Chapter 7

I returned home again for the holidays and was happy to know that my father had finally advanced to rank 7 as a warrior after years of stagnation. The holiday was also filled with much training as this time around it was me being pulled around and run ragged by my father, I'm just glad he held back on me so I did not reveal my full abilities to him.

I can just imagine what he would do upon finding out my true potential, he wouldn't care if there were enemies of our family out there, he would have me graduate immediately and use the church's influence through me to get back our clan's heirloom war blade back. I would not have any say in the matter and I would not be able to convince him of the Radiant Church's connection with mother's death without solid proof. Worst case, he would drag me in to the search effort for her and directly head to the church to ask for their assistance not knowing he is approaching the main culprit. Yeah, it is best if father dear does not find out anything until I step in to the Saint level myself.

School restarts and the cycle continues as I re-join my friends to train with them. Intense physical training with the group as a whole, training our spiritual essence using our preferred methods, pursuing our individual hobbies in our spare time and barely attending regular classes. By this point my friends have also severely cut back on attending the regular classes as they have found out that my lectures were far superior than even the institute's instructors. They would use that spare time for self-training or as a relaxation time to follow their hobbies. Again, none of us take part in the school tournament despite pressure from our instructors increasing and although some of us have advanced, we do not sign up for the grade promotion tests.

I finally managed to have my mageforce completely match up my spiritual essence level by the end of that year as I was solidly at the peak of 7th rank magi at age 12. I also just managed to reach 6th rank as a warrior and was eager to see if I could actually begin to train in the initial steps of the Stellar Transformations technique. I begin practicing the katas as mentioned in the Trans-Heaven Diagrams and even focused on the pacing and intervals between each stance until I somewhat felt it was right and I was moving smoothly through one set after another. Although I felt that my imitation of the movements was decent enough, I did not feel anything special.

That was when I began feeling worried a little, I could only really begin practicing the Stellar Transformation technique after I reached the pinnacle of the human body's limits without any Qi or some such. I hoped that would be the 6th rank warrior level as many people have claimed that is the limit of a human's potential. Now I feared that I would have to somehow get my body to 9th rank warrior without the aid of Qi, that would be a truly daunting task as I had already discovered that advancement in the body had slowed down tremendously for me after 5th rank. If the true requirement for starting to learn the Stellar Transformations was indeed 9th rank warrior without Qi then I had a daunting task ahead, actually from a certain perspective 9th rank makes sense as it is the stage just before Sainthood where a person can be considered ageless and immortal and thus the peak of mortal strength.

I try to keep my depressing thoughts in check as I reach home and call for my father. He usually would be ready to welcome me on these occasions but for some reason the house felt especially deserted for me. I spot Uncle Hillman coming out from the rear courtyards and call for him to enquire what was up. He seems to be nervous for some reason and I had to drag him inside and question him intensely to pry out the truth. It turns out that dear old dad let his advancement to 7th rank warrior get to his head, he thought himself to be invincible and proceeded to begin investigation on mother's kidnapping. The end result was the same as in canon with him being discovered and fatally injured after only figuring out the first piece of the puzzle, him being a little stronger and also possessing my enchanted wards had meant little in the face of the stupidly big and powerful monster he went to poke.

The only consolation was that due to father's greater potential this time both in terms of personal strength and tools used, there was little to no clue our enemies had of his identity. In fact, unknown to me at the time, my opponents had already assumed that the enemy was someone from the Cult of Shadows that sought to assassinate a high noble of the Union within the capital to weaken them.

Uncle Hillman had at first been very reluctant to share more details at first, fearing I would rush headlong like father had and endanger myself. He even tried to play the 'It was your father's dying wish for you only be made aware when you reached the 7th rank power level' card on me but I was having none of it. The old man could not hold back and rushed in, but was actually telling me to be patient, not going to happen, I was already quite powerful and I was aware of exactly how powerful my enemy was so I was not going to be stupid. I did however need the details of father's death; my knowledge of the big picture did not include a lot of the minor details and I wanted to know whose face I need to cave in for killing my father.

I promptly tased Uncle Hillman unconscious with my trusty 'Touch of Lightning' spell before frisking him for the letter from father that I guessed he had on him, I doubted he was going to leave that lying around somewhere. I was right and I soon found the letter in his inner coat pocket, it seemed to be written from father's death bed after he came back from his investigation fatally wounded. By the looks of things, he had held long enough to lose his enemies and make it back here while also covering his trail, he had then promptly put down his final will in writing and expressed his remorse at having to leave me and Wharton behind. I nearly scrunched up the letter right then, if the old man was so remorseful, he could have waited some more before running off, I thought in rage.

I kept my temper somehow and continued reading, it spoke about how sorry he was some more and then moved on to tell me not to be mad at Uncle Hillman for taking so long to give me the letter. He had requested I only be given the letter once I reached the 7th rank as a warrior or mage or better yet my Saint ranked teacher was by my side. Well at least he can't be upset with me for that I thought with a scoff as I had actually reached rank 7 as a mage and Grandpa Doehring was always by my side. I continued reading and as expected he went on to write about how mother actually left our lives, her kidnap after the birth of Wharton and all the details he had found so far about the ones responsible.

