The Completed Stone Wall
Pulling the outhouse door shut, Reed turned on his heel and walked away as if nothing had happened. It was not a calculated move, but rather the sheer, instinctive reaction of a boy whose brain had momentarily short-circuited in panic.
Crash!
The flimsy wooden door burst off its latch. A bipedal beast with the head of a bloated rat—a Kobold—stepped out into the open air. It twitched its snout, sniffing the breeze, before locking its murky gaze squarely onto Reed.
Its eyes were milky and unfocused, betraying poor eyesight, but the moonlight glinting off its fangs and elongated claws revealed an edge sharp enough to freeze the blood.
A kobold?
In the Central Continent, kobolds and goblins were bywords for bottom-tier vermin. Any able-bodied farmer could easily club one to death; they were only ever a threat when swarming in numbers. That was common knowledge.
Yet this was the Demonic Borderlands, where common sense went to die. Reed swallowed hard at the dark fluid dripping steadily from the creature's talons.
One scratch from that, and I'm a dead man.
This was no time to daydream. Reed drew breath to scream for help.
"Monster—!"
"Kieeeek!"
The beast shrieked and lunged first. Reacting on pure survival instinct, Reed dropped to one knee and slammed his palm against the dirt.
Rumble!
The ground surged upward, shaping itself into an enormous earthen hand that clamped firmly around the leaping creature mid-air.
"Kki-kkee?"
"Kyyi?"
Both the trapped kobold and a second one rushing up beside it froze in utter bewilderment. Glancing at its squirming kin, the second kobold hesitated for a split second before furiously raking its foreclaws across the dirt. The venomous claws tore through the soil like daggers through bread, crumbling the earthen grip that bound its companion.
"Kieee!"
"Kark! Kark!"
A frantic exchange passed between them—presumably some beastly equivalent of "I got you!" and "Thanks, brother!"
CLANG!
Reed’s iron shovel came down with brutal, unforgiving force, smashing square into the first kobold's skull. As its limp body collapsed into the dirt, the second kobold belatedly lunged at Reed, its venom-coated claws slashing straight for his heart.
Yet the scattered earth had already responded to Reed's will, reconstructing itself into a clenched fist that snagged the beast by its waist. Immobilized mid-strike, the squirming creature looked up at Reed with wide, pitifully watery eyes.
"Kki... kki..."
CLANG!
The spade struck again, caving its skull in with a clean, dull thud.
Reed let out a long, ragged breath.
"Whew... damn near gave me a heart attack."
Stepping out to take a leak only to be ambushed by monsters in an outhouse? The mere fact that he hadn't soiled his trousers was proof of monumental self-control.
The commotion finally drew the villagers and the guard detail running. Torchlight flickered across the square, illuminating two dead kobolds sprawled in the dirt—and Reed standing over them alone, shovel in hand.
"K-Kobolds?"
"What are creatures from the mountains doing inside the village...?"
"Did the lad kill them with a shovel? Gods, he's lucky to be alive."
One of the thoroughly intoxicated mercenaries, now completely sobered by adrenaline, knelt to inspect the carcasses.
"Ugh. That was a hair's breadth from disaster. Look at the venom oozing from their claws. If you get scratched by that, your entire body seizes up. Hell, some mercenaries even coat their blades with kobold venom..." Mid-sentence, the mercenary caught himself and swallowed nervously. "Ah... we're deeply ashamed, young master. We should have been keeping a sharper watch."
The mercenaries had been hired to protect the stonemasons. Had Reed been maimed or killed on their watch, their reputation—and their pay—would have been ruined.
Anton, who had been observing in silence, broke the tension in a calm, measured voice. "Who could have anticipated beasts appearing from within the village itself? We will not make an issue of it this time."
"Th-Thank you, Meister."
"However, as of tonight, there will be no more drinking."
"Yes, sir..."
With not an ounce of room for argument in Anton's tone, the mercenaries bowed their heads in chastened agreement. Anton then turned to Reed.
