Wild Era 4, Ch 1: Highmist

Kelin appeared in the guild in Highmist as the energy of the teleportation spell twisted the air.

Golden flames flickered around him as he scanned the room, each of them leaping with mana and soaring like tiny phoenixes.

The room was empty.

It was also neat and orderly, with only a touch of other mana signatures present. When he saw that, he relaxed.

He was in his guild room, the one that he had booked semi-permanently, and everything looked normal.

It had been a few days since he gave Esla and Taren a teleportation scroll to come here. The spell had taken them and their two kids away from the pirate ship where he rescued them. 

Highmist was a much safer place.

After that, he’d dealt with the pirates and the necromantic ritual on the island nearby, which had been a massive problem.

He’d told Esla to find one of the guild captains here and explain what had happened with the Sarathian necromancer and the pirates, but he hadn’t been sure how it would go.

Since things were arranged neatly, it looked like things were fine.

The guild must have helped them find another place, either a different set of rooms for the four of them or perhaps a secure inn.

Taren and Esla were wealthy merchants and in the First Evolution, so they weren’t weak, but after being kidnapped, they would naturally be on guard.

If things had been bad, they would have been bunkered down here, where his wards and his status as a Knight Commander of the Path and a Baron of Highmist could protect them.

Fortunately, it looked like things had gone well. 

He trusted the guild, so he hadn’t expected anything less, but enemies had already infiltrated the guild hall once and his best point of contact with the captains was gone.

Hopefully, Sandren would get the gift he’d sent to her and stay safe now that she had rejoined the Silver Army.

As for all the issues with Sarathia and the things he’d discovered on the island, he would deal with those soon enough. 

He’d spent a little while chasing down the third necromancer apprentice and destroying a few more pirates, or he would have been done even sooner.

Now that he was back, he had some local things to handle, like teaching his two apprentices and building his academy.

For now, although there was no one in the room, there was a message for him resting on the table.

He picked it up and read it.

It was written in Sylvan, which surprised him for a moment, but he had no trouble reading it. The curling characters and elegant runes brought back old memories of friends from his first life, as well as ones from his new one.

When he finished, a smile flickered across his features.

Serai had written this.

It looked like the Winter Sylph and his other two allies, Maro and Galin, had adopted Taren’s family. 

They had come back from their dungeon runs and had been taking a short break to reset and repair their gear when Taren’s family arrived. Now they were helping the family to feel at home in Highmist. 

They were also protecting them until Kelin could get back.

The merchants had plenty of wealth to draw on, but friends were in short supply, so he was glad to see it.

He stored the letter away and walked over to the window, where he looked out at the courtyard below.

Plans filled his mind.

He would meet them all shortly, but for now it looked like Taren and Esla were getting some well-deserved rest while organizing their accounts and working out some deals with the local merchants and banks.

The guild was also giving them some assistance, which would be worth quite a bit.

That was thanks to him.

As a Knight Commander of the Path, his status was incredible on Lareth, equal to the guild commander for the world, and since Taren’s family was under his protection, the guild was helping them more than it would have someone else.

He folded his hands behind his back as he studied the trainees in the courtyard below. 

It was a weapons class, but not one that his apprentices were in.

Yao and Naomi were mages, so while they trained in some physical arts with the guild, most of their attention was on mana control and spell theories.

He’d given them a massive inheritance to work on before he left, so hopefully they were making progress with it, as well as with their elemental partners and the soul bonds he’d helped them to create.

It should be almost time for them to specialize and choose a class, and they might have done it while he was gone. The guild tended to take things slowly, but it had been a couple of months.

When he’d left, Yao had been leaning toward a Lightning Mage specialty and Naomi toward being a Fire Mage, so he was looking forward to seeing where they had ended up.

Even if they had taken those types, there was still the question of their exact classes.

He would check on them shortly and give them some advice.

He had a lot of other small tasks to take care of, as well as the big one of dealing with that undeath cult in Sarathia, but there was enough time. 

The Sarathian plot had been slowly unfolding for years and it didn’t look like it would speed up any time soon. 

