"Please come in." walking into the house, Ramie invited the two guests in.
When he and the rest first came to the compound, the compound leader had them settle away from the living quarter, were the rest lived, because of him. However, after the last two battles, the attitude toward them shifted a 180 degree. And they were asked to relocate right in the middle of the living quarter, where it was supposedly the safest place to live at.
However, their group refused that offer, and chose to remain right where they were. As with the azure gazelle king around, this was the safest for them. Also, they had already settled here, and they were rather comfortable here away from the rest.
For that reason, Ramie trained in the front yard of the house, and sometimes even in the open street, without having to cover his head or face.
Although by now, the residents were fine with the way he looked, to a certain extent. But the children… they were still frightened by his appearance. As such, he preferred to stay away from the gatherings.
So, when the two guests arrived, his head and face were uncovered, thus, throwing them in shock.
To this type of reaction, Ramie only smiled, lightly. After all, there was nothing out of usual to the way they reacted to his appearance, and to him, this was the normality now.
Outside, the two guests started recovering from their shock, and after some hesitation, they followed him inside.
...
Serving them water, Ramie sat at the table in the kitchen. Opposite him, were the two guests, also sitting.
They were still staring at him, gawking, as the shock has yet to dissipate in their eyes.
As for Ramie, he didn't mind it at all, even though it was rude to stare this hard at someone you just met.
After all, this was the normal reaction for those that sees him the first time. So, he was more or less used to it by now.
After a while, the two magicians realized their impoliteness, and started issuing fake coughs in embarrassment.
"Mr. Ramie… I… I'm sorry. We didn't mean to be rude." With difficulty, the male magician fumbled out, trying to apologies.
"No worries. No worries. It's fine." Ramie comforted him, and stopped smiling. As he remembered that smiling makes his face looks even more terrifying, which would only make the two even more flabbergasted.
The male magician then let out a sigh of relief, and lowered his gaze to the ground, to collect his thoughts, as Ramie's face was too shocking, and was still causing him difficulties to focus.
The only thing he was told by his leader when coming here, was that there was a very capable bloodline magician with strong spell among the locals, and that he had 'special grade' artifact. As such, the main objective of coming here was to lay the ground for future cooperation with this magician and his group, which had apparently came from the outside too, the same as them.
His leader said that this man had spell that can even cause a tier-2 beast to lose conscious for a while. So, he wanted to ask few questions. He wanted to see if someone with special grade artifact could receive different or better knowledge from his artifact than the rest do upon leveling up the first time.
So, coming here, he already had it in his mind that this magician belonged to the bloodline path. As such, he prepared himself to see someone with bestial physical traits. He had set his mind to not show any startled or even surprised expression when meeting him, to earn a favorable impression from this powerful magician.
Also, they too had a bloodline magician in their group with beast's physical traits on her body. So, he was sure that he would be able to hide his surprise, and act normally around this magician.
So, when he went for the magicians' house, and saw him using some sort of spell in the front yard, he was only surprised a bit at the man's dark-green skin color, and his weird hat. Luckily, he adjusted himself in a second, and went to greet the magician.
However… the moment he stood in front of the house… and the man turned and faced him, his smiling expression froze, and his mind lagged.
The black flower atop this man's head and the nose-less face were things that only caused him a brief surprise... However, those yellow, shining eyes… they were different story…
The golden irises shone in contrast to the dark sclera and dark pupil, giving off a vibe of an evil spirit, or ghost.
He then struggled to act normally, and erase the shock from his face, but it was to no avail. Eventually, only after he saw the artifact around the man's wrist did he manage to convince himself that this man ahead was a magician, and not some sort of evil spirit.
Afterward, this magician walked home and invited them in.
As those terrifying eyes turned away from him, he finally found a chance to allow this shock to settle.
Then, he and his partner followed the man in, and took seat around the kitchen table across him.
However, the moment those eyes fell on him again, and on such close proximity, he actually started staring again.
Unlike the female magician beside him, he was not all covered up, and his expression could not be hidden. As such, he knew that he had to mend his expression as fast as possible, to avoid offending this magician any further.
As such, he lowered his head, appearing as though he was wiping dirt off his shoe.
"I'm sorry Mr. Ramie. It seems that I have brought some dirt into your clean house."
"It's fine. Don't worry about it. Actually, even I brought some dirt when I walked in." Ramie replied, appearing very relaxed. He did not want to pressure them, and he was willing to give them all the time they need to absorb the shock of seeing his face.
