Taking a deep breath, I got up and went home.
My one-year-old son was noisy in the courtyard, and the maids looked after him, fearing that the little lord would get hurt.
- Dad! Dad! - chirped the little one when he saw me.
I hid my conflicting feelings in the back of my mind and smiled as I watched my son walk towards me. I gently picked him up and put him on my shoulders.
- Forward. - Kyle ordered.
I followed the order and we began to walk in the garden of our yard. Sometimes I staggered, pretending that it was hard for me, but Kyle only laughed and shouted in delight. He was a very active child.
Next year, the Magicians will visit this part of the continent again to recruit students. However, now my desires have faded into the background. Kyle has become a priority. It is my duty to educate and train him as much as possible until he is 12 years old. In 11 years, Kyle will go to a talent test, no matter the cost.
I didn't intend to delay until his 17th birthday, as 12-14 years old was the optimal period for development as a Magician, at least according to the information known to me. The delay could rob him of many of his prospects as a Mage.
I myself continued to train regularly as a Knight. But the sad news was that at first it was not known how many years it would take me to accumulate vital energy in order to have at least a chance to make a breakthrough.
There were a couple of hundred Knight Apprentices in the kingdom, but there were only three True Knights. It is obvious that it was not easy to reach the threshold.
But not so long ago, I learned that in order to become a True Knight, I would still need either the help of a Great Knight or the blood essence of a magical beast of the appropriate strength.
There were no Great Knights in our kingdom. Finding one is not easy, and persuading him to share his life energy is even more difficult. Let not by much, but it will shorten the duration of their already short life.
It seemed even harder to find magical creature. Not so long ago, I received information about the appearance of a magical creature not too far from my territory. Upon arrival, I was stunned.
Everywhere lay a bunch of human corpses, and they obviously killed each other fighting for the right to the carcass of the unfortunate magical beast.
It seemed that thousands of people and a bunch of Knights rushed in search of the unfortunate creature, naturally if it was found then it had no chance of survival.
In the end, I returned empty-handed and realized that this was a disastrous business, there were too few magical creatures on this part of the continent or so called Outland. People were too hungry to know that such a creature had appeared somewhere. Among other things, there were rumors that one day someone gained incredible power thanks to one of them. No wonder I never met them. Poor creatures.
Of course, judging by the well-known information, becoming a Knight Apprentice also required the blood essence of one of these beings, but I managed to do without it.
It was because of this feature of my breakthrough that I was able to ignite the life energy in my body to some extent, although this was detrimental to my longevity. But usually, before reaching the True Knight stage, life energy could not be manipulated at all.
Nevertheless, the likelihood that I could perform such a miracle again was, to put it mildly, negligible. My lifestyle gradually changed, now there were many other people who solved most of the problems for me.
In any case, it became obvious that traveling around this vast world in search of magical creatures or something special would be extremely counterproductive.
Therefore, from the very beginning, I paid attention to the guild pawnshop and from time to time visited it as well as small warehouse. In addition, I opened a separate pawnshop for the poor, where all sorts of incomprehensible nonsense was bought up for a penny.
The poor dragged there various plants, rags, rats, garbage, dust, and anything else. I personally instructed the worker and inspected the garbage, explaining to him what he should accept and what not. Although this pawnshop brought only losses, but it was small losses in the general scheme of things.
Sometimes Bertram and I visited the markets and he checked the goods with mental energy. And now that the guild is slowly starting to get back on its feet, I was going to open an auction house.
I continued to teach the already recruited children and recruited more and more new ones from other cities, of course, now trusted people were doing this for me.
Founded a branch of the mercenary guild to lighten the burden of protecting trade routes.
I persuaded the librarian Farez to become the deputy master of the guild and threw most of the work on him. Also lured Jayden away from Rent and made him the nominal leader of his gang. Tucker, after the death of Gray, became one of the teachers and mentors for a huge number of children and my future people.
There were other people whom I considered worthy of trust, and the list gradually grew.
Two more years have passed. I'm 26.
The Tarrister Guild began to gain momentum in earnest. More and more traders flocked to the city from nearby and even distant cities. Many people from all nearby cities and territories of the lords moved to Harin or brought their goods there.
The city could no longer accommodate so many people, so people began to actively settle in my territory, which was prepared for this in advance.
Gradually, another city began to appear outside the territory of the city of Harin.
Viscount Rashford was very pleased, as the city's power and population grew so did the profits, he even agreed to slightly reduce taxes in order to further increase the development of the city.
