Lucius thought over the letter and Kiana's suggestion, finding both to be good. He did need to be a bit more involved in the social circles of the nobles if he wanted to grow his power. After all, in a world such as this, an individual would not be able to compete against an entire kingdom.

"Alright, I'll go there." Lucius agreed.

"Great! I'll get some special clothes prepared for you. After all this will be your first appearance after a long time." Kiana said, before rushing away to do what she said.

Looking at her one would think that she was the one attending the Party rather than Lucius as she was more excited than him.

"This woman…" Lucius Chuckled.

Even though Kiana was in her thirties, she hadn't lost her childish touch. Though she could be fierce when the time for it was there. Lucius couldn't really find anything to complain about her.

~shing~

He picked up the sword back and returned to practicing. 

~shua~

~zing~

His strikes were getting better with practice, and now he was nearly the same as that of a trained soldier. Even his body seemed to have improved greatly in this time and the outline of muscles could already be seen from his clothes.

It was getting toned, and if he was shirtless, it was bound to attract attention from quite a lot of girls.

Spending a couple more hours in practice, Lucius decided to windup for the night and returned to the mansion. Quickly heading to the Baths, he ordered a servant to get a change of clothes for him.

Once he was done with the bath, he sat in the dining hall while thinking about the Hell imprint. All this time, Lucius had been desiring to make a hell imprint, but the thing was he didn't even know what he was going to do with it.

He actually didn't know for sure if the demonic magics would work in this world or not. Or if there would be restrictions on it. Though seeing how the Soul resonance spell had worked made him think that his previous world's spells might work.

"What should be my first goal… strengthening my body seems like the most obvious one, but I don't think this one will be able to handle that level of demonic mana infusion. Plus the side effect may be too glaring for other people to not notice." Lucius muttered to himself.

There was no one in the hall except for a couple of servants who stood near the wall, waiting on Lucius if he needed anything. Thus they could not hear Lucius either and just thought he was mumbling to himself about work.

~tak~tak~tak~

The sound of shoes clacking against the floor could be heard as Lita appeared in the hallway.

"Kiana seemed excited for some reason. Did something happen?" Lita questioned, feeling curious.

"Ah yes, I have yet to inform you. I got an invitation to a party. It's being held by the daughter of Baron Harrels." Lucius answered.

"Baron Harrels, huh…" Lita responded.

"Is there a problem?" Lucius asked, seeing Lita's reaction.

"No… it's just that Baron Harrels has always had a close relationship with Viscount Drew, although they are still part of our territory. I doubt they would invite you as well." Lita said.

Upon hearing this, Lucius realized that he had actually made a mistake in assuming that Paul's guess was correct.

'So it was intentional… though it might be a good occasion to scout out a few things.' Lucius thought.

"It wasn't exactly her that invited me. It was Paul who invited me along with the others that are going there." Lucius replied.

Lita's expression visibly eased up after hearing his words.

"Ah, if it's him then it should be fine," Lita said.

Lucius simply nodded his head and waited for the food to arrive.

***

Back in his room, Lucius quickly got to making the hell imprints.

With the help of the soul essence, he was progressing faster and was now able to reach at least 70% before the imprint collapsed. Multiple hours had passed, and Lucius was probably on his thousandth attempt now.

~Shua~

The illusory symbols of the hell imprint started to form above Lucius's chest as he kept on focusing on the formula.

"This has to be it!" Lucius exclaimed.

While Lucius was going through the different coordinates, he had suddenly stumbled upon one that seemed to fit perfectly. It was almost like his luck had been increased greatly as something like this seldom happened. Though considering he was using up soul essence to shield himself from the damage, it could just have been the result of sheer numbers.

The illusory symbol flickered and reached fifty percent completion, after which it paused. Sweat dropped off Lucius's forehead as he put his entire focus on pushing the hell imprint to completion.

With his extra effort, it reached the seventy percent point once again. But this was the next bottleneck that Lucius needed to overcome.

"Come on… come on…" Lucius mumbled.

Lucius went through the formulas again, finding the best approach to make progress, before trying the one he thought was best.

~shua~

Another symbol joined the hell imprint, showing that it was progressing.

"YES! Just like that!" Lucius said with excitement.

Now he had slowed down his process as he wanted to take this extremely carefully. He was sure that he could actually form a proper hell imprint with these coordinates. All he needed to do was to just find the compatible symbols that fit the hell imprint.

Minutes turned to hours as Lucius continued his work. Eventually, he reached the next step and the hell imprint had reached 90% completion. By now a headache thrummed in Lucius's head as he forced himself to continue.

"Ah! Time to put all my stakes in!" Lucius stated with determination.

He controlled the soul essence and poured it entirely into the Hell imprint. 

~shua~

~shua~

~shua~

Hundreds of complex symbols started to suddenly appear around Lucius's soul.