Going into this meeting, Sol was expecting a no nonsense, cut throat member of the Phoenix kingdom's nobility to be sitting across from him at the table, ready to shoot down any ideas of Sol gaining access to his personal runesmith.

He had lived in this kingdom his whole life, and even if he had lived in a rim village, rumors about the Earl had still trickled in from time to time. Stories of what he did to keep the region together ran rampant, and Sol didn't know which were true and which weren’t. The one at the forefront of his mind was the rumor that the Earl was in the middle stages of the Assimilation realm for his cultivation. That put him firmly into the “overwhelmingly powerful” category in Sol's mind.

When Sol stepped into the room he saw the Earl looking out one of the windows, facing away from him. Sol opened his mouth, but the Earls' son spoke before he could. “Hey dad, just had one more thing before I left.”

“What is it, son?” The Earl replied in a far more sing-song voice than Sol had expected of him. That was, until he turned around to face them, and saw Sol standing there. He coughed and cleared his throat before speaking in a much more authoritative voice, a serious expression on his face. “Yes son?”

“I just wanted to introduce you to somebody.” The young man said, gesturing to Sol. “Allow me to introduce you to my savior…” He trailed off, looking at Sol. “Actually I don’t believe we ever properly introduced ourselves. My name is Therian Fisk.”

“Sol.” Sol said, nodding his head. He then nodded to the Earl. “It is a pleasure to meet you sir.”

The seriousness drained from the man's face, and suddenly he was at Sol's side, shaking his hand vigorously. Sol hadn’t even seen the man move, and he took an involuntary step back in surprise. “I give you my sincere thanks for saving my son.”

“Dad, laying it on a bit thick.” Therian said, rolling his eyes.

“Sorry.” The Earl said, standing up straight again and letting go of Sol's hand. “Thank you for saving my son. If there is anything I can do to pay off this debt, then please do tell me.”

Wow, that was way easier than Sol had been expecting. He had thought that what he had done would get played down, but it appeared he didn't have to worry about that at all. “Actually, I do have something. I was wondering if I could get your runesmith to do a job for me.”

“Of course, he should be back tomorrow from the capital.” The Earl said. “Tell me, where are you staying at the moment?”

“Uh…” Sol hadn't expected that question. “An inn just outside of the city.”

The Earl scoffed. “Those run down inns? I will not have you staying there. Stay here at the manor for as long as you are here in the city.” He then turned to the servant that had answered the door for Sol, who had walked in and was staring dumbfounded at the whole exchange. “Logrin, please go prepare one of the guest rooms.”

“Yes sir.” The servant said, quickly leaving the room.

“What about my horse?” Sol asked, forgetting for a moment that he was talking to an Earl. “I mean, is there anywhere my horse could stay? I wouldn’t want her to be too far from me.”

“I will have her brought to the stables just outside the manor.” The Earl said, waving the question off. “Now, what do you say to having a meal with me and my son?”

_____

The next morning, Sol was woken up by the very same servant that had reluctantly set up the room and brought his horse to the stable. Honestly, he found it pretty funny how the servant who had judged him based off of his ragged clothes was now attending to him.

Sol was handed a pair of nice clothes, which he tried to deny. The servant insisted that they were a gift from the Earl, so he had no choice but to accept.

“Any idea why your father is doing so much for me?” Sel asked Therian during his walk to the stables. “I know I helped save you, but it really does seem like a bit much.”

“My father is a kind man, despite the many rumors that go around about him.” Therian explained. “More than that though, he absolutely hates being indebted to anyone. He probably doesn't want to feel like he owes you anything.”

“Makes sense, but it still seems excessive.”

“She certainly seems to be enjoying the attention.” Therian said, pointing to Sol's horse when they got to the stables. Dawn had two stable workers attending to her, both of them thoroughly washing her down head to toe. She may just be a horse, but she seemed to radiate smugness as she looked over at Sol.

“Yes she is. That just means that I don’t have to deal with washing her today.”

The smugness stopped radiating from Dawn for a moment as Sol left the stables, pretending to not hear the whining of the horse and the splash of some poor servant likely getting thrown into a water trough.

“So…” Sol said, not knowing how to bring up the elephant in the room. He decided it was probably best to just get it out. “Earl's son huh? How come you didn't mention that when I was bringing you back to the city?”

Therian looked a bit sheepish as he responded. “I don’t know, I have just never been a fan of throwing my title around. I don’t want to be the guy saying ‘do you know who my father is?’ and all that crap.”

“Still, probably should have come up at least once. Is that why those people attacked you that night?”

“I don’t think so. I just got unlucky.”

“Well, traveling in the middle of the night on a main road to the regional capital kind of seems like you were setting yourself up for failure.”

“Hey! You were traveling at night too.” Therian shot back.

“That's different.”

“Because… it is.” Sol struggled to think of a better excuse. “Besides, I am a cultivator. I can handle myself.”

“You must have just started then if you still rely on your horse for travel. What stage are you at?”

“I am still in the foundational realm.”

The tale has been stolen; if detected on Amazon, report the violation.

“What stage though?”

“Early stages.” Sol coughed out, looking away.

“What? You are a total novice then! It’s barely different from me traveling at night!”

“Hey, I also have months of training from the rim guard to lean back on in case of danger.”

“Oh, well that explains how you took the four thugs on at once then. I thought it had just been through overwhelming strength, but clearly it wasn't.”

“A win is a win.” Sol said, brushing off the ridiculous notion that he barely knew what he was doing with magic.

“Why did you come here anyways?” Therian asked. “You mentioned yesterday that it had something to do with my fathers runesmith, but you never really elaborated past that.”

