Gratitude? I can actually get that?!

So maybe the one part of the plan I didn’t think through properly was getting Misty out of the river. The unfortunate thing about blowing up an entire peat bog is that you then have a really hot peat god. Who'd have that, right? Then some of the water turns to steam and bits of boiling hot bog fall from the sky and stuff and gah, it’s a whole mess. Point is, getting Misty out was a pain in the backside. So I didn’t bother trying. Just let the river drag her downstream a bit so she could get out somewhere that didn’t look like a research station for pyroclastic ash. She’s a big girl, and she can use water magic. I figured she’d just get out in her own time.

I was far more interested in looking at the results of my spell. The explosion had left a crater that was covered in steam and ash, and pretty much nothing inside it was recognisable as a part of those big puppies that I barbecued. It’s a shame. Beowolf meat is tasty, and a good source of protein.

Still, I was pretty happy with the results. A whole bog, destroyed or vaporised, and with no collateral damage! 85 points! Ten docked for knocking Misty over, I guess. The scale of destruction… it was truly beautiful to behold

…man, I sure do hope the wildlife here wasn’t important to the local ecosystem. In hindsight, maybe flambeeing an entire biome was a little overkill. But hey ho, all is fair in love and war.

“Mizuha!”

Some old lady shouting alerted me to the fact that Misty had, in fact, managed to get out of the river further downstream. Looked like she had to drag her way out by hand. Now that I think about it she was probably totally out of magic herself. My bad.

In my defence, we fire mages don’t have that silly limitation. We draw mana from the air instead of our bodies. Another win for the fire magic. Hoo-rah. Sucks to suck.

Oh yeah, Misty ran up and hugged her mum or whatever. But I figured that’s no concern of mine so I didn’t really care.

“Credit where credit is due, your planning is the reason that mother and daughter were able to reunite,” said an annoying voice from behind me.

“Ah- Immanuel? How long have you been standing behind me like a creep?!”

“Since about five minutes ago when you started muttering to yourself about calculating mana residue and blast radius.”

“Say something sooner!” He made me sound like such a weirdo. I was just evaluating how much energy was in my spell, duh! If I wanna get as strong as possible I have to know how strong I am now.

Grumpy at having been interrupted, I turned back to my very important work, only to be interrupted again. This time by the voice of a lady. I looked towards the voice to see Mizuha and her mum trotting towards me.

“A fire mage, as I live and breathe!” said the mum.

“Damn right! Yeah, some of us are still kickin’!” I stood up straight, put my hands on my hips and puffed up my chest to show off my regal majesty. I was sorta lying by omission, though. While I said ‘some of us’ are still around, I hadn’t actually seen another fire mage in… well, so long that I didn’t really remember. We were a rare breed indeed. Just another reason that yours truly is so special.

“I’m so glad the two of you came, I’m really not sure what we would have done without your strength and skill.”

“Hehe! Well, I am pretty ama-”

“I mean, you must have incredible precision to have wiped out all of those beos without setting the dry peat on fire.”

“-eh?”

“Just a few meters further down and you’d have started an uncontrollable wildfire where the river ends. You and Mizuha must have coordinated it absolutely perfectly to avoid that!”

“..y-yeah! We sure did!” One look at Misty told me I wasn’t the only one who had literally no idea that could have happened. Now I was a little sad that I didn’t get to try it. “W-well, it’s all in a days work for the amazing Bakuchan and her trusty sidekick Immanuel-”

“My name is Fredrick.”

“-so don’t be too surprised. Though I suppose your girly there did her fair share of the work too.” I sure hope I didn’t look too smug. I was aiming for ‘yes, I just casually saved all of your lives, I really am that cool’ sort of smug, not ‘I deserve to be kicked in the face’ sort of smug, but apparently I was never all that good at drawing the line between them.

“If there’s any way we can repay you, please, don’t hesitate to ask.”

“For real? Then cough up.” I stuck my hand out in front of me, which earned me another chop to the back of the head from Immanuel. I would seriously consider reporting him for child abuse if not for the fact that his job was literally to kill me if I did anything wrong.

“Just a place to stay and eat for the night would be enough,” said Immanuel, boringly. Wasted opportunity. We totally could have extorted these guys. “Safe passage over the river would be good too.”

“Of course! That’s the least we could do for the heroes who saved our little hamlet. All we have is a small inn for travellers, but we hope it will be sufficient.”

“If it has two beds and dinners, it’s more than enough.”

I was a little grumpy that we weren’t asking these guys to run their pockets in exchange for our hard work, but I guessed I should just be glad that Immanuel was actually getting me a bed rather than making me sleep on the floor as punishment for almost causing a wildfire. So I magnanimously let that one slide and followed Misty’s mum to the inn.

***

You could tell the population of this place was tiny by the fact that the ‘inn’ had, like, two rooms and one big table for food. Hell, even the ‘hall’ was basically just a big house for people to meet in by the looks of it. By my count there couldn’t have been any more than about 50 people in the whole hamlet, and that was an aggressive estimate.

By the time I’d finished eating dinner, I was pretty sure I’d met every damn person in the whole hamlet. They kept on interrupting me while I was trying to eat to tell me how grateful they were and all that jazz. I was a little annoyed that my food was going cold, but I can’t pretend I wasn’t happy to be treated as a hero for once.

“Man, it sure is nice to see some actual gratitude for your hard work for once,” I said to Immanuel when everyone finally left us alone.

“Haven’t you survived all this time as an extermination and demolition contractor? Surely you’ve seen some degree of gratitude before?”

“Well normally my extermination jobs end with people looking at me like a freak of nature, and my demolition jobs end with a smouldering crater that’s not exactly fit for building on. People get real uppity about that.”

“I’m very surprised.”

“I know, right? Like what the hell are they expecting when they literally pay me to blow up the ground beneath a building?”

“I actually meant I’m surprised you made enough money to survive.”

“Oh that? Yeah people tend not to stiff the contractor when she’s capable of blowing up their neighbourhood by swinging a big stick around.”

“And how exactly did you keep getting jobs?”

“You know any other  mages around working as a travelling explosion merchant?”

“I suppose that makes some sense.” If it makes sense, why are you rolling your eyes at me, jerk?

I finished my food and apple juice (Immanuel was a jackass and wouldn’t let me have beer) and sat for a while thinking about everything that had happened that day. Honestly, the only reasons I had agreed to help Misty were so I’d have an excuse to use Inferno Magic, and because I thought I might get paid. But honestly, this whole ‘hero’ thing was a lot of fun. My adventure books usually focused on exciting adventures and fighting epic creatures, but getting praised for helping people in need was pretty cool too.

Yeah, maybe we should do this more often! I can already hear the whispers in all the big cities. Legendary hero Bakuchan and her loyal sidekick Immanuel, helping and protecting the people of Umbria Kingdom on their journey to vanquish the most fearsome of foes! Spread the word, we fire mages may be few in number but we’re not down and out yet!

I jumped to my feet and pumped my fist as I envisioned it, the king himself bestowing us with the highest of honours for our great deeds! Unfortunately, jumping up suddenly after you’ve been sitting in silence for several minutes makes you look like a bit of a weirdo, so Immanuel looked at me like I was insane. Even more unfortunately, jumping up like that jostled around the apple juice I had just drank.

“Eheh…" I rubbed the back of my head sheepishly. "I... need to take a leak…”