Chapter 463 - Growing in Popularity
Chapter 463 - Growing in Popularity
463 Growing in Popularity
It’s difficult to hate someone who’s smiling at you.
Roland sized up the middle-aged man, and he knew very well that this couldn’t continue.
Under these circumstances, if he forced the issue, he would be put at a disadvantage.
After all, the other party was a teacher who was making amends on behalf of two noble Mages, so if Roland continued, public opinion would be against him.
The purpose had been accomplished when the maidservant was saved.
However... finishing touches still had to be done.
Roland said to the middle-aged Mage, “Sorry, I’ve just arrived here, and I haven’t even entered my dorm. Can we talk about magic nodes later?”
The middle-aged Mage nodded and smiled indifferently. “That’s quite a pity, but understandable. Mr. Roland, please remember, I will be waiting for you at Building 17 on the sixth street of the middle district. You are welcome to come over as a guest any time.”
“Thank you.”
Roland smiled at the middle-aged Mage, then crouched down and said to the two noble Mages, who still didn’t dare to raise their heads, “You got lucky this time that someone came to save you. I’m not sure if your luck will be that good next time. Next time you see me, you’d better avoid me, or I can’t promise to back down.”
Roland withdrew his outgoing mental power, smiled at the middle-aged Mage, and walked up the stairs.
After Roland’s footsteps disappeared from the stairway, the two noble Mages let out long sighs of relief and slumped down on the icy floor.
“Scared the hell out of me,” said Bild, the noble Mage whose robe had been wet by the maid, still caught up in lingering fears. “Uncle, what’s this man’s story? Even you have to back down—and you’re at the Master level.”
The other mage placed the dozen or so gold coins he had gouged out on the floor and sat down, also looking at the middle-aged Mage with a curious gaze.
The middle-aged Mage curled his fingers at them, and said, “Go to my house and rest for a few days to lay low.”
They both looked stunned, and then they both realized something.
Bild said in a feeble voice, “Uncle, there’s no need to be so dramatic, right? We still have to hide even when you’ve stepped in?”
The middle-aged Mage only said, “We’ll talk after you’re there.”
Both Bild and Heinrich stood up and followed the middle-aged Mage obediently.
As Roland withdrew his magic power, the layer of ice on the dormitory began to slowly disappear, turning into water.
The entire dormitory building became damp, and the seven Mages who had escaped earlier returned to the main hall, looking at the wet floor. No one had a problem with it.
A dozen gold coins were placed on the ground in two stacks; no one dared to take them.
The crowd watched for a while, but finally, a man went over and picked up the two stacks of gold coins and placed them next to the stairway.
Then the crowd dispersed.
Roland went up to the sixth floor, found room 602, swiped the black wooden tile in front of the door lock, and the door opened.
Magic Resonance... interesting.
The dorm was a single room, not too spacious, and only about forty square feet.
It was fully furnished.
It wasn’t a problem for a single person to live in.
He first folded the blankets and sheets on the wooden bed and set them aside, then took his own bedding out of his Backpack and laid it on the bed.
Finally, he laid down on the bed in a star shape.
Then his spirit entered the forum and started browsing posts to pass the time.
And then, unbeknownst to Roland, his name began to spread in the Red Magic Tower.
The middle-aged Mage, Jose, returned home with his two nephews and sat them down first. The smile on his face immediately became serious. “Before you came here, didn’t anyone at home tell you that you had to keep a low profile when you came to the Red Magic Tower? This is the low profile you want?”
Heinrich lowered his head and didn’t speak.
Bild argued, “Uncle, it’s not that we’re deliberately looking for trouble, but that brat called Betta is so damned despicable. I was just going to punish a maidservant who had made a mistake, what gives him the right to jump out and stop me? It would make sense if the maidservant was a great beauty, but the maid was plain-looking—why the hell did he stick up for her? And if he hadn’t jumped out, that Roland bastard in the back wouldn’t have clashed with us either.”
For Bild, to heavily punish a maidservant was a normal and very reasonable thing to do.
This was why he felt quite aggrieved.
The middle-aged Mage sighed. “There’s indeed nothing wrong with you punishing a maidservant, but if someone steps up for the maidservant, shouldn’t you just sell it as a favor? Connections aren’t acquired from fighting and cursing, you have to give respect to the other before you can build them up.”
Bild said softly, “I just couldn’t get over my anger, but I guessed that it’s not someone important to rebuke me over a maid.”
The middle-aged Mage sighed deeply. He was in complete despair over Bild’s emotional quotient.
Heinrich then asked, “Who is that Roland? Do you know him, Uncle?”
“Not really, I’ve only heard of him,” explained the middle-aged Mage. “He offered up the oil-making and water-making spells consecutively in just two or three months, and the Goddess of Magic recorded both spells and named them with his name as a prefix.”
