Lucius judged that the spell matrices were increasing in stability, but were not entirely strong enough to support another use of the spell. If he wanted to put a mark of obedience on another person, Lucius would have to make it again.

'At least this time it was easier since Johan was accepting of it from the start.' Lucius thought to himself.

The Mark of Obedience was a peculiar spell that needed the agreement of the person it was being cast on. But this was a condition that was a bit flexible depending on the agreement of the person.

If the person was devoted to the caster, the spell would work near instantly and would cause no pain to that person except for the pricking feeling upon initial entry of the Hell energy. But that was normal and could not really be avoided.

As for those that were accepting, but did not fully believe in the caster, the spell would work, but the person it was being used on would feel pain depending on how much they doubted the caster.

Neta was an example of this and had felt the pain upon the usage of the spell.

"You can take your leave, Johan, and keep this to yourself. Only the others who are the bearers of the same mark as you should know about it." Lucius instructed.

"As you command, Lord Asher." Johan said before taking his leave.

Once Johan was gone, Kiana looked at Lucius.

"That mark was different from the one I have, right?" Kiana said while looking at her hand.

~shua~

With her response, the mark on her hand reappeared and glowed to show its presence.

"Yes, your mark is different from the mark Johan has. After all, you are not the same as them, you are far closer to me. Think of it has a higher ranking mark than Johan and Neta's." Lucius replied.

"I see…" Kiana said, feeling happy internally.

"How are things going at the prison? They having trouble yet?" Lucius questioned.

"Just as you predicted, the guards at the prison are indeed having quite a lot of trouble by now. Not only are they short on manpower, but they also have some prisoners with strong gifts that can't be handled easily." Kiana answered.

"Hmm… looks like we'll need to begin our work soon." Lucius muttered.

"I can get them to send the prisoners if you so wish." Kiana quickly replied.

"Get three of them tomorrow. I'll need to prepare a bit before that... my gift will need to recover." Lucius spoke.

"Ah, of course. Take as much time as you want. The guards will bring us the prisoners whenever we want." Kiana stated. 

"Though for the petty thieves and such, you can get some of them transferred to the cells here and begin their counseling," Lucius ordered.

"I'll do that then. I'm pretty sure the guards will be happy with your decision, Asher." Kiana said with a smile.

Lucius nodded to himself and walked out of the room, along with Kiana. At the exit of the building, they split up, where Kiana went to the prison to talk with the guards while Lucius went back home to rest.

'I'll need to recreate the spell matrix for the mark of obedience and also increase my hell energy for the experiments later on. Hopefully, I'm able to make it in one day this time…' Lucius thought to himself while riding towards the Mansion.

Upon reaching the mansion, he left the carriage to the servants while heading straight to his room.

There he first spent a few hours in meditating and recovering the hell energy he had used up in casting the Mark of obedience on Johan. Only after it was at its peak did he begin to make the spell matrix for the mark of obedience.

Lucius appeared in his mind space and saw the other two matrices for the spells, Enrage and Fireball floating in the space. Of these two, Lucius had mostly used Enrage and had not used Fireball to attack till now.

One could even say that he was wasting his spell matrix slots on keeping fireball, but Lucius wanted to maintain it as it would be his trump card in case of a fight. No one would expect a fireball from him and it was one of the only offensive spells he could cast for a low Hell energy cost.

Even though this fireball spell was very basic and weak, it was still useful for Lucius. As long as he aimed at the right spot, it would still render most people helpless. All Lucius would need to do was to blind their eyes using the fireball and they would lose 90% of their combat effectiveness in one go.

After all, people were heavily dependent on their eyes to see things and if they couldn't do that, they would not be able to attack someone accurately either. Once someone was blinder, Lucius could very Weill kill them in the N number of ways that he had in his mind.

Though for Lucius, it would be better if it never came to violence. 

'A fight that is fought without ever fighting is the true victory.' This was the quote Lucius often read in his past life. According to him, the enemy must lose the fight before he even knew he was an enemy or knew that he was fighting.

And for that very reason, deceit and diplomacy could be the biggest weapons of them all. Enrage and Mark of obedience would come in handy to Lucius far more than the fireball spell would right now.

Fireball was only there for when he had no other choice left but to fight directly.

Within Lucius's mind space, the runes for the spell matrix were slowly being formed, but the instability could be easily seen. It took Lucius three tries before he was finally able to form the spell matrix for the mark of obedience.

"This is far better than I thought… seems like Aether is getting tamer than before." Lucius muttered to himself.