When I was reading father's account of the fateful kidnapping of mother, I could somehow feel the pain and suffering he was under. It seemed to eat at his very heart and soul to not be able to do anything because of our assailant's possible connections and background, he had young sons as dependents and he could not abandon them no matter how much it hurt inside. In the end after waiting for so long he could not bear it anymore and after knowing that the future of his children was somewhat settled, he could move, at least to get some closure. He wrote about how proud he was for Wharton's talent to be a Dragonblood Warrior, how proud my talent in magic made him that I even had a Saint level teacher. The letter finally ended with once again asking for his children's forgiveness as well as once more telling us he was proud of us just like mother would have been.

I just knelt there in a daze, letter in hand for who knows how long until- "Squeak squeak!"… "Linley…, I know this must be hard but I… we are here for you." Bebe nuzzles my neck and Grandpa Doehring consoles me. The tight death grip I had on father's letter relaxed a bit as some of the tension I was feeling bled away. I didn't know when but tears were running down my cheeks and it took me a while longer to somewhat pull myself together but I managed with Bebe and Grandpa Doehring helping out.

Once I felt I was level-headed enough I went over the information I had obtained again and started making plans. It would take me a long time to take revenge on the ones at the top but I could at least strike the low-level flunkies who actually did the kidnapping. I made note of the descriptions of all of mother's kidnappers so I could deal with them the first chance I got, the plans against Fenlai's slimy King Clayde and his little brother Duke what's-iz-name Patterson would have to wait a few more years. After calming myself some more with plots and plans against my enemies I finally got around to healing Uncle Hillman and rousing him to consciousness after I had knocked him out.

It took me some more time to apologise and then convince him that I was in fact very strong already and was not going to rush in and do something stupid. I also had to politely convince him to keep his mouth shut about my actual abilities as we obviously have powerful enemies, I then shared with him some of my immediate plans so he could rest easy on that at least. I told him to lay low for now and pretend that father was only away on travel. I also requested him to manage the town as best as he could for now.

In the quiet of the night, I held a private wake for my old man and performed all the last rites as one would expect. I also swore to smack his head after I resurrected him in the future, seriously the old man could not hold it in for a few more years could he.

My little brother and I were left alone now for all intents and purposes to fend for ourselves. Mercifully father at least had enough sense to keep enough funds to tide Wharton for another year at least before things got dire as a worst-case scenario. That would still not be enough for much though, I may be able to deal with things as my education was almost free here but money was vital for my little bro at the O'Brian Empire.

Guess I will have to make a few quiet trips to the mountain range of magical beasts sooner rather than later. I wasn't really all that mad at father for leaving me with this mess either as I always felt that all he did so far was for us, if we weren't there to chain him down, I doubt he would have wasted even a second trying to get mother back. I sort of felt the same way, that even though I had few people I care for there was not much I would not do for them especially if they were in danger.

So, after finishing all the last rites to father's funeral by myself in my first few days back home, I went over a bit of the town's management with Uncle Hillman. Ours was a small rural town so there was not much that needed to be done so most of the things could be handled by Uncle Hillman himself, I used some of father's old notes as well as my limited understanding of modern politics and management (curtesy of the Transmigrator's memories) to make the process easier for him. For any emergency or crisis, he could still contact me at school as it was not that far away.

By the end of my first week back, all the immediate fires were put out and I decided to use the remainder of my holiday to make a quick trip to the mountain range of magical beasts. It won't be easy to make time for this after I get back to school as then I would have to jump through a lot of hoops and let the school authorities know where I was going as well as why. The news of a 11-year-old successfully venturing in the mountain range of magical beasts by himself would bring the wrong sort of attention on me so I thought it would be better if I saved these trips for my yearly holiday when I do not have to report my whereabouts to anyone.

It was also better to start now than wait for the following year as the funds would have become tighter by then. Besides it really would not be that difficult for me due to my strength, I just had to take some precautions that will ensure my identity stays hidden while wandering. It would be pretty stupid to have my identity revealed by some random stranger I ran across while adventuring after all.

So, with all the planning done I set off from Wushan town one night, dressed all in form fitting black, my face and head also covered (classic fictional ninja getup). I had a little less than 3 weeks to make some money excluding travel time so I cast the 7th rank wind spell Soaring Technique to directly fly to the mountain range of magical beasts to save time. Bebe and Grandpa Doehring accompanied me of course and I also carried a good quality bag on my back with a few essentials like my ward sets with my father's set as a backup, water skins, a few spices, a dagger, my straight chisel, a couple sets of change of cloth and other necessities.

I made good time and was nearing the thickly forested edges of the mountain range of magical beasts; it was truly a grand sight to see now. One would still be able to see this mountain range from Wushan town if they look to the east from a high enough vantage point. The mountain range of magical beasts was truly a natural wonder as it ran the entire length of the Yulan continent from north to south effectively dividing the continent in two albeit unequal parts. Many powerful magical beasts were said to have made the central region of this place as their home and they occasionally wandered in to the outer region so I had to be careful regardless.

I decided to rest up a bit before entering the place proper as it would not do to rush in right now when I still felt a light strain after flying continuously for 5-6 hours. I gently floated down to perch upon the higher branches of a tall and sturdy tree a couple kilometres from the mountain range proper. Due to my dark black clothing and the late hour, I doubt anyone would notice me but I was still somewhat cautious.

