A month has passed since my birthday and all of the spring planting has been completed, and right now the family is in maintenance mode.  Most of what we have had to do is weeding and watering our crops, though I’ve had the pleasure of gathering firewood for the next year so most of my time has been spent in the woods chopping down trees.

The task used to be Dad’s but I’m big enough now to do it on my own so for the last two weeks my hands have been covered in blisters.  I’m not upset about it though since honestly I like chopping down trees a lot more than carrying a big bucket around to water our crops.  I really need to remember how to set up proper irrigation.  I think I know how to do it, but the only way to find out is to potentially ruin a field which my parents have not agreed to.  I haven’t pushed them on the issue because frankly it would be a lot of work and if I get it wrong, which is very possible, it would have been a huge waste.

So for now I chop and chop and chop until a tree falls, then I remove its’ limbs and then drag the trunk back home in order to turn into smaller pieces that are easier to burn.  I’ve also been practicing my magic while I’ve been alone in the woods.  I’ve been trying to create a water blade, and no that doesn’t mean some kind of sword made out of water, or ice.

The “blade” I have been trying to create is what they use when cutting stone, an industrial sized water cannon that releases water at such high pressures it can literally cut through rock or even metal.  Unfortunately my water blade has all of the power of a super soaker.  I think the biggest problem is caused by the fact that I have to pull the water out of the air which doesn’t allow me to build up the pressure necessary.  The good news is that I now always have a source of clean water so the lack of progress hasn’t depressed me yet.  But today I am going to try something new, I am heading to the river to cut down some trees and I am going to try combining the power of the river with my water blade.

It took me 20 minutes to jog there with my axe and pick out a tree close enough to the river for this to work.  I took close to thirty swings to notch out the back of the tree so that it would fall toward the forest instead of toward the river.  Then I sat down off to the side of the tree and concentrated on my mana core.  I gathered around half the mana in my core and then decided to gather half the mana in my channels.  Since my growth spurt ended my mana channels have stabilized so I could finally use all of it without enduring a channel collapse.

I forced the mana out of my hands and into the river, surrounding as much water as possible without leaving any holes or weak points.  I went over the construct I had created multiple time, it amounted to a giant bag of water, but I had to make sure there were not any weak points. Once I was sure that the container I had crafted was sturdy enough to handle the stress I was about to put it through; I created a small tentacle of water and a weak point at the end of the tentacle.  I aimed the tentacle at the tree I had previously notched and then I compressed my mana as much as possible.

The resulting explosion of water completely soaked the tree, it even formed a small gash in the bark, but ultimately it was a failure.  The entire tip of the tentacle had failed instead of just the small weak point I had made.  The weak point went first obviously, which is what caused the small gash, but the rest of the tip failed before it could do any more damage.

I sighed and then reabsorbed as much of the remaining mana as possible.  I’d lost maybe a quarter of the mana to the process of reabsorbing it and another quarter due to what I had asked of the mana.  I gathered the remainder of my mana and once again sent it into the water.  I gathered half of the previous amount of water which allowed me to double the thickness of the mana walls, layering the tip of the tentacle with an especially thick layer of mana.  I made the weak point and then once again compressed my mana as much as possible. 

A thin jet of water shot out of the tentacle, cutting into the tree and rapidly eating a line through the wood.  Then suddenly the water pressure seemed to drop. I took my focus off of directing the water and noticed a geyser of water coming from the side tentacle shooting straight up into the air.

I’d sprung a leak.  I stopped compressing my mana and examined the spot where the water had broken through.  I sent my mana sense into the construction and found the hole quite rapidly.  Apparently the water rushing through the tentacle had been eating away at the construct.  The entirety of the tentacle had been wearing thin.  If I had kept the pressure on another leak could have sprung in any number of other places.

I regathered the mana I’d used and decided to call it quits on the experiments for the day, I needed to think about the results and probably come up with a different delivery system.  Two to three seconds of water blade were not enough for my purposes.  If I couldn’t get at least a minutes worth of use out of it then it would be usable for neither battle nor industry.

I might be able to get a blacksmith to create a steel tube with a nozzle at the end for me.  If it was thick enough then I probably wouldn’t waste nearly as much mana.  Of course in order to do that I was going to need money, which at the moment I currently lacked.

I finished chopping down the tree, lamenting the fact that I lived on a farm which severely limited my ability to make money.  Sure I’d crafted a few useful household items, like a spatula, whisk, forks and spoons, bowls and plates, mostly using wood or clay. Dad and I had built a kiln a few years ago, which is how I was able to create so much table ware, but I doubted most of it would sell well enough to make me the money I needed.

My bigger inventions, like indoor plumbing could potentially make more money, but would really only work if I was building a house from the ground up.  The rooftop cistern I’d created for our place really only worked because of my earth manipulation skills and the fact that we had a slate tile rooftop.  Even then it wasn’t able to hold very much water since too much weight would collapse the roof.  Someone else might have been able to do better but I was studying to be a doctor, not an engineer so a small cistern was the extent of what I had been able to manage.

