Plans had been made in the morning, plans to destroy as many Undead as possible while leaving as many Shattered as possible behind. It wasn’t that we liked Shattered better but, as far as I had seen, there were two factions competing for control over the basic Undead. One faction was composed of Shattered the other was either composed of racoons or of the higher Undead I had seen, either way, it was quite likely that the second group was capable of procreation. Shattered, on the other hand, were limited in their number, each and every Shattered we destroyed was one that would never bother us again. Thus, the idea to limit the influence of that second faction became paramount Otherwise, it might devolve into a situation similar to the one I had witnessed in the Dorrian Mountains, where the Undead had literally claimed the land for themselves.

It wasn’t so much the idea that the Shattered, the enemy of our enemy, were our friends but that we would gladly let our enemy’s enemy fight against said enemy, reducing the strain on our resources. As long as we could gain a large benefit from their struggles, it would be advantageous to us.

The idea was to have the survivors focus their primary training efforts on the city, taking pot-shots at the Undead before retreating. The idea was that attacking from a distance, either by magic or using some sort of ranged weapons, would take out a few Undead, before groups could retreat, abusing the slow pace of the Undead. If the Undead moved out, into the field, the distance would hopefully work as a shield, allowing the survivors to pick their enemies off, or to lure them into prepared traps or even the beasts that roamed out there. Those beasts might be the biggest problem, as they were as much a threat to us and the traps we might prepare as they were to the Undead. Involving them was only an emergency measure, one that nobody really wanted to see in reality, which was why I had the job they asked me to accomplish.

Namely, I had been asked to accomplish two things. The first was relatively simple, to make sure no Undead, especially not in large numbers, could cross the fields during the night. Silva, Lia, Alex and I were obviously suitable for that, as we had multiple people with highly developed perception skills and I was quite capable of laying waste to almost any number of Undead. The other task was to keep the beasts out of the combat field, if at all possible. It was less a task for me, and more for Silva and the dogs, with me only acting as additional deterrence in the night. Hopefully, it wouldn’t become necessary, though I had a niggling feeling it would be.

However, I was aware that my part of the battle would, hopefully, be in the background. Destroying Undead was, at least with their current level, useless to empower me further. I needed stronger targets, enemies like the most powerful Shattered or the greatest threats amongst the other faction, be that racoons or sapient Undead. Those would, hopefully, be left for me, or I could venture into town in the night, taking those threats down with prejudice. And in the meantime, I had magic to train with.

While it wasn’t to train the primary elements to the same level my Ice Magic already had, I wanted to get them at least into a better shape, to the point that I’d hopefully get a greater class than the Lunar Sorcerer I had gained after crossing the first divide on Mundus. What that might be, I wasn’t sure yet but I was reasonably confident that being well-rounded and having access to all the major, and maybe even some additional minor, elements would provide a huge pay-out.

But even if I didn't get any special pay-out, just having access to those types of magic gave me greatly expanded options to deal with whatever challenge might be thrown at me at any time. Ice was a wonderful element, and would likely remain my go-to response in unknown situations, but there were some situations where Ice wasn’t the best response. All the elements, even the fire I hated so much, had their benefits, it came down to me to master and use them appropriately.

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Now, after the long discussions with the leadership of Apple Gate Farm were finished, I was working on exactly that. Mastering my magic. Instead of trying to push my Earth Magic further, as I had the day before, I decided to work on my Wind Magic, just to see the difference. And maybe to incorporate some runic magic into things, as I still wanted to know whether I could increase the power of my Ice Rune Spells by incorporating wind runes.

It was an interesting conundrum, just going by my understanding of magic when viewed without taking outside circumstances into account I was confident that the incorporation should increase the power of Ice Runes such as Blizzard or Hail. When supplementing such spells with a Wind Rune, I was convinced that the Wind Rune would increase the impact power of spells cast that way, increasing the violence of the storm and the force with which the hailstones hit.

But that was only without taking outside circumstances into account, what happened to the efficiency if the caster of the spell didn’t have equal affinities or skills, as it was the case for me? The Wind Rune gave higher impact strength but it took me more power to get the same result from a Wind Rune compared to an Ice Rune, thus, would it actually increase the amount of power or would I handicap myself?

While I wanted to test that out, the cellar in which I had created Lia wasn’t the place to experiment on that scale. I could easily test smaller spells out, simple workings with only a single Rune or just the magic manipulation, but nothing larger, there was simply no space.

In this case, I had drawn one Wind Rune and was carefully channelling Astral Power into it, mostly focused on keeping the created wind flowing around me. It was a deceptively simple exercise, equivalent to letting a chunk of Ice or the piece of rock I had used the day before orbit around me, only that it was far harder than it looked. Where I could easily focus on those physical objects, the wind, the air around me, lacked such easily focused on parts.

At first, the only way I could make any progress was by using my magical sight to keep track of the azure power I was channelled into the air, I could see it, even smell and taste it, making it comparatively easy to focus on. But without that trick, the crutch I was trying to drop, it was a lot harder, I kept losing track of the flow I created, forcing me to guess and oftentimes fail to keep the stream of wind steady. I kept creating turbulences, slowly but surely annoying me.

Finally, I had enough of the annoying interference. Instead of trying to work subtly, I forced the issue, letting out a stream of power instead of the controlled drizzle I had used before. The gentle wind circling around me flared up, turning into a storm to the point that dust billowed up and everything lying nearby was blown away.

Only, the increased power didn’t really help. I was still scrabbling, only now I was trying to control a storm, instead of a gentle breeze. The greater amount of power was both helpful, as it made the effects of my working so much more obvious but also hindering, as it was far more difficult to control the storm. Maybe I just couldn’t control the storm.

But I wanted to try, to make the wind mine. And so I kept pulling, twisting, forcing the air around me into my control.

Suddenly, a weird sensation entered my nostrils, the scents around me changed. From the freely moving wind, the airy scent of freedom I had come to associate with flying and the rushing of wind I now smelled something else. I couldn’t place it, not at all, the scent was sharp, almost chemically so, but not akin to bleach.

Blinking my magical sight into effect once more, I stared into the blurring, azure glow that was tumbling around me, the turbulence of the storm reflected in the turbulence of the magic I had poured into the air around me. But there were some parts of it, springing into existence within my magic before rapidly vanishing again, some parts that weren’t wind.

Curious, I tried to focus on them and, for some reason, the closest mental analogy I could find was a blazing fire. But why was there fire within the wind?

Shaking my head, I gave up. This wasn’t working as I had hoped and I had used up far more magic than I had planned, to say nothing of the mess I had made.

But I had gained something and learned something. My Wind Magic and the Wind Rune Mastery had both levelled, bringing them to nine and five respectively, in addition to that curious observation. At some point, I wanted to know what that had been.