"Squeak squeak!" Bebe said while also sending me some thoughts to express his excitement at being able to go to the mountain range of magical beasts. He still couldn't form whole sentences over our thought link just yet, he could convey a few simple words and was progressing well though so it would not be long.

"Quiet Bebe. Let me set up some wards first." I gently convey to him via our mind link. I then quickly set up the security and stealth wards before leaning back against the trunk of the tree for a small break.

I rest up for around 3 hours and share some of the dry rations I had packed with Bebe, I didn't pack much by way of food as I was pretty confident on hunting enough meat for the two of us, this was more emergency or travel rations. We decided to pack up and head into the mountain range of magical beasts proper at the first light of dawn.

The sun was just rising and I was packing up when I noticed a commotion at the edges of the wilderness. Soon I saw a couple of warriors rush out from the mountain range in a great hurry, they seem to be in a bad state with their clothes torn up and they seemed pretty beat-up and injured in general. I decided to keep my wards up for a while longer as a safety precaution and it seemed to be the right thing to do as I soon spotted a dozen warriors chasing the two from earlier. This new group all seemed to be dressed uniformly in dark black form fitting attire similar to mine if only of a vastly superior quality. They also seemed to have been through a fight, some more that others but on the whole, they were in a much better state than their prey.

I was caught up in a moment of indecision after that, I certainly wasn't going to interfere to try and save the first two. This place had no room for morals or ideals like that and for all I knew the pair being chased might not be innocent victims, so no, I wasn't hesitating over saving them or something. I was hesitating if I should cast a scouting and reconnaissance spell to better get a handle of the situation, I had close to 3 years of magical education now, 4 if you considered what Grandpa Doehring taught me before my admission to the Ernst institute. I was pretty confident with all the practice and skills I had under my belt and I also had a slew of new self-invented spells that I could use in these situations. My friends knew about my all-attribute affinity but I had still hidden my soul-mutate status so I had never shown them any elemental fusion spells I had created and I was currently debating if I should cast one right now.

My elemental fusion spells are a bit different from conventional magic spells as not only are they combinations of different elements, they have longer incantations and slightly higher costs, but their effects are comparable to normal spells at least a complete tier above my current rank. So, even though I am only rank 7 I could display powers comparable to rank 8 magi under the right circumstances.

In the end I decided to chance it as I sincerely doubted if the people here could detect my casting, it would take a mage of the 9th rank at least to detect what I was doing if I were to believe Grandpa Doehring's assessment of my spell when I had demonstrated it to him. I began chanting my spell in a soft whisper, this was a scouting spell that incorporated earth, wind and life attribute mageforce to give accurate readings of the surroundings up to a dozen kilometres from me as well as giving me an accurate measure of lifeforce that I could use to gauge the strength of any target in my range.

The results I got back showed that the pair being chased were warriors of the 7th rank and of the dozen chasers, six were 5th rank, three were 6th rank, two were 7th rank and the one I took to be the group's leader was a powerful 8th rank warrior. Surprisingly enough I also detected another larger party to the south a bit that was also observing the chase, there seemed to be about 30 members in that group with at least 2/3rd of them being 5th rank warrior and the remaining being 6th rank and the one I assumed as the leader, was 7th rank. The interesting thing I got from the readings was that the larger group to the south also had three magi and from the elemental essence readings I had gotten two were low level rank 3 magi with fire affinities and again the leader was surprisingly a rank 5 mage of wind and dark affinities in addition to a 7th rank warrior.

This was interesting, looks like a good show is about to play out. I thought to myself and settled down quietly to see if any opportunities to snag something for myself showed up. With this many participants involved there was no way that things would end without a big mess being made.

As expected, the large group to the south was getting involved, about 20 of them separated and were stealthily making their way towards the two smaller groups that had run out of the mountains. The remaining 10 or so which included the leader and the two other magi took up position a little further away armed with bows and arrows prepped for firing.

The 20 from the larger group stopped a ways out of sight a bit to let the cat and mouse chase sort itself out. The two escaping warriors could not keep running forever after all and they were tired and injured to boot with no one in sight to possibly assist them. The chasers also had two people of the same rank as them and one of a higher rank so the only reason they were delaying was to exhaust their stamina and play with them a bit. Seeing the writing on the wall they soon stopped running and started to fight back instead. They fought with wild abandon as they knew their chances of survival were nil, they only hoped to at least take some of their opponents down with them.

The two fought as a team with decent coordination and actually focused on landing fatal strikes on a single weaker target from their hunters. Not that the hunters were not suited for team battles but they got careless due to their superior numbers advantage and ultimately paid the price.

POV change-

The 8th rank warrior who led them was quite pissed as two from his party were swiftly killed and three more suffered heavy injuries before he could intervene and kill their prey for good. All the damage to their side was among the weaker 5th rank cadre but it still left a bad taste in the mouth to suffer even that in what should have been an easy ambush turned chase.

