Starting Out on His Own

Independent Living

White Horse City was a very beautiful place with white walls, red tiles, green grass, and blooming flowers.

Hill slowly walked toward the castle. Today he was coming of age, and from then on, he would bid farewell to this city.

Hill's status was actually rather awkward. His father, Count Perast, had married three wives and fathered a son with each of them, while he was the middle one.

According to the rules of the Salar Kingdom, once a non-heir son reached the age of sixteen, he had to take a share of property and leave to set up his own household.

Manton, the eldest son and heir, had a mother of noble birth. As the daughter of Kral Duke, her dowry was exceptionally lavish. It was only a pity that her constitution was rather frail, and she passed away not long after giving birth to Manton.

With the eldest son possessing such powerful maternal backing, the count had to proceed with extreme caution when taking a second wife.

Unwilling to limit his choice of wife to lesser nobility, he set his sights on Melanie, the daughter of Court Archmage Obsidian Falan, who existed outside the traditional noble hierarchy.

Melanie was a fair-skinned, beautiful mage possessing long hair like a golden waterfall, which deeply captivated the count.

Count Perast was handsome, wealthy, romantic, and passionate. Under the instigation of the court women, the beautiful and innocent female mage quickly fell for him and resolved to marry him, though she regretted it bitterly less than two years later.

The entire count's castle rejected this female mage, and everyone felt certain she would target the eldest son, Manton. Even the husband who claimed to love her best grew increasingly guarded against her in all sorts of ways after Hill was born.

Yet no one expected that in the world of mages, there were no tedious women's wars. Melanie plunged headfirst into alchemy, took her son to buy a manor outside town, and moved in, never seeing her husband again.

Before turning twelve, Hill only ever saw this so-called father during the annual New Year banquets. Regrettably, the year he turned twelve, Melanie's alchemical experiment failed, causing a spell backlash, and she passed away a few months later. Hill was forced to return to the count's castle.

Count Perast remained utterly indifferent to this son and immediately plunged into the selection of a third wife. He no longer dared to marry a lofty female mage; after twelve years, he had had enough of the nobles' mockery.

In the end, Count Perast chose the daughter of a baron, famous for her outstanding intellect, beauty, and grace, who gave birth to a third son, Edgar, two years ago.

This time, the people in the castle finally returned to a familiar rhythm. The young and pretty little wife had no sooner entered than she pushed back Manton's coming-of-age ceremony—which should have been held at sixteen—to past the age of twenty. Who could blame her when Manton lacked ambition and was still a far cry from becoming a formal knight?

The vast majority of people pursued ease and comfort when under no pressure; only when pressure arrived would they strive with all their might. Thus, Manton began his grueling daily training.

Hill was leaving anyway, but if fourteen years from now, Manton in his thirties still had not become a knight, his inheritance would depend on whether Edgar could become one.

Of course, if the count had the misfortune of kicking the bucket before then, Hill could always come back to snatch the peerage. After all, among the current younger generation, Hill was the only one at or above the knight level.

Therefore, to minimize trouble and keep his ears at peace, Hill rarely even used spells while in the castle, letting those people simply think he was still an apprentice.

Manton had once tried to win Hill over, but his methods were clumsy. Hill put on a lofty, aloof expression, acting as though he was merely waiting to come of age and divide the family property, and successfully shook him off. After observing closely for a period of time and discovering that he truly only wanted to leave, the stepmother's faction also faded quietly into the background.

Hill spent his days passing the time in the castle library until last night, when he suddenly received a message from a maternal grandfather who had never communicated with him directly.

He rushed to the manor overnight. Upon sensing Hill's mage-level mental power, the aloof archmage gave him a storage ring with a look of satisfaction and left, giving Hill no space to speak at all.

Hill called out to his grandfather for a long time with no response, so he glumly tidied up the manor and packed away all his mother's belongings. The storage ring was very large, and the spellbooks inside were numerous.

He understood that being a mage was a self-study profession; once his mother had introduced him to the threshold, he was meant to read and learn more on his own. There was nothing wrong with Falan's approach.

As a maternal grandfather, Falan's love for him was all contained within the ring, which held many precious materials, a massive amount of gold coins, enough books to fill a library, and most importantly, building materials for a magical tower—the high-grade Mage Tower Core that Hill could not have bought even with money.

But! Hill wailed in his heart, Dear Grandpa! I'm a sorcerer! I don't even know what my bloodline is!

Yes, after years of meditation, right as he was about to step onto the grand path of a mage, Hill's path took a sharp turn, and he awakened as a glorious earth-wood-water sorcerer. He did not know if traversing through time and space was to blame; in his previous life, he worked in civil engineering, and after awakening in this one, water got added to the mix.

In Hill's spell list, Turn Stone to Mud and Turn Mud to Stone stood in parallel at the front, followed by Summon Earth Elemental, Wood Elemental, and Water Elemental. Interspersed in the middle were Earth Shield, Earthquake, Slow, Natural Growth, Summon Nature Companion, and Purify.

Hill knew his bloodline was definitely not ordinary; not everyone could possess so many spells right at the awakening of a sorcerer. Furthermore, ever since his awakening, his body had grown stronger day by day, holding formidable power within its seemingly slender frame. As a sorcerer, his physical might could almost rival that of a formal knight.

