The Mercers minus Fred were going to see Kathy and Claire after not coming over for 20 days. This was a big change from when they saw each other every few days. As they walked down the street, Kyle only thought about how he could raise the money for a library membership.

'Kill monsters? Nope.' Killing monsters was out of the question. For one, he had not even seen an adventurer's guild in this town. Secondly, Kyle did not know the population of monsters in the wild. Kyle had heard a few times something about certain monsters being spoken, but nobody had been attacked by monsters that he knew.

'Heal people?' Kyle would not heal people unless he could disguise himself. He would not throw away this life just to earn some fast coins. He would first have to get the coins to buy a mask, and a cloak too. He might even need something to stand on to hide his size. He only needed 100 coins, so going through all this trouble would take too long.

'Kyle's delivery service?' Kyle would not be able to use fly magic without a mask, so this was out of the question too. Other than these methods, Kyle did not know how to earn money. He always lived minimally, but had just enough to eat food in town for every meal.

"Kathy, guess who is here?" Elena said as they got to the Drought family home. Nothing had changed in the past 20 days.

"Elena!" Kathy said as she came to the door. "Please, come in." Kathy held the door open for Elena and Kyle. Dave's tiny body was currently being carried by Elena. Elena sat on the couch and Kyle looked around for Claire.

Claire was a little over 1 year old, and Kyle had missed the birthday. It was not a big deal though, because 1st birthdays were not celebrated. Kyle did not know if this was strange or not because he was a normal person for his first first birthday.

"Kyle, Kyle, Kyle." Claire sat on the floor and looked at Kyle, and repeated his name.

'Creepy.' was what Kyle thought. It was unsettling to have a 1 year old stare at you and call your name.

Kyle played with Claire and Dave for a while until Kathy finished apologizing to Elena about what happened to Kyle. Kathy thought it was her fault from the story she told Kyle, but Elena told her it wasn't so. Something happened a few miles out from the town of Thornberry that night, and the reason Kyle was found on the wall was assumed to be him wanting to look at the event.

"Didn't you hear about the huge magical event?" Elena and Kathy did not get out much, so most of what they knew they heard from their husbands or their small trips to the 3rd district.

"What do you mean?" Kathy for some reason had not heard it from Paul what happened. Paul did not tell her about it because he did not want to seem insensitive to her worrying about Kyle and her relationship with Elena.

"Well, there was lighting from the sky even though it wasn't raining, so people just thought it was a mage training." It was not strange for a lightning mage to use lightning spells outside of town. Lightning had the tendency to swerve off target sometimes, so powerful spells were best done outside of populated areas.

"Well, those lightning mages have some dangerous spells." Kathy did not know very much about the inner workings of mages, but she knew the gist of what spells they had and the 6 types of magic.

"But that was not all, after the lightning was a huge rock that came from the sky." Though the spell [Gravity] was the only legendary earth magic spell, Meteor was a very strong spell. It summoned a rock high in the sky and then the rock fell in a certain direction. Only the most powerful earth mages used this spell for long distance attacks.

"A meteor?" Just because a mage could make it did not mean it had to be magic. There was the chance it happened naturally, and for a mage to use both Lightning and Earth magic was strange. Those two were conflicting magic types, so a mage normally was gifted in one or the other.

"That's just it. The rock wasn't on fire. It was just a huge rock." With this knowledge, it was certainly a spell.

"So it was a mage?" It was shocking for a mage to use two powerful spells that were used that day one after the other, but there was a group that could perform magic to that degree...

"I had to be a mage. Earth mages can make rocks fall from high in the sky when they have strong enough spells." Though among mages this might be common knowledge, Elena and Kathy only had access to low level fire magic.

"It sure is scary what mages can do." Spells that could burn someone alive, squash them like a big, turn their feet into blocks of ice, a mage's spells were mostly suited for killing. Only the healing and wind types were for anything else.

"I know, but listen, even after that there was more." After two huge spells, it would be absurd for another. People knew about the limit to a mage's mana, so to cast two huge spells quickly would at least have a little rebound.

"What happened?" For the mage to not have rebound, and in fact subsequently cast another spell, was amazing.

"The ground was lifted into the air."

"What?" Kathy's shock was reasonable. Ground could be created in the air, but to move it up from the ground was like something out of a legend. The Gravity spell had not been seen in a long time after the hero Akira died.

"It was like gravity stopped working in that one area and the whole place floated up in a huge mound, the it was dropped right back in place." That confirmed it. It was really the spell [Gravity]. If a Gravity spell like Elena said was cast, the town of Thornberry could be in huge danger if it was used on them.

"That is too scary." Just the thought of her home being ripped from the ground and then thrown back into it, scared Kathy.

"And that isn't even the end." As if telling a scary story, the events never stopped. One feat of powerful magic after the other happened that day.

"No way." It was only 2 types of magic, but a mage would normally work their whole life to use [Meteor], and never become strong with the lightning type. If the mage used legendary magic though, there was no telling what else they could do.

"Yes way. Even after those 3 things, a huge pillar of flame came from the ground and extended far above even the highest spot of the lord's manor." The last spell extended high into the air. It was the final show for everyone who looked in that direction from the sound of the thunder or the meteor smashing.

"That high? But erupt can only get as high as two people normally." Erupt was not a legendary spell, and it was normally used for fires inside of furnaces to smelt ore when paired with a smithy. Most instances of it were a few feet, sometimes to show power mages would make it 30 feet, but the highest spot of the lord's manor was over 200 feet high, and the manor was at the top of a hill.

