You're Up Against a Deadline, Aren't You?

"Will that do?"

With that, Alexia ended her earth magic.

Thanks to her, our assigned plot was finished within the day.

I'd sent Azu and Elza off to help with meal prep after someone mentioned they were short-handed.

Feeding a large crew meant heavy lifting, but those two would handle it fine.

I gave Alexia the rest of the time off, seeing as she was today's star contributor.

Her earth magic had knocked out four days' worth of work in less than half a day. She deserved some free time.

Taking me up on it, Alexia pulled a hammock from her bag, strung it up on supports she'd fashioned from earth magic, and climbed in.

The magic hadn't drained her mana, she said, but sustained casting had left her a bit fatigued.

She lay back, and within moments I heard soft, steady breathing.

Watching her like that, I had to admit she really did have striking features.

I sat down on a nearby rock and struck up a conversation with Kwad.

My first impression of him hadn't been great, but once we started talking, it turned out he'd been having a rough time.

The duke had handed him the job along with a budget, which was fine, but the order to begin work immediately had thrown everything into chaos.

On top of that, Alsarm was far and away the most developed city in the Kingdom.

Its economy hummed along briskly, and there was no shortage of well-paying work.

As a result, few people had volunteered for farmland clearance.

And it was winter. Nobody wanted to dig frozen earth outdoors in the cold.

Only after raising the wages had he managed to scrape together enough workers to begin clearing the duke's designated land, but even then, progress had been painfully slow.

The Adventurer's Guild listing, he told me, was a leftover from that desperate recruitment push.

"The soil around here is terrible to begin with. Poor drainage, no nutrients, not suited for farming. Alsarm's always earned its coin elsewhere and bought its food from outside. That's how it's been for ages."

Kwad grabbed a fistful of dirt and kneaded it.

"Ever since that stone showed up, the soil's been improving for some reason, though. The duke wants this place to be self-sufficient in food. It's his dream, apparently."

He tossed the soil aside and looked toward the Earth Elemental Stone.

"One day the duke showed up out of nowhere. I thought it was an inspection, nearly had a heart attack. We were even further behind back then."

"And he left the stone?"

"Yeah. Told us not to let anyone touch it. And it is genuinely dangerous to get close. See, right there?"

Near the Earth Elemental Stone, I could make out several magic circles drawn on the ground.

They'd been arranged in a ring around it.

"Wards. The duke has a mage stationed here full-time to check on them regularly. Obviously I can't pull them off ward duty to help with clearing."

"Obviously not."

Whether it was because he'd been bottling things up, or because Alexia had blazed through an entire section in one go and given him room to breathe, Kwad laid out the whole situation.

Maybe he could finally exhale for the first time in a while.

"Look, I don't care what that thing is. As long as I finish the job on time. There's nothing shady going on here."

"Fair enough."

"So here's the thing. The work you were assigned is done, but could I hire you on for more? With that girl's skill, the rest of the area would be cleared in no time."

"Hmm."

Our assigned plot was done in half a day.

Considering we'd been paid four days' wages, it was a pretty sweet deal.

Telling Alexia to keep at it wouldn't be a problem.

She might grumble, but I knew by now that her complaints were more preemptive pushback than genuine refusal.

Blind obedience to authority had gotten her father killed and her family ruined. That trauma ran deep.

Knowing that, I could afford to be lenient.

According to Kwad, the duke's deadline was the end of winter.

But winter was the worst season for outdoor labor. Anyone who'd ever done physical work knew that from experience.

That was a very aristocratic sort of deadline, I thought.

And that was exactly what had been eating at Kwad.

If the cold slowed them down any further, they might not make it.

In fact, he admitted they were already falling behind.

I felt a twinge of sympathy.

"All right. I hear you."

"Then…"

"Hold on, I haven't said yes yet."

I held both hands up in front of the eager Kwad.

"You saw for yourself how good Alexia is. We only came here because the portal was shut down and we needed some travel money. Normally, you couldn't hire a mage for this kind of pay. Am I wrong?"

"… Hmm. How about this?"

After a moment's thought, Kwad proposed a figure.

"From the way you were talking, this whole area is in scope, right? That's a lot of ground for one person, even Alexia."

I gave a mildly reluctant response after seeing the number.

It was decent enough.

But this site was already behind schedule.

You don't jump into someone else's fire without proper hazard pay.

"… Fine. It won't do me any good to haggle and miss the deadline."

He offered a new number.

A generous one. It seemed the budget really had been adequate all along.

"Deal. I'll talk to Alexia. Got to say, though, you had budget to spare all this time?"

"I put out calls for mages, but nobody applied. And I couldn't recruit enough general labor either. So the budget just sat there."

"Being a site supervisor's no picnic, huh."

"Means a lot to hear that. Sorry about earlier. I was worried you lot wouldn't pull your weight, and the stress made me come off cold."

"You were under the gun. People need a bit of breathing room to be decent."

Kwad shook my hand and headed off.

It sounded like the plan was to wrap up for the day after distributing meals.

The cook was hauling a large mobile stall, with Azu and Elza pushing from behind.

Looked like the food was ready.

The menu was a hearty, well-salted soup packed with meat and vegetables, with wheat-flour dumplings mixed in.

Rye bread on the side.

Not bad for a free meal. Filling, too.

I'd heard of places that served nothing but watered-down porridge.

Azu and Elza briskly ladled servings into disposable bowls.

Then they handed them out to each person who came for their share. With this many people, it had to be hectic, but they kept things running smoothly.

Elza I could understand, but watching Azu work so efficiently, it struck me how much she'd grown. Time really did march on.