Throne of Magical Arcana

The marks on the wall were messy and complicated. Lucien even directly wrote down the word “Emden”, since he had no idea how to express it in the secret code.

Then, using the Moonlight Blessing, Lucien left the area and carefully approached his shack. Hiding in the darkness, he intently sensed the supernatural power inside his house.

The night watchers had left. In the moonlight, Lucien could directly see the “eyes” which were monitoring him the whole night. The pair of eyes floating in the air were almost transparent, staring at the pile of messy blankets in the bed. However, the eyes did not have pupils!

While common people would be really scared by the horrible scene, Lucien felt quite lucky. Fortunately, this pair of eyes could not sense the heat, or he would have been found out already.

In the darkness, Lucien waited patiently. Half an hour later, the transparent eyes gradually disappeared. A new cycle should start soon.

Lucien stayed highly focused. Within his expectations, a moment later, a sudden wave of supernatural power was detected coming from a certain direction. That was where the heretic was hiding!

Lucien grabbed a small stone in his hand and quickly threw it against the wall in the opposite direction. The sound of the stone hitting the wall and falling on the ground was especially clear in the late night. As if the kidnapper was startled, the pair of eyes being formed suddenly rippled and soon disappeared.

Seizing the chance, Lucien started to move as fast as he could with the help of Moonlight. He was fast like a shadow. His movement was so agile that his blurry figure instantly integrated into the silver moonlight. No one could notice him unless they observed carefully.

Lucien pushed one of the windows open, quickly jumped into his shack, closed the window and tucked himself in his bed. Lucien clearly knew that it would take the heretic some time to recover from the power backfire of the failed casting he or she just did, thus he unhurriedly covered himself with the blanket and made sure the shape of the blanket was not of a big difference.

More than a minute later, the eyes rose in the air again with caution.

In the next ten minutes, pretending that he was still sleeping, Lucien purposefully turned his face towards the eyes and kicked away the blanket to let the eyes see him directly.

Luckily, Lucien successfully awoke his Blessing tonight, or his night would be way tougher than this.

Everything went on smoothly. After all, anything could have caused the little noise from the stone, such as a wild cat, or a crow.

Slowly, Lucien felt asleep, knowing that he had more work to do tomorrow.

……

After having breakfast, Lucien arrived at the Musicians’ Association.

Knocking the door of the office which was in charge of musicians’ accommodation, Lucien was putting on a play in front of the heretics who were still monitoring somewhere.

A middle-aged woman opened the door and asked, “Mr. Evans? What can I do for you?”

“Yes… I’m looking for Brian,” answered Lucien, and he saw Brian was coming over.

“Anything wrong with the house?” asked Brian a bit nervously.

“The place is fine. Just the sheet and the blanket in the bedroom are too soggy. Can you find someone to dry them for me and make sure the cleaning of the whole house will be done by next Monday?”

“For sure, Mr. Evans.” Brian was relieved, and a smile appeared on his face, “By next Monday, everything will be ready for you to move in.”

Later Lucien came back to his own office. Today he was definitely in a better mood, knowing that he was finally capable of saving uncle Joel and his families when time was proper.

In order to hide his excitement, Lucien started to practice. With the awakened Blessing, his coordination had improved a lot. Along with his great memory, Lucien could master a piece of music way faster than ever, and of course, faster than many other people.

After several rounds of practicing, Lucien had mastered Symphony of Fate and other several pieces of etude pretty well like a well-qualified instrumentalist.

“No wonder Rhine said that the combination of Blessing and good memory can easily produce a qualified pianist. That does make sense.” Lucien wondered to himself.

Actually, it was not too hard for a knight to learn how to use a musical instrument. However, mastering a musical instrument and becoming a great musician was a totally different story.

After giving the Moonlight Rose to Lucien, Felicia started to ask Lucien many questions about music all the time. This morning she visited his office and asked for Lucien’s suggestion about her composition. Since she regarded this as an agreement between them, Felicia did not want to waste any time.

In fact, Lucien’s understanding in music was no better than Felicia’s. He had no choice but to search for the masterpieces from his original world in his spirit library in order to provide feedback by adding pieces of those great music works to Felicia’s composition. However, that already impressed Felicia a lot. She was very inspired by Lucien’s feedback.

“Your talent is astonishing.” Felicia’s red eyes were shining like rubies, “Your playing skills progressed a lot as well.”

Lucien just smiled politely.

……

After lunch, Lucien brought some of his stuff from the shack to Gesu district.

The blankets and sheets were hanging up in the backyard, bathing in the sunlight. Lucien felt a bit nervous, having no idea what the kidnappers would say about he leaving the letter here last night.

Opening the letter slowly, Lucien held his breath. A new sentence was on the letter.

“Bring the letter with you, Mr. Evans.”

Lucien pretended he was confused, behaving like an ordinary person who had no idea how useful the letter actually was.

“I accidentally left the letter here last night. I’ll be living in Aderon this week since the house is not ready yet.” Lucien said to the letter.

A while later, the letter replied:

“Then bring the letter back with you. So we can communicate easier.”

“I will, but I want another Scene ball,” requested Lucien.

“Sure,” replied the letter immediately.

……

On his way back home, with his sharper vision, Lucien saw that the marks that he left on the wall last night had been replaced by new marks:

“Professor, we are fine. Fire Wolf volunteered to be your guide for Emden Relic. Where should he meet you?

“Owl”

Lucien kept walking without stopping his footsteps.

There was no magic relic named Emden. Lucien made it up.

During midnight, the heretics started to be less alert. With Moonlight, Lucien avoided their monitoring again and came to the mark wall.

He left a new line of marks on it.

“Eleven, Friday night. East entrance of Larnaca Canyon, Melzer Black Forest. Professor.”

……

On thursday morning, Lucien found the second Scene ball in front of his shack before leaving for the association.

The same wood cabin, the same wood table. Joel’s face was emotionless, while Elisa was wiping tears silently, and Iven looked scared. Silver moon could be seen through the window, and several stars were shining in the background.

Lucien saw fresh dirt on their shoes. Suddenly he realized something.

Maybe the wood cabin was just the place for making Scene balls. The real place that they were taken captive should be somewhere else. According to the freshness of the dirt, the actual place should not be too far away from that cabin.

……

In the princess’s practicing room, when Lucien was playing the piano loudly, he suddenly said to Natasha:

“Your Grace, I need to confess.”