They spent the rest of the day cleaning up.

  Demolition was easy when they could use a skill or a spell to knock something down, but digging the collapsed stone off of people buried under rubble came down to simple manpower, with the other teams coming in to lift the debris one stone at a time.

  Which took hours for those with physical stats because they had to shift and brace the rubble like a giant game of Janga. Those who didn’t have points in the physical stats only got in the way, which left Penelope away from the action.

  The Healers were close by to heal the injured as quickly as they could. Even Skylar was out there, using her left arm to direct her healing magic where it was needed.

  Penelope sat on the wall near the corner of 28F and watched everyone work. I feel like I should be doing something.

  “Not much you can do.” Jeru shrugged. “Maybe if you had better control over the , you could use them to pull the rubble away, but they’ve got more than enough people down there to dig everyone out.”

  I could stuff off of them. Penelope sighed.

  “That’s a lot of mana for two rocks at a time.” The blue Elf grumbled.

  But couldn’t I move the really big rocks? Penelope nodded at the group of people lifting a large section of the wall away.

  “Technically, you could use it on another object and not have to even cast it on yourself, but that’s something that you’re going to have to practice because if you try to do it on something that large, you’re likely to blow it up.” Jeru tilted his head. “That’s also something that you need to have the others be able to see you progress through.”

  What do you mean?

  “The others saw you with the spell and were able to get it for themselves, but what happens when they see you use to move objects?” He shook his head. “If they don’t see you progress through the steps of how you change the spell, then they’re going to start wondering how. And the more they ask how, the harder it’s going to be for you to explain.” He patted the wall they were standing on. “Take this for example. Patrick started out with a simple , which was nothing but dirt. He was the way you manipulated and began to experiment with changing the size of the wall until he could make it fit in the tunnels on the last floor, but then he began experimenting to see if he could have the wall constructed out of different materials, which is how he got this stone.”

  Jeru pointed at the lip that she was sitting on. “Once he found a suitable new medium, he was able to regulate how much mana went into the spell, which changed the shapes of what he was making and allowed him to create the ledges and stairs.”

  So what you’re saying is that once I learn how to objects, I need to still go through the motions of learning how to do it because other people are going to follow the same steps that they observe and if they can’t repeat what I’m doing, they’re going to wonder how I’m able to skip steps.

  “Exactly!” Jeru grinned. “So by all means, go ahead and practice, but know that some things are difficult to do badly once you learn how to do them right.”

  So you’re also telling me not to work on something on this run that I’m going to use a lot in the next one?

  “Ish. Your accuracy is already difficult to explain away.” The blue Elf stood up. “Right now though, I think the best thing you could do is find something to do to keep busy.”

  They don’t need my help. Penelope watched the others work to stabilize the injured.

  The narrative has been illicitly obtained; should you discover it on Amazon, report the violation.

  “So, they don’t need you for the rescue efforts, but what about cooking? You could help the harvesting team or even scout out where there is fruit in this square.” He pointed in the direction Allis has gone. “The other Casters are looking for ways to help and after you kind of just held back during the end of the fight, it wouldn’t hurt to put in some face time so they could see you helping the community somehow.”

  Cooking didn’t sound that helpful, considering there were other Casters who had been handling that for the last few weeks. Looking down at the corpses littered among the trees, Penelope got an idea. The members of the harvesting team that weren’t physical classes were already out there collecting the bodies. She closer to them.

  “WHOA!” Kingsley dropped the two Fae Dragons that he was carrying. “PEN! You scared me!”

  Penelope looked at the nineteen-year-old man. Despite Patrick constantly yelling at Kingsley for messing something up, there was no one who could deny that he was a hard worker.

  A Caster class hadn’t helped add any mass to his scrawny frame, but the brown-haired man hadn’t let that stop him from lugging the corpses onto the flat wagon that Patrick and Jerry had built. The wheels weren’t exactly round, but they rolled well enough that the larger bodies could be loaded on them and then carted over to the buildings where they would either be processed for their hide and meat or sent to one of the ranges to be used as target practice.

  “Sorry.” Penelope nodded at the wagons. “Need some help?”

  The young man looked around. “Yeah. It’s just me out here at the moment. Everyone else is helping over at the wall.” He swallowed. “Did the monsters really throw the exploding ones at the wall?”

  “Yeah.” Penelope looked at the wagons. “So where are we putting what?”

  “Oh!” Kingsley picked up the two corpses he’d dropped. “The ones that are easy to carry, we’ll just put on this wagon here.” He set the two bodies down. “We can with the ones that are too heavy for us to carry…” The young man pointed at a pile of two Natiles. “We can’t do anything with the elementals, so we pile them up there and let Steve or Aly burn them once they’re free.”

  “Do we stack the different monsters on different wagons or are there ones that we can pile up together?” Penelope looked at the pile of gear that had already been stacked up.

  “Gear isn’t the most important thing, but the will dry up if we don’t get to them fast enough.” Kingsley grinned. “Though everyone likes to see what new gear we got.” His smile faded. “Not that I’d ever get any of the good stuff.”

  “It’s been a while since I’ve gotten an upgrade, so I’m sure the stuff with two stats will get to you eventually.” Penelope gave him a thumbs up.

  “Maybe…” He shrugged. “Anyway, the Murhana and Fae Dragons are the only things that are going to the chop shop.” He winked at her. “The fish are too big to fit more than one on a wagon, but most of them are under the rubble with the others.”

  Penelope sighed. She didn’t know who had come up with the nickname for the processing building, but most of the people on the processing team used it.

  Kingsley shrugged when Penelope didn’t respond to his humor. “I haven’t found enough of the Pine Soldiers to do anything with and since they were walkers, they’d be going to the range anyway, so if you find a big enough piece of them, you can throw it on the elemental pile.”

  “So the Flying Monkeys and Army Ants go to the practice building?”

  “Yeah, but I haven’t found any monkeys.” Kingsley shrugged. “Did you blow them up?”

  “They hit the roof.” Penelope pointed at the rubble. “They’re probably either buried in that or they got blown up in the explosion.”

  “Ouch.” Kingsley winced. “They killed their own?’

  “No, I got the Flying Monkeys.” Penelope touched one of the Army Ants, then on top of one of the empty wagons. She looked over at Kingsley. “You ever try to something without moving yourself?”

  Kingsley laughed. “Yeah! It was a Cypup, those one-eyed things back when we first got here?” A huge grin split his face. “The whole thing blew up. Pat was sooo mad at me!”

  “And you haven’t tried again?”

  Kingsley scratched his head. “Not on a corpse. Pat was clear about that. Told me to ask you about it before I tried it again, but you’re always so busy…”

  “It’s okay.” Penelope hopped off the wagon. “It was just something that I thought might help with transporting things.” She nodded at the destroyed wall. “If we could things away from us, then maybe we could things to us.”

  Kingsley’s eyes widened. “If you want to try that, be my guest, but there’s no way I’m going to try to do a ranged on Pat.”

  “Not right now, but it’s something that we should practice in case this happens again.”

  “I’m game!” Kingsley over to the first Murhana she’d killed, slammed his hand on it, then back on top of one of the empty wagons.

  The young man looked at the four wagons. “Well, it was hard enough getting these four over here, I doubt they’re going to want us to interrupt them again…” He sighed. “I guess once we finish loading up the ants, we can pile up the elementals, then if they’re still not done, we can just go around.”

  “Sounds good.” Penelope over to another Army Ant. She hoped that the people carting off debris would have the others dug out by the time the two of them had loaded everything up. Not because it would make transporting the wagons easier, but because she knew the longer they were buried, the greater chance for something bad to happen.

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