It’s something I’ve always thought of, even in my previous life. It seems I was a rather lonely person back then as well. Just like now. There’s no one to share my troubles or woes with.

I hope that someday I’ll be blessed with companions I can trust.

For now, I’ll continue to work hard to ensure that I live to see that day.

If I’m to build a guild to gather wandering adventurers, there are certain criteria I need to fufill:

One, is power. It’s simple, I can’t make anyone believe that the organisation can protect them if it can’t even protect itself. The organisation needs a powerful leader, even if that person isn’t’ me. I don’t believe I have enough talent for that, so getting a high leveled mage to support this endeavour would be for that best.

I’ve heard that there’s a recluse mage in the northern mountains, and he’s rumoured to be Rank 5. The rumours have been there since years ago, so he is suspected to be dead, but we can’t know for sure. Someone like him with no affiliation would be my ideal supporter.

Secondly, influence. I need to have political support. If this organisation is not supported by the nobles at the start, it could easily be crushed by the whim of any Noble. I need to have some form of backing in that area, preferably from the side of the Royal family.

The prestige of the Duke house is great, but it’s ultimately not my own.

Lastly, money. Gold is the foundation of everything here. If I want to achieve the previous two requirements, having gold is essential. Having financial resources can allow me to negotiate for the support of a strong individual, and also bribe for political support.

On that note, my 100,000 gold is a paltry sum.

I can’t leave the Kingdom’s city walls currently, since I’m far from being strong enough.

Unfortunately, I’ll have to shelve my plans for the organisation’s development since I can’t venture out in search of the recluse mage. Until I’m able to find a willing and strong individual to back this organisation, I can’t proceed any further.

Thinking about this, I sigh to myself.

“Young master, we’ve reached the house.”, Leticia says as she gently nudges me.

“A-Ah, have I been thinking for a while?”, I ask.

“Yes, young master. You’ve been in a daze for quite some time.”, she answers nonchalently.

“Hey, Leticia, what do you think about what I’ve done recently?”, I ask seriously.

She seems troubled for a moment, before starting to answer.

“Actually, never mind. Ignore that.”, I cut her off.

I want to be told that I’m doing the right things and heading down the right path. However, I don’t want to be told that I’m wrong. I don’t want to be told that everything I’ve worked for was meaningless. I feel alone, but I have to stay alone, keeping certain things locked deep within me.

Since I can’t get started on the organisation, I was thinking I’ll create a new apprentice mage spell. It’s not an impossible task, but one normally not attempted by apprentices since it requires thorough theory knowledge for magic.

I won’t reach the rank of a formal mage soon, so I’ll just spend that time engineering a magic unique to myself.

I’ve had the idea since I came into touch with magic actually. I have weak magical capabilities, but if I were to think of a way to make magic function like that of a gun, compressing the mana into a small point before launching it, I could gain huge combat power.

The difficulty in this is that it goes against the usual way of executing magic. The principle for creating magic is that you imagine a structure, and you use your mana to fill that structure before executing the spell. However, If I want the mana to be denser, I would need to skip that step of creating a structure, going first into compressing the mana, before creating a structure for it.

It’s a complicated process. I was thinking that I could execute a spell first to help in the compression, before forming the structure. Something like usuing Wind Impact from all sides to pressurise raw mana into the size I desire, before locking it into a bullet structure, and firing it.

That was my plan…. But after 4 hours of testing, I’ve only found mother failure more and more attractive. Is it because she keeps shining on me? I compress the mana slightly using the Wind Impact spell, but the spell ends up letting loose the mana after a few seconds.