“Ah so tired, so hungry!” Xero said as he collapsed upon a table.

The current location was Everlight academy itself, as stated, every month it was required for all students to return for a mandatory test and to turn in all the month’s school work. The test is to show the progress of the student to make sure they aren’t falling behind. They also have to pay the tuition fee at that time.

After a dawn and morning full of tests that needed to be done even when they were all drowsy, now it was noon and Xero’s stomach was growling like a tiger roaring in the mountains.

“Here, eat this.” A cheerful voice said and Xero looked up to see Meldie holding a boxed lunch.

Xero’s eyes shined, “Thanks!” He said and happily took the box and began to eat.

“Did you do good on the test?” Meldie asked.

“More or less, the monster biology was a bit annoying since there are lots of monsters.” Xero said thinking about the process of the tests he did.

“I had trouble with the physical portion.” She said and sighed. “So how was the last month?” She asked.

She obviously did not remain at the village and went to do other jobs so that she could pay her tuition.

“It is alright, Sister, Zip and Void all evolved their familiars but mother isn’t really exerting herself to that and is just using the fairy as he is since he is a farming type fairy. I did check about Harvest fairy though, it seems that it can only really grow stronger by farming and it will get an instant burst when it’s crops are harvested.” Xero said.

“How does that work?” She asked.

“Fairies are tied to nature normally, they grow stronger when their ‘element’ is used or appreciated or it is flourishing. A harvest fairy flourishes when there are large farms, orchards, pastures and more all prepared and aided by it to set up and taken care of with it’s help. So they grow with each harvest, that is the reason mother isn’t really worried about training.” He said.

“You're saying it like the fairy can’t evolve?” She said.

Xero smiled, “Although I don’t know about that but from what I can guess, the only evolutions it can become are queen fairies or maybe a spirit.” He said.

“What are you going to do now?” She asked.

“Well… because I did lots of work for my family I already have more than 10 gold coins, I don’t have an urgent need for money so I was thinking of just continuing with the same job of teaching my family. They need lots of help anyway and father can just ask me for lots of the jobs that would normally be paid to someone else and it helps out my own control.” He said.

“Do you have any jobs planned out?” She asked.

Xero nodded, “First I will spend some days here to learn how to erect stone walls and reinforce cave walls, that way I will be able to raise stone walls. I will probably return after a few days to improve the 30 km of horrible road from the section of road that connects with the village.” Xero said.

Meldie looked at him with a smile, “You're really impressive, to think so much when so young. You're always so smart and hardworking.” Meldie said blushing.

“Really?” Xero commented confused, “Isn’t it something everyone would do to help their family grow stronger? As long as the roads are improved then merchants will need as little as 3 hours instead of 2 days to reach the city. I can even make a straight road by tunnelling through the hills and mountains.” He said.

Meldie giggled when she heard him talk, “Xero~! Not everyone thinks like you.” She started to laugh, “Did you forget how Chad was so much weaker than you. Out of everyone in school, there aren’t so many people who put so much hard work to be like you.” She said looking at him.

Xero blinked in surprise, “But… all the people in the library?!” He said.

“Have you ever seen someone stay days and nights reading many books in one go alongside you?” She asked.

He thought and shook his head but then stopped, “Oh there is that 4rd year senior from the library committee who reads a lot and helped me a lot since he knew were all the books I wanted were.” He said.

“But he is part of the Library committee, he is supposed to know what books shelves hold what books.” Meldie giggled, “You really underestimate yourself and overestimate everyone else. We should go eat a better lunch, I just grabbed that box since I saw you tired out here.” She said.

Xero nodded as he heard his stomach growl once more. His metabolism had caused him to become a glutton ever since he returned from the camping trip but that did help him become stronger.

***

In a corner of the Lurian empire, within a small snow covered village that was half inside a mountain and half built outside, a tavern was built inside the mountain. Inside it was filled with rough dirty men and women served them in skimpy dresses they were forced to wear.

The men eyed them with obvious lewd eyes and blushing faces from being drunk. At the back, a large mountain of muscle sat on a couch alone while a table filled with drinks was in front of him and sitting surrounding him were his closest allies.

