The drive back to the city was in absolute silence. The woman did not say a word and only nodded when Lucas asked if she was heading to the city as well. They would occasionally glance at each other through the rearview mirror, but no words were exchanged.

  When the rain stopped and they reached the city, the woman tapped him on the shoulder to say that she wanted to get out of the car now. She tried to give him money, but Lucas refused. He also refused when she tried handing him a business card.

  He didn’t help her to get something in return.

  Lucas just bid his farewell as the woman flew off.

  His next destination was his new workshop. Thanks to modern technology and magic working together, the construction of his workshop only took a week to finish. It costed him a fortune, but it was worth every credit after seeing the results.

  It was a three-story building with each floor being as high as two floors combined. This allowed Lucas to have his larger golems inside the workshop without worrying about them hitting the lights. The first and second floor was the production workshops where most of the commercial golems would be made, while the third floor was for Lucas’s personal projects. The rooftop also served as a training room.

  There were also several more external facilities separated from the main building, but within the property. First was a garage, an isolated workshop with advanced waste disposal for potentially dangerous chemicals, and another isolated workshop with an open-outdoor testing field.

  Even with all that, there was still a sizable empty plot of land available for more facilities. This whole thing costed him 90% of the money he earned from the auction.

  “Planning on making a grand opening?” Althea asked with a smirk as he entered through the massive stone wall surrounding the whole property.

  “Is this necessary?” Lucas gestured to the giant fifty-meter wall.

  “Very much,” Althea answered. “Once people here about your independence, numerous attempts to assassinate, steal, kidnap, and many more will happen.”

  “I can take care of myself,” Lucas assured, but as he looked around, he agreed that he needed defenses, and it’ll cost more money. “Hey,” Lucas got Althea’s attention. “How much can I earn from a mana vein?”

  Althea raised an eyebrow.

  Three king-ranked mages gathered for an expedition to locate a mana vein. The military had already scouted it out and found several powerful monsters around it. When they were about to send a stronger team to scope the area, the team was attacked by an unknown group. This forced them to give the information to other organizations.

  Fredrick Limestrow was the king-ranked mage sent by the military. Vanessa was the representative for the mage association. Lastly, an imperial guard was sent by the emperor.

  “We’re nearing the provided coordinates,” Michael announced.

  “Prepare for a fight,” Vanessa stated. “The report said there were powerful monsters in the area.”

  The group proceeded with caution. As they ventured through the forest, they constantly passed traces of intense battles and numerous corpses of powerful monsters. After a while, they arrived at a barricade made of boulders.

  Using Fredrick Limestrow’s earth magic, they created a stable slope to climb. Upon reaching the top, they were greeted by the beautiful sight of a pond with glowing blue water. But their amazement quickly turned to shock as between them and the pond was a mountain of monster corpses. And sitting atop the corpses was a cybernetic black knight.

  The knight turned to them with glowing red eyes and a menacing purple aura.

  Fredrick Limestrow chuckled.

  “Looks like someone got an upgrade.”

  Just before Lucas left the CDA, he left Percival and a few golems to scout the surrounding area of the battlefield with the angel. It came as a surprised that only a few kilometers away, there was an undiscovered mana vein.

  Mana veins released an abundant amount of mana into the environment, creating a mana enhanced area. The water, plants, and even the monsters were infused with a large quantity of mana, making them valuable. Additionally, cultivating in such a place would result amazing improvements for any mage.

  When Lucas reviewed the footage from one of the golems, he was surprised by the discovery. Mana veins were considered a national treasure and attracted the greed of powerful people.

  That’s why the current emperor, Arthur Vulcan III, created strict laws regarding mana veins stating that ownership would belong to whoever clears the area around it and creates a safe perimeter. Benefits and a part of the profit would be provided to whoever discovered the mana vein, giving a fair contribution to them.

  With the footage from his golems, Lucas had substantial proof that he cleared the mana vein. And from what he just saw, people already found out that he did.

  “I don’t have the money to develop such an area at the moment, so I’m thinking of selling the rights to the mana vein,” Lucas explained to Althea.

  “No!” Althea slammed her hands on the table. “You can get a loan and develop the area yourself!”

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  “But we already have too much on our plate,” Lucas reasoned. “We’re starting our own company and that’s a lot of work even if I don’t need to advertise myself.”

  “Here me out,” Althea began. “You already have enough materials to make a bunch of golems, right?” Lucas nodded at her. “Why not make golems that can be used to develop the mana vein and loan money for everything else needed in the process?” she suggested.

  Lucas sighed. It was clear Althea was ambitious and driven with no sign of the elegant first impression Lucas had of her.

  “Is a mana vein really worth holding back on this?” Lucas asked.

  Althea nodded aggressively. “If you develop the mana vein you can make a company like Waywood seem small.”

  Lucas sighed in defeat. “Fine,” Lucas agreed.

  It didn’t help that when he discussed the topic with Philipe and Joshua, both of them agreed with Althea and even supported it by saying they will give him the loan he needed for the development of the mana vein.

  All that led to his current situation. A meeting with the representatives of the military, mage association, and the imperial guards. The representative of the military was Leona, while Michael was the representative of the mage association. As for the imperial guards, Lucas had never met the woman before.

