The Crimson Moon city was the only city Zain had ever seen, since he had grown up here, and lived all his life in and around the city itself. Traveling between cities was hard and expensive, mostly due to the prevalence of bandits, vagabonds and aggressive mana-beasts. His parents were also born in the city and lived the entirety of their lives here. Zain was a city boy through and through.

Everyone knew most people could do some amount of magic, but it was a rare few who had the knowledge to harness it properly. Zain had begged his parents for enough money to purchase a fire and water spell each, and he had made good use of it.

Yesterday was quite productive. I hope today goes just as well. If I get good business for a bit, I can finally pay off what I owe to Papa, and maybe even buy another spell, he thought to himself.

The skies were still quite dark outside when Zain headed out to work. He walked at a quick pace through the streets, as if staying any longer than necessary was undesirable. If you looked at him, you wouldn't say the man was in a hurry, but he did have the walk of a man about to be late to work. Zain had no one to report to, except himself. He was a hedge-mage of some small skill, specialising in fire and water spells, and had a small shop rented a bit away from the market square. His skills were in watering fields and heating homes, not in burning a man to ash or drowning a dungeon in water. There was no need to pay the exorbitant rent required in the main market. Those who needed him knew where to find him.

He had caught a big fish yesterday, a large contract to clear out a series of fields of pests, and to till, seed and water the fields once done. It was quite a large ask for one person to do, but Zain was confident he had the skill. And he needed the money, too so he could not complain.

Lost in his thoughts, he only noticed that he had reached his workshop when he had already opened the lock and stepped inside. The slight chill of early winter washed away, and deep warmth settled into his bones.

He had a couple of hours to collect the supplies required for today's job and arrange for a ride to the Northern gate. It was far enough away that walking would take too long. Speaking of supplies, he mostly needed some food and water - enough for lunch, and maybe dinner depending on how long it took to clear out all the fields.

After that, he would need to prepare the spell-slips for repeated castings of heat and conjure rain , the two spells he knew. They were simple tier-one spells - and did as they said on the paper - one heated a material, and the other conjured small clouds of rain that would stay in place. Even so, he had to prepare about forty castings ahead of time since that way he could simply fire and forget. He chose to only prepare the spell-slips for heat, since conjure rain would need active direction to direct the conjured water.

As he had expected it took him about an hour and a half to prepare all the spell-slips. For lunch, he had already set aside a dozen eggs to boil, so he simply collected them and decided that he would pick up a couple of bread rolls from the market before he hired a cart to the gate.

It was time to head outside.

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The main market square of the Crimson Moon City was a bit of a misnomer since the market was big enough that it sprawled outside of the square, with stalls and hawking carts visible all around. The big square was only for the larger merchants who Zain would typically never deal with - his purchases were often small, and only enough to carry by himself.

It was still quite early in the morning, even if it was bright out - so his plan of buying some fresh bread was dead in the water unless he wanted to delay his trip outside the city. He found a small shop that had not properly warmed up the ovens yet, but it wouldn't hurt to ask if they had any leftovers from yesterday.

They ended up not having any but the kind uncle offered him some salt biscuits he could have instead of bread if he was willing to put some effort into chewing them. With no other option, Zain agreed - they were quite cheap anyhow, and easily affordable.

With lunch debatably arranged, he walked away, looking for a cart he could hail. It took him some time to find the corner where all the cart drivers were sat, already drinking and chatting merrily. Usually, people would just hail one off the roads but he was in a hurry and did not have the patience to wait for one.

There was a group of about twelve people sitting around a small bonfire, warming their hands. Their carts were sitting off to the side, presumably waiting for the city to wake up properly. He was already wincing at the cost it would take to get one of them to agree to leave early.

As he started walking towards them, a voice hailed him.

"Oi! Moron! Idiot! Don't you see those people are eating? Whatever are you going there for? Where do you wanna go, anyway? Come! Come! I will take you."

He turned around to see a young boy, sitting in a cart, gesticulating at him. The others spared him a glance over their shoulder, but one of them waved a hand as if signalling him to go talk to the boy. He headed over and started to chat.

"I want to go to the fields by the Longshore Lake, just a bit outside the northern gate."

"Out of the city so early? You're gonna make the guards grumpy, making them get their lazy asses out of beds in the morning."

"It should be fine, it will take us some time to reach the gates, about twenty minutes. They should be open by then. I checked yesterday."

"Alright, Alright! Whatever you say. I will still take your coin if the gates are closed, and I ain't waiting for them to open"

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Zain simply nodded, knowing there was no point in arguing. After a bit of haggling, they agreed on the price of a silver to the gate, and half a silver to be dropped off at the farms if the gates were open. With that, Zain got into the cart, and the boy got down and started pulling the rickshaw. He closed his eyes for a bit to have some rest, and let the smells of the city pass by.

It would take some time to reach the farms, but the work would only begin once he got there.

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In the end, the boy had gotten him past the city gates and to the Longshore Lake in about fourty five minutes, which was impressive. Had he walked himself it would have taken him much longer, maybe about two hours. The farms were about six or seven miles away from the city market. It was impressive how many mundane uses magic could be put to use for.

