The small group had just exited through the southeastern gate of the village and turned south. The sun was shining brightly, with no clouds visible in the sky. Roderic walked in front of Alden along with two more guards, ready to take on any kind of danger, while the mage walked next to Alden with his staff, followed by a few more guards. Alden had taken his sword as well, just in case they were attacked. He may not be able to defeat the captain, but he was still one of the best swordsmen in the village.

  Once they reached the corner of the village walls, they turned west toward the brickfield. It didn't look like anything special yet. The original 80 meters of cleared space had been burned in a controlled fire a few days ago to clear the place of any weeds and shrubs. Half a dozen guards were already on duty there, keeping an eye on the forest in the south, all of them armed with spears and shields, with swords tied to their waists. Two of the crossbows had also been given to this group for any emergency.

  Closer to the walls, a group of village women was hard at work molding the clay into bricks. They used large rectangular molds made of wood to stuff the clay in and make it flat before they cut it into smaller bricks. Another group took these cut bricks and stacked them in a growing stockpile in the sun to dry.

  Some distance ahead from the walls, towards the forest, the first two brick kilns were already completed, with the third one now being worked on by laborers. When they were ready, they would be taller than even the village walls. He planned to make eight kilns here, so they could keep getting a fresh batch basically every day, since the bricks would take days to weeks to cool down even if Daelus managed to bake them far more quickly than that.

  Daelus had initially suggested bringing Thuvara as well since she could take care of a pack of monsters by herself, but Alden knew that with the griffin's bulk it would be easy for her to crush the raw bricks or break the kilns here. So the beast had been left behind to keep sunning herself in the courtyard, where by now the manor residents were slowly becoming more familiar with the griffin. Some of them had even started to feed her treats, although she had a habit of flying away from the manor occasionally to soar into the sky, perhaps to look for another monster to snack on. The fact that it would make the village and its immediate surroundings safer was only a side-benefit, of course.

  As they reached the place, Roderic turned to get a report from the guards on duty, while Alden walked with the mage to the first brick kiln. The workers immediately stopped as they saw him approach. One of the women, who looked to be around 40 years of age with streaks of grey in her hair and had been ordering the other workers, walked over to him.

  “Milord! How are you here? It can’t be safe for you outside the walls!”

  Alden tilted his head at Daelus. “I brought a mage here. Don’t worry. Nothing’s going to harm any of us while he’s here. We do need to bake these bricks anyway, and Daelus is the one who’s going to do it. Who are you anyway?”

  “I’m Kerra, milord,” the woman replied. “Sir Vusato appointed me as the foreman here.”

  “Oh, that's good to know.” Alden pointed at the first kiln. “It looks perfect.”

  Kerra smiled. “It better be, Milord. We’ve been using that measuring stick the majordomo gave us, saying it was from you. We built the base just as wide as he told us, and only stacked up the clay to make the walls after that. It’s big enough that we can place thousands of bricks inside it when it’s ready.”

  “Let’s make it ready, then.” Alden looked at Daelus. “Come on. Time for you to show off.”

  Daelus grinned. “What do you want me to do? I have absolutely no idea what I’m doing.”

  Alden pointed at the first brick kiln. “It’s made out of clay, as you can see. I need you to bake it into a solid wall. We’ll experiment later on how to do it for the bricks, but it should be safe enough to do it for this kiln as a solid wall. I think something like a fireball is needed, but we don’t exactly need a ball, and I need the fire to be sustained for a while until the kiln sides are fully baked. Start slowly, so the moisture has some time to evaporate slowly and then using your full power for a while. Of course, the fireball shouldn’t explode or something.”

  “Obviously,” Daelus laughed. He scratched his chin for a moment. “Hmm... This isn't going to be easy since I've never done anything like this, but I think I know what to do. Make some space, everyone. Move back until you’re nowhere close to the kiln. You too, Alden. You’re not made of steel either.”

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  Alden nodded and moved back with the guards and the workers to a safe distance away.

