When I woke up, I found myself staring at a familiar ceiling. It seemed that I had been transported to my bedroom while I was unconscious.

I had a hard time sitting up as my core muscles threatened to cramp with each little movement I made. Though the rest of the muscles in my body were sore, they were nothing of note as I was used to having a sore body from all the training I have done over the years.

Slowly, I got out of bed and walked downstairs to the back area of the bar. As usual, the old man sat there doing something. This time he was wiping the cups, a job normally reserved for me. Noticing the look on m face, the old man spoke.

" I will open the bar today, go get a shower and continue with that wall you have rallied the village into building." The old man said in a neutral tone that I found strange. He had always affirmed my belief that we should have more defences against monsters.

Was he backing out now? Was he mad at me for exhausting myself till I passed out? Was he just unimpressed with the noise that the villagers were making essentially outside our house? Was it because our business will be obstructed for a few days?

Whatever it was, I did not know nor did I ask the old man about it. Instead, I went and got the shower as he had recommended.

Then, I returned upstairs to my room and walked over to my clothes cabinet. From it, I pulled out a small tin can and applied some ointment to soothe the muscle aches. I slathered more particularly on my abs.

Finished with my daily ritual, I quickly left my home and went out to help the villagers. The seemingly exhausted villagers welcomed me with wide smiles.

...

(3rd person POV)

The cyclopes moved slowly to make less noise. They did so with practised ease as they had done for decades now. It had been 3 decades now since they started preparing their army. An army of cyclopes to crush the puny humans and retake the lands that they had lost.

Initially, they had planned to attack the Luxus kingdom. After all, it was the heroes from the Luxus kingdom that had driven them into the state that they were in now.

Even after all this time, the elders of the cyclopes still remembered the names and titles of those powerful humans. The humans who had allowed for the expansion of the Luxus kingdom.

Lithe Luxus, the great lightning, had culled them with lightning speed. The elders still remembered her twin swords. The magic swordsman, Magnus Flare, had been the weakest of the group. However, he still slowly took down cyclopes one after another. His stamina had astounded the cyclopes.

The grand magician, Marrie Frost had frozen entire sections of what used to be an endlessly large forest. Though she had been confirmed to be a magician, she used a dagger as her catalyst. Finally the only archer of the group using a weapon that was not a blade, Liam Star.

His arrows had fallen from the sky like falling stars. He had been the scariest of the lot. Of the 4 heroes of the Luxus kingdom, the cyclopes had only been able to overwhelm and kill two. The twin blade, Lithe Luxus and the ice witch, Marrie frost.

From what the elders could remember, after the death of the twin blade, the ice witch was killed nearly immediately after. Then, there was a bright light. What looked like a giant fireball had fallen from the sky and created a crater where water would eventually fill and turn into a lake. A lake that the cyclopes currently use for water.

The massive fireball was presumed to be the flaming swordsman's final attack before retreating. The arrows had stopped as well, though the cyclopes weren't clear as to what happened, apparently, Liam Star had stopped and picked up both of his fallen comrade's corpses and weapons to hide and bury.

However, the kingdom built by the legendary heroes had somehow self-destructed. A fact that they found funny till this day. So, to settle their need for revenge and blood thirst they had decided to put their sights on the newly made empire instead.

After years of training for war, the previously peace-loving cyclopes had turned into a bloodthirsty army looking to avenge their forefathers.

After decades of training and living in cramped conditions, it was finally time to attack.

..

...

..

(First Person)

It took far longer than I had anticipated building the wall.

It had taken us, villagers, an entire 2 weeks of work to build a wall tall enough to prevent goblins and wolves from climbing over or simply jumping over the wall.

Apparently, my thinking that a wall was just stacked logs was wrong. We had to get a proper architect to plan and draw up a good plan to build the wall. Then, all it took was my zealous participation and some work from about 50 villagers to actually build it.

Since its creation, I had thrown myself back into training again. I was somewhat satisfied with our safety now that there was a physical wall preventing monsters from entering the village.

I had been trying to replicate a skill that my father had. Extra skill [Magic Sense]. According to what my father told me, it was an extremely difficult skill for humans to attain but was relatively common for monsters of a certain level of power to have.

Behind the bar, I could be seen sitting on the ground meditating. The magicules have always loved me. I could feel them around me but I could not use them to feel my surroundings for me. That just didn't make sense to me...

Perhaps it was the same as the other thing I was trying to solve. My puny internal magicule reserve. Sure I had far more magicules than a regular monster hunter but it was not enough.  I had been trying to absorb the magicules in the air into my body however, my body seemed to reject the external magicules.

My body's resistance to magicules was even higher than the stone tablets I use to carve my [Explosion] spell circles. Perhaps I was doing it the wrong way? I had been trying to forcefully funnel magicules into my body after all. I always ended up with a headache and no results.

Letting out a sigh of frustration, I get up and return to the back of the bar. There, I took a seat and continued my newest carving of the [Explosion] spell circle. It was completely identical to the previous three I had carved. That was the whole point of inventing my own spell circle.

To be able to reproduce it with relative ease.

After a few hours of very careful taps of my hammer on a chisel, I stared at my completed spell tablet with a satisfied smile. Under the candlelight, I inspected my finished item and then dropped it into my empty pouch.

I had placed each of the other two spell tablets under the wall about a few steps away from the gate to the forest on both sides. In case any monster does break through the relatively more flimsy gate.

With a smile, I went to bed.