Power wasn't something I lacked, I was fairly strong compared to those around me.

I didn't realise however, that my strength was insignificant in front of a monster.

I knew that monsters were strong, the beserkers alone could have taken me down.

There was not the slightest idea within me about just how strong monsters would be.

The rituals and experimental processes I had undertaken to increase my own personal power pushed my physical growth to where my magical power was.

I couldn't become a stronger mage without ascending, and I couldn't ascend without months of preperation.

So to increase my personal strength, I had to take long abandoned ideas and make them some what practical.

My armour was shattered other than me helmet, so I decided that I was going to go all out on my new one.

A semi golem armour, many of my magical processes automated.

I'd be able to focus entirely on movement and attacking, with constant smaller attacks putting pressure on my enemies.

There was also a few experiments I wanted to try, I knew from experience that fire magic stones could push objects when they had enough power so I tried to create an extremely strong one.

It took the remainder of the day, but I produced one that could push a human off of the ground when set off.

Recharging magic stones was the problem, they'd passively recover magic very slowly over time but many mages forced their own mana into them to speed up the process. There was no solution to the problem of speed, it still took minutes to charge one.

With the progress I had made, I forged a suit of armour.

It was a fusion of the two metals and so tougher than most monsters could handle.

The suit fit me perfectly, so I decided to start the process of my experiment.

I first turned the armour into a sort of semi golem, that alone was enough for it to be quite unique, then I enchanted it several times to make it extremely tough.

Following that, I attached my prepared magic stones to the armour and wore it.

Flight wasn't steady, it wasn't easy to control but it was enough to escape from the enemy if an emergency occured.

I then moved on to my next experiment, I had toyed with the idea for years on and off.

Cursed mana as I called it, was the product of trying the enchantment process on a magical gem.

I used a normal mana magic gem and cursed it with gluttony, sloth and wrath.

These three curses were part of the basic seven, sloth slowed the enemies movement to a crawl and wrath caused the enemies to lose sight of their comrades and simply attack anything in sight.

Gluttony made the mana continually absorb the mana in the air and build a monstrous amount of strength the further it travelled, it also chewed through barriers quite well.

The problem with cursed mana is that although it was extremely effective, it was extremely inefficient.

I prepared only one cursed mana gem and placed it on the palm of my armour, following it up with normal magic gems, fire gems and various others.

They were more effective than spells but slower to recharge, annoying considering that the armour likely wouldn't have much of a power source to begin with and refilling it was extremely impractical.

All in all my armour was virtually untouchable for around sixty seconds.

I'd be able to kill at least two ogres in sixty seconds if it came down to it, even it the fight killed me.

I planned on improving efficiency in the future

Finally beginning production on the the golem automators, I went to a lab that had been prepared for me in the cities richer district.

With the number of magic gems available to me, I produced a fairly large number of automatic golem production stations by inscribing the runes on stone slabs.

There was a team of researchers who followed my orders and oversaw production of the barrier, I held little confidence it would do much unless we actually took out the army attacking.

Hiding behind a barrier would simply let them whittle our defences down and build their forces.

Over the following month, three hundred golem production stations were created and the number of golems quickly grew.

The barrier was raised and the production on the weapon creators was underway.

The problem however was that I still hadn't made much progress on the power issue, I had increased the capacity for energy by 20% for each of the gems which left me with the same runtime but greater power.

That still left me with little improvement and a massive task to complete, I wanted desperately to help the city but power alone would solve nothing.

It all added up in my head to a feeling of "just enough", I had no idea what sort of forces the other side had but I estimated based on records of previous ogre armies.

They worked in a very simplistic military structure, one leader and the rest were soldiers.

I submitted an official proposal to lay traps in the forrest north of the city, it seemed like the best location to approach the city from as it provided both cover and camouflage.

The ogres were simple, but not mindless. They would employ some semblance of strategy when attacking.

My head was suited to magical research, combat using armies wasn't really in my skillset.

I knew for sure that I could diminish their forces if I layed traps in that forrest though.