Ancient Protector

A little over ten days after the assassination attempt concluded, William's two sons received the news and returned from their warrior teacher's home today. William's entire family had now moved into Dark Night Manor, officially becoming a part of the Merlin Family.

"My Lord Mage!"

Dressed in clean warrior attire, the two youths, led by William, formally paid their respects to their liege, Donald.

"My Lord, this is Eric, this is Eli, and this is my youngest son, though he's too young to have a name yet!"

Donald looked at the two youths before him and nodded with a satisfied smile, saying:

"Good, you have both worked hard!"

He then turned his gaze to the toddler. Unlike his parents and brothers, who were reserved, the innocent and naive child showed little fear. Instead, he looked at Donald, the master, with great interest through his big, dark eyes.

Donald, who had always loved children in his past life, couldn't help but say:

"Your youngest son is very clever too!"

"Thank you for your praise, my Lord. Children are still young and ignorant!"

"Since he doesn't have a name yet, how about I give him one?"

William and his wife immediately bowed gratefully, saying, "Thank you for bestowing a name, my Lord!"

Donald thought for a moment and said:

"Let's call him Clark. It's the name of a legendary hero. As a vassal of my Merlin family, he must also have a surname. From today onwards, your family will take Kent as your surname, which is also that hero's surname!"

Although Donald appeared solemn on the surface, he secretly chuckled inwardly, "Clark Kent! Heh! What a nice name!"

William and his wife trembled with excitement upon hearing Donald's words. Having been granted a name and surname by a noble mage of higher standing, their family had essentially transcended the realm of ordinary commoners. Moreover, such a surname carried legitimacy. Ordinary commoners who dared to use a surname privately would be arrested and imprisoned for impersonating noble descendants.

Seeing the excited and grateful expressions of William's family, Donald waved his hand to the steward behind him. Code immediately ordered several servants to bring forward the prepared items.

Donald took a longsword and raised its tip forward.

To become a Knight Attendant of a noble, instantly gaining quasi-noble status, was a more promising career than becoming a common warrior. William's two sons, aged fifteen and twelve, were so excited upon hearing the news that they couldn't sleep for two consecutive nights. They were sensible enough to know how to make the right choice.

At that moment, the two youths knelt on one knee with knightly etiquette. Donald lightly placed his sword on each of their shoulders, saying:

"Do you swear to uphold the will of the Merlin Family's glorious knights, to become my Knight Attendants, Donald Merlin, to follow my footsteps for life, and to protect the glory of Merlin?"

"I, Eric Kent, hereby swear loyalty to Knight Donald Merlin, and by the honor of a knight, I shall never betray!"

"I, Eli Kent, hereby swear..."

William and his wife watched, tears of joy streaming down their faces, their gratitude towards Donald reaching its peak.

The status of a noble knight's attendant, in essence, transcended the commoner or servant class, making them akin to half-vassals. As a squire, if the liege had no heir, his Knight Attendant had the right to inherit his noble title, estate, and territory. This illustrates the extraordinary status of a Knight Attendant.

Before coming of age, the children of some great noble families were often sent by their elders to the side of other great nobles or to the royal court to serve as attendants, learn noble etiquette, and receive knightly training and cultural education. Nobles of the middle and lower strata also continued this fine tradition. This is also one of the reasons why the noble class could maintain its lineage and produce many elites in each generation.

After the oath, Donald had servants bring forward the prepared equipment and warhorses, which he personally handed over to the two young attendants.

"You are now my official Knight Attendants. This is a gift from me as your liege!"

Although Donald could not provide any training for his two Knight Attendants at the moment, it was easy for him to equip them with a set of Knight Attendant gear and warhorses. After receiving their equipment, the two youngsters, besides receiving some temporary noble education from the steward, continued their practice according to their original warrior training. The combat skills of warriors and knights below horseback were still transferable.

"Thank you, my Lord!"

The two youngsters joyfully accepted Donald's gifts. The two sets of equipment, ranging from noble hunting attire and knightly formal wear to half-plate armor, cost at least a hundred Gold Sols to prepare, not to mention the two valuable purebred warhorses.

The reason Donald valued these two youths so highly was twofold. Firstly, he considered their father's competence. His initial intention in taking these two attendants was to win over William. A commoner like William, who could interact with many mages and was sharp-witted, was extremely rare. Furthermore, he was upright and honest, making his loyalty relatively assured.

Secondly, after meeting William's two sons, Donald was quite satisfied with their situation. Even if these two youths' talents were not top-tier, they were still quite good. Otherwise, they wouldn't have reached the strength of a mid-stage Black Iron warrior before the age of fifteen. If properly cultivated with his own methods, becoming a junior knight before eighteen would be effortless. In that case, his family would have two more helpers who could be openly displayed.

