Epic Of The Demonic Sage

Lucius gave Arius several instructions, which the man took in easily without a question. Lucius was pleased with this and felt like if the other two were the same, they might be a much better investment than he would have originally expected it to be.

Kiana on the other hand, stood at the other side and observed their new 'employee'. 

'His power is certainly on a different level… while I have confidence in taking him out at a distance, at close quarters, I don't think I'll be able to do much. His speed also increased with his attack and what the hell was that burst at the end? Can he fly too now?' Kiana had several questions in her mind.

But she knew that they were hard to get answers to. Not that Arius wouldn't answer them, but rather that he wouldn't even know about them either. All they could do was to wait and see their progress.

After about five minutes of discussion, Arius and Lucius were done discussing.

"Well then, when should I start?" Arius questioned.

"We'll get the other two ready… if they want to and then get you set up for the journey." Lucius answered.

Arius was willing to do the first few jobs for free since he already knew how much of a favor Lucius had done for him. The increase in a gift was not something that could be quantified in a monetary value.

It wasn't just the requirements of it, but rather the 'knowing' that was close to priceless.

"You'll be upgrading their gifts as well?" Arius asked.

"Well yes, if they accept it." Lucius replied.

"Very well," Arius replied. "Us three have worked on a couple of jobs together before and shouldn't really have any problems." 

"That'll be pleasant," Lucius said.

Having done this, the three of them returned to the carriage, which then went back to the blind crow tavern again. It was parked back in the stables and prevented anyone seeing them from exiting and entering the hatch.

Thankfully for them, there weren't that many people passing by around here, either. 

~Creak~

About a minute later, the three of them finally entered the hidden room and called for Leif.

"What do you want?" the grumpy man came down to see them.

"Call the other two. If all goes well, we'll be out of your hair today." Arius was the one who spoke this time.

"GOOD!" Leif said before going back upstairs.

"May as well wait till then," Lucius said, looking at the damaged table.

Thankfully, the stools and chairs in the room were still fine, thus they had no problems. About five minutes later, the door opened again and Cohen and Carlyle finally appeared. The first thing they saw was nothing but the destroyed table and the hole in the floor.

Only after that, they noticed that Arius was no longer wearing his mask.

"Why'd you get rid of the mask? Already trusting him?" Cohen questioned.

"Well, the mask was destroyed due to my mistake, but yeah, I do trust him now. He's proved his claims." Arius answered.

"Proved them? How?" Carlyle asked.

"You two know my gift, right? You've seen it before." Arius replied.

"Yes, we have," Cohen spoke.

"Then see for yourself," Arius said before activating his gift and letting his arms transform into the massive size they reached with his new gift.

Seeing it, the eyes of the two men widened in shock.

"This… it can really be done?" it was safe to say that the two masked men were blown away.

They looked at each other and nodded before looking back at Lucius.

"We're in!" They said in unison.

"Perfect!" Lucius replied.

This was exactly the kind of decisiveness Lucius preferred in people, and they had already become a bit pleasing to him.

After their approval, Lucius quickly got to putting the marks of obedience on both of them. This had exhausted the uses of that spell and the spell matrix of it collapsed.

'Thankfully I reconstructed it last night, or I would have only been able to do this for one of them.' Lucius thought to himself.

Having done this, Lucius quickly got to using nexus on their gifts and learning about them. He had already restored his Aether while on the ride back here, as he had expected to use Nexus.

The two gifts that Cohen and Carlye had were quite different and Lucius felt like they had great potential as well. The requirements for them were thankfully something he could obtain relatively easily as well as long as he gave a request to the Artificers guild.

What Lucius was doing was a rather big investment in the three men. He would be using up over eighty percent of the profits they had made from the sale of Humble blaze. But this was an investment that was rather worth it.

'If only it was this easy to obtain rune beast crystals for Donald and John as well…' Lucius thought to himself.

Once this was all done, Lucius told them that he would take a couple of days to get the things ready for the upgrade. During this time, they were asked to leave the Blind Crow tavern and live in a small residence that was located near the Reeducation center.

It was one of the sets of residences. Lucius had asked to be renovated so that the extra workers of the reeducation center could live there. While there was still empty space in the reeducation center for staff, it wouldn't hurt to have some space ready for the future, Lucius thought.

And Lo-and-behold, he already had the first tenants for it. 

"I believe you three should be able to take care of the rest of the things on your own? The main this is to keep out of public sight." Lucius reminded.

"We are used to it. Don't worry about that." Cohen replied.

"Good, I'll call for you when it is time," Lucius said before taking his leave along with Kiana.