Once everyone had retreated to the edges of the courtyard, Daelus muttered something to Thuvara, who gave another hoot. Then, spreading her powerful wings wide, the griffin flapped them a few times as she began to lift up, spreading a small cloud of dust in the courtyard. Daelus' purple hair ruffled in the wind, as they kept moving upward. Soon, the griffin and the mage were hovering higher than even the manor house, which was already the highest building in the village, with its three story construction.

  Alden was wondering if Daelus had forgotten about the fireball when the mage brought out his staff and raised it higher. He said something that was inaudible from the ground, then pointed up. Immediately, a glowing ball of fire began to form above the top of the staff, this time at least a dozen feet higher than the crystal, compared to the last time when he had made it just a few feet above his staff. However, instead of launching the fireball up, Daelus kept increasing the size of the fireball until it reached at least a few feet across.

  Caelan and the manor residents started to cheer at that, but the fireball kept growing and growing. Eventually, it reached a size of at least ten feet wide, and it started to look like there was a second sun in the sky. Despite the distance, everyone had to shield their faces from the fire because of the immense heat and brightness it gave.

  Alden began to fear what would happen if the mage lost control and the fireball fell to the ground for some reason. It would surely burn up the whole manor and everyone present to a crisp. That's when Daelus looked downwards and grinned again, and jerked his staff up once.

  Immediately, the fireball began moving upwards, but quite slowly this time. Alden realized that the mage was just showing off to the villagers who must also be seeing the spectacle, and chuckled. Before long, the fireball reached quite a lot of height, and soon it vanished into the clouds. However its yellowish glow was visible for even longer.

  For some reason, Alden had a notion that the mage was capable of making an even bigger fireball if he wanted, but didn't want to empty his mana reserves in case there was any danger on the road, or just didn’t want to risk damaging the village.

  There was another round of clapping and cheering after the fireball vanished, when Daelus gave them all a wave and his griffin flew away towards the west.

  Everyone slowly began to return to their tasks, as they discussed the fireball and the implications of having a mage in the village after a very long time. However, Lira decided to sit there for a while and asked her maid to bring a chair for her while she leaned on Caelan. Alden tried to tell her to come inside, but she just didn't seem to be in the mood to listen to anyone.

  "Come on, Lira," Alden tried again. "You can return here after the sun's up. It will be too cold for you outside until then."

  "Can't I just stay here for a while...?" Lira whined. "I don't even remember when was the last time I liked sitting outdoors. Please, Alden...?"

  Alden sighed. She had worn warm enough clothes right now, so maybe it would be okay. "Fine. Caelan you stay here and keep an eye on her."

  "Yay!" Lira smiled, brushing away her long pale-orange hair from her face.

  "Nay..." Caelan scowled.

  Alden left his siblings and walked to Vusato. “What's the status of the sailboat?”

  “The boat captain left the village with all the deckhands and a few guards at sunrise,” Vusato reported. “His boat will leave within the hour.”

  “Good. The steel he will bring is going to be vital for us. Did you talk to the captain about what I said earlier?”

  Vusato nodded. “Yeah. I told him to be on the lookout for any smiths who might want to buy more ore in Garitus, and to look for any merchant contacts who can sell it in the southern cities on the Lokir River, at a good discount. We have never mined enough iron ore to be able to sell that much continuously, but as it stands right now, we have so much ore stacked in the northern hills that we don’t need to worry about running out of it. Finding a good buyer will be the difficult part.”

  Alden nodded. “It’s worth a try, though. If we can sell another sailboat’s worth of ore every month just for this winter, it will tide us over quite well. The 187 gold we received from the boat captain yesterday is already going to help us a lot.”

  Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.

  ***

  In the evening, Alden was sitting in his father’s—no, his—study, taking a final look at what he had drawn. The sketch of the scorpion looked good enough. Or at least as good as he could make while working on parchment with a quill. But thankfully, this village had all kinds of craftsmen—including those who made parchments. So there was no shortage of it, as long as he could pay them.

  The best part in the design was the pair of gears he had attached on the side of the scorpions, to make it much easier to reload. That mechanical advantage would allow even women to load the scorpions without a problem.

