My Home

Chapter 4: My Home

Hill had known for a long time that even though Lina shouted about cute little Hill every day, she still felt that his excessive softness meant he would not survive in the future.

The fact that Hill had his personal servants learn spells made it even easier for people to think he was easily susceptible to temptation.

Lina herself was someone who had benefited, so she could not and would not speak up to stop it. Melanie, however, took this kind of behavior as proof that he would only be able to muddle along under Falan's care and die without accomplishing anything, and thus paid him no mind.

If not for the fact that during that final period she discovered Hill possessed a powerful soul force and cultivated his mana very well, Melanie would not have spent a great deal of time teaching him.

Hill actually did not care about these things; knowledge was precious and indeed needed to be cherished, but it did not need to be begrudged.

He had no desire to groom Bourne into a prodigy either, but he hoped his playmate could receive a basic education.

Bourne was the person who had benefited the most from this whole mess, and it was from that time on that he resolved to follow Hill.

Hill did not know when he would end up killing his first person, but he still hoped it would be as late as possible.

The longer he stayed in this world, the more he missed his past life. He had always understood that once he started killing, it would cause him to lose all the convictions he had cultivated in modern society.

Having lived to his thirties in his past life and dying alongside his parents in an earthquake, he felt regret but no hatred. Hill did not know why he was the one who had been reborn, but he hoped he was still the precious, beloved child in his parents' hands rather than a merciless killer.

For the four years at Peraster Castle, Hill always treated people with a cold face. With that massive fire of his mother's serving as a baseline, no one dared to provoke him either.

He had always concealed everything about himself, but now he could finally leave.

Hill's profession allowed him to survive very well, but he still wanted to live comfortably.

He had Bourne take most of the storage rings and purchase a great deal of supplies.

After leaving the safe zone, threats became the magical beasts in the wilds.

Yet the wood elements Hill summoned could emit a natural aura, causing the magical beasts on the wilds to ignore Hill's party.

The wood elements all resembled little sprites, petite and cute, and their delicate wings allowed them to fly back and forth inside the carriage.

In the corner on the roof of each carriage, Hill had placed a large pot of green radish. The lush green radish leaves allowed the wood spirits who did not wish to be seen to hide inside them.

The four carriages bypassed the forest and headed straight for the distant mountain range.

After munching on dry rations for eight days, Hill reached his destination.

This was an unusual triangular grand canyon. The entrance was a long, narrow path, with river water rushing out from between thousand-meter-high stone walls on both sides. It was hard to imagine how the Peraster Grand Knight of yesteryear had thought to head in along the riverside; that narrow riverside rock path, wide enough for only a single carriage to pass, was damp and muddy with only a few lines of animal paw prints upon it.

Hill summoned a few water elements to tie the carriages together with ropes, placing all the horses at the front to be slowly led along. The water elements swam swiftly ahead in the river and relayed back news of safety.

Holding his staff, Hill walked at the very front, while Bourne carried spell scrolls and walked at the very rear accompanied by water elements.

After walking slowly for about three thousand meters, the stone wall on the left suddenly tilted and opened to the left. After extending for dozens of kilometers in a thirty-degree diagonal line, it was firmly blocked off by a transverse mountain range.

The valley was densely forested along the mountain range, but the riverside consisted of large swathes of grassland where flocks of herbivores grazed leisurely. It truly was a territory very well-suited for Hill.

Smiling, Hill turned his head back and said, "We've arrived! Let's go, let's head into the middle of the valley and find a good spot!"

The carriages sped swiftly into the valley, finally coming to a stop beside a small hill.

There was a straight, hundred-meter-high rocky hill bordering the vast grassland. The river flowed past the cliff by the mountain, and the riverbank was also entirely composed of rock.

Hill summoned earth elements, having them dig down from the top of the rocky hill to a depth of one hundred meters underground, and also sculpted the hill into a circular round tower.

The earth elements liked to absorb the excavated rock onto themselves to strengthen their power, and soon transformed into a dozen or so giants standing a full ten meters tall.

After crafting a twenty-meter-thick stone roof to cap off the top of the tower, the thirty-meter-radius tall tower was evenly divided by their heights into nine floors.

In the middle of the tower was a five-meter-radius vertical shaft. Hill built a one-and-a-half-meter-wide nine-story staircase along the boundary, using the spell Turn Mud to Stone to turn the earth-piled staircase into sturdy stone steps layer by layer.

Hill continuously reinforced the tower body with spells, slowly descending through the hollow shaft to the bottom floor.

The earth elements happily followed down. This was also one of the reasons Hill believed his bloodline was that of the Earth Bear.

