Back to Austin and his wives.
All the groups were fighting fiercely with their respective opponents which were the 9 Lords.
The fights were so hard with different tempos, sometimes fast and sometimes slow and sometimes in between. Many different areas in the arena were destroyed and deep craters were made, it was a hard battle on both parts, especially Austin's women who had yet to have any experience in fighting, but with their talents to adapt, they were keeping up.
This was faced only by those who didn't have any experience like Mi-Kyung Cho and the nuns.
But they were keeping up with their opponents giving them a hard time.
------
In a room with vintage design yet still luxurious, it was colored in deep dark brown giving a feeling of relaxation to those who enter it.
There were many things in this room from book shelves, office, couches and tables, to decorations that gave the place its touch. It was beautiful and elegant.
There on one of the couches, a figure of a woman who didn't look like humans was sitting elegantly.
She had blue skin and golden eyes yet she didn't have hair only something like two long tentacles that were blue and thick.
She was wearing a blue robe and was drinking tea at the moment. People who are from her race will know how beautiful she was.
Her way of drinking tea resembled those of the nobles that if anyone saw her, they would think that she was a noble lady from rich family.
Anyway, while she was drinking, she was reading a book that contained some ancient language.
No one knew what this book was talking about but she seemed to know it and was reading it as if she could read this language with ease.
Enjoying the silence while reading a book and drinking hot tea was the best feeling for people like her.
Suddenly, her silence was interrupted with the appearance of two people in the middle of the room, just some steps away from the couches as the room was vast like those rooms in a great palace.
Although it was surprising and should make her angry because her silence was interrupted like that, she didn't react much and just sat there continuing what she was doing.
The two people were Austin and Selena.
Before, he thought that it would take more time if he and his wives went to face the lords level by level as groups, with each group facing a lord, so he used two spells to locate the exact locations of the lords and teleported his wives that were divided into groups to fight them.
Each group faced its respective lord.
It was faster and efficient that way. He intended to deal with Marjaana by himself before going to face Edwen.
And now he appeared in front of the woman in question, Marjaana the Wise Lord or better known as Brain Flayer Queen.
She is not a native from the demon realm and appeared hundreds of years ago.
She is from a race called Brain Flayer. It was called like that because of their proficiency in mind skills, they had a very high mentality and could read the memories of any creatures to know their entire life from the moment of birth.
But Marjaana was a scholar type person, she had a very high intelligence and could create spells from nothing as long as she had the necessary knowledge and tools for that.
Anyway, Marjaana didn't react to Austin and Selena's appearance and didn't even look at them.
Austin found it amusing and went and sat on the couch opposite to her along with Selena.
Sitting opposite to each other, no one talked just silence that the sounds of Marjaana flipping the book pages could be heard.
Selena looked at her husband and the woman sitting across from him. She must admit that this woman was so much different from humans and her appearance was intriguing with her hair like tentacles and blue skin.
But she just sat beside her husband like a good wife.
Marjaana gave her a glance but it shifted to Austin in the next moment.
Her eyes glued on him and didn't move for some seconds. She must admit that he was so handsome, the most handsome man she had ever seen unlike the men of her race. Unlike that, she didn't perceive the men of her race as handsome or good looking, they were ugly in her eyes.
She preferred the human men more than that which was something that made her different and made the people of her race look at her as if she was weird, she was even discriminated against.
Even her sister did the same, but she didn't hate her for that or didn't care about any of that at all.
Yes, from the beginning she didn't care about the people's opinion of her, she only cared about her researches and the things like ancient artifacts and languages that fired her interest.
But looking at Austin, she had a favorable impression of him. Just by looks she knew that he wasn't a bad man and only cared for his people and she assumed that the woman beside him was one of them.
"You seem unsurprised by my appearance here, as if waiting for my arrival,"
"Not really, I just expected that some of the invaders would come to me, and here you are, in front of my eyes." She said with calm tone while sipping her tea.