  Giving a satisfied nod at his work, he stood up. Now that a full-fledged mage like Daelus was going to stay in the village—possibly for the whole winter—he knew that he had to find ways to utilize the mage's magic to improve the village and its defenses before Daelus left for his other duties. The fact that Daelus was a fire mage was even better than having some other kind of mage.

  He hadn't visited the northern hills so far since his arrival in this world—Roderic kept saying it was way too dangerous for a baron to visit there—but he could imagine what the majordomo had called small hills of iron ore stacked up there. He knew that there was a limited demand for iron ore in Garitus these days because of that damned iron mine which had opened in the south of the kingdom, but what if he could smelt the ore into iron ingots—or even steel—right here in the village? He knew that it would normally be a huge undertaking, and both his father and his grandfather had already been unsuccessful in doing that. But neither of them had the services of a fire mage available to them.

  So what if he could design something to convert all that ore into iron? Something like a blast furnace? With the Lokir river present not far away, he knew they could get a good amount of clay from there. Then Daelus could bake it into bricks to make the basic structure of the blast furnace. If they could just get enough coal here, perhaps by buying it from Tevrim—that plunderer Baron Marachi' village—then cooking it into coke would be easy enough, for later use in the blast furnace. Daelus' fire would be helpful in that as well.

  This way, they could use all the iron ore stored between the northern hills and convert it into pig iron using the blast furnace at a large scale. Then if they could buy enough steel just to make a single Bessemer converter—Coltan was already skilled enough to forge it—then they could make all the steel they wanted right here in the village. He certainly knew every single thing about how those processes worked, so all of it would be feasible to do here with the help of Daelus.

  They could sell that steel to raise revenue to buy food, and use it right here as well. In fact, Daelus baking clay into bricks with his fire magic gave him another idea. If they could get enough bricks in time—

  The opening of the door interrupted his thoughts, before Vusato walked inside.

  “Milord, Garrik and Coltan are here.”

  “Good. I was waiting for them.” Alden rolled up the parchments spread on the table and walked with the majordomo to the dining room on the ground floor, which had also become his meeting room by now.

  Entering inside, he saw the redheaded carpenter, as well as the bald blacksmith, already sitting there along with Roderic. Alden took his seat at the head of the table, while Vusato sat on his right.

  “Milord, we just delivered the second crossbow,” Garrik said. “We've also received the payment for it.”

  “So what did you want to talk with us about?” Coltan asked.

  Alden grinned and handed over the large parchment with the full sketch of the scorpion to the blacksmith, before he gave the two smaller ones—which had dimensions and sketches of each individual component—one to each of them.

  “Take a look. This is the larger weapon I was talking about. It's called a scorpion.”

  As the craftsmen studied the designs, the guard captain looked at him in wonder. “You really do have some great ideas in your head.”

  Alden shrugged. “Everyone needs to do their best to make sure the village survives the coming winter. I’m just doing my part.”

  Garrik looked at him. “The design is… interesting, to say the least. Are you sure it'll work? It’s quite complicated.”

  “I am more worried about whether bar iron can even handle the stress for something like this,” Coltan interrupted. “I think we'll need steel for it.”

  Alden nodded. “Yes, it will work, and yes, steel is indeed going to be needed for this. We will receive a small amount of steel in around four days. Until then, you can work on making the other parts.”

  “Within four days?” Coltan repeated. “Had you already given an order to the boat captain to buy steel in advance?”

  “Wait,” Garrik said. “Does it have something to do with the huge beast we saw leave in the morning?”

  “Yeah,” Alden smiled. “It was Daelus, someone who used to live here in the past, and is now a full-fledged mage. He will likely be staying here for the winter to help defend the village. He’s the one bringing a small amount of steel to be used in the first scorpion, and then a boat captain will bring a bigger amount within 10 to 12 days.”

  “There will be a mage staying in the village…” Garrik said in wonder. “I guess I don’t have to worry too much about letting my family stay here in the winter in that case.”

  “Hopefully, it will be safe enough for all of us,” Alden said. “So can you make it?”

  ***

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