Once the two groups had rejoined and selected a campsite within a short distance of a small stream, Mordecai pulled Derek aside to wait for everyone else to form the basics of the camp, thus defining its area.

"Now," Mordecai said, causing Derek to jump. Mordecai had been amused watching him fidgeting while everyone else, and especially Shizoku, worked. "While I don't expect night attacks immediately, it is time to start forming some good habits. We do not want to rely on night watches alone, so we're going to have to make some basic fortifications from the earth. You want to leave an opening in the wall facing the river for now, but that can be closed up before everyone turns in."

The fortification was simple in design, though it would have been much more complicated to build for someone who could not just draw material from the ground. The six walls formed a hexagon that was over twenty feet tall, though the wall facing the creek was left only partially built for now. The walls leaned slightly outward and were covered in downward-facing spikes, and they were as smooth as Derek could make them.

That part of the construction pushed Derek to his limits, and Mordecai sent him off to eat and rest while Mordecai finished the rest.

Atop the walls, Mordecai placed several small pillars, in addition to a ring of large pillars halfway to the center of the camp. These pillars supported a roof that sloped down to leave a ten-foot vertical gap between the roof and the wall. The roof also overhung the wall by about twenty feet, which would require any large flying creature to swoop down below the overhang, which would make them very visible to anyone standing watch. There were also some grates scattered along the overhanging portion of the roof, which allowed a watch stander to have some upward visibility while still keeping off any inclement weather.

Or attacks rained down from directly above.

Then it was time to protect from below. Mordecai left a couple of inches of soil to make the ground more comfortable, but underneath that, he transformed the earth into a solid slab of worked stone that met up with the walls that Derek had created.

If Derek had the stamina, it would have taken him less than half the time it took Mordecai to finish the work. Creating a simple stone wall took about the same time for either of them, but Mordecai had to spend a lot more time modifying a spell to precise parameters to create the same sort of refined results that Derek was capable of conjuring up just by changing his mental image.

Derek's resonance with the elements was also more efficient than using spells to do the work. A young mage of approximately equal power would have spent themselves quickly while trying to replicate even a small portion of the work Derek had done, and would need sleep before trying again. Derek would be able to finish up the last wall before it was time to sleep.

Of course, spell magic was able to do a lot of other things that Derek's pure elemental abilities could not. When Mordecai was done with the stonework, including some appropriate basic facilities at the back of the camp, he began casting wards.

It only took about ten minutes to create the basic set of wards that should be all they'd need, given how far they were into the nexus, but Mordecai was here to exercise himself as well. So instead, he pushed himself and created layers of wards to provide every type of protection he could think of that was remotely practical under the circumstances.

This did mean dinner was mostly cold by the time he was done, but that was fine; there was still plenty of meat and meat-based stew from all the animals the two groups had harvested. Kazue and Moriko were happy to fill him in on the minor social drama that had been slowly playing out while he was busy.

Amrydor had been very careful to not spend too much time around Fuyuko, though it was still obvious to all the adults that he kept being drawn toward her when he wasn't paying too much attention or otherwise distracted.

Some of that distraction came in the form of flirting with Rika and Allania, though Yugo, Taeko, and Galan also tried their hands at chatting the two young women up. Rika was half-elven and Allania was a full-blooded elf, so both of them were older than the boys trying to flirt with them despite appearing to be teens of similar age.

They had been amused and tolerated the flirting attempts to an extent, but once they were bored of they game, they diverted the conversation thoroughly enough to make it clear that they were not interested.

Mordecai found some amusement at Amrydor's situation; the boy clearly still found Fuyuko 'distracting', but he wasn't willing to let himself pine away either. It was the healthy approach, given Fuyuko's clear lack of interest, but it was not easy on Amrydor.

It was possible that someday Fuyuko would develop those sorts of feelings for Amrydor; she certainly liked hanging out with him as a friend and sparring partner, which could be a good starting point, but she might not.

Maybe Amrydor would find someone else who got his attention just as thoroughly.

Maybe Fuyuko's romantic interests would awaken with someone else, if they ever did at all.

Either way, Mordecai felt confident that Amrydor would remain a good friend and a devoted protector.

Though their friends seemed to like, or at least be amused by, the idea of the two being a match. While the bedrolls all had an equal amount of space between them, Shizoku had conspired with Taeko to make sure that Fuyuko's and Amrydor's bedrolls were adjacent.

