One of the first lessons you learn in magic is that it’s fundamentally a matter of just willing things to happen. If one was willing to concentrate at something and had access to some pure mana to manipulate, you could make pretty much anything happen. The type of mana limited what you could do, with truly pure mana being a theoretical exercise, and if you didn’t understand the nature of what you were manipulating, it was pretty scattershot as to being able to make the mana do something useful. The fact one had to actively concentrate on making something happen for the entire duration of the effect is why it was called active magic.

All other forms of magic were just ways to overcome the drawbacks of active magic. Shaping, curses, and enchantments were three different ways to make mana keep doing something beyond your active attention at it. If you were unskilled, all three only created temporary effects with varying amounts of duration, which was why Faron’s weapons were so fragile, tending to explode when they were damaged unless he was able to concentrate on fixing them.

Spellweaving, on the other hand, attacked the opposite problem that active magic had. It was slow and inefficient with its strength, as your will could only direct a limited amount of mana per second, although that amount did increase substantially with practice. But by building up mana in the stable structure, it eventually overflows and spills out all at once in a quick, efficient, and frequently violent way.

Casimir has fought many kobolds in the eighteen or so years that he’s been an adventurer. They were furry little bastards the size of eight year old children… mostly, with faces somewhere between dogs and bears, with hands that grew metal claws out of the fingers, quite capable of climbing sheer rock. Larger varieties existed, but like most humanoid monsters, they had a hierarchy, so you only got stronger variants when you had enough of the weak guys around.

In other words… This was really more of a spellweaving kind of job. With the ease of long practice, Casimir started the battle by converting a large chunk of stone mana, raising a wall of stone at the ‘front’ door, trapping all of the spears that were poking through it.

Faron’s armor and weapons were already shaped, so he used his force shield to shove the lot of them into their fellows, the mana construct utterly uncaring of the narrow points of the spears like a wooden or even metal shield would be. Hanna was already building up a powerful Fireball, Peter readying a Magic Barrier to shield the group from any backblast.

Seeing that half of the battle was dealt with for now, Casimir turned back to the stone and painted a stone reinforcement enchantment on the wall with his combat brush. With a quick infusion of additional mana, the wall shifted subtly as the enchantment took effect, becoming hard enough to give a kobold’s typical stone-breaking toolset a very difficult time… for as long as the enchantment lasted. There should be plenty of time.

Right when he finished, Hanna released her spell, Peter bringing up his barrier right as it passed the doorway, a muffled boom sounding out a second later. It was a good start to the battle. Now… Casimir focused on his senses as his students continued to fight to determine how difficult of a fight they were in for. Given that they’re using the most basic of kobold tactics, this was probably not directly led by a competent commander. Or maybe the competent one was on the other side of the wall Casimir erected…

Faron moved with hard-earned precision, each swing of the water mana shaping bearing deadly intent, before shifting in shape to allow him to swing again, minimizing his recovery time and removing one of the primary ways small intelligent monsters deal with adventurers, as they couldn’t grab the weapon and pull it away. Peter laid curses on him, invigorating his body to keep going, speeding his movements, and focusing his mind, supplementing the vanguard’s energies with his own mana. In the event that a kobold managed to duck under Faron’s shield and rush past, they met their end by Peter’s axes.

Illivere had nocked an arrow on her bow, and was waiting patiently for the right moment to intervene. Hanna was casting some kind of life spell, Casimir didn’t bother trying to figure out what it was.

Behind the battle, the crystallized mana of each kobold’s monster core fluctuated slightly with their heartbeat, which was detectable with mana sense, so from the staccato sounds of it… Casimir estimated somewhere between forty and seventy kobolds in the force that the kids were fighting. In the force behind the reinforced stone wall, which even now was getting struck with mining picks? Three times that many, at least. There were a few stronger kobold variants, but he couldn’t pick out any that were strong enough for Casimir to worry about his odds individually.

