Steel and Mana

Chapter 12 – Starting Out (2)

I spent the winter mostly inside my room, either teaching Sasha or drawing up my plans. What I noticed was that her mind was like a sponge, quickly slurping up the knowledge and managing to retain it in the long term. Whenever I asked her out of the blue, she managed to give the correct answer, no matter when. I was starting to suspect that magic truly affected a mage's intellect… which was a great boon and a requirement to remember so many incantations and draw complex formations. Now, I only had to find a way to start teaching her magic, but… with my plate so full, it had to wait.

The moment the weather started to warm up, and the snow began to melt, I was ready to go out, bringing people away from the castle and collecting everyone who signed up to my notice. All-in-all, I had around 300 people wanting to work. Many were men with no choice, meaning they were either young or without exact skills that they could sell to anyone else. I was surprised that there were many kids between the ages of 11 and 12, and the oldest looked to be maybe 25… Well, in a place where their average lifespan is 50 at tops… I couldn't be picky.

I made sure that Oleg and a few capable warriors took the more significant chunk of workers to the area I marked for them on the map. It was from a day walking from here, and I had chosen a spot where the land looked relatively straightforward, and the mountain was forming a slight U-shape. It would be a very well-protected spot, and the mountain range would always protect one side of the city. By my estimation, just cutting the trees down and flattening the land would take the whole year, if not more. That gave me enough time to start the primary industry at the mining site and start producing the building blocks we will need and, if I am lucky, maybe some iron tools, too!

So, with the rest, we headed straight to the mine, and our first move was to create a clearing. We cut out significant parts of the forest, using the wood to build houses on my instructions and erecting log cabins where the workers would stay. Just that alone surprised them… which then surprised me as I think they thought they would live in shoddy tents. Please… This will be a site where they will have to live for the foreseeable future. I am not a slaver to not care about their living conditions!

"Leon! Come quickly!" Sasha rushed up to me as I was overseeing one of the houses being built, explaining to the people how to do it, as many of them were still unable to read or follow a basic blueprint.

"What happened?" I asked, expecting that somebody already had an injury. It was bound to happen; I just didn't think it would be this soon. "Did someone chop off his own hand already? Did a tree crush him?"

"Nothing like that! We found something incredible!"

"Oh? Really now?"

She didn't lie. It indeed was incredible. Now that the open pit and the surrounding area were cleaned up, shrubs, vines, and tall grass mowed down, something brilliant appeared. It was a magic formation etched straight into the ground. It was already faded, and some places of it were damaged, making it incomplete, but it was there.

"Woah!" I exclaimed, ordering everyone to make a cordon and keep an eye out for others in the vicinity. This made my brain whirl, and now I understood that they used magic when mining! I just don't know what this did… but it was a magic formation, so it surely had a function!

"What is it? Can you tell?" Sasha asked, her eyes twinkling with excitement.

"Aren't you the witch? Why do you ask me? You tell me!"

"Err… I don't know! I had never seen one until you showed me yours! I only recognized this because of that!"

"Well, I don't know yet! I will draw it down and study it; maybe I can learn a thing or two! Don't try to activate it yet! I see that it's broken… maybe it will explode and kill us all if you fuse mana into it!"

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"Wah?!" She shouted loudly, jumping backward.

"Ahahaha! Don't be silly, I don't think it explodes just because you are here… just don't excite it with your powers!"

"I won't, I won't!" She waved her hands like a windmill, now keeping at least two meters from it.

"Go, look around the mine with some soldiers! Start sweeping away the road and the rocks and try to see if there are more around here!" An idea in my mind was slowly forming, but I needed more proof.

While the group began to clear more rubble and dirt away, I was drawing the formation into my notebook, and I had already found the first problem. One part of it was missing. Not because it was damaged being left here for decades, but deliberately. A chunk of it was cut out and either brought away or destroyed. It's probably a safety measure, so others won't use it. Replicating it will not be easy… but my brain was already working on it. I was referencing the different parts of it and deducting the missing one from what I was seeing. It was truly like an equation. It's a complex one, but I could work with it and, in its weird way, calculate what was taken away.

"There are more!" Sasha came back, running, out of breath, and sweating. She wasn't used to much physical labor, but she wasn't complaining.

"How quaint…" I murmured as there were seven more, smaller ones, etched into the ground, previously covered by decades of dirt, now swept away. "These are connection or booster nodes to the main one at the top…"

"What does that mean?" Sasha asked, her eyebrows raised as high as possible.

"These are also damaged, but I can infer from their structure that they are all identical. It's probably the same method as setting up long-range radio signals. You need to set receiver and booster towers at intervals, or the signal gets weak… but of course, there is a difference between radio to radio and cell towers and…"

"Leon?" Sasha asked, tapping my back as I crouched down, running my fingers on the faded lines of the formation.