After few seconds, the magician raised his head and gave Ramie an apologetic smile… not even one trace of discomfort on his face. And with an amiable expression, he said: "Mr. Ramie, I apologies for my earlier misconduct. So, please, pardon my narrow-mindedness…!"
"Let me introduce you myself, Mr. Ramie. I'm Brent, this is Nora. We have heard of your heroic actions that had saved a lot of lives. And we…"
Afterward, Brent kept flattering Ramie for a while. And Ramie listened to him patiently. As even though he wasn't really comfortable with being flattered this hard, but he still listened, and did not interrupt.
While Ramie wanted Brent to directly get to business, as he was really interested in learning more about the scholar path, but Brent on the other hand seemed to try to lighten the mood, and make Ramie forget his earlier 'misconduct,' before jumping to business.
Anyway, after chatting for a while or various unimportant topics, the direction of the talk finally steered toward the artifacts. Brent asked Ramie regarding his artifact, and Ramie answered all of his questions. After all, everyone in the compound already knows about him. So, there was no point in hiding what is already known.
The only thing that he kept to himself was the ability to perceive intentions. This ability was a trump card not only for him, but also for the entire group. Lance forbade Neil and Reem from telling anyone about it, not even Etta knows.
On the other hand, Ramie showered Brent with questions regarding his scholar path, and all of them were answered.
From that, he knew that the scholar path magicians' don't actually get spells when they level up their artifacts, but instead, they get formula of inscriptions and tons of information on how to successfully inscribe them.
With aggrieved expression, Brent told Ramie that after leveling up to this point, he got four inscriptions, but so far, he was only able to inscribe one of them.
Apparently, and unlike spells, scholar magicians can't just execute the inscriptions using the artifact, but they actually had to study the inscriptions formula from scratch, and had to comprehend them completely. Only then would they be able to build the module of the inscriptions. And this was only the theoretical part. As for the practical part, they would have to start experimenting the inscription indefinite times, until they get a handle on it. Only after that, can they make an inscription.
However, even after he went through all of that, he was only able to inscribe the most basic form of the inscription that he had comprehended. As for the other inscriptions, he has yet to even begin studying them.
Apparently, this branch required the magician to have a high IQ, and also required the magician to put in a lot of efforts to learn the inscriptions.
However, as hard as this might be, the reward was certainly worthy of the efforts.
As even though Brent only learned to make one inscription, but its effect was so powerful that It had increased the total power of the survivors group by a huge margin, and even enabling them to kill tire-2 beast when all of them were only in the first level.
The effect of inscription was to give any object that it is inscribed on a lightening attribute, which causes a paralyzing effect on any living creature that is stab with it.
Using his inscription, Brent started making offensive magical weapons that had even allowed the average people that weren't warriors or magicians to kill beasts.
The advantage these weapons brought was beyond enormous, which made Ramie think that they had lucked out by this group of survivors coming here.
As the conversation progressed further, Brent conveyed their leaders will for future cooperation with Ramie and the group.
Ramie agreed immediately to that, as it would not only allow him to get more of these lightening inscriptions, but also, it'll allow him to get the other inscriptions once Brent learns to inscribe them. As such, Ramie did not hesitate to accept their extended hand.
After conversing for another while, Brent took out an object that was wrapped with a piece of cloth.
"Mr. Ramie, as an apology for my earlier behavior, please accept this gift."
Saying so, Brent un-wrapped the cloth, and revealed a 30 centimeter long blade that was clearly made of beasts' bones.
At the blades' thick end, a stripe of rubber was wrapped around it, to be used as a handle. An eye catching inscription could be seen hidden under the rubber.
"Mr. Ramie, this knife is made from the bones of a very strong beast that the leader had killed. I inscribed it with my lightening inscription. So, the moment you press on this marked spot at the blade's handle, the inscription will activates, and you'll see a current of electricity dance around the blades' tip. Afterward, any creature you stab with it, the inscription would then release part or all of its energy inside the creature, depending on the resistant it meets, and paralyze it for a certain while, which depends on the creature's strength."
"Now, let me remind you that once the inscription is activated, it will stay on until all of the energy stored in it are used up, which would be less than an hour. So, it would be better to use it as soon as possible, when its energy is still full, to deliver the strongest effect."
"Of course, you shouldn't touch the tip when you activate the inscription, to avoid being electrocuted. And keep in mind that this inscription is one time use. After that, all what you'll have is a good knife, and not a magical tool."
Ramie didn't hesitate a moment to accept this gift. And then he offered his thinks.
Afterward, and as Ramie escorted the two magicians out, to send them off, the female magician finally spoke.
…