I walked with my head down back to the inn. I figured the innkeeper, Wang, would be able to tell me about Liam. Since I was unsuccessful by the second night, I only had one more day to find a way to earn some money.

  About five hours have passed since I left the inn, and when I returned I found Wang sitting at the desk as usual. I pulled out one of the wooden stools on the opposite side of the desk and rested my head in my arms. Wang came around the desk and sat next to me.

  “No luck?” he asked.

  “No,” I responded as I raised my head.

  “Ah, I’m sure you will find something tomorrow. There are plenty of people who need some help.”

  “I did hear about a man named Liam,” I told Wang.

  “Oh, that old hag. Liam is a kind man, but he keeps to himself for the most part. He mines and melts down palladium himself to supply the city with money.”

  “Do you know where I can find him?”

  “Yes I do, he lives on the farthest north point of the wall. If you truly want to work for him. I should warn you, he will work you to the bones, but he pays better than most.”

  This did sound tempting, and it seemed like it was just a bit past Nina’s shop.

  “He is growing weak in his years,” Wang said, “so he will likely make you his palladium miner, but he’s a master with the staff. Before the wall came about, he could single-handedly take on any demon, so don't even think about stealing from him.”

  “That would have never even crossed my mind,” I said.

  “Good,” he responded, “If you did you’d end up bleeding from your rectum.”

  This was certainly not something I wanted to experience in my life. However, I needed some form of income and I’d rather sleep in the dirt than work serving food. With two nights left in our deal, Liam seemed like my best bet.

  I thanked Wang for his hospitality once again and ascended the steps to my room for the second time. I pulled out the room key I had stuffed in my pocket a few hours prior. I opened the door and saw my room was just as messy as when I left it.

  The sheets on the bed were ruffled on the floor, and my spell book rested safely on the desk. It was true I had no possessions to speak of, so I couldn’t make much of a mess if I tried.

  Being stuffed inside the wall started to have its effects on my body. I started losing track of time, and the constant dark tint made me subconsciously think it was always night, and I was always tired. I was sure that the sun would still be up by now, maybe even mid-day, but I had no way to be sure and my body was already shutting down. I crawled into the bed like before and quickly fell unconscious without even getting changed.

  While I didn’t seem to have any nightmares this time, I still felt rather on-edge the next morning- or night. At that point, I gave up on keeping track. Finding Liam was next on my list of things to do. After I left my room I remembered to lock the door and headed out again. I passed the front desk and to my surprise, Wang was nowhere to be seen. I guess he had a life after all.

  I started to walk down the street to try to find anything that could resemble a mint factory, but the only thing I noticed was the lack of liveliness this place had compared to before. It was likely just my poor sense of time and everyone had already gone home, but still searched.

  I walked down the path until I reached Nina's shop, where I made a rather unpleasant memory. I continued on, but there was nothing. The tunnel dug out of the wall was getting narrower, and the buildings were getting farther and farther apart.

  I kept walking until I found myself standing next to one of the very last buildings in the line. It gave the impression of a factory, and It was another building made out of stone. It was much larger on the bottom than that top, and it gave the illusion it was a leaning tower. The highest floor was barely even wide enough to fit one person. Unlike the rest of the stone buildings I had seen before, this one was made from bricks. Every other one I had seen before was carved from the wall itself.

  It had a steel chimney protruding from the side of the middle floor, but instead of pumping the smoke into the raw air, it was attached to a rather large and flimsy pipe that hung from the side and dug into the ground. Who knows where that pollution could end up, but at least they had the courtesy to pump it away from the people.

  What seemed to be a narrow slide hung from the only window on the top floor that released small amounts of crushed pebbles at a time. Nearly every window was illuminated by the raging fire inside the house. I could catch a glimpse of the large furnace creating the fire in one of the first-floor windows.

  I hesitated for a moment before approaching the steel door. I hit the cold metal three times and waited patiently for a response. I waited for what seemed like several minutes. After some time a little man that was half my size opened the door and clutching a wooden stick in one hand. He looked to be at least three hundred years old, and I feared that the weight of the door alone would crush his spine if he pulled too hard.

  “Hello?” he asked while checking me from head to toe.

  “Are you Liam?” I asked politely. I found it hard to believe someone his size could really run this factory on his own

  “Yes, that's me.”

  “I heard you could use an assistant, and I am in need of a job,” I offered.

  “Hmm,” he mumbled.

  The old man lifted his stick and jabbed me in the stomach hard enough to knock the wind out of me. He then continued to smack both of my arms on either side.

  “You’re too scrawny,” he said just as he was about to shut the door.

  “Wait!” I called.

  I winced in pain because the door slammed into my foot with much more force than I had anticipated. Without the protection of my shoes, I would have surely lost all of my toenails.

  “I know I could be of use to you,” I announced.

  “Yeah? How?” he asked after prying the door from my foot, “You’re too weak to mine, and you lack the skill to purify any metal.”

  “But I can mine,” I argued, “let me prove it.”

