With the passage of time, winter’s strength grew to its peak and finally weakened to the blooms of spring. With the winter cold slowly weakening, snow began to melt, sunshine reached the group and the green and many multicolored flowers bloomed through the continent.

To the Null family, this was the biggest chance, once all the lion and tiger monster cores were sold along with the bounty from the bandits, the family had a over 30,000 gold coins to invest. This was a considerable sum for a small village.

That said, once the snow began to melt, it also meant that the common merchants would begin the trade routes once more. Those who came and went during the late winter had spread word of all the incredibly structures that the very pathetic village had gained as well as how in a two month time the lord rose into a Rank 2 noble while there was open mountains with resources being mined and another that was cleared to be opened.

In the first month of winter, there actually appeared some people at the gate with covered carriages. These were people ready to move to the village since the development began. Particularly these first people were craftsmen. Miners, blacksmith, masons, carpenters, Alchemist, Herbalist, Leatherworker, Tailor, Hunters and Farmers. The very base of the economy were the most happy about the development of a new village.

They were even more excited because of the fact that the Lord was already Rank 2 and the village was already surrounded by a wall and had the main roads of the city. From this it was up to the Pioneers of the land to develop from a village to a city.

The space around the Lord’s manor, the west and north section of the town were cleared of wood and within the town’s walls, a huge lumber yard had been formed causing the carpenter families to drool. Carpenters come in several category depending on their field. Construction builders, material makers, furniture builders. Within the time of the end of the first month of spring, all kinds of carpenters were filling the workers district on the west side. The north, and spreading towards the east, was slowly filled by the farmers and villagers. The homes of the old villagers that lived here from the get go, Xero and the others had rebuilt their homes out of stone during the last month of winter and organized the structure of the streets.

On the outside of the walls, the south side had almost 10 acre of land cleared of trees and weeds. Under the lead of Opal and the Harvest fairy, the Serf’s prepared the seed for the plants while Opal used one of the three innate spells her familiar knew, Till, and the fairy began to form the farm lands while the serfs went planting in the manner the fairy had instructed them.

The land isn’t easy to plant thought, the ground is hard but the magic of the fairy caused the earth to soften enough to allow the plants to germinate.

That said, Opal was very limited in her mana, although she could cultivate 2 acre in a week, her mana was indeed too limited but that is where the farmers that moved in came in. Renting the remaining land, in which the crops planted and harvested the lord’s family would keep 40% as land tax, the rest of the land was split and put under the hands of more farmers.

After a month, the population of a few dozen that lived during the winter, became a few hundred as farmers, Lumberjacks, miners and many craftsmen kept flowing into the village.

Each and everyone brought their family and with it more manpower as they had young strong sons and daughters.

From these people also began a six way recruitment between all five church and the Lord’s family. They all wanted new followers and workers but most of all the Lord’s family wanted to increase the number of guards from 30. The number was simply insufficient for such a city.

The scholar said that a city this size, when completely developed, would need between five to seven hundred soldiers, three hundred archers, at least 50 trained mage not to mention the 300 knights who must all possess familiars which is an expensive procedure to build in such a small town and thus would need to go to a nearby town with such thing built in.

As such, the recruitment of the Guards was turned up and the salary was set to 40 silver for the first month of recruitment and 10 silver a month as is the common wage.

It should be known in an established town, a commoner family can survive the month with 3 silver a month so the benefit of 40 silver upon recruitment and 10 silver a month was a big score but it also accompanied by the danger.

Because of the influx, it also would sooner or later, draw bandits and there already were such people around these parts but they simply did not attack due to it being mostly commoners and poor.

In the second month of spring, the guard recruitment filled the quota of 150 guards as the city was still small and simple patrols in the city and along the walls were needed for now as well as protection of the lord's family.

Another job that opened, and this one for young men and women as well as children, was the servants for the Lord’s manor.

This was explicitly requested by the scholar who said that such people should exist to do the work in the kitchen and the cleaning of the family because nobles possessed many jobs more important than such things to accomplish. Nil agreed, and had nothing against it, but he did have his fears, particularly spies.

Although Viscount Warren had not done so, it was because Madrid was still within the borders but hired hands were hard to track, especially with the limited information network that was nonexistent.

To nobles, it takes a while to start off, someone like Nil that suddenly advanced 2 ranks, he is still behind other people but because of the fact that Xero had such a large development in magic knowledge. He advanced the growth of the city by working almost exclusively on the village for three months straight during the winter and had formed a premature structure for the town and so the city was advancing quick. It put Nil at an impasse because the city lacked guards and so now he wasn’t sure how he would hire maids and such due to possible spies from large powers.