Mordecai then witnessed Amrydor's expression when the young man saw how close his bedroll was to Fuyuko, then glanced at Shizoku, who looked amused. Hmm, there could also be a bit of mild sadism involved on Shizoku's part instead. After all, her grandmother did have a pretty wide evil streak of her own. Perhaps he needed to have a talk with her.

He discussed the topic with Kazue and Moriko that night, then the next morning found an opportunity to quietly take Shizoku aside. "I know that teasing Amrydor can be entertaining," he said, "but you need to be careful. He is sincere and has already figured out where he stands with Fuyuko; he's not trying to change anything there. If Fuyuko ever thought that Amrydor had been hurt by you using her to tease him, well, I am not certain exactly how she would take it. But I think we'd all rather not find out."

Shizoku had started out looking skeptical, but her expression had rapidly changed to contrite and embarrassed. "I apologize," she started in formal tones, then shook her head and switched to conversational, "I'm sorry, you're right. It's just, I find myself frustrated and conflicted about the whole thing. At a glance, they look like they might be a good couple; they are both tall and strong, they fight well together, they get along and like each other. The whole knight and princess thing helps of course, especially since I think he'd only protect if she actually needed it." She shot a glare at her own protector, the cousin who she’d been doing her best to avoid.

The little kitsune sighed and said, "But I also kind of don't like that part of him is holding onto those sort of feelings when she's made it clear that she's not interested. I mean, he's not doing anything about it, but he's not completely letting go either. But if he still feels that way, why is he seeing other girls? He and Gemeti certainly seemed to enjoy having some romantic time alone, from what Fuyuko said."

Well, there was a lot to unpack there. "His unrequited feelings are exactly why he needs to go out with others," Mordecai said. "It's how he has a chance of someone else being able to take up as much or more space as Fuyuko does in his feelings. That would be part of moving on, and if that happens, well, he'd still be a loyal friend and could still be a devoted knight, just not one pining endlessly for his princess."

"I suppose," Shizoku said reluctantly.

Mordecai smiled at her. "If it helps, I think they might make a good match in the future too, though for different reasons. Amrydor wasn't hurt by her rejection; he simply accepted it. When he helped her deal with the effects of his aura, he was patient in trying to teach her without ever talking down to her, and he's been just as willing to learn from her. They've occasionally been cooking meals together too, which is good, given how much both of them eat."

Shizoku giggled briefly, then grinned, "Alright, you have a good point there. They were Bellona's happy helpers last night and she gave them the chance to compete against each other with some of the meat. I just imagined them trying to run a restaurant together, but they have to make two meals for every one ordered, so that they could eat the second one. Maybe three meals, so they could each have one."

"I agree, that's cute and funny," he said. "Now, you can still tease Amrydor a little, but be gentle, alright? I think having it be so obvious that someone was messing with him by putting their bedrolls close together was hard on him. He'd probably be fine if they were simply camping together, but doing that made him think about it. It didn't look like he got much sleep last night."

Fortunately, a single night of bad sleep didn't seem to affect Amrydor's combat performance significantly.

The two junior teams were kept the same for today, but now they worked together and rotated who was in front, which allowed one team to move forward while the other team was recovering from the previous battle. As for their opponents, the theme was still animalistic creatures, but now they also had various elemental abilities, such as frost wolves, lightning eagles, stone boars, and even some tigers wrapped in fire.

Dersuta had also decided it was time to start testing the more experienced members of the delving team and sent in small groups to attack when the junior groups were already busy. It was quickly established that any of the adults could potentially one-shot any creatures of this zone, though how easily they could do so varied.

After a while, Mordecai decided it was time to push back a little. While the power of individual spells he could cast was sharply limited compared to the height he'd reached with his internal avatar, Mordecai still had a very deep well of mana. Using it and getting used to the flow of magic through this flesh and spirit was the best way to start increasing how powerful and complicated a spell he could cast while maintaining control.

So Mordecai started casting area effect spells that would last a while, often as some type of elemental storm. They weren't particularly large as far as storm type spells went, but they lasted a good minute or so and could be sent off to slowly roll away from the group, assault the ground and anything upon it with ice, lightning, fire, acid, a rain of stones, and so on.