I started removing the branches from the tree with swift swings of my axe.  I needed to think of something that would make me some real money, the problem of course being that I don’t really know exactly what has been invented yet.  There were obviously a few things that would make me a ton of money, like an abacus, or printing press, but frankly I couldn’t be sure if my family simply didn’t have the money or need to buy these things.  I had built a rough wheel barrow, which had some potential as a money maker and when in town I didn’t notice a wheel barrow store, but then I kind of figure you would have to ask a carpenter to build you one.

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 I really did need to explore the town more on my own, but Mom and Dad rarely let me leave the farm.  It was remarkably frustrating, biding my time, allowing myself to gain full control over my magic, learning martial arts and growing up.  I wanted to do so much, but if I acted too early I wouldn’t be prepared to deal with the potential consequences of trying to live my life according to my old value system.  After all can you imagine a six year old fighting an adult twice his size and winning?  That might happen in manga and light novels, but here it would just get me killed.  After all my dad regularly trounced me when we sparred and I could tell he has been holding back.

After reaffirming my plan to remain anonymous until I was older and had learned enough to defend myself against all comers I looked down at my handiwork.  The tree had been completely delimbed and it was time to take it home for further processing.  I grabbed the tree close to its’ midpoint, and lifted it up to my shoulders.  Sure the thing weighed close to three hundred and fifty pounds, but I’m hella buff.  It took a minute to adjust the tree so that it sat balanced upon my shoulders, but afterward I was able to head home at a quick trot.

Okay, so jogging home with a three hundred and fifty pound log on my back was a mistake.  I got about half way before my shoulders tried to fall off my body.  I ended up leaving a half mile long furrow in the ground as I had to drag the damn log home.  I guess I over estimated my own strength, but hey, life would be boring if you never tried to push your own limits.

I left the tree trunk by the wood pile and grabbed some food from inside the house.  Mmmmm velocichicken jerky, it tastes great… errr, well great might be an exaggeration, but it is quick and edible so I went with it.  After scarfing down my midmorning snack I began to meditate.  You absorb mana faster while you meditate, plus I needed to figure out exactly how much I had just messed up my muscles.

As part of my consciousness focused on taking in all the available mana, the majority of my focus went to examining the muscles in my neck and shoulders.  They were in fairly rough shape. I had micro tears throughout the muscles in my neck, which wasn’t so bad, that’s just the result of a hard workout, what would have been annoying were the tears in two ligaments in my neck and one in my left shoulder.  I’d like to give you the technical names of them since I spent an entire quarter learning all of the ligaments in the body, but frankly they don’t quite sink up to a human equivalent.  Sure we are built along similar lines, but frankly wolf head vs. human head does some interesting things to the neck’s structure.

I sent my mana into my neck and focused on reconnecting the tears in the ligaments.  I left the tears in the muscles to heal naturally because frankly that’s really the only way to improve your muscle mass.  If you heal the muscles with magic, they just return to their original size and strength.  Trust me, I spent a month healing tears to my muscles and gained not an ounce of muscle mass.  No freebie training cheat for this guy.

After healing the ligaments I felt a lot better, I was still sore of course, but I could get back to work, so I started chopping the tree trunk into firewood.  I would have used a saw, but we didn’t own one.  When I asked my father about it he said they were too difficult to maintain and cost too much since it took a smith a long time to properly shape a saw.  I sighed and started chopping the tree up into manageable chunks with my axe.

Oh trusty axe, I spend way too much time with you.  It’s sad to say but lately I’ve spent more time with Mr. Axe than with anyone outside of my immediate family.  Gurt might be able to match the time I spend with an axe, but it would be a close thing.  Does that mean Mr. Axe is a better friend to me than Gurt?  I hope not since he is a terrible conversationalist, all he says is whish and thunk, super boring.

Ugh, my mind tends to wander chopping wood and random worthless thoughts just pop in to my head.  If there was someone else to talk to it wouldn’t be so bad, but with everyone else in the fields I’m left to do my work alone.  I should probably go back to figuring out how to make money.  I could probably make a ton of money if I could get my water blade to work properly since smooth planed wood would sell really well.   I mean yeah, a well-equipped carpenter could do it, but creating a 2 by 4 with a hand saw isn’t easy, especially with the shitty level that hand saws are bound to be at when made out of low grade steel.

I think my next task will be convincing dad that we should start a fish farm that way I would have access to enough water to continue refining my technique, without having to run 2 miles just to do it.  Plus effort free fish once we get the farm set up.  I might even be able to sell them in town and start making some money, and if I ever get that irrigation thing figured out it would be much easier to implement.

I’d finished up about half of the trunk when I finally heard, “Lunch is ready!” Ahh Mom, sometimes you say the sweetest things.  I stopped by the well and washed my hands off, then I dumped the rest of the water over my head because frankly chopping up a tree is a great way to overheat, plus I had wood chips in my fur.  I shook off what water I could, then vigorously ran my hands through my fur to get rid of the remaining water.  It didn’t completely work but it was close enough that I was only a little damp when I went in for lunch.

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AN: Sorry for the long absence guys finals were annoying and long.  Fortunately this little break allowed me to recharge my mental juices and get a little ahead.  I ended up changing the chapter a little bit from what I had initially intended because I realized I needed to set some things up.  Next chapter is finished and will be posted within the next 10 hours, just doing some proof reading and adding the finishing touches.  The job offer will actually show up in the chapter after that when Raha comes for a visit.