Ch80.The years pass by.

//Sorry for the delay, I have no real excuse besides me getting lazy and finding a novel or two that needed binging... also have had a bit of a struggle deciding whether or not to rewrite the whole novel since I am not too impressed with a few things after going over everything again lol, but yeah I will continue writing casually, updating when I can and getting this volume done.

Since its been a good while since I last worked on this, please shout if you see any inconsistencies as I will be rapidly advancing the story and may forget some things.

Hope this chap is decent-ish and again sorry for my laziness XD//

Time has passed by rather rapidly and 4 years have gone by, I am now in my 6th year at Swernoot academy and have officially become a 'senior', and have gathered a rather large group of students to become my 'subordinates' hopefully, after they graduate, I will be able to hire a few of them into my clan.

During this time I have barely become a Circle 3 Mage and have been struggling to move towards Circle 4, it has been a rather tough process when deciding what Runes to chose to complete my third circle, but after much deliberation I was able to successfully create some rather awesome Runes, besides the default Energy Gathering Rune, I managed to find or modify some new Runes for my Circle 3,

The First one has provided me an upgrade to my Partial Transformation fighting style, the 'Beastification' Rune, which allows me to further transform into a humanoid animal, fully gaining some animalistic qualities, such as growing hair all over my body and gaining the physical senses of an animal like hearing, smell and such. it was a massive upgrade while including my previous circles.

The next Runes focused on my physical capabilities, 'Expansion', 'GiantStrength' and 'Trolls Vitality', I am sure these are self explanatory, I have gained the ability to further grow in size, dependent on my base physical strength and body weight, Giants Strength is an active rune that quite literally grants me the strength of a Giant by multiplying my strength according to my physical size, usually this would be a useless rune for any normal mage, but for me and my fighting style its just ... broken.

Trolls Vitality is also quite simple, it just increases my bodies natural healing to incredible levels, this is a passive rune and is activated whenever I am injured, but also has a rather annoying negative effect, that results in me having a massive apatite, even when I have had enough food to sustain myself, I will remain hungry, this is not really ideal but I will have to resolve this issue in my next circle.

Next were some basic Runes to enhance my basic abilities such as defense and movability, which include 'Metal Skin' that literally makes my skin as hard as certain metals, the more magical energy I have, the better quality metal my skin gets hardened to, although this is a rather stupid description since my skin just becomes harder the more energy I have, next was the 'Flexibile' rune, that is really as basic a rune you can get, allows me to move my joints in more extremes ways, and with my current 'supple bones' it allows me to move in ways that really should not be possible.

Then I also have the 'Enhancement' rune, which allows me to send magical energy to a part of my body and physically enhance it further than it should be able to, pretty straight forward really, not every rune needs to be something fancy, and lastly 'Instinctual Reaction' rune that allows my instincts to literally take over when I cant, so if I were to lose my logical reasoning somehow I have a backup that will allow me to get out of whatever the situation may be.

Lastly there are the more unique runes, 'Greater Memory', has granted me an almost eidetic memory, so all knowledge I have read or gain, I should be able to engrain into my mind and remember when I gain a new body.

'Weight manipulation' is my new favorite rune, it allows me to basically control my own weight, although I cant make myself heavier than I am, I can reduce my weight to increase my speed and then increase it suddenly to increase my striking power, it has brought me a large increase in my offensive abilities, although incorporating this into a battle is not easy as it requires very precise manipulation of my energy and this will require a ton of practice.

Lastly, 'Shadow mark' is my elemental rune of this circle without much practical usability just yet, it allows me to leave some of my shadow energy on a target, which just helps with tracking a moving or stationary target, I am hoping that in the future circles I am able to somehow link my shadow space to the mark and allow me to teleport wherever I have placed a shadow mark, although this may be wishful thinking.

Now onto another pressing topic, business, my various 'dealings' have been progressing at a satisfactory rate, I have been struggling to expand as most of my advances into other territories are blocked and have been challenged by that annoying Derolo, but that is to be expected since I am doing the same thing to him, if not more aggressive.

