By the Grace of the Gods (LN) - Volume 7 - Chapter 11

Chapter 5 Episode 11: Hobbies, Practical Use, and the Unexpected

“Boss! Got a new recruit here!”

“Nice, bring ’em on over!”

They sounded like bandits. After Fay registered at the adventurer’s guild, I parted ways with him and accepted a demolition job at the reception desk that looked optimal. After that, I went to the site of the job, and the man in charge furrowed his brow at me.

“What’s a scrawny kid like you doing here?” he said. I looked like a kid, so I was used to this.

“Good morning, I’m an adventurer,” I said, then showed him the request sheet and my guild card.

“Oh, you’re the one who took the job. It’ll be simple enough, but—Huh? You look pretty young, but you’re D Rank, eh?”

“Yes! I’m confident in my strength, and I know earth magic as well.”

“A mage, eh? Guess that works. So as far as your payment, what do you mean you want these materials? You saying you want to take the wreckage? Taking the standard reward money?”

I was glad I could get right to the point. Something about the mood here brought back memories. “Of course, but I’d also like to take as much of the wreckage as I can. As far as transportation goes, I can also use space magic, so I’ll do it myself.”

“Then take whatever you want, I don’t mind. Hey! Take this kid out back!”

“Thank you!”

Thankfully he didn’t need much convincing, just like the people at the guild told me. His whole job was demolishing buildings, and he hired other businesses to deal with the debris once he was done. I took the payment in advance, and it was that much less he’d end up having to pay other businesses. It honestly didn’t seem like he expected that much from me, but I was being paid by commission, so he had nothing to lose.

“Alright, here we are! It’s all you now.”

The young man led me to the place opposite where I was. It was just like the boss described, but nobody else was there. There was a large building, with one wall having a few meters’ worth of decay on it, but that was all.

“There’s no one else here at the moment, but this is where we have a job for mages.”

“The others are elsewhere, then?”

“I’m told that using magic takes focus, and if you were to get tired out and run out of magical energy, they’d just get in the way.”

It was true that if I pushed my magic to its limit, I would probably become too tired to stand. On top of that, a construction site is far from an ideal place to flake out.

“You’ll get paid for as much as you can do, so no sweat if you get worn out at some point. Just tear down the wall of this building and the rest of what’s on these grounds. Don’t damage the roads or the other buildings. The only other thing I can tell you is to watch out for falling objects. I’ll leave this for you just in case,” the man said and left a large hammer leaning against a wall that was still intact. “You can take a break if you want, but if you’re an adventurer, I’d like to see some guts.”

After that, he went back. It seemed like a bad idea to leave a single amateur alone and out of sight, but according to the person at the guild, he never had enough workers on hand. Plus, his instructions were kind of sloppy to boot. All the same, I got to work.

I opened my Dimension Home to call my metal slimes out, and ordered them to transform. I put them on my head with a thick towel in between to serve as a helmet. I keenly felt the convenience of the metal and iron slimes and how much they had grown as I reaffirmed the importance of wearing a helmet on a construction site.

On that note, I hadn’t seen anyone working in helmets since I got here. None of the workers I saw had helmets, so I thought maybe developing some of those, along with safety boots and whatnot, would be worth considering; I could use materials from sticky slimes for those. But that could wait for later.

I cast Break Rock on the wall. Pieces of it fell away, leaving a hole forty centimeters wide. Part of it reached all the way through to the other side, but that part was only ten centimeters wide. It was all I could do with the magical energy I had; a smaller hole than expected. Maybe this wall used that anti-earth magic paint I had heard about at some point. If so, I figured it could be prudent to increase my magical energy a little bit.

I cast Break Rock again with more power than before, leaving a bigger hole than last time. But now it seemed a little inefficient. The debris from the wall fell to my feet, where it turned to sand. That was fine for destroying the wall, but I didn’t need to break it down to such small bits. I just needed it in chunks small enough to carry, like the workers out front with hammers were doing. I decided to improve on this.

I limited my magic’s range to a line instead of a wide area, running from the top of the wall to the ground. I cast Break Rock again, my magical energy seeping through the wall and causing sand to fall from it, as though the wall was packed with sand. After the sand fell, a groove covered in two-centimeter bumps remained.

