I collected all the portable traps and moved towards the academy.

Having somehow hobbled my tired body to the academy, I was about to go to my building and my room when I met the True Mage Harlow on my way. Unlike acolytes who mostly had to wear gray robes, True Magicians dressed as they pleased, it was hard not to notice them.

In fact, I've only met other True Magicians a couple of times over the years. They were not required to sit in the academy. Everyone had their own home or hiding place where they could go about their business in solitude.

Harlow had a wrinkled face with long but well-groomed gray hair and stubble. He was older than Nocturne, but as far as I knew he was weaker than him. However, I stepped aside and bowed like the other acolytes in his path. But Harlow stopped in front of me.

- Sam Tarrister? - Harlow asked.

Yes Lord Mage. - I answered, although I did not remove the mask from the disfigured face.

- It's okay, relax. I wanted to discuss something with you, let's go to my office.

Of course I did not object. Although there was a possibility that one of the acolytes I killed was connected with him, but after being here for so many years, I have never heard of someone killing someone in the academy. Even if some of the True Magicians did kill the acolytes, they were most likely doing it outside.

Apparently he led me to his office. In the center was a wooden table with some books and sheets of paper where Harlow actually told me to sit down. On one side of the room there were a lot of small cabinets with books, ingredients and who knows what, on the other side something like an alchemy laboratory with various test tubes.

- I heard you're good at the sound element, right? - Harlow began.

- Yes, sir.

- Good. I didn't pay enough attention to other elements besides my own. However, I heard that sound waves are a great way to scan, especially underground. Do you have such spells?

- Yes, I have some experience in using sound vibrations.

Sound is a vibration, and a sound wave is a stretching of these oscillations (vibrations) in time and space.

In fact, the more I worked with the sound element, the more time I began to pay attention to vibrations. All my traps and scanners worked on the principle of an Infrasound wave, which is inaudible to the human ear. Infrasound and low-frequency sound have a very long wavelength, therefore they have a high penetrating power, are poorly absorbed and moderately reflected.

The more I immersed myself in this topic, the more I realized that sound vibrations hide an unimaginable potential. Of course now I did not have time to delve into this topic.

- Do you think you could scan the underground facility? It can be made of metal, earth, wood, whatever. Can your vibrations reveal hidden spaces?

I didn't want to lie to the True Magician, so I answered directly.

- I think so sir. I have not yet come across materials that could completely drown out sound vibrations. As for the range, I'm not sure, it all depends on the environment.

- Excellent! The point is this. I found some place, there is a possibility that something extremely valuable will be found there, like an advanced meditation technique or some other legacy of the ancient Mages. Although the likelihood that you will be able to find a way to break through to the True Magician is low, however if such a possibility exists then only in such a place. Are you interested in participating in this expedition? - asked Harlow

Ha? The true Magician whom I see for the first time in my life tells me about some ancient burial place, it is not clear where, claiming that this is my chance. And if I ask him to tell me the details, he obviously will not let me go just like that.

You have to be a complete idiot to agree to such an adventure. Although if I had no other options at all, then I would still become this same idiot and agreed even if I was 100% sure that nothing good awaits me there. However, I already had an alternative. Let the alternative be lousy and the chance of success was illusory, but still higher than if I trust the first person I meet.

To be honest, I really wanted to spit in his face and send him to hell. But outwardly I made an extremely interested look and breathed a little faster. My eyes sparkled, as if in anticipation. Of course, I was not going to agree, I had to pretend that I really want to go, but ask for a little time to think. Allegedly in order to find out more information about Harlow or something else. Surely Harlow himself will come up with a good enough reason in his head.

In my personal experience since Outland, it was much easier and more convenient to always agree. Refusal could offend the interlocutor by creating unnecessary problems for me. Nobles of various stripes often came to my city Harin and I was invited many times to various banquets both in Harin and in other cities and capitals. With rare exceptions, I always put on a polite smile and sincerely promised to attend this or that event. Of course I forgot about it the very next moment. If someone once mentioned this to me, I was talking some nonsense about an experiment or something else.

- Can I think about it for a few days? - I asked, suppressing my excitement.

Harlow smiled kindly.

- Of course Sam, no problem. Here's my contact print, if you decide to let me know.

After bowing, I left Harlow's office with a sigh of relief and went to my room to make final preparations.

Over the years, a lot of things happened, I got quite a lot of new knowledge and combat experience. Got some nice amount of different materials and magic crystals. Although there was nothing to be particularly happy about.

I finally became convinced that there was something like an agreement between the Magicians. It was somewhat reminiscent of Outland, where it was forbidden to transfer the technique of the Knights to commoners. Apparently, there was a certain general list of knowledge that could be transferred to acolytes in massive numbers.

Of course, there was another option that there was no other useful knowledge for acolytes. For example, I already doubted that there is such a thing as a library for Mages of the 1st rank. Judging by their selfish nature, each did their own research and rarely shared it with other Mages.