"Reed. Are you hurt anywhere?"
"No, Meister. If there had been a pack, it might have been ugly, but there were only two."
"A blessing. Even so, we must expedite our work. For kobolds to infiltrate the center of the village means there is an opening somewhere along the palisade."
"You're entirely right."
The danger was far graver than they had thought.
The village spent the rest of the night in an uproar, scouring every nook for lingering beasts and checking roll calls to ensure no one had gone missing. Fortunately, the two Reed had dispatched appeared to be the only intruders.
Or perhaps the rest fled the moment the commotion started, Reed mused. Still, to think kobolds were behind the disappearances...
Kobolds were subterranean creatures that thrived in dark caverns. That held true even in the Demonic Borderlands. As the mercenaries explained, it was extraordinarily rare for them to roam aboveground in the open.
"I've never once heard of them raiding settlements and dragging folks off like this," one mercenary muttered. "Their eyesight is rubbish to begin with."
After that chaotic night, dawn arrived.
Loty requisitioned an empty shed and began mixing lime into fresh mortar, while calling together the able-bodied villagers who had agreed to assist. Most who gathered were men; the women and children took coarse clay bowls and headed out of the village in a steady stream.
Noticing Anton's silent gaze following them, the village chief offered an explanation.
"They're going to pan for gold dust. The river by our village yields placer gold. At one point, rumors of a gold vein brought a rush of prospectors, but the mountain in the back held nothing but quartz. Regardless, the gold dust is our village's lifeblood."
"Understood," Anton said. "More hands would see the wall finished sooner, but..."
Livelihoods had to come first. While the men labored on the wall, someone had to earn bread for the family.
Construction began with securing raw materials. Naturally, they could not haul all the stone required for a wall by cart.
"Where have you piled the stone?" Anton asked.
"We gathered a fair heap in the vacant lot behind the village," the chief answered. "Tumbled down from the mountain over the years."
Rocks of every shape and size littered the open ground. Anton walked along the perimeter, tapping them one by one, before coming to a stop before an ochre-hued sandstone boulder.
"We shall start by splitting this one," Anton said, turning. "Now, Reed. A question for you. How would you cleave this solid boulder?"
"Uh... by striking it with a hammer?"
"Give it a try."
Reed nodded, gripped his heavy stonemason's hammer, and brought it down with all his might.
CLANG!
A sharp shockwave rattled up through his wrists and arms. Yet despite the deafening crack, the rock remained completely intact, bearing nothing more than a superficial scuff.
Anton offered a wry grin. "Not so easy, is it?"
"No, Meister. I barely scratched it. Am I simply not strong enough?"
"Your strength is more than adequate. You merely applied it incorrectly."
"Incorrectly?"
Anton unbuckled his tool satchel and drew out a hand drill.
Skrrk. Skrrrk.
With thick, corded muscle coiling in his forearms, Anton steadily twisted the drill into the boulder, boring into its heart. It was slow, tedious labor. Beads of sweat formed across Anton’s brow. Being a Meister did not grant one the power to punch holes through solid granite with a wave of the hand; it merely endowed a man with unyielding focus and patience.
After a considerable span of grinding, a borehole roughly the depth of a finger joint appeared. Anton set a cold chisel firmly into the hole and raised his hammer.
"Watch closely."
CLACK!
The hammer struck the head of the chisel. In an instant, a sharp, web-like fracture branched across the stubborn stone with a crisp crack. Anton delivered several measured blows in rhythmic succession until, unable to withstand the concentrated strain, the massive sandstone boulder cleanly split into four quarters.
As Reed stared in wide-eyed fascination, Anton wiped his brow, a refreshing grin stretching across his rugged face.
"An old stonemason once said this: Give me enough pillars, and I shall lift the mountains. Give me a sturdy hammer and chisel, and I shall shatter the stars."
Dusting the dirt off a fractured segment, Anton held it out before Reed.
