Chapter 63 Deal

The mysterious person in her hood was stalking Lucas, following him when he was taking random streets or turns, tipping him off. Lucas wanted to get away from the tavern since he caused quite a disturbance, the drunk man was loud enough for everyone around the tavern to hear that they had a new visitor. In the end, he merely wanted to know where to go so now that he had a destination there was no reason to stay in this tiny village.

'How bad can you be in tailing someone? At least she isn't walking right behind us.'

'You know that she isn't an assassin at least, shouldn't that make you happy?'

'Euhm, well...'

Lucas walked into an alleyway, it was time to face his shadow. The woman turned the corner, coming face to face with the darker alleyway. She didn't see Lucas anywhere, but she knew that he had gone in here, he had to be here. She was nervous, the dark alleyway didn't do her any favors either, the smell of the rotten food and the rats running around made it even worse. She went forward, foot by foot, step by step, slowly making her way forward.

"So, would you mind telling me why you're following me?", the question came out of nowhere and shocked the woman voiceless. She merely shook and her head moved from side to side. Darting around, trying to find the source of the voice, it seemed to come from above.

On the roof of the building on the left, Lucas was lying down and using his willpower to sense where she was at.

'We should train this as well.'

His training schedule was already unhealthy, but he found that using willpower to sense his surroundings could help him in a lot of fights or exploration in general. The woman was quiet, she was still searching for the source of the voice, but Lucas didn't want to wait for too long. Before he got annoyed to the point he would simply leave, the woman had gathered enough courage to respond. "I...I wanted to ask a question."

"Then why didn't you ask that when we were in the tavern?", Lucas wasn't taking it very seriously, he was playing around with a piece of wood he had found on the roof. "Because I wanted to keep it private."

'Sure, why not.'

"Go ahead, pose your question."

Lucas started to circulate his core again, he felt like he was wasting his time. So doing some actually useful things while talking felt better. "Could you at least show yourself?"

"Says the person wearing a magical hood that hides their face at all times.", the woman was speechless for a second. It seems that she hadn't even realized her own position. "Fine, I'll show you my face, but not here, we need a safe place."

'And you gave away even more information, so your face is well known or has something that alerts certain groups like a tattoo.'

Tattoos were looked down upon by some groups but they wouldn't shun them, just prejudiced. The technique was foreign to Lucas, but he remembered that some smiths had the necessary tools to create decorative tattoos, but these were unpopular since they were mostly used for slaves.

'Should we just pull her up here?'

That would be somewhat more secretive. Lucas just didn't want to waste any time booking a room or looking for a secret location.

'Screw it, let's get her up. I want to be done with this calf.'

Lucas spoke a few runes before holding the spell, "Don't move or do anything.", and letting the spell affect her. She started to float upwards to the roof before Lucas grabbed her hand to pull her on the roof. "Is this secure enough?", the girl was baffled.

'A flying spell should only be available to a Rank 1 mage or a Core Disciple for a prominent mage school.' She grew more confident in Lucas' capabilities. Sadly, it wasn't a flying spell, merely a floating spell that Lucas found in one of Venion's tomes. Creating a current in the air and letting her float made it seem that she was flying, but nothing was farther from the truth. Lucas had never even used it on himself, since he wasn't sure how floaty he would become, using her as an experiment showed how harmless it actually was.

"Hmm, I would rather look for a secure room-"

"Then I wish you good luck.", Lucas stood up and turned around to leave. "Wait! It's fine, please stay."

'Tch, now you're showing weakness and dependence, foolish.'

'She's a greenie, but so what? Let's see how much we can gain from her, shall we?'

"What do you want?", Lucas was starting to get irritated, he needed to continue his training and travel to the magic school to reach Rank 1. He had everything he needed to advance, but he was being held back by some harlot he didn't even know. The girl took a deep breath before lowering her hood, revealing a lovely gorgeous face. Her appearance was fantastic to look at, but Lucas had dampened that feeling, to him, only Marie was beautiful.

