The kids jumped around their mother in curiosity as she yelled in distress. Urist shook his head at the kids that were too young to understand the danger they were in. On the signal, the dwarfs rushed forth with Urist taking the lead by pushing strength into his feet. Shocking the kids and mother goat he slammed into the mother goat.

Fearing for their lives the kids fled in all directions as Urist wrestling their mother into submission. As the two forces tried to win out against one another the other dwarfs descended upon the little ones. Thanks to their excellent plan it wasn’t hard to capture them without much effort expended. Rat came in soon after Urist to help to subdue the mother goat and after five minutes or so they finished the mission and headed back home with the yelling goat family.

When home Urist had to explain to the confused dwarfs why they weren't eating the goats they caught. Urist could only shake his head at how sad they look as he made his way to the rabbit pen. He decided that this would be a temporary pen for the kids until they could make a pen to house them and their mother.

With that surprise handled, Urist walked over to Yri.

“Hey, do you know how to look after animals?”

Looking up from her planting she tilted her head. “Er. Yah. I’m a farmer, of course, I know how to take care of animals. Why?”

“Could you look after the goats we just got?”

“Sure that’s no problem you planning on making goat cheese?”

“How did you know?”

“Heh. Lucky guess boss, as long as you can get me the food to feed them than it’ll be easy.”

Having the goats taken off his back Urist thanked Yri before the two headed over to the goats as she wanted to see how they were. He became quite pleased that under her touch, the wild goats became less agitated and more docile.

Leaving Yai with the goats, another plan was forming in his head. Now that I know that goats are running around the area its best get a large pen up and running later.

Putting the thought in the back of his head, he walked over to Qrtia to see how many bricks she made ready to fire. He sighed in admiration at her amazing ability, with today alone she had made 210 bricks that were ready to fire.

After counting the bricks he noticed the extra ten. “Hey, why is there an extra ten?”

Sipping on some water Qutia answered, “It’s because I expanded so much it increased. Every time I expanded it twice I could do an extra brick.”

“I see, still I have to ask if you had any problems using all your mana at once.”

“Other then getting a slight headache and getting a little bit hungry I’m alright.”

“That’s a relief knowing there aren't any big problems of bottoming out your mana and it’s a benefit. But I want you not to push yourself too hard ok?”

Qutia waved her hand and laughed, “No worries boss, this type of work isn’t stressful and great training. From what I could remember about magic in my world, a person's body was set in stone. So to increase my mana is a blessing.”

That’s pretty interesting information I’ll have to ask other mages that join if that's the case in their own worlds.

“Good to know Qrtia. For now, this is enough brinks. I’ll require you soon so when you top up your mana we’ll be doing a project before the sun goes out. But before I go I like to thank you for your hard work.”

“Haha. No problem boss. I’ll be ready to go in an hour or so.”

Having finished his business with Qrita, Urist moved onto thinking about the basics of making a kiln. When he and his team headed out this morning he had the dwarfs go to the river shore and collect shells. Entering the cave he was greeted to a pot full of shells just waiting to be crushed into pieces, then stuffed into clay balls. The reason to put the broken shell pieces into clay was to easily collect the cooked calcium oxide easier. And the use of the calcium oxide was to be used as an ingredient for mortar.

Before breaking up the shells and mixing the material he bought some cloths face masks on the market.

It’ll be a good idea to use these so no one inhales any of the mixtures while we’re working with it dry.

With the masks acquired, he did a few things around camp and talked with everyone to pass the time. When Qrtia was topped up on mana she came to find Urist and he smiled knowing it was time to put his plan in action.

“Ok, what do I gotta do boss?” Asked Qrtia.

“It's nothing you haven’t been already doing. I need you to take this bucket of clay and completely drain it of its water.”

“That’s all? I wouldn’t have needed all my magic for this.”

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“Ah. What can I say I wanted you to rest a little bit.”

“Come now I’m not that fragile.”

“I’ll keep that in mind from now on.”

“As long as you understand.”

Giving a faint smile, Qrtia put her hand above the bucket and closed her eyes. A blue glow soon appeared at the bottom of her hand. At first, the light was faint but then it quickly grew in brilliance and when it reached a certain point she began chanting quietly under breath.

Urist watched entranced as the magic formation began to form from the clump of mana that then shot straight into the bucket. Opening her eyes she raised her hand and drew out the water in the bucket before putting it into a container for storage. After all, why waste 100% pure water which could be used medically or for drinking?

Finished now Qrtia turned to Urist. “Now that I’ve finished doing what you wanted. Will you let me in on what you want with dry clay?”

Urist let out a chuckle as he held out a mask for her, “If you wanna see I don’t mind, but I ask you to wear this mask for your protection.”

