After that initial confrontation, I could easily return to my work, with Sylvia plodding along behind me, watching with awed eyes as I was reshaping the world around me. The rest of the people who had been working remained behind, speaking with Luna under Silva’s watchful gaze. We really should look for somebody focused on negotiation and social judo. While my current power was enough to humble and intimidate people into letting me do whatever I wanted, within certain boundaries, I doubted I would always be the most powerful being in the area; there were bound to be people who could match me, maybe even suppress me as I suppressed the people here. But those were considerations for later, now, it was construction time.
Finishing the protections around the house and field was, amusingly, easier than setting up the initial layer. Mostly because I only needed to raise the area behind my frozen rampart into a dyke, leaving a ditch on the other side where I had pulled the earth from, and then use a combination of Crystal and Earth Magic to transmute the outer layer, the one towards the water, into a singular, fairly solid piece of crystal. That way, the rushing water wouldn’t be able to carry away the soil; even the abrasive mix of earth and stone the water carried with it wouldn’t be able to scratch the crystal. The only possible danger came from the few trees the water carried with it; those might have the sheer mass to crack the crystal, though I doubted it. And even if that happened, after I made the initial pass to have that first layer of crystal, I could easily make another pass and add a second layer a few centimetres deeper. That way, even if the initial layer was broken, there would be a second layer with a cushioning layer of earth in between.
“Can you explain what you’ve been doing here?” Sylvia finally asked as I was pausing to consider what the best next step would be.
“Which part are you curious about?” I asked in return, a smile spreading over my face as I casually wove three different elements together to accomplish a fairly simple task just because I could. My actions didn’t help her initial understanding of magic, so I began to lecture, starting at the obvious foundation of magic, the Astral River and how it influenced our reality. From there, I began to describe different elements, demonstrating their utility and even letting her have a feel of the raw Astral Power, though that was only done very carefully as all elements were dangerous in their own way.
It didn’t matter if it was a supposedly nice element, as the uninitiated would consider Water or Life; they all had their own innate dangers, whether it was the erosive effect of Water, the calcifying effect of Earth or the subtle mutating influence of Life, if one wasn’t careful while handling them, they could all be deadly in their own ways.
Luckily, I had a lot of experience when it came to lecturing about the foundations of magic and the place of the elements within the world, allowing me to continue talking and working as I went, making the entire process look a lot easier than it actually was and soon, I managed to get around the entire area, protecting it with a dyke so that no matter how much water was dumped into the river, this place would be protected.
As things currently were, my solution wasn’t perfect, but it was easily good enough. To make it better, I would have to transmute the entire dyke into crystal or stone and anchor it deeply into the ground; it was good enough and would keep the fields of these people nice and dry. And all through my work, I was teaching Sylvia to the point that she even used her Ice Magic a few times in an attempt to help. Her actions were quite clumsy, almost more of a hindrance than a help, but looking at her face scrunched up in concentration, I couldn’t bring myself to chide her, especially as she was eagerly enduring the cold and unpleasant rain next to me, while almost everyone else had long-since retreated into the comfort of their houses.
Once I was done with the protection from water rushing in from the river and the forest above the farm, one of the local farmers, a guy named Jeff, approached me with a request. He asked, or rather pleaded with me, to add some drainage to their fields. Otherwise, they would drown due to the incessant rain. Luckily, he knew what was needed, as I had an extremely limited idea of drainage, mostly from what I had seen on Apple Gate Farm. But he could easily guide me, and he even managed to talk me into creating a cistern for them so they could store some of the rainwater for later usage.
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Once that was done, he started to hint that maybe, if I were ever so kind, I could connect the cistern to the river later so it would automatically fill. Cheeky as he was, he challenged me to add a filter to that connection so the water in the cistern would be cleansed automatically, though he made it sound like he doubted I could do it, prodding my pride.
Amusingly, despite knowing that I was being manipulated, the manipulation worked. I wanted to see if I could create something that would automatically cleanse water of all impurities; even if that wasn’t really the healthiest thing to do, the minerals were important. But to create a magical filter able to distinguish between good minerals and bad minerals sounded even more difficult. At least rendering all biological contaminants harmless would be fairly simple. All bacteria, viruses and other microscopic life forms were susceptible to Death Magic, robbing them of even the faintest sparks of life. Theoretically simple, really, though setting it up in practice was something I would have to figure out. A wonderful challenge and something to keep me occupied during my meditations.
The challenge of creating a theoretical framework was passed on to Sylvia, though I doubted she would be able to come up with anything usable; she simply lacked too much foundational understanding.
But, as we were talking, I learned that there was a local Legacy, a warrior-type named Ned, though the name did not mean anything to me. Apparently, he remained human and had been heard grousing about the lack of proper weapons. The image managed to bring a grin to my face, and I had to admit that magic was quite superior in that regard, at least magic used in the style I was employing. I didn’t need anything to be reasonably effective, just my body and mind working in conjunction. But a warrior without their weapon, or maybe their weapon and armour, was a lot less effective, turning them into a wrestler who might not even know how to wrestle, a simple brute and brawler in effect. And, given that it very much sounded as if this guy had only the most superficial idea about the Arcane and Divine, I doubted he’d be able to help any of the burgeoning spellcasters.
To make matters worse, the guy had decided to lead his party into the mountains a few days ago, meaning he wasn’t even here to assist the villagers, as I had begun to think of them in their current plight, leaving them with very limited defences from any roaming monsters and none from their current watery predicament.
Though, even if he was here, I doubted he’d be able to do all that much. From the descriptions I was getting, he sounded as if he had played some sort of knight, a soldier or something similar. Somebody who was part of some sort of hierarchical structure, something like an army. He also sounded as if he was accustomed to a certain standard of equipment, used to fight with comrades at his side and, to some degree, have a plan dictated from up high. Depending on the role he had filled within that structure, he might have some influence on the strategic goals but it was more likely that he had been limited to tactical decisions unless he had eschewed even those and acted as a simple soldier, a follower.
Certainly somebody competent but as I realised more and more, the level of magic I was wielding would be fairly uncommon on Mundus and here, on Terra, after the Change and the cataclysmic scale of death and destruction that came with it, I was almost certainly the most powerful and versatile spellcaster around. And even with all that power, protecting the town and its fields had been quite challenging.
Finally, I felt that my work outside was done, and it was time to find shelter. So, I asked Sylvia to show me where my daughter would likely be and where I could take my load off. After all the hard work, I really didn’t feel like setting up a shelter.
In response, she immediately showed me to the largest house. The moment she opened the door, a wall of warm, stuffy air hit my face, making me wonder if setting up my own shelter would be all that difficult, regardless of my exhaustion.
