Director Carlyle showed up with a small bus on the same day as my queued contracts that were coming to pick up their goblins. Similar to Mr. Fjord, who I was surprised to not have heard from, the director brought test subjects with him. However, unlike Mr. Fjord, he brought kobolds instead of goblins and only brought enough for the kobolds to fight against.
There were quite a few more kobolds than goblins so there were now three times as many kobold bodies I would have to find something to do with. Luckily, they were all at least D grade which meant a couple dozen hides had just been handed over to me. The bones I could convert to ivory material, the 'extra' hearts would go to Poniard and Glaive, and everything else could sold as D grade carbon material.
Also contrary to last time, Director Carlyle had something else in mind for his test. Even though these guys were only meant to train other groups of kobolds and the Bureau would teach them group tactics, Director Carlyle wanted a full-blown mock battle. His kobolds were all given their starter kits and the testing strays were all armed with naked iron rods.
Once everybody was placed in formation, I personally gave the kill order to signal the start of combat. One saving grace was that the phalanx units had been trained on videos that used groups of people to illustrate shield wall tactics. The phalanx group knew to get in formation quickly with their short spears and large roman moon shields but the archers and swordsmen were a little confused.
However, with the front line crouched to provide the archers behind with enough view to aim by, the archers soon started firing on the stray kobolds. Keeping pace and formation angling back from the sides of front shield wall to cover their flanks, the swordsman pushed forward patiently for several steps until the first enemies came within reach.
Then they started hacking and slashing at limbs before considering vitals.
For the most part the strays focused on the shield wall, throwing themselves at the large round shield and positioning themselves around the one fifth of mission round shield that the moon shield afforded roman soldiers to gouge the enemies from the safe side of the shield. That was the worst thing they could have done.
Once the strays met the formation, the phalanx kobolds unanimously struck forth from around their shield to spear the bodies and faces of the stray counterparts. The sounds of metal on wood and metal rang clearly in the air but never did a stray actually land a blunt attack on my goblins. Each archer even wounded at least one enemy, if not killed them.
Updating my business page with a picture post of the victors and a link to the pay-per-view one-and-a-half-minute video, I gave each kobold a prepared 'breakfast core' like the ones I made while Lucinda was away before helping the director load them onto the bus. Then I finalized my business with with the contracts after simply having the goblins show how quickly they could perform each style set ten times in a row.
After sending them off with a breakfast core to each of their mountain goblins the director informed me that the sculpture he previously mentioned was in the bus.
Getting it out, however, was a job that required both of us. Not only was the mana crystal swan a couple hundred pounds but the director also brought a large C grade bronze stand for it that was close to a thousand pounds. Since the swan was basically quarts, though, I planned on incorporating it in the pond so this left me with a huge block of cash or exposure that I could incorporate some other way.
If I could get a steel block I could place them on opposite sides of the pond between benches with portal wood or even petrified portal wood tabletops. At the next cookout there might actually be somewhere to sit and eat. If I really wanted to increase the exposure levels, though I could probably have a gazebo built around the area from portal wood.
Director Carlyle finally left with his goblins after we finished working out plans for what kind of pond to install and how followed by a brief measuring, leaving me alone on the property with just the hobs, Poniard, Si-Pon, and Glaive. Even though I still had the road raptors, they were all trained and their next breeding season would not be until right before winter in a few weeks. The hobs already did more with them than I did.
Because my MP level has risen a just over two-fifty, the director gave me one more week of vacation in which I was not allowed to even visit the property. As long as my levels did not rise about two-sixty in that time, I would be given a physical exam and then cleared for active duty again. The first thing I did was make a post about my medical house arrest.
I finally got home two hours later than usual thanks to having to clean and skin and package kobold bodies. Lucinda had already made dinner and was currently sitting on the couch in her usual comfort clothes of jogging pants and a tank top. There was a large plate of food wrapped in plastic on the table for me so I just went right to work helping myself.
After telling Lucinda the good news about my Mp levels while scarfing down my food, I ended up joining her on the couch for a family movie before passing out on the couch right after she went to bed. Needless to say I woke up being smothered by Poniard and Glaive. It was almost enough to make me feel loved.
I went ahead and started working on wearing Lucinda down that day, talking about how strong I was as a surgically enhanced mid D grade and how easy portals were becoming even before my medical leave. At first she had no idea what was going on and was as genuinely excited as I was. After two hours of this, though, she finally caught on and wanted to know what I was doing.
Coming out with it then and there since I still had an entire week to work at it, I asked her if I could start doing more than two portals a month as long as we were still in E grade. I was all prepared to go through a serious debate over the merits this would have for my business as well as preparing for higher grade portals. However, Lucinda the safety Satan merely shrugged and gave the okay.
I was so skeptical and incredulous that I spent ten minutes questioning her about stipulations and loopholes and hypothetical situations before I realized she was actually okay with it.
Then I spent the rest of the day in the basement with Glaive and Poniard having them run at fifty-degree inclines with five hundred pounds of weight on Glaive and two hundred overall on Poniard. It had been a while since Poniard was actually worked out because of her useful she was in training other creatures and Glaive herself had never bee properly 'calibrated'. Now, though, they seemed to consider their current run as a competition between the two of them.
Even when it looked like they were reaching the point of collapse three house after starting the run my hands were swatted away mercilessly when I tried to stop the machines. Instead they only leveled out their beds to ease the strain on their bodies. Less than an hour later they collapsed and were subsequently tossed from the end of the treadmill.
