Years flew by, another 6 years passed. I was 46

The king still started the war.

Ever since I became a True Knight, they tried in every possible way to drag me into intrigues, conflicts and war. Of course, I ignored such provocations again and again and never even showed up in the capital, staying in my city. Naturally, this could not but offend the capital.

A trip to the capital would take many months only in one direction, naturally I was not going to spend so much time on such nonsense. I even had suspicions that it was the royal family that was behind the magic trap, although these were only speculations.

Despite my categorical refusal to participate in the war, apparently the royal family did not give up.

The county of Rashford and my city were the main front lines, which I was certainly not surprised at. Moreover, the royal army was moving in the direction of my city, supposedly to create a staging post here for further warfare. There is even a possibility that this so-called war is just a political ploy to bring an army into my city and subsequently take it away from me. The power and wealth of the city and the guild were so great that the royal family lost patience.

On the other hand, even if they capture and sack this city, it will be far from enough to deprive the guild of its head under the current conditions. They will have to start a full-fledged sweep of the county, if not the entire area.

As soon as the army was about to advance in my direction, I immediately gave the order to spread throughout the kingdom and even among the neighbors the information that the royal family decided to betray their own vassal and take away his city as well as Tarrister guild. Of course, all this was described eloquently and exposed the royal family in an extremely sinister tone.

I made sure that everyone in the region understood the whole picture, realizing that this was an attack not only on me, but on the region as a whole. None of them will leave unscathed.

While other lords suffocated people with taxes in their territories, I was actually a savior for many poor people from all over the kingdom, my reputation was more widespread and stronger than ever.

Of course, I did not expect much from such a move, but it will not be superfluous to spoil the reputation of the royal family.

I have called on all the mercenaries of the guild to return to the city and stand up for its defense.

I also sent a message to the neighboring kingdom, promising that I would become their subject if they help defeat the royal army.

Asked Rashford to support me in the fight against the crown. It was Rashford and I who gradually secretly transferred a large part of the guild into the hands of Duke Murphy. I knew him well and strongly doubted that he would remain on the sidelines.

Although there were nominally three True Knights on the side of the royal family, they certainly couldn't drag all three into the conflict. At the same time, Duke Murphy was on our side, and he certainly couldn't ignore what was happening.

In any case, I took many steps to stir up the water as much as possible.

Although I could hardly resist the army of the kingdom, I did not worry too much. In the worst case, I'll just escape along the prearranged escape routes. I didn't get any younger, and I valued my time too much to spend it fighting for other people's interests.

After finishing the creation of the 9th rune of the mind, I finally became a rank 3 acolyte. Although I used the Breakthrough Potion that I prepared a long time ago, but unlike Bertram, I did not need additional funds due to the True Knight's physique.

The promotion process was relatively stable, although I was exhausted, but I didn't get any injuries.

I now had several sound spells in my arsenal that I had developed myself. Of course, they couldn't match the difficulty of the Sonic Sword spell, they were secondary spells. My attempts to create a protective sound barrier of at least a small radius have failed. The barrier turned out to be extremely unstable and absorbed a ton of mental energy. I had no choice but to postpone this issue for the future.

But now the sonic stun was much more powerful and louder. I even had to develop an additional spell to keep my own ears safe. Although the source of the sound was the magic wave from the spell, the sound itself was not magical, yet its volume was already so strong that I myself could be seriously injured.

On the other hand, I could use the detection wave. It spreads around me a completely silent wave that conveyed to me the coordinates and essence of everything in the area. All because I learned to leave particles of my mental energy in this wave. Now neither alien mental nor elemental energy can hide from this wave. Moreover, this wave was invisible, so if my wave does not touch another Magician, then he will not even feel it.

I also learned to limit both waves to a certain range, which further increased the potential of these spells.

The model of combat spells was essentially a detailed description of the process of calling a spell. Starting from using mental power, summoning the right elements in the right combination and quantity, correct method of manipulating mental power on the elements to create the desired effect, and finally ending with the release of the spell.

Due to the complexity of all these processes, they usually turned into a so-called spell model that was too difficult to convey in simple words.

If a young acolyte wanted to learn a spell, it was much easier for him to use a ready-made spell model that would take him only months to learn.

However, theoretically, anyone could create their own spell models, it just took a lot of time and constantly consumed mental power in the process of experiments, which apparently not many considered a useful time spending.

I was quite keen on this occupation and managed to create many variations, albeit simple, but my own spells of different elements. Of course it is still most effective to use sound as the main combat spells.

Among the garbage in recent years, I have discovered a lot of interesting things. In particular, the model of the 1st rank spell. It was the defensive type spell. Although it didn't refer to the sound element, it was a great reference for me nonetheless.

One of the finds was a whole collection of runes, the formations and methods of their application that I so lacked. We are talking about runes that are used in almost all professions of magicians. The more I studied this collection, the more convinced I was of its huge value.

I got this amazing book almost for free, an ordinary twenty-year-old guy named Francis himself came to my guild about five years ago and asked to see me. Although there were quite a few such cases, I always came to such meetings or guild sent those people straight to my home.

