However, I promised the girls that I would be back quickly, so I don’t have time right now. I land just inside the barrier and attempt to talk to the crabs, but they don’t respond. I don’t know if it is a language thing, an intelligence thing, or an aggression thing.

  Whatever it may be, if they won’t communicate that only leaves me with wiping them out. They look like monsters, so that was my original plan, but I wanted to try just in case. So, I take a deep breath, activate my breath weapon, and strafe the beach with it.

  156 Crabmen defeated! 156,000 Exp gained!

  My breath turns every crab it touches into a charred mess and even bounces to a few extra. They are really weak, a lot weaker than they look, I thought they would take more to kill. Either that, or they just have an extreme weakness to lightning, which is a possibility.

  Although, from the small amount of exp that they are worth, the first option is probably right. Whatever the case may be, there is now nothing living left on the beach and no more crabs have come out of the water. I put most of my mana into the wards to recharge them and then head back to the lodge.

  The girls are awake and waiting for me just as they promised and they are relieved to see me. They quickly settle down once I am back and most of them are soon fast asleep again. Only Lin and Myria stay awake to hear the full story about what happened before they go back to sleep.

  I lay down on the outside edge of the bed and try to go back to sleep, but I don’t have any luck. After trying for a few minutes, I get back up, but this time I don’t wake up the girls. I sit and watch them sleep as I think about how to improve the island’s defenses.

  The lightning wards worked well, but they ran out of juice too easily against the number of crabs. I either need to beef up their stored power so that they can fire more, or I need to add something else. Beefing up the existing system would be easier, but I am worried it wouldn’t be enough.

  If the crabs had been stronger, the system would have been even less effective against them. I didn’t really plan on the defenses having to stop a small army, but it seems that I should have. I have been thinking about it all wrong, I should be thinking like it is a tower defense game.

  Thinking like that, I can put towers all around the outside edge of the island and enchant them. If I give them a variety of attacks then they will be able to defeat different types of opponents. Also, with the larger amount of stone used on the towers, it will be able to have more enchantments.

  I can even place the towers as the points of a formation design, one that gathers mana. That will supply the defenses with more energy and allow them to recharge faster. It isn’t something that I can do tonight, but I will discuss it with Lin in the morning and get her input.

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  For now, I take out some paper, sketch the island and the formation that I think will work the best. It is a more complicated formation than needed, but this way it has more points for towers. After all, this won’t work if the towers’ range doesn’t completely cover the borders of the island.

  I try to find a balance between the two, but to get full coverage the formation has to be more complicated than I like. However, it is the best that I can come up with for now, maybe Lin will have some ideas for me. She probably will, she normally manages to spot something that I completely missed.

  Now I just have to figure out what I am going to do to keep busy until the girls wake up. I decide to make a quick trip to the castle to get some more materials and then do some crafting. First, I make new dresses for the avatars, then I make them some jewelry enchanted to protect them.

  Finally, I make necklaces for them that are enchanted to give them access to the network. I won’t make crowns for them, because they won’t be official wives, but I still want them to have access to the network. The only reason I won’t marry them for real is because it would cause problems with the beastmen.

  Besides, it would be weird to marry the avatars now and then the goddesses later. I explained that to them and they seemed to be fine with it, but I still feel a little bad about it. For now, I will just see how things go, if it becomes a problem later I will deal with it.

  The easy answer would be to find more beastwomen to be my wives, but I’d rather avoid that. Having six women who get along and are willing to share me is already a miracle. I don’t want to push my luck, but it really isn’t up to me anymore, it is up to Lin.

  I am just going to have to hope that she doesn’t want to share me with anymore wives. I think that if we keep things as they are, we should be pretty well covered for most situations. The only real reason I could see to add another wife is if we added another race to those joining us.

  While it is true that taking a wife from the empire would help to settle things down, I think we can manage without doing that. I will just have to wait and see how things go after the honeymoon, but I think the girls will be fine. I am pretty sure that they can handle just about anything that might come up.

  Besides, if they keep using Sero’s spell to cheat, I can’t handle having any more women. Of course, if she would use the spell on me, then it would be a different story. If Lin does decide that we are going to add anyone else, then I will make that my condition to agree.

  That way I will at least have a better chance of winning future battles against them. Not that it is really important who wins and who loses, but it will make things more interesting. In fact, I am half tempted to ask Seronia to give me the same spell, wouldn’t that be a surprise for the girls.

  Of course, Seronia would probably tell me no, she is probably highly amused by the situation. I have felt the goddesses watching from time to time, especially at night. I haven’t said anything, but I am sure Lin and the avatars have noticed as well. Some of the others might have noticed as well, but no one has said a word about it.

  Considering that their avatars are directly involved in the action, it isn’t really spying. I am not willing to call the goddesses out on it, at least not until I can use it to get out of trouble. It isn’t like it hurts anything, they are going to get the memories of participating at some point.