“Success! I broke through to the other side again by using the same amount of magical energy. Now I can cut this into appropriately sized chunks.”

But the bumps that the magic created were kind of odd. I thought it would be perfectly straight, but I evidently couldn’t control the spell as well as I thought. I tried it again, imagining that I was cutting with a katana. I kept calm and cautiously controlled my magical energy. To help my imagination, I gave the spell a new name.

“Let’s go with Stone Cutter, then.”

The second cast created a groove about half the width of the last one, and the cut was smoother. I would have liked it narrower than that, but I could deal with that later. Those two casts had created something of a pillar from part of the wall, so now it was time to break that apart. I imagined the pillar filling with cracks to put another new spin on the Break Rock spell.

“Crack!” I chanted. “Alright! Another success!”

Cracks shot through the pillar like lightning, and it broke into medium-sized pieces that fell to the ground with a loud boom. Earth magic seemed to offer a lot of freedom in its usage. Part of it was probably down to how familiar I’d become with it by now, but it was also easy for me to utilize it in the precise way I wanted.

Another idea came to mind, so I decided to give it a shot, since I was kind of enjoying myself. My idea was to make the sort of big crater that you would see in manga and the like, after someone suffers or delivers a major attack. Naming the spell Wall Break, I sent the most magical energy yet into the wall and letting it spread throughout. Deep cracks that resembled spider webs appeared, and the wall began to crumble. Now it only needed a bit of prodding to come down.

Having gotten the exact results I imagined, I quickly proceeded with my work. This spell left a hole about two meters in diameter. Considering the first attempt was forty centimeters, this was a big jump. I was using more magical energy now, but even so, this was more efficient considering the area of effect. One more cast of this spell would almost entirely bring the wall down.

“What the hell?!”

“Hm?!”

Just as I was feeling content with my magic, the man from before approached me.

“Hello! Is something wrong?”

“I heard something loud and decided to pop in. Did you do this?”

“Yes! I did it my way! What do you think?”

“You’re a surprisingly talented mage.”

“Thank you! I happen to be pretty good at earth magic, and I’m told I have as much magical energy as a court magician.”

“Well, it looks like you’re doing fine, so keep it up. I don’t really know the rest of your instructions, so I’ll go get the boss for you.”

“Got it!”

I got the boss’s approval to do the job my way, then continued to destroy the wall. I finished around noon, packed my Dimension Home full of debris, and cheerily went on my way. Just before I left, the boss asked if he could hire me, but I politely declined. Then I returned to the adventurer’s guild to meet up with Fay.

“You sure are strong, Mister!”

“Um, would you be interested in joining our party?”

“I have a job already, so I’m afraid not,” Fay said. “I appreciate the invitation, though.”

“Aw, well, are you single?”

“I have a daughter your age!”

Fay was being doted on by some beautiful adventurers.

“Damn, if only I’d talked to them a bit sooner!”

“Where the hell did this guy come from?!”

“Um, I’m sorry, did something happen?”

I asked some male adventurers glaring at Fay about what had happened. It sounded like Fay had accepted and completed some request after he registered, then reported it at the reception desk. Around the same time, a party of female adventurers who were starting to gain fame around town were at the counter next to him.

“Then a group that’s famous for their philandering came in. Seemed like they were here to pick up a bunch of chicks after work, too.”

When they saw the female adventurers, they wouldn’t leave them alone. The men were lustful and drunk, but stronger than the women. The girl at the reception desk tried to stop them, but the men wouldn’t listen. Fay saw them and interrupted, upsetting the men. They picked a fight with Fay, but he restrained them all, leading to the current situation. He was like some kind of protagonist.

“Oh, Boss!” he said. “Help me out! Why are you just watching from over there?!”

He spotted me. I didn’t know what was going on to start with, so to be honest, I didn’t know what I should have said. Also, the women’s eyes were pretty terrifying. They were looking at me like carnivorous predators.

“I’m sorry, could you wait a moment?” I said. “I have to report on my own job. Besides, I don’t know how to deal with women either.”

“Boss! Boss!!!”

Reporting on the request you took was absolutely required for adventurers. I told Fay to wait until I was done and hoped he would have done something about the women by the time I was as I hurried to the counter.