Merlin and Mina met with the others and saw the magic circle had completely disappeared. Upon seeing that the contract had been successful, Merlin decided it was time to put things into motion. He prepared himself, stood next to Emelyn, and started to speak to them.

Merlin: “Ok, all of you have chosen to follow me, and have thus become the first people who will settle in our new city, Ragnarök. As all of you know, I’ve been bestowed the title of Earl, and you currently are in my territory, however, my age is a problem, so for the time being, it will be my mother, Emelyn, who will deal with everything related to the organization and government of the territory. Until I state otherwise, you all shall heed her every word as you would mine, for when she speaks, it’s like I’m speaking through her. Understood?”

Everyone: “Yes, Lord Pendragon!”

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Having distributed the different works to the freed slaves in Merlin’s name, Emelyn left the crowd and went home. Merlin, instead of following her, gave a signal to the nine people who had caught his eye, and told them to meet him inside the tent he had previously used. The nine people, albeit surprised, hurriedly complied. Once Merlin had finished putting a spell on the tent, soundproofing it, he turned around and spoke to them.

Merlin: “I guess many of you, if not all, are wondering why I’ve summoned you here. The answer is very simple: you are to become the secret pillars of Ragnarök, its shield and sword in the shadows!”

Mina: “Excuse me, lord Merlin. I’ll be going to Hexenwunder Royal Academy in eight months… How exactly do you expect me to become a pillar of this city, when I won’t even be living here?”

Merlin: “My dear Mina, you don’t necessarily have to be present in the city to become a secret pillar of support for it. There are many ways in which you could help, but we’ll get to that later. From now on this group will be known as ‘The Council of ten’. We’ll act in the shadows and make sure that anyone in the underworld learns to fear this name.”

*Who is your dear?* thought Mina, *Idiot!*. Although she didn’t voice it out, she felt embarrassed when he addressed her that way. No one had ever addressed her that way aside from her parents, who were her closest relatives, so it was very embarrassing for her being addressed like that by someone of the opposite sex, even if the one doing it was a 6-year-old boy.

Merlin took out an orange stone twice the size of his fist and ten pieces of silver he proceeded to enchant. Upon seeing the orange stone, Sokar, the dwarven craftsman, recognized what the stone was and gasped, while Merlin chuckled seeing his reaction. Merlin made a gesture inviting them to take a piece of enchanted silver each, then he continued his explanation.

Merlin: “Please bond the pieces of enchanted silver with your blood.”

As soon as they bonded the pieces with their blood, they transformed into silver medals, with an unknown symbol, and engraved characters which looked like some sort of text by their disposition, but that they were unable to recognize. Shin couldn’t hold back his curiosity anymore and asked Merlin about the meaning behind those strange characters.

Merlin: “It’s a new language and alphabet that I’ve created for the exclusive use of this ‘Council of ten’. That orange stone over there is a low-grade memory stone, it can hold a limited amount of knowledge, and imprints it into the mind of whoever touches it. It will work only nine times before turning into dust. All of you, touch it and learn it, for this is the only language in which the members of the ‘Council of ten’ will communicate with each other.”

Klantea’s common language had a similar grammar to that of English back on Earth, but the vocabulary was actually closer to Dutch. Merlin had originally thought of using English as the secret language for the ‘Council of ten’, but he finally chose not to, due to the similarities between Klantea’s common language and English. It wouldn’t be much of a secret language if it was easily decipherable, so he chose French instead, because it had a completely different grammar. As a safety measure, he also made it so that the roman alphabet could only be used by the members of the ‘Council of ten’ when using French, that way he ensured no document in any of Klantea’s languages would ever exist written in the roman alphabet, eliminating like that the risk of someone deciphering the messages of the ‘Council of ten’, were anyone able to intercept one. When everyone was done and the orange memory stone turned into dust, Merlin spoke to them again.

Merlin: “Maintenant vous devriez être capables de comprendre ce qui est écrit dans vos médailles.” (You should now be able to understand what is written in your medals.)

Everyone concentrated their gazes in their own medal and read the inscription “Conseil des dix” (‘Council of ten’).

Merlin: “À partir de ce moment, dès qu’on parlera d’affaires concernant le ‘Conseil des dix’, on n’utilisera que cette langue. C’est bien compris ?” (From now on, whenever we talk about any matter concerning the ‘Council of ten’, we’ll do so in this language. Is that understood?)

Everyone: “Oui, Maître.” (Yes, Master.)

Shin: “Master, I’m sorry to point it now, but isn’t Aimi a little too young to belong to this ‘Council of ten’?”

Merlin: “No, she is not. Of course, when giving her a mission, her age and ability will be taken into account. Don’t worry, Shin. I don’t plan to needlessly put your sister in danger!”

Shin: “Thank you, Master.”