Even his father, the Earl of Rushford, became involved in the development of the guild.
Of course there were problems. The outflow of population from the territories of other lords, as well as the rapidly rising giant in the form of the Tarrister guild, could not help but upset many people.
Therefore, over the years I had to solve "problems" more than once by tritely eliminating the strongest gangs of trade routes, and then the people responsible for their formation.
Of course, the guild of mercenaries played the main role in which the wealthy merchants hired worthy escorts for themselves. Known groups of mercenaries began to appear that competed with each other.
The first, but not the last branch of the Tarrister guild opened in Rent. Quickly crushing the attempts of the local lord to create worthy competition.
On the one hand, Lord of Rent made a lot of profit from my guild in his territory. And on the other hand, he simply could not suppress its development, because for this he would have to fight not with me, but with crowds of mercenaries, merchants, artisans and many others, which threatened him with a banal uprising.
In truth, even I already doubted that I could destroy the guild if I wanted to, there were too many interested parties.
However, Kyle is already three years old, so from now on I decided to spend more time with him and soon start active training. Especially since with the development of the guild, I had more and more ill-wishers, so I did not want to lose sight of Kyle without good reasons.
At one of the auctions, I purchased the blood essence of a magical beast to advance to the Knight's Apprentice for my son.
I even managed to secretly obtain an advanced Knight technique. Having checked it in practice, I was convinced that it is more effective than mine. But the main advantage of this technique was the detailed instructions on how to manipulate life energy after becoming a True Knight.
I also got some medicines to increase the rate of progress and improve the physique of my son, and even something for myself.
Through the guild, I started spreading the word that I am looking for help in becoming a True Knight and I am ready to offer 5 thousand gold coins to the Great Knight or whoever has the means to help me.
Another 4 years later. I'm 30.
By this point, the city in my territory had grown larger than the original Harin. Obviously, the people of the new city considered me their lord.
Word of the Tarrister Guild has already spread far beyond the county.
Most of the key people in the guild were orphans which mostly was pretty loyal.
However, the Earl of Rushford was still the king of that county. I could ignore the other lords, but I couldn't afford to quarrel with his son Viscount Rashford. Although I could already capture Harin without any problems, but the whole county would rebel against me.
Therefore, I tried with all my might to maintain the status quo with the Viscount, trying to take steps to meet him. I even hinted to him that I was going to sell my share in the guild for magic crystals in the future.
Fortunately, Viscount Rashford was a reasonable enough man and did not want to start a war if the benefits did not significantly outweigh the disadvantages.
However soon Duke Murphy, the ruler of this area, decided to visit city so our differences with Rashford came to naught. All the important members of the guild, like Rashford and myself, greeted the Duke humbly and were not weakly nervous.
Fortunately, during the conversation, it turned out that Duke Murphy did not come to create problems for us, but rather was very interested in the development of the guild. Of course, he offered his generous support for a reason, reluctantly, the viscount and I had to give a large part of the influence and profit of the guild into the hands of the Duke.
Nevertheless, I was personally pleased with how the negotiations went. Although my income and control over the guild has drastically decreased, but at the same time, with the support of the king of this area, the guild will develop even faster. Over time, my smaller piece of the larger pie will still bring even more value.
Moreover, now we were all connected with each other, which means that if problems arise, the Duke will not stand aside. And our relationship with Rashford has become less tense.
My only real legacy was my son, in five years I was going to send him to the Mage's world anyway.
The guild has always been only a means to reach my goals, but never was a goal itself. I was not going to marry again or have children, which means that I had no one to leave a legacy in the mortal world. It makes no sense to cling to the guild by any means, the more people will be at its feeder the better.
Over the years, I have constantly taken Bertram with me to the warehouses of various pawnshops to check various junk with his mental energy. In such a simple way, we managed to find a couple of interesting materials. Although he could not identify everything, but I had already begun to collect all possible information related to magic a long time ago.
Naturally, I didn't plan to give Kyle the things I found in the future, if among them there is something valuable enough, he can simply be killed for them even before becoming a Mage. I collected these things for myself, in the hope of finding something that will help me in the future.
Over the years, my relationship with Bertram became quite friendly. Other than using him as a walking scanner, I didn't make any special demands on him. At the same time, I shared with him the information I found about magic. Considering how far my influence extended, I collected a lot of information, so I gradually tried to fill in the gaps.