6 Worries

Thomasstr 13, Flower Shop

Hekiel felt quite uneasy recently.

As he was walking through his shop and adjusting the flowers and bouquets, his mind drifted to the incident that happened a few days ago.

His most loyal subordinate and arguably the most useful one of them, even if he wanted to be dissatisfied with the fact that humans could be useful, was robbed and knocked out. But if that was where it all ended, Hekiel wouldn't care a lot. He would surely be annoyed or maybe amused at such foolishness, but he wouldn't take this accident to heart. Through his long life, he had seen quite a good share of such situations that most would blow out of the proportions.

What unnerved him though, was that not one of them remembered anything of how they were knocked out. Their memories were fuzzy at best and no concrete details could be made out. This was where Hekiel started to get slightly unnerved. 

As a Fallen Angel, he didn't have really any official permission to be here, but as this town was deemed of little importance to most factions, the Church, that was most dominant in Europe, washed its hands off of it and it remained as a sort of neutral grounds for a lot of different factions that wanted to hide some of their actions or deals from prying eyes.

Those factions, though, rarely dealt with humans, or at least in this town. Causing huge accidents here was bound to set off some more tumultuous reactions, which would then threaten the status quo that no one wanted to break. 

It begged the question: who did it? Hekiel wasn't specializing in magic, but he still knew the traces of Hypnosis Magic when he saw them. Not a lot of mages knew how to use it, never mind so effectively as to erase and modify memories so well. There were a few of other races on his mind, but he somewhat doubted that they would have to resort to such lowly means of robbery. People and beings capable of Hypnosis Magic weren't so poor as to rob some ordinary thugs, nor did they have any valuable information.

As for the fact that a completely normal human could cause this little incident? It did cross his mind, but not for long. He knew that they weren't some top fighters, but they at least could hold their ground for a few minutes or at least seconds in a real fight. But he didn't notice any signs of struggle, so they were literally knocked out in a matter of seconds, with no chance of retaliation, which didn't leave him with many options in the end.

'So who was it and what do they want? Maybe they know that I am behind them? But it's quite unlikely... I will have to be careful now. There's an unknown client in this town.' Hekiel thought with a frown crossing his face.

Anyhow, he didn't wish to anger some unknown faction by mistake, so he ought to play his cards more carefully in the near future.

×-×-× 

After paying the bill, Lucius soon left the cafe. It was a cozy place, but he couldn't completely waste his time right now on such things. He ought to have that leisure time in the future.

It was already evening outside. Despite the fact that most of the snow had already melted a long time ago and it was the start of the spring, the days were still quite short. As such, sun rose later and fell earlier.

People were busily moving between their workplaces and homes, some were taking a stroll outside and some ran off to somewhere else. Even though it was one of the busiest times of the day, Lucius noted that it wasn't that packed; on the contrary, some of the streets were completely empty, devoid of people. It was this atmosphere of a small town that he enjoyed the most right now.

Moving back towards his hostel, he tried to notice any shady activity in the hidden and dark alleys that no one paid attention to. Although he had some money, it was definitely not enough, especially when he had no job. While he definitely could hypnotize someone and rob them in secluded place, it was far easier if someone was already there where he needed them to be.

'I wonder how advanced hypnotic magic is in this era. Back then, only I and a few more beings and races could be proud of having it.' 

Lucius clearly remembered how gods tried to limit the use and popularization of this branch of magic. They deemed it to be 'too dangerous for others' and even most of their direct followers were no exclusion to this rule. Besides, not everyone could easily learn hypnotic magic, as it needed a little bit more than a simple hard work to succeed.

He, of course, didn't care about that back then. After all, while he was proecificent with most types of magic, hypnotic magic was what was probably closest to him. Reading memories of others was one of the hypnotic magic spells, or more like a subspecies of it, and as far as he knew, he was the only one that could use it. Not even gods of magic were capable of it.

After walking for about 15 minutes, he finally heard some grunting noises coming out of the alley and he noticed that a lot of people avoided this place as some kind of plague. 

After Lucius walked further inside, he noticed two people beating up a man against the wall. The situation was almost the same as yesterday, but he didn't even feel like wasting his time on them. Apparently, they heard his purposely loud footsteps and immediately turned around, with the man against the wall gazing upon him with hopeful eyes.

"Haha, another one. Today is a lucky-" He didn't even finish his sentence as his eyes rolled back and all three men stood there like zombies, not moving at all, as if time stopped for them alone.

One small magic circle could be seen in his right eye, pulsating with power.

"Give me all your belongings besides your underwear and forget that I existed. After that, you will remain here for 10 minutes and then leave the alley as if nothing happened. Also remember, you were beaten unconscious by three men and you only scarcely remember the incident, and not even their faces could be remembered." After Lucius said that, the three men all stripped clean of their belongings and gave them all to him.

While their clothes weren't really up to his standards, they were still better than nothing. He also got their wallets and noticed that they were actually quite bulky. After short inspection, he opened his small dimensional space and put all the items there before slowly leaving.

'Hah, even that small use of magic can drain a quarter of my reserves. I will need to use magic more sparingly then, limiting myself mostly to physical attacks. Normal humans shouldn't be my opponents anyway.'

Soon, he finally found his hostel and went inside.

Back in his room, he took out the magical book once again. He wanted to try and use human magic and see if it had better energy efficiency. His magic was based on imagination, and while it was easy to use and adaptable to any situation and environment, it had a bigger toll on magic reserves. It wouldn't be a problem if he was in his peak condition, where he could fight days-on without end, but right now, it wasn't really cost-efficient.

Human magic though, as far as he had seen, was a little rigid and focused on technical aspects, but it also greatly minimized the cost of casting spells. The book also mentioned that mages could also write down main magic circles beforehand on any surface and then later on use them in battle, while only configuring a small part of the circle to suit the situation. This way one could further minimize the cost by a little bit and save on time.

Lucius also understood the downside of such use of magic. Magic circles weren't easy to write down and they needed one to spend quite some time engraving them on the surface of their choosing. Those circles could also be only used once, as the magic damaged the surface and magic circle in the process of using it.

As such, while it could be used as a sort of trump card or in order to save energy in more peaceful times, mages were still advised to learn to cast full spells without any other assistance, as it could save their lives in dangerous situations.

"But I can still use them. It can save greatly on energy and drawing them shouldn't be that hard." After thinking about the time-consuming process of drawing the circles by hand, he thought suddenly of a better idea. "Hmm, if I use water magic with ink, wouldn't it simplify the process by a lot? This way, I can easily amass tons of magic circles and use them as the situation calls for it."

The only problem he had was that he got no ink with him.

'I guess it isn't yet the time to end this day.' 

Closing the book, he stood up and soon left and locked the room, with a clear objective in his mind.