Chapter 21

Darius had received a pile of bank notes neatly organized and backed in a brown letter folding. While walking out, he saw his guards waiting outside after grilling. Daylight was nearing while the last remains of the night lingered in shadows. Darius walked to them while Trader's guard bowed to him slightly.

"Okay, let's go back to get rested. Tomorrow we will have a lot of projects with the buildings."

Guards nodded, and they left back to the Green Lantern. The tavern was eery quiet in the early morning, and Darius went to the bathroom to clean himself and head for the rest. While Darius was cleaning himself with several buckets of water, Elvira walked in.

"Master, do you want me to wash your back?"

"Sure, I won't reach it anyway."

Elvira started scratching his shoulders with a rough cloth.

"Master, was it difficult today? Other men were a bit on the edge when they came back."

"Well, yes and no, we had to torture that official, he stole our land, but we got it back now."

"Okey, then everything should be fine now?"

"Yes, they will have only one lead, and it will lead them to the burned village. They will first assume that Orlond died there, not here."

The moment of silence was relaxing. Darius was tired and dozed off a bit. Elvira gave him a warm bucket of water, and he stood up and downed the bucket slowly on himself.

"We must make plans for rebuilding. This time I want it to have at least five floors and a cellar."

"Your will be done, my master," answered Elvira. She had seen the immense amount of money Darius had, but at the same time, Darius lacked magic stones.

"Also, I need to develop as a mage. I have been putting it off too long. The meditation I used is not doing anything other than maybe healing the body."

"Yes, it can happen easily. Typically, magical aptitude, comprehension and many other things are needed to rank up as a mage. It will require different meditation techniques. But when meditation ceases to be useful, you will always need a better one or some ways to modify your body for magic. The typical strategy is to raise the amount of the singular particles to replace others; this is usually done with meditation. Or you can use enchantments, potions, blessings, or any other form of magic suitable for you to broaden your sea of consciousness."

It all made much more sense than months before. Darius could later choose some spell models for negative particles to practice, but now he needed to grow his mentality and particle control to do magic. Darius had not wasted time for a single day. Most days, he made potions and discussed with Elvira on magic.

"Elvira, you can go check the new equipment and resources. Maybe we can do something about my bottleneck and your body balance. After all, it would be better if you could rank up too in future."

"Thank you, master. I will do whatever it takes," said teary-eyed Elvira.

Darius watched after her and started thinking about his current situation. What he lacked most were resources and magical plants. There were only two solutions to get them. The first one was obviously to buy them with magic stones. The second chance was to run around all the forests, mines, mountains, and jungles to find resources himself. Both of these options did not appeal to Darius. The first one was too expensive, and even if he could make a business empire within this city, it would only mean a very meagre income for a mage. The second option was even worse. Why would he want to spend all his time travelling in random locations for large risk and only a slight chance of actually acquiring something valuable. But Darius had more options now with the acquired wealth. He could buy larger groups of slaves and make them do his bidding with the resources. All that Darius would have to do would be to provide enough equipment, training, and resources with money for them and order them to seek materials in groups to avoid risks in the wilderness. This undertaking would cost him tons of money, but it was still very little compared to the magical plants and resources he could gain from this. Darius would need to buy someone to take care of these details, herbalists, guards, and several people to sew and smith all the clothing. He could buy everything at the beginning, but when these groups' scale grew, he would have to produce and provide everything to cut losses.

The bath water was getting cold, and Darius returned to the tavern hall for breakfast. While munching on bread and onion soup, a street kid came in and yelled.

"Big news on investigation of city office! Paper for two coppers!"

Darius looked while several people bought the paper. He fished two coins from his pocket and waved the kid to the table where Darius was eating. After a fast exchange, Darius read the short notice of inquiries and investigations. It seems that the city officials were looking for any leads, particularly those on missing Orlond. Darius sighed in his mind. It had only taken seven hours for city officials to find out about the lack of money, organise a public statement, and start an investigation.

Darius decided to head back upstairs to meditate the whole day. He gave orders to Elvira to forward to the guards when they woke up.

Elvira's words followed Darius to his room and meditation. While he was meditating, Darius finally noticed some differences. It was hard to point out. The mind is not a place, but to use it as a room, the folding triangles seemed to use less space than previously. This might be because he had meditated every night for almost half a year. But it seemed that this expansion was nearing its borders. It had barely grown in the last month. Darius would have to investigate better methods and potions to advance as a mage.