But quantity had a quality all its own, and as much practice as he’s had for dealing with a set of four weak enemies in close quarters recently, that doesn’t help that much when you’re outnumbered so severely. Still, maybe there was a plan he could use… Casimir pulsed some stone aspected mana in the ground, feeling out the shape of the cavern to get an idea of what the layout was beyond the now blocked door. About a foot of arched stone, fifteen more of dirt, and more stone were the obstacles if they tried an upwards exit. It was probably just a road up there. Downward, there was a massive roughly constructed cavern right at the edge of Casimir’s senses, a few hundred feet to the south and thirty deeper. Casimir would bet money that was where the bulk of the kobolds were camped out. The tunnel with the kobolds went perpendicular to the door, a large thoroughfare that was probably expanded from its original dimensions by the kobolds, or maybe just originally meant for supply wagon shipments in the event of military occupation, such extreme situations being the purpose of most of these tunnels.

Ah, but the wall to the left… there was a smaller passageway after only four feet, most of it dirt. That had potential. There were kobolds moving in it, but it was just why the kids haven’t run out of kobolds yet. Briefly, Casimir checked their status. The kobolds were efficiently retrieving their dead, ripping the monster cores out and feeding them to the strongest one, increasing the monster’s strength a minor amount for each one. Casimir frowned at the odd action. It wasn’t completely unheard of for monsters to do that, but Casimir had never seen kobolds specifically do it. It was more commonly something goblins did, and even they ate all of the bodies instead of extracting the core, which given that it represented well over half of the mana within a monster, was the objectively smart thing, even if there was some wastage.

The kids, on the other hand, were doing just fine. Faron was running on pure magic and spite, but that was normal for this kind of situation. Illivere had been sending out arrows enchanted with piercing to score multiple kills with each shot, carefully lining up each one to preserve her ammunition and minimize friendly fire. Naturally, Faron’s force shield didn’t give a damn whenever the kobolds launched the arrows back, as the kobolds couldn’t launch it with enough power for him to care and piercing only helps against physical barriers, not magical ones. Just one of the many tips in coordination Casimir’s been drilling into them. Peter was still watching Faron’s back for kobolds that tried to squeeze through, but the kobolds had wised up and were no longer attempting that, instead pressing Faron with all of their might. Hanna was switching between keeping Faron and Peter’s body going with life magic and copying Illivere’s tactics by taking potshots with Propel.

Come to think of it… normally, kobolds wouldn’t dream of fighting like this, rushing a chokepoint to die. Was that monster core eater ordering them to go to their deaths? Monsters did have a sense of self-preservation, it was just easily ignored. If they were coordinating with the other side, the one still trying to get past the wall, the more powerful kobold will rush in right when that wall breaks.

Grinning at his idea, Casimir focused on the strongest monster core in the bunch. You could cast a curse at anything you can sense, it just got harder and less efficient the further away they were and the more that was between the two. Taking out one of his combat-quality mind mana potions, he opened the stopper and drank it down in one smooth motion, as combat potions were only about two ounces of liquid, easily drunk in one gulp. You needed a high mana density for it to be useful at that dosage, but this was a pretty good time to break out the consumables. With the extra chunk of mind mana, Casimir constructed a curse to infect the kobold battle leader’s senses, deluding him into thinking things were going according to plan.

With that done, Casimir shattered a small section of the left wall by simply punching it with a little extra oomph, and the Delusion curse translated that into the reinforced wall that he had already seen shattering. “Ack!” Casimir shouted. “They’re flanking us!”

The kids were confused, but the battle-leader rushed in, ignoring what his own eyes were telling him as he shoved his diminished retinue aside to shove his stolen thrusting sword towards Faron as he was caught flat-footed by the attack.

