"So, what did Mystia tell you?" Seeing the young man come closer to him, Julian waved at Valyr, asking the question that instantly came to mind.
After all, before he and Sirius had a discussion regarding what Valyr might be able to do in the future, he had received a brief message from the young man, telling him pretty much all he needed to know.
'I'll be talking with Mystia for a while. I'll let you know what we talked about once we meet up.'
"A lot of things," replied Valyr, bitterly smiling as he noticed the man's serious expression. "Aside from telling me more about the items I've received from Sirius, she also told me about what I might possibly do in the future."
"My hunch was correct, then," said Julian after listening to the young man, causing the latter's eyes to briefly widen in surprise.
Though, just as Valyr was about to ask the man on what he meant by that, one of the attendants of the auction house had arrived in front of them, carrying a flask of viscous fluid and an archaic-looking book on top of a tray.
"Sir Julian Pyrrhia and Sir Ylvar, right?" asked the attendant, leaving the two no choice but to nod in response.
"Sir Sirius has ordered me to give you the items you've won from the auction, lest you forget." Nodding back, the attendant moved the tray closer towards the two, prompting Valyr to thank the attendant as he stashed both the flask and the book inside his spatial bracelet for the meantime.
Seeing that their task was over, the attendant gave both Valyr and Julian a respectful half-bow before turning around, eventually leaving the two to their own devices once more.
"…Wanna head back to the Blacksmith Guild to talk more about it?" Feeling that the atmosphere between the two had become slightly awkward due to the attendant's sudden appearance, Julian took a quick look outside before giving the young man a suggestion.
"It's not like I have any other choice." Of course, with how he had a feeling that Julian had a lot of things to say to him, as well as the fact that he would have to ask the man for more information regarding information brokers, it went without saying that the young man agreed, briefly shrugging his shoulders in nonchalance.
…
"Alright. Now that we're back here, we can talk a bit more freely about what information we've obtained from our respective conversations." By the time they arrived at the Blacksmith Guild, the two of them swiftly headed to Julian's personal workshop, ignoring the curious looks everyone else gave them along the way.
Then, once there, Julian made a solid barrier out of mana surrounding them, only stopping his infusion of more mana into it once he felt that the barrier would stop any sound they made from getting outside.
"So, what did Mystia tell you exactly?" Letting out a long and drawn-out sigh, Julian looked at the young man before him.
"Which part? The items or the part about the future?" Letting out a sigh of his own in response, Valyr grabbed a box to sit on before responding. "Speaking of which, did you and Sirius talk about something while I was talking with Mystia?"
"We did." Julian nodded. "Coincidentally, we talked about how your actions would have an effect on the future… though, Sirius painted it in a bad light for some reason."
"Really?" Valyr raised his eyebrow in curiosity. "Well, Mystia talked about how my strength would grow beyond the level of a Herald, allowing my actions to not only change the course of humanity, but the entire world as well."
"And that was it."
"Huh. That's exactly what Sirius told me," replied Julian, briefly scratching his head. "However, he always looked at it from a pessimistic perspective, saying about how you would cause humanity's downfall in the future."
"Then again, I'm pretty sure his perspective towards the prediction was skewed by the fact we interacted with a rude member from the Zeihardt clan back then." At these words, the man faintly shrugged his shoulders. "Well, I don't blame him for thinking that way."
"So, if I'm getting this correctly, we basically obtained the same information from different people." Pondering over it for a bit, Valyr eventually opened his mouth, omitting the fact that he and Mystia talked about how he was a Harbinger.
"More or less." In response, Julian nodded in agreement, not finding anything amiss with the young man's words. "Ah, right. What kind of items did she give you?"
"Well, the first one is a stronger version of the Nascent Rebirth Pill sold in the auction." As he said these words, Valyr looked at Julian's reaction. Unsurprisingly, the man only nodded once he heard it, prompting the young man to move onto the vial.
"As for the vial, according to her, it complements the effects of the pill I got," said the young man soon after. "However, it was more like the vial enhanced the pill's effects even further."
"Did you consume the items already?" asked Julian as he examined the young man's aura. Though he had already sensed that the aura Valyr was passively releasing was considerably stronger than before the two separated ways, he still wanted to confirm it with his two eyes.
"Yeah." Nodding in response, Valyr went ahead and flared out his aura in its entirety, causing the man's eyes to slightly widen in surprise as he did not expect the increase to be that massive.
Then again, once the young man explained how much stats he had gained from the two items, everything eventually made sense to him.
"In total, I gained 100 points each in every stat," said Valyr, leaving Julian at a slight loss for words.
Even though a hundred points might not mean a lot to someone like him, for Valyr, whose stats were already high for his rank, increasing it by a further hundred points was akin to adding wings to a tiger.
'I wonder how he'd react if he found out I could also control Mystic Energy now,' briefly thought Valyr to himself as he suppressed his aura once more, taking a bit of delight in Julian's reaction.
"Anyways, would it finally be alright to tell me more about the people you know who could get me more information about the Zeihardt clan?" Thinking that he had given Julian enough time to process what he had told him, the young man went ahead and changed the topic of the conversation to what he wanted to talk about all this time.
"Ah, right." Fortunately, Julian quickly snapped back to reality, nodding as he thought about the question for a bit in silence.
Then, feeling as if he had gathered all of the information he needed to tell Valyr, only then did the man begin his explanation.
"So…"
