Advent of the Archmage

Link waved a hand at the five mixed demon children around him and pointed at the woods nearby. As he was not familiar with the local language, Link activated a Level-0 Suggestion spell.

"Go!"

The children straightened up and walked over to where Link had pointed. Gretel too stood at a safe distance from him.

Link found a flat surface in the woods after walking around it for a bit. He let out a burst of Dragon Power, and a white spatial ripple spread out in all four directions from his body.

The trees around him were all felled in an instant.

As the trees fell one after the other, the air was filled with a swarm of scaled-down versions of Link's Vacuum Blades. The translucent magical razors raced towards the trees and began shaving off their leaves and branches till the trees lay completely naked on the ground.

As the spatial distortions raged on in the area, the clean logs fell in neat piles back on the ground. Link then dried them all up with a brilliant red blaze. The ground around him was now leveled and ready for construction.

He then let his Dragon Power flow into the earth. Three seconds later, he flicked both his wrists up and whispered, "Rise..."

A brown-greyish dirt castle began taking form. At the same time, a blue-white circle of light had appeared five feet in the air. As the dirt rose through the circle, it was instantly transformed into hard, polished stone.

This was simply a Level-4 Dirt-to-Stone spell. Its main function was to turn ordinary dirt into magical runestone, but Link had taken the spell to another level.

What he had sculpted with such a simple spell was nothing short of a miracle.

The mixed demon children standing in the distance looked on at Link's work, utterly dumbfounded. Some of them were left speechless, their eyes wide like saucers. A few seemed to have forgotten that they still had their grimy little thumbs in their mouths, while others let their jaws gape open, thin slivers of saliva falling from the corners of their mouths.

In no more than five minutes, a 50-foot-tall, 40 cubic feet castle now stood majestically before them. Surrounding the castle was a great wall, on which wooden doors mounted with runes were set.

The castle's general structure was now complete, but its details remained far from complete. Looking at the shoddy creation before him, Link felt his compulsion to magically smooth out all its imperfections acting up.

He activated Void Walk and began flying around the wall in circles.

He began carving out embellishments across the castle walls and the walls inside and outside the castle. He then proceeded to lay out the floors and set up the castle's furniture and wooden window frames with the piles of dry logs outside.

Ten minutes later, after making ten rounds around the castle, Link was finally done with the whole castle. The castle's details and furniture inside it were all sculpted with an exquisiteness that was contrasted splendidly by the building's overall simplistic style.

Link landed on the dirt ground within the castle. With a push from his hand, the dirt ground was instantly transformed into a flat surface composed of jade tiles.

Link walked forth, and the jade-green surface began snaking forward. When he exited the castle walls, a smooth green path continued extending outward beneath the forest's shade.

The path continued spreading out a hundred feet away from the castle grounds until it finally reached the Red Dragon Queen. Link smiled at her. He held out a hand and bowed to her.

"Your Highness, your palace is ready for you."

Gretel smiled back. "If word of you using your enchantment skills for such a menial task gets out, you'll probably be the laughing stock of the magical world."

Despite what she had said, Gretel was impressed with Link's handiwork. She strolled along the jade-tiled path towards the dazzling castle.

The mixed demon children beside her stared at Link with fearful eyes.

When Link turned towards them, some of the children imitated the deferential posture their elders had assumed back then, prostrating themselves before him and not daring to make direct eye contact with Link. However, they continued gossiping excitedly among themselves. Even though Link did not understand a word from them, he could clearly sense their amazement.

Link did not immediately let the children stand up. Instead, he listened to their ramblings for a few minutes, trying to make sense of some of their words. He then spoke to them, "Stand up now, and follow me."

Saying this, Link headed for the castle after Gretel.

The children seemed to understand what Link had said. Pausing for a moment, they rose back to their feet and timidly followed Link to the castle.

As they were still children, they did not have much self-restraint. After walking for a while, they had completely forgotten their deference towards Link and began chittering among themselves again.

Link did not stop them and listened intently to them, trying to learn the mixed demons' tongue from their excited chatter.

When they reached the entrance of the castle, Link who had been eavesdropping on the children's conversation all this time, now had a better understanding of their language.

Stopping at the doorway, he turned and pointed at the children. Points of light containing a Cleansing spell and an Enchantment spell floated from his finger towards them.

The Cleansing spell cleansed them of all dirt on their bodies, whereas the Enchantment spell transformed the rags that they were wearing into beautiful sets of clothing.

Without waiting for the children to finish marveling at their new clothes, Link pointed at Gretel, who was admiring the elegant furniture in the castle's great hall. He said to them, "She, queen, mistress. Obey mistress' orders, understand?"

"Understand," the children timidly replied.

Link then pointed to himself. "Me, the castle's housekeeper. I'm in charge of you, will train you to serve mistress better. Understand?"

"Understand..." replied the children. Their replies were somewhat disorganized. One of them still had his thumb in his mouth, and his voice came out muffled as a result.