"Masonry is the magic of force. Distribute force properly, and you can bear the weight of an entire mountain. Concentrate it in one place, and you can shatter the hardest bedrock. Remember this, Reed: to break a stone, all you need is a minuscule flaw—a single, tiny hole."
"...I will keep it in mind, Meister."
Reed nodded earnestly. Beside them, Loty stood with his mouth slightly agape in reverent awe, looking as moved as if he were hearing it for the first time, despite having undoubtedly sat through this lecture dozens of times before.
Clap!
Anton clapped his palms together, dispelling the philosophical air. "Right. That concludes our lesson! Time to earn our bread."
"Yes, Meister!"
Thus, the real work began. In truth, the task itself was straightforward. They split the stones, laid them course by course against the wooden palisade, and bonded them with mortar. This was a modest frontier village, not an imperial fortress, so it required no masterwork finesse.
Here, Anton assigned Reed a special task.
"The lime we brought won't be enough to raise the wall to the height I'd like. Since we have your magic, why not put it to good use?"
"I'd be glad to, Meister."
To compensate for the lack of height, Anton decided to dig a dry moat in front of the stone wall. Lowering the ground level in front while piling the excavated earth behind the stone facing would effectively double the rampart's relative height.
Normally, excavating such an expanse with shovels would have taken weeks of backbreaking toil. For Reed, however, that labor was rendered trivial.
Reed spread his palm, focusing his mana. Great mounds of earth lifted smoothly into the air, floating like weightless clouds before tumbling neatly atop the stone wall to form a packed earthen bank.
The watching villagers were struck dumb.
"M-Magic? That's real magic!"
"The boy's a mage? Nay, Sir Mage?!"
"By the gods, I've never seen a mage in my life..."
Their awe only multiplied as they watched the pace of his progress.
"How many men's work is he doing all by himself?"
"Are all mages like this...?"
In truth, Reed was far from a typical mage. He remained a novice in theory and spellcraft, yet the sheer depth of his mana reserve seemed bottomless. For repetitive earthworks of this scale, no one in the Empire was better suited. Reed cleared roughly thirty meters of trench a day. Even accounting for the modest depth of the trench, his output easily eclipsed the labor of ten grown men.
It's been a while since I could cast magic to my heart's content, Reed thought.
Magic was an arcane art, yet like any craft, it leaned heavily on practice, muscle memory, and finesse. Even now, Reed found himself commanding Earth Control with vastly improved fluency. Where he had once simply hurled clods of soil like clumsy projectiles, he could now effortlessly mold floating spheres or sharp geometric prisms in mid-air. His precision had advanced by leaps and bounds.
Magic truly grows through use. There's no doubt about that.
In that sense, manual labor was an ideal training ground. Yet Reed took it one step further—there was another application to Earth Control.
If kobolds scaled the palisade, they had to have left tracks.
As he excavated the moat, Reed paid close attention to the texture and composition of the soil. Footprints from villagers coming and going. Mud trampled by grazing cattle. Faint impressions left by scampering hares. Through his resonance with the earth, Reed could discern subtle traces that typically only a veteran hunter could spot.
Yet no matter how thoroughly he probed...
There aren't any kobold tracks?
Even along the perimeter outside the palisade, not a single claw print or scrape marked the ground. Was his magical perception simply too crude? It was possible. His understanding of geology and soil was still rudimentary; he could very well have missed their spoor.
"That must be it," he muttered under his breath. "Unless the damn things grew wings and flew over, they had to have walked..."
He had not surveyed every inch of the perimeter yet, but an uneasy prickle lingered at the back of his mind.
Despite Reed's lingering doubts, the construction progressed without a hitch. If anything, it went so smoothly that it spawned minor headaches.
"Look how easy it is! Aren't you asking for a bit too much coin for such simple work?"
Some villagers attempted to haggle down their agreed fee after seeing magic do the heavy lifting.
"My barn’s been leaning lately on account of the old timber. Have pity on an old man and shore up the foundation while you're at it, won't you?"
Others tried to sneak extra chores into the contract.
