Ronan believed he had found the solution to the problem of not having teleportation stones to go to the goblin village.

In principle, he could fly on Myrthaxya; but his lady wanted to keep the dragon's existence a secret, so his fastest mount was out of the question. He could also make himself a seat with several ice golems, ask them to levitate, and move them with birds of prey. But that would also attract too much attention. Other options, like traveling the roads on a bone mount, were faster than a typical horse-drawn carriage but still involved many hours, which made them too slow for his taste.

Without a doubt, the portal to the village was the fastest and simplest option.

Teleportation magic was based on runic magic, ancient knowledge that was lost and of which only a few relics remained, like the portals and their stones. No matter how much the scholars of all human kingdoms had tried to recover that magic, they hadn't succeeded beyond using the large portals that already existed, building some minor ones (like those in high nobility houses), or linking new stones to existing portals. Ronan had researched it. The one in Clearhaven, despite being a minor portal, was created in ancient times by the ancient race that mastered that magic and which, according to the oldest annals, was believed to be humans.

Thus, runic magic was forgotten magic—or so he thought until he went to visit Damien's father's church.

A shame he couldn't take those books…

In any case, although he had included unraveling that ancient magic in his experiment objectives, it wasn't something he'd be able to achieve in a short time frame. Maybe he'd need years. And the route of getting the stones through Catrina was going slowly. To start with, once he had returned from his visit to the capital, he found he couldn't schedule another appointment with the professor because she had left and wouldn't return to the academy until autumn break was over.

So asking Vincent for help had been his next best option. Because being a prince, he had contacts who could provide him with the stones. Plus, he was trustworthy. After all, he was one of his few human friends and none other than his lady's fiancé.

It was the latter, the thing about being his lady's fiancé, that had finally decided him.

So Vincent had pulled some strings, gotten a small bag of stones and instructions on how to link them to that particular portal, the one in Clearhaven. And there they were, appearing in the middle of the square.

"Are you sure we'll be able to train here without worrying about damaging someone or something?" Vincent asked him while looking at the few villagers passing by.

They, not recognizing the prince, greeted Ronan. In fact, a small child approached him and started asking to play with the golems.

"I cannot entertain myself playing with you right now and the golems are cold. That is why I do not want to leave you a couple unsupervised; but maybe some other little friend of mine wants to stay."

"Yes, yes, please," the child asked, and a couple of his friends came out from inside one of the nearby houses and echoed the request.

Ronan sketched a kind smile while pulling out a small piece of bone from his pouch. Next, he animated the skeleton of a dog, one large enough for two or three of the children to ride on top.

And yes, it was a dog. Not a wolf. And not because Bianca might say something about the latter, but because this dog needed affection.

Ronan knew this, because he was a soul weaver, after all.

Since childhood, dead rats had been his friends. When he left the basement, every time he felt a soul near a recent corpse and animated said body, he asked the soul if it wanted to stay or preferred to move on to some other place, another world, wherever souls went after death.

The dog he had just animated, he'd found it a few weeks ago dead near a road. The death date was fairly recent, so the soul was still there. That's why he had asked and the dog had accepted. Apparently, it had been the dog of a farming family with many children. That's why Ronan knew it liked children. Also that the poor animal had died far from its family and was saddened not to continue playing with them.

Once he raised its skeleton in the village, he asked out loud:

"Do you want to stay and live here? Play with these children and take care of them?"

The dog, happy, started wagging its bone tail, raising dust from the bare earth of the village square. It also sent him mental images of itself joyful in its past life, ridden by several small children with yellow hair who smelled like cookies.

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"Very well. Stay here. This will be your new home."

The three little ones burst into excited jumping and squealing. One of the mothers approached, looking worried.

"Excuse me, necromancer sir. I don't mean to offend but, won't it be dangerous? It's undead and, if you leave, it could attack our children."

"He has a soul," Ronan answered simply. "The soul of a good dog accustomed to playing with children and defending its home. He cannot go feral. Do not worry."

"What if my husband scolds the boy for doing something naughty and the dog thinks attacking my husband is defending my son?"

Ronan watched as Vincent tried to hide a smile.

"No, Mike has my orders not to harm any human being, not even to defend the children. If something like that happened, bandits attacking for example, he would alert me and defend them without hurting anyone, putting his body in the way of the attacks."

And Mike would alert me and I could change his orders, the necromancer thought.