I simply left them both lying on the ground and brought the artifact over. Before I knew it I was massaging their arms and shoulders the way I used to for Poniard before the training business whenever she was a he and I gave them an exceptional workout. This was usually done at the end of the day when I was washing him, though.
Now, though, I just absentmindedly softened up the already worn and torn muscles of first Poniard's and then Glaive's arms and shoulders. Next I moved on to their backs and by the time I was done over half and hour had passed. So I just kept going from their feet up to their gluts where I made myself ignore the way Poniard's mostly toned butt simply had a thick outer layer of soft bounce.
When an hour had passed and I was done stimulating their bodies to help healing, I sent them to the basement bathroom with the artifact to wash up after deciding they had worked out enough for today. Tomorrow I would find their upper limits and then work on raising them. Today we would just have a lazy day.
After their shower I gave them both a slime core while looking up and away from the lack of towels or clothes when they came out. They usually had better manners than this but they had only showed for a short time and were still moving slowly from the state of their bodies. The entire day most people would spend feeling stiff and sore or even numb was what they were experiencing for an overall half-hour.
If not for the massage I had given them that soreness phase would last much longer.
Both of them eventually ended up passing out on the couch, thankfully leaning on each other instead of me, while I played video games and Lucinda managed paperwork from home. It had actually been a long time since I had any simple rest days that today suddenly reminded me, but it was nice to have nothing to do.
At first. After the first two days, though, I started becoming bored and restless with the minimized routine after having kept myself so constantly busy for the past month. The worst part was not being able to actually leave my house. Since it was only the property that added to my exposure levels I should at least be able to go to a shooting range.
Day three was spent fruitlessly meditating so I finally decided to get to work on a personal project. Si-Pon speculated that the main reason I had trouble actively interacting with my mana was that I was not a mage with a simple side helping of the fact I was probably doing it the wrong way. First and foremost, I was a fighter and needed to try expressing mana in fights.
Since I was stuck at home with few options, I gathered together my most private stockpile of insects and stones to set to work.
Using Poniard's mana as a catalyst for Si-Pon, I had most of my elemental stones of the fire, air, water, ice, and lightning elements transmuted into two larger pieces of stone apiece. These newly igneous element crystals were shaped like short cleaver blades with three to four inches in length, thick spines, and thing edges.
Probably because they were blades. Just blade pieces, made stealing ideas from Carlos and Emile. The largest blade pieces were four inches tall and over and inch broad with only a slight taper and made from opaque white 'air quarts'. The garnet fire blades was only a little shorter with a slightly more emphasized tapering, the following transparent water and foggy ice aquamarines followed the same trend.
The final two pieces were whitish blue agates that were exactly three inches in height, tapered dramatically from one side, and had thick bottoms that somewhat fit into the tops of the ice crystals. Using some modeling clay from Lucinda's various untouched craft supplies I carved out a mold for a dagger with a broad based blade that tapered to a stiletto point. Around the sides of this mold I pressed in the crystal blades, outlining the empty 'body' of the dagger with the pre-fabricated razors.
Searching out a small cast metal pot in which to dump insects, I add my two largest gold, silver, platinum, and copper insects to the pot before adding half a time more 'average' sized iron or steel insects as previous insects. By weight, the precious metals made up an overall forty percent of the alloy I was making and that was after considering a generous amount of burn-off.
Using magic flames to further enrich the estimated low C electrum-steel, I melt and mix the metals in the small pot into a solid glowing mass of even temperature distribution. Then I started pouring it into the dagger mold. I ended up with a little extra metal than I planned on but I just left it in the bowl to start making my own 'precious MP scrap'.
Letting the dagger air cool so that the light steel alloy would cool soft, I wait half an hour while under the dagger was entirely room temperature before having Poniard heat up the metal. Once it was glowing nice and bright, I killed time doing math in my head estimating the appropriate time to quench based on color and alloy density. However, I ended up taking so much time the original yellow had faded through yellow-orange to a bright orange.
When I noticed this problem, I quickly quenched the dagger by dropping the entire thing point first into a tub of water.
My dagger's metal body was only for its middle grade conductivity to the mana stones so that casting magic with a catalyst was as cheap and efficient as possible. On top of the amount of other materials in the blade, even if I wanted to use the alloy for an edge it would be too soft at that shape and thinness to cut through more than a few bodies no matter the grade or my strength. Simply having a hardened steel spine supporting the element crystals was more than enough.
The dagger's different blades were all sharp enough to shave a short line of hair from Glaive's arms, though, which meant they were probably as sharp as they ever could be. Since I was at home and not the property, I could not really even cast F grade spells. However, in the garage, I could experiment by saying the word, "Fire."
Regretful was how I felt when I finally experienced the drainage of mana and saw a large candle flame appear in front of the conjoined point of the dagger. Though I could not use this fire to do anything besides heating metal and the like, I could still continue to test myself my manipulating the size of the flame with my will. At first it was both as hard and as simple as imagining a stronger and hotter flame.
As my mana ran low after only a minute or two it became harder and harder to maintain this mental imagery, though. Eventually, I was left with only the base size flame and a few minutes later even that was gone as I blearily sat down on the cement floor. This was what it felt like to be burnt out from mana exhaustion and Poniard nearby looked at me with pity.
*