These earth elements had signed a summoning pact with him as an entire clan the very first time Hill summoned earth elements after becoming a sorcerer.

Although the wood and water elements also showed that they liked him, they did not have this kind of enthusiastic family-dragging, clan-following passion.

Hill and they agreed that once the mage tower was established, he would let them stay by his side. However, everyone also knew that wanting to have a safe place for so many earth elements to live meant Hill had to reach at least the Archmage level.

Although they wanted to enter the prime material plane, they were quite picky as well! Running into a bloodline resonating with the earth like Hill's was simply a miracle; the earth elements felt that even waiting a few decades was worth it, and they never expected Hill to be so capable!

They happily excavated the first underground layer. Beneath a twenty-meter-thick rock layer, Hill assigned them a sixty-meter-tall grand domain, which was more than enough for their use.

At a depth of one hundred meters underground, Hill left a five-meter-tall underground hall.

Standing in the center of the underground hall, Hill first activated the Pioneer Writ and said in a loud voice, "Great Majesty, the God of Contracts, Hill Peraster Bolanio requests your gaze! I swear here with my soul: I voluntarily pioneer my territory in the wilds and will struggle for it for my entire life! With the gods above, I die without regret!"

Hill sensed a trace of majestic gaze sweep down from the sky. The Pioneer Writ floated in his hands, and layers of invisible light waves rippled outward. Hill hurriedly opened the alchemical map. Outside the border of Salar on the map, a new location lit up: the Barony of Bolanio.

Hill's territorial range indeed included the three mountain ranges surrounding the canyon, and he let out a relaxed breath.

Although a magical item like the alchemical map could only mark places one had passed through, it was likely a divine creation, and the map marked things with extreme realism. If Hill had awakened the mage tower's tower spirit first, the map might have just shown the Bolanio Warlock Tower.

Once recorded on the map, it would not change unless he reported it to a temple or the gods intervened.

Hill hoped that no one would know he was a sorcerer until he reached the Magus level, or at the very least, he had to conceal it until he became an Archmage.

Beside the stone tablet, Hill inscribed a pentagram array, placing gold, wood, water, fire, and earth elemental pools at the five sharp corners of the array. Finally, he placed the mage tower core—a shining sixteen-sided crystal—in the middle of the array. Squeezing out a drop of fingertip blood and connecting to the core with spiritual power, the floating crystal slowly sank downward to merge with the ground array.

He closed his eyes and communicated with the array using all his mana, and a surging pillar of light standing several hundred meters tall erupted outward.

The tower spirit awoke. He controlled the scattered magic power, causing the entire tower and the underground to merge into an integrated whole, transforming into obsidian. This was probably the hardest and most magic-conductive stone material in this world. A thirty-meter-radius, two-hundred-meter-tall obsidian mage tower finally brought Hill the confidence to survive.

Looking at the tower spirit materializing before him—in the image of an adult man with black hair and black eyes, carrying a rigorous demeanor yet with gentle and loving brows—Hill could not help feeling a pang of sorrow. Sixteen years had passed; although he had not forgotten his own appearance, when the tower spirit was formed, it had suddenly taken on his mother's eyes.

He said softly to the tower spirit, "You shall be called Liszt!"

"As you command, my master!" Liszt bowed deeply and said.

Hill sealed off this layer, and from then on, only Liszt could enter here.

Returning to the first floor of the mage tower, Hill took out all his alchemical golems and handed them over to Liszt. Liszt had absorbed his soul force, acquired all his knowledge, and could command the elements that had signed contracts with him; he was already an excellent house-building worker. Hill felt that he would surely make a good project owner who practiced hands-off management.

As the sky gradually grew dark, Hill had Liszt make the elevator first, and then churn out a place for people to live, before leisurely walking out of the tower doors.

Locke had already let the horses loose nearby to graze, and Bourne was directing a few minor servants to move everything inside the carriages into the mage tower.

Hill took Bourne's family to Liszt's location to record their soul information. As for those minor servants, they could only stay below the second floor and would only head out once the farm was established later on.

Standing by the water's edge, Hill began to summon water elements. Some water elements were willing to sign a contract with someone they found agreeable and stay in the prime material plane. After all, the elemental planes remained unchanged for tens of millions of years, and there were always elements wanting to see the outside world. In this regard, sorcerers had a huge advantage; there were always elements that loved them, and relying on one's face to make a living simply made one well-liked.

Water elements answered the summons one by one, but not all of them chose to stay. When Hill ran out of mana and stopped, seven or eight of them had remained behind.

The water elements played in the river, incidentally patrolling along it as well.

Safety in the water was guaranteed, and the earth elements would also guard the surroundings of the mage tower.

Hill's home had been built.

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