Chương 141: Book 3 Chapter 19 - Subtle Mind Magic

Victor watched as the four-man team from the Silver Serpent Clan approached the Yountal Estate in Portish under the cover of night. The team leader was a powerful tier 3, and he was followed by two more tier 3s and a tier 2. Victor didn't dig too deep, but their surface thoughts informed him that it was a strike team, intent on attacking the estate. Elsa Undril had returned from the Capital a couple weeks earlier, and had no doubt learned about Kane Vondeer's demise in Easton at the hands of Shian Yountal.

This was apparently her form of retaliation. Victor had told Shian that he didn't want to get involved where the Silver Serpent Clan was concerned, and he meant it. Even at tier 6, he was honestly a bit scared of Elsa. Even with all of his advantages, he didn't actually know if he could beat her in a fight, that's how scary she was. He undoubtedly had more raw power at his disposal, but he wasn't a fighter. His personal growth was driven by a love of magic and research instead.

That being said, Shian had called him her friend. Victor hadn't had many friends in his life, and the ones he did have he hadn't spoken to in decades, after what happened. He admitted to feeling similarly about Shian, he considered her a friend. He enjoyed their little game of him spying while they both feigned innocence, guessing at her real power and what her goals were, and watching her little empire slowly build. The fact that she had been summoned by the duke and agreed to go spoke volumes about her character.

Even as a (probably?) tier 7, she worked to benefit the city of Easton, listened to the duke's summons, and was acting as a good citizen. He only mentally added the 'probably' disclaimer for his own benefit, since accepting that reality would dictate his own actions out of a sense of duty, something he wasn't ready to face yet. While he was quite certain about her being a tier 7 mage, he was also actively grasping at any oddity or excuse he could find to convince himself she might not be.

Even the fact that she went to see the duke, and had agreed to wear the bracelet he gave her might indicate a lower tier. Maybe. Probably not, but he had convinced himself that it was a possibility. At any rate, he didn't like that the Silver Serpent Clan was planning to attack her estate while she was gone. That young boy, Yeager, wasn't ready to handle a confrontation of this sort, and the other guards simply didn't have the capacity to stand up to three tier 3 mages.

No doubt quite a few of the Yountal Estate servants and guards would be killed, and the estate reduced to rubble. Victor rationalized that Elsa herself wasn't here, and she didn't need to know that he had been involved. As long as she didn't come for him personally, surely there wasn't any harm in lending a helping hand while Shian was gone. She'd been absent for over a month now, and likely wouldn't return for some time yet. Victor nodded to himself, making up his mind.

As the strike team approached the wall of the estate, Victor, invisible and undetectable by these four, erected a mana shield to protect the estate wall. It extended upwards into the air above the wall dozens of feet, and a few hundred feet to either side. The mages attempted to climb the wall, but the mana shield prevented them from actually touching it. Confused, they felt the shield all over, going a few feet in either direction to see if they could find a way around the barrier.

"Some kind of shield," one of them whispered in the darkness.

"Everyone move back," the leader snarled.

"I'll blast a hole in it." They did, and he tried, only to find that the shield rebuffed his spell without so much as trembling. Victor may not be a fighter, but his mana control was exceptional, and the spells of a tier 3 had literally no chance of affecting him. Not even Zoey's unusually strong spells for a tier 3 had strained him in the slightest, the tier gap was simply too great.

Not to mention that Victor could have wrested away control of the team leader's mana and spells if he'd wanted, a perk of his personal domain. He avoided that though, since he wanted their report back to Elsa to be reasonably explainable without implying that a high tiered mage had intervened. He also didn't want to hurt or kill any of them, since that would likely draw out Elsa's personal attention, rather than relegating the task to her underlings.

Victor wanted to avoid that at all costs, at least until Shian had returned and could personally deal with this mess. Love this story? Find the genuine version on the author's preferred platform and support their work! The strike team tried a few more things, but realized they couldn't get through the shield. Not wanting to return and report their failure, they began moving down the estate wall, searching for an opening. Victor gently reached out and tugged on their thoughts.

Tier 3 mages could sense mental probes and attacks, even if they couldn't defend against them, so he took his time and moved very carefully. He wanted to dissuade them from their efforts without them realizing they'd been affected by his mind magic. He listened to their surface thoughts, the things their minds were screaming so loudly that he could almost hear them passively. As thoughts arose that hinted at giving up on this task, he simply amplified them ever so slightly.