Whenever that happened, Anton shut them down without a shred of hesitation. "You may submit a formal request through the Stonemason Guild."
Invoking the guild's authority crushed such petty tricks on the spot. In moments like these, belonging to an organized guild felt remarkably reassuring.
Having grown up in the Asteritz slums, Reed understood intimately how quickly people would slit each other's throats over a single copper. Had Anton been an independent contractor without institutional backing, disgruntled villagers clutching scythes might well have coerced them into uncompensated labor.
Thanks to their vigilance, the twelve days of construction drew to a close late one afternoon.
The Placer Gold Village was now guarded by a sturdy stone rampart and a deep ditch. It was a fortification formidable enough that ordinary bandits or roaming beasts would not dare attempt an assault.
"Ah, it's finally done!"
"Nothing can break through this, right?"
"Of course not! No wretched kobold could ever scale a wall like that!"
The villagers rejoiced at the return of their safety and peace of mind. A few older folk even shed tears of relief. The stone wall looked so solid that any grumbling over the cost vanished into thin air. Anton smiled with quiet satisfaction, and the mercenaries finally breathed easy.
Reed sat atop the stone wall, legs dangling, watching the horizon as the setting sun painted the sky in crimson and gold.
"How does it feel?" Loty asked, sitting down beside him. "Your very first real project. From now on, whenever you pass by this region, you'll think of this wall."
"I suppose so. As for how it feels..." Reed glanced toward the laughing villagers down below and let out a quiet chuckle. "It feels good. Fulfilling, in a way."
"Right?" Loty grinned broadly. "To be blunt, stonemasonry is brutal work. You're always on the road, facing danger left and right, and some days are so exhausting you just want to drop your tools and run. But still... whenever a project finishes like this, a thought always hits me. 'Ah, I'm glad I chose this trade.' So don't you go forgetting this feeling, kid."
"..."
Reed was a man who knew how to respect his seniors.
He didn't blurt out, 'Aren't you just an apprentice yourself, acting all high and mighty?' Nor did he ask if Loty had practiced that speech in front of a mirror, or tease him for stuttering through lines he had clearly memorized beforehand.
Every senior had moments where they wanted to appear wise and dependable in front of a junior. Besides, clumsy as he was, Loty wasn't a bad sort.
So Reed simply smiled.
"I'll take it to heart, senior."
"Heheh. And another piece of advice I wanted to give you—after doing this for a few years, what I've realized is..."
"..."
"Hey, you two up there! Hurry down and get some food!"
The village chief's booming shout drowned out Loty before he could launch into another rambling lecture.
Nice save, Chief.
"Coming right down!"
Reed hopped to his feet without missing a beat and headed toward the village square. Loty smacked his lips in mild disappointment, trailing after him with an unfinished speech stuck in his throat.
A feast broke out in the village center. A whole pig was roasted over an open pit, and long-dormant kegs of ale were rolled out of the storehouses. The mercenaries, parched after days of enforced sobriety, made a beeline for the booze. Villagers raised tankards in celebration, and with the contract fulfilled, Anton and Loty joined in the revelry. Anton proved to possess an astonishingly high tolerance for liquor, while Loty was already swaying on his feet after a couple of cups.
Holding a cup of his own, Reed quietly watched the raucous party.
Where in the world did those kobolds come from?
He had walked the entire boundary of the palisade, yet never found a single trace of their entry. It was genuinely bizarre. Naturally curious, Reed racked his brain searching for an answer, but no explanation presented itself.
Well... as long as nothing happens, that's what matters.
The stone wall was finished. Even if kobolds lurked nearby, they could no longer clamber over the perimeter into the heart of the village. The mystery remained, but he felt no burning urge to go trekking through the dark woods to investigate. It was merely a passing curiosity.
Reed closed his eyes and leaned back, savoring the tranquility of the moment. Just as Loty had said, the memory of this evening would likely remain etched in his mind—a warm, solid pillar to look back upon in the days to come.
The following morning.
Loty was gone.