It was appropriate, that the kobold was promptly caught equally unprepared for Casimir shoving his stiletto into the kobold’s skull and detonating some fire mana out of the tip, creating a spurt of steaming liquid when the knife was removed. Plucking the sword out of the kobold’s grip, Casimir whistled at the quality. “Where did this joker get a mithril basket-hilt?” Basket-hilts were known among adventurers as military blades, as they were amazing when dealing with human-sized enemies or smaller, but tended to invite getting your wrists broken if you weren’t careful against anything bigger than a horse. Against kobolds? Probably a better choice than Casimir’s stiletto. “Good balance, he kept the edges sharp, too.” The remaining kobolds had retreated along the tunnel previously noted as being the route between the two sides of the battlefield.

Faron was panting, turning towards the safehouse’s enchanted chamber pot and vomiting into it. Ah, he’s caught a bit of mana sickness from all those curses that kept him going. His tolerance for it was still relatively low, as despite how well the kids have taken to the training, they still have less than a year of acclimating to the life of an adventurer. “What was that?” He asked.

“I cursed and baited the kobold’s leader to come and attack.” Casimir explained. “You four did a good job, keeping them back until I could get a good picture of the situation.” Casimir looked at the sword more closely and gave it a few test swings. “...Illivere, do you remember how to enchant mithril?” Enchantments were a lot more particular than curses were, as each substance required some adjustments to your enchantments in order to properly do so. If he had instructions or notes, he could manage well enough, but he hadn’t bothered memorizing any mithril runes.

“Yes.” Illivere said, taking the sword from him as he handed it over. “Hm. Etched seems best, given the design seems poor for gilding. We don’t have enough time for that, though.”

“I was talking about inked runes. I have some stuff here that should hold up for a bit.” Casimir fished out the alchemical paint he used for whatever random enchantment job he needed that the normal paint won’t cut it for.

“In that case…” Illivere said, not missing a beat from the new information or wasting time by questioning whether she had some of that stuff in her own pack (she did), took out the brush from her enchanter’s kit, dipping it into the paint the second Casimir removed the lid from the jar and quickly sketching out… It looked like she was going with a not-quite-basic sharpening enchantment, which honed the edge and made it difficult for things like blood and viscera from staying on the blade. Exactly what was needed for dealing with unarmored enemies like the kobolds.

After taking the sword back, Casimir channeled mana through the enchantment just so, reinforcing the paint and protecting it from the rigors of combat. The stuff wasn’t perfect, but it would probably last for a couple hundred sets of kobold guts before it started to fail.

Checking the wall again… The kobolds were still trying to break the wall, but the number of kobolds there… Where did they go? The mining effort was a pretty transparent attempt to make their enemies think they hadn’t changed plans, but if it was a full retreat, such a tactic would be pointless. Faking a retreat was pretty normal kobold behavior, but these… are not normal kobolds.

“Oh! Speaking of which…” Casimir jabbed his fingers in the battle leader’s neck, touching the core and promptly sucked all of the monster’s residual mana into it, melting the meat and bone as the kobold’s body rapidly rotted away and sublimated into nothing. “I wonder what Master will make of this?” Casimir wasn’t terribly conversant in the analysis of monster cores, as the dense but impure mana had very few uses for an adventurer or wizard. But few was not zero, and an unusual specimen was always noteworthy to someone. “Hm.”

“Master Toomes?” Asked Hanna, confused as to his action.

“...Stay here.” Casimir eventually said as he picked up the sword’s sheath and affixed it to his belt. “Rest up, I’ll take a look around. Illivere, copy the enchantments on the first wall on this second one. Don’t forget to bind more mana while you’re in there” He went to the thug, who had fallen unconscious from the backlash of his terror breaking the calming spell. “...There. He’ll stay down for a few hours.” Casimir said as he weaved a curse into his soul to put him into a deep sleep.

Casimir started off his stealth mission by rushing towards the kobolds trying to get through the wall and killed all three with two swipes of his new sword.

“Now… Where did you mutts go?” Casimir murmured to himself as he focused on his magical and magically enhanced senses once more.

How in the world were kobolds able to keep themselves hidden in Anima for this long? This smelled like trouble.