I solidified my knowledge of spell making, but now I was 100% sure that I would not be able to create a rank 1 defensive spell on my own. The probability of finding such a spell for a sound element was also negligible.

However, I could use a simple spell like my sonic blast as my 1st tier spell. And all because this spell was ridiculously primitive and did not require the construction of any complex models.

I never heard about the Mages who used an attack spell when breaking through to the True Mage. But apparently I just had no choice but to go that route.

For the same reason, I stopped wasting my limited time trying to create other sonic element spells, and focused on improving the effects of sonic blast while trying not to complicate the essence of the spell.

For this purpose, I sought out rare sound element magic beasts and studied their ways of using sound magic, trying to make small innovations in my main spell. To be honest that didn`t helped me much so far.

I was able to collect Mortal Tears. Some by exchange, others from looting corpses of acolytes. But the potion of Ascension, even theoretically, was nowhere to buy. At least i could not find the way to do it. The only way to get it is to conclude a contract with some organization. Previously I was sure that no one would enter into such a contract with me, but now there is an option. True, the option was dubious.

There was the Melrose family and its head was the True Mage Melrose. Calling it a family was exaggeration, since he was the only True Magician in this family now. It was rumored that all his relatives were used by him for experiments and died a terrible death.

Over the past 60 years, he has killed about a thousand rank 3 acolytes on the verge of a breakthrough, and even a couple of True Magicians who somehow participated in his experiments. The funny thing is that most came to him themselves, and even funnier that now I was one of those who thought about becoming his next victim.

Apparently, he once discovered the research of an ancient magician for saving and transferring the soul, and since then he has not calmed down trying to succeed in his experiments.

The fact is that True Magician could live for about 200 years, but if he manages to change the body, then this period can be significantly increased. The soul theoretically could live 400-500 years.

It’s just that despite it was believed that True Magicians really had a full-fledged soul, but in reality it was impossible for the soul to leave its body and capture another. Forming a spiritual body was also only a dream for low-level Mages. At least no one in the Southern Continent seems to have achieved such a result yet. Thus the soul inevitably died along with the body.

The legacy that the old man found allowed to delay the destruction of the soul after the death of the body, and there were cases when the soul of a rank 3 acolyte successfully turned into the soul of a True Mage. He himself enthusiastically spread this information, enticing more Mages to try their luck. Magicians who had very little time to live had nothing to lose, and many agreed to an adventure.

Of course, the second stage of the process, namely the transfer of the soul to another body or vessel, always ended in failure.

The old man did not have much time left to live, so he increasingly called for volunteers, hoping to achieve success before his death. The conditions became more and more attractive and there was even a chance that this Mage would have an extra Ascension potion ready.

Obviously, this potion was not as rare as it might seem, it was just that its distribution was fictitiously limited. Otherwise, it's hard to believe that thousands of elderly acolytes came to him with their own potions. Apparently Melrose had connections with the central part of the Southern Continent. Most likely, all organizations of the Orion coalition had similar connections.

However, over the years I have found a lot of evidence from various sources confirming that Melrose's experiment is real. From time to time, he specially brought witnesses to observe his experiments process so that the news about his experiments dispersed and more people wanted to participate.

At least even this seemingly ghostly option was much better than taking the word of some cretin whom I met for the first time in my life.

Unfortunately, this was the only real clue to becoming a True Mage that I found of so far.

Although I tried to go to the anomalous zones, I did not find much useful for myself. The main prize for the days of wandering and hunting for acolytes was the Moon Nut, thanks to which my mental energy made a serious leap forward.

But I found a lot of problems for myself. It's a miracle that I am still alive. My face was disfigured, and instead of a leg there was a local prosthesis. Considering that I had already lost my arm before, I could now be called a demi-human.

The good news was that I finally mastered all the knowledge in the library. Of course, I just got acquainted with most of it, and focused on those things that interested me the most.

In particular, it turned out that Francis's book was even more valuable than I thought, since many of the runes from it simply did not exist in the library and I had not yet seen their use anywhere else.

Some of the overlays, transfer, stabilization, and many others were quite unique, which allowed me to consider myself quite experienced in matters of magical traps and formations by local standards. There were runes and formations that made my heart beat faster, like the magic resistance rune.

Unfortunately they were too difficult for an acolyte, although my mental energy was quite pure thanks to advanced meditation techniques, however, before becoming a True Magician, I still won't be able to create such runes.

I also thoroughly studied the issue of the creation and method of work of golems. They were also a kind of magical traps. The difference was that when activated, they could not only be controlled by magicians from a distance, but there were even ways to program them to do certain actions.

It is a pity that the teleportation formations have so far remained an unsolvable task for me.

In any case, I did not have much time to live. I had no idea about how much time exactly I got left but most likely less than 10 years. Probably I will just die but If a miracle happens and I stay alive after the experiment, then Melrose will surely try to use me as a test subject. I still have to find the way to prevent such a scenario.