When Hill awakened, he had vaguely seen a giant bear roaring toward the sky, and he knew his primary bloodline must be ursine. Bear clans were basically all earth-element, and only equivalent bloodlines could coexist, which was why Hill had constantly pondered what kind of entity an Earth Bear could tangle with to produce an earth-wood-water offspring.

He was extraordinarily curious about his bloodline, yet after reading all the books in both the castle and the manor, he found no clues. He had finally managed to cross paths with an archmage who might know, only to still end up with nothing.

Instructing the manor housekeeper, Lina, to pack the luggage and wait for him at the manor gates, a deeply stifled Hill could only step back toward the castle in the morning light.

Count Perast had not yet gotten up, and the only person in the castle was an awakened Manton, training strenuously in the company of several illegitimate sons. Hill paid them no mind and went straight to his room to tidy up.

A few days prior, the housekeeper had already leaked the count's intentions to him. The count had given Hill two choices: a lord with a small fief within the count's territory, or a baron without a fief holding a Pioneer Writ. He chose the baronhood without a moment's hesitation. Are you kidding me? If he stayed in the count's territory, endless trouble would await him later. Was magic not fragrant, or was alchemy not fun? Hill had no mood to subject himself to this suffering.

No one in the count's castle knew Hill was a sorcerer. Low-Rank Mages were nothing unusual among the nobility; a mage's growth required a vast amount of time, and the resources consumed were countless. Given his cold relationship with the count, Hill, who would certainly not get much property from the family division, was not valued.

Yet if he were a bloodline-inheriting sorcerer, he would surely be treated like a stud horse and married off to some great noble in the name of a political alliance.

Hill only wanted to run as far as possible and hunker down somewhere to cultivate until he became an archmage.

After tidying his room, Hill did not wait long before seeing the housekeeper who had come to invite him downstairs. The count, his wife, and the family members were all waiting for him to dine together. Hill slowly walked down the stairs, the grand dining room packed with people who had come to watch the spectacle. After eating a stomachache-inducing breakfast amidst whispers, he followed the crowd to the conference hall.

The count stopped at the front of the hall, facing Hill in the crowd, and said with a smile, "Dear Hill, my cherished second son, at this important moment of your coming of age, in the name of Count Perast, I confer upon you the title of Baron Bolanio!

As your father, I bestow upon you twenty thousand gold coins and grant you permission to take away all your mother's property. I hope you will add further glory to House Perast in your capacity as Baron Hill Perast Bolanio!"

The moment the words fell, Hill heard the abruptly magnified murmurs. The onlookers could not conceal their astonishment at all.

Count Perast's annual income was roughly fifty or sixty thousand gold coins. A baron title without a fief seemed high to commoners, but a substantive fief-holding count could confer one every year, and they were generally used to rope in great knights or nobles purchasing them with money. No great knight had appeared this year, so giving the baron title to Hill was quite normal.

Yet the count had actually not given even a fief to his son! All the property Hill received added up to less than the count's annuity for two years.

Hill knew the count felt Melanie's property was enough to compensate him. Although the count was not afraid of the court archmage, he did not want to invite trouble either.

Moreover, he intensely disliked this son, who served as a living testimony to the humiliating rejection he had suffered from his wife. As long as Hill remained, no one would forget Melanie's story. He would never keep this son within his own territory. Besides, Hill was a mage and certainly wouldn't choose to be a minor lord.

The count had always assumed Melanie was merely a minor mage who knew a bit of alchemy and managed to kill herself with it in the end. Even if he left the property to Hill, it was worth at most a hundred thousand gold coins or so, which was why he had so generously told Hill to keep it himself after Melanie passed away.

Before coming of age, Hill had been entirely unwilling to let the count discover that Melanie was a mage with a storage ring.

With Manton—an eldest son possessing powerful maternal backing—the count could only carve out money for his other children from his own annuity. Therefore, toward a son he disliked, he did not wish to give Hill too much.

The coming-of-age ceremony at sixteen that should have been held prior to the enfeoffment ceremony was completely bypassed by the count.

Generally speaking, children who left the family through a division of property would receive a generous compensation at their coming-of-age ceremony.

As for Hill, he did not even have a coming-of-age ceremony.

Everything today only made it clearer to everyone that there was no longer any need to treat Hill favorably for the count's sake.

Hill did not care about these things in the least. He calmly watched the instantly shifting atmosphere in the hall.

From now on, this place would be left to the new countess and Manton to continue their wars!

Hill had only taken twenty thousand gold coins; Edgar and any younger brothers he might yet have would be able to split hundreds of thousands.

Hill saw Manton's eyes turn abruptly sharp. From this moment on, little brother Edgar truly became his enemy.

Meanwhile, his young and pretty stepmother's eyes flickered. Everyone understood that even though Edgar would gain much in the future, what she wanted was even more. The Count Perast Castle would undoubtedly be extraordinarily lively henceforth, leaving plenty of conversational fodder for those satisfied souls.

Hill had no desire to deal with these people and matters. He retrieved the baron's decree from the housekeeper, formally thanked the count for the bestowal, and, amidst the gaze of everyone seeing him off, turned and left the castle.