Zain knew from arranging the contract yesterday that the farm was humungous, being about a total of thirty hectares. One would imagine that a variety of crops were grown here, but it was all rice paddy. Being that it was winter and there was no rice to be grown this time of the year, the fields were left fallow. The farmer who owned these lands, also owned about another dozen of the same size, all on the outskirts of the city, but thankfully these were his only responsibility today.

The contract was in two parts, where Zain would first clear the entire farm of any pests and beasts. Then, he would have to clear away the weeds, and till and plough the farm to prepare it for seeding. Once it was done, there was a bag of paddy seeds waiting for him inside the barn on the site itself. Then finally he would plant the seeds, and that was it for today.

Tomorrow, he would have to come once again to irrigate the fields and put some spell-slips around the farm to keep the farm warm and moist. If not, the soil would dry out in this winter and the seeds would die without sprouting.

It was an impossible amount of work for someone to undertake in one or two days, and for normal farmers, the thought itself would have been insanity. But, Zain had the power of preparation and some nifty spell-work on his side. He thought he could get through this, even though he would be dead tired by the end.

Even so, he knew he was getting ripped off, but fifty gold was fifty gold, and a few other jobs like this would allow him to finally pay off the money he owed to his parents.

Enough woolgathering, I should get started so I can get done with at least the pest removal and the initial irrigation today, Zain thought to himself. He hadn't done any substantial farm work before today, but he had read up a little on agriculture and came up with what he thought was quite a clever plan.

First, he started channelling heat within himself, tinging the mana within himself with a hint of heat, and touched a weed growing near to him. With a little bit of experimentation, he figured out that dry grass and weeds ignited easily, taking much less effort than it would to light a hearth fire.

Dead plants nearby him caught fire and burned merrily for a few moments before the fire died out. The vegetation on the field he was on wasn't anywhere near dry enough to spontaneously combust and then keep on burning. The few plants he was touching would burn to ash, and then the fire would die.

No matter, that is why he had prepared several spell-slips in the morning, but he did not think forty small applications of heat were anywhere near close enough to set this much land to fire. He was sure he could come up with something quick enough that the rest of the day would be productive.

At first, Zain thought about collecting all the weeds together by hand and then collectively burning them, but physical labour was hardly his strength and de-weeding was only the first step. If Zain spent all day just de-weeding by hand, doing the entire farm would probably take a month, maybe longer. He started doing that anyway, to occupy his hands while he came up with a solution but stopped after only about twenty minutes, visibly tired from the effort of pulling out grass by the roots.

This isn't working, I need to think of something else, or I will never be able to finish this in the time I promised, he thought to himself. He couldn't set fire to anything farther than about a metre away from him, since the spell dropped off him in strength very strongly with distance, so while he could probably cook himself alive with heat, he couldn't do that to the tumbleweed staring mockingly at him from about a hand and a half away.

"But maybe I do not need to..." Zain whispered out loud. Quickly, an idea came to him and he picked up a single spell-sllp, primed it with as much extra mana as he could give it at the moment and tossed it on a particularly large patch of weeds. Then he ran, as fast as he could.

He could sense the fire-aspected mana build near the spell slip as each mote ignited another. Soon enough, the entire patch burst into a roaring conflagration. If he spaced these spell-slips properly and armed them with enough energy, he would have to use about five slips to set fire to a house of reasonable size. If he set fire to about a hundred houses he could fire to the entire field. If he did it thirty more times, that would be the entire farm

Zain did not appreciate his budding pyromania. He didn't have the ability to burn down three thousand homes in a day, not even if he emptied himself over and over and over again

How was he going to finish this job, when he couldn't even de-weed the farmland in time? He sat down a ways away from the burning fire and decided to snack on an egg to calm down. Surely, he could figure something out once he calmed down. After taking out a couple of eggs from his pack to snack on, he continued pacing around. Trying to sit down and eat had not helped and Zain was only tempted to berate himself for signing a contract without understanding the scale of the problem.

He had thought his experience with his magic and a little bit of light reading would be enough to successfully complete this job. Why had he been so naive? It was not like it was his first job, and he understood his limits well. If he had understood how large the farm was when the farmer told him, he probably would not have taken the job at all, or at least negotiated for a larger time frame. He didn't even understand why the farmer had agreed to let him attempt the job alone, as well. There weren't even any extra penalties for not finishing the job besides the loss of pay. Regardless, he would now have to finish the entire planting process before the next week or he would be breaking his contract.

With the amount of gold on the line, he really could not afford that. So, the only way forward was to finish the job and do it well enough that there would be no complaints. He had spent another half an hour dilly-dallying before he calmed down enough to think. Today was proving to be a spectacularly unproductive day.

I really can not de-weed the entire farm with just a spell and some magic, but it should be possible to reduce the amount of spell-slips and effort needed if I can get something flammable to sustain the fire instead of just raw magic and dead plants, he thought to himself.

Evidently, he would have to head back to the city, this time on foot. It would be a monumental waste of time but there was no other choice. There was one benefit of getting up bright and early in the morning, in that the sun was still rising in the sky and it was still not midday yet. If he made a quick pace he would be able to get back early enough in the evening that he could do some de-weeding, and perhaps even a little bit more. Although, if he came back later today he would have to stay the night in the barn, outside the city walls.

There was no choice however, he had made his bed and now he would have to sleep in it.

I can't wait to burn this fucking farm down he thought to himself as he started walking