Thomas Balvan had three sons: Adrian, Evan, and Rhys.
His wife was a noblewoman of a small-size noble family who died giving birth to Rhys.
Adrian Balvan was his first son and the second in command of the family.
He was in charge of the military power of the family and was married to Gillian Lansay, from which derived the friendly relationship with her family.
He had only one son, named Keith, who he trained to be his successor as the head of the Balvan army.
Evan Balvan was in charge of the economic aspect of the family.
He managed to marry the daughter of one of the nobles in the Shosti family, her name was Sibyl Shosti, and from her came most of the financial support of the Balvan family.
He had two sons and two daughters named respectively Maxwell, Neil, Valerie, and Lena.
Neil and Lena were about the same age as Noah while the other two had more than twenty years.
Rhys was in charge of the management of the mansion but he rarely bothered to do that, leaving all his duties to his trusted guard Wayne.
He had a son and a daughter, Fabian and Rose, with Rose being the oldest.
Each of Thomas' sons had a group of personal guards always attending them.
Noah had been assigned to Evan Balvan as a guard and he ordered him to attend his younger children.
His days were spent escorting Neil and Lena around and satisfying every request they had.
His position as a guard of the inner circle granted him access to many manuals and body-refinement methods of rank 3, but he already had those.
For rank 4 ones, he needed to accumulate more merits and obtain a more prestigious position.
As for better cultivation techniques, the family would always refuse his request which made Noah understand their intentions.
'They want to slow my growth.'
Even if he was granted access to the inner circle, the family still hadn't recognized him as a true descendant, so they had to suppress him.
They could not allow for an outsider to be stronger than the actual family members.
In their view, Noah was still young, losing a few years of training to ascertain his personality was totally worth it.
However, from Noah's perspective, it was just a way to prolong his torture.
The Patriarch had declared to let him outside of schemes but he could not control the behavior of every family member, especially of the youngest ones.
Every true descendant would feel a sense of superiority toward a bastard, especially since they were used to their noble title since birth.
Neil and Lena were no exception and would always try to get a reaction in their new young guard.
A few months after his enrollment, Noah was already used to their daily abuse.
"Hey cousin, I knew that your mother was good at taking hits, you surely inherited that from her."
Neil said that looking at the bleeding youth in front of him.
"No, she wasn't that good at that. She decided to kill herself because of that remember?"
Lena answered her brother with a bit of sweat running down her forehead.
Noah was shirtless in front of them with a small cut on his chest.
Since he had a rank 3 body, he could be used by the members of the family as a test dummy for their weaker spells.
Almost all the guards in the inner circle had a body that strong but the brother and sister always chose him for practice.
"Then it's just because of his body, right? I can't wait to reach rank 3 too so I might spar with him a little."
A mischievous smile was on the face of the young man when he said those words.
"That is because you always waste time playing around. You have the same age as him but you never train. Do you want shame on our family by letting a bastard be stronger than you?"
The sister answered while she focused again and a small water bullet shot out to hit Noah.
Noah took the hit without moving, the bullet penetrated his skin to be stopped by the muscles below it.
Only a cold expression could be seen on his face.
Lena nodded seeing the blood coming out of his chest and smile happily.
"Mh that will do, my control of the spell is really growing. You can go now cousin, I'm already sick of your face."
They didn't even look at him while he put back his red armor, bowed, and moved toward his lodging.
When he was back in his room, he took away his armor and threw it on the floor.
'All the fucking day doing the punching dummy for those fucking spoiled kids. What control is growing? I could kill that bitch with one thought!'
Neil and Lena would spend every day with him so he could not train or fight.
Adding the constant mocking, Noah irritation grew day after day.
He sat on the floor and took out a folded sheet from the space-ring that pinned on the wall in front of him.
He began to meditate in the rank 1 cultivation technique with his eyes closed.
The "Breath" began to enter his dantian and slowly enlarge it.
Then, strands of "Breath" from his body moved toward his low waist and joined the one gathered from the technique.
Most of it was unable to mix with the one of the technique and dispersed but a small part still blended and entered the dantian.
Since the quality of the "Breath" in his body was the same as the dantian, Noah discovered that he could use it during the absorption process.
However, only the one belonging to the darkness element could enter the dantian, while the other part was dispersed.
Nevertheless, it was still an increase in cultivation speed and Noah didn't hesitate to constantly use this method since the "Breath" in his body was refilled autonomously.
Then, he opened his eyes to look at the sheet on the wall, an intricate rune was written on it.