Extra's Survival: Raising SSS-Rank Characters Is My Only Option

Why did the Wall fall?

It was a question Encrid had begun asking himself after seeing the two hundred kilometers of fortification built along the edge of the Great Green Forest.

The Wall itself was strong.

For centuries, it had stood against the Great Green without once falling. Its foundations were deep, its towers were reinforced, and thousands of soldiers guarded it every day.

But that was not the true strength of the Wall.

The true strength of the Wall was its people.

More than eleven thousand lives lived on this edge of the world, and among them were warriors strong enough to fight roamers that would normally not appear until much later in the novel.

There were experienced soldiers, powerful cultivators, skilled commanders, scouts who had spent decades watching the forest, and craftsmen who could keep the entire fortress functioning even during the harshest winters.

And yet, despite all of that, the novel had begun after the fall of the Wall.

Encrid had never understood how that was possible.

The Wall was not some poorly defended village waiting to be overrun by a roamer horde.

It was a fortress that had survived for centuries.

So why had it fallen?

That question had been sitting in the back of his mind ever since he arrived.

At first, he had assumed the answer would reveal itself eventually.

Perhaps there was an enemy powerful enough to destroy it.

Perhaps there was some hidden weakness in its defenses.

Perhaps the Thousand Beast Calamity Horde, as it was called was simply too large for the Wall to handle.

Or perhaps the real problem was not the strength of the Wall at all.

Perhaps it was everything around it.

The food, water, roads, soldiers, supply lines, command structure.

Maybe it is the number of people who could actually fight.

Or is it the ability to move those people where they were needed.

A fortress could have the strongest walls in the world and still fall if the people inside it could no longer fight.

Encrid leaned back in his chair.

There were too many possibilities.

But that did not mean there was nothing he could do.

He still believed one thing.

’The Wall could be saved.’

The future he remembered was not a fixed destiny.

Too many things had already changed since he arrived in this world.

People who were supposed to be dead were alive.

Events that should have happened later had already begun.

And most importantly, Encrid...no - Jin was here.

He knew what was coming.

That meant he had a chance to change it.

The problem was that knowing something was going to happen and actually preventing it were two very different things.

Encrid had tasks.

He had a great many tasks.

He had already thought of several ways to strengthen the Wall.

The first was simple.

Food.

If the Wall was ever surrounded by thousands of roamers, there would be no guarantee that supplies could continue arriving from the south.

The Wall needed enough food to survive for months without outside help.

Not just enough to survive a normal winter.

Enough to survive a disaster.

Water.

He had already begun looking into the cisterns and drainage system, but that was not enough.

If the Wall was surrounded for a long period, water would become just as important as food.

The wells, cisterns, drainage channels, and emergency water sources all needed to be mapped, repaired, and protected.

Manpower.

Eleven thousand people lived on the Wall, but not all eleven thousand could fight.

Some were children.

Some were elderly.

Some were craftsmen.

Some were merchants.

Some were clerks.

Some were soldiers who were too injured or inexperienced to stand on the front line.

Encrid needed to know exactly how many people could actually fight.

He needed to know where they were stationed, what weapons they could use, how experienced they were, and how quickly they could be moved from one section of the Wall to another.

The watch system.

If the roamers were really gathering in large numbers, the Wall needed to know about it before they reached the fortifications.

The current system was designed for ordinary threats.

It was not designed to detect an entire forest moving in one direction.

The far-watch needed better communication.

They needed clearer reporting methods.

They needed to know exactly what information the Commander needed when something unusual happened.

And most importantly, they needed a way to warn the Wall quickly.

The roads.

If soldiers could not reach the part of the Wall that was under attack, then having more soldiers would not matter.

Encrid needed to know how long it took to move troops from one section to another.

He needed to identify every narrow road, every blocked path, every bridge, and every point where a large group of soldiers would be forced to slow down.

The same applied to supplies.

If food, arrows, weapons, or medical supplies could not reach a particular section quickly enough, that section would eventually become a weakness.

