When the wall was finally moved, Damion and Mr. Galen sat down on the old man’s porch to rest. Even with Damion’s high physical strength and endurance from years of training and the magic flowing through him, Mr. Galen did not lose a step to him. The old man worked just as hard as the young man had.
“Since Phil ate up the Fire Scorpions ya killed earlier, I can make up for so of the stingers from my share for ya. So, ya can get yer proper pay,” Mr. Galen told Damion.
“Don’t worry about it,” Damion said after taking a sip from his canteen. “I just need five stingers to turn in for the mission. You can keep the rest to sell to the Association. Help get your farm up and running.”
“I don’t need charity,” Mr. Galen said gruffly as he started to count out Fire Scorpion stingers.
“I told you before. I’m here to practice my spells. That is worth more than money to .”
Mr. Galen gave him a hard stare but stopped arguing with him and took back the stingers he had separated for Damion. The old man was stubborn, but not to the point of foolishness.
“Have ya had enough practice yet?” Mr. Galen asked as he looked at his burnt fields.
“No. But even mages need to rest,” Damion answered with a smile. “Let’s get sothing to eat and then I’ll go out and clear so more areas.”
“I appreciate the effort, but if we don’t close off each area more of ‘em will just move in.”
“Perhaps. However, if I eliminate enough Fire Scorpions, then it will take longer for them to repopulate the cleared areas. Maybe you will have enough ti to section so of the areas off.”
“Why not eliminate them all?” Mr. Galen questioned, exhaustion easily detectable in his voice.
“I intend to try,” Damion answered. “I can’t make the promise that I won’t miss any though.”
“I wun’t believe ya if ya did,” Mr. Galen chuckled.
After Damion felt he had rested enough he got up and headed back into Mr. Galen’s fields. Phil, the Snow Hawk, had vanished back into the Benault Forest leaving the majority of Damion’s first round of Fire Scorpion kills untouched. He was not sure if the Snow Hawk left the corpses because it had its fill or if it did not want to take all of Damion’s kills. Whatever was the case, he pushed the thought out of his mind to focus on clearing more of Mr. Galen’s fields.
Damion started near the house this ti. Clearing out the area around the small safe fields first. In each area he would start off again by taking out as many of the Fire Scorpions as he could with Ice Shard. Once the Fire Scorpions realized they did not stand a chance against Damion and his ranged spell, they fled into their burrows.
When the Fire Scorpions fled into their burrows, it told him where those openings were. After seeing the Fire Scorpions hide in the burrows, Damion would go over and cast Ice Breath into the holes. His spell would either kill the hiding Fire Scorpions or force them back to the surface.
Section by section, Damion cleared the fields near the house. Then he moved on to the fields closest to the road. Many of the fields he worked to clear were already sectioned off with small stone walls, but Mr. Galen had never been able to completely eliminate the Fire Scorpions from them and thus he could never grow anything in those fields.
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Seeing that Damion was doing his best to truly take care of all the Fire Scorpions, Mr. Galen began working to erect a small wall to separate the fields in the front and rear of the house. The fields in back were larger and being closer to the Benault Forest always had more Fire Scorpions.
Mr. Galen thought there was a good chance Damion would be able to clear out all the fields in front of the house, but he was not so sure about the back. However, if he walled off the front and the back fields, keeping the Fire Scorpions from moving back to the front fields, Mr. Galen thought he might actually be able to have a profitable farm again.
As Damion continued to work, he could almost feel his intrinsic understanding of his spells deepening. He had not yet received a ssage from the Magic System telling him that he had increased the Rank of one of his spells, but Damion could tell he was getting close.
By the ti Damion had cleansed the front fields of Fire Scorpions the sun was setting. Mr. Galen had managed to finish half the wall to block the front fields from the back, but completing the whole wall was a montous task for him on his own.
“Ya gonna walk back to town in the dark?” Mr. Galen asked Damion as the two rested while watching the sun go down.
“If you don’t mind, I’ll just pitch my tent in your fields.”
“Nonsense,” Mr. Galen harrumphed, and Damion was afraid for a mont Mr. Galen was going to shoo him off. “No sense in sleeping on the ground. I’ve got a spare room. Yer welco to it.”
Damion was taken off guard by the offer from Mr. Galen. Sleeping in his tent would have been perfectly fine, but he would hardly say no to sleeping in a bed. After eating a stew made by Mr. Galen, which Damion suspected was, but did not ask, mostly made of Fire Scorpion at, he headed to bed.
When Damion got up in the morning, he ate one of his ration packs for breakfast and headed out into Mr. Galen’s fields to hunt more Fire Scorpions. Mr. Galen had not yet woken up and Damion felt the old man deserved a rest for his hospitality, so he started working on his own.
Damion’s first task was to finish the wall Mr. Galen had started yesterday. There was no point in completely clearing the fields if the Fire Scorpions would be able to just move right back in. As he moved the stones from the old wall Mr. Galen was taking down to make the new one, Damion finally received notifications from the Magic System.
*Ding*
[Spell True Sight mastery increased to E Rank]
*Ding*
{Quest Completed}
[Quest: Increase a Magic Spell in Rank – Status: Complete – Reward: 100 Experience, 500 Store Credit]
Damion stopped working for a mont while he studied the Magic System notifications. True Sight had increased in the range it was effective. Now able to grant him the ability to identify Ranks and see clearly for up to 15 ters. Finally, being rewarded with a large number of Credits for the Magic System’s store ant Damion could spend those points for upgrades or items from the store, as soon as he could make up his mind on what he wanted to buy.
After checking the Magic System’s quest nu and seeing that he still had the quest to increase his mastery of a magic spell with the sa reward Damion was surprised. He had expected that if he did still have the quest, it would have beco more difficult, like his kill quests had. When Damion considered that the number of spells he could learn, and use was limited and that each ti he increased one in Rank it would beco more difficult to increase the spell to the next Rank he figured the difficulty of the quest increased on its own.
The question of what to buy with his new credits was difficult to answer, and best answered when he was assured of privacy. Putting those thoughts aside, Damion returned to his work on the wall.
As Damion was nearing completion of the wall Mr. Galen ca out and started helping him. Every so often a Fire Scorpion would appear and walk along the wall, searching for a way through to the now clear front fields. Damion would quickly dispatch these Fire Scorpions with a quick cast of Ice Shard, but the persistence of the Fire Scorpions as they continued to show up, following the path of the previous one, looking for a way through the wall like ants following a trail left him wondering if there was more to these Fire Scorpions.
Just as Damion was considering what the behavior of these Fire Scorpions might an he felt a rumbling under the field. A large patch of dirt was being pushed up from down deep. When a ter long pincer pushed out from the earth and knocked the wall Damion and Mr. Galen had been building down, he knew they found the real source for all the Fire Scorpions on Mr. Galen’s farm.
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