Necromancer, What the Heck Is Summoning 055? Section 33

"By accident? Looking for an opportunity? That's the result of your investigation?"

"Fool, can't you see those scumbags were after me?"

"They were after my inheritance, do you understand?!"

The clerk lay prostrate on the ground, not daring to move as blood pooled beneath him and formed a trickling stream.

"Was it the second brother? Or the fourth? Or are several of those idiots planning to join forces?"

"Before Father calls me to account, you must clean this mess up completely!"

No wonder the eldest young master of the Zircon Family was furious. A great family had its blessings, but it also had its troubles.

As the primary heir to the Zircon Family, which held seven cities, the eldest young master, Gaoshi Haisen, was constantly like a porcupine bristling with quills, keeping a wary watch over his territory.

After all, his father had too many children, but there was only one marquis's seat.

To ensure nothing went wrong with his inheritance, he first needed to keep a firm hold on his father's favor. Second, he needed enough power.

The heir to the marquisate could not be a good-for-nothing.

Everyone in the marquisate knew that the eldest young master was a once-in-a-generation warrior genius of the Zircon Family, who had become a silver-armor warrior at a young age and was approaching the threshold for a class advancement. But Gaoshi Haisen himself knew that this was merely a false prosperity built with vast sums of money and medicine, and that he had even used some shady tricks along the way.

There was no telling how many more resources he would need to actually advance his class.

Many of those expenditures had to be kept from his father. Otherwise, why would he have gotten involved over a mere few dozen gold coins?

Now someone had exposed the matter. On the surface, it looked as though the attack was aimed at that foolish steward of external affairs, but Haisen, jumpy as a startled bird, caught a faint whiff of trouble.

Whether someone had deliberately exposed the matter to target him, or had truly only been after the steward's position and had accidentally implicated him, Haisen could not tolerate it.

The eldest young master served as acting lord of Radiance City in the marquisate, and he had already built a well-established team under him. With plans laid by his chief steward and clerk, he cut through the mess and took immediate action.

First, the steward of external affairs left a letter confessing his guilt and killed himself.

In the letter, the steward admitted that the forty-gold-coin reward had been too tempting. Blinded by greed and out of his mind, he had privately withheld most of the money, betraying the lord's trust and cultivation. Only death could atone for his crime.

In fact, if the steward had not killed himself, the eldest young master would have been in much greater trouble. As a member of the estate staff, the steward of external affairs usually followed Haisen's orders, but he ultimately belonged to the old marquis, the estate's master. The eldest young master needed his father's permission to take any action against him.

Otherwise, it would have been a serious overstepping of his authority, crossing a red line the marquis had forbidden anyone to cross.

After all, if you dared kill my steward today, would you dare sleep with my concubine tomorrow?

And who knew what would happen the day after that?

Now the man was dead, having taken responsibility for all the withheld money and carried all the blame to his grave. Some breathed a sigh of relief, some beat their chests and stamped their feet, and perhaps some others had seen their plans come to nothing.

The eldest young master was able to catch his breath.

Of course, Eldest Young Master Haisen still had to see the matter through properly and neatly, giving the marquis a clean account.

That little apprentice was as good as dead!

Chapter 54: Again and Again

To settle the matter as quickly as possible, Gaoshi Haisen summoned the vice captain of the Radiance City Patrol. "Get some men together and send them to Creek Moon at once. Don't let that little brat get far!"

"Don't worry about the expense. Just get this matter cleaned up quickly!"

Although he said not to worry about the expense, the eldest young master's finances were not in good shape. So he could only use public resources for a private purpose, sending an elite iron-emblem warrior to the Creek Moon Federation on official business in the name of the Radiance City Patrol, with orders to hunt down Chen Mo "along the way."

The iron-emblem warrior first went to Black Raven Castle, where he confirmed Chen Mo's identifying features once more, then followed in his footsteps into the Six-Leaf Woodland.

Armed with the marquis's eldest son's orders, the iron-emblem warrior naturally made no attempt to be polite. "I'm looking for a necromancer apprentice who passed through here a month ago, the one with a skeleton. Bring me whoever guided him then. I have questions!"

Faced with a behemoth like the Zircon Family, the centaur tribe was unwilling to offend them without cause, so the young centaur Kajia was summoned.