He issued orders for his team to loot their prey's bodies and administer first aid to the injured, just as his team got to work and he was overseeing the process, misfortune struck his party. Someone actually dared to ambush them, an elite assassin party from the Dark Alliance was being ambushed by a group of lowly bandits. It did not matter if the bandits now outnumbered them 2 to 1 and some of their numbers were injured, with him and the other high ranked fighters they could route these insects. Just as he was thinking of all the ways he could make these 20 or so bandits suffer, half a dozen arrows rained down towards them and caught them by surprise.

Normally, arrows would not be much of a challenge to him or his party but three of the arrows fired seemed to be enhanced by magic as two of them exploded in a fiery inferno after being dodged by his men and completely broke their formation. The third one was much more dangerous and was obviously shot by someone really experienced both as an archer and a mage, it was seemingly hidden within the shadows of another arrow by a darkness spell and actually nailed him in the left shoulder. It was only thanks to his high-power level and sharp instincts that he was even able to dodge that much as otherwise the arrow would have pierced his heart and killed him instantly, that shot was really dangerous.

He immediately made his displeasure known as he went about slaughtering the people who were ambushing him in the most brutally efficient way imaginable. That seemed to give their attackers sufficient pause for his own comrades to pull themselves together and methodically slaughter their opposition. The archers still gave them a little trouble, especially the magic ones but now that the initial surprise had worn off the half dozen arrows with the occasional magical one did not bother them too much. After expending much effort, he and his team manged to nearly kill all the fighters who had engaged in melee, soon the only ones left would be the archers in the distance, he was just about to order his men to charge at them despite some of their injuries. He would personally snap the neck of the one who shot him after breaking both his arms and shoving an arrow up his a*se.

Just as the last melee fighter they were fighting dropped dead at the hands of his 7th ranked lieutenant, the situation changed for the worse. The lieutenant did not have time to breathe easy as he found an arrow sticking out of his right eye socket and he dropped dead. The leader was shocked, that last arrow was too fast, with a very tricky timing and angle, even he was not confident in avoiding something like that. Even worse though, the arrows raining on them seemed to have doubled and he could see the archers who were taking pot-shots at them before come charging at them. Seeing the speed of the charging archers who seemed to be faster than the ones who approached them before he knew he had been had, the others from before were just the cannon fodder sent to weaken them and the main force was approaching them now to finish the job.

He was already preparing to flee by himself but the leader of the opposing team seemed to have figured out his plans as he was intercepted by another fast and tricky arrow that had got him in his leg this time. He had only managed to separate from the rest of his team by 100 metres or so and his mobility was already compromised, he really felt frustrated at all this. His frustration only seemed to increase when he recognised his assailant, there jogging towards him with a cocky smile on his face was a former underling of his, a traitor.

"Well well well, if it isn't my former captain Aerys. I would ask how you are doing but I can clearly see you are not doing so good." The sharp shooter slows his approach while still maintaining at least 30 metres between them. He also took the time chant a quick spell and fire off another quick shot towards the other 7th rank warrior in black clothing and making it easier for his friends to kill and loot the stragglers.

"Baelish!... you sneaky b**tard. I always knew you could not be trusted; I was so glad to get you off my team despite others saying I was a fool to let someone of your talents go. Humph, guess I was right when news of your new team's near destruction due to your betrayal got back to us." The wounded Aerys said with venom, he also spit out towards the approaching Baelish.

"My, I never pegged you to be a nostalgic one captain Aerys. Rest assured I will make sure to mention all this along with your past honours over your grave as a eulogy." Baelish continues to mock his previous superior.

"You won't have the chance traitorous scum, for the cult!" Aerys shouted towards the end and with supreme effort leapt at Baelish. His speed and agility were still surprising despite his injury but his target still smoothly evaded him but was caught unprepared and barely dodged his subtle knife throw.

"Tch, it seems that I still underestimated you, captain Aerys. I thought that the poison I hit you with would have already weakened you enough." Baelish remarks as he wipes the blood from the long cut across his right cheek that had also messed up his right ear quite badly. He seems really pissed at being injured so and after staunching the bleeding a bit, quickly fires a few more shots at his former captain.

"Gah! I'll get you Baelish, the Cult of Shadows will never forgive traitors." Aerys fiercely yells after failing to dodge the last few arrows. He only now realises how bad his situation is as the poison Baelish had spoken of was beginning to affect him, he was starting to feel light headed and dizzy.

"I was going to take it a little easy on…" Baelish started to say but his head soon went flying off his shoulder. Aerys was shocked as he did not know if that actually happened or he was hallucinating the whole thing. It wouldn't matter much though as soon after, his head also went flying off his shoulder as an invisible attacker cleanly beheaded him.

A few moments earlier-

I quietly watched as the large group that came from the south mercilessly sacrificed a majority of their members to wear down the group in black. Either they had some irreconcilable differences or the leader of the larger party believed that the gains would out-weigh the loss here or some combination of the two. Whatever the case, the ruthless action of the leader of the large group earned his place on the list of scum in my books and I would make sure to kill him afterwards.

