top of magic

After parking the car, Keech found himself taken by Tina to a strange house.

This seems to be the mansion of a certain nobleman, and it is not inferior to the Hill family's courtyard in terms of area, but the plants and mottled walls in the courtyard indicate that no one has lived here for a long time, and it is now occupied by the Magic Association. , but failed to return to its former glory.

"Welcome to the former residence of the Chimera family." Standing beside Kiki, Tina introduced in a strange tone.

Kitsch suddenly opened his eyes wide and looked at Tina in surprise.

"The person is taken away by Lucifer, the property is left to the Magic Association, and the title and territory are returned to the emperor." Tina raised the corners of her mouth mockingly, "This is what the Lucifer family, the Magic Association, and Emperor Yalong reached back then. Chimera family partition agreement."

"...The Lucifer family seems to be at a disadvantage." Kiki asked hesitantly.

"You think so because they ended up with nothing to lose." Tina curled her lips and said, "If they really let their women give birth to children from the Chimera family, then according to Yalong's law, no property, nobility or territory , will be under the control of the Lucifer family."

——This is the issue of inheritance rights that Hill often talks about, right?

Keech didn't say any more, and silently followed Tina and Avella into the old house.

Contrary to the dilapidated exterior, the inside of the house has been completely refurbished. In the main hall, there are several booths that are obviously newly added, and some booths have already placed magic weapons of different styles.Perhaps due to time constraints, I didn't see many people along the way, only a few magicians guarding in an inconspicuous corner, looking like guards on duty.

Tina didn't delay in the main hall, and led Kiki all the way down, stopping in front of a small room in the basement.

Seeing this room with no windows and only a small bed, Kitsch immediately understood what Tina meant by being inconvenient.

"Before someone vacates the room, please bear with me for a while." Tina pretended to be helpless, but her tone was full of jokes.

"...Where's the bathroom?" Keech asked blankly.

"Upstairs, there are many." Tina raised her finger to the top of their heads, "Avella's room has a bathroom, you can go to her when you want to take a shower. Well, just be patient tonight, and let her take care of it tomorrow. You know your way. There are too many magicians crowded in this house now, and there are not enough rooms. When all the booths are cleaned up, those little guys who work will leave——by then, I will definitely give you another A bathroom room, I promise."

Keech didn't speak, and walked into the room with the salute that Hill helped him sort out.

"Good night." Tina smiled and waved to Kiki, closed the door for him, turned and left.

In the room, Keech looked at the so-called bed made of several wooden boards and the dimly flickering short candles on the slate floor, and couldn't help but miss the comfortable bedroom in the Golden Lotus Hotel.

——The guest rooms in Hill’s house are better than here, at least, there is Hill!

Keech thought gloomily.

Just after Tina and Kiki left, Hill was also called into the study by his grandfather, Count Balotelli, and asked him about Kiki's exact identity.

Hill did not hide it, because what he knew was very limited, even if he told it all, it would not be enough to satisfy his grandfather.

"That is to say, his last name is Rice?" Count Balotelli frowned.

"Grandfather." Hill asked tentatively, "Do you think the Kiki magician is related to the Chimera family?"

Earl Balotelli did not answer, remained silent, seemed to be recalling the past, and spoke again after a while, "You must bury my next words in your mind, and unless your life is extinguished, you must not let anyone know, including Ann. Gale, and your little wizard friend."

"...I see." Hill sat up straight, waiting for Count Balotelli to continue.

"You must all be wondering why I am so obsessed with magicians, and even send my children and grandchildren to the Magic Association for this reason, even if they don't have magical talents." Earl Balotelli did not directly talk about the Chimera family. Turned to another question that Hill also didn't understand, "Oliver complained more than once that I threw too much money into the Magic Association, but Angel didn't understand it, but he didn't ask."

"You must have your reasons," Hill said.

"Of course, there is a reason for everything." The earl raised the corner of his mouth mockingly, "Answer me a question, my dear grandson, why do you think Emperor De Rossi dared to expel me from the imperial capital? Not why he expelled me from the imperial capital, but Why did you 'dare' to drive me out of the imperial capital?"

"...Because we don't have military power?" Hill replied hesitantly.

"Since the founding of the country by Emperor Borgia, the Balotelli family has never controlled military power. Why didn't the previous emperors try to manipulate us, but instead entrusted us with important responsibilities?" The earl sneered.

Hill really wanted to say that it might be because you, the head of the family, have failed, but he knew that this would never be the answer his grandfather wanted to hear.

