The Last Guardian

the ants of war Part 7

While Austin was busy building up his basic industry. He started construction on a larger scale assembly Bay. These bays could assemble larger components that were printed by the smaller ones. Which would be the first step to building the far larger facilities needed for nanobot construction. The irony of which was not lost on him.

Sofia was currently walking through the forest, unfortunately they had had two scares with a wolf, but Austins beetle had been quick enough to take them down. Au-Austin had gathered up as many of the small patches of herbs Sofia had missed as he could detect. Even so his bots limited storage capacity was quickly filling up. It wouldn't be long before he'd have to start handing them off to Sophia to store in her bag.

Sofia had been handed an old timey basket like backpack to fill with herbs. The basket was rather large and had to be padded so she could wear it comfortably. As it was almost as big as she was and she had to toss whatever she found up into it. By the time the two of them finally decided to return to the village the sun was already setting. Sofia hadn't managed to fill the entirety of the basket but with the surprise of what his beetle had been able to gather it was close. Which was almost surprising for the entire village. It usually took a group of gatherers to fill an entire basket like this. The fact that a single girl and her strange beetle creature had managed to do it made it no less impressive.

The next morning Sophia went to meet up with the village mage Catherine to try and improve her limited magical capabilities. Unlike Catherine who was from an actual city with more than one mage to mentor under. So, she was able to study under a variety of different spell crafts tell she was old enough to earn enough to pay to go to a lesser but still no less respected magical Academy. Where is she finally found her niche that later ended with her becoming the village mage of a small no name town on the edge of Duke vine wells territory. The only reason Vine well even wanted a settlement out here was because this area was one of the best places to find healing herbs in his territory. He had made several attempts to set up proper plantations but had met with mixed results. So small gatherer villages like theirs were used instead. The village was made up of a few dozen gatherers, a single blacksmith. A local guard funded by the Duke himself so the locals kids could earn some extra coin for their families. Because farming was impossible in these lands as well. It also kept the town safe with a small hoard of young but not necessarily well trained guards. There were also two woodworkers, Sophia's mother the tailor and a general crafters family that handle just about everything else. In total the village population hovered somewhere around the mid sixties depending on birth, deaths, people leaving to find their fortune or work or so on. So long as they kept a relatively steady supply of herbs and medicines for Duke Vine wells tribute each year, they were pretty much left alone. This year they might have a bit of an issue meeting that demand. At least that's what Sophia believed at first with all the monsters. Though with her new companion maybe not, she wasn't quite sure just yet.

Sofia was trying to pay attention to her lessons and did her best to perform the task given to her. They weren't hard per say just complicated. It seemed like everything Catherine wanted her to do had dozens of steps. And while she could perform each step when she was walked through it. Trying to do so on her own or perform them as a whole task was a lot harder than she expected. The closest sheet had gotten to so far was a very simple spell to purify water. Sofia lacked any direct elemental affinity, but she was instructed to at least learn the basics of each of the elements. As it was often the more advanced or more diverse magic types that used these fundamentals as a template to build upon. She could purify water, but it always came out boiling for some reason.

Catherine would have suspected she had a fire elemental affinity because of this, if it wasn't for the fact her attempts at generating fire made sparks closer to lightning or just heated an object up until it exploded. If she had any fire affinity conjuring a simple flame would be like dropping a match to oiled kindling. Despite this nothing she tried worked right even when Catherine used herself as a focus much to the mage's confusion. She claimed Sophia's Mana was strange inactive it rose and fell like a wave. Active it spiked and fell almost like lightning but focused it could be almost as steady and accurate as earth and then there was just this weird nature of putting out more energy than it should. Fire would shoot off sparks or ZAPs of lightning would sputter, and shimmer water would boil, and earth would come out as glass for some reason.