All evidence pointed to a hidden civil war in the desert empire between the cultists and the old guard of the country, including a large part of its military, and frankly even if they killed themselves and they all turned into undead, it wouldn’t harm the world that much.

The main thing was that Kelin didn’t want to see them kill more innocents in their pursuit of power, so it was in his best interests and the interests of the civilized races if he settled matters before too long.

The civil war was keeping things contained in the empire for now, but the cultists were active on the outskirts, like the island he’d just come from.

Since they couldn’t act overtly at home, they were moving abroad to do their dirty work.

Some of them had been sacrificing innocents on one of the smaller islands on the eastern side of the Ocean of Storms, one of the Isles of Azure Sand.

They’d taken over a dungeon and had been enhancing it to open a gate to the City of Bones, an old location of power that belonged to one of the Sovereign of Undeath’s generals.

The Lord of Bones, a Seventh Evolution Immortal.

Kelin had destroyed everything there, even if it had nearly killed him.

He chuckled at that thought.

Undeath was probably even angrier than usual with him, if the being was aware of what he’d done.

Not that Kelin cared.

His mastery of Soul Magic was why Undeath had killed him in his first life and what set off the chain of events that led to his reincarnation.

The two of them were fated to clash again and again.

For now, he didn’t have the power to win that fight, but he did have the backing of the Sovereign of Silver Chaos, who was helping him from a distance and blocking Undeath from taking any direct action against him.

Any new one, at least.

The tally was still Undeath 1 and Kelin 0.

Kelin would settle that debt in time.

Destroying the island ritual had helped him make some progress.

He looked inward at his bones, which were glowing golden with phoenix flames. Inside them, a liquid flame was brilliant and radiated power.

It was like a sacred golden marrow filling them.

The final battle at the island had resulted in him rebuilding his body and particularly his bones. Before, he’d had a Trait called Tempered Bones that used essence from the Law of Bones to become harder.

He’d gained it from an earlier dungeon and an altar that held a remnant of the power from the undead.

It hadn’t been a problem at first, since humans were adaptable and could use many Laws, but once he’d entered the city that belonged to that immortal, his bones had come under great stress.

The battle against a Third Evolution seer there, a Sarathian enemy who’d been nearly a hundred levels over him, had poured necrotic energy into his bones and threatened to turn him into an undead.

He had used a source of wraithfire in the dungeon to destroy his bones and remake them, infusing them with the echoes of Laws he had gained and then taking it a step further.

The Path had helped as well.

This was the result.

His bones had been reborn with the Law of the Phoenix.

His previous Perfect Soulfire Physique had adapted to the change and was now a Soulfire Phoenix Physique. He also had a new foundation for the Law of the Soulfire Phoenix to go along with it.

Overall, it was an enormous improvement, one he had forged on the edge of death.

It also gave him a particular advantage, one that would grow with time and help him to achieve a goal he’d never managed in his past life.

To reach the Seventh Evolution and become an immortal.

It might also help him achieve his new goal to become the Sovereign of Souls and the Lord of Reincarnation, a being who could stand as an equal with the Sovereign of Silver Chaos and the Sovereign of Undeath.

There was a third Sovereign out there as well.

The Sovereign of War.

He was an old enemy of Silver Chaos and had tried to conquer this galaxy in the past, but the Silver Lord had grown stronger over time and was keeping him from causing too much trouble.

If Kelin could become the fourth Sovereign, he could help to protect their galaxy, and humanity and the other civilized races would be much safer.

That would honor Irian, his ancient home world that had been destroyed in the Chaos War almost three thousand years ago.

As Kelin looked out at the courtyard, he organized the plans in his mind and his mood settled. 

Eventually, he turned away and headed out of his room.

There were a lot of things to do.

He had searched the souls of half a dozen key figures on the island, from the pirates who’d kidnapped hostages to the main necromancer and his apprentices who had been maintaining the ritual.

Soul searches were notoriously fragmented, however, and even he couldn’t read memories with perfect clarity. 

He had some leads about where to look in Sarathia for more enemies, including places where those cultists had stayed before and the noble clans behind them, but he would have to combine that with some information from the guild so he didn’t waste too much time.