  She had pale skin, bright green eyes and short orange hair styled in a sleeked pixie cut with her bangs held by a blue hair clip and wore sapphire earrings and wore an elbow-length white and blue shirt.

  She made everyone confused when she arrived and introduced herself as the representative of the imperial guards. Nobody questioned her choice of attire, but they all expected her to be wearing the famous imperial guard uniform.

  “I expected you to be older,” the imperial guard commented, not even introducing herself.

  Lucas didn’t know how to answer that, thankfully Michael decided to speak up.

  “Shall we proceed with the meeting?” Michael spoke up. “We would like to secure resources early for after your development of the mana vein.”

  “Like what?”

  “Upon our arrival at the mana vein. We confirmed the existence of several herbs that we could use for alchemy,” Michael informed. “We’d like to reserve the right to purchase them from you.”

  “We’re more interested in cultivating within the mana vein,” the imperial guard spoke up.

  “Doesn’t the imperial guards already have multiple mana veins under their ownership?” Lucas asked.

  Leona decided to answer for him. “The effectiveness of cultivating in a mana vein diminishes over time, requiring them to find a different mana vein to cultivate in. Although, other people could still use the mana vein,” Leona explained. “Allowing our soldiers to cultivate is also what the military wants.”

  Lucas nodded. Despite studying everything he could about mages, he didn’t know a lot about mana veins since it wasn’t public information. Additionally, after giving up on cultivating mana, Lucas focused more on acquiring information about aura.

  “I can agree with most of that,” Lucas stated. “But I would like information about the mana vein to remain confidential.”

  “That’s obvious,” the imperial guard mentioned. “Spreading such information would become a problem for us as well.”

  The meeting proceeded with all of them discussing specific details of what they wanted and how much were they willing to offer as payment. Of course, no contract was signed since Lucas still needed to consult this with the others to confirm if he was getting a fair price.

  Once the meeting was over, the first one to leave was Michael as he needed to deal with the new members that joined the mage association. Leona followed since she needed to return to military, leaving Lucas with the imperial guard.

  “You’ve done well for yourself despite your age,” the imperial guard commented.

  “Thanks,” Lucas said as he got up to leave.

  “A lot of houses must be lining up to have you marry their daughters,” she said before Lucas could leave.

  “Not really,” Lucas replied.

  She shrugged. “Not yet.”

  When Lucas arrived at the office, he found Althea going through some paperwork. “Shouldn’t you be home by now?” Lucas asked.

  “Just reviewing the applications,” Althea replied without even looking up from the paperwork. “Since you’ll be getting a mana vein, having decent mages is a must.”

  Lucas turned to Perci who was just floating at a corner. “Got anything to add?”

  “I’m an aura user. Mana veins do not interest me,” Perci replied. “But if you're asking for advice, I suggest you only choose mages you trust.”

  “That’s a given,” Lucas said. “Well, if you need me, I’ll be making some golems.”

  Lucas began stretching as he entered the workshop.

  “Time to get started.”

  For the next few days, Lucas worked on creating golems specialized in construction and production. After enough golems were made, Lucas began giving them tasks of creating other golems, while Lucas started working on his next monster lord golem.

  But even if he got busy, Lucas didn’t neglect his aura cultivation and training. He had already successfully created his second circle and was close to perfecting it before moving on to his third circle. Perci mentioned that if he hadn’t absorbed the aura fog, his current progress would have taken over a year to accomplish.

  “You may not have talent, but you’re certainly gifted,” Perci commented.

  “Well, my gift involves being able to see mana circuits,” Lucas mentioned. “Other than crafting artifacts, there’s not much use for it.”

  “If you develop your gift, you may gain the ability to see mana traces that may help you to cut the flow of mana,” Perci stated.

  Lucas huffed. “Unlikely.”

  Perci was referring to the technique used by anti-mages where mana infused blades were used to cut the flow of mana in spells and dismantle them. A method that has long been abandoned since anti-mages didn’t have the physical ability to keep up with mages. With the addition of aura, he could make it work, but that’ll take a while to implement.

  “I still need to find out why aura isn’t common anymore,” Lucas said. “I doubt it’s simply because people didn’t know about it. The woman from the CDA knew about it for some reason.”

  “Why not ask the woman from the military?” Perci suggested.

  “That came to mind, but I’m not sure I want the government to know that I know.”

  “I believe that so called CDA is a part of the government...”

  Lucas just realized that. “Good point.”

  Lucas made a note to ask Leona about aura.

  A magic circle appeared on the ground in the forest, releasing a torrent of mana that blew away everything around it. With a bright flash of light, four people appeared above it.

  They looked around in confusion as they took in the sight of the new environment, they were in. “That goddess was right! I can feel power flowing through me!” a young man exclaimed as flames erupted in the palms of his hand before he launched it at a tree and watching it explode. “Hell yeah!”

  A young woman scoffed as she watched the scene. “Boys.”

  “Where are we?” a little kid asked in worry as he looked around in fear.

  An older woman approached him. “It’s okay. Stay with me and we can look for a police station to get some help,” she tried comforting the kid.

  As the group began their journey in a new world, they were unaware of the ripples they left behind.