“Protection?”

“You’ll become ill if you inhale any of the dust particles we’re going to be playing around with so safety is a great concern. In a little bit, the shells should be soon cooked so, for now, we’ll crush this to powder.”

Taking the mask and putting it over her face she became quite interested in what Urist was doing. Half an hour later Urist pulled out the clay balls with his bare hands as an experiment and found that the heat didn’t burn or affect him.

Good to know I’m not just immune to flames but also immune to this amount of heat. Although it might just be the Orgain flames at work here. This will need more experimentation later, but for now, it isn’t a pressing concern.

Qrtia and co. watched in utter amazement as they watched Urist break apart the hot clay. He let them cool though and didn’t touch the shells. After all, he didn’t what a caustic reaction that burned his hands.

When he finished he thought of something and laughed, “Oh yes, usually you let the clay fully cool before handling them. I’m just impatient.”

Qrtia sighed, “I was wondering about that. This is the first time I’ve seen a person stick his hand in a fire. Not even fire mages would do something so casually. What magic do you use boss?”

“Really? How unexpected. It’s called Origin Flames, but I’m not sure it’s magic. It says it magic but when I use it, it doesn’t make magic circles like yours.”

Rolling her eyes Qrtia replied, “It’s because you didn’t chant while using it. Which means you're pretty much brute-forcing the mana to work. You should work on that because you're wasting mana and also limit magic application. Although I've never heard of Origin Fire, it should follow the same laws of magic. Even if it gives you a special constitution to not be affected by the fire.”

“Then how do I control it?”

“At most I could teach you the basic magic formations and the rest would be up to you. I’ll need something to draw on to give you a sketch of them.”

“I will be sure to get something for you after we’re done here.”

“Ok, then what's next boss?”

“Some elbow grease. First, we get some gloves so we don’t burn ourselves due to a reaction the calcium oxide has on the skin. It’s pretty nasty so make sure to wear hand protection when doing this ok?”

“I don’t get why or those confusing terms but I shall wear gloves.”

Urist sighed, When we become more stable I’m going to have to buy science books and teach chemistry. So glad I paid attention in science class.

“Now that we have our safety equipment all these shells will be crushed into powder using the mortar and pestle I’ve made. As you know that shells are hard to break, but when heat is added they become easy to break down. You can call it quicklime at this point. Now we shift out the large pieces with this shifter and leave them to be heated once again. To finish up this material we add four parts of water to one part power slowly. If you add it all at once it will be quite dangerous. Qrtia may I have the water you extracted please?”

“Here you go, boss.”

“Thank you.”

Then slowly mixed in the water into the mortar and watched the chemical reaction take place. An after a hiss here, a crumble there and some heat later the hydrated mixture was completed.

“With this finished all we have to do is add some sand and water then we’ll have made Mortar.”

“Eh? But didn’t you call the bowl a mortar?”

Seeing the confused reactions of the dwarf Urist could only chuckle. “Funny enough they both share the name mortar in my world. There is also a weapon called a mortar in my world so depending on the subject it can be quite confusing.”

“Your world is pretty confusing boss.”

“Indeed it is. Now enough of that let’s move onto shifting sand.” Finishing his words Urist pulled out a bucket and a custom copper screen. Using the collected sand from before Urist had the dwarfs shift the sand they had collected. If they wanted to they could use the gravel collected from their trip to the mountains to make concrete.

That's a good idea we should do that to kill two birds with one stone.

With such thoughts they then put sand, and gravel in their respective buckets for later use. Alas, he wouldn’t be using the gravel in for the bricks to hold the kiln together. Although it was much stronger than mortar it wasn't good for building projects. He would use the concrete on the base as it was better suited for structural support.

The next step was to mix up the mortar to be three parts sand and one part cement to make the mix. Although they had collected around nine buckets of shells, it would take a while and use many mini fires to bake them all to temperature so this was more of a test.

A project for tonight and then tomorrow we’ll make the kiln, thought Urist as he kept working as he wanted to test the mix.

With the help of Qrtia, he would able to make the mixture as wet or dry as needed. Then as a test, Urist had Qrtia test her magic on the brick to slowly extract water. A few tests later and he was quite happy to find it becoming stronger.

When we finish cooking all the shells tomorrow we won’t have to wait for the mortar today. Soon we’ll have a kiln to forge metal with, I wonder what kind of people we will get tomorrow? No matter since we can’t finish it today then…

“With the test done tomorrow, we will mass produce mortar and concrete to make the kiln. For right now, since we can't make the kiln let’s go make bubbles.”

Yet he was able to show them something cool instead. Going over to the float and buckets full of metal material he smiled.

"Bubbles?”

Seeing their confused reactions made Urist want to chuckle.