Chapter 60 - New Lands (2)

After a few days, Billy had gotten quite good at blocking the Water Balls of those aquatic monsters. Dodging was even easier, but he couldn't risk letting someone behind him get hit. In any case, both of his skills and magic were developing nicely, even though he wasn't training. He didn't even have much free time since he used meditation and recovered his mana from working.

"I knew I should have bought some extra rings and leveled them up," Billy thought.

Even if he had bought them, most likely, Billy wouldn't have had time to make them level up. The effects of automatic meditation were that useful and expensive, after all. Since he couldn't recover mana faster, Billy had to be creative. Instead of transporting them out of the water with a liquid platform, Billy fired the corpses toward him by using a water jet. At first, he had a hard time adjusting his mana, but eventually, he got it right and managed to save one-third of the mana being used. Speaking of which, Billy realized that controlling water from a body like a river was a lot easier than making them gather from the air around him. It also consumed less mana.

"Hey, Billy," Natalie suddenly appeared and then said. "You said that the elementalists are compressing the ground to make it harder… it also makes it heavier, right?"

"Not exactly, the mass is the same, but since it is occupying less space, it gives the impression that it is heavier," Billy explained.

"I don't get what you are saying, but can you imitate them?" Natalie asked. "I tried to do the same, but I failed and I want to put something into my swords to make them heavier for training."

Natalie got a lot more docile over the course of last week, probably because she was getting off the tension with training. He had no idea why she was so nervous, though. In any case, buying better swords probably was the best option, but that was possible in such a place. Billy also wanted to explain to her that having bulging muscles would make her stronger. Still, it also makes her movements slower and less fluid. It would be better to keep sharpening her skills instead of her muscles. Still, if that was her choice, then who was he to say otherwise.

"Okay, I can do that," Billy said. "You owe me one."

Billy never practiced that, but he knew the theory. Besides, the elementalists were going to put the first group of blocks on the river that day, so he wouldn't have to fish those monsters. Hopefully, Natalie will understand that just getting bigger wouldn't be enough, so Billy decided to make her realize it as soon as possible. He created some thick rings of the earth around her sword after compressing several kilograms of earth and putting them on the sword's pommel. It wouldn't get in the way of her grip, but she certainly would feel all the extra weight.

"Thanks, this will do it," Natalie said while swinging her swords around.

Speaking of training, aside from the red archers, the elementalists, and a few certain individuals, pretty much everyone in that mission had too much free time in their hands. While they needed to be cautious in case something happened, they didn't notice any weird movements on the other side of the river, so it was safe to assume that they were fine. Alexander and Natalie were practicing their skills during the day, and they practiced their magic at night… most of the old generations would get behind due to the fact that they didn't want to learn new skills. Still, they were thinking that the young ones wouldn't reach anywhere trying to master so many arts. Billy couldn't disagree more with that… after all, one can't train with their body nonstop, and they can only practice magic as long as they have mana. The balance between both was necessary.

Soon after, the elementalists began to work on transporting the blocks of earth toward the river. Since it might be troublesome to transport only one of them at a time because they might be hard to localize underwater, ten of those were being controlled by dozens of elementalists. Making the blocks float was impossible for a single person, but not for several of them. Still, Billy could see their mana rapidly decreasing.

As one would expect, their coordination was impressive. The blocks of earth moved for dozens of meters without losing balance or without having their connection being destroyed. Once they approached the river, some Sahati tried to attack, but red archers defeated them. Thanks to that, they managed to put the block on the river, and several of the blocks managed to stay above the water. Naturally, since they put it near the coast.

"Good work," Leo said while watching some Sahati attacking the blocks and not even scratching those. "We will have to repeat this process many times, but we can't get lazy. How about it, Sarah? Can your current personnel keep going at this pace for another week or do you want to return, give them some time to rest and bring another group."

"We can keep going," Sarah said. "This is nothing."

The meditation level of those guys was pretty high, so they could recover completely after a single night. Maybe they could recover even more by using Zen, but Billy never saw them using that. Regardless, Leo nodded at that response and asked the elementalists to create another pillar of earth blocks, this time, they will have to transport the blocks to the shore, and then they will have to jump to the first pillar because the goal was to put the second ten meters away from the first. They managed to do that, but in the end, they used all of their mana, and the progress of the construction came to a stop for the day.

"I wonder if there is something I can do to speed up all this," Billy thought.

Unfortunately, nothing came to mind since he was too busy helping secure food… he didn't even make much progress with Fire Manipulation either. Maybe melting some ores and covering their exterior with earth magic might speed things up, but first, they had to find the proper place to mine it…