After watching the slaughter for a while, I once again realised how cruel this world could be and if you weren't strong, you would very likely live and die for nothing. Just as I was pondering over so much meaningless death, I suddenly got an idea. I could make use of all these people dying, I mean I had a soul protecting Sovereign artifact as well as an affinity for the edicts of death after all so could I maybe harvest and refine their Souls. I wouldn't know unless I tried so I got to it instead of just sitting around and twiddling my thumbs. It was not easy and took me a couple tries as I had never done something like this before but in the end, I was able to pull the souls of all those who died within a kilometre of me into the Coiling Dragon ring. The refining process was much easier than I expected though as the ring seemed to have an in-built ability to refine Souls into pure spirit essence for the owner to absorb.

Soon my spiritual essence power was climbing like mad, I gained the equivalent of what I would have gotten with a month's progress of meditation within a few moments. This was truly a hack to get strong fast and I was going to abuse the hell out of this shortcut, now I was 100% confident with reaching Saint level as a mage within a decade. I just had to be sure to harvest the Souls of all the people or magical beasts I personally kill or die near me and my road ahead will be smooth.

I saw the leader and his immediate subordinates get taken down by arrows and seeing that the battle was about to end, I decided to make my move. I cast my scouting spell once more just in case, it would not do to stick my head out only to be ambushed by some other opportunistic bugger. After making sure that there was indeed no one else in the immediate area I cast the 7th rank 'Soaring Technique' to quickly and quietly make my way over to the main stage. I also cast another light and darkness combination spell of my own making that would render me nearly completely invisible to sight.

I approached the fight between the leaders first just in case, I knew that most of the time the good stuff was on them and if you let them slip away, they were most likely to cause you trouble. I heard a bit of their conversation and the only thing that I could think of was that I seem to have caught some big fish. The two parties did seem to have some bad blood and the black clothed party seemed to be an elite team from the Cult of Shadows, those guys were bound to have some good stuff. I did not waste too much time after that and pulled out my own dagger and cast a simple 'Wind Blade' enhancement on it to sharpen the cutting edge and lengthen it a few times, I decapitated both the losers.

The fight of the subordinates was still ongoing but I did not want them to be spooked and scatter after they noticed that both their leaders were dead. I then quickly flew over to them and after a quick application of the 5th rank earth spell 'Earth Spear Array' that impaled most of them, I quickly got rid of the rest of them by cutting their heads off just like I did to their leaders. From start to end, they had no clear idea who or what did them in as I was still invisible.

I then enlisted Bebe's help in looting all the corpses, that was a lot more time intensive than I had expected as it took longer than the battle and that was counting the time from even before I joined the fight. As I had expected of the black clothed elite team, they were loaded with magicite cores of magical beasts like rich money bags. Each of the lower ranked member- 5th rank members had around a 100 magicite cores each with 20% of them being rank 5 cores and the rest being 4th rank cores. The rough estimates of each of these guys was around 15,000 gold including some miscellaneous items they had like a few expensive medicinal herbs, precious ore and gem pieces, my money problems were non-existent now as these 6 low ranked warriors themselves just donated around 90,000 gold to me.

I excitedly continued my looting and the 6 higher class black clothed fighters and the value of the goods they were carrying completely dwarfed my earlier accounting. They easily had 5 times the monetary value as they had quite a few higher rank cores from 6th, 7th and a few of even 8th rank beasts. The real prize was however on the party's 8th rank leader, the guy had on him a real honest to goodness spatial ring that I quickly bound with my blood. The thing had around 10 cubic metres of space inside it and it was filled with so much treasure that I thought I was going to pass out.

No wonder that traitor jackass Baelish thought it would be worthwhile to strike this team and even went as far as sacrificing 2/3rds of his forces, the spatial ring itself was worth millions. I then checked the poor cannon fodder, they really were pitiful as even after looting them I only found about 30,000 gold worth of stuff in total from all 20 or so them, that was literally not even a third of the worth from the 6 grunts of the Cult of Shadows elite team. The gap was truly wide. The higher ranked bandits that followed Baelish were slightly better off, at least each was comparable to the weak grunts of the Cult team.

The surprise was once again Baelish himself as despite the value of the things in his bag being comparable to the mid-levels of the Cult team, he also had a spatial ring of similar design and internal size to the Cult team's leader. The traitor must have nicked it from the Cult before he turned traitor, who knows he may have even orchestrated his old team's death like that Aerys fellow accused him of and looted it from his old team leader's corpse even.

Note (From fandom Wiki… most of it):-

Magicite cores are the energy core of magical beasts. They only solidify in the bodies of magical beasts of the 3rd rank and above. The higher the rank of the magicite core, the more valuable it is as the energy in magicite cores become denser as its rank increases. Magicite cores have many uses- they act as socketable gems for magi-staffs, they can be used as power sources for some formations, they are used as raw materials to make certain alchemical products such as high-grade medicines or mineral refinement and they are also used in weapon forging sometimes to strengthen the base metals and alloys.

Ranks

- 3rd rank, it is worth about 10 gold coins.

- 4th rank, it is worth about 100 gold coins.

- 5th rank, it is worth about 250 gold coins.

- 6th rank, it is worth about 1000 gold coins.

- 7th rank, it is worth about 50,000 gold coins.

- 8th rank, it is worth about 500,000 gold coins.

- 9th rank, it is worth about 5,000,000 gold coins.

- Saint-level, it is worth tens of millions of gold coins; a truly priceless treasure.

