Now that he had fulfilled one of the conditions to become a true Rank 1 mage, Lucas was ecstatic. But he was also scared of what just happened, giving a strange feeling.
'All we need now is a lot of magic power, we just don't have any clue on where to find that.'
'As long as we're shackled down to the baron we need to stay quiet and hidden'
'You know that's practically impossible, we'll have to work with the baron's son in the future. It's the third most important person on the estate, we will be noticed.'
'There's still a difference between being noticed and attracting attention.'
'I know, but before we talk about the future, we need to solve the problem ahead of us. we acknowledged the bat, so guess what?'
'We'll have to kill it, I know, don't worry, we got this.'
'Wha-how?'
'Have you forgotten, the bat's strongest power is its hide and runes, those are now useless.'
As long as the bat was asleep Lucas had a chance, but when he glanced back at the bat it was feasting on the dead bodies. Looking at the trail left behind, it looked like it had already eaten three corpses.
'How long were we stuck in that trance?'
'I don't know, I was going to say at most a few minutes, but that doesn't seem to be the case.'
In reality Lucas had been standing for a few hours, the cramp in his legs only got obvious now. The bat seemed to enjoy feasting on the flesh of its prey, giving off a strange sound every now and then. Lucas didn't take any initiative, he knew that the primary attack of the bat was useless, but then how did it kill so many other monsters?
Letting it do its thing, his observer stayed quiet, even putting up a darkness spell to further hide himself. Once the monster was done with its buffet, it went back to the ceiling to sleep.
'Is it in recovery?'
The bestiary he got from Venion didn't talk in great detail about any kind of monster, so Lucas could only come up with vague conjectures. The glow of the runes seemed stronger than before, giving him a single clue, but that was where it ended.
'At least the runes don't affect us, oh, I got an idea, should we test that out?'
Lucas was left alone in the mansion to train as much as he could. This gave him time to come up with a lot of ideas on how to escape, but he needed to be sure before doing anything. Taking a single risk with this plan could screw his entire life up, so everything needed to be tested.
Lucas crept toward the corpses with something in his hands.
Some time later
Exiting the cave he felt like the suppression of the contract was lifted, he had succeeded in his task, so he just needed to go back to the mansion. The contract wouldn't allow him to enter the cave again.
Lucas was grinning about his successful experiment in the cave before remembering Liam. Liam was the only good friend he had in that estate, yet he was loyal to the baron. He was upset when he learned of the experiments but couldn't do anything about it for obvious reasons.
'At least he's not under any kind of contract, he can just abandon them with me.'
'You know that we can't take him with us, it would slow us down in a myriad of ways. Liam is an official knight, people in this region would recognize him. We don't have an identity as long as we're alone, the moment we're with him, everything will break down the moment we enter a town.'
On his walk back he inspected his mental sphere, when he was in his apathetic state he had already learned a few things. The sphere was empty with runes of light and darkness engraved in the walls. 'If we carve the runes of the other elements in here, will we never forget those as well?'
'You know we shouldn't get reckless with something that represents our mind'
'Asking Venion could lead to trouble, so that's off the table'
Complaining about his situation didn't improve it one bit, but it at least made him relieve some of his stress. He had his notepad in his hand, he brought this with him to jot down everything he learned. But now that he was going back to the mansion, it felt dangerous to bring it with him. 'Should we hide it?'
'There's not a hundred percent chance that we'll come back here, so it could leave an unnecessary trail or serve as evidence.'
'Well, it would be difficult to remember everything in it after a week or so.'
'Wait, let's read it again, we have a mind sphere now, shouldn't that improve our something in our mind?'
Reading his notes again showed the benefit of having a mental sphere, he could order and structure all the information immediately and classify it somewhere in his mental library. Now that the knowledge was placed inside the sphere, it was stuck there forever. He wouldn't ever forget the knowledge stored in his sphere, just like the runes that were engraved. 'Good, this will help us a lot in the future, now, what do we do with the notebook?'
'Burn it, not a single page should be left in tact.'
When he arrived back at the mansion he took a hard initiative to explain what happened to the baron. Any question should be avoided for it could leak part of his plan. "There were multiple sorts of monsters there, Steel Spiders as we presumed, but also a Giant Centipede and a strange mole-type species. All these wounds you see come from the combat against them, I have to excuse my dirty clothes, my Lord, their blood has stained your gift. I truly wish to apologize for that. But all monsters have been eradicated sir, the mining business can resume."
Trying to distract the baron with his income was the best way to avoid any skeptical questions. "All-in-all, the mine is safe again, right?"
"That's rights my Lord, your order was to eliminate every monster in the cave, their bodies have been left behind for you sir. Please use them as you wish."
"Fantastic, good job Lucas. Do you think that monsters bodies will go for a lot?"
