Lukas stepped forward confidently. They were here for legitimate business, so they had nothing to fear.

"We’re here to fulfill our contract with the Le Fay family," he said. "We were told to come to the Lotus hall."

One of the guards tilted his head to stare at each of them before moving towards them.

The man was a drow, his light violet skin glowing slightly. His pointed ears poked out from the edges of his helmet.

From the way he held himself, it was clear he was a professional.

"Contract?" he asked. "Very well. Let’s see it."

Lukas reached into his spatial ring and produced the document, holding it out.

The guard took it and opened it. Then he began slowly flipping through the pages, trying to verify it was, in fact, genuine. "You know the consequences of forging a contract with the Le Fay family, right?" He glanced up at Lukas.

"Of course."

The man simply gave him a nod and went back to the contract. His eyes finally landed on the final section and he caught sight of Morgana’s signature at the bottom glowing faintly.

He blinked, then his posture shifted slightly into something more friendly. He looked up at Lukas with a slight smile.

"Signed with the princess, huh?" He chuckled. "Lucky you." He handed the contract back. "Follow me."

He led them not through the main gate but through a narrow side door built into the fence structure, barely wide enough for two people to pass at the same time.

Beyond it was a small building attached to the interior of the fence line, serving as a security checkpoint.

"Before you can move beyond this point, we’ll have to pat you guys down." The man said. Then he gestured to the guards there who stepped forward.

The male guards handled Lukas, while the female guards moved to Akira and Melody, the process thorough but professional.

Akira watched the guards finish and looked around the modest room. "That was relatively straightforward," she said.

"That’s because this is the only check you’re aware of." The drow guard chuckled. "You were through several security checks before you reached the gate."

"We have hidden eyes on the street, passive scans on the avenue, and even aura assessments at fifty meters away." He glanced at her. "If any of you had been flagged as dangerous, you would not have even made it to the gate."

Akira considered that. "Fair enough."

He led them out of the checkpoint building and onto the property proper.

The grounds opened up ahead of them, with the grass extending further than it had appeared from the gate, and the mansion sitting at the end of a wide central path far in the distance.

Waiting for them was a small vehicle. It resembled a golf cart, being open-sided, with four seats, and no visible engine.

"The property is too large to walk across comfortably," the guard said, gesturing towards it. "Get in."

Lukas took the front passenger seat, while Akira and Melody made themselves comfortable at the back.

The guard sat behind the wheel, placed both hands on it, and the cart started without any visible input.

Without further ado, he began driving the quiet cart along a paved path that curved towards the mansion.

Melody looked at the grounds passing on either side, studying the hedges and the manicured grass.

"Just how large is this property?" she asked.

The guard glanced back with a small smile.

"It’s very large, but this isn’t even the largest Le Fay property," he said, keeping his eyes on the path ahead.

"It isn’t?" Melody asked.

"This one belongs to the family head, who is also the City Lord. He uses it occasionally, when he isn’t at the City Lord’s mansion. His wife and children move between here and there depending on the season and what’s required of them."

He steered the cart into a gentle curve in the path, away from the main doors of the mansion.

"The largest Le Fay mansion is their vacation estate. It was built to accommodate as many branches of the family as needed at once. This," he gestured with one hand at the grounds around them, "is modest by comparison."

"I thought you’d be used to seeing mansions like this," Akira teased Melody. "Weren’t you from a noble family?"

"Our family wasn’t this rich." Melody answered, pouting. "Even the palace of the king wasn’t this big."

As for Lukas, his mind was on something else as they passed a small car park. Sitting there was a two seater sports car, its body shining under the sun.

"I have a question about cars," he said to the guard. "They’re everywhere here. We had nothing like them in Havenhart."

The guard nodded. "Cars are Adept ranked [Items]. The mechanism inside requires an Adept’s mana to operate, because the interaction between the driver and the vehicle’s system only functions above a certain threshold."

He glanced at Lukas. "There’s no practical reason to have them in a Tier 5 city where the entire population are Awakeners. They simply wouldn’t work."

"Oh." Lukas nodded as his mind went to all the cars he’d seen since they arrived in Salaria. Every driver he’d noticed had been Adepts. So that was why.

The cart slowed and stopped beside a side entrance to the mansion. Even for a secondary door, the entrance was grand, with detailed stone work designs on the edge of the frame.

They stepped off the cart and the guard led them inside.

The entrance hall was small relative to the exterior scale of the building, but small here meant a landscape painting that occupied most of one wall, and a chandelier twinkling as it hung above their heads.

Two guards stood at opposite ends of the room, watching.

"Wait here," the drow guard said before giving them a nod and leaving.

They sat, waiting, and after several minutes, a door on the far side of the room opened.

A woman entered. She was also an Adept, dressed in formal attire. She gave them a polite smile, gesturing to the door she’d just walked through.

"You’ve been granted an audience," she said. "Follow me, please."

*** 𝒇𝒓𝒆𝒆𝙬𝒆𝒃𝓷𝒐𝓿𝙚𝙡.𝒄𝓸𝒎

A/N: I totally did not forget last week’s bonus Chapter.