'She must be someone important, question is, why?'

Lucas stood there with a bored look on his face, to the girl this was very strange, 'Why isn't he saying anything?', she was starting to get uncomfortable. Normally people would be in awe of her magnificence, but his dead fish eyes destroyed that assumption. "D-Do you not recognize me?"

Lucas held his emotionless face, but internal there was a bit of turmoil.

'Shit! Is she someone important in this kingdom or a daughter of someone higher ranking? You can't let that show.'

'Don't you think I know that already? Let me handle this, I'm the one who does the social stuff.'

"Like I said, what do you want?", not denying or confirming her question, it was better to move along with the conversation. He made his posture seem confident like he knew who she was without saying it. "You wanted to go to that magical school right? I can help you with that."

"But in exchange you want something as well, correct?"

"Yes, you would need to escort me to Avesta, a-and I'll give you a bountiful reward."

'So now she's admitted that she's an important person with power and a lot of wealth that needs escorting for some reason. Most possibly there are people after her or she wouldn't need to hide her face, or she has done something that wasn't good and now needs to hide from the public.'

'It would explain the hood in this godforsaken town.'

'No, actually, it wouldn't, these people should only know the people who live here, they wouldn't recognize anyone that has a high standing. Let me poke her for a second.'

"You're going to trust a random stranger with your security and life to get to the next town?", with her shell of protection broke down. She didn't have anyone to help her out, she needed to hide her identity and was scared of everyone around her.

"You have to help me, please, I-I can't trust anyone and you're the only person strong enough to protect me!", in this village, there weren't many useful people when it came to protecting. The guard were basically farmers with spears instead of pitchforks. So the appearance of Lucas who had the power close to Rank 1 seemed a lot more helpful.

'Wait! How does she know that we have any kind of power? The spells would be a dead giveaway, but she chased us from the beginning with this request in mind. What does she know?'

'Give me control, I'll wring the information out from her!'

"How do you know that I can protect you? What if I told you that I only know a few spells?"

"I..I can sense it."

"You can sense it?"

'This bitch isn't making any sense, our aura is locked away.'

'Shut up for a moment.'

"Please explain what you mean with that. I'll consider helping you if you're clear."

The girl seemed to form a look of uncertainty, as if she shouldn't talk about it, but that dissipated rapidly. She placed her hand on her chest while looking proudly at Lucas. "I have been blessed with the innate gift of sensing the strength of anyone I come across. Just from looking at the people in this town I can tell you can slaughter all of us without any problems.", her voice almost broke at the end, but she held strong.

'I wonder...'

"I will help you out on a few conditions."

"Please tell me, sir Conrad."

"Can you guarantee my place in the school, a bountiful reward and tell me how your 'gift' works?", at which the girl nodded. She was desperate, a lot more than Lucas originally thought. He was planning on asking for high conditions before wilting them down to what he actually wanted, but the girl immediately agreed. He was shocked and scared of what the future held, part of him came up with tons of conspiracies, but his other part put them down. His mask almost slipped from the surprising answer.

Lucas sighed, he had already revealed he hadn't gotten any admission into the school, which he usually would hide. But since she was so open, he couldn't help but feel he should give her some information, even if she couldn't grasp it. "Alright, I don't mind helping you out, but you'll have to follow my every command. And I mean EVERY command, understand?"

The woman started to blush heavily, but Lucas didn't understand it, he never had the time to think about women or any kind of degenerate act. His sexual development was halted due to training and life-threatening work. "I don't mean to ask you to do anything sexual or derogatory if that what you're thinking, I couldn't care less about your body."

She felt a little insulted from that comment, every man was always after her because of her beauty. But now, this man was simply not impressed, had he seen someone else that surpassed her magnificence?

"Ye-Yes, that's fine, I won't obey every order, but I will follow them to my own will."

"As long as you don't get in the way, I'll do my best to protect you.", and with that, he had closed a deal.