Translator: Exodus Tales Editor: Exodus Tales
Abel placed the long grey robe over his head and left the tower. Along the way, he ignored Finkle, the fatty who said hello to him last time. It was already late, Abel was afraid if he stayed and talked to Finkle, he would’ve never reached house no. 16 in time.
Walking down the mountain road, Abel felt a sense of malice again. This time he ignored it. He thought he could find out later on.
“Master, I need to report something to you!” Ken, dressed in an all-black steward suit, saluted Abel as he entered.
“What is it? Abel asked.
“The eldest prince, Julien George, will be ascending the throne in 3 days, and he invited you to his accession ceremony.”
“Make an excuse for me, just say I am in a retreat researching and I can’t attend!” Abel couldn’t tell anyone about his study in the magic tower. Only the people that were close to him knew about it.
Abel hid his presence in the tower because he wanted to study as a wizard follower without being disturbed. If anyone knew he was in the tower, those who wished to obtain magical weapons would’ve disturbed his meditative lifestyle.
With his past incidents with the royal family, Abel didn’t want to bother with such events. It was none of his business who became the king anyway. Instead of attending those events, he could just read more books in the meantime.
“Master, your outstanding military service has been recognized by the army, and the eldest prince Julien has approved you in becoming a Lord. From now on, I will address you as the Lord of Abel.” Ken’s voice sounded overly emotional. It was considered to be a very high-status position to be a steward of a coat of arm Lord and a coat of arm baron. Furthermore, with Abel being a Lord at such a young age, his future ahead was bright.
“What about Uncle Marshall?” Abel said with a flat face. He didn’t seem to care about these titles. An increase in status could only make ordinary people respect him more, but to Abel, genuine improvement meant improving his abilities.
“The Lord of Marshall didn’t have enough outstanding military service to reach his promotion, so he didn’t get promoted,” Ken explained.
“How did that happen? Aren’t I supposed to share the outstanding military service with uncle Marshall?” Abel had left the rest of the battle to Lord Marshall, and the three knights who had helped him complete the battle. This made Abel extremely confused about what was going on.
“The Lord of Marshall gave you the majority of the outstanding military service to you. He said it was the only way to ensure that one of the two was promoted.”
“Uncle Marshall!” Abel murmured emotionally, all his life, The Lord of Marshall had cared most about these fancy titles. Every time he was promoted to a higher title, he was always thrilled, but he gave his chance of attaining a higher title to him this time.
“Also, the eldest prince, Julien George invited you to the noble arbitral tribunal to collect your compensation at your convenience,” Ken added.
“Compensation? Why?” Abel asked curiously.
“Because prince Middleton George ordered the attack on you, these payments were intended to get you to give up pursuing prince Middleton George, who I’ve heard was pressured by a powerful figure,” Ken said hesitantly. He didn’t want to say anything about this powerful figure’s supposed pressure, but he did, considering his master’s contacts and connections. It might have been better if he had given him a better understanding of the situation.
“Powerful figure, hmmm…” Abel then immediately thought of the ghostly head commander Hopkin. Maybe that’s what he meant by trying to harmonize the situation.
The truth in regards to the siege by the royal cavalry made Abel furious. He gave out a bitter laugh. If he wasn’t inside Bakong City, with Abel’s attitude, he would’ve already flown over Bakong city on White Cloud and dropped exploding big swords over the head of prince Middleton.
But now that head commander Hopkins had come forward, and since he too was a blacksmith Master, Abel decided to honor his reputation and let the matter go. However, Abel was fully aware that the matter was not over. He just didn’t want to pursue it for now. He would always remember what happened. When he had the chance, he would teach prince Middleton George an unforgettable lesson.
“There were rumors that prince Middleton George was exiled to the city of Murray. Apparently, he was granted a 100-mile fief, and his title was stripped off,” Ken said. However, Ken used the word “Rumour” as though he wasn’t certain if it was true or not.