Link wagged a finger at him, and said, "No sucking on thumbs, or else you'll end up like him."

Saying this, he snapped his fingers and magically sealed the child's mouth shut. A look of surprise came over his face, as he tried to pull his thumb out of his mouth, but to no avail.

The other children looked in horror at him. One of them, a girl probably, started to cry, and the other three followed suit. Chaos descended on them in an instant.

Link cast a Silence spell on them, and then took out four pieces of dried fruit bits from his spatial pendant. He gave a piece to each of them. "This is good stuff."

The four children who were not sucking on their thumbs instantly stopped crying. They looked at the fruit bits warily. Then one of the bolder children, no longer able to resist the sweet scent coming from it, took a small bite. His face split into a wide smile, and he excitedly squeaked to the others, "It's sweet."

All four children wiped their tears and began nibbling on the dried fruit bit. The child who had his mouth sealed shut by Link had momentarily forgotten his ordeal. He now stared hungrily at his companions who were chewing on their bits of candy in front of him.

Link removed the spell from him and then held out a piece of dried fruit bit in front of him. Just as the child reached out for it excitedly, Link pulled his hand back and stuffed the candy into his own mouth. He said to them as he chewed on his own candy, "Obey my orders, and you'll get something good to eat. My first rule is no thumb-sucking. Got it?"

"Got it, housekeeper," all five of them responded in unison. Four of their faces were filled with excitement, though one still remained teary-eyed. With a tasty treat as their reward, their memories had gotten a lot better.

"Alright, for my second rule, keep yourself clean at all times. Clean yourself up in the pool if you somehow get yourself dirty."

"Okay."

"For my third rule..."

Link began listing out the rules of his castle to the children, enforcing them with either the promise of a delicious titbit or some horrifying form of magical punishment. Ten minutes later, he had finally reformed them into clean, obedient, well-mannered servants of the castle.

As he brought all five of them into the castle, Link began assigning their rooms and duties to them. He then gave each of them a beautiful mithril bracelet, which allowed him to eavesdrop on them whenever he wanted. Link wanted to have a better understanding of the island itself by listening to the children's conversations.

"Always keep it on your wrist. Don't take it off, or you won't have anything to eat." Saying this, Link gave each of them a piece of sweet cheese.

"I understand, housekeeper." All five children had committed his teachings to memory. Though they were famished at this point, they remained standing upright, not daring to touch the pieces of cheese given to them.

"Good. You can eat."

When he had finished speaking, the children stuffed the bits of cheese greedily into their little mouths. As they chewed, they glanced sideways at Link, uncertain whether they had done something wrong.

Link observed them for a moment, then nodded. "Good. Now, remember this last rule. Assemble in the great hall for your meals whenever the bracelet lights up. Understand?"

"Got it, housekeeper."

"Good, you can now go and play outside." Link vanished in a white light, and in an instant, he reappeared beside the Red Dragon Queen.

The Red Dragon Queen was out on the balcony on the third floor of the caste. She leaned against the railing and gazed at the mixed demons' village in the distance. Sensing the flurry of Link's appearance beside her, she asked without turning to him, "Have you gotten the little ones prepared?"

"Of course. In fact, I've almost mastered their tongue by now." Link handed a runestone to the Red Dragon Queen and said, "You can use this to hear what they're talking about with each other."

"Smart move." Gretel accepted the runestone with a smile, then asked, "What do you plan on doing next?"

Link already had his next step planned out. He took out the purple meteorite. "I'll need to study the meteorite's special properties. In any case, we need to find a suitable dampening material for the singularity explosion as soon as possible."

"I'll let you handle matters on that end, while I'll try to understand the locals here. In the meanwhile, I'll look for the rest of the medicinal herbs that I'm still missing for the antidote. Oh, I do hope the little ones would be of some help in that area."

Link smiled. "They are quite intelligent. I'll forge you a couple of magical gear later on so that you can defend yourself against any threat in the forest. I remember the kids mentioning something about a one-eyed king."

He also had an eavesdropping runestone of his own. He held it to his ear and heard the children's voices flow out from it.

One of the speakers was a girl. "My grandma said that no one should build their houses in the forest, because it's the one-eyed king's domain, and he'll punish anyone who trespasses on his forest."

"What are you scared of? The one-eyed king won't be able to defeat the housekeeper. Didn't you see how powerful he was?"

"But my grandma said that the one-eyed king is as huge as a mountain. He'll tear the castle apart with just a sneeze. He even ate a hundred llamas in one gulp. If he's upset, he'll start stomping about, and the ground beneath him will split open."

The children seemed to be describing a monstrous creature living in the woods. Though it all sounded like a fairy tale, there was always some truth in legends. Also, Link had noticed that there were no buildings anywhere in the forest.

He looked at Gretel. "Do you think there's actually a one-eyed king?"

Gretel smiled back. "Maybe. The people in the village do seem to be frightened by the castle's appearance. You're the duke of the dragon race, anyway; do you really have anything to fear here?"