"Absolutely, the bodies of monsters are stronger and harder than normal steel, the wound here is from the Steel Spider's leg which can cut through steel without any problem. Selling them for a hefty price shouldn't be a problem sir."
"Oh how perfect, I'll ask Venion to heal you up, you have done well Lucas. I would love to reward you, but something came up. You see, my son wants to go explore and fight against monsters like you have. You will follow him as a loyal servant and make sure that he comes back unscathed, okay?"
"Yes, my lord, I will protect him with my life."
Nodding the baron informed Lucas that the first expedition for one of the bigger mines occupied by monsters would take place in a few weeks. He didn't get any extra tasks in the meantime.
'He truly is as stupid as Venion said. To not even question why I didn't heal myself during my return, what a fool.'
Lucas had hurt himself to distract the baron even further and to let him gain sympathy for Lucas, but that didn't completely work. The baron didn't ask any question that could bring him in danger, but planting a seed of sympathy didn't work.
'He is too close-minded and still believes in the ranking system, so having him care for us was impossible to begin with.'
'At least we tried it, luckily, not many of our plans center around his feelings about us.'
With all of this free time, Lucas did what he always wanted to do. He went to the library of the mansion, most members of nobility had a library in their home, not that many actually went to read.
Entering the library he noticed how silent it was, there wasn't a soul in sight. The library wasn't that big, even the word 'library' was clearly an overstatement. It was an almost empty room with shelves on the outsides with a desk in the middle. There were quite a lot of shelves with at least hundreds of books in total. Closing in on the closest shelves he found a lot of books covered in dust, 'If you have all of these books at least take care of them.'
'You and I both know that if the baron were to actually read all these, we would be in a lot more trouble.'
A bit annoyed about the manners of the master of the mansion he took a few books that looked interesting and searched for a little reading table. Placing the books on the table created a storm of dust "Cough, cough"
'We should clean this place up before reading.', shaking his head in disappointment he started to clean the table and books. Eventually, he got bored and stopped midway through his work to start reading. The books had subjects about mathematics, languages, geography, biology, and many more, but they all interested him. Reading them wasn't hard, understanding was something entirely different. He was still young, but with a mental sphere, everything seemed to fit perfectly, like there wasn't even a gap in knowledge between him and a normal fully grown adult.
One week later
Liam was inspecting the training of the soldiers, since the expedition to clear one of the bigger mines was approaching the baron wanted to send his soldiers with his son for protection. He already had Lucas, but if he were to die to protect Robert, he would be left alone.
The men weren't the greatest soldiers, or the fittest, most had only gotten basic training. They were practicing with steel swords, but their captain didn't look too pleased, 'Why are they all inferior to a literal child? He isn't even an adult and beat them all at once, a simple destabilisation of the ground and they all become sitting ducks, how disappointing.'
"C'mon men, drop your swords and start running, 10 laps, when you're done, you'll do another 10 push-ups. GO! GO! GO!"
"What? Captain, please, we're tired, we've already been training for an hour, let us rest for a moment!". "You've got to be kidding me, are you all lazy entitled pigs or something, that child did double your training daily, yet you're crying that you're exhausted! Do you want to go clear out those mines now?! I don't mind sending you to your grave if you want to!"
The soldiers were a bit surprised by the sudden outburst of their superior, but even more when they heard what Lucas did. Feeling a bit ashamed they apologized and started to run. They remembered what happened when Lucas came back to beat them all in one on one. Taking revenge for what they did to him felt a lot more painful than they would've imagined. It felt like Lucas had been playing with their lives for fun. 'He must've been born from a devil, there's no other way'
The child in question was without a doubt Lucas, he was back in the library with a relaxing smile reading a book. It became his second home, if he wasn't training his muscles or magic he was reading. Since he had such a wide range of books he was exposed to a wider world. He learned a ton about the world through simple books With his mind sphere he could process information a lot faster than any human. His reading speed was enhanced and most of the knowledge from the books stuck with him. The books that interested him the most were books about biology and economics. But he made sure to read a lot of different books to expand his view on the world.
Through the books, Lucas learned a lot about different subjects, making him knowledgable about most things. Amassing knowledge felt like the most obvious thing to do in his situation, but there is an astronomical difference between knowing you need to learn and actually absorbing that information into coherent thoughts. Still, Lucas forged his way through most of the library, out of need for survival but also curiosity.
So far he avoided Venion to make sure he didn't find out what happened to his contract and his mind sphere. Luckily the library was a room that was barely used. Robert had his own teachers that taught him about etiquette and other things that were definitely in the books that were stored in the library. But the teachers brought their own books because they were more accurate.
Lucas was always critical from when he was a child, so critical thinking wasn't that difficult to achieve, cynicism was born during all the events throughout his life. These two combined made him see through some of the fronts that were painted in the books. Especially the religious books and scriptures that were present.
Another 2 weeks pass