Inheritor Of Magic: The Magi King

First thing the next morning, Wolfe was outside waiting for the scouts to arrive. The witches had also set early alarms in the hopes of having a second copy of the buggy ready before the first one was sent out on its trial run, as Wolfe had suggested the night before, and they were making good progress with just a little help from his magic.

What they had realized quite quickly was that making a jig to hold the pieces in place as they assembled them was actually much easier than it sounded. They just needed a bit of earth magic to make stands, and a few vines to hold pieces, and they could have everything mocked up before they even started to put the bolts in.

It was making the progress on the second prototype go much more quickly than they had anticipated, and now that they were all Rank Two witches, the magic to create the buggy itself was effortless for them to cast. The great difference being that at the Second Rank they could permanently transmute metals from any form of soil or rock, so they didn't have to rely on the vines and other living plants to make the chassis.

It was a real annoyance to Wolfe that he couldn't use Earth Magic, and he had started working at it in his very limited spare time, trying to forge some sort of affinity for the Element so that he could make it work for him. 

At Rank Five, he would be able to create all sorts of marvellous things with Earth magic, but it seemed that wasn't his fate, and he might have to wait until he advanced again before he could accomplish the seemingly impossible task.

But Earth was the creation element, the only one well suited to making solid objects with some permanence without using a base material. If he had the steel, Wolfe had no doubt that he could create the buggy using fire, lightning and wind magic to bend and shape the metal, but only Earth magic could make the metal to start with.

They were well on the way to having the chassis ready when the first of the morning scouts arrived.

"Good morning, Ann, and good morning to all the rest of you lovely ladies. It's a pleasure to see you as always. I've got the reports from the Eastern Front, on the north flank. The air battle still rages on, but the bombing runs have been halted by both sides, while the fighter jets are still battling for supremacy. Once one side gains an advantage, we expect them to continue.

There are more refugees on their way here, mostly moving through the mountains to make it harder to track them, but that will add days to their journey.

They are also encountering a lot of the Cursed Talismans that we haven't found yet, and they're going through a lot of ammunition.

For now, it seems that their supply is holding out, but that might not be the case for long." The scout reported.

"I will get the planes to go look for them and drop food and ammunition to the refugees." Ann agreed, and made a note in the daily logbook.

"Thank you, it would mean a lot to them. We don't have any way to get supplies to them through the mountain passes, the trucks are too heavy, and a motorcycle doesn't carry enough. There are some of the smaller utility vehicles, but they don't do well at high altitudes, so they might not make it over the pass." The scout replied.

It was clear to everyone that he was hinting that the buggy standing conspicuously in the grass beside him could be used, and Ann, the border guard, smiled at the not so subtle suggestion.

"Well, if you get a gunner for the back seat, then I think you could take a quick run-up to go see how they're doing. It's all kitted up for patrol duty, and it has even got a self charging feature, so if you don't push it too hard it won't run out of mana." Ann suggested.

"You've got a deal. Whoever comes next will be my gunner, even if I have to tie them to the chair."

The witches laughed as they assembled the new buggy from the plans they had brought, while the scout eagerly examined every bit of the new toy that he was going to get to try out.

The witches had tested it last night, but he wasn't going to get into an unfamiliar vehicle without at least having a basic idea of how it worked and what sort of capabilities it might have. It looked fast, and capable of taking on very rough terrain, but he didn't know much about the magical motors, so it might not be as fast as he was hoping.

The gun, though. That was a familiar sight, and very welcome. The [Wind Blades] on the heavy machine gun rounds would mow down hordes of smaller monsters, or chop apart the larger ones with ease. It had an impressive ammunition capacity as well, so it was suited for extended missions. It even had two full crates of supplies ready for him to deliver to the refugees.

"I don't suppose that you could spare some ration packs as well? We could stuff them under the gunner's seat to give out along with the supply crates." He suggested.

Wolfe smiled. "Those are mixed crates, one can of rifle ammunition, twenty vials of healing potion and a bunch of jerky and dried fruits. They're what we're dropping to all the outlying villages now, since they're likely to need everything that they can get with all the chaos going on." 

The scout made a fist pump gesture and double-checked the crates. 

"You really did think of everything. Now, we just need another scout to come report, so we can go looking for the refugees."

"And here they come." Ann replied, pointing off in the distance where a scout in a light green cloak could be spotted moving through the grass, waving happily as the forest border came into sight.