This was the bandit camp of a group known as the Seven Cats. The reason for this is that the 7 original members were once a party of mercenaries who possess familiars and ironically all of them were feline type. The result was that the name was also the same back then but after an incident, they turned to bandits and recruited miscrits. With their strength they soon made a bigger name as bandits.

That said, they had real power behind their name, the bandit leader, name called Tiger scar, because of the five scars on his face he got when sparring with his familiar, was nothing less than a level 40 powerhouse. His familiar was a rare White Tiger Familiar that was trained under brutal beatings and slaughter of hundreds.

The other six members on the other hand were all level 30 masters. Unlike Tiger Scar, they have yet to find a chance to surpass their bottleneck but they insist on looking for a big score and materials that could improve their chances.

“This year we were able to increase the profit by a large margin.” A short haired scholar like man among the six leaders said. With a pair of glasses, he looked out of place among the bandits who were rough and smelly. Of course the man wore robes that hid his figure that was like a lithe cat.

“How high was the profit?” Tiger scar asked.

“Last year we had an overall profit of around 3000 gold coins, this year it was almost five. Also we were able to capture that transport of Lurian military armor so our men are armored with military grade armor which probably cost around twenty to thirty thousand gold alone.” he said.

“Anything good this year to help improve the familiars?” a beautiful woman that was like an amazon with her tight clothing and well toned figure.

The man shook his head, “We haven’t obtained anything, yet.” He said.

“Yet?” She asked.

The glasses man lifted his face and smiled, “In the north west territory, within Earl Fracess Horin Kree’s territory, there is a new Rank 1 noble who was unlucky enough to put be in ‘farm lands’.” He said.

“Poor sobs, those places are overrun with high level monsters, if he is newly ranked then he has only surpassed level 30 recently.” One of the men laughed.

“Thing is.” The glasses said and grinned, “He used the connection of the Magic academy to call in help to exterminate the monsters. An interesting fact that came in is that a Hellvine sold all the corpses of his catch directly to the village even if it was a low price, it emptied the treasury since the catch was over 100 level 30 to 40 Mountain Lions. Almost all of them already have Monster cores and what is most interesting.” His grin widened as he looked at Tiger Scar, he pushed up the bridge of his glasses up, “There was a Level 45 Mountain Tiger among them.” He said.

The five other gasped but a moment later their eyes burned with greed and desire. Tiger Scar laughed, “This is good, the bottleneck on level 40 is a bitch so if I get that monster core, Scar can upgrade a bit, you all can advance as well and all the rest we can have some of the trash upgrade to familiar owners.” Tiger Scar said.

“So are we going? Mid winter?” The woman asked with a frown.

One must know that midwinter raids are harsh, besides travelling in the blistering cold there is also food and warmth, moral and not to mention the benefits that they would need to get. A bandit group would not be able to enter the villages or cities without alerting the state and a large group like the Seven Cat’s have quite large. One more point to take into consideration is that the camp was built in the western border while the village was in the northwest.

“How are we even going to get there quick enough during winter, the roads aren’t exactly good for travel you know.” she asked.

“I know that, in truth even they know that, they only had merchants visit them because there is a mage literally flying them in, or rumors say. The only reason rumors spread so far is because they got in contact with an auction house and set a date next month to auction all the monster cores as well as materials gained from the lions.” the glasses said.

“We are going.” Tiger scar said.

“Wait but what about the cold, we can survive but most of the weaklings aren’t good and are slow in the snow.” The woman said.

Tiger Scar snorted, “I never said we were taking this bunch of weaklings, us seven only are going, this is a new noble, All they have is one level 30 at most 35 and thirty common guards as commonly sent out by the earl. What can they do to me and you all? Our familiars are also strong under harsh conditions and we won’t have problem in the cold, we were born and raised in this hell hole anyway so what is a little cold.” He said.

“Oh, boss is right! Lets just go us seven like the old days!” Laughed one of the men.

