Epic Of The Demonic Sage

Chapter 85 - Commotion In The City And Nosy Nobles

After explaining the things to John and Alessa, five days passed by quickly. 

In those five days, the Inanis city saw quite a few changes. The first was the fact that there was suddenly a demand for workers in the city and someone was recruiting a lot of them. 

The types of workers that were needed were varied, too. There were unskilled laborers involved along with skilled workers like carpenters, blacksmiths, and woodworkers needed. This excited the people of the city a bit as the people that wanted these workers were paying a higher price than normal.

The citizens also noticed that a basic fence had been created in the outskirts of the city. Soon the workers that were recruited were sent there, and they started preparing the land. First, they cleaned it up a bit and leveled it.

Just this took them two days while the lumberjacks went to the forest and chopped down trees for the timber.

By now the people had become aware that something was being built there, but they didn't know. A few curious people even asked the workers that were working there on what was going to be built.

But they received confusing answers. Some workers simply said they did not know, while others gave different answers. Some said a new barracks for the army was being made here, some said it was going to be a large mansion, while some said it was going to be a warehouse for crops.

Overall, there were many rumors going around and these were all intentionally spread by Lucius. He didn't want any nobles or their enemies getting a whiff of what was going to happen.

He made sure no single person knew everything about the Brewery by compartmentalizing all the information. The workers only knew what they were 'supposed' to know and nothing more.

Thus they all added to the rumors by adding their own conclusions about what was being built. 

As for who had ordered this to be built, that was also a mystery. The order was directly sent through a steward who was representing said party. This was a different steward that Gabriel had hired. 

Though in reality, he was just one of the men that worked for him in the army unofficially. The Inanis family had no lack of people that were willing to work for them, and there were far too many to know individually.

Gabriel only needed to make sure the man would not leak anything and would keep his silence. Once those two things were confirmed, the process was swiftly started. 

The other nobles in the city were of course nosy, and wanted to know who could afford such a large chunk of land along with hiring so many people. They knew that it must be some other noble, and they wondered why they did it.

The most obvious answer to them was it was a new venture. But some of them also argued that it may be a new noble moving into the Inanis city and getting their new mansion built. Of course, the nobles of the city tried to ask the Count, but he simply ignored them.

The excuse that he was busy with military work was enough to shut them up. The kingdom was embroiled in war and was currently in a sensitive time as the Armistice was still being finalized.

If they said anything or disturbed Gabriel too much, he was very well in his rights to punish them. After all, most of the nobles of Inanis city were not part of the Army and were merely rich landlords or business owners.

Forget Gabriel, if the other higher ups in the army found out letters were being sent to Gabriel involving some petty matters and they were taking up his time, they may themselves be angry with these nobles and would take action.

Count Gabriel was a brave man who did not shy away from the front lines. To other higher nobles who were scared of death, he was a saving grace as they could easily push him to the front while saving their own asses.

If they saw that their main man who protected them from the war front was being harassed by some lower nobles, they would not take it lightly.

Of course, these nosy nobles won't give up that easily. Since they could not contact Count Gabriel they went to the very next person who was likely to know about it- The Countess. 

Unlike the Count, the Countess lived in the city always and attended to certain administrative matters there. So there was a great chance that she would know about it, or so they thought. 

But the reality was sad as they were denied right away. Lita just said she didn't know either and it was dealt with by men who worked with the Count. Now, having lost all points of access, the nobles could only wait and see what it was going to be.

During this time, Lucius was also doing his own work. Not only did he continue his practice of making the Hell imprint, but he also checked out the gifts of people that worked in the Inanis family. He was looking for the right person to be his next subject for the test.

He wanted to find a suitable person whose gift would come in handy to him and help him in the long term as well. Doing so was difficult, as he could only gather information about one gift in a single day.

And in these five days, he had done six gifts. He had been able to do one extra gift because he used nexus on a servant with a common ranked gift. He discovered that doing so allowed him to directly gain all the information about that gift at once, including the requirements for the evolution of the gift.

Though his assumption that the lower the rank the lower the requirements for the gift evolution turned out to be true. In fact, the common ranked gift that he had used nexus on, only needed Aether Crystals to be upgraded!