The interior of the luxurious room, with its colorful carpet and the surfaces of numerous pieces of furniture, carried a faint, refined fragrance—as if baked by some special incense—giving it an air of understated elegance.
Leilin surveyed his surroundings and nodded with satisfaction.
Though he had already seen the Lias family's guest chambers the last time he visited as an honored guest, this room surpassed even that in opulence.
This had once been Ime Lias's private mansion, and naturally, once Leilin expressed his intention to stay the night, it had been cleaned and arranged for him at the fastest possible speed.
At the moment, Leilin stood before a massive oil painting, studying the portrait of a blue-haired warlock depicted within.
The portrait bore a certain resemblance to Ime—it was clearly some sort of ancestor of his.
After Leilin had been gazing at it for a while, the eyes in the portrait shifted, and an expression of utter terror surfaced on its face, as though it had come alive—yet it could neither speak nor move, and could only plead through its expression alone.
"Hmm. A lingering trace of will…"
Leilin nodded. Every detail of the painting had been absorbed into his perception. "It seems there's also a hidden demiplane in there, storing the bloodline and remains of an ancient adult Thousand-Spine Thunder Bird? This must be the Lias family's final trump card!"
In such a short time, there was no way Ime could have had this critical mechanism removed.
Of course, the other party may well have been banking on the possibility that Leilin wouldn't discover it—or even if he did catch a whiff, that he would consider himself too high and mighty to bother with such things—so they hadn't bothered to conceal it particularly well.
"Interesting! Interesting!"
Leilin stroked his chin, then sat back down on the sofa. The portrait in the painting visibly relaxed, its expression returning to a vacant stare.
As for those things, Leilin genuinely harbored no ill intentions toward them at the moment.
Perhaps when he had been at the fifth or sixth tier, a sixth-tier existence's bloodline would have held considerable appeal. But now, having already advanced to the pinnacle of the Dawn rank—and being called a semi-seventh-tier by some—he truly had no use for such things.
"Big Brother Leilin! The sofa here is so comfortable!"
Sophia clutched a small teddy-bear pillow and rolled about on the enormous sofa, looking for all the world like a mischievous child.
In truth, however, the clever gleam in her eyes told Leilin exactly what she was thinking.
The Belinda sisters had already held Leilin in good regard, and Sophia in particular—the little girl seemed to have latched right onto him.
As for benefits that practically threw themselves at him, Leilin naturally accepted them without the slightest courtesy.
Moreover, even if Belinda still harbored a few reservations, winning her over was merely a matter of time—and perhaps he would need to bring one more along with her.
Leilin stroked his chin, a faint, enigmatic curve touching his lips. With a wave of his hand, the surface of the oil painting was enveloped in darkness. "Little sister Sophia, would you like to play a very fun game with your big brother?"
…
The happy hours passed quickly, and in the end it was Belinda who came to collect the thoroughly weak-kneed Sophia.
As they left, Belinda shot Leilin a fierce glare—one laden with a very complex mixture of feelings—while Agnes watched the whole scene with an amused expression, her cheeks inexplicably tinged with a faint blush.
"Clever women, every one of them."
Leilin closed the door and offered the quiet assessment.
All of these women were quite sharp. They had left him more than enough privacy.
"Come out." At that moment, Leilin's face was utterly calm, his gaze fixed on a cabinet to one side.
Gurgle! Gurgle! The floor seemed to melt in an instant, bubbles of black rising up in layer upon layer. A coat of orange rust bloomed across the surface, slowly spreading to cover the entire room.
In the span of a single blink, Leilin found himself in a dramatically transformed space.
"Spatial ritual folding?"
Leilin stroked his chin.
Within this environment, a black gate of light unfurled from the cabinet, and from it emerged a wizard dressed in a tailcoat and top hat, a gentleman's cane in hand.
Over one eye, the visitor wore a round golden lens, attached by an intricate chain of fine links that ran all the way behind his ear.
"How do you do? My name is Innosite!"
The arriving wizard removed his hat and gave an elegant bow.
"A being of the Rules? You only just now reacted? That's already exceeded my expectations!" Leilin regarded the other party with great interest. Through his comprehension of the Rules, he could clearly perceive that the body before him was merely a form the entity had casually adopted. As for its true nature—it was a mass of mist, with a complex black halo at its center, pulsing to some unique rhythm, all of it sheathed in dense layers of the power of Rules.
A profound and dark aura emanated from it, reminiscent of a bottomless abyss—one that made one's heart quake at the mere sight.