It should have been an ordinary questioning, but this iron-emblem warrior had a foul mouth.

"You actually helped him escape? Couldn't you tell that guy was a criminal? Your brain didn't finish developing, did it?"

"You even found him a doctor? Were your parents a brain-dead moron and a complete idiot?"

"Little piece of trash, you should be grateful for the Zircon Family's generosity. Otherwise, you wouldn't even be worthy of being roasted for me to eat. I'd be afraid your stupidity would rub off on me..."

By the time Kajia left, every muscle in his body was trembling.

The young companions who had gone with Kajia snorted and stamped their hooves in anger too, all of them outraged. But the centaur camp certainly would not confront a behemoth like the Zircon Family over a few verbal insults. At a time like this, the little delinquent Little Dreadlocks gave Kajia an idea.

Before long, the iron-emblem swordsman, who was preparing to stay at Hero's Inn, was told that the rooms were full.

"We're terribly sorry, but Hero's Inn cannot turn out any traveler who has already checked in. Please come back tomorrow."

Given the iron-emblem warrior's status and temperament, he would never stay in a livestock shed shared by people and animals, so he had no choice but to sleep outdoors.

In the centaur camp, sleeping outdoors without standing guard was an outright provocation to those fellows who walked the edge of evil. If they did not strip you clean, they would be too ashamed to face the great dawn. Besides, the centaur Little Dreadlocks had already conspired with the blackhearted innkeeper to put a little something in the man's food and water.

It was nontoxic, had no side effects, and effectively improved sleep quality. No one could pin anything on them.

In short, the next day, a fellow with leaves barely covering his private parts fled Six-Leaf Camp in disgrace, his bare buttocks wiggling to the crowd's laughter as he plunged into the vast forest.

He had no money for the airship and had lost all his travel funds. His mission was already a failure, and on top of that, he had made a huge fool of himself.

Knowing the eldest young master's character all too well, the iron-emblem swordsman chose to conceal his identity and wander the world.

The guide the Zircon Family had stationed at White Stone Outpost waited in vain for the first swordsman. After making a few inquiries, the patrol's vice captain learned what had happened.

He could not leave the task the eldest young master had given him unfinished, so he gritted his teeth and sent a second group: a squad of four elite warriors.

This time they had learned their lesson. They were cautious throughout the journey, watching what they said and did. However, they had lost too much time and had to pick up the pace, so at Six-Leaf Woodland, they chartered an airship and demanded it take off immediately.

The gnome in charge of flying the ship shook his little head so fast it left afterimages. "Masters, our firm has an ironclad rule against flying in the rain. We can't go, we really can't!"

"Cut the nonsense. We're in a hurry. Besides, your ship isn't made of paper, so what's a little rain going to do? If you don't get moving, I, of the Green Pine Kingdom, will charge you gnomes with obstructing urgent official business and deliberately letting a fugitive escape!"

After repeated threats, the gnomes could only start the airship, their faces long with misery.

Come to think of it, was an airship afraid of rain? Actually, it was not. The ships were normally left outside in the sun and rain. Never mind a drizzle like this-even in a downpour or a storm, there were drains all over the ship to let the water run straight out.

It was not as though they were at sea.

Then why had the gnomes' machinery firm made such a rule? No one knew. They had followed it for so long that the current generation of gnomes no longer knew why it had been made in the first place.

Then the elven sentries living in the Dark Forest were treated to a magnificent sight.

Through a curtain of rain stretching across the sky like white silk, a bolt of lightning, twisted and crooked like the branches of a dead tree, tore through the air. Arcs of electricity danced over the airship, giving the living beings aboard an ultra-ultra-ultra-high-voltage electrotherapy session at who knew how many volts.

The airship's gasbag was scorched and shattered. Like a meteor of heavenly fire, the whole vessel fell from the sky into Mother Earth's embrace.

A few days later, the Zircon Family's vice captain received a sternly worded, irate notice from the gnomes' Long Legs Machinery Firm. It lodged a serious protest over the loss of the airship and its crew and demanded enormous compensation.

The gnomes might have been a bit shady, but their influence was considerable. How could anyone capable of establishing multiple monopolies be easy to deal with?

These descendants of a people who had wandered for a thousand years, roaming every corner of the continent and profiting through trade, moneylending, and price manipulation, had often been slaughtered by various nations in their early years. But after attaching themselves firmly to the Mist Moon Divine Court and coming to worship the Seven-Eyed God, they had become a force on the continent that could not be underestimated.