The Span.

The Darwen Span was one of the most important parts of the Wall.

It was the main route connecting the fortress to the south.

If the Wall ever needed to evacuate civilians, move reinforcements, or receive supplies, the Span would become one of the most important pieces of the entire fortress.

Encrid needed to know exactly how many people and wagons could cross it in a day.

He needed to know what would happen if thousands of people tried to cross it at once.

The soldiers themselves.

More soldiers were not always better.

Better-trained soldiers were better.

Encrid wanted to know how many soldiers could fight roamers effectively, how many were capable of fighting in groups, how many knew how to retreat without breaking formation, and how many would panic when something far larger than anything they had ever seen appeared in front of them.

He also needed stronger officers.

A hundred soldiers without proper leadership could become a hundred frightened men.

A hundred disciplined soldiers under the right commander could become something far more dangerous.

Cultivators.

This was perhaps the most important one.

The Wall already had strong warriors, but Encrid knew from the novel that cultivators could eventually reach a level where ordinary soldiers could not hope to compete with them.

If he could increase the number of cultivators on the Wall, even by a small amount, it could change the outcome of a battle.

That was why he had already started teaching Gus - in the hopes that he would get strong enough to at least stand guard and protect himself.

It was also why he had begun thinking about whether the Wall needed an actual cultivation program rather than leaving talented people to figure it out on their own.

Weapons.

The Wall had weapons.

But Encrid did not know if it had enough.

He needed to know how many arrows could be fired before the stores were empty.

How many replacement bows existed.

How much oil remained.

How much timber was available.

How many siege weapons could still function.

And how long it would take to replace something that broke during a battle.

A weapon that existed on paper but could not be repaired was not really a weapon.

Medical supplies.

If the Wall was attacked by thousands of roamers, the number of wounded would be enormous.

The Wall needed enough medicine, bandages, healers, clean water, and places to treat the wounded.

Otherwise, even soldiers who survived the first battle might die afterward.

Encrid kept thinking.

The list continued growing.

Fire prevention.

Emergency shelters.

Evacuation routes.

Backup command posts.

Communication between watch commanders.

Training civilians to defend themselves.

Protecting the granaries.

Protecting the water supply.

Creating reserves of weapons.

Establishing emergency signals.

Making sure every watch knew what to do if another section of the Wall was attacked.

The more he thought about it, the longer the list became.

Encrid looked at the blank sheet in front of him.

He had tasks.

He had ideas.

He even had knowledge of the future.

But none of those things was a plan.

A plan required understanding the problem first.

He needed to know how the Wall had fallen in the original story.

He needed to know what had failed.

Was it the soldiers?

Was it the commanders?

Was it the supplies?

Was it the defenses?

Was it the sheer number of roamers?

Or was there something else that he had completely missed?

Encrid picked up his pen again.

At the top of the page, he wrote-

A Plan to Prevent the Fall of the Wall

Then, underneath it, he began writing the questions he needed to answer.

What caused the Wall to fall? What failed first? How many days could the Wall survive without outside supplies? How many soldiers could actually fight? How quickly could they be moved? How many roamers could the Wall realistically defend against? What would happen if the Wall was completely surrounded? What happens if the Wall cannot receive reinforcements? What happens if the Darwen Span is destroyed? What would the Wall need to survive for thirty days?

He stopped.

Then he added another question.

What would the Wall need to survive if nobody came to save it?

Encrid stared at that final question for several seconds.

That was the real problem.

He did not want to prepare for the Wall to fall.

He wanted to make sure it never did.

But if he wanted to prevent the fall, he had to plan as though the fall was already coming.

Not because he had given up.

Because if he understood exactly how much it would take to destroy the Wall, he could finally understand what it would take to keep it standing.

Encrid pulled the ledgers toward himself.

He lit another candle.

Then he began to work.

If the Wall was going to survive, he needed to know exactly what it would cost.

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