Chapter 31: The Ancient Guardians

More than ten days after the assassination attempt ended, William’s two sons learned that their martial arts teacher had returned home, and now the entire William family had moved into Darknight Manor, officially becoming part of the Merlin family.
“My lord mage!”
Dressed in clean martial robes, the two young men, led by William, formally paid their respects to their lord, Donald.
“Lord, this is Eric, this is Eli, and this is my youngest son—too young yet to have a name!”
Donald glanced at the two boys and nodded with a satisfied smile. “Good, you’ve all worked hard!” Then he turned his gaze to the toddler. Unlike his parents and brothers, who were reserved, the innocent and naive child wasn’t afraid at all. Instead, he stared at Donald, his dark eyes full of curiosity.
Donald, who had always loved children in his past life, said, “Your youngest son is quite smart too!”
“Thank you, my lord, for the compliment. Children don’t understand such things.”
“Since he doesn’t have a name yet, how about I give him one?”
William and his wife immediately thanked him gratefully, “Thank you, my lord, for bestowing a name upon him!”
After thinking for a moment, Donald said,
“Call him Clark. It’s the name of a hero from legend. As servants of my Merlin family, you must have both a name and a surname. From today onward, your family will bear the surname Kent—also the surname of that hero!”
Although Donald appeared serious on the surface, he secretly chuckled to himself, “Clark Kent! Hehe! What a nice name!”
Hearing Donald’s words, William and his wife were so excited that their hands trembled. With a noble mage like him bestowing a name and surname, their family had essentially stepped beyond the ranks of ordinary commoners. Moreover, such a surname carried legitimacy—ordinary people who used it without permission could be arrested for pretending to be nobles’ descendants.
Watching the William family’s grateful excitement, Donald waved at the butler behind him. Codd immediately ordered several servants to bring over the prepared items.
Donald took a long sword and held its tip forward.
To become a retainer of a noble knight and instantly gain quasi-noble status was a far more promising career than being an ordinary warrior. Upon hearing the news, William’s two sons, aged fifteen and twelve respectively, were so excited they couldn’t sleep for two nights in a row. Having already learned to think rationally, they naturally knew how to make their choice.

The two youths immediately knelt on one knee in the manner of knights. Donald placed his sword lightly on each brother’s shoulder and said, “Do you wish to follow the will of the honorable knights of the Merlin family and become my, Donald Merlin’s, knightly servants, following in my footsteps for life and defending the glory of the Merlin family?”
“I, Eric Kent, swear here to be loyal to Knight Donald Merlin, and by the honor of a knight, I will never betray him!”
“I, Eli Kent, swear here…”
William and his wife watched happily until tears streamed down their faces, their gratitude to Donald as their lord reaching its peak.
A knightly servant, by nature, was above commoners or servants, akin to a half-vassal. As an apprentice knight, in the absence of an heir, his knightly servant had the right to inherit his noble title, estate, and lands. This showed just how extraordinary the status of a knightly servant was.
Before reaching adulthood, the sons of noble families were often sent by their elders to serve under other nobles or in the royal household to learn noble etiquette, receive knightly training, and receive cultural education. Even lower-ranking nobles continued this fine tradition. This was one of the reasons why the noble class could maintain its continuity, with each generation producing many elites.
After the oaths, Donald had his servants bring over the prepared equipment and warhorses and personally handed them to the two young servants.
“Now you are my official knightly servants. This is a gift from me as your lord!”
Although Donald could not train his two knightly servants for now, it was easy for him to provide them with sets of knightly servant equipment and warhorses. Apart from receiving some temporary noble education from the steward, the two boys continued to train in their original martial arts, as the combat skills of warriors and knights under a warhorse were largely interchangeable.
“Thank you, my lord!”
The two boys joyfully accepted Donald’s gifts. The two sets of equipment, ranging from noble hunting attire and knightly robes to light armor, cost at least a hundred gold sols just to prepare, not to mention the two valuable purebred warhorses.
Donald valued these two youths so much partly because of their father’s competence. His intention in taking these two servants was originally to win over William. People like William, who could interact with many mages and were clever, were extremely rare, and their upright character ensured loyalty.

Secondly, after meeting William’s two sons, Donald was quite satisfied with them. Although their talents weren’t the finest, they were still quite good—otherwise, they wouldn’t have reached a level close to that of mid-tier black iron warriors by the age of fifteen. With proper training, it would be easy for them to become junior knights by eighteen. That way, his family would have two more helpers they could rely on openly.

