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Seeing that the coachman was being this emotional, Lucien almost burst out the answer—serve the people! Fortunately, he was able to stop himself in time and instead said to the coachman gently, "It’s just my conscience. It’s what I should do."

Maybe because opera was very important in Holm, the way that the coachman showed his gratefulness was also a bit dramatic.

Poc was not a poet and was also not very well educated, thus he kept repeating the words like "thanks", "thank you", "survive", "farmer", and "harvest".

Finally, the coachman realized what his job was, and he hurriedly said, "Mr. Evans. I’m so sorry... I’m just too excited... Please, please get on the coach."

"It’s okay. We’re not in any hurry," said Lucien. He casually looked around and noticed that there were quite a few people looking at them out of curiosity, wondering why the coachman was using such a courtesy.

Lucien and Arthur got on the coach painted with a purple and red royal coat of arms, followed by Arthur’s guards.

"Rustic countryman!" Arthur murmured. In his eyes, what Poc just did was a shame representing the royal family. However, he did not show it directly on his face. Instead, Arthur flattered Lucien, "You’re such an angel! An angel of harvest, ha! We are lucky that no one really got close to us on the platform, or you’d probably be thrown into the prison because the coachman just used the highest courtesy..."

Lucien looked aside as if he could see through the board of the coach, smiling, "According to some historical documents, after the establishment of the Saint Truth, there were divinities of death, sun, moon, life and harvest/hunting, and then more gods and goddesses followed. Now, only a bit more than ten countries in the northwest beside the Dark Mountain Range were still worshiping them."

Very long ago, human beings had started to worship the divinities, but most of the heritages failed to be retained because of the harsh, pre-historic environment. What was left were only some wall paintings. Meanwhile, when human beings were suffering at the bottom of the food chain, some people born with greater spiritual power gradually figured out how to cast magic using the special patterns of the magical creatures. Finally, the ancient magic empire arose.

Many years later, within the empire, nothing related to divinity could be found. Therefore, if a sorcerer wanted to study divinity, he or she needed to invade other dimensions.

The Saint Truth, together with the powers worshiping other divinities, defeated the ancient magic empire. Then, however, the Saint Truth, after growing strong, changed the side of the war and ended the power following other beliefs. Only some small countries in the far northwest managed to survive. Now, there was a subtle balance between these small countries and the countries of other races.

Hearing Lucien’s words, Arthur didn’t dare to make any improper comments. Although he was totally fine with working with sorcerers, and honestly speaking, he already started to doubt the Church after Creationism had been overthrown, what he was taught during his early childhood still had a great influence on him.

Lucien noticed the look on Arthur’s face. So he switched the topic back to business. Then they had a pretty good conversation.

...

The party was held in a private villa beside Verosa River in Rentato. The villa faced the river that looked like a golden strip of light, and in the back, there was a big garden where many flowers were blossoming. The view was wonderful.

In the villa, Lucien saw Prince Patrick, Natasha’s uncle, again. He looked even more aged and slim than a year ago. Lucien could hardly tell that the prince was only in his middle age.

"Welcome back, Evans. I thought it was going to take longer." Holding a glass of wine, Patrick stood in front of his several guards who were protecting him from the cool wind from the patio, "I’ve always been longing for a trip throughout the continent, but my health condition won’t allow me to do so. By the way, how’s my niece doing? She must be much taller now."

Lucien grinned, "Your Highness, Natasha’s doing fine. She’s gradually stepping out of her bad memories."

The conversation was warm and casual, mostly about Natasha, Aalto and Lucien’s trip. Patrick patted Lucien’s shoulder and said, "Evans, I’ll introduce some friends to you before the dinner starts."

Not coughing much, it looked that Patrick was in a good mood today.

Leading Lucien through the hall, the prince nodded to the several nobles slightly and then entered a separate room. Then the three nobles and a middle-aged man wearing a long black magic robe followed in.

"This is Count Hackson, Chancellor of the Exchequer of the kingdom," introduced Patrick.

Count Hackson, the elder man wearing the white wig, had sharp blue eyes.

"This is Russell, Duke Wolfburg, and this is James, Duke Paphos. They’re both very influential members in the Parliament."

Wolfburg County and Paphos County were both quite prosperous counties in the Kingdom of Holm. As for the two dukes, one looked rather charming and elegant with his blond hair, and the other one was bald and looked a bit intimidating. Lucien knew that both of them were in fact elders, but they managed to retain a middle-aged look because they were radiant knights.

