Chapter 28

Instead of going back the same way I came up the mountains, I go directly to my house. It took the entirety of the 32nd day to finish the quest, and I only get back to the house at night. Before falling down any steap cliffs, I set rope to help me get back up so I can fight the Iron-Hide Devil Hounds again. As a reward for myself, I put the leather armors into my inventory and take a nap on the bed.

I wake up when it is still dark, presumably on the 33rd day, to the sounds of clawing at the walls of the house. I instantly fill with fear and place the smelter from my inventory and place it behind the door. With this, at least the door won't be knocked in. With x-ray vision, I look through the wall of the house at a pack of twenty-some Iron-Hide Devil Hounds.

In such a situation, some adventurers might get scared, but I was actually relieved. I did not think the hounds would follow me this far and feared a bigger monster that I had seen so far had wandered towards my little home, smelled human inside, and decided it wanted a snack.

I re-equip my leather armors and wait on the bed. I don't have a sword to fight up close with, and I don't want to risk burning down the house trying to make one inside. I have fire magic, but I don't think I can use it on the hounds outside the house. The thing I can do is take my rocks and create a wall inside the house. With the wall made, I can completely block off any hound's attempts at getting at me, and I can shoot them with my bow. Sure, the rocks are heavy and would normally fall to the ground, but I can use Basic Earth Magic to fuse the rocks together, creating a solid wall!

My plan is absolutely flawless, and I get started on the wall. Instead of making the wall far back inside the house, I made it right up to the door, behind the smelter. Once the wall is made, with a few openings in it for me to shoot through, I open the door and allow the hounds to attempt to smash inside. The smelter is sufficiently heavy enough to prevent them from moving too much, and the smelter is prevented from moving by the rock wall.

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With my bow, I start taking out the hounds. Arrow after arrow, I rain hell upon the Demon Hounds. Once my mana increases beyond a point, a use earth magic to make spikes in the haul of the smelter, which makes small cuts on the hounds.

I get down to the arrows and I think at least five hounds died. I can't see very much from here, but the hounds have retreated to circling the house before moving in to attack, at which point I release an arrow. I want to keep the rest of my arrows, the 10 remaining iron arrows and three demon arrows, so now I switch to all fire magic. I can use intermediate fire magic for one second before running out of mana, so I take the smelter back into my inventory and direct fire magic out as a thin stream between the two sides of the doorway. I have to be very careful about not starting a fire on my wooden beams.

Morning comes and the last few hounds run off. I am tired, and I have this big wall I have to remove now, but it was all worth it. I take a few hours to break apart the wall and place all the stone back into my inventory, and I return the smelter back to its original condition.

Outside the house, I am thankful I used wooden beams a foot thick to build the sides of the house with. There are claw marks everywhere, and I fear I will have to rebuild the house soon. On the ground, I can't salvage a single arrow, but I do find the corpses of 13 hounds. Oh, and did I mention I leveled up?

>**Level-up!**