Country Mage 4: A Slice of Life HaremLit Fantasy Adventure, page 1
Contents
Copyright
Dedication
Country Mage 4 Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Thanks
Other Work
Special Thanks to...
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Copyright 2023 Jack Bryce
All rights reserved.
The characters and events portrayed in this book are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.
No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the author.
lordjackbryce@gmail.com
Cover design by: Jack Bryce
ISBN-13: 9798379259877
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To bubbly blondes worldwide.
Country Mage 4
Chapter 1
James trudged through the dense forest, his eyes scanning the ground for the perfect spot to set his trap.
The red-eyed creature had been easier to track ever since Astra had found out where it lived. They had found a trail that led to a nearby creek, just a little upstream from where James often bathed. Astra was sure the werebunny went there a few times per day to drink.
There was a clear path both James and Astra supposed the bunny would take. After all, like any creature of the wild, it would choose the quickest route to get where it wanted to be.
As such, that was the place where they would set up the trap…
With a determined light in his eyes, James got to work. He began by clearing away the brushes and leaves, exposing the soft earth beneath. He took his time, making sure to clear away every single leaf and twig.
As he worked, he couldn’t help but peek over his shoulder from time to time, making sure that nothing watched him.
Once the brushes were cleared away, he grabbed the shovel he had brought from the cabin and began to dig into the ground.
The dirt was soft and easy to work with, and James soon had the humble beginnings of a pit trap.
But there was a long way to go.
It had to be deep enough, so that if the werebunny fell in, it wouldn’t be able to climb back out. He also made sure to make it wide enough so that the animal wouldn’t be able to hop over it and miss the pit altogether.
It took him a long time — much longer than he expected it would. At least two hours passed, and he wasn’t even halfway. Additionally, he had begun the work at a brisk pace, and he now felt his fatigue catching up with him.
That wasn’t a problem, though. He had plenty of time.
James set down the shovel and unpacked his lunch from his backpack. Soon enough, he found a spot where the autumn sun still broke through the canopy and gave a little warmth. It wasn’t warm enough for him to take off his coat, but things got too cold in the shade with fall good and well underway.
He ate his lunch with relish, more famished than he thought he was.
Kesha had prepared the sandwiches for him — BLT with cheese. She’d also put a canteen with clear water in his backpack, and the drink might as well have been the nectar of the gods for how thirsty James was.
After he finished his lunch, James didn’t dawdle. He wanted to get this pit trap done as soon as possible — after all; he needed to dig several more after this one.
If they wanted to trap the werebunny, they would need to be thorough and cover all possible avenues.
With a roll of his shoulders, James shrugged off the nip in the air and got back to work.
James resumed digging his pit trap, getting the pit to a satisfactory depth after about two-and-a-half hours more of work.
Once dug, he made sure to line the bottom of the pit with soft things to break the fall. He gathered moss and leaves from the surrounding area and spread them evenly across the bottom of the pit.
He took care to make sure it was completely covered with branches that still bore foliage, so the creature would have a soft landing.
He did not desire to bring injury to the werebunny, no matter how much the Shifter had frightened his companions during the past weeks.
After all, Astra told him the creature was essentially harmless. That meant that — despite the hunger they had seen in its eyes — the creature was not hunting them.
No, James thought. There is something else going on, and I mean to get to the bottom of it.
Once the pit was lined with soft materials, James began to cover it up.
He used branches and leaves to camouflage the trap, making sure it blended in with the surrounding forest. This was easy since it was fall. The forest floor was covered in the falling leaves, alive with resplendent colors.
He took care to make sure that the trap was not visible from any angle, and that it would not easily be disturbed by the wind or get sprung by smaller animals. Finally, he arranged the top layer so it wouldn’t be disturbed by the wind and would remain stable.
James stepped back to admire his work. He was proud of what he had accomplished and suspected that it would be effective enough at capturing larger game.
But will it capture a werebunny, though? he thought.
That remained to be seen.