  Daelus brought up his staff, which had a crystal tied at the top of it. He began muttering something inaudible from a distance, and the crystal at the top of the staff started glowing. Then he pointed his staff at the first kiln, and a thin stream of fire began pouring out of the crystal into the entrance of the kiln before it pooled inside, making the interior glow.

  All the workers who had been staring at the spectacle began clapping, and the guards also joined in. This was probably the first time most people here were seeing magic right in front of their eyes. Alden also tried to wrap his mind around the fact that fire was pouring out of the crystal in a stream, like it was water. It didn’t make any sense based on any physics principles he could think of... And where was the fire coming from anyway? Was Daelus somehow converting that mana thing he had in his body into fire through the crystal? How did that even work? Why could only Daelus do it and not others? Magic really didn’t make any sense at all to his engineer's brain which looked for logic and structure in everything...

  He kept watching for a while as the mage continued pouring fire into the base, and before long, following his earlier instructions, Daelus did something and the stream of fire started thinning until it stopped completely. Daelus then muttered something else before something like a wall of fire came out of the crystal—to bake it solid—and as it touched the kiln, it somehow moved around it until the whole kiln chimney was wrapped in fire.

  "Whoa..." one of the guards muttered. "That's literally a wall of fire!"

  Roderic nodded as he crossed his arms. "I've met other mages at Fort Raltra, but this is probably the best control over fire I've ever seen. The kid is gifted, no doubt about that."

  Alden chuckled. "He's already a full-fledged mage at his age—nearly the same age as me. That can't happen without talent."

  After a while, Daelus muttered something else as the fire stopped slowly coming out of his staff. Then he tied the staff with a sling back over his shoulder and called others over.

  Alden and Roderic walked to the kiln, with some other curious workers following him—everyone already feeling the heat from the simmering kiln from a distance. It was way too hot to even think of touching it, but there didn’t seem to be any major cracks visible from any side. It also looked solid enough that it wouldn't topple over even after it cooled down.

  Alden nodded with satisfaction. “Seems like this will work. Well done!”

  “It was way too easy,” Daelus shrugged. "I thought there'd be more work to do."

  Alden laughed. “We’re just getting started. It's true that we still don’t have that much work today, but when the bricks are ready to be baked, you’ll probably be here for hours every day.”

  “Well, I’m happy to help as long as I have mana remaining, and as long as Hilda keeps feeding me pies in return. Can never get enough of 'em!” The mage pointed at the second kiln and its chimney. “Want me to do the same for that one?”

  “Yeah,” Alden nodded. “Do that while I figure out how you can dry the bricks faster.”

  He moved back once more and let the mage work. Roderic had sent some guards closer to the forest in pairs, so they could give early warning to the others in case they saw a monster approaching. The captain stayed close to Alden, however, since he was easily the best fighter here.

  Leaving the captain to his tasks, Alden looked at the stacks of raw bricks being made by the women. As per the usual process he knew of, they were supposed to be kept for a few weeks in the sun and open air so they could dry up properly, and to prevent any steam explosions when the baking started. But they didn’t have that kind of time. Thankfully, they also didn’t have to depend on conventional heating methods, which was basically a coal fire, and had a fire mage to help them.

  For today, he just planned to experiment with it. He called over Kerra, who quickly jogged to him.

  “What is it, Milord?”

  “We’re going to do a few tests here to see if we can use Daelus’s help to dry the bricks faster. So call up a few workers and tell them to bring some bricks here. We’re going to make some stacks in a few different arrangements—uh, shapes—and then we’ll see which one works the best.”

  “As you wish, milord.” Kerra immediately walked away and started giving orders.

  By the time Daelus returned after baking the walls of the second kiln with his staff tied behind his back with a sling, there were four different stacks of bricks kept away from anything else. The first one had been stacked up in the usual evenly spaced-stockpile shape. The next one had bricks placed on the ground like a horizontal wall. The third one had the shape of a small cylindrical oven, while the last one had been placed kind of like a jigsaw puzzle in criss-crossed shape, with a decent space between each of them. If none of these worked, he would have to think of another method.

  “So, what do I do?” the mage asked as he brought his staff in his hands again.

  It's 11 chapters ahead!