As for William's youngest son, who was less than four years old, he was still too young, and Donald had no plans to test his aptitude for the time being.

Sensing that besides himself and his summoned creatures, only these two young boys in the manor possessed any combat strength, Donald couldn't help but feel a sense of urgency.

"After all, I can't stay in the manor all the time. An assassination attempt has already occurred. If I leave now, who knows if someone will set their sights on the manor."

Therefore, he acutely felt his lack of strength, unable to provide safety for himself and his subordinates.

Although the Tree of Life possessed combat power comparable to a Level 5 magical beast, its greatest weakness as a plant lifeform was its slow movement speed.

For a solution, Donald's first thought was the permanent summoning authority granted by the Book of Truth. However, this method was quickly abandoned because, while permanent summoning had no quantity limit, the required soul power was far from sufficient to create high-level troops with the soul power he could gather from scattered undead creatures.

Permanent summoning primarily required soul power, not the energy within magic cores and crystals. In reality, the energy required for normal summoned creatures was enough for their physical manifestation. What was most needed to create beings was the more precious soul power.

He had once ordered the Book of Truth to calculate and deduced that the soul imprints from magic cores could not be used for permanent summoning due to their insufficient soul power intensity and incomplete structure. This would greatly affect the intelligence of the summoned creatures, as they were magical beasts with little intelligence in life, and their residual fragments after death were also incomplete.

The best raw material for the soul of created beings was the soul power of intelligent creatures.

Therefore, without obtaining other sources of soul power, Donald had no intention of exercising his permanent summoning ability for the time being.

With the first idea rejected, Donald then thought of the defensive structures of the Elven race.

"Ancient Guardians? That's not a bad idea!"

Unlike the defensive towers of humans and beastmen, Ancient Guardians, like the Tree of Life, were both treants of the nature race.

Creating an Ancient Guardian treant required only a small amount of soul power, about one-twentieth of that of the main base's Tree of Life. This consumption was equivalent to that of a normal Level 1 wild unit, which Donald could afford. Considering their strength, it was undoubtedly a very cost-effective option.

Thus, Donald went into the forest and found ten ancient trees that were thousands of years old. Using them as vessels, he summoned ten Ancient Guardian ancient trees.

These living defensive towers were distributed around the four sides of the manor, with two Ancient Guardians rooted on each side. Two more were rooted at the location of the Tree of Life to guard it.

These ancient trees, capable of drawing power from the earth and the Tree of Life, and hurling energy stones, remained stationary like ordinary trees during normal times. However, once an enemy entered their range, these ancient trees would immediately transform into tireless catapults, launching fierce attacks at enemies once every two seconds. Coupled with the natural power bonus from the Tree of Life and its suppression of enemy strength, enemies below Bronze would generally be unable to breach the manor gates if there were fewer than a hundred of them.

With these tasks completed, the manor's defensive system was essentially perfected.

However, this only allowed for passive defense and lacked sufficient mobility, so he still needed to recruit some guards and train them to assist the Ancient Protector in safeguarding the manor.

Fortunately, there was likely still some time before he had to leave, as only the orc vanguard scouts had been discovered by humans; the main force was presumably still on the way, and the Kingdom of Selt had not yet issued a conscription order.

A stretch of mountainous hills still stood between the Northwest Wasteland and the Kingdom of Selt, and although the terrain was not particularly treacherous, it would still take a considerable amount of time to traverse.

Furthermore, in previous years, the orcs' primary targets had always been the wealthy human nations in the center of the continent; as for the Kingdom of Selt, which was also in the north and difficult to access, usually only the weaker tribes were assigned there.

This suggested that the orc forces facing the Selt border should not be overly strong, which also granted Donald a certain amount of preparation time.

The next day, Donald began discussing the matter of hiring guards for the manor with the Steward.

Although non-landed nobles were not permitted to raise private armies, they were allowed to acquire private military force through two methods: hiring guards to protect their manors and property, or gaining the loyalty of knightly retainers.

However, such private military forces could not be brought into the public eye and could not be used to secure military merit. This was a restriction imposed by the royal families and nobility of various kingdoms upon non-landed nobles and merchants, to prevent these individuals from seizing their territories, lives, and property during times of war.

Moreover, without an official mandate, non-landed nobles and merchants dared not hire too many guards; firstly, the expenditure on provisions and wages was quite high, and secondly, they feared that these armed guards might turn around and target their employers.

It was well known that there had been instances where hired civilian Adventurers had ransacked a home while the employer was away, and there were even guards who had simply robbed and murdered their employers before turning into bandits.

Therefore, when selecting manor guards, the first thing Donald had to consider was not their strength, but their character. He would rather have a group of guards who were weak but honest and loyal, than hire those ungrateful wretches with poor dispositions and cunning, treacherous natures.