Rankunk III stood up and left the cave, along with the totem.

  “Are you hungry?” the goblin leader asked him.

  “Yes, I haven’t eaten anything all day.”

  “The females fear you, that’s why they haven’t offered you food. Come with me, I’m going to the kitchen. Grumpa is generous—she won’t have a problem giving you a bite, especially if you go with me.”

  They walked to a nearby cave, where there were fires and ventilation openings in the ceiling for smoke. Surrounded by wooden tables and shelves, ingredients, pots, and knives, a very healthy and plump female goblin smiled radiantly upon seeing the totem.

  “Grumpa, this is the iron fist of the orcs whose settlement we’ve conquered. He’s one of us now. Can you give him something to eat?”

  The goblin, short and small compared to the orc, looked at him somewhat warily, but since her totem had told her he was one of them, she immediately smiled at him.

  “Of course, there’s some leftover stew from last night. I’ll heat it up for you now.”

  She approached one of the enormous pots and, with a wooden ladle, poured part of its contents into a smaller pot, which she placed over one of the fires, on a metal structure that separated it from the bulk of the flames.

  A dog—a puppy that was almost as tall as her—followed her and gave her a pitiful look, prompting the female to rummage for a bone with still plenty of meat attached and hand it to him.

  The orc could tell it wasn’t a puppy trained for battle. The kennel handlers in his village would never allow such behavior.

  The totem pointed him to a stool made from what looked like a tree stump, near a rough wooden table, and the orc sat down.

  After a few minutes, the female brought him the steaming stew in a bowl and also gave him some water.

  “Grumpa,” the totem then said to her, “I need your help. Come with me.”

  “Of course, let me take off my apron. The kitchen can go without me for a while,” she answered.

  They left amid feminine laughter, and the orc was left eating alone with the dog.

  The dog approached to sniff him.

  “Get away,” the orc snapped while giving him a slap.

  He wasn’t going to let that spoiled puppy try to take his food.

  However, although in the iron fist’s mind his palm had already struck the dog and launched it several meters back, causing it to hit the ground hard, that didn’t happen. Instead, the puppy cleanly dodged the slap with an agile jump and then growled at him.

  The iron fist frowned. How dare that dog growl at him? He stood up to teach it a lesson.

  But then his eyes stopped working properly, because what was before him wasn’t a dog whose head reached just above his knee, but a black wolf cub the same size. It looked at him with malice, and one of its paws had been covered in dark, dense, and pulsing darkness.

  The wolf cub raised its paw threateningly, and the orc saw its aura. Its powerful and intense aura.

  It wasn’t normal.

  He felt it.

  He knew he was in the presence of divinity.

  He fell prostrate on his knees, forehead against the stone floor, begging for mercy and forgiveness.

  If that was the divine beast of darkness, then that human woman had to be the Demon King.

  The divine beast kept growling at him, threatening.

  The iron fist accepted death as just for his disrespect and attempted aggression.

  Then suddenly it all passed. That aura receded abruptly. The dog puppy was once again a dog puppy, nothing more—one looking warily at the human necromancer who had just entered and given him a smack on the head.

  “I’ve told you to behave, to ask my permission before pulling one of your stunts,” he scolded.

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  The puppy whimpered pitifully and left for the main cave.

  His disguise was perfect; even knowing who he was, the orc continued seeing a dog.

  “Everything alright?” Ronan asked the frightened Rankunk III.

  He didn’t dare lift his forehead from the ground. He looked only at the feet of the one who’d just reprimanded the divine beast, glancing from the corner of his eye.

  Who was this necromancer who didn’t fear the Dark God’s wrath?

  If the iron fist had respected him before, now it was terror.

  “Come on, get up; it is not that big a deal. I do not want warriors in my army who cannot overcome fear.”

  “Yes, sir,” the orc managed to mutter, but not to stand up.

  He was trembling.

  And when Ronan left, when he managed to sit down again, his bowl of food was already cold. However, he was happy and felt full of ambition.

  Now he was a subject of none other than the Demon King. He would work hard to prove his worth.

  For me, the rest of the day is spent searching for a suitable location for the quarry and shaping stone blocks.

  To maintain our anonymity, I didn’t want it on the exterior of the mountain, nor too close to the caverns currently occupied by Convergence, since I wanted to leave room for future expansion. That’s why I began casting earth control, which I believed had greater range, to see where to excavate. Starting from the tannery, I carved a wide tunnel leading deeper into the mountain. Around me, no earth could be sensed, and that was exactly what I was looking for. I switched to stone control, confirming I was completely surrounded by solid rock.