As for William’s youngest son, who was under four years old, he was too young, and Donald had no plans to test his abilities for now.

Realizing that aside from himself and his summoned creatures, there were only two adolescents in the manor with any combat capability, Donald felt somewhat anxious.

“I can’t stay in the manor forever. There have already been assassination attempts before. If I leave now, it’s possible someone might target the manor as well.”

Thus, he felt acutely that his strength was insufficient to ensure the safety of himself and his followers.

Although the Tree of Life had combat power comparable to that of level-five magical beasts, its greatest flaw as a plant lifeform was its slow movement speed.

Regarding solutions, Donald first thought of the permanent summoning rights granted to him by the Book of Truth. However, he quickly abandoned this idea because, although there was no limit on the number of creatures that could be summoned permanently, the soul power required was far beyond what he could obtain from gathering scattered souls of undead creatures—far from enough to create higher-tier troops.

What was truly needed for permanent summoning wasn’t the energy from those magic core crystals; in fact, the energy required for normal summoning was sufficient to manifest their physical forms. What was most crucial was the more precious soul power.

He had asked the Book of Truth to calculate this, and it concluded that soul imprints from magic cores couldn’t be used for permanent summoning, as they lacked sufficient soul power and had incomplete structures, which would greatly affect the intelligence of the summoned creatures. After all, those magical beasts had little intelligence in life, and their remaining fragments after death were also incomplete.

The best source for creating creatures’ souls was soul power from intelligent beings.

So, until he found another source of soul power, Donald decided not to use his permanent summoning ability for now.

With his first idea rejected, Donald then thought of the Elven defensive structures.

“The Ancient Guardians? That could indeed be a good solution!”

Unlike the defensive towers of humans and orcs, the Ancient Guardians, just like the Tree of Life, belong to the natural race of treefolk. Only a small number of soul forces are needed to create Ancient Guardian treefolk—about one-twentieth of those required for the Tree of Life in the main base. This amount is equivalent to what’s needed for ordinary first-level wild units, which Donald can afford. Considering their strength, it’s undoubtedly a very good deal. So Donald went into the forest to find ten thousand-year-old trees and used them as carriers to summon ten Ancient Guardian trees. These living defensive towers were placed around the estate—two on each side—and two more were planted where the Tree of Life stood to protect it as well. These trees, capable of drawing power from the earth and the Tree of Life to launch energy stones, remained motionless like ordinary trees most of the time. But once enemies entered range, they instantly turned into tireless catapults, launching fierce attacks every two seconds. Combined with the natural power boost from the Tree of Life and its ability to suppress enemy forces, enemies below bronze rank could hardly number more than a hundred before they could breach the estate’s gates. With these in place, the estate’s defense system was essentially complete. However, this approach only allowed passive defense and lacked mobility, so it was still necessary to recruit some guards and train them to assist the Ancient Guardians in protecting the estate. Fortunately, it would be some time before anyone discovered him, as only the orcish scouts had been found; the main force was likely still on its way, and no royal recruitment orders had been issued. A range of mountains and hills separated the Northwest Wasteland from the Kingdom of Celt, and although the terrain wasn’t particularly treacherous, it still took considerable time to cross. Moreover, in previous years, orcs had focused on the wealthy human kingdoms in the central continent, leaving the less accessible Kingdom of Celt to weaker tribes. This meant the orc forces facing the Celt border probably wouldn’t be very strong, giving Donald some time to prepare. The next day, Donald began discussing with his butler the idea of hiring some guards for the estate. Although noblemen weren’t allowed to raise their own private armies, they were permitted to acquire private forces by hiring guards to protect their estates and property or by gaining the loyalty of knightly vassals.

However, such private forces cannot be exposed publicly and must not be used to gain military honors. This is a restriction imposed by royal families and nobles on non-noble commoners and merchants to prevent them from seizing their lands, lives, and property during times of war. Moreover, without a formal title, non-noble commoners and merchants dare not hire too many guards—firstly because the costs of food and wages are high, and secondly because they fear that these armed guards might turn against their employers. It has happened before that hired adventurers plundered their employers’ homes while they were away, and in some cases even robbed and killed their employers, ending up as thieves themselves. Therefore, when choosing guards for his estate, Donald first considers their character rather than their strength. He would rather have a group of less capable but honest and loyal guards than hire those with malicious intentions and treacherous natures.