151 The Prelude to the Feas (2/2)

”Nothing, but just do not bother me.” Caspar waved his hand impatiently, ”What do you think of putting Mr. Evans' portrayal in the hall?”

...

IN the third week of July, there was a shining silver moon hanging high in the night sky, pouring its bright and clear light from above.

Bathed in the moonlight, Lucien swiftly cross the mountains and forests. Soon, he was already able to see the beautiful, mirror-like lake close to the castle.

The castle was still the same as what Lucien saw the last time. The pointy, tall and thin towers surrounding the main building looked like horrible demon paws in the night sky, stretching and scratching the sky. However, this time, there were already many in black hooded robes waiting outside the castle. Lucien took a quick glance and found that there were at least three or four hundred of them.

Among the crowd, there were a few people, some male and some female, who looked very special. Their robes were of different colors and there was no hood covering their faces, as if they were not afraid of being recognized at all. These people shaped a loose small circle with some other ones wearing hoods and were chatting casually together, while the rest of the invitees stayed away from them as if they were afraid of those who were not wearing a hood.

Lucien quickly thought to himself that those people should be real sorcerers instead of apprentices and their true appearances were changed by the first circle magic, Disguise Self. Because the spell would not work when someone was facing another person whose spiritual power or willpower was more than two levels higher than himself or herself, Lucien's guessing was that those people who were not wearing hoods should be middle-ranked mages.

After a quick counting, Lucien surprisingly found out that there were only twenty three real sorcerers in Djibouti, and he wondered if there were only twenty three across the whole territory. After all, this piece of land, which originally belonged to the great necromancer, Wilfred, consisted of two duchies and one independent county, and the area it covered was way broader than the Duchy of Orvarit.

Lucien slowly walked out from the shadow and headed toward the gate. Some of the black-robed people turned around and took a glance at him, but after that, no one took the initiative to talk to him. So, he stopped beside the four sorcerer apprentices and quietly listened to their conversation which was full of words such as ”body”, ”eyeball”, ”hatred” and ”revenant”.

”H… Hey… I'm from the south mountain range of Djibouti. Where are you from?” A round-figured apprentice greeted Lucien. His black robe bulged from his obvious beer belly.

”I'm from Kazan. Nice to meet you. And you can call me by my pseudonym, Professor.” Lucien answered politely.

Kazan was a small independent county close beside Dragon Tooth town.

”I see… Kazan. Welcome to Djibouti. Just call me Fatty.” Apparently, Fatty had never heard of the name Professor before. ”This are Garrupa, Bread and Wine.”

Lucien took a glance at Fatty's belly, feeling a bit suspicious whether his big belly was real, ”It's my first time joining a gathering like this. Never expected that there would be so many people here. Are there more coming?”

”Almost all of the sorcerers and apprentices from the nearby three nations are here, except those people who only work on their own.” Bread, a stout apprentice answered in a low voice, ”I heard that from the distinguished sorcerer who led us here.”

”Distinguished sorcerer…” Lucien murmured.

”There they are.” Fatty carefully pointed at the twenty three sorcerers gathering on the other side and introduced with a mixed feeling of respect, fear and admiration.

Even in today's Aalto, a sorcerer apprentice hardly received any recognition, not to mention respect within the circle of magic. Although there they were called as ”sorcerer apprentice”, there was a huge gap between an apprentice and a real sorcerer, and often the gap was insurmountable for many people, even though they spent their whole life working on it. Furthermore, for some lunatic ancient sorcerers, apprentices often stood for experimental materials.

In this gathering, there was only one sorcerer for each twenty apprentices.

At that time, all of a sudden, Fatty got scared and his voice trembled, ”What… what's going on here?”

The sorcerers just secretly surrounded Lucien and the other four apprentices.

”Who're you?” The leading old man, who was almost as skinny as a mummy, asked Lucien harshly, ”You'd better confess. None of us know you.”

The questioning was totally out of Lucien's expectation. How did the sorcerers differentiate him from the other people?

However, soon Lucien realized that it was because of the organization form of the Feast of Death: After the viscount found the several sorcerers who he felt were trustworthy, these sorcerers produced their own lists for inviting the other sorcerers and the apprentices. Therefore, since there was nobody knowing Lucien here, he became rather suspicious in the eyes of the sorcerers.