The final two who were the first victims had around 150,000 gold worth of stuff between them, a reasonable sum of money to be chased after. I was just packing up to head out when my gaze landed on the corpses of Baelish and Aerys, I reminded myself once more of the dangers I would face if I proceeded to the mountain range and resolved myself to push through regardless. I was already ridiculously loaded with cash so there was no real need to put myself in danger but I decided go through with it any way, at least for the experience. I could at least search for and scout out that foggy gorge that canon Linley had found that was full of opportunities.

I was just about to head out for good when I was suddenly struck by something about Baelish's character and actions. In my opinion the dude was a piece of trash of the highest order due to the way he treated his subordinates but he also struck to me as a very decisive, opportunistic, cautious and a bit of a slimy coward actually. He had no regrets with sacrificing his subordinates but was cautious and cowardly enough to only engage in long range at the start, he even stooped low enough to use poisons from the get go.

I had to really wonder what sort of gain or treasure could drive someone like him to betray the Cult of Shadows in the first place. He had another team previously before he moved to the one that he eventually betrayed but if it was just a spatial ring he was after, he could have made a move sooner as even his old team seemed to have one. There had to be more to it than that so I quickly went over both the spatial rings that I had bound to see if there was anything of particular value or something I could not identify that might be some treasure.

There was not much there that I could not immediately identify, what with studying in the library of the continent's best magus school so much there was a lot I had read up on. A few ores, gems and plants I could not identify but after using my spiritual essence and mageforce to gauge their natural element essence potency I was sure they weren't all that. What else was there?

With thoughts like that in mind I once more approached Baelish's headless corpse, I then thoroughly checked his clothes before finally stripping him naked. Well… I found what it could be but I was very reluctant to retrieve it; there it was adorning his d*ck, it seemed to be another spatial ring but of a different design, the b**tard was using it as a c**k ring. I really did not know what to make of that, it was a really concealed and hidden place to hide it, any man would also not risk damaging that region so it sort of… nonono… do not under any circumstance try to rationalize this in any way, shape or form. I swiftly cut off his junk with a wind blade and burnt the flesh to ashes before picking the ring up using a stick from nearby.

"That is just nasty, the things that some people do." Grandpa Doehring commented with a look of revulsion, he was observing everything quietly until now.

"Yeah Grandpa, still there is absolutely no way you will convince me to touch that thing before I boil it in water a dozen times over as many days." I respond with a disgusted look. Just to be sure I did not miss anything else; I burnt the bodies of everyone else to ash and spent a little while sifting through it. Who knows, Baelish or someone else might have hidden something up their a*se too and there was no way in hell I was going to do a colonoscopy, I didn't think that my sanity could take anymore. Fortunately or unfortunately I did not find anything else, still why did I not just burn the idiot's body first instead of doing a strip search, I will keep asking myself that for a long time.

I even had weird thoughts like if this was some kind of 'MC halo encounter'. I got involved in some high rewards fight, I got treasures but then was cursed by the sight of a crazy pervert's madness given form. I looked around rapidly to see if I could actually see the ridiculous 'MC halo' that made me undergo all that but I didn't find anything.

I resolved to research further on that for the sake of my sanity in future strange encounters, who knows the edicts of fate and oracular magic might hold the answers. That was the only affinity that I had trouble with as I had no idea on how to use it properly before, now I planned to try and use it for divination, just have it be some radar for encounters with fortune and just a heads-up warning system.

"Squeak squeak!" Bebe tries to comfort me after that traumatising experience and after petting the cute guy a bit, I feel better and decide to just move on into the mountain range proper.

I did not bother myself with seeking out magical beasts to hunt once inside, I was already wealthy enough and was not hurting for cash anymore. There were plenty that chose to attack me of their own accord so I quickly and efficiently killed them to replenish my food supply, I also let Bebe get some practice fighting different opponents as well. On my exploration journey, I made it a point to have my senses sharply focused and used the little bit of practice I had with sensing the wind and earth to great effect, I was actually walking bare-foot just to have a better connection to the earth.

I also sensed quite a good number of other people both alive and some half-eaten corpses but mostly steered clear of them, I was not looking to socialize here after all. I did make it a point to kill every human assassin or bandit I came across though, it was easy to identify them as they tended to linger around and follow other people a lot. Once I had confirmed that someone was a cold-blooded killer, I had no mercy for them and swiftly dispatched them before they knew what happened. They again donated a considerable amount for me to add to my growing fortune.

The other thing that really motivated me to keep practicing my sensory techniques was the numerous random treasures I found. Usually, most people would have to get lucky to find quality medicinal herbs, precious metal ores or raw jewels buried in the ground but with my powerful mutated soul and affinities for earth and life, I had it easy. I just had to go to the locations where I felt an unusual clump in flow of the natural essences and I would find something interesting. It was so helpful in fact that by now I was more than twice as rich in terms of my non-beast core assets, I was more effective at finding random natural treasures than all the dirty murdering looters I had encountered combined.

