As the truck they are sitting in glides smoothly over the ground on its antigravity Vector, Nebel and Rosa talk about the arrangement that made her his assistant.

“…Well when I walked into the office they just told me I was to apprentice under you until I know how to make any enchantments you know how to make…” Rosa says with a complicated expression “Not that I don’t like you Nebel but I hope I can finish this job quickly… how do you think it looks on a resume when a professor enters an apprentice ship under one of her students…”

Nebel chuckles at her worry and gets a glare in return. “The job should be done pretty quickly I’ve only made one type of trap component that can actually be called “Special”. And I’m sure you can grasp it quickly.”

Rosa stops glaring and smiles “Yeah I guess so… hey we’re there!”

They had arrived at the army’s camp situated in the center of the northeastern frontier, this camp while being the main one, was actually one of the smallest of the five camps situated for full coverage along the line. The camp was erected around an ancient tower that had obviously been abandoned for hundreds of years… but it had recently been put into use once more. The camp itself was just a bunch of tents erected around the tower but the supplies were being properly stored in a depot that seemed to have been built only a few days earlier.

“Hey Nebel over here!” Alan says having come out of a nearby tent to greet the soldiers it seemed.

“Hi Alan, right?” Nebel replies to his greeting “I’ve been sent here to help out.”

Alan looks around while talking but then snaps his fingers seeming to have remembered “I’m not sure how one person could… Oh yeah! You’re the trap guy aren’t you!?”

Alan looks a bit embarrassed “I haven’t slept well, the rat men keep attacking. Every three hours they come, their tactics keep improving.”

Alan smiles as Maximus shows his face from a different tent “Oh hey professor! I bet we’ll be getting some more sleep now you’re here! At least in the day that is…”

Nebel smiles while walking closer to them “Actually your job might just turn into trap maintenance.”

Nebel hands a list of objects he needs over to a soldier who looks at it in disbelief “I need these items to make the traps ask your leader for permission.”

On the trip to the camp while he was talking to Rosa, Nebel was also compiling this list

per meter of frontier:

*1 meter long flat stone

*17 matches

*12 lighters or 24 matches

*2 six inch sticks or 4 lighters

*2 one foot long sticks

*2 one meter long sticks

“We don’t have all day… if you don’t think it will work bring just one meter worth and a rat man in a cage. I’ll show you my idea.” Nebel tells the man.

The soldier salutes the three of them and leaves.

“When I’m done with the planning of this trap I have an interesting idea so I’ll be working on that for about a day, if it works you guys will seriously be reduced to trap maintenance.” Nebel says to Alan and Maximus.

“That can’t be right” Alan says to Nebel “There’s no way a trap could work that well.”

Maximus laughs “Well you didn’t see his last trap; it gave me shivers it did.” Maximus trembles to make his point “And I’m the guy that jumps off of buildings for fun!”

“The rat men aren’t as stupid as the goblins” Alan tells them “They always leave a messenger behind to inform the rest what went wrong and if that messenger escapes they never fall for the previous plan again.”

Nebel looks pensive for a moment “How far behind?”

“Thirty feet at the minimum, when they haven’t noticed anything, if they’re worried the messenger stands a good hundred feet behind.” Alan says while scratching his chin.

Nebel laughs and says to them “Then it’s no problem my trap new trap idea is way more deadly than the last one!”

Nebel grabs a short spear from a stand by a tent and starts to draw a bunch of letters in a line

M F S LLL LL L mmmm mmm mm mT mm mmm mmmm L LL LLL S F M

Before explaining the trap to them.

It takes only a few minutes to tell them the idea but the simplicity and Machiavellity of the plan leaves Alan, Rosa and even Maximus, who was expecting something like this, astounded. While he waits for the material, Maximus sharpens his sword and polishes his shield and Alan marches off to ready his men for the next attack.

Enough of the materials arrive for only ten meters of trap but the general in charge of the north eastern line sends a note along stating “Let’s just see how well this trap of yours works before we go all crazy making a wall of it.”

Nebel shakes his head at the note before discarding it and getting to work, he tells Rosa what to imagine and to practice the technique for making his traps on one meter worth of materials before getting to work on the other nine alone. Two hours later he has finished just about five meters worth of the tools when he heard the call to arms.

The rat men were coming, hurriedly grabbing the completed traps, Nebel, Maximus and Rosa, who was still struggling with her first one, run to the frontline and deploy the trap. As the trap powers up Nebel and Rosa rush back to the camp and climb the tower to get a better view of his handy work, while Maximus runs to join the soldiers standing two hundred meters closer to the camp.

At the top of the tower they find the general sipping on a canteen and watching the men form up. On the other side of the open piece of plains between the rat men and the humans where Nebel’s trap stands not a single living thing can be seen. The two armies stand there for a moment before the rat men start their charge towards the humans.

“Your trap hasn’t done anything yet!” says the general who obviously had noticed them as the rat men pass over the beginning of the trap… he drops the canteen as the rat men that reach three fourths through the trap fall to the ground, seemingly choking. “What’s happening?”

The general along with Nebel and Rosa continue watching the battle, everywhere other than behind Nebel’s trap men are skewering rat men or slashing them apart. Apparently height and reach are very important in fights but the rat men with their almost unlimited numbers keep on coming regardless of their casualties and the humans start to get visibly worn out...

At Nebel’s trap the story was very much a different one, panicked rat men were trying everything to free themselves from his trap and some were actually managing it but not the ones coming forwards or retreating, they were dying without even a chance of survival.

