Year 2, Spring, Third Month, Fourth Week.

Anya gave in to exhaustion and allowed her body to fall backward. The collapsing sound broke Wein’s concentration, making him misdraw the last part of the Property Extraction Array. He glared at the fainted girl and poured dozens of curses while he cleaned the incomplete Array to start the drawing all over again.

The dreams of becoming the village hero ended up swept by the dozens of re-drawings he had to do daily. The more he learned, the more tasks would be put on his back, the life of direct disciple was anything but glamorous. His fellow disciple and most fierce competitor to the title of second most loved hero in the village didn’t seem to care about the endless drawing and redrawing work though. Which made her earn daily praises from their Master. Wein could only push away his envy and work hard to surpass the girl.

Unfortunately, Anya was a monster. When awake, either she was working or following Master to learn new things, even when eating she would find a way to keep studying. The other day, Master warned her against exhausting her spiritual energy, but she couldn’t stop drawing until she fainted. How could he keep up with her? While he was sweating to master the Property Extraction Array, she had already moved on to the Direction Array…

Wein could only thank the Origin that the Merchant left a couple of days ago and he could finally dedicate some of his day time to studying the new Arrays. After the village closed the deal, they had to focus all their energies on fulfilling it, which meant he and Anya were responsible for drawing all the Extraction Arrays and Execution Arrays in the weapons. Every day, when evening came, Wein was exhausted and could only eat before entering a deep slumber. Anya, however, would still train the new Arrays until she was taken by sleep.

***

The sweating Wein, looked pleased with his finished Array, he had finally mastered it and caught up with his annoying rival. Amidst his giggling and self-praising, he failed to notice the stretching girl, who had just woke up from her deep sleep.

“Congrats! You finally got it… I bet you can’t wait to start training the Direction Array… If you want to, I can give you some tips, I think I already got it… But don’t forget about the presentation of your new designs, Master said that we have until the end of the week to finish and present it in an open lecture… Mine is scheduled for tomorrow!”

Wein’s pride and happiness were trampled by a few sentences from the hateful workaholic girl. He thought he had caught up with her, but she already had grasped a new Array, while also finishing a new magic tool design and preparing her presentation. Wasn’t it too much? Because of the heavy workload, he had forgotten completely about the assignment, now he only has a few days to finish it.

Anya laughed at the clumsy running Wein.

“He’s so lively today… OK, let’s train some drawing… I’m so slow… I can’t help it, I’m not as talented as Master, but I’ve been slacking off lately. I should work harder from now on…”

***

Nemera moved cautiously, ready to activate her shield at any time, the presence of the team leader at her right side helped to ease her nerves. Last month, she was chosen to be in the second hunting group, which meant they deemed her good enough to go outside without much training. Unfortunately, the hunt wasn’t very successful, they met a group of six grey wolves and barely defeated two wolves before finally scaring the rest of the pack away, leaving behind many wounded team members.

Toni explained that it was a good result, all things considered, but the damage to the group’s pride was already made. Being chosen as the best, also have downsides, everyone would be expecting great things from them. Nemera didn’t care about wounded ego, she just got scared by facing death so directly. When a wolf bit her fellow team member, she didn’t hesitate to push it away using her shield, but the cost of blocking the beast's follow-up attacks until it was shot down was dislocating her shoulder.

For three weeks, she had to bear with the pain and could only participate in the resistance training. But that was in the past, now she was back with her team and had to get over the fear of facing the beasts. Nemera wasn’t a delicate girl, instead of praying for missing the beasts, she actually wanted to fight her way into defeating her fear. Fortunately, she didn’t have to wait much longer, Toni stopped the team and pointed to three hyenas eating something not far from them.

Besides being relieved for finally fighting, she was also pleased to find some earth beasts. Until they found enough earth crystals to all shields, the teams would have to share them and decrease their training time with the earth-enhanced shields. Regular training also helped, but it was better to get as much training as possible with the crystal to avoid misactivations in real battle.

However, it was already good that they could each use their own shield. After the Council closed the deal with the Merchant, the teams received a lot of weapons. Even though most of the teams still had to use the old weapons until the Alchemy Department could enhance the new ones, nobody dared to the complaint. The few new enhanced weapons had improved their attack and defense power by levels. Fortunately, new weapons got enhanced every day, which meant that they would need more crystals, earth crystals for the defenders to be more specific.

A group this size would surely, scare the hyenas away, so Toni decided to divide them into three groups and circle the beasts. Surprisingly, the hyenas only noticed the danger approaching after the three groups were already positioned on the agreed sides. Toni didn’t want to risk their escape, so he signaled for the archers to shoot, even though they weren’t at a perfect distance. Six arrows flew from different sides, forcing the beasts to move.

One of the arrows pierced through a beast’s leg, while another barely scratched its back, making it lag behind when they ran towards the gap between two approaching groups. Most of the archers managed to shoot again before the beasts got too close, two shoots found the target, taking down the wounded beast. Fortunately, the defenders had enough time to close the gap between the groups, barring the hyena’s path.

The beasts turned to the left, trying to flee sideways but failed to escape before the last group’s attackers were on them. Nemera breathed a sigh of relief, brushing away the remaining feeling of failure from her last hunt. However, something very far got her attention, making her ignore celebrations' hugs attempts while she made her way to Toni.

“Look, something is moving very fast…”

***

“Good morning everyone… Today, I’m excited to present my first design proposition for a new magic tool…”

The crowd in the central square listened to every word Anya said attentively, they didn’t want to miss anything, every word could help them understand more about Alchemy and later help them advance. Although the lecture was directed at the disciples and students, many villagers working in other areas had paused their tasks to watch it, everyone was curious about new magic tools.

“I decided to focus on a tool that could help us in our instant problems… I often hear about the difficulties in the village fields. Now that we have both common fields and the new magic fields to care for, the workload on the Farming Department only grows, so I decided to design something to help with farming…”

The villagers nodded in excitement, everybody supported the hunts but farming still held the most important place in their minds. Anya asked some teens to help her place a stone on top of the podium, earning many gasps from the villagers when they saw the already familiar Array drawings on the stone.

“This is my design for a magic hoe… The m-hoe would make tilting easier for the farmers. By pressing this activation Array when tilting, the hoe would enter and exit the soil easier… I’m not using any complicated Arrays to do it, just the regular ones already seen in the WET and MAC. First, the common powering part, an Extraction Array, where an energy crystal should be placed, connected to an Activation Array, where the farmer will press. The powering part is connected to Properties Extraction Array with an earth crystal inside, tunned to extract the earth affinity property… I think that with this property, the metal part would enter the soil easier and facilitate the tilting… After testing, we can verify if the tool needs other Arrays, like the Direction Array, and where would be the best place to draw the Array, in the top or bottom of the tool… The magic energy expenditure also needs to be checked and improved…”

Anya continued to explained other details, while answering dozens of questions from the excited villagers. Even though most of them didn’t understand what she explained, they appreciated the feeling of participating in the design discussion.

***

Wein sighed after finishing his re-drawing tasks of the day.

“We need to find a way of making the imprints more durable…Will I overcome her one day?”