All this random wandering and occasional combat practice went on for two weeks, I had made a few smaller gains mostly in terms of non-beast core stuff but still nothing was comparable to the windfall just prior to my entry to the mountain range. There was still no sign of that foggy gulch from canon and I was running out of time, I resolved myself to stop for now and try again next year if I did not make any progress in the next couple of days. My super treasure senses were not helping me much with this, maybe I ran around too much digging for treasure that I veered too far away from my original target. No matter, I flew straight up a bit over the tree-line to look for the tallest mountain or just any high-altitude place that would offer a good view and set a course for it as my last try. If nothing else it should at least give me a view of the place that I can use as a reference for future searches, don't want to keep looking in the same general area over and over after all.

As I was making my way to the large mountain I had set as my destination I thought about some of the better things that happened over the past couple of weeks to keep from obsessing over the foggy gulch of wonder. After two weeks of constantly scrubbing it in every stream I came across as well as boiling it in hot water every few hours while resting under my wards, I finally decided that I could bind that third spatial ring I had without becoming violently sick. Imagine my astonishment when I discovered that this was a high-quality spatial ring with a storage capacity easily over 100 cubic metres. Hehehe… that was amazing, I would never wear the ring anywhere on my person though, but still… hehehe.

The ring also contained a massive fortune, looks like Baelish stashed 80% of his fortune in this thing as it contained way more than what I had previously valued him at. That wasn't all though as what I thought was Baelish's stuff only occupied a tiny portion of the vast space, the rest though I assumed was the ring's previous owner's as not only could I not identify most of them but they had ridiculously high concentrations of natural essences to them.

This led me to believe that the ring and most of its contents once belonged to a powerful deity from the higher realms, the Infernal realm in particular I judged upon finding a couple thousand thumbnail sized square stones. Most were pitch black but there were a couple that were azure in colour and aggregated into fist sized blocks and they all seemed to be saturated with destruction essence.

The stones I remembered were the main form of currency in the Infernal realm and were called Ink stones and Azurites or something. I had no proper idea of the value of this stuff but was just glad that that twit Baelish had not sold them off or worse tossed them out thinking it to be junk. Besides the Ink stones most of the contents seemed to be food stuff and drinks, if they could be called that. Compared to the local food here, these had way more elemental essences in them. Locals of the Yulan plane could even be excused for thinking them to be priceless medicinal and alchemical products.

There were also a few books in there that had me very interested like Infernal Realm, General Summary, there were more books that went into the details of a place called the Karol continent in the west of the Infernal realm. It was just more geographical and topographical information of that particular region though. I was completely shocked at the referenced distances though, a single prefecture could span billions of kilometres in radius, the Yulan continent seemed tiny by comparison, in fact I thought that our entire material plane would not even match a prefecture of the higher realms in size.

The real treasure according to me though was a single book called 'A brief overview of the Profound Laws and Edicts'. This book did not describe how to practice any technique at all and seemed to be more like a person's journal describing the various usages of the Laws and Edicts they had encountered. Just those few descriptions and ideas was enough to get the gifted imagination of the Transmigrator part of me to run wild and try to analyse how any of these things could have been done and which properties of the Laws or Edicts caused those effects. I was going to have my nose buried in that book for a long time after I get back to the Institute.

The ring unfortunately did not have any weapons or artifacts though it did have various crystals and lumps of ore along with what I identified as 3 godsparks. The godsparks were a surprise and though I had no intention to use them myself or give them to my friends and family, I decided to hang on to them. I had no way to tell what rank they were but I was sure that if I ever brought them out, I would be hounded to death by every Saint level expert on the plane, best just keep them until I can cash them for Inkstones in the Infernal realm I thought.

I quickly stopped my train of thought as I sensed a large pack of around 50 Wind wolves come within range of my extended mage sense. They had sensed me as well as they had really sharp senses and were wind attribute beasts with adults ranging from 4th to 8th rank to at most, I really liked to run into stronger pack type magical beasts as I could gain great rewards from fighting them. Not only could I gain good combat experience from all the fighting but the spoils in the form of magicite cores and Souls harvested would be enormous not to mention that I could store a good amount of their meat for later use, cooking with magical beast not only increased my culinary skills but the taste and energy provided by them was also superior to regular food. This pack while large only had 2 wolves of the 7th rank and a dozen 6th rank with the rest being 5th and 4th rank beasts so it was not something Bebe and I could not handle with a bit of preparation.

I informed Bebe of the company that we would be having soon and quickly cast the wind style spell 'Supersonic' on both of us which caused our forms to be covered in a layer of gently swirling winds. Normally this spell would only gather the winds near the targets feet but I had modified mine to cover the whole body as I understood wind resistance and turbulence affected the whole body. While the overall concentration of the wind layer was thinner in order to cover the entire body instead of just the legs the overall speed boost and dexterity increase were half a level better in my version. I also cast the 7th rank Earthguard Armor spell on myself which formed a jadeite plate armour on my body, I was not as tanky a Bebe after all. I then pulled out two of the daggers I had looted from the Cult of Shadows elite group and as a change of pace applied lightning type essence to sharpen and lengthen the cutting edge. The wolves were soon within sight as they were truly charging towards me at a frightening speed, I wasn't worried though.

"Ready Bebe?" I mentally call out to my partner who mentally replies in the affirmative along with his usual cute squeaks.