Because normally, it was true his undead had orders not to attack, but only if they weren't attacked first. With the dog he had made an exception.

"Oh no, poor thing," said an even smaller girl, about three years old, who came out from behind her mother's skirts.

"It's all right, Mike is strong," Ronan told her. "Besides, he does not eat anything. He will not be another mouth for your family to feed."

"Mommy please."

"Aunt Abbie, please," the other children started begging her.

The woman ended up shrugging. She didn't seem to have it very clear but Ronan and Vincent were already on their way, leaving the hound there.

Once they reached the palisade gate, Ronan introduced his friend to the two guards, who were usually quite friendly. They must not have recognized him either, because they didn't stand at attention like other soldiers did in the presence of royalty.

They moved forward a bit, a couple of minutes. The sound of hooves and rustling undergrowth began to be heard, getting closer and closer.

"Here they are," he told the prince when the two bone deer arrived, which he had called shortly after appearing in Clearhaven's plaza.

"Are we going to ride?"

"Yes, they are very fast. They are going to take us to the clearing I mentioned."

"They don't look very comfortable, but let's go."

The deer lay down to make it easier for them to climb on.

"Hold on tight," was all the warning Ronan gave before the mounts, already standing, burst from total stillness into a sudden gallop.

Zigzagging between trees, it didn't take them too long to reach the clearing. It was a wide area, several hundred meters. Perhaps that's where the villagers had gotten the wood to build their houses and palisades. Ronan didn't know. He didn't see any stumps either. In any case, it was a perfect place to train.

And, although training wasn't his main reason for going there, he would never say no to an opportunity to improve with his sword, even less against a fighter as skilled as Vincent.

"Are you sure I can use my air and water magic without holding back?" the latter asked while a smile, more typical of Darius than him, curved his lips.

"Sure. And do not worry about me. I have more resources than I appear to have."

"I don't doubt that. Let's do this."

Ronan and Vincent dismounted, drew their respective swords and shields, and began to fight. Vincent had better physical stats than Ronan, but the latter had a 26 in intelligence and a new shield he wanted to test. The goblins had made it for him, with bones joined by leather and with a wooden base to reinforce it. It was a kind of buckler. He was convinced that, if in other schools they could make shields with their element, he could achieve something similar.

That is, there was a darkness shield but he didn't have the spell and his academy professor had told him it was a spell whose learning was jealously guarded by a few families.

This didn't happen with other schools, where nobles who managed to develop a spell shared it with others.

Thus, Ronan had thought that, if he got himself a bone shield and trained with it, maybe he could get a spell that would create said shield for him. No matter how much he had tried to stare at a pile of bones and shape them and control them with his mind, he hadn't succeeded. The closest thing had been his abomination spell—there he had felt the dark mana permeating the corpses, and lifting and swirling their different parts in the air for him to shape them.

He'd even tried making an abomination that was a shield and another that was armor. But the second one he couldn't fit properly and have it move with him in a fluid and natural way. It was more like a jumble of bones that resembled something that could be armor. And, as for the first, he didn't see it as practical. Besides the time it took him to create it and how expensive it was in materials, the main problem was that it was gigantic. After all, the materials for an abomination were a mass of corpses equivalent to six medium-sized humans. And he didn't have (yet) the strength to lift that.

Of course, he would keep trying to see if he could come up with a version that satisfied him. In fact, he had one that was a structure with four legs, that galloped and had a platform protected by walls and a bone roof. The only thing is that he would need to be able to use more corpse mass to close the gaps that had been left open.

Similarly, when the goblins gave him his current shield, he had tried to reproduce that feeling of connection with his bones; but without success.

What he needed was something like the darkness shield, something he could conjure quickly to block an attack.

Indeed, yes, he was taking hits. They were from Vincent's sword, which he wielded more skillfully than he did his own, and from his wind and water magic.

Even without using his creatures, Ronan could easily beat his friend with the life and mana drain spell or with his dark flare, not to mention the curses. But he preferred not to use them. However, Vincent was starting to give him such a beating with the sword, in addition to blocking all his strikes with the shield, that he cast exhaust on him.

Advanced level exhaust. One that lowered Vincent's attack speed, movement, and strength for 5 minutes. And it barely dented his mana bar.

(Vincent was already on his third potion).

"My apologies," he told him.

"Don't be sorry, it's more interesting this way," Vincent answered just before casting and launching an attack with a double wind blade at him.

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