Sure enough, the mage swung the gate open and stared around the compound with an impressed look.
"Oh, Jones, it’s you. How are you doing today?" He asked.
"Jones Junior, are you here to cast the barriers?" The Stonesmith replied.
The slender Dragonkin mage smiled. "Assuming that I can get paid." He agreed.
Remi handed Karl a Mana Jade ring, engraved with Spell Power and Mana Storage runes.
Karl quickly poured mana into it as the Mage watched in shock, then when it got to the Royal Rank limit of the item, he handed it to the Dragonkin.
"I don’t suppose that will get us a proper barrier for the house?" He asked.
"I think that it might. I don’t suppose that you were looking for an apprentice? I’ve got one just about to start looking for training in a career, and her mother’s a Magic Demon. Quite the skilled young prodigy." The Mage, who looked almost human with whatever disguise spell he had activated, replied.
Karl shook his head. "I’m not sure that I’ll be here enough to provide proper training for an apprentice. But I do need someone who can identify and appraise items brought for trade, so perhaps we should talk. If the student is self-motivated, the teacher doesn’t need to be around every day."
Rain looked down from a third floor window, with a curious frown.
"Why is he Jones Junior, but you’re not related?" She called, loud enough for Jones to hear.
Both the Stonesmith and the mage began to laugh.
It was the mage that answered her question. "You see, my name is Jacob Jones. But he also goes by Jones, as nobody can pronounce his full name, and he is much older than I am, so he is the Senior Jones, and I am Jones Junior, or Mage Jones."
That was less interesting than the young Dryad had hoped, and she pulled her head back in the window to continue showing Lotus around.
Mage Jones walked inside the main room, followed by Karl, so he could explain the situation. The others waited outside, wanting to be surprised once it was all done.
"Oh, this will work wonderfully. They even built railings to define the edges of the barriers. I will give you an access stone, so you can add employees to the list as necessary. I specialize in this, so I will make you proper jewellery cases." The Mage explained, then tied his long black hair back and out of his face.
The room looked like one of the Elven residences Karl had seen on the other continent when he was sent to the past. It was all organic curves, not planed flat. Except on the inside of the display cases.
But the walls were white stone, polished smooth, and the floors were hardwood and similarly well-fitted. In the back, hidden behind a door that looked like the back storage room, was a large kitchen complete with a freezer that the Mage enchanted, and the actual storage room, which was accessed through the kitchen.
It was an odd setup, but Karl suspected that it was meant for dried goods storage for the Guards, so the location actually made more sense, as it was opposite the freezer, allowing a group of cooks to work efficiently during meal prep.
Once the display cases and the kitchen were finished, Jones Junior put an Overlord Ranked barrier over the whole house, and then Karl followed him to the second floor, where he saw a large central room surrounded by small rooms.
They must have been guard dorms in the past, barely two metres wide.
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