The two of us then pre-emptively charge the wolf pack rather than let them get closer and surround us. "Skreeee!" Bebe was already terrifyingly fast before, comparable to my full spell enhanced speeds but now that I had also given him the same speed spell boost… the wolves had no idea what hit them as numerous tiny claws tore at them. The little guy's biggest problem was his shallow attack reach due to his small size, guess that was the natural drawback for his otherwise powerful race as just his speed, attack power and defence were ridiculous enough. Maybe I can work with him later to see if he could extend the reach of each of his attacks by channelling some of his innate magic through his claws, wind or darkness enhanced extendable claws were the goal. For now, at least his small size was working for him as the wolves were finding it near impossible to track the little guy's movements.

Still, I was also focused on my own battle, dancing through the pack of wolves cutting anything that got within striking range. The daggers I was dual wielding only increased my normal reach by less than a foot but by having them coated with an elemental essence, the effective range of my strikes was around 2 and a half feet. Plus, since I was channelling lightning, every cut caused the muscles of my victims to wildly spasm for a bit and giving me ample opportunity to either finish them off or protect myself from being ganged up on. That combined with my mastery of the wielding-something-light-as-though-heavy stage made it so that I did not need more than 2 moves to kill a 6th rank and below wolf.

Thanks to our frequent practice sessions together, my coordination with Bebe was brilliant and we were able to watch each other's back to prevent injuries. Neither of us had a scratch on us at this point due to our speed and defence advantage so we had easily killed a dozen of the pack's members in the first couple of minutes. Our battles weren't always this easy though, initially we would be injured even in one-on-one fights with other beasts as we had little experience on how to deal with the various types of opponents. All the book knowledge only helped so much when confronted by the situation in person and although I knew the weak points of the many beasts, actually landing a good hit on them proved to be a challenge. Needless to say, we managed to polish our actual combat skills a lot in the two weeks we spent so far in this mountain range.

That was all in the past, now though there were few opponents of the 7th rank and below that would pose a challenge for us even though normally magical beasts of the same rank were considered a rank stronger in terms of combat against regular humans. We would have to be outnumbered by more than a dozen to one by 6th rank beasts to even feel slightly threatened, and it was showing now.

The two 7th rank leaders of this pack saw that the battle was not going in their favour at all and if they let this continue there was a good chance of their pack being decimated. They let out a howl to signal most of the normal pack members to retreat and the two leaders along with the dozen 6th rank elite wolves immediately charged forward to quickly close the gap with Bebe and me.

I was ready for this tactic though as it was the same one employed by the two other wolf packs that Bebe and I had encountered so far. We had to run away the first time we were faced with it though and were quite badly injured due to our lacking experience, thank goodness for the healing abilities of life magic though. Honestly though the healing abilities of Life magic were OP, no wonder they are so highly regarded despite their rarity and people say that if there is a life attribute mage in the party then it is difficult for you to die even if you want to.

I was chanting the incantation for the basic 5th rank 'Super Gravity Field' and my modified 'Earth Spear Array' so just as the leading wolf was within a metre of us the earth below us all started shaking with a yellow glow. Besides the slight shaking Bebe and I weren't affected much as I had warned my partner to brace himself but the wolves had no such warning. If it was just the ground shaking a bit it would not affect the wolves much, it was the combination of the shaking and glowing that signified the area was under the effects of a higher gravity that made many of them fall and tumble. The situation was then compounded as sharp earthen spears rose to pierce the soft undersides of the wolves that were falling to the ground under the higher gravity.

My opening attack itself took out one of the 7th rank leaders and over half the elites while injuring the rest. Bebe and I did not give them time to rest as we once again attacked them in a frenzy at our fastest speed, the area of my gravity field was also large enough to trap the weaker wolves so after swiftly dispatching the stronger wolves we killed off the stragglers as well before any could escape. Then it was time to harvest all their magicite cores and most of their meat, I also used a bit of my death mageforce to gather the Souls of all the wolves into the Coiling Dragon ring.

I had stored up quite a number of Souls and refined them already as there was no shortage of living creatures dying after failing to kill us or just dying in range of my ability to pull them to me. The only problem was that I could not continuously absorb the essence to enhance my own Soul and spiritual essence. After I had absorbed so much refined Soul power on the first day which was equivalent to 6 months of my usual fast paced cultivation, I started getting light headed. I came to the realisation that there were still some limits and I could not just willy-nilly eat more than I could chew or digest in one sitting. Thankfully I was able to still gather Souls and store their refined power within the CD ring for later use so it wasn't all bad.

Once we were done with looting, Bebe and I set off again to the tall mountain that was our destination and we only got into a couple more fights on the way that were not any more challenging than the wolf pack. Considering our strength and ability we had travelled a little further into the mountain range and it was easier to encounter 6th rank beasts here with the occasional 7th rank so it was still good experience for us. I did not let the string of good luck get to us though as I knew from Grandpa Doehring's warnings that stronger beasts sometimes travelled to the outer regions, it would be truly bad if that were to happen. Thankfully I had reached 7th rank at least and knew the flying spell of the wind style so there was a slightly higher chance for me to escape even from higher rank magical beasts as long as they were ground bound. If I encountered a powerful flying beast or God forbid a Saint level beast then my death was all but assured, so caution was still rule number 1.