In the end, Patrick introduced the black-haired and black-eyed sorcerer to Lucien with a smile on his face, "This is Viscount Harrison from Holm Royal Magic Academy. He’s also the member of Family of Sorcerer and the noble parliament. I’m sure you’ve heard his name. Harrison’s a very famous illusionist and an alchemist."

Lucien slightly nodded. Viscount Harrison was quite famous not only because of his achievement in the magic world but also the fact that, as a sorcerer, he still managed to inherit the title. According to the rules between the Church and the nobles, when there were other inheritors, sorcerers were not allowed to obtain the title. Very rarely could sorcerers become inheritors because a noble always had lots of close or distant relatives. The best situation for these sorcerers was to later become the members of the parliament. However, there were still some lucky ones, for example, Viscount Harrison.

What made people envy him most was that Harrison was only a fifth-circle sorcerer when he inherited the title, and then because of the family’s wealth, Harrison became a senior-rank mage in only fifteen years.

But that was not what Lucien heard about him. Lucien knew him because Harrison had refused to join the Will of Elements, instead, Harrison chose to be one of the leading mages of Family of Sorcerer, which was incredible to most sorcerers in Holm Royal Magic Academy. It seemed that Harrison was fond of Illusion more than Alchemy.

The prince coughed a bit and smiled, "I’m sure you all know who this young man is. Let us welcome the youngest winner of Holm Crown prize, the talented young sorcerer, Mr. Lucien Evans."

James, the baldheaded duke put on a big, warm smile, while the other three nobles maintained their manner and only slightly nodded.

"Arthur’s really lucky," said James directly. "He’s very fortunate to be your partner. Jinkela right now equals gold. I wonder what you’re working on recently. I’m interested in working with you."

"I’m sorry. I just got back to Allyn. Currently, I’m not working on anything new." Lucien would not tell someone who he met for the first time too much.

James did not mind Lucien’s attitude. He smiled and said, "We’ll see if there’s any chance in the future. By the way, I’ve been working with Harrison on a new product. Are you interested?"

"What is it?" hurriedly asked Count Hackson greedily before Lucien responded.

"It’s based on the Lord of Storm’s Electromagnetic Message. The spell enables people to talk when being far from each other. Although there’s noise and it’s easy to be interfered, it’s enough for daily use! Much cheaper than using a teleportation circle! Think about it... when you’re hunting in the forest, you can tell your friends in the city what you find any time you want! You can save lots of time communicating!" said Harrison holding the glass of wine.

Unlike most illusionists, when mentioning money and the product, Harrison’s face was glowing with excitement.

"It’s still a level-five magic item. Not many people can afford it." Count Russell slightly shook his head. He was not very optimistic about the product’s future. In Holm, due to the high price, most nobles could only choose to buy the magic items that they really needed.

"We’re trying to simplify it, say, using stored the power of electric current to replace the permanent magic circle. There are more and more electricity magic towers built by the Congress using the energy of the river flow, so this is doable. If this works, we can avoid using part of Fernando’s exclusive right on the spell to further lower the cost. But, yes, the price’s still a problem. After all, the magic item still needs to use the fifth-circle spell." Harrison looked a bit bothered, as he was not good at Electromagnetics spells.

He turned to Lucien, "So, my young fellow. Any ideas on it?"

"So far... nothing..." said Lucien honestly. He once tried to simplify the spell as well. However, the power of the fifth-circle spell was just irreplaceable.

Lucien’s answer was within the several nobles’ expectation. After all, the solution equaled a great amount of money!

The following conversation was a bit boring to Lucien. The nobles were sometimes busy with criticising the secretary as being too laggard, sometimes commenting on the speaker as being too conservative. They viciously guessed that it was probably because the old speaker was going to die soon, and the speaker needed to follow the Church closely to rise into Mountain Paradise.

"Boring, right?" Harrison walked next to Lucien. "But sometimes it isn’t bad to get some information like this. At least, we can know who we should work with and who we shall be careful. These people are all liberals."

Lucien took a sip of the liquid, Sky Blue, and smiled, "I’ll rest my brain a bit with this conversation."

"Good. Promising young man," said Harrison, "later, let me introduce more senior-rank sorcerers to you. It’s good for your future."

"Thank you very much, sir." Lucien casually smiled.

Then they started to discuss magic. Harrison mentioned the paper by Isabella. Because some arcanist who reviewed the paper had leaked the information, many sorcerers had heard about the paper before this month’s journal was published.

"The paper’s totally shallow! She only sees the things on the outside!" said Harrison a bit angrily, "She has forgotten why these alchemical substances in human body are secreted. Mind and soul should be the solid foundation of illusion spells. Human beings’ mind changes all the time, thus arcana cannot control the human mind. Only illusions can!"