Genius Mage in a Cultivation World

"Are you sure you have everything you need?" Irea asked as her head leaned over her shoulder. 

"Yeah, with just the two of us, we will be able to move quite a lot faster," Markus replied while nodding his head. "No offense," he added, taking a glance at Al's face.

"None taken," the burly warrior replied before shrugging his arms. "I will be of much greater use here rather than by chasing around the entire place. Just make sure to pass my words exactly as I said them," he advised before looking at the four small bags that the couple from the future intended to use as their luggage. "Are you really sure this amount of provisions will be enough, though?" he asked. "While I don't doubt your ability to move fast, wouldn't that mean an increased need for food and water?"

"Yes and no," Yelna replied, proving that she was slowly warming up to the bunch. "If it was all about physical movement, then you would be right. But we are going to use some... extreme tricks to move around," she added with a shy smile.

"Hey, I know it's not the time to talk about this, but I just can't push those thoughts aside," Irea suddenly spoke up while averting her eyes. She then moved her chin up and looked Yelna and Markus straight in the eyes. "If you were to compare, would you guys be stronger than Layn?" 

"And where did that came from?" Markus asked, puzzled by the origin of the sudden question. 

"Don't get it wrong, I don't plan to wait for him and go against you for some reason..." she explained herself, only to stop midway. 'Nothing openly doubted that this was the reason for this question, so why am I acting like that?' she asked herself before shrugging her shoulders and shaking her head. "It's just that... Whenever I'm talking with you, you guys appear to have far more tricks up your sleeve than you revealed so far. So I just got curious about how strong you guys really are," she finally explained the truth behind her question. 

"And here I was worried you still harbored some plans for the race..." Markus answered with an awkward expression on his face while scratching the side of his head. "While explaining our strenght might be a little bit hard... You could say that we are about as strong as Layn unless he uses some extraordinary measures," Markus smiled before shaking his head. 

"That is unless he uses one of his many extraordinary measures," Yelna repeated last of Markus' words, aiming at accenting how vital this part of what he said was. 

"I see," Irea nodded her head before putting a sad smile on her face. "I guess I just miss him. Even learning a little more about him like that..." she stopped her words before they could form the entire sentence. But the message behind her words was clear to everyone. 

"Well, let's not stall any longer. The sooner we depart, the sooner we will get back here with more manpower," Markus wrapped the conversation up and grabbed two of the medium-sized bags full of supplies. 

"Make sure to work everyone to the bone," he threw to Al before raising his hand in a farewell and starting to run. Yelna followed him without even a moment of delay, leaving the entirety of her farewells into a short moment of raising her hand as she ran off. 

"So they left us," Irea summed up, watching at the backs of the couple from the future. 

"So they did," Al repeated after the girl. 'Thank the spirits they taught her the translation spell,' he thought, not even daring to imagine how hard it would be to communicate if not for this little bit of Markus' help. 

"Heck, why the hell are you just standing there?" Irea asked after a moment of doing absolutely nothing. "Let's go back to work!" she added, turning around on her heel and moving towards the mercenaries that remained in the camp. 

Even with Yelna and Markus leaving, the entirety of the camp remained just as strong manpower-wise as it was when Layn first led everyone here. Even though he wasn't here now, Al appeared to be more than ready to fill the slot. 

"Where do you want me to go?" Al asked as soon as they reached the busy site of the camp. 

"You won't be of much greater help than the others in the production line, so how about you go and help with building new places?" Irea proposed while rubbing her chin. "It would be for the best if we could get a home for everyone before everything else," she added as she pulled up the sleeves of her robes and pushed her hands into the mass that would soon become material for burning the bricks. 

"Sure thing," Al replied, following the suggestion. 

All in all, the progress of Layn's camp was going rather quickly. With Yelna and Markus helping through the most painful process of rebuilding everything that the wave of monsters destroyed, only the mundane work remained by the time they left. 

Yet, as boring as it was to keep doing the same thing for days and days to come, it also meant that there were no specifically complex elements that they couldn't deal with. 

With the reestablishment of the brick-production line, the work moved forward at a quick pace. By using this primary building material, creating a small lodging was only a matter of hours. At the same time, any kind of more elaborate structure could be quickly finished within a single day. 

By the first night, since the future couple left, the camp was back to how it looked before the invasion of the monsters. In just two more days, every single mercenary in the camp already had a small hut for themselves, allowing them to ward off the coldness of the night and the hottest hours of the day. 

"I don't think we are progressing quickly enough," Irea complained at the dawn of the third day since Yelna and Markus leaving. 

"What do you mean by that?" Pavrien asked while shoveling a small amount of fish-gruel into a personal bowl he carved out of the freshly-made brick. 

"It took us three days to finish the work necessary for just our small group to live here more or less comfortably," Irea said before she silently started at the men working at the brick plant. Over the last three days, turning this production facility from open-grounded to indoors was the greatest project that their small group finished. 

"So?" Pavrien asked before shoveling a bit of the simple meal into his mouth. "It's not like anyone expects us to work harder than we can," he added after munching on the tasteless food. 

"It's not about what others expect us, but what is necessary," Irea countered before standing up. "Right now, we are using every single man we can into building more and more structures. According to the plan, we will have the granary and washhouse finished in two or three days. But that's all we can do before we will be forced to move half of the people into food production," she explained before sighing heavily and hiding her face in her hands. 

"Right, I forgot about that," Pavrien muttered with his mouth full of the meal. At the same time, his face soured when he realized that he wasn't all that frugal with the amount of food he took a moment ago. 

"Well, it's not like anyone will be able to blame us," Irea attempted to fix her mood by shifting the responsibility. But, sadly, it didn't seem to work all that well. 

'I wonder what Layn would do,' she thought, looking aimlessly in the distance. After a moment, the horizon she was looking at suddenly flashed a little, only to return to its usual state a short moment later. 

"Well, staring in the distance nor eating more grub won't change anything," Al suddenly appeared behind them, scolding both of them. His hands were covered with clay all the way to his elbows, proving that he wasn't slacking at all. 

"Just working hard isn't enough," Irea protested before her eyes suddenly turned wide. "Right, if we just wait and hope that everything will somehow work out, then we will be the victims of our own naivety!" she suddenly announced as she stood up. 

"I don't even want to ask just what kind of wicked idea you came up with," Al commented while averting his eyes. 

"Listen, in the next three days, we are to set up the public bath and worker's bath and the granary, right?" she asked the obvious, forcing the foreigner from the future to look her in the face. 

"Yeah, that's right," Al nodded his head, confirming her words. 

"Then how about we actually try to map the area around this place?" she asked as the sparks of fresh energy flashed in her eyes. "What if there are some resources, some places that would be abundant in what we need somewhere nearby, laying in waste because we couldn't as much as to go for a short trip?"

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