"All the spells used were extremely powerful versions of normal spells." That was the truth. It would take a separate mage who trained their whole life to cast spells of these magnitudes.

"Do you think it was the Order of Wizards?" This is the only group that could possibly do it. The Order of Wizards was a group of mages assembled by the descendants of Akira, and they were the strongest in the whole empire. It was even rumored that some could use legendary magic.

"What do you think the Order of Wizards would be doing in Vegaland?" Vegaland was a county in the western half of the empire, prone to poverty, scarcity of good food, high birth-rate of beast-kin, and had higher monster populations. If the Order of Wizards was in Vegaland, it was temporary.

"We will just have to wait and see if our husbands can learn anything else." Though Elena and Kathy did not know many people, their husbands worked with a force of dozens of frequent bar goers. If anyone would find information on the event and the Order of Wizards, it would be Fred and Paul.

"I'll ask Paul when he comes home." Kathy had not asked about the events and even though she heard thunder when it did not rain, and sometimes people might say something while she was buying ingredients for food, she did not listen to it. Nobody was a more trustworthy news source than Elena.

When the Mercers went back home, Kyle immediately went to leave again.

"Bye mom." Kyle said as he hoped the door to leave.

"Wait Kyle." Elena stopped him, seeming uneasy about things.

"Yes?" Kyle did not know the problem. Elena had always let him go without stopping him before. Even though those occasions were limited when Kyle wanted to live the life of a simple man, removed from the events of the now empire.

"I don't think you should be going out yet. Just wait a few more days in case something happens." Elena did not want to limit her child from being able to leave the house. In the town of Pricklebush, Elena's mother and father did not let her leave the house for any reason without her brother coming with her.

When Fred swept her off her feet and took her to Thornberry without telling her parents, she told herself she would let her children be as free as they wanted, but this was now a matter of Kyle's health. The town guards would probably not mobilize to search for one of their comrade's missing children again.

"Uh, I feel fine now, but sure." Kyle needed to keep up the ruse of not knowing what happened. He knew that he exhausted all of his mana with the fuel to keep the Erupt spell up, even after the mental note not too. Something inside him would explode if his mana ever dropped below a certain amount, but he let it happen again in a fit of anger. It was a lapse of judgment, partially because when he used to run out of mana he would just switch to swords or hidden unarmed arts.

Kyle sat down on the couch. He could lay there forever, with the subtle and inconsistent pattern of the cloth holding in whatever material was used for stuffing it, it was almost comfortable. Nothing could compare to the beds at the royal palace in the human kingdom capital, but that was a place Kyle would be fine not to see again, unless one of the hero's descendants were there. Then he would destroy it.

Kyle could not live the life of a hermit. Kyle could not live the life of an ordinary man anymore. He would have to kill. That couch would soon become a thing of the past.

It took a few more weeks until Elena let Kyle go out by himself. Making Kyle stay home for his health and letting him be free to leave the house whenever he wanted were conflicting values in her head, but an active child is a strong child, so if Kyle was to get stronger he would need to go outside.

Kyle still did not know how to make money, so he went into the 1st district. The 1st district was a messy place. With the city heavily separated into sections, the 1st district was for the poor, people with no family, and people who just couldn't afford a house in the 2nd district. Most of the town guards without families lived in the 1st district.

As Kyle passed by, he could see people with visible diseases lying on the side of the street. These streets were wide enough for two carriages to pass, but there was no sidewalk. The houses on both sides of the street were shabby, and probably even worse than the one Kyle lived in.

It was probably not safe for a 3 year old to be walking in this area, but Kyle could cast status magic on anyone to came up to him with malicious purposes, so he was not worried. Worse case scenario, he is occupied for a few hours.

The town of Thornberry does not have a very high criminal element, so if Kyle was to try and find someone he would be able to steal money from without a guilty conscious, it would be difficult. Kyle's plan was to be approached by a thug, use status magic on them, and then take their money. It was the only way he knew how to make money as a small child.

Thornberry had a population of a few thousand, and most of them lived in the 2nd district, but that still left plenty of people in the 1st. This was because the 2nd district had families of people while the 1st district was mostly single residence shabby homes.

"Hey kid, want some candy?" A voice came out to him from in the shadows.

"I.. I want some candy." Kyle did not actually think the shadow was offering him candy. Kyle knew full well what was happening, and if the shadow thought he was going to get one up on a defenseless child, he was sorely mistaken.

"Then come here, I've got a whole handful." The shadow pushed a hand into the light and revealed a handful of actual candy.

'And to think things worked out so well on the first day.' Kyle thought as he went towards the shadow in the alley.

"Gotcha" the voice said as another person came into view and put a rag over Kyle's mouth. The rag was a little green and moist.

'Shit, it's somno herba poison!' Kyle panicked for a short second and then was out.

The somno herba was a monster from the southern region of the human kingdom near the elven kingdom. It looked like a mushroom very close to the ground and with a huge trunk. When the weary adventurer came near it without knowing any better, the somno herba's roots would pick up the adventurer and drop them into a huge mouth that would open in the center of it's body. The somno herba would then excrete a poison that in just a few second would keep its prey alive and unconscious while it digested it over several weeks.

Kyle had once been eaten by a somno herba in his past life, but he was fortunate his journey started near the north because he was able to use the Wolf Fang Fist from inside the monster's belly before the poison got to him.

With the rag placed directly over his nose and mouth, this was not possible though, and he would simply have to wait until he came back to reality.