  And then I remembered something I’d already noticed before; but that, with everything happening lately, I hadn’t exactly forgotten… more like reverted to an old assumption.

  My earth control is at an advanced level. Stone control is intermediate, two ranks lower. Back when I first learned stone control, its range was much shorter than earth’s, and somehow that idea had stuck.

  But now both spells have a range of one hundred meters and control up to fifty cubic meters. The difference is that earth control is faster, and I can even launch it into the air and shape it there.

  Wow.

  There’s no doubt this stone mastery is Ronan’s doing. His slave-driving—“make brick, make brick again,” which reminded me of that old Earth karate movie’s “wax on, wax off”—has allowed me to raise the spell from minor rank to intermediate at record speed. And I suspect that, just like healing spells level faster when you heal real wounds rather than one caused on purpose, stone control improves more quickly when the work has an actual purpose. Making bricks for a real settlement or cave is far more effective than training for training’s sake.

  So once I realize that, I abandon earth control entirely and switch to stone. Sure, earth costs one mana point and stone costs two, but it’s worth it.

  I shape the fifty cubic meters into a cylindrical section of tunnel, walk to its end, recast the spell to confirm there’s nothing but rock ahead, and—without releasing it—continue excavating the next section. With my fourteen mana points, I need to meditate every three hundred and fifty cubic meters or so. Part of that volume goes into reinforcing the tunnel walls, compacting the stone to remove defects and prevent collapse. That’s also why I reinforce it with arches.

  Since I'm more or less making a half-cylindrical tube shape, it’s about 2 meters high and 4 meters wide, and each spell gets me roughly 7 meters in length. At full mana, that puts me about forty-nine meters farther from Convergence between meditations.

  Ideally, I’d like the quarry to be at least a couple of kilometers away, but that’s impossible in a single day.

  It takes me time to make the tunnel: the hole, the denser stone without defects, as well as the arches. From the stone I remove, I do two things: I reuse part to densify the walls and shore them up, and pile the rest to one side. I also notice that my stone manipulation is becoming smoother and more intuitive, taking less time with each iteration. Besides, let’s not forget that every 3 MP recovered through meditation takes twenty minutes.

  That’s why I settle for moving the quarry about a hundred meters away from the goblin caves.

  The work is slow and demands my full concentration. That’s why, even though tunnel-digging isn’t exactly thrilling, it doesn’t feel tedious either. In terms of mental engagement—being so absorbed that you lose track of time—it’s comparable to playing a ranked LoL match with chat muted.

  Once I’m far enough from the tannery, I excavate the chamber that will serve as the quarry. This part is simple: a large stone face for the cutters to work on, space to accumulate the rough blocks they extract, and an area for shaping and polishing them, as well as storing tools.

  With that done, it’s time to make the blocks.

  From the accumulated stone—over five hundred cubic meters—I produce far more than the one hundred and fifty blocks requested for the quarry, nearly seven thousand. Each measures 0.6 by 0.4 by 0.3 meters, or 0.072 cubic meters apiece. There are extras. Okay, maybe I got a little carried away. But that’s fine, it’ll cover the next building project.

  I am absolutely done with tunnels, rooms, blocks, and bricks. The tunnels can be left to the ants we’re going to conquer, and the blocks to goblins, orcs, or undead who’ll handle the quarry.

  Still, neither my stone control nor my meditation skill levels up. Well, they will eventually.

  There’s just one last thing I want to try before heading back. A test. Since I’m the first spirit magic user, at least as far as is known, I have to run a few small experiments. Though I suspect they won’t match Ronan’s in rigor or complexity.

  After drinking a small mana potion—I’m not meditating again, it’s late, and I’m not going to look for the pup—I approach one of the reinforcement arches and cast both stone control and earth channeling. Then, just as I once hardened earth until it became stone, I now do the same with stone, pushing it further to see if it becomes metal.

  Because I studied at the academy that metal is the next spell that evolves from the basic one in the earth branch, this time from rock. Very few mages have managed to learn it.

  I can't help but curve my lips in a satisfied smile when it works without issue. The arch reinforcing that section of tunnel turns into what, judging by its appearance, I'd say is iron. Hmm... iron rusts. Will it need varnishing?

  Well, those are minor details now.

  Since there are several more arches within my 100-meter range, I repeat the process. And so, feeling so proud I'm even smug, I finally cancel my two spells and, without losing my smile, direct my steps to meet up with my friends.