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The wind was warm. The sunshine was warm. Everything seemed to be warm and drowsy.

On a street of Segru, Lucien, who had changed his whole set of outfit, was heading for Valentine’s secret residence following Leo.

Once Leo recovered, he showed his good disguise skills: he changed Lucien’s Holm-styled black long coat to the typical tight surtout in the style of Schachran Empire, with white breeches and black long boots. Using hair oil, Lucien’s hairstyle was now slicked-back, together with the make up and his moustache, Lucien now looked like a serious and calm gentleman around twenty-seven or twenty-eight.

Since in the East Haven there were lots of people who managed to escape from Schachran Empire and finally came here, Lucien and Leo’s way of dressing was more than common. Cautiously, Lucien and Leo walked through the crowd to prevent being followed by anyone. After all, the duke Vladimir sending assassins to kill Valentine was not a secret at all, and also, if anyone saw that they visited Valentine, their fake identity would be seen through easily.

Segru was not a small city. To be more specific, the city was about half the size of Aalto, but the buildings here were very disorganized, and the streets were thus very narrow and messy. However, Leo was very used to the environment and familiar with the surroundings. Like a fish in the water, Leo had confidently guided Lucien across many streets, alleys and crowds to get rid of any possible pursuers.

Half an hour later, Lucien and Leo walked out of a quiet alley and came back to the busiest street, then crossed it and entered a grocery. Directly ignoring the grocery owner, Leo walked to the stairs. From the shadow, two bulky, butcher-like men stopped him.

"The griffin over Nigreen River." Strange words came out of Leo’s lips. The words were Schachranese.

Hearing that, the two men lowered their guard. After glancing at Leo and Lucien carefully, they gave way to both Leo and Lucien.

The stairs to the second floor were squeaking. Lucien sensed that the whole place was protected by dangerous magic circles, and they were purposefully revealed to people who could sense them directly to be a deterrence. Lucien was not sure whether there were more hidden magic circles around.

The cost of placing all the magic circles could be easily over ten thousand Thales. Only the man who once could compete against the duke could afford this. Lucien estimated that this place’s security level was about the same as that of Bertren Castle. Obviously, when Mr. Valentine ran away from the empire, he must have carried a great fortune with him, so he could afford having middle-rank mages to set up this place for him.

The floor squeaked when Leo and Lucien walked on it with their leather shoes. Other than that, the whole place was beyond quiet.

When they came to one of the rooms on the second floor, Leo knocked at the door gently and said politely, "Mr. Valentine, I’m Leo. I’m here on business."

"Come in," responded Valentine in his dull and old voice. He already knew it was Leo from the magic circles downstairs.

Leo pushed the door open like a butler, and he signalled to Lucien to enter the room, "Mr. X, please."

Lucien nodded and walked in the room covered by thick, black curtains. The whole room was very dark.

In the shadow in front of the curtains, there was a desk and an armchair. In the chair sat a man wearing black suit with his back to Leo and Lucien.

As Leo slowly closed the door, the man in the chair slowly turned around and looked at them.

His blonde hair had started to get thin, but his face was still featured, although it already looked quite old. Lucien estimated that this man should be in his sixties. According to Leo’s words, when Valentine first came to the East Haven, he was a level-four grand knight. However, after this twenty to thirty years, no one knew for sure whether this man’s power had improved even further, or dropped.

Valentine did not have much interest in them. After taking a glance at Lucien, Valentine said to someone else in the room, "Tea for the two guests."

From the shadow walked out a decently-dressed elder man. He bowed to them politely, and then he walked into the tea room.

Leo, as Lucien’s guide, said, "Mr. Valentine, my employer wants to enter Schachran Empire, thus he needs a fake identity."

"So you want to pretend that you’re from the Vladimir family?" Valentine asked directly, and his way of looking at Lucien became sharper.

Seeing that Mr. Vladimir was looking at him, Lucien had to talk to him on his own, "Yes, Mr. Valentine. A relative in the Vladimir family. How much shall I pay?"

After a couple of seconds of silence, Valentine burst our in laughter, "If you can kill Ilyich for me, I won’t charge you anything. Well, well... I guess you would not be here if you were that capable..."

Ilyich was the first name of the Duke, Vladimir.