Even the guards themselves he never accepted someone with prior military training or with a level higher than 5. Such a low level, for people without familiars it was very easy to gauge. Level 1 is the weakest possible thing, people with no training would have it. Strength 2-5 are all adults from craftsman jobs that have low use of strength. Level 4-8 are levels found from people that do heavy jobs.

Hunters and Mercenaries that eventually appeared, usually have levels surpassing level 10 but Nil would not hire them as guards but he would hire their services to teach the guards the hardship of tracking and scouting.

As for the servants, the Scholar did agree with Nil on the fact about spies and so he sent a letter to someone he knew and after a week a woman, middle aged and about the same age as the scholar, around the late 40s early 50s, arrived.

She was his sister and she was a trained maid that once worked for a Viscount but moved to another city with her husband due to some incidents with robbery against them as such they left.

She had been unemployed for several years until she got the letter now about a new lord requiring a good Head Butler or Maid and so they have. The husband is an ex mercenary and for the last decade he managed a bar. He closed up and came with his wife when he heard of a new job for her. Head maids were paid depending on the rank of the noble. A Rank 1 noble would normally not have a maid but a Rank 2 noble would. The pay for the Head maid would range from 50 silver to 1 gold.

Not to mention that, the woman was extremely experienced and was a fighter herself as well as having a good eye for people. Hiring her at 70 silver a wage monthly, they began to hire the servants as well but it was her training and hiring. All children hired, all between 7 to 12, were paid 1 silver, men and women between 13 to 18 were all hand picked by her and trained as well.

A new servants quarters was built within the manor’s yard and they began all the caretaking troubles but only Opal and the head maid took care of the 6 and 1 year old children, the others being strictly prohibited from getting near.

As for the four men who held the strength in the family, Zip built his Smithy within the workers district. It was the largest smithy, of course, but it hired only 4 smith's, two dwarfs and two monoeye that came here. All the aides and such were not even needed because this job was given to the 40 imps that were under the direct command of Zip and Cinder.

Void on the other hand, unexpectedly, set up a Hunter’s order. It is similar to a knights order, where they train hunters, but the hunters of this were group hunters, their targets were always large monsters more dangerous monsters. When it was a successful hunt, the hunters would be paid in coin and with some of the meat.

That said, the reason for this is actually sneaky, besides butchering the skin off the beast, Void would only butcher the weaker creatures but those above level 25 he would ‘buy’ the corpse at a higher price from the others and summoning Ember, she would summon a large cave that looked like that jaw of a beast.

They would dump the corpses into the cave, this was exactly Ember’s Feral Soul Den.

Similar to how Ashley needs to make conscious swords as minions, or Cinder ‘forge’ imps as servants, Ember summoned up a cave with countless Feral Devil Souls. These souls are connected in a similar manner to a spawning pool but the souls moved to hell but the skill draws them in and alters them to be Feral devils. To make minions they need to provide the bodies, even if it is a badly damaged the body would slowly reform, smaller and weaker, but they would eventually become Feral Devils under Embers control.

This was one of the methods he discovered to increase the strength of their family to improve their chance of survival. Only by having abundant number they could resist any kind of army that comes out.

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Finally Xero, with five months, almost every day he would spar with Ashley. At the start he would get beat himself. Although her strength was weaker, her skills were better so she had the upper hand. As time went on, Xero’s Spirit swords slowly improved, his combat experienced also rose, he slowly gained control of his mysterious Sword Devil’s Aura and would somewhat mimic Ashley’s invisibility trick as well as focus and concentrate the aura in each attack.

In the half year that he spent with his family training, properly fighting Ashley, his ability and movements, sword skills and mana control improved greatly.

At the second month of the second half of the year, he also looked for his magic teacher and asked about meditation and breathing techniques that were more powerful to replace his own. With them, all the brothers and the father were taught the techniques allowing them to train the mana capacity.

Xero’s current strength was already level 19 but due to fighting experience from constantly battling Ashley along with hunting he can fight at least level 21 or 22 monsters.

Within his year, only 20 people appeared that was her match and shockingly enough, within this number was actually Meldie.

Because it was also the end of the year already, Xero had returned for the end of the year test. The final tests would also rank him within the year. What was shocking about the listing was that compared to the camping trip, the common level rage that had been between level 7 to level 10 had dramatically risen within the second year and was now between level 14 to level 20.

