A week later, Heiko’s shift at work changed, and he stayed home from 6 AM until 10 PM. During the latest hours of the night and earliest hours of the morning, he worked the night shift with the Gallus Town guards. His shift rotated by eight hours every week, and the night shift was the most dreaded of them all.

The town guard had very little work to do, but they couldn’t rest. They patrolled inside and outside the town, and they sometimes had to deal with rowdy magicians. Because of that, Heiko and the other guards were called mages - because they had a bit of combat ability.

The lowest category of magic-enabled humans, called magicians, were just everyday run-of-the-mill people. They used their magic to assist themselves in their daily needs, but not much else. Mages, though, were trained to fight magicians or other mages with their magic. As such, they mostly had combat affinities and formal training.

After working for eight hours and waiting for his relief to take over at his post, Heiko walked home, cleaned himself and slid into bed beside his wife. A few minutes later, Susanna crawled out of bed and began dressing, which usually took several minutes.

A few minutes walk away from their home, Andric and the rest of the Avantus family were still asleep. They commonly stayed up much later than the Klerkse family, and they woke up an hour or two after.

Morning in Gallus Town was quiet. Most businesses stopped at 8 PM, but some - like the food cart Wolter worked at - were open as late as 11 PM. In the morning, most businesses didn’t open until an hour after dawn. The mining operation never stopped, but the mines were too far from the residential area to be relevant.

Meanwhile, on the opposite side of the mountain from Gallus Town, a group of mages followed a large animal through the forest. They had tracked the animal for several days, waiting for a time when they all had full mana and the beast slowed its movements. Due to the animal’s large wings, keeping up with it required magic, and the mages had little faith in being able to kill it without their full mana.

Some animals were ordinary and harmless, and some were hostile and dangerous, but some were ferocious monsters warped by magic. Mana coursed through their veins, differently than how a human used magic, and their physical properties were greatly altered.

This particular monster took the form of a chicken with a height and width of over ten feet. Its wings stretched fifteen feet in both directions, and it could eat a man’s torso with a single peck from its beak. In addition to all that, flames roared across its body. The flames didn’t burn the monster, and they made for a dangerous attack whenever the monster flapped its wings.

In the forest, where trees were spaced less than ten feet apart, the monster had little room to move around on the forest floor. Instead, it hopped across the tree canopy and ignited the leaves in its path. It occasionally fell through, but a few gusts of wind from its wings was enough to propel it back up.

At the same time, whenever the monster flew upward, fire spread out in the forest. However, the mages who followed the monster disregarded the damage it left in its wake. They no time to deal with the spreading fires, and they only cared about killing the agile beast as quickly as possible.

Monsters were mysterious beings that appeared spontaneously. Even the beast that the group of mages followed for several days, which resembled a chicken, had no confirmed origin point. Monsters weren’t known to appear in succession, but they could appear in large groups. Thankfully, this time, it looked like only one animal had mutated.

Even so, with just one car-sized flaming chicken, six mages were completely occupied. Perhaps, if the monster hadn’t such an incredible range of movement, the mage squad would have been able to deal with it earlier.

The monster fell through the canopy, and everyone in the mage squad jumped away. For the most part, they followed directly under the monster, but they kept a suitable distance so that they would flee if it fell down. This time, instead of it flying back up and resuming its travel, the monster looked forward and saw a long expanse of forest it could travel through.

It opened its wings and rapidly flapped, propelling itself through the forest. While moving at a speed the mages could only match with magic, the monster looked for food to eat. Even though its body had been made with magic, it still needed to eat to sustain itself. It could eat plants - to a certain extent - but larger prey were more efficient at supplying it energy - even better when that prey contained mana.

Few large animals inhabited the mountain around Gallus Town. Excluding the livestock kept by farmers around Gallus Town, most of the large creatures around the mountain had already been hunted. Thus, the monster continued to travel for many miles.

One mage, tired from having chased the monster for so many miles, threw several disks of mana at the tree in front of the monster, and they caused large chunks of wood to splinter off. The attack used a large amount of mana, but it also caused half a dozen large trees to fall in the monster’s path.

“Attack!” another mage, seeing that the unannounced attack succeeded in halting the monster’s movements, shouted. From behind where the monster stood against a mass of fallen trees, five mages gave their most powerful spells to the feathery backside of the monster.

Fire magic would have little effect on creature shrouded in flames, and the mage squad resorted to other types of magic. Lightning magic held the title for being the most lethal, but aiming it proved challenging. However, when the target stood only thirty feet away from them and had the height and width of a storage shack, missing was almost impossible.

All five attacking mages struck lightning upon the monster’s body, and blackish feathers flew out like darts. For a moment, the mages were elated their strike had succeeded so well. But, a moment later, it was clear that the monster had simply shed a layer of crispy feathers while remaining unharmed underneath.

The monster turned around and spotted one of the mages. With two fluid movements, it dashed forward and bit down on the mage’s upper body. The monster’s huge beak fit half the man inside it, then tore his head, arms, and chest from his body. It gulped the meat down, then flew upward and continued its southbound advance.

The mage squad stopped and regrouped around the corpse of their fallen comrade. They knew hunting monsters came with its own risks, but they didn’t expect one of their friends to be killed so easily. Heads turned to follow the direction the monster flew away in, and they spat curses from their mouth.

While the monster drew ever closer to Gallus Town, the ordinary lives of the citizens continued, oblivious to the danger that approached them.