In the chaos the rat men didn’t seem to be communicating very well and the ones that did escape were in no condition to help their less fortunate brethren. Most of the rat men didn’t even seem to realize what was happening until they reached the six tenths point and started choking, through binoculars the general, Nebel and Rosa watch some rat men cover their mouths obviously thinking it was poison gas and others start walking on the corpses of rat men before them, seeming to think it was a heavy gas they could even see one try to crawl under something that wasn’t there…

“What is doing that to them!” the general demands to know of Nebel who was smiling broadly.

“It’s a heat trap.” He tells a gaping General and a star struck Rosa.

“But where’s the fire?” the general asks dumbstruck as Rosa only says “Amazing….”

“I said a heat trap, not a fire trap.” Nebel says a little annoyed he redraws his letters from before on a srap of paper and shows it to the general.

M F S LLL LL L mmmm mmm mm mT mm mmm mmmm L LL LLL S F M

“The Large ‘M’ stand for an permanently spelled meter long stick, the ‘F’ a foot long one, the ‘S’ a six inched one, the ‘L’ a lighter with one and the ‘m’ a match with one.” He points at the groupings “The groupings indicated the actual grouping of the permanent spell “Nodes” and all of those have the same permanent spell applied a single helping of heat generation.”

Nebel points at the “T” “Now the ‘T’ is different it is the trigger for the whole trap and its location at the center of the trap makes it inescapable if the trap is placed in a canyon or a path but right now some idiot gave us barely any resources and no staff… so it’s only five meters wide.”

The general opens his mouth to protest when he sees both Nebel and Rosa pointing at him.

“Permanent spells increase in power when placed on objects that are related to their effect with Vectors not being an exception but also not increasing in power when you do so. In the case of heat spells the amount of heat you could get is related to the amount of heat generated by the spell, if the rat men stay perfectly still at the center they would be trapped but fine. Due to their flight response they are running into the high heat areas of the spell and the heated non breathable air is suffocating them.”

Nebel points at the four tenths and six tenths point of the trap “The slowly increasing temperature of the trap is so the rat men don’t realize what’s happening and much like the frog in the pot, they are being slowly cooked…well dried actually.”

Nebel takes a bow and says to the general sarcastically “No applause please!”

The general after a few moments starts laughing as load as he can as below them the human army finishes off this round of rat men, including the exhausted, in pain rat men that had escaped the trap.

“I like your trap boy! Make me a whole frontier of it if you don’t mind.” The aging general says to him.

“I’ll do you one better, I’ll teach some of your mages to make them.” Nebel says and shakes the out stretched hand of the general.

“Sorry about slighting you earlier but since your stunt in the mountains dozens of idiots have tried to copy you and I was worried of wasting resources, now I’m going to send you all of my mages and any resources you want!” the general says “Hey LTG make the arrangements.”

The lieutenant general, who was unnoticed beside them the whole time, nods and runs down the rickety stairs.

“This is going to be beautiful!” the general says looking out over the corpses of the rat men still in the trap.

Nebel and Rosa return to their make shift work station close to the trucks and the depot and find five men standing around inspecting the materials they had left behind when they were setting up the trap. Each one was clothed in matching outfits unlike the regular soldiers of the army but also different from Rosa or the top brass.

They had Black, silver lined cloaks over black jackets and black pants, at their necks each one had a silver brooch with the swords emblem that Nebel had seen on the official letter from a while ago, holding their cloaks in place and their boots while black like the soldiers had a pattern like Rosa’s boots that looked like a starburst pattern. Since two of them had their backs turned before they noticed Nebel and Rosa, Nebel saw that their cloaks had silver patterns across their backs, one had a flame and the other had a plant so Nebel thought it was most likely their specialty.

“Hey are you this Nebel I’ve been hearing about!” One of the men says arrogantly, stepping in front of the rest.

“Umm, Brian he’s an arch mage now be more polite.” Another one of them says in a small voice.

“Yeah you really should didn’t you see the effect of his trap? It was amazing.” The guy who Nebel had seen with a flame on his back says

“Shut it you two the boss is talking.” one of the remaining two says while the other remains silent.

“Damn not pretend tough guys…” Nebel thinks as he steps towards them. He smiles at the two nice guys and asks the three stooges “Yeah, I’m Arch mage Nebel, and who are you three, suppose to be?”

“We’re the top Mages of this army and I don’t feel like listening to you.” Their spokes person says taking a step towards Nebel and trying to be menacing “What are you going to do about it, little Inventor?”

Nebel steps forwards a single step and stomps his right foot. The three idiots fly up from where their standing before smashing together and falling to the ground in a heap.

“Well that for one.” Nebel says taking his foot off of the activation stone for the trap he had laid. Armies in times of peace were refugee camps for misfits and guys with no other options and in war a few more people with few options were mixed in, so Nebel had planned for such an occurrence and set this trap… He even walked this path to their work space to make sure any idiots would walk in this direction.

It had been simple for Nebel to set vectors in a circle pointing towards the middle of them and connect it to a pressure plate and it was obviously fun to see the results.

Clap! Clap! Clap! The flame user starts clapping and even whistles “Nice one boss! The names Frederick by the way and the shy guy looking spooked is Charles. I expect this will be a beautiful relationship!” Frederick smiles and starts laughing.

Nebel runs his hand through his hair “Great!” he thinks “Just what I needed more drama.”

hope everyone likes it thanks to those that keep loving this good night!