"Hm?" I looked at her, blinking my eyes with question marks in them.

"Are you possessed by evil spirits?"

"Eh? Why?" That was such an abrupt question I failed to process it at first.

"You were talking strange!"

"Khm… Anyway! What you need to know is that these little ones are receiving the magic from the big one, transmitting it towards the bottom of the mine! So…!” I rushed down, following my conjecture, and lo and behold, there it was! Another big one at the bottom, same looking at the one at the top!

"Another one!" She exclaimed with surprise while I walked around it over and over again.

"Mhm… Keep up the work, and first, finish building the residences! Don't worry about this for now!" I stood up, telling the others and sending everybody back to work while I returned to figure this one out.

…
….
……

It was four days later when I finally finished it. I, well, possibly, recreated the formation with the missing part! My calculations should be correct, and I was ready to try it out! To the dismay of Sasha, as she would accompany me in this… project. We filled in the missing parts, and I completed the formation with a chisel on all of them. It was crude, but it should be okay! Or I may blow this whole thing up, but… I am willing to risk it. Standing back at the top, most of the others retreated to a safe distance, and I was glad that Oleg was with the other group and he wasn't here to say no to this all. The rest of my people were not brave enough to say no to me… or to progress!

"Stop grinning…" Sasha moaned, pulling on my sleeves. "It creeps me out when we may be just killing ourselves!"

"Oh, please!" I moaned, rolling my eyes, "These were used here by the church and the Empire! This has to be safe and not something destructive! Even if I failed, the worst that could happen is that it won't work!"

"Are you sure? Didn't you tell me it could blow up?"

"If incomplete! But even then, it was just a wild guess; I am not a formation master!"

"Then how do you know that they won't blow up now?!" She cried out, her legs shaking, "What if you turned them into something dangerous?!"

"Then we die. So what?"

"We die, that's what! I am not ready to die!"

"Bah, don't worry, it's not a big deal! Now… do it!" I pushed her before me, "Infuse mana into the formation!"

"No!"

"I am ordering you, Sasha!"

"No! I refuse to do it!"

"Come on… please?" I shrugged, holding her waist, but she was like a donkey, refusing to move an inch.

"I'm not doing it! Find someone else!"

"Girl!" I grumbled, and with a hard slap, I grabbed her buttocks, slipping my fingers deep between her thighs.

It was immediately effective. The sudden feeling drove her over the edge as she flared up, simultaneously feeling multiple emotions, such as shyness, anger, and maybe a little bit of excitement sprinkled on top. She was about to turn around and complain, but her unstable emotions excited her mana, which activated the formation.

"Hyah?!" She screamed, forgetting to be angry at me, and I failed to pull my hand away, watching without blinking, wanting to see everything.

The formation glowed in a blue light, looking extremely beautiful. It remained active as I saw it pull energy from the air and recirculate it while, one by one, the smaller ones also lit up, going in steps until arriving at the one at the bottom… then nothing. They simply remained glowing and doing nothing.

"We… didn't die?" Sasha asked, on the verge of tears.

"No, we didn't," I whispered, still kneading her bottom.

"Stop it already!"

"Hm? Oh. Sorry. It felt nice." I laughed, letting her go and walking forward.

"Leon?!" She tried grabbing me but missed my hand as I walked into the light.

"Oooooh!" I exclaimed at once as I saw my hair be raised, and I felt my weight gone the moment I was inside its effective area. "This is an anti-gravity formation! Huh! Now I am really getting it! I can improve this, ahaha!"

"Huh? What are you talking- waah?!"

Her scream came because, seeing how I was okay, she followed me, but the moment she lost all feeling of weight in her petite body, she panicked… and now she was floating and spinning in mid-air.

"It is an area of effect," I continued, turning towards her, letting myself float there with a grin, "Nothing has weight here! They could easily mine out the rocks and transport them up from the bottom! Probably had other tools that made it extremely easy to cut it out and bring it away! Hahahaha! With this, building my city will be a piece of cake!"

"Help! I'm floating away!" She wailed, throwing her legs and arms everywhere, not even listening to me, her body slowly rising upwards.

"You are hopeless…"

While shaking my head, I grabbed her ankle, pulling her down and stabilizing her. Clearly, the formation could be kept on for a long time without further input from anybody. My next question was… how do I turn it off? Probably with a spell… but I knew none, and I don't think Sasha could do it either. So I simply scratched a part of my added solution, and it immediately disrupted the flow and turned off at once.

"Haaah… I can feel my body again!" She exhaled with relief. "This was too weird!"

"No, my dear Sasha!" I answered, licking my lips, feeling I hit the jackpot, "This is something that will change my world… You'll see…"