The basement of the residence was made of solid rock and was quite spacious. But it had recently been remodeled and there were several runes and inscriptions carved on both the walls and floor of the room.
All of these runes and patterns were carved in such a way as to form a large circular spell formation. Marcus placed some Rehi crystals at six different points in the formation and walked to the center of the formation.
'Alright, attempted activation of necrotic suppression array number one hundred and I don't know how many times I did this... Okay, what was it like?' Before continuing, Marcus went over the words of the incantation one last time, to avoid making any mistakes that would ruin the array activation. 'Sacrad necrot balsur harat del yarad!'
*Weng Weng*
The entire spell formation vibrated. At the six points of the formation, the Rehi crystals began to emerge a bright light that was permeating the runes and inscriptions at the ends of the room.
Slowly the light from the crystals spread from the ends of the formation toward the runes in the center. A white light emerged from the center runes and immediately enveloped Marcus' skeletal body as a layer of white energy.
A few minutes later, the light emanating from the runes dimmed and the blanket of white energy merged with Marcus' body. Finally, the necrotic suppression array was extinguished as if nothing had happened.
'Will it have worked?.... Detect corruption'.
Marcus activated the detect spell. He looked around and then looked at his skeletal arm which looked the same as before.
'No necrotic energy! Haha...it worked!'
After his arrival in the port city of Neima, Marcus had made a mistake and now everyone knew that he was capable of using magic, becoming a focus of attention. However, the real problem occurred at night.
By day, Marcus' powers and necrotic energy were suppressed by the sun's energy, making him look like a simple wizard from the 1st Rehi realm. But by night, Marcus' magical energy would become more intense, along with the necrotic energy radiating from his body.
If anyone noticed this, Marcus would be discovered and would have no choice but to flee the city. To avoid this, he had been searching for a way to suppress the necrotic energy emanating from his body.
Fortunately, in the book of necromancy that belonged to Bairus, there were many incantations on how to manipulate, purify and suppress necrotic energy.
Unfortunately for Bairus, the necrotic energy that had caused the fall of the Guerrmanic Empire was too dense, so these low-level spells had been useless to him. But they served Marcus' purposes.
After searching for a while, Marcus had found a spell array that could block necrotic energy from his body for several weeks. The only problem was that to activate the array required an amount of energy equivalent to that of a wizard of the 5th Rehi realm, which was equivalent to ten wizards of the 3rd realm.
Marcus was a wizard of the 3rd realm, so he could never have activated the suppression array on his own. Fortunately, he had a large amount of Rehi crystals that he had obtained after three months of survival in the jungle.
Shortly after moving to the noble district, Marcus had searched the library for information about Rehi crystals such as their properties, their value, and how to use them.
It turned out that these crystals were the basis of magical civilization, as they could contain and store magical energy. They were basically rechargeable magical batteries.
Marcus spent day and night carving and fixing the suppression array to use the energy from the crystals and finally, after a series of failures and using many Rehi crystals, the array had worked.
Now even if it was at night no one would notice that Marcus' body was radiating necrotic energy and as a side effect, his magical energy fluctuations were reduced to those of a wizard of the 2nd Rehi realm. The only way he could be discovered was if he used his necromancy spells.
Once he confirmed that everything was in order, Marcus collected the empty Rehi crystals, put all his things in order, and left the basement, locking the door behind him.
****
Marcus closed the front door of the mansion and walked through the huge garden as he made his way to the barred entrance of the residence.
He was wearing a long black hooded robe that had some white striped patterns, leather boots, and gloves, a cloak, and was wearing his black enchanted mask without holes.
That night two of the three moons were full so the front garden was bathed in a whitish silver light, giving it a truly beautiful aspect.
In front of the mansion's barred entrance, there was a luxurious carriage pulled by two large black horses. The carriage was escorted by a group of six armed horsemen.
When the group of riders saw Marcus exit they bowed and the one who appeared to be the leader of the group approached to greet him.
"Good evening Lord Edevane. My name is Cristian Viel and I will be your escort tonight. If you need anything you can ask my men and they will do it."
================================
Name: Cristian Viel
Race: Human
Profession: Warrior apprentice. (Chief of escort)
Rank: 1
Level: 15
================================
HP: 480/480
MP: 10/10
Strength: 46 Stamina: 58
Defense: 5o(+30) Intelligence: 1
Vitality: 48 Wisdom: 20
Agility: 40(-13)
================================
Skills:
{[Swordsmanship lv:2][Horsemanship lv:3]
[Melee combat lv:2]
[Overcoming physical limits lv:1]}
================================
'Hmm... Although he is only slightly stronger than me when I was a Magic Skeleton Soldier, he is still stronger than an average human.'
After activating the suppression array, Marcus had spent most of the week seemingly wandering around the port city of Neima, but in reality, he had been analyzing the power level of the humans in this world.
After a week, Marcus had come to a few conclusions.
The first thing he noticed was that, unlike monsters who were classified according to their species, humans had professions that changed as their level increased. These professions seemed to be related to each person's skills and stats.
From level 1 to 9, humans were classified as unemployed or unemployable and from level 10 to 24 they were apprenticed to a profession. After level 25 an official profession was acquired.
Although after a while, Marcus realized that these Professions were just a method of classification by the system and were of no use. But what was important was the difference between ranks and levels.