Pausing a bit, Valentine took out a cigar from the drawer and lit it with a match.

In the gray smoke, Vladimir said to Lucien slowly, "The more you make this kind of fake identity, the easier it is for you to get caught. In the past twenty years, I’ve made six of them so far, so a fake identity is very expensive. Five hundred Thales or the equal value of Schachran gold. If you cannot afford it, you might want to consider doing me a favor."

Although the expense for the task would be covered by the Congress later, right now Lucien only had some gold and gems with him, worth about a hundred Thales, plus other magic potions and materials.

After considering for a while, Lucien smiled, "I prefer to pay. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough with me right now. I wonder if you’re willing to accept magic items as well, Mr. Vladimir?"

Lucien did not want to be involved in Valentine’s stuff, even though the task might not be that difficult, the task might still be part of his contend against the duke.

"Pity," Valentine responded in a monotone. "Mr. X, I do accept magic items, and the value estimation here in East Haven is very fair."

For Valentine, getting a magic item was way better than getting money, since in many places other than Allyn, magic items were very valuable because very often they were not available on the market.

Lucien took out Rosan Aaron’s Asthenia Dagger and said, "This is a level two magic dagger..."

Valentine coughed a bit, and then an hook-nosed, elder sorcerer wearing a robe in the style of the ancient magic empire entered the room. The elder sorcerer first took a weird glance at Lucien, and then grabbed the dagger.

From the magic waves surrounding the elder man, Lucien could tell that the old man was a sorcerer that followed the ancient magic system.

"Level two, middle-rank, enchanted dagger. It can corrupt other people’s weapon, and wounds left by the dagger are hard to heal. It should be around three hundred and eighty Thales, but because of the scarcity of magic items on the market, one could sell it for four hundred and twenty Thales."

"Let’s just do four hundred and twenty, then. So you can save some time selling it around," said Valentine directly.

Hearing the price, Lucien was very surprised. As a person who had always been kind of a moneygrubber, he almost wanted to trade magic items between Allyn and the East Haven to make a fortune, however, this was strictly prohibited by the congress.

Lucien nodded to agree on the price. Then he took out some materials that he would not use for a while and some gold to pay Valentine.

After playing with the dagger a bit, Valentine took out a piece of special paper from the Vladimir family and started writing. As he was writing, he said to Lucien, "Peter Joseph Vladimir. His father was Lord Joseph, the son of Ilyich’s grandfather’s youngest cousin, and he died many years ago. You’ll play the role of Peter, who failed to inherit the lord title, and was secretly killed by someone during one of his smuggling trades in the East Haven. You remember, Joseph was mean, alcoholic, and rough, while Ilyich is mean and a pervert, but he likes pretending he’s nice and loving."

Valentine was providing Lucien with detailed information within the family to help Lucien do a better job in his role-playing. It was easy to see that Valentine had still got support from the inside of the family. He even knew the several new knights from the family very well.

...

After Warren left the bar and turned around at the corner, the big, strong man beside him suddenly started to cast a strange spell, and the magic waves started to ripple around him.

The man was not a knight, but a real sorcerer!

"What are you doing, Mr. Reja?" asked Warren, a little surprised.

"Lord Warren, most sorcerers are vicious and cunning, and I was checking if he had left any marks on us to track us." Reja opened his eyes and answered, "But it seems he’s not one of them."

Warren nodded unhappily, and then turned to the armed guard beside him, "Keep an eye on them."

Then Warren went back to his garden villa in Segru.

Around four in the afternoon, in his study, Warren said excitedly, "So Leo and the sorcerer visited Valentine?"

"That’s right, young master," the middle-aged man responded in a flattering manner.

Although Valentine had been hiding himself well since he arrived at the East Haven, there was no way that he could completely disappear under the nose of Warren’s father, the member of the city lord conference. The reason why all the important people in the East Haven had reached the agreement keeping Valentine in this place was that they saw the potential and the possible great future value in Valentine.

In order to keep a close eye on Valentine, Warren’s father had put a servant around him.

When the servant left his study, Warren calmed down a bit. Looking outside of the window, there was a vicious smile on his face, "Hiring Leo... Visiting Valentine... You want to get a fake identity and pretend that you’re part of the Vladimir family... You’ll see what I can do once you enter the empire..."

Warren always took his revenge!