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It was another pleasant day at Plazzo Abate with Quinn just finishing his morning workout and on course to return to his room to freshen up to officially start his day. As Quinn turned to the corridor to his room, he stopped when he heard something from his back. He turned to see Brio and Aksel talking with each other.
His head tilted as he watched the pair talk with each other. Deciding to see what they were talking about, Quinn walked towards them and greeted the two adults with a smile,
"Good morning, Mr. Thorn.. . grandfather," he said.
It turned out that Brio Abate had no qualms about arguing with Quinn every time he had tried to call the man anything other than grandfather. After two weeks of almost daily arguments, Quinn had decided that it was a lesser pain to call the man by what he wanted.
"So what are you two talking about so early in the morning," asked Quinn.
"Thorn was just telling me how you have been liking it here. I hear that you are barely home. It seems like you have been having fun," said Brio.
"Is that so.. .. it has been a busy time. But the beautiful country, fantastic people, and the amazing food help a lot. Time passes quickly in such a beautiful place."
"You should take it easy. Sightseeing is nice and all, but you should spend some time at home; get to know more of the family."
"Hmm," Quinn thought about the offer and glanced at Thorn before nodding, "alright, I will spend the day inside. Take it easy for a day or two."
"Good, good. It's important to rest," said Brio before leaving.
Quinn turned to Aksel and spoke, "It's decided, I will take the day off today. You can take easy for today."
"What are you going to do?" asked Aksel.
"Spend some more time with grandmother, maybe get started with knitting a scarf of my own hand; play some chess with Sara; most probably give one of the books a good read."
Aksel stared for a good while before saying, "I will tag along; can't take the risk."
"Ah, the lack of trust hurt, Mr. Thorn. And here I thought all the fun time we spent together would have created an unbreakable bond of faith and confidence between the two of us."
"That doesn't sound right at all."
"Well, I'm disappointed by that; maybe we will develop that bond someday, but for today, I hope you'll enjoy my company."
Aksel was on his way to get some breakfast, so he left to get something to eat while Quinn would take a shower and get himself ready for the day.
As Aksel walked away, Quinn stared at him with some thoughts about the conversation. He wanted to go outside and weighed the possibility of fooling Aksel to go on a solo day trip across Rome.
"Hmm, let's just stay inside. I can't take the risk of facing my grandfather's wrath after the Tri-wizard incident. It's better to lay low this time around.. .. I can always come back on my own."
- (Scene Break) -
It was sometime after noon; Quinn sat in his room with the door being locked shut and the windows curtained off. The room was properly lit with the portable MLEs that he carried around with him.
In his hand sat 「The Theory Behind The Magic Of Constructs」. His eyes scanned through the pages with complete attentiveness, gleaming through black letters printed on the parchment to get the nuggets of knowledge.
"Alright, let's see if my understanding is correct," said Quinn, putting the book aside on the king-sized bed and standing up to walk to the clear space in the front.
He flexed the fingers in both of his hands. He shook his left hand for a reddish-yellow cord of light appeared out of his palm. It was the cord from one of Quinn's all-time favorite spells: Carpe Retractum. Next, he shook his right hand, and glowing red material rippled out his palm like a liquid flowing out a tap, and instead of liquid polling on the ground, it retained the form of a rope and coiled on the floor.
"So this is Empyrean, huh," muttered Quinn as he stared at the incandescent red color of Empyrean.
He then raised both his hands to observe both Carpe Retractum and Empyrean. While both spells were in the form of cords/ropes, Quinn could tell how different they were. He whipped the ropes and threw the other ends into the wall, making them stuck to the wall.
"This is fascinating."
The fingers of his red hand twitched; the red Empyrean rippled, and the rope fell from his hand and polled down on the floor like a puddle of water.
"Empyrean.. .. the material that could take on any number of physical properties," said Quinn, his stone-grey eye reflecting the red glow. "Fascinating, extremely fascinating. I can replicate Carpe Retractum down to the exact detail, and I can turn it into a puddle of liquid the very next second.. . what versatility!"
He dispelled Carpe Retractum and focused on Empyrean. He stood up from beside the puddle of water and raised his hands for the liquid Empyrean to lift off the ground, and under Quinn's molding, it formed a shoddy cube.
"I still need a lot of practice; this is piss poor," he muttered, looking at the cube, which looked like it was about to break down. If another user of Empyrean heard Quinn, they would manifest a bat made from Empyrean and hit him until he was crying for help. The audacity to call his performance poor when people couldn't produce Empyrean for the first couple of days.
Quinn continued to stare at the Empyrean as the material trembled into various shapes under his command; he looked back at the book sitting on the bed and smiled.
"We are going to have much fun, a lot of fun," he then started laughing.
The sphere made from Empyrean started to jiggle more and more with Quinn's laughter and suddenly exploded straight into his face, and it seemed that Empyrean had taken the physical properties of paint as Quinn's front side was covered in glowing red.