"Want some tea?" She asked.
"Sure." He replied.
From the beginning, Austin didn't come here to fight, he came here to negotiate and maybe add another member to his side.
He knew that she was different from the people of her race, her brain is one of a kind. His greed for her was increasing but he held it.
For now he was aiming for an ally.
Marjaana's attitude made Austin appreciate her more, calm, collected and elegant. Yeah, she looked beautiful in his eyes.
Ahem! Anyway, Marjaana gave him a cup filled with tea and Selena as well which she accepted.
Austin took the cup and began to drink without any care.
Marjaana looked at that while raising her eyebrow.
"Didn't you think for a second that the tea I gave you was poisoned?"
Austin looked at her and smirked which made him more handsome in Marjaana's eyes.
"If you wanted to kill me, you would have done it from the moment I appeared here, just by putting a trap to activate once an intruder appeared in this room, you could kill him by surprise. Besides, you have some deadly spells that could kill in an instant, after all a person like you must have searched for many kind of spells in ancient books. Another thing, I'm immune to poisons so even if you did put poison in the tea it would be a useless attempt, my wife beside me as well."
Hearing his conclusion, Marjaana become more interested in Austin and was slightly surprised that the woman was his wife, although she expected something like that but at the level of lover not a husband-wife relationship.
Looking at Selena, she was looking at Austin with eyes filled with love and affection and unconditional trust which made Marjaana have a certain feeling she didn't experience before.
She put that strange feeling at the back of her mind and continued looking at Austin and observing his body movements.
Then suddenly, Austin put the cup of tea down on the table and leaned forward slightly while looking directly at Marjaana's eyes making her heart race out of the blue for a moment.
'What is that feeling? Why is my heart beating like this? Intriguing.'
But then Austin's eye glowed and his expression became serious.
"You, you aren't under the effect of mind control imposed by Edwen, right?"
"Hoo~ Why do you think like that?"
"The moment you talked about the tea being poisoned revealed you. Another thing was the way you talk and the way you looked at me. If you were a person under the mind controlling ability of Edwen then you would talk strangely like being restricted or something, besides, nothing could be hidden from my eyes."
He said the last with a smile on his face making Marjaana have a slight blush on her blue skin as he looked even more handsome now with his glowing crystal blue eyes and the smile on his face.
But immediately the blush disappeared and was replaced by a smile of her, a smile she first revealed since the moment Austin saw her.
Her smile was so elegant and beautiful.
"Your analysis is correct, indeed I'm not under his mind control, but that didn't mean that he didn't bind me at all, every action I do is being watched by him so if I tried to betray him, he would know and kill me by the binding spell he casted on my heart. Just a flick of his fingers and I'm dead, not just me but all of the other nine Lords as well. After all, if you have a strong mind then the mind control is useless so he did that to keep them completely under his control. And another thing, corruption is useless against demons and me because demons are already a corrupted beings from the beginning and me being not a demons or a human and my soul is unique so the corruption is useless against me as well."
Marjaana frowned when she mentioned Edwen and the binding spell.
Selena frowned as well as just hearing that made her hate for Edwen reach new heights.
Edwen even put the possibility of his servants betraying him, so beside the mind controlling he put a binding spell on them to make them obedient to him.
"Well, you don't need to worry about this thing, I can help you with that," Austin said with a smirk on his face.
He expected many possibilities but this one was out of them. He prepared many things to make her on his side as his ally and help him, but didn't expect such thing to happen. Either way, it served his purpose and such a chance won't leave his hands.
"I can remove the binding spell from you, but,"
"But nothing is free, tell me what do you want." Marjaana said with solemn expression. She knew from the start that he wanted something from her and that thing was unknown to her. She of course was relieved that he could help her with the binding spell, but there is nothing like free lunch in this world and he clearly wanted something in return.
"I want you." Austin said with a very friendly smile.
"..." Marjaana.
"..." Selena.