James took a deep breath. He had spent at least five hours on this trap — not what he had expected. If he needed to do this several more times as he, Astra, Sara, and Kesha planned, he wouldn’t get much other work done in the coming days.
The frustrating part was that he had tried to find a spell in his ancestral memories to let him dig a pit with his High Magic. So far, he had come up blank, which happened from time to time — he didn’t seem to be able to find a spell for every purpose that he desired.
With a shrug, he shouldered his backpack. There was nothing he could do about it now; he would need to dig those pits manually.
Just as he made ready to turn around and go farther down the trail, he heard branches snap behind him.
He turned around to see a sensual and voluptuous figure coming his way down the trail. Even at this distance, he easily recognized the unique and graceful gait of Sara, his cat girl familiar.
And the way the dim sunlight reflected in her yellow eyes made his heart jump.
As she approached, she waved at him.
“Sara,” James said, a broad smile already on his lips. He walked over to the cat girl.
She gave a happy meow and hopped over for a hug, pressing her soft cheek against James’s chest, a low purr rising from her throat.
As James hugged her, he scratched her behind her ears, causing her to deepen her purr and press her soft and curvy body even harder against his.
“I came to check up on you,” she said, still pressing close to him
He chuckled. “Well, I’ve been working my ass off, to tell you the truth,” he said. “But I’m not complaining.”
She purred louder, rubbing her head against his shoulder. Then she raised her head for a moment and looked past him at the pit he had been digging.
“You’re… You’re doing that by hand?” she asked, her big yellow eyes inquisitive.
James nodded. “Yeah. I didn’t manage to find a spell to help me dig.”
He gave a shrug as he separated himself from her embrace and followed up with a chuckle.
“Believe me, I tried. It doesn’t matter, though. It’s okay to do some of the work manually.”
Sara smiled at him. “Well,” she said. “Maybe I can help you…”
James perked an eyebrow. “You think so?”
“Yeah,” she said. “If we try together, we might find something.” She gave him a hopeful look.
James smiled and shrugged. “Okay, let’s give it a shot.”
Sara gave a happy nod. “Okay,” she said. “What have you tried so far?”
“Well,” James said. “I did what I always do. I envisioned the desired result — in this case a pit in the ground — and I tried to will that into existence, calling upon my intent the way you taught me.”
“Okay,” Sara said. “And did you feel the mana tingle at the base of your skull, or maybe at the back of your head?”
“Nope,” he said. “Nothing happened.”
“Hm,” she hummed. “As far as I know, that can have a number of causes. Sometimes, it’s just a matter of none of your ancestors having cast a similar spell before.”
She perked a perfectly groomed, black eyebrow as she considered the predicament. “However,” she continued. “Since the application that you’re looking for is so simple as moving soil, I doubt that is the case. Surely, someone of the House of Harkness — your ancestors — has used High Magic to move earth around.”
She thought for another moment. “No,” she finally said. “More likely is that you are not calling upon the right Elements of Magic.”
“Oh?” James said. “I didn’t know I was supposed to call on a specific Element as I tried to envision a result.”
Then again, he remembered he had learned his Cooling spell only because he shifted his focus to the Element of Air instead of the Element of Water — and that had made all the difference.
“Yeah,” Sara said. “Sometimes, you don’t need to because it happens automatically. Other times, however, it helps to try to focus on a specific Element of Magic.”
“All right,” James said. “That makes sense. What Elements should I focus on?”
Sara furrowed her brow. “Well, the most obvious one is Earth…”
He laughed and nodded. “If it were that simple, I would have already found a spell.”
She grinned and gave him a playful poke.
“Okay, Mr. Smarty Pants,” she said. “Then let’s go over it for a second, all right? What else could move stuff like soil or sand from one location to the other? What else would we need?”
The answer came to James fairly quickly, if only by grace of the other spells he had mastered that moved stuff from one place to the other.
“Space,” he said. “The Element of Space.”
