Jacob nodded and stepped back a few paces, appearing to comply with the man's demand.
While Elis raised the pitchfork to meet the first charging goblin, Jacob began to gather the air around his own fingertips. He had no intention of staying idle.
He focused on the space behind Elis, preparing to use his new understanding of direct magic to provide a backline of fire and wind.
The goblins surged forward in a disorganized, screaming wave. Their lack of coordination worked against them as they tripped over one another, providing Elis with plenty of space to utilize the long reach of his pitchfork.
Jacob watched the lead attacker and provided his visualization of the air to his magic, and he felt it resonate with the surrounding energy. A sudden concentrated blast of wind caught the creature in the chest, knocking it backward into its companions.
Whenever a goblin gained too much momentum, Jacob shifted his focus to the earth beneath its feet. He envisioned the soil becoming loose and wet, like a sink pit in a swamp.
The creature's foot sank instantly, causing it to stumble face-first into the grass.
Elis was waiting for every opening, driving the sharpened iron prongs through leather and bone with a greater efficiency than one would expect to see from such a crude tool.
Jacob tried several times to manifest a more direct attack. He visualized a sphere of fire like the one that had scorched his desk, but only managed to produce a few weak sparks that left small, singing burns on the goblins' hide.
The creatures barely flinched at the heat. Frustrated, he abandoned the elemental approach. He began to focus purely on the concept of "sharpness" itself.
He tried to project an invisible cutting edge through the air. A thin, shallow red line appeared across the throat of a nearby goblin, but the wound was minor.
It was a start, but it lacked the lethality he needed.
Deep within the woods, the sounds of a secondary battle echoed through the trees. The clatter of steel and guttural roars suggested the goblins were already fighting another foe.
Jacob and Elis had no time to wonder about the source of the noise. They were occupied with the steady trickle of monsters entering the farmyard.
A figure finally burst through the brush line. A teen boy, clad in rugged, travel-worn armor with a small buckler strapped to his arm, stumbled into the clearing.
He swung a short sword with practiced, desperate efficiency. On his arrival to join the group, he cut down a goblin that had been flanking Elis before moving toward the center of the yard.
"Stand fast!" the boy shouted, his voice strained and heavy with the grit of the forest. "There are more trailing behind me. Keep your distance and do not let them get behind your reach!"
The three of them fell into a natural, rhythmic defense. Elis held the center with his long reach while the newcomer darted in to finish any creature that slipped past the pitchfork.
Jacob stayed in the backline, his mind working at a fever pitch to keep both fighters from being surrounded.
He tripped a goblin here and sent a blast of air there, acting as the invisible hand that kept the monsters off balance.
Occasionally, he even reached down to grab a loose rock, which he promptly overloaded with a random runic enchantment before throwing it toward a group of goblins.
The damage was still minimal, with some goblins getting slowed down by the shrapnel, but it served its purpose of breaking up groups quite well.
Despite their efforts, the sheer number of goblins flooding in from the treeline began to take a toll.
The boy had a deep gash on his thigh, and Elis was breathing in ragged, heavy gasps as he bled from several spots that the enchantments could not defend.
Neither combatant was invincible, and Jacob was still struggling to inflict any real damage on his enemies.
The goblins were closing in, sensing the exhaustion of their prey.
Suddenly, the air around the teen boy grew thick and hot. A fierce, reddish light erupted from his skin, glowing with the intensity of a forge fire.
He let out a guttural roar as the light intensified, casting long, bloody shadows across the grass.
He threw himself into the center of the goblin ranks with a speed that the eye could barely follow. His sword became a blur of red-tinted steel.
Tearing through the monsters with a terrifying strength, he eviscerated anything that stood in his path.
The goblins' crude weapons seemed to bounce off his skin without leaving a mark as he decimated their numbers in a flurry of desperate violence.
Arthur crested the hill with Caleb and Tom, Bran lagging behind, all carrying pitchforks.
They were just in time to witness the goblins fleeing back into the forest with the vicious teen boy cutting down the stragglers as he charged back toward the forest in pursuit.
And Elis got a notification from the system.
Quest Complete:Defend Farm from Invading Goblins.
Reward:Class upgrade. 5 freely distributable stat points.
Farmer (43) --> Advanced Farmer (40)
Three levels converted to distributable stat points.
Elis gasped as a surge of warmth rushed through his limbs. The exhaustion that had weighed down his shoulders vanished, replaced by an unreasonable vitality.