“I need a method to effectively cultivate with. I have a peculiar combination of mana affinities, and I heard it is common up in the astral layer. I was hoping to find a talented runesmith who could modify the church's ritual to reach into the divine layer, and maybe get it to reach up into the astral instead.”

“Sounds complicated.”

“Yeah, it is. I have next to no hope to figure out how to do it myself. Maybe with a lot of practice I could recreate the ritual, but starting from scratch I would be hopeless.”

Therian gave Sol a pat on the back. “I am sure he can help. Darien designed the entire manor after all, as well as enchanting every square inch of the place. I don’t think it would be a stretch to say he is the best runesmith in the region.”

“That's good to hear at least.” Sol said, sighing. “Hopefully he is good enough to pull a miracle out of thin air, or preferably pull astral mana out of thin air.”

Just as Sol and Therian were getting back to the manor, they heard shouting coming from inside. It was a dark, grumpy sounding voice that screamed “angry grandpa” to Sol.

“I have other jobs to work on! I can’t just set those aside to help some kid with whatever minor enchantment he wants me to make!” The voice boomed from somewhere within the manor.

“Well if it isn’t the man himself.” Therian said, causing Sol to hang his head a bit.

“Is he going to be like that the entire time?” Sol asked, a bit of hope still left within him that it might be a smooth process.

“Most likely. Actually, I would be shocked if he wasn't.”

“Great.”

They walked through the manor, following the sound of the voice until they reached the Earls office.

“Just hear the boy out at least.” The Earl said, trying to calm the raging old man down. “Maybe whatever he needs done will be interesting to pursue.”

“There is no chance someone like him would have anything worth my time to present to me.”

The Earl sighed and looked over the runesmiths shoulder, seeing Sol and Therian walk over. “Don’t make me order you to do this for him. I owe him a debt after all.”

“Fine.” The runesmith huffed, before turning around and noticing Sol's presence. “This the one?” He asked the Earl.

“Yes, that is him.”

The runesmith pointed to Sol, then to a chair in the room. “Sit.”

Sol sat down obediently.

“What do you want?” He asked as he sat across the table from Sol.

“I need help creating a ritual to help me cultivate.”

The runesmith scoffed. “Sorry kiddo, no shortcuts. You are going to just have to roll up your sleeves and do it the old fashioned way.”

“I can’t, that's my problem. I have four affinities that only usually appear together in the astral realm, and I have no way to cultivate them without poisoning myself from mana types I am unaligned with.”

The runesmith sat back down, having been standing to leave. “The astral plane.” He said, thinking to himself for a moment. “I assume that means you have the four non elemental affinities?”

“Yes.”

“Show me. Actually, don’t bother.” The runesmiths eyes lit up, and Sol felt like his entire being was laid bare before the gaze of such a powerful cultivator. It sent a shiver up his spine.

“Derian, it is rude to do stuff like that and you know it.” The Earl said, shaking his head. “Sorry Sol for his behavior.”

“Woah.” Derian the runsmith said to Sol, ignoring the Earl. “First off, what the hell have you done with your mana? You aren’t supposed to split the affinities until you are well into your disciple realm.”

“I split it up because I wanted to be able to mix affinities into my eyes with different combinations.”

“Well it was reckless and stupid. Do you know how easily you could have killed yourself?”

“Yes, I do. The resident healer of my outspot made damn sure that I knew.”

“They were smart too. If it is true that you are unable to cultivate safely, then you could have died from mana deprivation if you had leaked out all of your mana while doing that. How long did it take you to do all of that without dying? A week? Maybe two?”

Sol cringed a bit, hoping he wouldn’t get another Morrison style lecture. “About four days.”

That caused both the Earl and Darien to stare in what Sol assumed was shock.

“I just can't deal with that level of stupidity right now.” The runesmith said, shaking his head and leaning back heavily in his chair. “Back to your original problem. Do you have a potential idea how we could draw mana from the astral realm?”

“I might, but I don’t know enough about runes and enchantments to know if it will actually work. My idea was that if the church's ritual to draw mana from the divine layer could be modified to reach one layer higher, then I may be able to use it similar to how they do.”

“That might work.” Darien said. “Give me a second.”

He left the room and came back with a thick book. He flipped through it a bit before drawing a rune on the table and studying it. After a few minutes, he looked up at Sol.

“Alright, I believe it may be possible, but it definitely won’t be simple or cheap.”

“You are not going to make him pay for your services are you?” The Earl asked, scowling.

“Of course not. The material cost is what I was referring to. For a ritual as complex and powerful as this one is likely going to need to be, I will need to use some strong materials to keep it from breaking down.”

“I can find the money from somewhere.” Sol affirmed. “If you start working on it today, how long would I have to scrape the money together?”

“Well you can pay whenever, but I imagine it will take at least a week or two of work to get even a weak version of the ritual running. The price of the materials will probably be around 3 gold.”

“That is fine.” Sol said, before realizing something. “How did you have a book with the church's ritual in it? I thought it was supposed to be a secret.”

“It's an open secret, if even that.” Derian laughed. “When you are teaching a ritual to millions of people across the world, it is bound to become public knowledge at some point. Now get out, I have a lot of work to do.”

Sol left the room with a smile on his face. He was not far from finally being able to start his cultivation and increase his potential. Now, he just had to find out how to make 3 gold in the next week.

It didn't take long to dawn on him how he could do it, and he smiled as he walked to the nearest shop. When they didn't have what he needed, he walked to the next, and the next. He went to several shops before he finally found what he needed.

When he had bought his desired item, he headed for the nearest tavern and sat at the largest table, which also happened to be nearly full. He looked around at the other men joyously talking and drinking with one another.

Sol whistled, getting everyone at the table's attention. He then set the deck of cards he had purchased down in front of him. “Evening gentleman. Anybody up for games of cards?”