Garry was led to the burrow of the groundhog he befriended. The burrow was close by, several meters away, and it didn't quite look appealing from the outside, which was expected, as the burrow only had a couple of holes that they considered entrances.

Well, one entrance was a fake one. It led nowhere, and it was used to keep predators busy, such as foxes.

The other entrance led to the deep interior of the burrow, and quite frankly, Garry was astounded when he squeezed into it. This was no mere home with weak, dirt walls to hold it up, no, as everything within the burrow was enhanced by a six-inch layer of carved stone!

The stone walls within the burrow weren't placed randomly. They weren't bumpy, but rather, they were smooth, and had these rows of symbolic words carved into it with a language that he could not understand. Nevertheless, he was impressed.

"Woa…" Garry sighed, as he looked at the walls around him.

"Why are you loafing about here?" The guiding groundhog asked. "This is only the entrance. You haven't seen anything yet!"

Garry was beyond intrigued. He followed the host through a four-foot wide tunnel that stretched over fifty feet, and it was otherwise quite comfortable to walk through it. It led downwards, mostly, but that wasn't a big problem as there were well-placed stones to assist the descension.

Once they made it past the tunnel, they entered a room which could most accurately be described as a cavern for these little guys. It was about fifteen meters across, and five meters tall.

Unsurprisingly, this one was filled with statues, to the left and to the right. This place looked like a hidden sect, and the stone stairs that led lower into the cavern made it look even more so like a sect. The only thing that it was missing was an altar of sacrifice, but thankfully the cavern didn't have that.

That aside, the stonework here was phenomenal. It might as well be, if it's holding up such a big cavern!

Excited, Garry added, "Your hame looks stoatin! Howfur lang did it tak' ye tae build a' o' this?"

"Oh, the resting place of the Ancients? I don't know, I heard it took our ancestors a day or two. Mind you the statues have been added over time." The host answered. "We have plenty of Lava Mages, we always did, so it's barely a task for us to build anything we want. Sometimes it even takes just a few hours."

"Lava Mages, huh? Fascinating!" He remarked. 𝑓𝘳𝑒𝑒𝓌𝘦𝘣𝘯ℴ𝑣𝘦𝑙.𝘤𝑜𝑚

The two of them had passed through ten groundhogs already, and there certainly were tens more of them somewhere within the complex burrows, so Garry was prompted to believe everything the other said. This species may not be unique, but the type of mana they bore certainly was.

Anyway, the two of them walked down another staircase immediately after they passed the first one, and then they followed yet another staircase. This process went on until they made it about two-hundred meters below the ground, where they truly started feeling the cold. It was cold this deep underground, but luckily Garry had shapeshifted into a demonic species that was quite hairy, and so he didn't mind it.

The coldness they felt was shunned away only seconds later, after they made it to a pool of lava. The pool was fifteen meters wide, and it was laid out across a twenty-meter cavern that wasn't as reinforced as the other caverns, or rooms that they've passed so far.

"So this is whit ye uise tae build hings, eh?" Garry asked. "A'm o'er o' whit lava is, bit ah cannae jalouse howfur ye uise it tae build a steid as muckle as this! Dae ye drag th' mana a' o'er th' cavern 'n' then thaw it oot or something?"

"Something like that, but it's way easier than you think." The host said. "This here is what we call pure lava. The Ancient ones have drawn it from several kilometers below us. Up here, we filter the toxins out of it daily, otherwise it would be deadly to even stand near it. However, since we purify it, the lava then becomes more fluid, or, more flexible to our wishes, rather than just safe to breathe in."

Afterwards, the host gave him a simple demonstration. He stood on his hind legs, stretched his palms out and waved them around, and as a result, tens of kilos of lava started rising from the pool!

The floating lava then assumed the shape of a teardrop, and then hardened into a tough rock. This was impressive, however, what the host did next was physically impossible!

The host transformed the hard rock into fluid, hot lava within seconds, and started waving it around as if it was a bundle of ocean waves! The movements of the lava were truly fluid, it moved like water!

The host then dropped the lava back in the pool, and asked, "Impressed? You should be. Humans, and other mages in general are lucky that we're pacifists, otherwise we'd take over the world in a week. There are so many possibilities when lava listens to your commands! At the very least, we can stab, and knock the daylights out of our predators, with hard stones, and at most, we can-"

"Flood cities wi' lava," Garry interrupted. "I'm an Arch Mage, th' kind that loues fire, if ye ken whit ah mean? Bit ither than fleeing, ah dinnae think ah cuid protect masell, or a'body else fae a wave o' lava..."

"Most can't protect themselves from it." The other confirmed. "As I said… the world is lucky that we're pacifists. We must be peaceful, as such great power comes with a price. Our strong principles keep us in line, no matter how much we may not like them…"

Afterwards, he asked, "Anyway, do you wanna visit our dwarven friends? We have a portal over there."

If Garry hadn't been shocked already, he was shocked now! Out of all the things that he expected out of these groundhogs, expecting them to have access to portals was absolutely not in his list!

Of course, he agreed, and so they walked to the edge of the cavern they were in, and followed a short tunnel. At the end of the tunnel, they walked through a tall, black portal that seemed quite familiar. Garry was too stunned to speak!

The eight-hundred Expert Mages that joined the frontline were quite capable. They were very useful on the count that Timothy and his team spent a few hours nudging them in the right direction, and once they got a hang of what to do, there was no stopping them!

Ten more shapeshifted Ancient Sea Orcs had tried to attack the city before sunset, and the Expert Mages, otherwise known as the city's soldiers, had killed them all! They killed them without losing a single man or woman in the exchange of attacks.

They discovered that the giant orcs had this odd ability to toss exploding fireballs around almost randomly, but they worked around it. Ten mages shot fireballs at the giants to overwhelm them, essentially blind them, and then twenty mages snuck below the line of fire, and froze the giants solid! This method worked like a charm, and Timothy had helped them develop it, so the mages didn't lose arms and legs during their many fights.

The dark giants helped them. Fortana insisted for the giants to behave, and she told the mages to not provoke the giants, as it would be a fatal mistake.

Anyway, once the sun set, Timothy and his friends felt like their services weren't needed any longer. The mages were doing a great job keeping the frontline strong, and there were plenty of them, so they could even divide their responsibilities in three or four shifts. It would take a bit of organizing, but that was what the city officials were for. Timothy didn't care to organize their schedules.

Instead, the team went ahead into the city, and walked to that local Inn that they were growing accustomed to, and were close to falling asleep, on the count that they've been awake since the crack of dawn. They made sure to eat before falling asleep, as their guts were whistling, and then they slept around 9 p.m. The food here in the Inn wasn't favorable, and some of the selections tasted like cardboard, but they chewed through it.

Cornelius had gone back to his sect several hours ago, because he didn't care to watch over the mages at the frontline. With the city officials over the case, he felt comfortable with ridding every sense of responsibility he felt over the city's safety off of himself, even if that responsibility had been minimal. He loved how the events unfolded today, because for once, he made the city officials perform the duties they were supposed to perform, rather than have them hope for the best while he handled their manky business.