After meditation for the whole day and night morning, the sun rose again. Darius stopped meditating and decided to go back to the building. He ordered his guards to oversee demolishing and rebuilding of the burned remains. Tens of helpers were hired for the task, and the work started. Huge loads of half-burned wood beams and logs had to be delivered to the slum dump. It was not all bad. The slum people could now start to renovate their huts and broken houses. Some even came to ask for the materials at the building site. 

After everything was dealt with, Darius straightened his robe and walked back to the nobility area, this time to Lumbert's family mansion. The greetings were more eager this time, and he was being thanked for healing three times before he even met the lord of the house. A new butler hurriedly came to greet him and led Darius into the large dining area.

"Darius, good, give him a plate and silvers. We are feasting today. The chef has outdone himself today. You have to taste this roasted chicken with honey," Bellowed lord Lumbert. He didn't seem to be concerned at all and just ate happily. Instead, Lumbert's wife seemed furious and nit-picked the food in front of her. They seemed an odd couple. His wife was at least one head longer than the lord was. Otherwise, they were opposites of each other. Lord Lumbert had unruly black hair, and he dressed in the newest bright colour clothing like a clown, while his wife had well-kept, almost white-yellow hair and her violet dress was very modest.

Darius greeted them with a courtesy nod and sat on the chair given to him.

"I heard your building burned too. What was it about?"

"Yes, sadly, there were some thugs extorting money, and they went too far. But everything is in control now. I will build a new building and have hired knights to make things go smoother."

"That sound very capable, indeed. At your age, I was just drinking and womanizing with my daily allowance until my father's retina leader kicked me into sword education." Darius could see this comment causing lord's wife to roll her eyes, but she didn't say anything, only smiled a bit at the end of her mouth.

"Well, Lord Lumbert, there will be a bit of delay with the alchemy store, but we still produce potions daily. With additional workers, it could be done even faster. I was going to ask you, can I just build whatever I want on the land lot for the building, or are there any limitations?"

"Hmm, well, some tight-ass neighbours might complain about it, but it is not a problem that money can't solve. You will be fine if you are not building a castle on the plot," lord laughed giddily.

"Seriously speaking, Darius, I wanted to offer you a deal."

"By all means, you have my ears and attention lord."

"Well, I see you are starting a large business, and you have money to back it up. I would want to cut into the profit by providing you with more slaves and handling all unnecessary things that might happen in this city."

"Yes, I understand there have been some ordeals, even with the officials. Luckily everything is solved and clear."

"What I want of you, Darius, is that you prosper with your store and sell potions to me in bulks. This fire next to our house was not the only one. We have suffered some damages, and there have been countless expenses with it. So, if you are willing to sell potions to us, we can take better of them and raise money in the nobility area auction house. You would not be permitted to do it, but I can loan my lot. If you want, you can also get access to it and buy through my items and slaves at your leisure."

"It is an interesting offer, lord Lumbert. What I mostly think is how this will be a fair deal to you?"

"Hehe, don't worry about that, Darius. You see, some nobles have more money that is good for them, and they have wars over items in auction houses. We can sometimes make a killing with medium and high-quality healing potions."

"I have been thinking of expanding the potion selection quite a bit, lord Lumbert."

"Good, that is even better! So, you can put your price on the highest potions and special potions you are not selling in the store openly, and I can, with a 20% cut, sell your medium and high-quality potions at the nobility auction house." Darius made some fast calculations, and with over-the-top prices on medium and high-quality potions, he still would be on receiving end of this bargain.

"Okay, that will be an agreeable deal, my lord."

"Capital capital! Just name your price, and I will set the starting limit accordingly and share the results of 80/20. In return, I ensure nobody ever touches your business again in this city." Darius knew lord Lumbert was not the highest lord in the town. But support by any lord, even the one he had stolen from, was generally a good deal. It would help straighten the bureaucratic problems, blackmailing and other issues. Now he would be backed up from the shadows by mister Trader and at daylight by Lord Lumbert. It was a nice happy ending. But Darius didn't believe in it. To him, everything could collapse at any minute. He was just buying time to amass enough slaves, influence, magic books, and items.

After chatting and eating an entire meal course, the lord of the house left to sleep the feast off, so to speak. Darius used this moment also to leave the mansion.