For now, he had quite a few things from the island to sell off, including the spatial items from all of the high-level figures he’d eliminated.

There was quite a bit in them.

Three of the Sarathians had been at the Third Evolution, which put them on the same level as the City Lords of Celadon and the Guild Council for the entire world.

The three necromancer apprentices had been at the Second Evolution, and there had been two more First Evolution young elites from Sarathia’s noble families. Those two had been there to benefit from the ritual and gain levels.

That ritual was how the cultists had so many Second and Third Evolution fighters. They were absorbing necrotic energy and elements from the dungeons they found, as well as vitality from living sacrifices.

It sent their levels flying upward, but it also meant they would turn into an undead when they died.

It was a fool’s choice, and they even knew what would happen to them in the end, but they were doing it anyway, confident that their power in life meant more than their enslavement in death.

Kelin shook his head at that.

Their choices aside, the cultists had at least had quite a few good things in their spatial rings.

Some of it had come from the people they’d killed, so he was planning to give a good part to the guild. The guild clerks could track down anyone left from those families and help them.

As for the rest, he had plans for it.

He needed to restock some mana potions and other things at the guild store, including teleportation scrolls, and then to check on his apprentices and Taren’s family.

The guild probably had some updates for him as well.

Jesra, one of the guild clerks who worked for him, was keeping an eye on his estate here and the construction of the academy and orphanage that he’d ordered.

Hopefully, the local nobles weren’t causing too much trouble for her.

If they were, he’d have to remind them why that was a bad idea. He'd only been gone for a couple of months, but he suspected they were the type with very short memories.

There were a couple of weeks left until the Decennium, the nobles' once-a-decade meeting where they split up authority and dungeons across Celadon. Since he was a Baron of Highmist, he was nominally supposed to attend.

He hadn’t decided if he was going yet, but if they were causing problems, he wouldn’t mind visiting and leaving a lasting impression.

He let his plans brew at the back of his mind as he walked through the guild. He scanned the people he passed, getting a sense for how things were going.

The feedback told him that Highmist was stable enough, at least here in the guild.

That was reassuring.

It didn’t take him long to reach the guild shops, where he emptied his spatial storage onto the counter.

It took a while to add it all up, but the result was nearly 900,000 gold.

The clerk on duty was the regular one, who usually looked bored no matter what he saw, but this time he was wide-eyed at the amount Kelin was selling.

Fortunately, the guild’s pockets were deep and its network spanned the entire galaxy, so it had no lack of funds. This was only a drop in the bucket, a fraction of a percent of what a single world could supply.

Kelin estimated how much the hostages might have had on them, tripled it or more, and deposited 600,000 gold into the guild’s accounts, all of it marked for redistribution to the families of those affected.

The other 300,000 gold he kept for his own use. 

He’d only had about 50,000 gold before that, so it was a significant improvement.

The Path had raided his storage and taken almost everything with a shred of mana in it to help him forge his bones, so he took the time to restock the missing things, including some mana crystals.

He ended up with 30 major healing and mana potions and about the same number of each lesser variety, as well as a few dozen high-grade mana crystals.

Then he added on some new crafting materials for talismans, spare clothes, and a dozen teleportation scrolls, since he’d used his last one to return here.

All of that only added up to about 30,000 gold.

He checked on a few items that might be useful for his academy and the orphanage that he was supporting, including some things that could make the wards stronger, but there wasn’t much else available that they needed.

He’d purchased twelve Fourth Evolution spatial ward cores before he left, so those were also waiting for him. 

He ended up adding some supplies and a few dozen spatial crystals, but nothing else.

He didn’t have any spatial energy of his own yet and wouldn’t until he reached the Fourth Evolution, so he would need the crystals to help him activate the wards and make adjustments.

With them, he would be able to get everything set up.

The academy and orphanage had enough funding from his earlier efforts, so he wasn’t too concerned, but if they needed more, he could add it.

He tossed all of his purchases into his spatial storage, tipped the clerk who was looking at him with a stunned expression, and headed off to the front desk.

On the way, he whistled an ancient tune from Irian, one that had once accompanied him as he walked across a golden plain.