The thoughts were their own, he simply juiced them up a bit. As those thoughts were amplified, they repeated more often, gaining organic traction in each of the mage's thought patterns. Any thoughts about trying the gate, he damped slightly, although he could simply erect a barrier there, too, if needed. His efforts paid off, as after travelling a few hundred feet to the side and again failing to penetrate the shield, the strike team decided the mission was a bust.

"This estate is too well protected. Must be some kind of protective ward."

"Do we just give up? Elsa won't be happy." They turned to the team leader, the one who would have to report to Elsa. He paused, then shrugged.

"Nothing we can do. If even I can't break through, then none of us can. Let's go grab a drink. If we have any more ideas to try, we can come back, otherwise we'll let Elsa know that we couldn't get in. She'll have to send one of the other teams." They turned as a group and started the trek back to the city. As Victor watched them go, he realized they'd given him a great idea.

If he put up some protective runes on the walls, he could get a similar effect to what he'd just done, but without him having to personally be here. He placed the runes on the inside of the walls where they couldn't be tampered with unless someone had already made their way inside. The estate was large, and the wall was quite long, but his domain sped the work up considerably.

Rather than tediously inscribing each rune by hand, and dealing with the slight imperfections that came from such manual work, he simply willed the stone in the wall to sink and compress in the right places, and perfectly formed runes etched themselves into existence. He did the wall in overlapping sections, which allowed him to infuse his mana into a section and get it powered up, then he could work on the runes for the next section while his mana recharged.

Victor didn't technically need to sleep anymore, although a short nap felt nice sometimes, so he worked through the night and into the following day. He did the more publicly visible parts of the wall while everyone else was asleep, but kept his invisibility up the entire time to avoid anyone knowing he was working on it. By the following morning the wall was done, and now he would just need to stop by periodically, to see if any sections needed recharging.

Barring any sort of attack, the wall would last months without needing to be recharged, and if something like the other night happened again, it should hold up fairly well for anything a tier 3 could throw at it. The gate opening allowed people to come and go, but the gate itself also now had protective runes inscribed into the metal. When the gate was closed, the estate would be essentially impenetrable to anyone below tier 4.

A group of tier 3s could break through in a concerted effort, or even a group of tier 2s, given enough time, but Victor felt much better about leaving the estate unattended now. He patted himself on the back and went for one of those pleasant thirty minute naps, knowing he would awake feeling completely recharged. * Kiara, Dustin, and Zoey checked a few different neighborhoods in the suburbs of Lakeshire until they found a house they liked.

It was modest, and surrounded by many other houses of similar shapes and sizes. The area wasn't too busy, and kids played with a ball in the streets. It felt very out of the way and low key, perfect for their secret house on the Central Island. After buying the house, they spent the rest of the day lazing around, exploring the neighborhood and surrounding area. The next day, they went to the Lakeshire city offices to look at the job boards and find out where they could hire more house retainers.

They set up some interviews for that afternoon, and met with quite a few new faces. Finding tier 2s wasn't too difficult in Portish, so they stuck to interviewing tier 3s here in Lakeshire. They asked around to see if any tier 4s were looking for work, but were told that they would have to check in the Capital. Tier 4s were in such high demand, that it was unlikely they'd find any looking for long-term employment.

They spent the next few days interviewing in Lakeshire, the Capital, and a few other nearby duchy capital cities, all of which were located fairly close to the Capital. They ended up finding three additional tier 3s that Kiara liked, all of whom seemed pleasant, good-natured, and level-headed, and were willing to relocate south to Portish. They did interview two tier 4s in the Capital that were looking for work, but neither of them seemed like they would be a good fit.

Two of the tier 3s they hired, Ben and Lily, had plateaued at tier 3, but the other, Stellen, was working his way toward tier 4. Once Zoey, Jaden, and Stellen all advanced, House Yountal would have three tier 4s on retainer, which was an impressive roster. They paid for soul oath contracts for the new retainers, using the same template that Victor had drawn up for them originally. With the soul oaths active, they began filling the new retainers in on the state of things in both Easton and Portish.