The First Legendary Beast Master

Karl folded his hands in the symbol of the Dragon Church. “I feel for you, brother. Facing the full terror of bureaucracy alone. I will send prayers your way.”

The Totem Ranked Dwarf gave Karl a suspicious look.

“What do you mean, alone?”

“Well, we don’t live here, now do we? So, the whole aftermath is really a ‘you’ problem, not a ‘me’ problem. So, while you work out all the details with your fellow Totem Ranked leaders, I will bring my group back to the tavern, and we can help them patch up a few of the larger problems with our limited Earth magic.” Karl explained.

The Dwarves frowned. They had forgotten that he didn’t live here. His team had made quite the name for themselves today, with multiple over Rank kills. But they had only just arrived, and they would be heading out again in a few days.

“Well, we could ask you to be an advisor, but you have a point. A combat specialist isn’t likely to be necessary for a policy meeting. No matter how little we want to go.” The Dwarf agreed with a slight sigh.

Karl shook hands with the Totems, and they all went their own way to look after their own affairs.

The group’s progress was slow, as Lotus stopped every time she felt someone in need of healing in range of her spells. Some were injured in battle, some were just sick. But Lotus waited for the effects to help everyone they passed.

At that pace, it took them an hour to get back to the Inn, and they had a whole entourage of old ladies and children following them by the time that they made it to the town square, but the battle was over, and most of them just wanted a safe escort to see how bad the damage was.

The centre of the city near the tavern was in rough shape, but the streets were wide, and the battles had been over fairly quickly. Karl and the majority of the city’s warriors had been gathered nearby for the announcement, so the Ogres hadn’t had time to rampage.

But the buildings were still in bad shape with the illusion gone.

“Would you like us to give the building a bit of a facelift and fix the roof?” Karl asked the Innkeeper, who was looking over the area outside his Inn with deep concern.

“You have Earth Magic?”

Karl nodded. “Not much. But we can reshape stone easily enough. That will eliminate the cracks and crumbling bits. The whole place is made of stone, so a bit of revitalization is all that it will take. After all, you already did the inside.”

The building would end up a few centimetres thinner in the walls when they were done repairing that much damage, but they were most of a metre thick now. It shouldn’t be a problem.

The innkeeper nodded, and Rae coated the building in magic, fixing all the cracks in the stone, and the worst of the crumbling outer sections. She left the aged patina, but now it was as solid as the day it was carved.

The Dwarf smiled as he ran his hand over the building. “That is perfect. Not as pretty as it appeared before, but now it doesn’t feel like it might fall apart.”

Then he paused. “If only it was still a metre thick.”

Rae’s confused look made Karl laugh. “Dwarves are sensitive to stone. He can tell the difference between a metre of stone and ninety-nine centimetres of stone over his head. It’s like a painting that has been hung slightly crooked.”

The nearby Dwarves nodded. “It’s hard to explain. But knowing that the roof won’t fall on our head is a good start until we can find a talented enough Earth mage to get it just right.”

Rae had a realization. “If you can feel the depth of the stone, then the stone relief carvings of Dwarven architecture are more than just visual preference.”

An old Dwarf nodded. “The volume of stone left, how thick it is, how far from the floor, how much of the stone flows across the surface. It all lends a particular feeling to the room. Dwarves can literally feel the difference between an amateur, an imitation and a true master’s work.”

Rae nodded. She was good with Earth Magic, but not that good. Maybe she should work on it? She could add it to her art portfolio.

A few more locals came over with hopeful looks, and Karl waved them over. “Lady Rae and I can both use some level of Earth Magic. So, if you would like your buildings patched, we can fix the structure for you.

As you saw, it takes some time, but we will try.”

Karl did his best on the buildings on the surrounding blocks, and while it wasn’t pretty, he did manage to make them all structurally sound again. Following Rae’s lead, he didn’t change the exterior much, other than to make sure it was solid stone again.

But that was becoming the aesthetic of the city now, as involuntary as it might have been.

Every Dwarf with enough magic was doing the same thing, just patching buildings to make them solid instead of spending the hundreds of hours it would take to make them perfect.

However, his instincts for stone were a bit better than Rae’s, and he adjusted the walls to be ninety-eight centimetres. That left enough stone that the roof could be returned to one hundred, so that the ‘just slightly wrong’ feeling faded.

He took a break for dinner, and returned to the Inn, where most of the group was waiting for him.

Karl took a seat in the crowded booth and wrapped his arm around Dana.

“Well, that was an interesting day. Does everyone want to leave in the morning? Or should we stay for one more day and see if there is more we can do here?” He asked.

Tessa smiled. “I think that we can leave. There has been enough chaos in the city for one day. There is no way to prove it, but I am starting to suspect that our presence affects probability, and that feeling got even stronger after whatever happened to Cara in the trial.

But why didn’t the others change?”

Karl shrugged. “The trial is supposed to be for System Users, but apparently Cara has the favour of an Old God, while the others are under the jurisdiction of the Spider or Beast Gods. So, she could participate, but the others could not.”

Tessa nodded. “That makes sense in a way. But her chaotic aura will be a problem.”

In her space, Cara snorted in amusement. She didn’t see the problem.

Chaos was fun.