  To be honest, I wasn’t entirely sure what I was mining for, but I figured I could use my magic to help dig through the rock.

  Liam glared and said, “Fine, come in.”

  “Thank you.”

  “I can tell you’re new here, so I’ll give you a quick lesson before we start,” he said while giving me a silent tour of the building, “First, pal is a very rare metal. In fact, it’s a metal that doesn’t even exist in the natural world. Most kids your age don’t realize this. They think since it’s a common currency then it must be a common metal, but no. Palladium ore is unique to the wall”

  I didn’t really appreciate being called a “kid”, but he was right about that, I knew nothing about palladium.

  “If it doesn’t exist naturally, how do you mine it?”

  “Ah, you see, nothing about this wall is natural, the outer portions are damn near indestructible, and the inside is packed full of solid stone and palladium. I mine the inside of the wall to make room for expansion, and separate the metal from the rock to refine the palladium.”

  There was much more to this than I initially thought, but I didn’t waste any time asking what to do first.

  “So how can I prove I would be useful?” I asked.

  He reached for a rack similar to Nina’s and grabbed a shiny pickaxe that seemed as if it were made yesterday.

  “You take this, and dig into the wall. Come back when you have five thousand pounds of rock dug out within twenty-four hours.”

  I must have misheard.

  “You said five thousand?!”

  “Is that an issue?” he asked with a smirk, “I mine twice that amount daily, if you can’t handle it then you don’t belong here.”

  I accepted his challenge.

  “I can do it,” I said confidently, perhaps too confidently.

  “It doesn’t matter where you start digging, just try to keep the expansion going. I want to see us reach the full length of the wall before I die,” he said as he turned away from me.

  That was my clue that it was time to work. It was still difficult for me to tell the time in this place, so it was best I just worked as fast as I could.

  I stepped back out the door into the torch-lit darkness again. I followed Liam’s instructions and followed the path to the very edge of the tunnel. The outer sides of the tunnel closed in to block the path. All along the end of the wall rested tall ladders and scaffolding that reached the very top of the tunnel.

  After I came close enough to touch the wall I inspected its surface. It was rough and jagged with a few cracks scattered about, and I could see the individual marks from the pickaxe. I backed away from the edge and made my first swing, striking a small lump and creating some sparks.

  A chunk of rock cracked off the wall and tumbled to the dirt in front of me. I set my pickaxe down and lifted the rock. I could guess it weighed half a pound. Ten thousand more strikes and I would be done, but there's no way I had enough time for that.

  I thought about using my lighting to shatter the wall, but at the moment I’m unable to use it for prolonged periods of time, so here it wouldn’t be much use.

  I paced back and forth in front of the wall to think about how to go about this. I needed some way to separate enough rock from the wall without draining all of my energy.

  After several moments I came up with a plan. The barrier spell. It seemed counterintuitive to use the barrier spell to destroy something, but If I cast the spell horizontally instead of vertically, I could cast it between the cracks and separate the pieces.

  Without putting any further thought into my plan I got to work. I went to each crack in the wall and placed my hand over them. The glowing magenta light illuminated them each time I did so.

  One by one I tore off the pieces using the barrier. Before I knew it the ground was covered in an unsafe amount of rock, and I had run out of cracks, so I used the barrier yet again.

  With this spell, direction is irrelevant. The barrier leans whichever way the user casts it. It doesn’t matter if it’s vertical, horizontal, or even upside down, it’s all the same.

  So I backed away from the wall, put one knee down, and placed my palm in the dirt. I cast a much larger barrier spell that stretched about fifteen feet long and with a steep twenty-degree diagonal slope into the stone.

  I left my palm on the ground to keep control over the spell. Slowly I extended it until it crashed into the side and caused massive boulders to come crashing to the ground with the rest. I’m no good with math but I knew what I had collected was well over five thousand pounds.

  I carried the first twenty-pound rock back to the factory where I simply dropped it to the ground and picked up a large cloth sack I had found conveniently wrapped around a post just to the side.

  After I returned to the site I filled the sack with rocks and emptied it in a pile in the front of the building. I filled the sack with rocks and emptied it again. I did this for what felt like hundreds of times before I was left with only one boulder that was too large to carry.

  Stood a good distance away and prepared to snap my fingers. With the memorable click of the fingertips, the boulder had disintegrated into dozens of smaller and more manageable pieces. Once again I repeated the process of filling the sack and emptying it.

  With the last load finally finished I entered the factory in search of the old man Liam who I found napping on a couch in the corner.

  “Liam?” I called with no response.

  “Hello? I’m finished.”

  He woke up in a drowsy panic.

  “Huh?! What? You’re done already?”

  “Yes sir,” I replied.

  “Agh,” he grunted as he stood from the couch, “let’s go see what you’ve done.”

  I followed him out the door where he froze at the sight of my pile.

  “Damn kid, that’s at least eight thousand pounds, and in only a few hours!” He said in amazement, “I suppose I have to give you the job.”

  “Thank you,” I said gratefully, “you won’t regret it!”