"But before that, I have a lot of work to do."
- (Scene Break) -
The largest magical market of Italy was hidden in the heart of Florence, the birthplace of the Renaissance, and has been called the Athens of the Middle Ages and capital of the Tuscany region. The market was famously known as the Pisand Row and was the Italian equivalent of British Diagon Alley and its adjoining market lanes.
Situated inside Pisand Row was a store called Rigenerare. A quaint little shop with a front shop much smaller than the back area of the shop, the place where the magic happened. It was an apothecary specializing in medical potions and was a famous potion shop, providing its services to many magical hospitals.
"Mario! Amity needs ten crates of Fire seed potion! And they needed it yesterday!" yelled a gaunt man in Italian with sunken cheeks and pale skin that looked like it hadn't seen daylight for days.
"W-We don't have that prepared!" yelled another voice sounding anxious. The owner of the voice peeked out from a corner to show a man with a sweaty face.
Nereo Polo, the gaunt man, was the manager of the Rigenerare and the apothecary's head potion brewer, while the other man was Mario Spagnolo, one of the other potion brewers of the store.
"Then get your ass up to a cauldron and start brewing because if I don't lay my beautiful eyes on a crate full of glowing orange, you better forget the weekend off you were begging for!"
Mario sputtered at the threat and ran to get the batch of potions working with tears in his eyes. He was looking at another all-nighter.
A stunning olive beauty peeked from the outside and yelled at the men working inside, "Shut your damned mouths! It's leaking outside, and customers can hear it! I'm not going to lose my commission because you men can't behave like civilized people!"
Even though Rigenerare mainly tended to hospitals, they had a healthy amount of individual customers, and the olive beauty Antea was a front desk seller.
"Alright, alright, we will be quiet," said Nereo Polo.
"You better be," said Antea and then stacked off back outside.
Nereo Polo grumbled in a low voice after Antea was out of earshot, "Only if that woman wasn't good at what she did." He turned to the potion brewers under and yelled just enough so it wouldn't get out of the back workshop, "Move your hands, keep those cauldrons hot! I don't want to see a cauldron off fire if it isn't being scrubbed."
"Nereo!" Antea came back in.
"What is it, woman?! I didn't yell!"
"Abate is here," she said.
Nereo got up from his chair at once, "Dolion is here, but he isn't supposed—"
"Yes, I'm here, Nereo," said Dolion in Italian, "can't I just be here to visit a friend."
"You can be, but.. . ."
Dolion stepped forward, and two more people(one teenager, the other adult) entered the back room. Nereo being in charge of the brewing back room didn't like unknown people entering his domain. "Who are they?" he asked.
Nereo saw Dolion gesturing him to look at the teenager; Nereo was confused but studied the teenager closely. At first, he wasn't sure what he was looking at, but a moment later, he noticed the stone-grey eyes that stared back at him.
"A-A West!" exclaimed Nereo.
"He said West," said Quinn, looking at Dolion.
"He did," said Dolion before nodding to Nereo
Nereo cleared his throat, quickly wiped his hand with a rag before stepping forward to say in accented English, "My name is Nereo Polo. You are.. . ."
"I'm Quinn West," said Quinn introducing himself, "and you, Mr. Polo are the manager of Rigenerare, an apothecary owned by my family, but you already know that." He watched Nereo for a brief second, his eyes twitching for a brief second, before looking at the workshop. "I have seen Rigenerare's records; the apothecary has seen good growth in the past three years."
"Thank you," said Nereo with a proud smile.
"But," there was always a but, "we haven't received any records from Rigenerare for the last half-year. I'm here to know why?"
".. . .The machine broke."
"The machine?"
"The machine that sends letters."
"You mean the MagiFax. It's broken for half a year?"
"Yes."
Quinn gazed at Nereo, "Make up a better excuse."
"I'm not making an excuse; it's really broke.. .. I just didn't get it fixed."
"And why is that?"
"I don't understand how it works," said Nereo.
The creator of MagiFax paused for a bit. "You can call a technician to explain how it works. They will explain how it works." When Nereo didn't say anything, Quinn continued, "I'll sign you up for a session," this wasn't the first case of people refusing to leave owl-mail, "now, show me where's the unit."
Nereo led them to a small room, and Rigenerare's MagiFax was stashed into a corner. "Alright, let's get it out from here," said Quinn and wheeled out the MagiFax from the room into a more spacious area.
Dolion leaned towards Aksel and whispered, "What's he doing?"
Aksel shrugged, "I don't know."
Quinn observed the MagiFax for a bit before speaking, "What did you do?"
"Nothing," said Nereo, but when Quinn continued to stare, he said, "I kicked it.. .. many times."
"No wonder it broke," said Quinn as he took out his fake wand.
He waved it once in a diagonal, and everyone's eyes in the room widened as the one-meter tall machine came apart with every single part of the machine floating in the air. Quinn stepped into the sphere of floating MagiFax pieces and started studying.
