Lyns woke up from his dreams with a tranquil mind, as if the events of yesterday happened to someone else. After all these predicaments he came clear with himself, there was finally a firm objective he wanted to pursue. It was strength and dominance, it all came down to this, those who had power could do anything and there would be no one to stop them. In a cruel dog eats dog world the strong prosper and only the weak suffers.

His desire for revenge and strength steeled his personality. Although these life and death situations were dangerous, they were precious experience for the inexperienced Lyns. If he had been an empty canvas before, now he was a painting covered in flames. His new resolve was very compatible with the constitution of his soul, which radiated an aura of overbearing dominance.

He activated soul sense and said to Karo:

“We are going for a hunt! I want Valentine dead, Master, please advise me.”

“You came to the right person my faithful disciple. I have quite an expertise in manhunt.” – said Karo with so much happiness for the situation, it almost made Lyns change his mind, almost…

“You shouldn’t be afraid, you are already stronger, than average soldiers and adventurers. You just have to bring your enchanted bluestones with yourself. As a last resort, if they force you, you can just cut him down with your cursed sword.”- at the end of his advice the ghost became gloomy by thinking about the sword, but he still continued with a sinister voice:

“First of all, we should start to search for information while the situation is still hot.

Lets start with downstairs at the counter. Track down this Valentine bitch and confine his soul, I might have some normal company by then and not just this lunatic Tim.”

‘Misery loves company.’- thought Lyns, as he packed his belongings.

He left his room fully armed and asked the innkeeper for information. It cost him only a silver coin to know exactly what he wanted to know.

Valentine A. Dovjav left the city last night with a caravan that headed to Xah’Xalami, the capital of Razanata. Such a coincidence, my original plans were to head there for experience and supplies.

“Kid, I know you are thinking about following that thug, but in the capital, you would be killed the first day you enter. It is beyond stupid to go there with your current level of magic.” -said Karo, with a convincing tone.

“As I said before, there are a lot of Magical family there and a lot of acolyte looking for a golden opportunity. They are sure to notice every awakened soul person that enters their territory and if that person by chance is weak like you, they capture and torture that poor fellow.

They are after inheritances and fortunes encounters.”

“Me myself used to be one of these people so I am sharing this piece of advice based on experience.

I mean It is hard to be a second heir already, not to say It is hard to be the second or third or fourth heir of an absolute magical bloodline. Only the chosen first heir inherits the family’s full inheritance, the others are chewing on the scrap techniques. They usually can’t overpower the chosen because their third-rate spells, but they can try to prey on the freshly emerged weak first heirs of other families.”

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Karo’s advice got through Lyns’s grudge clouds and reached his logic. He took a big breath and calmed himself and decided against tracking Valentine to the capital.

“Thanks master Karo, perhaps you saved me from a gruesome fate.”- thanked Lyns to Karo full-heartedly.

“Bastion city is ideal for your advancement. There are plenty of resources and the only Mages here are the protectors of the city. In my lifetime I have never managed to reach their strength level, they don’t care about small fries, but you should be careful not to mess with their people.

Before you depart for Xah’Xalami, you should reach a certain level with magic, where you can protect yourself.”

After weighing the pros and cons Lyns decided to stay in Bastion city and buy a house, where he could transfer everything from the cave, which he planned to leave as an emergency shelter.

It was very beneficial for a mage to stay in a city with an inheritance like Lyns’s. The shadow cultivation techniques were great but most of the attacking methods had to be practiced on living targets, and the bandits and hoodlums made perfect practice tools for this purpose.

It took Lyns a whole day in the building of city council to get every paperwork done and to buy a house not too far from the central area. It was quite an average building with a small stable and garden that could accommodate two to three horses and a carriage. It was a two-story house with a small underground storage space. There was a kitchen on the ground floor and two spacious room, the upper stairs consisted of three rooms, he planned to use one of them to be his bedroom and one of them to be his cultivation room and the third one to be his library, he decided to modify the underground storage to be a testing room where he will experiment with his new abilities. On the ground floor a room was bound to be a storage and the other one to be a laboratory. Lyns decided how he wants things and wrote them down on a paper, then went to the worker district to hire some capable people to get the house back in a good shape.

Lyns spent about ten days to get everything to his new place from the desolate bunker. He transported every book and almost every resource from the storages. He used the wagon that his now dead trader friends used once, it was quite a convenient tool for this purpose of his. He transferred the laboratory tools and forging tables too. One time on his travel to the secret base he brought long-lasting survival reserves to the place, if anytime an emergency had him hide there, Lyns would be able to stay a long time.

During these ten days the hired workers finished with their job so Lyns could freely put his stuff to their assigned room, but he was still missing a lot of furniture.

It took him only 3 more days to get all the things he has been missing, and to put everything to its place. The books were neatly arranged on beautiful wooden shelves in the library room, and the resources were also stored orderly inside the storage room. The laboratories floor was made from stone and everything were fireproof in the room. He didn’t really know the purpose of most things that he packed in the laboratory, but he was sure they will come handy one day when he was a full-fledged mage. He listened to one of Karo’s advice and hired a sixteen-year-old boy to be his stable keeper, as it was better not to interrupt his studies with the work that the keeping of two horses meant.

The day when Lyns would once again start cultivating was nearing, but he still had duties to attend. He had to visit his neighbors and get to know them, he had no trust in random people anymore, but he still had to know who resides next to him, and who knows they could be genuine good people.

Lyns took a walk fully armed to say hello to the neighbors, you know better be safe than sorry.

He knocked on the door and waited.