There was a saying on the continent: never leave a debt to a gnome unpaid, or the interest will compound until you cannot clear it even if you carve every scrap of flesh from your body.

The vice captain, who had suffered a crushing loss, did the calculations. Even all of Radiance City's income for the past few years might not be enough to cover this compensation alone.

Worse, if he paid it, he would face Young Master Haisen's thunderous wrath even if he successfully completed the mission.

Simply staying alive would be a luxury.

After discussing the matter with a trusted aide, the vice captain took a few loyal followers and set off on a long journey before the news spread, posing as yet another group sent to "hunt down the despicable little thief."

Before leaving, he also took the wages the city guard was due to receive the following month.

They did not go through the Six-Leaf Woodland, nor did they enter the Creek Moon Federation. In any case, no one knew where they had gone on their hunt.

All told, one bounty had sent three waves of pursuers after Chen Mo. The men sent grew stronger and the money spent increased, but by now they had not even caught sight of his shadow.

As for Eldest Young Master Gaoshi Haisen, he had lost his composure so many times that he had lost count.

Unable to bear it any longer and beside himself with rage, Haisen sent the captain of his guards, Tikpot, a first-advancement, fourth-tier Mystic-Armor Knight. Leading an elite team of six ranked knights, Tikpot took a detour through Ironback Valley and followed the only path the elves permitted travelers to use across the Dark Forest. They fought their way through an endless stream of forest magical beasts and entered the Creek Moon Federation from the east.

Why did they not take an airship? Because the account with the gnomes had not been settled, of course, and the Zircon Family had already been placed on the gnomes' blacklist.

In any case, the worldline of the Starry Continent had quietly returned to its course, and several streams from different directions were converging on that little preparatory apprentice.

At that very moment, Chen Mo, at the Har Preparatory Mage Tower, finally reached the peak of the preparatory apprentice stage and was about to take an important step on his path as a mage-psionic enlightenment.

Once he passed this hurdle, he would become a formal mage apprentice, also known as a Novice Mage.

It was like graduating from kindergarten and entering elementary school.

And as everyone knew, psionic enlightenment required one to undergo a small trial.

Everyone was looking forward to it.

Chapter 55: An Uneventful Elemental Sensing

The greater the expectations, the greater the disappointment!

The result of Chen Mo's psionic enlightenment left everyone disappointed-very, very disappointed!

They had not gotten to see any excitement at all.

Psionic enlightenment, also called elemental awakening, was described more specifically by some academic mages as opening elemental sensing.

After taking this step, a mage no longer merely used his own mental power to control mana. Instead, he could use his elemental pool to draw on the elemental psionic energy between heaven and earth, achieving the remarkable effect of using a small amount of power to accomplish something great and borrowing force to apply force.

The effect was not a simple doubling.

For example, Chen Mo, a preparatory necromancer apprentice, could only summon skeletons. But Little Goldie, who had crossed the threshold of psionic enlightenment and become a formal apprentice, could summon zombies.

On the surface, it looked like a mere change in the level of undead creature, but in actual combat power, the difference was enormous.

By weight alone, an ordinary humanoid skeleton weighed around ten kilograms in all, while any zombie, even one carrying nothing but a club, started at a hundred kilograms.

For Chen Mo, calling the change before and after enlightenment earthshaking would not be an exaggeration.

As the most important initiation for a mage, psionic enlightenment naturally carried a certain chance of failure.

But how could Instructor Morton possibly allow that to happen?

First, Instructor Morton had the only large magical testing device at Har's mage "farmstay" brought directly to Glimmer Group Three's classroom. Like checking blood sugar, he repeatedly tested "Roy" seven times a day to confirm that his mental power had indeed reached the double-digit standard for awakening.

During this period, Morton's little class intensively drilled Chen Mo on matters related to psionic enlightenment, reminding him over and over of every detail, large and small.

Since it had been more than twenty years since Mentor Morton's own psionic enlightenment, Instructor Morton also singled out several outstanding students from Glimmer Group Three, specifically to prevent differences between his experience and the current version. He had them draw on their own experiences to explain their insights and feelings about the breakthrough to Chen Mo in detail.