The others toasted and they ate their fill before Tiger Scar ordered some of the servants to prepare rations for them so that they can travel as soon as possible to steal all the cores from the Null family.

***

“So manipulate mana like that… if I build a small fomula sequence…” countless thoughts passed by Xero’s mind as he examined several dozen books pertaining to earth control and showing a complex formula of letters and numbers that make up an earth wall spell. “Spells are no good, as soon as I stop supplying mana it will break down. Maybe if I form a sequence to gather mana… then if I use another to manipulate mana like this…” He thought slowly building more and more methods all the while using a magic blade made of earth as the base to hold the spell. His plan was to use these swords, put down along the city, to raise the walls without a problem.

After a few hours Xero raised the large sword and shouted, “It’s done!” only to be reprimanded by the librarian for shouting.

The sword, after the effect of the spell began to take effect, the huge stone sword began to compress until it turned into a stone long sword but the crystal with the spirit moved from the pummel to the guard.

Xero began to copy down the formula he built that would completely alter the structure of the sword spirit to act as a spell that would last a long time.

When he was finished he ran outside to what was referred to as the magic field. It is a place that magic spells were tried out and so it was riddled with holes and broken targets.

Finding a good spot, Xero simply put the sword, blade pointed down, on the ground and pushed. The sword ‘melted’ into the ground without resistance until only the sword spirit crystal was exposed.

Slowly it began to shine and Xero ran away very quickly as the ground began to shake and when he got 10 meters away the ground cracked and burst as a wall 7 meters to both sides from the center space appeared rising 7 meters and rapidly solidifying into a strong wall. At the top of the wall, the crystal was shining drawing a lot of attention.

“Now let's see if the control works well.” He muttered and flew to the top of the wall. It was 1 meter thick so he had plenty of space to stand on and he sat down on top of the wall in front of the crystal. He touched the orb and slowly felt the flow of mana through the swords body and the wall. He found that the wall was getting stronger slowly as it concentrated earth mana. It would keep expanding for as long as the sword was in the wall. Of course only in the case that it isn’t altered.

The spell had a limited range and size until more mana is gathered but with the size here, it allowed Xero to completely go wild as he experimented. The first thing he did was thicken the wall from 1 meter to 4 meters and alter the shape of the top to include a pathway a meter deep allowing crouching space if under attack,

The length of the wall decreased from 14 meters to 10 meters and it thickened and formed the pathway.

“Wow the control ability is really good, it lacks detail and sufficient strength at the moment but a stone wall is much more imposing compared to a wooden one.” He tried out a few designs and found that to thicken the wall would cause the length to shorten which was logical.

He smiled at when he would do next. Pulling the length in he equaled the length, width and height and obtained a 7.5 meter squared earth cube.

He began to hollow out the interior and the cube expanded outwards until he left the walls 20 cm thick while the hollowed interior was 3 meter high and several meter long and wide. He had made the first floor of a house. Then he tried to open window spaces and doors and the wall crumbled in the section causing him to lose control of the connected section.

“So to ‘open’ doors and windows I have to sacrifice material.” He said analyzing. He then made some spaces were walls would drop to split the first floor between meeting room, and kitchen as well as a space that would be a stairway.

He then started to hollow out the ‘second floor’ and extra material deposited in the areas that dropped down. Of course the stairway was not formed was an L shaped wall but the space was formed while the second floor expanded to the size of the first floor. The house began to shake and Xero found that the foundation was lacking. To handle the weight of stone after all it needed a foundation.

Although the house would not fall quickly so he was not afraid. On the stairway he outlined in his mind the format but he could not figure out what method to break it. After a while he measured out the size and length of the first step and thought of breaking the first angle and found that the two actually had disconnected and that section was able to be withdrawn so pulling it upwards into the ceiling, he transferred that extra stone to the pillars supporting the walls on the four corners and on every area that there was a door reinforcing the lower floor while forming a pillar like shape in these areas. Following the same method he broke each step and pulled the stone up and transferred it into the walls and soon expanded the size of the house evenly spreading it out and making the second floor ‘rooms’ as he wanted.

At this point he stopped because he got what he wanted.

