outer coating of concrete covering the old stone walls, they now blended in hiding the fact that there was actually a three-foot layer of interlocking stone blocks on the outside of the new twenty-foot thick concrete walls.