Univa showed the greatest growth, both in her own growth as well as her Drake who were both level 20.

Xero with his level 19 over all strength, was #5 but the shocking matter that took most of the top ranks was how Meldie suddenly overtook Xero and reached #3 in the rankings and had reached level 20 alongside Univa. The reason Xero wasn’t higher level was because of Ashley. Once the information that her power was restrained to 50% until he could handle the rest, his ranking dropped until she literally beat anyone of the higher rankings due to her superior use of skills.

The reason Meldie went up so high was because of the Panda evolving again. During her travels to gather some herbs in the east, she happened upon a strange pond. In the pond was a very strange sight. A pair of fish were swimming while glowing. One was black with a white dot on the head, and one was white with a black dot on its head.

Because she had been training in martial arts and had access to some of the strange Yin Yang energy that Pou radiated, she could feel an intense energy of each type coming from each fish.

While she was curious, Pou suddenly bound out of the familiar seal and abruptly jumped into the water and grabbed the white one before eating the fish and then fishing out the other one.

What followed was a strange phenomenon. Because they were going to gather a rare herb that bloomed on the night of a full moon, the moon was high up and when Pou had ate the fish it caused a pillar of moonlight to fall into the pond.

Because Pou came out abruptly Meldie was inside the shallow pond as well half submerged but when the moonlight fell it suddenly sank into her tiny body and she felt a burst of power and mana.

Pou’s mana became chaotic as Spiritual energy from inside him began to burst out, this energy came from the two fish which were the Yin Yang Heavenly Fish.

Pou roared in pain and soon his body seemed to bulge. It kept growing until the energy finally burst releasing an extremely bright light. This bright light was like the moonlight and when it became free Meldie was able to see a tiny ghost of a baby panda and around it was flying ghosts of the two fish. The moonlight kept flooding the panda and also the halfling causing a massive degree of energy to fill her mana pool and open more mana channels.

It filled each and every corner of her body entering her muscles and bones completely remaking them into something stronger all the while the energy of the fish were absorbed by the panda baby.

As for the original body, they filled the pond and soon turned into mana that was absorbed once more by the little girl.

Only after a long time, the ghost panda opened its eyes, it was as big as a bear cub.

It looked at Meldie with black eyes and flew over before grabbing her by the scruff of the neck and putting her out of the pond where she laid down.

Finally the ghost panda entered the seal and came out in a solid body with the same size as it’s ghost but its strength was nothing like before. It had evolved into a Yin Yang Spirit Polar Panda Infant.

It had lost the Lesser part but were it had recently become adolescent at the time it reverted to Infant once more but its strength nearly doubled.

Like this, with the many new skills it developed, her own strength rose up to the top ranks of the year. In fact, when they were doing the strength tests, she frightened quite a few people when she suddenly walked over to the 600 kilo boulder weight and lifted them up. It caused quite a few people to fear what a punch from her tiny fist would result.

Univa on the other hand, as ranked one, had the largest strength, a level 20 is known for lifting around 700 to 850 kilos, that said different races have different benchmarks for what a level 20 is. Dragon types in particular have a high benchmark of almost 1100 kilos. To understand this benchmark, a common level 20, someone without a trained level 20 familiar, would only have a strength range between 300 to 400 kilos, as such strength type creatures like bear have an upper limit of 900, nearly three times higher.

The familiar highly affects the human body which is why it is possible for them to grow so much.

“Wow Meldie, you had such a good encounter when just out gathering Herbs.” Xero said complimenting the little Halfling.

She blushes, “I-I didn’t really want to kill the fish though.” She said and summoned Pou. His size was only a meter long when on all four and about a meter and a half standing. Still Meldie could sit on him. One interesting fact is that Halflings almost always have mountable familiars.

“It was a lucky encounter your familiar knew how to take advantage of.” Ashley said crossing her arms.

“How well is your training going?” She asked curiously to Xero.

“Really well, as long as I can reach maybe level 20 or 21, the demon tattoos will finally be gone.” Xero said and pulled back the right shirt sleeve showing how the tattoo had receded.

“Xero… d-do you have plans for the summer?” Meldie asked.

Xero thought a bit, “Besides spending some time finishing my summer work, I was actually planning on staying in the schools library during the summer since we would finally be able to access the 3rd year section.” He said.

She smiled wryly, “Is it really important to study so much during the winter?” She asked.