It all made sense now. His Control Water spell was the same — it required him to call upon the Element of Water first, the Element of Space next.
She snapped her fingers. “Well, Mr. Beckett,” she said. “I suspect that might just be it.”
James grinned and nodded. “It’s strange though. Most of the other teleportation spells I know aren’t compound spells; they don’t require me to call upon a second Element of Magic — only the Element of Space.” He glanced at Sara. “Isn’t that weird?”
She giggled and leaned in to give him a kiss on his cheek as her left ear gave its characteristic twitch.
“Not if you think about it,” she said. “Your other teleportation spells only require the Element of Space because they move something predetermined.”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “The Grimoire… Or an object that I used a Sigil of Space on…”
She grinned and nodded, clapping her hands excitedly. “Exactly! So… What do you think?”
James touched his lower lip with his finger. “Right,” he said. “Wait, I get it now. Every spell that uses the Element of Space for teleportation requires a clearly separated and distinct target. If I want to move something that is part of a greater mass or body — like water or earth — the spell also needs a component to separate the quantity that I want to move.”
He glanced at Sara. “Right?”
She laughed and nodded. “That makes perfect sense, James,” she said. “But I’m going to admit to you that I never thought about it in that much detail.” She gave another chuckle. “But, like I said, it sounds very plausible.”
He grinned and gave her a pat on her shapely bottom.
“Okay,” he said. “I think we’ve solved the mystery then.”
She licked her lips and gestured at a nearby boulder that was perfect for him to sit on.
“Try it,” she said. “Let’s see if it works now!”
James nodded and sat down on the boulder. As before, he tried to envision a small hole dug at his feet — just for the purposes of exploring his ancestral magic. And as he did so, he tried to visualize the Sigils of the Elements of Earth and Space, calling upon the arcane powers contained within those rune–like symbols.
And this time, a strange tingling at the base of his skull announced the rise of his mana.
A smile appeared on James’s lips as he directed his efforts to search his ancestral memories, envisioning situations in which his ancestors may have used similar magic.
Within moments, the mists of time came up to envelop him and bring him to another ancestral memory.
Chapter 2
James manifested in a forest, taking in the sights and sounds around him.
The whole place rang familiar to him — after all, he had spent most of his past few days in the forest. Being among the trees felt like coming home; he loved the forest and always experienced a deep connection to it.
But of course, he was now in the past. How long ago remained to be seen.
He looked around and noticed a figure moving among the tree trunks in the distance. His breath caught, and he swiftly made his way there.
As always, he was invisible and immaterial in these visions. He could pass through tree trunks if he so desired, and no one in the visions would see him. He was unable to alter the course of the events here — even though, at times, he had wanted to do so.
But this was the past. What he gleaned here had already happened.
He slipped through several tree trunks, then got a better view of the figure.
It was a man of middle age, and he was dressed in rough clothes of leather and fur. He had a crude stone tool hanging from his belt and carried a flint spear in one hand, while the other held a woven basket.
The man had a look of determination on his face, as if he knew exactly what he was searching for.
Behind him, a young boy followed closely, mirroring the elder’s every move as he looked up at the man with wide-eyed wonder.
James experienced that same sense of awe — of witnessing a past long gone — as he watched the man and the boy walk through the forest. He realized he was privileged to relive a scene from another time.
And when the sunlight fell on the duo, James recognized the features as those he saw in the mirror every day. Both boy and man had a tousled mop of dark hair — although the man’s hair was already turning gray at the temples. They both had piercing green eyes of an almost supernatural quality.
In short, they looked like James, perhaps a bit more emaciated and weatherworn.
They were his ancestors.
James followed them, relishing in that overwhelming awe of exploring the avenues of history — of being an observer to the deeds and adventures of his long line of ancestors, whom today were referred to as the House of Harkness.
The man and the boy stopped at a spot close to some small trees. As if call to a stop by some supernatural instinct, the man bent forward and dug with grimy hands in the top layer of soil and fallen leaves.
