Remembering that she may be assigned to base defence shifts, Erica decided to improve her Protective Aura as well. First, she invested 10 points to raise it to level 3. Then, she continued investing 100 points at a time until she reached level 7. Finally, Protective Aura reached level 8 after spending 478 of her remaining 503 Ability Points. She had closed up the level, the same as before, because she didn't like having part levels just hanging around.
Protective Aura now had a 10 metre radius, having expanded at level 5.
Faced with a now extremely large set of skill points, Erica landed squarely in decision paralysis. She wasn't sure that just over 650 points was enough to raise a skill a full level, and she still thought that she might learn new skills to invest in.
She decided to leave it again. Making choices was obviously too hard at that moment.
Finally prepared for her day, Erica went to get breakfast and check the duty roster. With new people being rescued constantly, the roster was updating daily. It was the responsibility of each person to check in the morning and promptly report to their assigned stations.
In consideration of how many civilians there now were on the base, the day was split into four duty shifts. These were morning, afternoon, third, and graveyard. Each person would work for two of the four shifts each day. The timings were staggered so that no duty station was ever empty. After breakfast, Erica would report to her first duty station. She discovered that she was on perimeter guard for morning shift and infirmary duty for the afternoon. She hoped that she could earn at least as many points as yesterday, as she had felt her abilities skyrocket as she worked.
Breakfast consisted of oatmeal porridge, toast, bacon, and eggs. One could take all or some of the options, as they wanted. With a cup of coffee and some scrambled eggs on toast in her hands, Erica found her way to an empty chair and sat next to one of the Activators she had met yesterday.
The Activator, Wes, was a man around Erica's age. His brown hair was a floppy mop of curls across his head. It dropped down into his eyes as he turned to smile at her.
"Morning," he greeted.
"Morning, Wes. How're you feeling today?"
He tilted his head a bit, the smile steady on his face.
"Pretty good actually. Way better than yesterday." They continued with some small talk while finishing their breakfast. They were both on the day shifts, so they arranged to meet up again at dinner time and hopefully bring the other Activators with them.
***
Erica hurried to the perimeter fence, reporting to the officer in charge. She got caught up in her conversation and had to rush to get to her shift on time.
The 'fence' was more like a stone wall at this point, the large sandstone blocks creating a rough surface that caught the dust that blew through. Some improvements were obviously underway, with some people working on raising the height of the wall, and others beginning to build another wall a few metres outside of it. The walls wouldn't help if the aliens just landed inside the base, but hopefully their ships would be too small for that.
The military wouldn't leave their defences up to a 'hopefully', so they had stationed soldiers at strategic locations throughout the base and were also considering ways to block alien ships from landing.
The officer on duty, a man named Zorawar, directed Erica to work with the others on the external wall. She was to help build as much as possible, but her main purpose was to protect the building crew in case of an emergency.
Erica went out to the building crew to find the next person to report to, who was a shorter, muscled woman called Ace.
Ace quickly introduced her to the basics of building a wall, and assigned her to yet another person, a tall and solid middle-aged man known as Bill.
Bill settled Erica in to mortar duty. She applied the mortar, he applied the bricks. They worked well together, speeding through row after row, although Bill made sure to let the mortar set enough before doing anything that might unsettle the wall.
As she worked, Erica got a pop-up. She grinned.
[You have unlocked the new Skill: Bricklaying Lv 1]
The construction team worked solidly from 7am to 11:30am, with short breaks for the toilet and water. The sun beat down, making sweat run down Erica's back and leaving her feeling sticky. Her hands and back were sore from the unaccustomed weights and movements, and she developed some nasty-looking blisters on her palms, but she felt surprisingly good. The perimeter wall stretched much further than it had earlier that morning. Its mismatch of brick colours gave it a patchwork feel, but it was solid.
She'd asked about the colours. Apparently, a team had gone out the night before to scavenge some bricks from stores and building sites. They just grabbed as many bricks as they could, ending up with a large variety and a wall that looked like it had chicken pox.
Reaching the end of her shift uneventfully, Erica raced back to her quarters for a shower. She definitely wasn't going to her infirmary shift smelling like she took a bath in a pond of sweat! The brick dust would not be good for any patients, either.
Grabbing a quick snack in the mess hall on the way, Erica made it to the infirmary just in time. The sharp smell of antiseptic assaulted her nose as she stepped inside to find the same doctors as yesterday. They smiled and welcomed her back, before having her dive right back in to the work.
A new set of rescued people were brought in every hour or so. The infirmary soon got noisy and crowded, with babies screaming, people crying, and children running around playing chase. Erica and the medical team worked their way through the crowd quickly and methodically, triaging patients and treating the worst injuries first.
Erica felt that she contributed more this time, as her higher Ability level meant that she could now heal moderate injuries without as much strain. By the time the shift was over, she was exhausted anyway. She wanted nothing more than to collapse in bed again, but she had promised to meet up with the other Activators.
Dragging her feet, she stumbled slowly to the mess hall.