Once a man with a tattered piece of skin from an unknown beast came to the guild and asked to meet with me, he was simply kicked out. I was so enraged that I executed a guild worker in the city square in a revealing manner. Since then, everyone knows that whoever came, if he brought something unusual, they better tell me right away if they don’t want to lose their heads.

Francis told the sad story of his fate. Although I wasn't too interested in the history itself, his book turned out to be amazing. Judging by his story, one of his ancestors got it a long time ago.

He cut his hand and made the book drunk with blood. The book lit up and absorbed the blood, and then opened. When I saw the contents, I was amazed, although I already knew some runes, but the vast majority of them became a discovery for me. Many of the runes I could not use right now and doubted that I will be able to use them someday unless I will become a True Mage.

All Francis asked for in return was protection from persecutors and the opportunity to become my apprentice. I bargained and we agreed that he would become my follower, obviously Francis had little choice. When these same persecutors appeared, I personally interrogated and killed them, after which I sent people on their trail. Unfortunately, nothing else of sufficient value has surfaced from this story.

Now I could, for example, create a rune on the inside of the stone, as in the case when someone attacked me and imbue the rune with the power of the spell. In fact, it was already a basic magic trap.

The use of such runes was widespread, and only certain runes were suitable for different spells. There were also various restrictions, such as the need to correctly select the size of the rune, for example, depending on the strength of the spell and the material on which it will be created.

Simple formations can be created even on a normal surface like wood, however a large area would have to be used. Otherwise, the surface of the tree will quickly be corroded by the formation and it will be destroyed. On the other hand, if you use durable materials, you can place the same formations on them using a small area. Auxiliary materials and other tricks described in the book also helped in this matter.

To feed the magical formations, magic crystals were required, or the Magician himself, who would regularly monitor this. Otherwise, the formation will not last long in any case and eventually lose its strength. This depletion period time also depended on many factors. Mage's power. Mastery of the superimposed formation. Formation materials and so on.

Previously, my abilities were extremely limited, but now I have rapidly progressed in drawing runes with mental energy and using more and more runes. My left hand became my first rune item or basic magical artifact. I placed eight runes in it, for the five fingers, the hand, the elbow, and the arm itself. The runes allowed me to manipulate my own hand through my mind.

In order not to waste mental energy on this process, I installed a magic crystal there so that the hand would be powered from it. At first it was extremely unusual and uncomfortable, but over time I began to get used to it, such a hand had its own advantages.

But in the end the most unusual find was another piece of stone, or rather granite.

When I started using spells to test it, that piece of granite suddenly turned into a lizard. The granite lizard immediately tried to escape, but was unable to because of the formations. Then it turned to me with its eyes in the form of small black beads that seemed to be covered with moisture. Seeing no reaction, he again turned into a piece of granite.

Naturally, I was stunned by what happened. After figuring out that this magical beast did not pose much of a threat, I temporarily placed it in a wider formation in the garden. Although lizard pretended to be a simple stone for a long time, he soon could not stand it and began to climb around the garden. It is interesting that he ate other stones, granites or other solid materials. Apparently, the very body of this animal consisted of similar materials.

I was even more amazed when he shed part of his tail, gradually growing a new one. Analyzing a piece of his tail, I came to the conclusion that this is quite a strong magic material. Somehow, everything eaten by this beast and left behind in the form of a tail was a rather unique material and possessed incredible durability.

But something else struck me even more. I tried to influence the dropped tail of a lizard in the form of granite with various elements, but did not find any special properties other than strength. Then I started trying to bury it in the ground, throw it into the air, douse it with oil and do other experiments.

When I poured wine on the granite, there was finally a reaction. Granite began to quickly lose its properties and turned into granite sand. I did not notice any special properties in the sand itself and did not find a good use for it. Nevertheless, having proved to myself that this strange material could change from external factors, I was extremely excited.

So I started feeding gold to the animal, and gradually the lizard became dark gold color, leaving this magical gold behind.

Of course, the lizard was small even less than my palm and could not eat large pieces of rock, fortunately a gold coin suited it just fine. Although the lizard could not absorb it completely, but just made a bite. Gradually, the bitten piece of coin simply melted in its mouth.

The lizard itself also clearly preferred gold to other materials. I was not sure what was the reason exactly, but presumably he preferred durable materials. The lizard was clearly looking at my left hand.

In any case, I gathered some of the most educated servants in the courtyard and showed them the dark gold. Their task was to carry out all kinds of experiments, many of which I myself listed to them, until the material reacted. This experiment was a success. When exposed to honey, dark gold gradually softened, eventually becoming something like plasticine, but eventually returned to its original state. This discovery became priceless to me, so that my servants instantly became rich.

I focused on gold because I had a tons of gold coins and could afford myself to feed lizard with it constantly. I could not make up with any other proper material which I have a lot of and could feed to my new treasure.

Thus, if I can endlessly feed the animal properly then he will be able to repeatedly repay me with various materials. Gradually, I was able to feed the lizard with various delicacies and become friends with it. Since that day I had a small pet.

I named him Rock.

The only material that Rock could not master was an invulnerable little figurine, which raised its value in my eyes even higher.

Ouroborus cataphractus