"Found it," he said, pointing to a layer of broken rune plates that connected the machine to the networks that allowed MagiFaxes to send and receive messages. He waved his fake wand, and the set of rune plates glowed as Quinn applied transmutations to fix the crack and get the runes flowing.
He stepped out of the sphere of floating parts and waved his fake wand once again for the machine to put itself back together.
"Usually, you would need a MagiFax technician with proper authorization to connect the unit back to the network-slash-sever, but fortunately for you," he pointed at himself, "I'm a West and thus have the proper authorization to connect any unit," which was partially a lie because while Lia and George would have the proper authorization, they wouldn't know how to do it.
As Quinn connected the MagiFax to the network, Aksel whispered to Dolion, "Told you he is skilled."
"It's done," said Quinn, "I'll book you for up for a session on how to work the MagiFax, so make sure you pay attention, but for now, send the records to Palazzo Abate and the WMF-id to which you send the records, I'll send them in."
"O-Okay," said Nereo.
"Good, don't kick the unit again, and don't be stubborn; learn how to use MagiFax; it will do you a lot of good," said Quinn before turning to Aksel. "Let's get out of here; I want to go to the library you mentioned; let's see if they have a book that I can make a duplicate of."
Aksel nodded and followed after Quinn while he exited the store under the eyes of Rigenerare's employees.
"Dolion," said Nereo.
Dolion didn't say anything and just shook his head which caused Nereo to sigh in relief.
- (Scene Break) -
It was late in the night; Dolion and his middle-aged companion sat opposite each other on a long table.
"It's ready," said Dolion.
"You really have it?" asked the middle-aged man.
Dolion placed the object in question on the table. "This is it. This is what I'm going to use to open the way up for me."
"Are you sure it will work?"
"You can try some and see if it works or not."
"N-No, i-it's fine." If it worked, the man definitely didn't want to try it.
"Your choice," smiled Dolion.
"If it works as you say it does, then we need to move soon. I'm running out of excuses as for why I'm not at home for the past couple of weeks."
"I'll move in a couple more days. I'm still thinking about how to make sure that West doesn't feel anything is off."
"Any ideas?"
"Yes, I have narrowed it down to two choices. Both of them will be effective against West; it's just a matter of which one is safer."
Then Dolion went silent as he stared at the table.
Before the marriage of Adam West and his sister Aria, the Wests and Abates only had a professional relationship regarding West businesses in Italy. It was only after the runaway marriage that their interaction evolved.
At first, the Abates had remained proud and stubborn about collaborating with Wests. The elders weren't happy that Aria had defied the family; to retaliate, they even tried to make business difficult for Wests in Italy, but Wests already had decent establishments in Italy before the marriage, and with the resources they had, they were able to hold on, even if barely — because as everyone knew, in Italy, there was nothing bigger than Abate.
It was only after they realized that the Wests could be better serve as allies than enemies, so they decided to use the fact they had a daughter married to the heir of Wests to their advantage — the Abates were no stranger to this method; they had been employing political marriages for centuries — but things didn't go their way as Aria refused to push their cause.
The sweet little girl who would listen to every instruction since childhood had risen to become Madam West.. .. the Abates had no control over her and in turn the Wests. Adam West did work some cooperation with the Abates to help his in-laws save some face, but it was only a token gesture and nowhere the level that Abates were planning.
Then came another opportunity to tap into the West resources in the form of Lia West wanting to connect with her mother's family.
'They pissed on that opportunity with their worthless traditions,' thought Dolion. He knew very well that his family didn't believe that women were capable of responsibilities outside the house and offended an ambitious Lia West the very day she stepped into Palazzo Abate.
Dolion, who had spent a lot of his formative years in America, didn't align with his family's views — at least not anymore; for him, anyone with a good head over their shoulders could do whatever they desired. It had physically pained him to see the opportunity known as Lia slip past, wasted.
But it seemed that the Abate family's luck hadn't run dry, and they were given yet another opportunity. Arai had given to a son, a son who had finally grown up, and because of the patriarchal nature, this time it was the Abates who sent the invitation to the Wests to let them get to know Quinn West.
Dolion had been so excited that he got to planning. He wasn't going to let his family ruin things this time.
'I'm going to get a vein into the Wests.. .. no matter what it takes,' he had thought.
And he was going to keep what he earned to himself. His moronic family wouldn't get anything.. .. they would only waste it away.
"I have decided," said Dolion to his companion, "I'm going to move, and by the end of this week, we will have everything we could ever desire."
His name was Dolion, and there was no one better than him when it came to deceit.
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Quinn West - MC - Learning a new spell and doing some family work.
Dolion Abate - Third Son - Deceit runs in his veins.
FictionOnlyReader - Author - I wanted this arc to last a little longer, but I think the is going to be the climax — I think, we never know.. .
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