Anywhere but a nexus, his actions would be reckless and irresponsible. Here, it was a way of creating a set of obstacles for potential attackers. He also created fields of razor-sharp stones and grew lashing vines that would try to wrap around and constrict anything that came into contact with them.

The constant casting slowed him a little, but that simply made him the rear guard and gave him something to do while the rest of the adults covered the flanks.

It did not take long for his challenge to be answered. Packs, herds, swarms, and flocks of enhanced animals began to arrive, increasing in frequency and numbers as the day went on. Mordecai refused to engage any of them with martial combat and forced himself to rely exclusively on large, area-affecting spells instead of tightly focused ones that would concentrate the power of the spell.

Of course, this also meant that the rest of the more experienced members of their delving expedition had a lot more work to do maintaining the flanks, but there was no reason that they couldn't do so. They just had to be more efficient than he was being.

Once Mordecai had emptied about half of his mana into the ongoing series of wide area spells, he started being more conservative and targeted, and gradually used less and less magic until he was at about a quarter of his starting mana. As he wasn't taking any breaks, he couldn't really restore his mana efficiently, but he did stop casting spells at this point.

With only a quarter of his mana left, he now allowed himself to engage in the swarms of creatures that continued to assault them. Dersuta tried to practically bury him in bodies, but with the limitations of individual power that each creature could have, they simply couldn't hurt him badly enough to slow him down, and the small injuries he did pick up quickly healed.

As it started to approach sunset, the hordes that Mordecai had provoked continued to swarm him, and it occurred to him that he had no idea how fast Dersuta's reset cycle was. He was fairly certain that was at least the third time that he'd killed that particular water bear.

Hmm.

He could call for Dersuta to pause, and given how ragged everyone was looking, he was certain that the others would appreciate it, but Mordecai decided on a different tactic instead. "Find a campground and have Derek start fortifying it!" he called out, his voice amplified enough to stun the burning tiger that had been about to leap at him.

The task became to fight the ongoing swarms to a standstill while the fortifications were built, and when Derek had been pushed as far as he could, Mordecai stepped in to finish the job. At this point, the ongoing waves of attackers already had more limited ways and directions they could attack from, so it was easy to let others take over his portion of the combat while he finished the walls and roof.

Only then did the assault end.

"Well, that was fun," Mordecai said with cheerful satisfaction, but was greeted with silent glares. Perhaps he had gone too far. Well, Kansif, Bellona, Xarlug, and Moriko were at least not glaring at him, and he was pretty certain they were trying to maintain neutral expressions to maintain solidarity with the others.

After taking in the battered state of his companions, Mordecai glanced down at the state of his clothing and pursed his lips. "Huh, I'm not sure a mending spell is going to have enough to work with here. Well, I guess tomorrow is a good time to start putting the wonderful clothes that my wives designed for me to the test."

Kazue narrowed her eyes and shook a finger at him. "Don't you dare try to get out of this by complimenting what I helped make for you!"

"No?" Mordecai asked. "What if I started to wax poetic about the bright shine of your beautiful eyes and the lovely flush of your cheeks?" He also quietly wove a simple spell that carried a whisper to Kazue's ears, saying, "And how the tears in your dress would be perfectly lovely on a damsel about to be ravished by a bold 'villain'."

Kazue's mouth dropped open in surprise, then she glanced down to realize just how thoroughly mussed and occasionally torn her clothing was. It was, however, still in better shape than his was, and he saw her gaze briefly wander over his body in a distracted way before she blushed. "You're incorrigible!"

He winked at her, then looked around at everyone else. "Well, that was my fault, but everyone got a good workout, and Dersuta was paying close attention. The danger was limited. Still, this is the least I can do."

Mordecai focused some of his remaining magic to flow in conjunction with a healing prayer, and then released a large wave of vitalizing energy that washed out from him and filled their campsite, healing everyone’s collection of small wounds. Anything major had already been taken care of, but there was a certain amount of fatigue associated with even small wounds.

It wasn't enough to restore people's energy completely, but it did make it easier for everyone to start preparing for the night. And there was a huge collection of interesting meat to be tried. Thankfully, Bellona's experience with elemental salts helped her make sure no one received any elementally charged food that wouldn't agree with them.

Everyone was going to sleep well tonight, though they still needed to maintain a watch. Mordecai would be taking the first shift.