Heinrich and Bild were both quite surprised. They were well aware that in the last hundred years or so, the Goddess of Magic had rarely included spells prefixed with a creator’s name, and now that she was including two at once, one could imagine the value of these two spells.
The middle-aged Mage continued, “As I just said, whether it’s the oil-making or water-making spell, the spell nodes are quite compact, and even a magic apprentice can learn them with some effort. Such spell node connection skills, not to mention Roland’s peers, even among the teachers of my generation, not many of them can do it.”
Bild was a little unconvinced. “Maybe he’s just lucky and inspiration hit him and he suddenly made these two spells out of nowhere.”
“Do you think creating a spell is picking up money? That all it takes is luck?” the middle-aged Mage rebuked angrily. “Things like spells only work two ways—you know it or you don’t. There’s no such thing as luck.”
Bild looked embarrassed as he scratched his head. Although he wasn’t convinced by Roland, he really didn’t dare to stand up to his uncle.
Heinrich thought for a moment and said, “Uncle, do you think this man can be roped in into our family? We could offer extremely excellent compensation, for example, to make him a citizen of Fareins?”
“It’s impossible.” The middle-aged Mage waved his hand. “I’ve heard that Roland is also a Golden Son. You’ve all heard what bullsh** temper these people have.”
The atmosphere in the room was suddenly silent, and after a while, Bild said slowly, “If I had known he was a Golden Son, I would have left on the spot and never let him see me do anything bad. No wonder Uncle told us to hide for a few days!”
The middle-aged Mage sneered. “Now you know to be afraid?”
Bild laughed embarrassedly.
Heinrich, on the other hand, felt himself break out in a cold sweat.
It had been two years since the Golden Sons descended into this world.
In the past two years, they had done a lot of things and made a lot of foreign impressions, but they had also... made a name for themselves.
Even if only occasionally a few Golden Sons came to the Fareins, the noble families of the Fareins had some knowledge of the group.
After all, the Guild of Mercenaries, an organization spread all over the world, could effectively pass on important information.
It was now clear to almost all noble families that the Golden Sons were rather meddlesome creatures, and they were usually so kind that they didn’t talk back much, even when they were ridiculed.
But once they saw “injustice,” or bad things, they would step up, meddle in whatever business it was, and do what they thought was right.
Whether you were a commoner, a mobster, a merchant, a noble, even a royal... if they thought you were wrong, they would meddle and dared to do so.
There were now many nobles who liked to kill people randomly who had had their heads removed by the Golden Sons.
Many of the robbers and bandits entrenched deep in the mountains were swept clean by the Golden Sons, and it was said that, oftentimes, when they heard that a mountain bandit had taken villagers, they spontaneously went to help rescue them, living as if they were saints.
They had just tried to kill the maidservant, so no wonder Betta had stepped forward.
And it was no wonder Roland was so unyielding.
They had probably already triggered what the Golden Sons called “bleeping.”
Because when the player said “quest,” it was automatically converted into this sound.
So the inhabitants of this world also naturally used the shielding sound effects when the players said they wanted to “do a quest.”
After hearing that Roland was a Golden Son and that Betta might be too, Bild and Heinrich decided to give in and hide out at their uncle’s place for a few days until Roland’s anger subsided a bit.
Time passed day by day.
Roland holes up in room 602 and rested, browsing the forums and experimenting with magic, having a great time.
Meanwhile, the rumors about him were gradually spreading.
After all, Roland’s oil-making spell had been a hot topic lately.
The Mage was a money-consuming profession, and children of great noble families naturally didn’t worry too much about magic resources.
But for the vast majority of middle-class nobles, or Mages from low-class noble families, money was still something they lacked.
Powerful Mages were rich, but that was after they became powerful.
In the early days of learning spells, Mages didn’t have many channels to make money.
Most Mages borrowed money from relatives or invested in joining great Noble families, trading their future for the money they needed to learn now.
But after Roland’s Oil-Making came out... they finally had a means of making money.
The price of insect oil from the Astral Plane was quite high, so it wasn’t a problem to spend five or six days casting spells to accumulate it and then sell it to make a gold coin or two.
And there were many uses for astral insect oil, whether as cooking oil, or for high-grade fuel, or even for something a little more naughty.
The consumption of it was extremely extravagant.
So even though many people got a hold of astral insect oil, the price of it still hadn’t come down.
Many low-level Mages who were short of money had a significantly better time getting by after learning this spell.
This was why they were quite grateful to Roland who had created this spell.
After Roland clashed with the two noble Mages, his name became known to the others, and word slowly spread.
Seven days later, the school year was about to start. Roland emerged from room 602 and walked to the main hall to find the place already full of students.
And when people saw him, the looks in their eyes immediately became much more enthusiastic.
“Look, that’s Roland.”
“He really does look like a genius, pretty much what I imagined.”
“He’s a great man. I heard that the water-making spell was also created to help us low-level Mages.”
Roland: “????”