On the one hand, rank represented the total combat ability of an individual, while level represents the total value of that individual's stats. The higher a person's stats, the higher his or her level.
This theory also explained why Marcus received stat points every time he leveled up or why these points increased every few levels.
Anyway, with this Marcus was able to determine the standard average strength of a person.
A normal adult human-like a farmer or a craftsman had an average level of between 5-6 and, each of their physical stats would be around 13-15 points.
But all of Cristian's physical stats averaged 50! This meant that his strength, stamina, speed, and resilience were more than triple that of a normal human. As for why this was so, Marcus attributed it to the Rehi.
Somehow, just as wizards or aura users meditated to channel ambient energy and strengthen themselves if a normal person undertook some kind of mental or physical training that would force them to overcome their limitations, their body would end up absorbing a slight amount of Rehi.
Over time, the Rehi would gradually modify the individual's body, endowing him with abilities that would normally be considered superhuman, but only to a certain extent.
'Even if he's not a wizard or aura warrior, with those stats he could still defeat a hundred people without breaking a sweat. If he was on earth this guy would have been some kind of supersoldier.'
"Is everything alright Lord Edevane?" Seeing that Marcus had been silent for quite some time, Cristian became a bit alarmed. After all, wizards were very strange people and one never knew how to react.
"What?... Ah! Sorry, I was distracted in my thoughts. We'll go straight to the auction house." Marcus replied with a telepathic message.
"As you command."
Marcus climbed into the carriage, which was even more luxurious inside and when everything was ready, he and the group of six riders left the entrance of the mansion.
As the carriage drove through the cobblestone streets, Marcus noticed that there were many more carriages on the streets of the noble district than usual. Some were more luxurious than others and there were even some that had wizards as escorts.
Every four months, the T.M.S Company branch would hold an auction in which they presented all sorts of enchanted objects, valuable relics, and works of art.
Although the auction was supposedly a few weeks away, due to the large number of relics Marcus had brought, the T.M.S Company had decided to move up the date to tonight.
This sudden decision had drawn a lot of public attention. So almost all of the city's political and business elite, as well as representatives of various powerful clans and organizations, would be attending the auction.
Marcus had originally not planned to attend the event, as his presence would surely attract attention. But due to certain circumstances, he had ended up participating in the auction.
****
...
{Wisdom has increased by 2 points}
...
'Humu. A bit of a cliché story, but very interesting! So that's why almost the entire continent is a jungle.' thought Marcus as he put the book away in his [inventory].
Since the trip to the branch would take a few minutes, Marcus decided to make the most of the time and had started reading.
The name of the book was [The Rise of Rhaiel the Great]. It told the story of an important event that had occurred on the continent of Austra, where he was currently located.
According to the book, in the year 23,111 of the fourth age, a horde of monsters was ravaging the continent and decimating the population to the point of nearly destroying all the settlements and cities on the continent.
Just when all seemed lost, a powerful sorcerer from the 11th kingdom named Rhaiel had arrived on the continent. Making use of his magic Rhaiel exterminated all the horde monsters and saved the continent.
After that Rhaiel had ascended to the heavens becoming the god of the forest. But the story did not end there.
Due to the powerful spells, Rhaiel used, the entire continent of Austra became tainted with arboreal magical power, causing the plants to grow at a terrifying rate. As a result, in less than 100 years about 85% of the continent was covered by a dense tropical forest.
Moreover, after the battle, most of the monsters had disappeared from the continent and only a few weak creatures remained that possessed a great capacity for adaptability, such as insects, amphibians, and reptiles.
Today, almost 150,000 years later, thanks to the resource-rich ecosystem, these creatures had mutated and developed to become the rulers of the jungle. But despite all this, the people did not hate Rhaiel and on the contrary, he was one of the most worshipped gods of the entire Austra continent.
After all, most of the high-ranking monsters tended to stay in the central areas, so they hardly ever attacked human settlements. Which made the Austra continent relatively safer than the other continents of Genaerrsis.
In addition, thanks to the jungle environment, the continent was full of resources that could not be found anywhere else in the world so it represented a great source of economic income for many kingdoms and renowned merchant companies.
All these factors made the quality of life on the continent of Austra one of the highest in the world.
'But to change the ecosystem of an entire continent... What kind of monsters were the wizards of the fourth age?!'
At that moment, while Marcus was still deep in thought, the carriage came to an abrupt halt. Outside, it could be heard that there was a crowd of people gathered.
"My lord Edevane, we have arrived!"
'Sigh...I seriously hate these formal events. Okay, Marcus, you can do it!'
A moment later, the door opened and Marcus stepped down from the carriage.
****
The auction house of the T.M.S Company was packed with people, all belonging to the higher social classes of the city and there were even some representatives of powerful forces from other countries and organizations.
At the entrance of the marble building, there was a long red carpet that was guarded by a dozen armed guards with enchanted equipment on both sides of it. In addition, a few Zero Realm wizards were guarding the branch entrance.
The sub-sector manager, Winston Folghs stood at the front door of the branch as he greeted all the people walking along the entrance carpet. But he didn't seem to be very interested in the common nobles.
"Good evening, manager Winston! Things seem to be very lively tonight. "Hearing this voice, Winston snapped out of his thoughts.