But Abel felt that it was probably true because there is no way the royal family would not make the details of prince Middleton George’s punishment public. Therefore, the only for Abel to know about it was to let this steward who had no source of information in Bakong city to know about it.
A royal prince has granted a fiefdom the size of a Knight’s estate to live the rest of his life in, without a title. This was probably the smallest gift the Duchy had given a prince.
Abel had heard about Murray city before. It was a city that lies between the intersection of the Duchy Of Carmel and Duchy of Thunder. There were a lot of unlawful things being done in Duchy of Thunder. The situation was very tense there. The other seven princes must have had a lot of hatred towards prince Middleton majesty, to send him there.
But prince Middleton George didn’t deserve any pity. Abel knew the ins and outs of the seven princes. Just dealing with the worgens was already enough to put him onto a death trial.
Abel had no idea how much gold they demanded from prince Middleton, but the presence of head commander Hopkins meant that it would be large. Abel’s training would require a lot of funds. Therefore, these unknown and out of a sudden wealth would be very important to a person with a great hidden identity like Abel.
“I will take care of the compensation these two days, and when I arranged the time, I will inform you to pick me up.” As Abel reached out his hands, Black Wind was urgently moving around him.
After helping Black Wind to do the mount enhancing spell, Abel went back to the magic tower. He tried to find the Novice Wizard Sam, but he quickly realized that Mr. Sam was still outside. This meant that Abel’s had a long night ahead of him. While all of the students of wizardry outside the tower admired Abel, he had to help Sam to do all of the chores, tidying the experimental items, and sometimes even have to take care of things that were messy. When Abel was finally finished, it was his own practice time.
However, the good news was that Sam had taken good care of Abel. He rarely asked him to do messy things. All he had to do was to do simple chores with fixed schedules and to clean up the laboratory at the end of Sam’s experiment.
As far as Abel knew, the three official wizards on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors were all stuck on level five apprentice wizards, and they were also much older than Sam too. In the magic tower, Sam seemed to have the highest chance of becoming a rank six novice wizard.
This was why Sam did little experiments. He spent the majority of his time practicing, in order to break through early and become a formal wizard.
It had been three days since Abel had arrived in the magic tower. Ever since he came here, he had never seen the other three disciples. They seemed to spend most of their time in the laboratory to discover a method to gather a large number of resources. For them, becoming a wizard was already out of the question. This meant that it made their followers extremely busy as they were required to purchase many expensive medicines for their wizard’s research, so Abel was never able to interact with them.
Abel went to the first floor to get his dinner. The dinner was delivered to a dedicated collection pathway in the magic tower. The spirit of the tower would automatically receive the food. After it had examined its quality, it would deliver it to the dining hall. Every member of the magic tower could freely get their food here, but of course, most of the time, the Wizard followers would bring the food to the official wizard disciples
The food today was pretty decent: white bread with honey, a little juice from honey fruit, smoked fish, and a few slices of oil muffin for dessert.
Although these foods weren’t anything special, they were already far beyond the standard of living of ordinary nobles. The white bread was special because of the wheat that was used, the unique wheat’s production was very small, and only the completely shell-less wheat flour was able to make real white bread.
Candied fruit was a specialty fruit from Bakong City. They were only able to grow in hillsides that were 1000 meters high. With the preservation time being no more than one day, and in order for the people in the magic tower to drink the magic tower fruit, it required people to harvest these fruits the night before, then to juice them cleanly. Only then they were able to deliver it to the magic tower early in the morning. All these procedures were done to ensure that it stayed fresh within one day.
The ingredients of a few slices of pastry seemed to be deceptively simple: One portion of sugar, two portions of butter, and a portion of flour. However, they were a well-known extravagant as sugar was very expensive, butter made from the ordinary household were considered as not smooth enough with flour not being finely grounded. Hence all 3 were essentials as the highest quality of ingredients were required to make them.