Once he had finished making his preparations, Merlin started giving out the first orders for the “Council of ten”. For the last few days, he had been having the lingering feeling that something was wrong and he was missing what it was. He couldn’t put his finger on it, which is why he hurried so much when creating this “Council of ten”. He was planning on creating it after the completion of the city anyway, but he got impatient and created it much sooner.

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Merlin: “Vania, Janus. You two will investigate the slave-dealing business around Delia City, and around this border. Killing that slave dealer was good and all, but I’m not so gullible as to think that the illegal slave dealing he was involved with was finished with the death of that one man… Half of the slaves he had in stock were from other continents, such an occurrence should be impossible in a city like Delia, unless he had some kind of organization backing him up. Be careful, and don’t get caught! If you find any information on other slave dealers involved with the said organization, do not take any action! Report it and wait for orders. Did I make myself clear?

Vania and Janus: “Yes, Master!”

Merlin: “Good! Argenta, I need you to pose as my mother’s personal maid and stay by her side 24/7. I’m afraid that someone might want to hurt her, now that I’ve given to her the ruling of Ragnarök. She usually wouldn’t have any problem dealing with some enemies, but now that she’s pregnant, she might not be able to do it, that’s where you come in! As they say: better safe than sorry!”

Argenta: “Leave it to me, Master!”

Merlin: “Sokar, there were 5 accomplished blacksmiths and 12 blacksmith apprentices among the freed slaves. Take them all with you and help them develop their skills. I’m not asking for them to acquire your level of skill, but we need to build the city as soon as possible!”

Sokar: “I’ll do my best to meet your expectations, Master”

Merlin: “Now as for you five… I won’t be able to provide you with a place to train until the construction of the city advances a little more, so… you can help with some miscellaneous work until then. Also, Mina do you have some kind of experience in hand-to-hand combat?”

Mina: “No, my mother was supposed to train me, but she never had the chance…”

Merlin: “Shin, would it be possible for you to train her in hand-to-hand combat for the next 8 months, until her departure for the academy?”

Shin: “Sure, although how proficient she becomes on it will depend solely on her ability and effort, I can’t do miracles!”

Merlin: “Thanks Shin!”

Aimi: “Brother, why have you all stopped using that strange new language and started talking in the common language again? Won’t people know about our plans?”

Shin: “That’s because we’re just talking about training. Everyone knows that we belong to what they call ‘a martial clan’, so it’s only natural for us to talk about training, we don’t have to conceal it. What we have to conceal is our actual training, which is why we have to wait some more days until we have a place where we can train in isolation. Do you understand now, Aimi?”

Aimi: “Yep, thanks brother!”

Merlin: “Well, now that we’re done here, everyone is dismissed!”

Leaving the tent after the others, Merlin thought of supervising the works being done in the city, but he found himself really tired, so he went straight to home and without even greeting his family, he laid down on the bed and fell asleep. What Merlin didn’t know at the time, and he’d only find out years later, was that he had been on the verge of destroying his own soul when making the soul contracts!

Soul contracts are a branch of magic which can’t be classified in any of the elements, the reason being that they only use magic power to activate the magic circle which initiates the contract, the actual contract requires the use of soul force, and if too much soul force is used, the caster’s soul implodes and gets destroyed. The usual amount of soul contracts an average person can make daily is 2, a third try usually leads to the immediate soul destruction and death of the caster.

However, Merlin had surpassed that limit more than a hundred times over, yet he was still alive! Were it not for the fact that, luckily for him, his soul was tens of times stronger than usual, he’d have died more than a hundred times over that day! In ancient times, a heretic cult became famous for finding a solution to that problem, that was the first time “soul crystals” ever appeared in Klantea. They were like batteries of soul energy, they allowed the user to cast hundreds of soul contracts without any danger for the soul. But, as everything in life, when something is too good to be true, it usually is…

It took researchers more than a hundred years, but they managed to learn the secrets behind the soul stones… A soul stone in itself was just a recipient, but unlike what had been told to the public, it didn’t collect soul energy from the air… it collected the soul energy from the souls trapped inside! Yes, to produce soul stones, the heretic cult hadn’t hesitated in buying slaves or kidnapping people to extract their souls at a later time and use them to create the soul stones! Needless to say, when the world learned about the truth behind the soul stones, the heretic cult was thoroughly destroyed and the use or production of soul stones was completely banned!

Merlin didn’t know of any of that, and in his ignorance, he almost lost his life. He had read about soul stones in the well, he even had an empty one in his possession, but the whole story related to soul stones was common knowledge and sense at the time the books were written, therefore the books didn’t mention any of it. Merlin slept soundly until the next morning, but he was the only one… the women in the family were so worried about his condition, they kept the whole household awake through the night just in case he needed some urgent help!

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