“Actually, five months ago, my brother created a smithing type familiar with an ability to summon a special forge. Since then Ashley has been asking me to make even a really low quality forge.” he sighed, “I have a huge summoning sequence but it takes too much mana to function and would require some mana stones to support the summoning and use of it so I was thinking of accessing the 3rd year section and begin studies in the more advanced knowledge so that I can improve it.” He said.

“Oh.” She looked downcast.

“Did you need something?” Xero asked.

“Um… well… I was kind of hoping if you could visit…” She said fidgeting and suddenly thought, “M-my older brothers have familiars but the are only level 30 and unable to surpass it. I was hoping you could help by making some spells or maybe seeing if there is a way to break the limit.” She said.

Xero smiled wryly, “Um… I do have a way but it's really dangerous. It’s also being kept a secret within our family though.” he said.

“Eh.” She said shocked that he actually had a method. “Eh um… if… if it's dangerous then it’s probably not a good idea.” She said looking away.

Xero scratched his head, unable to make heads or tails of what she wanted.

All the while, the girls in the surrounding saw Meldie fidgeting and were giggling and quietly commenting on it making the shy halfling blush more fiercely. “N-never mind. W-would you like to spend some time over at my families house? It’s a good experience, although we aren’t nobles, we are a merchant’s family.” She said.

She said that in a slightly loud voice. When the other girls heard it they started to go “Kya~! Did she really ask that!?”.

“Well… if I ask the librarian he might let me take out a few books, oh wait he has that magic pen familiar and can make a quick copy of it if I pay 5 common mana stones a book.” Xero thought.

Since the basics he already taught to his family they could already somewhat use magic themselves. It was limited but they all learned to write and build some basic magic formulas. Having only half a year to teach a year's worth of knowledge was obviously impossible so he wouldn’t even try something like that, he went the slow and steady pace and they already started to learn.

“I guess I can go, I did stick around home for most of the year so I didn’t explore much, maybe a summer of exploring and seeing the sights would be better.” Xero said.

“Really!?” Meldie said excited while a bubbly smile appeared on her face.

Xero smiled and patted her head. Strangely Xero felt a few glares on him and he found that some boys were frowning towards him. He looked at them confused for the reason they were frowning.

After that, the end of the school year came for the summer. Xero headed up to the library and with the help of the librarian, he found all the books on magic, for the 3rd year students, that he wanted. He also asked, in particular, about special monster spawned forges.

“Forge? Like blacksmithing forge. That is somewhat rare for a creature to spawn such a thing but it’s not like there aren’t such things, let’s see.” The old librarian said and picked up a book and summoned his familiar before touching the cover and opening the book.

“There are 47 books on this subject, it is a branch of tool summoning magic, it is somewhat advanced and 45 of these books are for years 5 and above.” He said and turned to the library and quickly flew up higher before returning with two books. One was called ‘Basic Tool summoning magic and it’s Formula construction’ while the other was called, ‘Five Formula basic monster forge system’.

The first book was a 3rd year book for people wanting to develop a tool summoning creature while the second was a basic forge spell. It was a complete spell formula for a forge summoning spell. The five formula would represent the parts it needed, Forge summoning, mana gathering, Fire starting, heat control, and Anvil strengthening.

Each formula would create a different item, Forge summoning spawned a simple smith furnace and anvil, fire starting created a magic formation inside that would start the fire, heat control helped contain the heat and increase the heat without letting too much of it to escape and Anvil strengthening would strengthen the anvil to handle the strength of the monster using it. The size, strengthen and shape of the furnace and anvil greatly changed depending on the monster using it since there are many sizes.

Xero’s eyes shined when he found that there was a premade spell. From this he could surely improve his own forge spell that he had been making. The spell he made was nearly ten times bigger but it was because he didn’t have the many more advanced magical sequences and knowledge to make it work more efficiently.

With just a look through the formula he could see that it was many times more efficient than his own. Several sections he couldn’t understand because of his lack of knowledge but a hungry look appeared on his face to figure this formula out.

“Sir, please make a copy of these books for me! My familiar really needs a forge spell to grow stronger.” Xero said with shining eyes.

The librarian laughed, “Alright child, calm down, so many books… will cost you an uncommon mana stone.” he said.

Xero easily took out the stone, to pay to get magical knowledge books that he could keep for his family to learn from. He didn’t think twice as he took it and started to store each book as they were made and was extra careful of the summon spell book and the forge summon book.

He thanked him and soon went off to meet Meldie. After sending off a letter that told his parents where he would spend the summer Xero took Meldie on his sword towards her family, that lived in the northern nation of the Radiance empire.