“I did it, an easy method to build a strong wall as well as construct stone buildings that would slowly gather earth mana and slowly get harder over time. They can even be moveable. I’ll call this sword, the Earth manipulating sword.” he said and gave a specific command and the sword came out.

Soon the house began to tremble and the excessive dirt began to break. Xero jumped and pulled out his flying sword and flew down only to turn and find that the structured first and second floor shell had ‘survived’ due to proper structural planning.

He walked over and pushed it and found it hard but giving it a small punch shook the whole house.

“It's made of dirt after all, of course it will be weak to a punch.” he sighed but it did prove something. As long as he obtained some earth mana stones, he could structurally make a large wall and move on to a different section while leaving the ‘shell’ left behind perfectly intact. As long as dirt is compacted enough it will turn into stone and become stronger.

Of course he knew the control sword he made was not as powerful as he planned it to be. In fact, if someone was not skilled at using the many controls they wouldn’t be able to use it, the reason, the controls weren’t one magic formula. If I was it would have stopped once it formed an earth wall. In fact, there are almost 700 loose sequences inside the sword and from them Xero would mix and match them to obtain a desired effect from the sword. This kind of control could only be obtained by someone knowledgeable, had enough time to examine all the sequences, figure out the effect of each and experiment the effect of several mixing and matching.

As such, only Xero would be able to, off the bat, be able to use this without facing many problems and even then he was still learning and the controls were considered a prototype in his mind because this was still an earth wall spell and not a stone manipulation spell.

It at least caused him to be happy that he would be able to help his family save time, money and effort to build a wall and all it would require as a little less than a few hundred common mana stones which cost 50 silver each unlike the 10 gold coin uncommon rank mana stones.

The reason he made it like this was because of the fact that the so called, elemental manipulation, was a novice method of manipulating the mana but more advanced methods would require a mage to make a magic formula to cast a spell and alter the spell while using the spell to achieve the desired effect, so he went in a different manner. Since he could make countless magic swords and load them with magic formula to use spells, why not an easier to use method to control the mana around them.

Of course, if anyone saw what he made, they would think he was either a nutcase or a genius because the amount of magical knowledge required was quite high. That said, anyone older who has studied in a magic academy would be able to use it because he only used 1st and 2nd year knowledge along with his own studied knowledge which also did not surpass the basics.

With the sword in hand, he flew to the request pillar and saw what his father was requesting, if something new had come in, and indeed it asked for an earth mage to improve the roads coming to the village, hardening the ground and widening the route so that at least two carriage could pass side by side.

The road one even had a 5 gold reward due to the urgency, Xero guessed that the mountain Lion pelts and goods were sold to the merchants that time so that the village would not be without money.

Xero accepted his father's road expansion request since he would return there anyway and would probably do it anyway and looked some more but found no new requests.

That said, sent to other villages was a notice that the village had opened up mines and the danger of the monsters had drastically decreased with the involvement of the geniuses from the Magic academies taking care of the biggest threats leaving only animal threats like the wolves, bears and such.

With the opening of the mines, clearing of the forests and extermination of the threats, the appeal of the village instantly shot up big time. Carpenters were very interested due to the clearing of the forests which would supply wood cheaply and sell processed wood more expensive. Another appeal came from an unexpected source when word got out that the forests had abundant natural herbs, alchemists.

Alchemy is an art of making brews from herbs but this is but one branch known as herbalists, people who make potions and medicines. Alchemy also had a more unique branch were the use of synthesis can combine several materials, be it herbs, rocks, metal ore, solid metal, etc, into new items through the use of magic and small scale magic formations. Of course people with familiars that do this for them have it many times easier, not requiring even half the equipment.

Only because of some small scale bandits that pillaged from the bigger villages, there were escort requests that soon began to come as people wanted to move there before the end of the winter to get a good space.

To Xero, on the other hand, this meant little because he had already left the academy several hours before the first of such request appeared as he headed back home to see if he could implement his new creation to rebuild his family's home with a grander style after he exchanged two uncommon earth type mana stones for two hundred common rank ones.