There have been various nightclubs setup throughout Academy City, and they have slowly become a 'norm' and to many people are no longer considered an exciting new experience, this means that there have been some competitors out there and I no longer have the monopoly over all the young masters, but this doesn't matter too much anymore, since I have been making an absolute maddening amount of money through drug sales, so much so, that I have even been giving Oga and Nafets a sizable budget to do with as they please.

I have even started heavily investing in students that show talent and I try to bring them 'under my wing' so that when they graduate, they will hopefully join my clan, and if not, they will still maintain contact with me, broadening my connections.

The situation with Derolo has been in a stalemate for the last few years with neither of us budging at all, we have had many small and large scale battles, and fights and almost every time we end in a draw or one of us has to rapidly withdraw due to various reasons, but with my recent increase in strength, I should have more than enough power to destroy him already, but with the high end bosses out there, I would like to wait until I advance one more time, assuming I can advance into Circle 4 successfully.

Then I will just have to find the right opportunity, and move swiftly taking everything he owns. After that I should have enough territory to officially become one of the larger Bosses in Academy City, and I will have to spend the next few years stabilizing my position, as I don't want to annoy any of the larger bosses.

Things regarding the drug business have been, interesting to say the least, after having a few influential people overdose on drugs, some even dying there have been some serious restrictions on their use, and although they haven't been flat out banned by the Noble house controlling this city, they have severely limited the quantity we are allowed to sell, and I believe the only reason it hasn't been flat out banned, is because nobody knows who the actual 'drug lord' is and where to find him or where he is actually producing all of these drugs.

The crazy thing is how close they have come to discovering Oga and I, but with a few anonymous favors and distractions, we were able to avoid detection. That, however is a story for another time, the important point is that I am no longer mass producing drugs at the Academy and considering my current finances, Oga has had his own dream laboratory created and is currently hidden away in a corner of this city, it has a secret connection to the sewer system, this somewhat allows drugs to be transported to almost anywhere in the city.

There are some restrictions in this regard, such as the task of mapping out the sewer system without being discovered and finding out all of the viable entrances and exits, also finding ways to not contaminate the products, while also staying undetected when exiting the sewers were also not easily accomplished.

Now that I have this layout set up, I had Emilior, after graduating, take over the drug operation and in essence has become the 'closest person' to the Drug Lord and he has been informed of some confidential knowledge after getting the Contract tattoo that just has the basic secrecy and loyalty binding in place.

He runs his operation using some puppets as delivery people who then deliver it to some 'dealers' that are paid to sell the drugs, even though they have no direct contact with us. That way, although the drug prices have steadily been increased, it is a much safer operation and helps us avoid suspicion as well as getting caught by the Noble houses.

And as I have previously stated, the Injection method has finally been completed, and to secure Ylarics silence, he has been forced to get one as well, not one containing any loyalty factors, just one that limits what he is able to speak about, thus giving me some peace of mind.

Convincing him to accept this was not easy, but nothing a massive 'donation' cant resolve seeing as it has no real restrictions that limit his 'freedom'.

This is just very a basic summary of what has occurred during this time, but the most important thing is what I am about to do, drop out of the academy, in the last year I have been steadily seeing a drop in my improvements and the struggle from Circle 3 to 4 has been far more difficult than I would have ever imagined.

My reason for dropping out instead of just graduating early at Circle 3 is that I don't want to be recruited by any of the organizations out there who look out for graduates, I would rather stay under the radar considering my line of work.

And since Teachers and professors can no longer provide me much help to get to Circle 4 or beyond, seeing as it's a talent related thing and I have already read any and all books that will help me in the future, my knowledge on different Runes are immense and I have basically decided on what runes I will need with each future upgrade, since I am not going to be gaining much from the academy anymore, I don't see the need to stay.

I feel like I have already made enough connections within the academy and its time to focus on my clan, I have a feeling I will be able to gain a much larger opportunities to improve through illegal's dealings than through the official way of joining some organization.

If need be, I can always privately contact the professors to use their 'services' since I doubt they will reject any of my requests seeing as how 'close' we have become in the last few years.