He could feel the new strength knitting together the small cuts on his arms. His muscles felt denser, and his vision seemed to sharpen as the system integrated the new class into his being.
Arthur hurried over to the farmhand after checking on Jacob, placing a steadying hand on his shoulder. "Elis, you're bleeding. Are you alright? Where did that boy come from?"
Elis blinked, the golden screen fading as he focused back on Arthur. "I'm more than alright, Arthur. The system just gave me an upgrade. I've managed to upgrade to Advanced Farmer."
He looked down at his hands, which were steady and strong. "As for the boy, he arrived just when we were about to be overrun. He fought like a demon, and his sword skill is beyond what his age suggests."
Jacob walked toward the edge of the forest, his eyes fixed on the spot where the teen had vanished.
He could still feel the residue of that reddish light hanging in the air. It was unlike any mana he had encountered.
It didn't feel like any sort of partnership with the world. It felt like a sort of raw, forced manifestation of internal will that had been projected outward with violent certainty.
He looked back at Elis, noting the subtle change in the man's posture. The transition from a standard class to an advanced one had physically altered him.
Jacob wondered if the system rewards were a form of automated enchantment that rewrote the human body to match the new designation.
That ability to rewrite the human body must be high-level magic, the closest I could get is healing magic.
He looked over toward Tom and Caleb, who began to move among the fallen goblins, their initial shock turning into the grim task of securing the perimeter. They used their pitchforks to finish off any stragglers that were playing dead.
Jacob turned his gaze back to the treeline. The mysterious boy had not yet returned from the woods. The silence of the forest felt heavy, as if the trees themselves were holding their breath after the violence that had just passed through them.
The forest shadows parted as the mysterious boy stumbled back into the clearing. The fierce, reddish glow had vanished, leaving him looking smaller and more fragile in the morning light.
His leather armor was shredded in several places, and deep, ragged gasps tore from his chest.
He leaned heavily against a fence post, his knuckles were white as he gripped his short sword.
"They are gone," the boy panted, wiping a smear of dark blood from his cheek. "The militia intercepted the main raiding party near the old stone bridge. These were just the stragglers looking for easy prey."
Jacob approached the newcomer with his hands held out in a gesture of peace. He could see several vicious wounds through the gaps in the boy's armor.
A deep gash on his shoulder was still weeping crimson, and his movements were stiff with the onset of shock.
"Let me help," Jacob said, his voice low and calm.
He didn't wait for a response. He reached out and placed his palms just above the most severe injury on the boy's shoulder.
Jacob closed his eyes and began to reach for the magic of the world, but he did not try to seize it.
Instead, he visualized the healing runes he had used several times for enchantments. He translated those rigid symbols into an actionable visualization for his magic.
He projected a mental image of the boy's flesh in its pristine state. He whispered to the cells, encouraging them to remember their wholeness and to bridge the gaps of the torn muscle.
The mana responded with a gentle, cool resonance. It felt like a soothing liquid poured over a burn.
The boy watched in stunned silence as the jagged wound began to close. The edges of the skin crept toward each other, knitting together without leaving so much as a scar.
The deep bruising on his ribs faded into a healthy tan, and the stiffness in his limbs vanished. Within minutes, the boy stood straight, his breathing even and his strength fully restored.
"I have seen healers before," the boy whispered, flexing his shoulder in disbelief. "But I have never seen someone mend flesh that quickly without a staff or a ritual. You didn't even use a chant."
Jacob gave a modest shrug, his mind already analyzing how the magic had interacted with the boy's unique energy. "I just suggested that your body should return to the way it was before the fight. It seemed happy to comply, and the magic seemed to agree."
"I am Jacob, by the way."
The boy nodded. "I go by Oren. I am glad I ran into you guys, not sure how much longer I could have lasted on my own."
Oren looked at his own hands, then back at the forest where he had unleashed that terrifying violence.
"Although, during the heat of that battle, when I thought we were done for, something broke loose inside of me. I felt this heat, like a forge fire in my gut, and it just poured out of my skin. Every lesson and moment of training seemed to come together... "
He looked Jacob in the eye, his expression a mix of awe and lingering adrenaline.
"I achieved Aura. My master always told me it was a myth for anyone under the age of thirty. It is a power that most combatants spend their entire lives chasing and never touch. That red light was my own will made manifest as a physical shield and blade."
Jacob nodded, processing the information. He realized that while he was learning to partner with the world's magic, Oren had learned to weaponize the energy within his own body.
"It was impressive," Jacob noted. "And it likely saved our lives."