"The fall of the Balotelli family started with the collapse of the Chimera family." Before Hill could answer, the count had already given the answer to himself.

Hill couldn't help being taken aback. Like Kitsch, he had never heard of the name Chimera, let alone that his family had ever been related to it.

"The reason why the surname Balotelli can occupy a place in the Yalong Empire is because we have been protected by the Chimera family." The count continued, "It's just that when they needed our protection, we cowardly chose retreat……"

"My lord grandfather..." Hill looked at Count Balotelli suspiciously.

"I will never forget that day." Earl Balotelli murmured to himself, looking into the distance, "The last member of the Chimera family quietly came to the Balotelli family's mansion - this is the house, now The one that has been turned into a studio by your father—he asked my father for asylum, hoping to use the power of the Balotelli family to hide."

"At that time, the Lucifer family had issued a unilateral marriage contract request forcefully, asking the unmarried Marquis of Chimera to marry them." Balotelli said indifferently, "This matter was not a secret at the time, no matter Both the Magic Association and the emperor showed an attitude of being happy to see the results, as if everyone was waiting for the Chimera family to be annexed by the Lucifer family."

"Of course my father knows about this, and he has been lobbied and threatened by many people. Moreover, the Chimera family is not good at financial management. A considerable part of their property is in the hands of Balotelli, who will be represented by us. From this point of view, if the Chimera family collapsed, Balotelli would be able to take this part of the property as his own—at least, at the time, we were also the vested beneficiaries of the Chimera family’s collapse. "

"So, my father rejected the Marquis Chimera's request." Having said that, Count Balotelli sighed heavily, "I always remember that when my father said the word 'sorry' to the Marquis Chimera, that Despair in those black eyes."

Count Balotelli fell silent again, as if he was adjusting his emotions, and quickly continued in a calm voice, "Your little magician friend has a face very similar to that of the Marquis of Chimera."

As he spoke, the count took out a small locket from his breast pocket and handed it to Hill.

Hill received it in doubt, opened it, and found that it was a sketch of a young man. As the earl described, although the man's age and hairstyle were somewhat different from Keech's, his appearance was very similar. It doesn't look outstanding, but it's almost perfect when you think about it.

"Do you suspect that Wizard Kiki is a descendant of the Chimera family?" Hill asked, raising his head and returning the locket to his grandfather.

"At least, I don't think it's a coincidence." Count Balotelli put away the locket and replied indifferently.

Hill took a deep breath, looked straight into his grandfather's eyes, and asked the question that his grandfather most wanted him to ask, "So, what do you want me to do, my lord grandfather?"

"Get it." Count Balotelli said word by word, "No matter what method you use, what means."

"This..." Hill couldn't help being stunned for a moment, and was very surprised by the word "get", but then, he realized that his grandfather said it, not him.

"The greatest wealth of the Chimera family is not their title, property, or territory, but their blood." Count Balotelli narrowed his eyes, "The Lucifer family has discovered this, but obviously, they have not been able to get it." .”

Hill was stunned, and couldn't help reminding, "My lord, what the Lucifer family can't do, I'm afraid we can't do it either. They at least have a daughter, and our Balotelli family has never been born. female members."

The Balotelli family has never had any female members other than through marriage, and this is a well-known anecdote among the Wurm nobility circles.Women who married into the Balotelli family never worried about heirs. As long as they could have children, they would definitely get a boy, even those illegitimate children who came to the world in a disgraceful way.

"Marriage is certainly not the best way, otherwise, how could the Lucifer family fail so easily?" Earl Balotelli raised the corners of his mouth.

"Then you mean..." Hill frowned puzzled.

"Find out the secret of the bloodline, and then get it." Count Balotelli smiled slightly, "You have already become friends with that little magician, which is a good starting point."

"...I see, Grandfather." Hill lowered his eyelids, but thought in his heart, he really shouldn't have kept Kiki at home, and shouldn't have allowed his grandfather to see him.Although the current situation is very different from what he originally thought, the result is worse than he thought-if Keech knew what his grandfather wanted him to do, he would no longer trust him and rely on him as much as he does now.

"Don't worry, Hill, the Lucifer family failed because they were too impatient." Earl Balotelli warned, "Of course, if my father, your great-grandfather was willing to take in the Marquis of Chimera, then, That kind of power may have become the possession of the Balotelli family - Chimera is always very generous to those they trust, about this, you can see the wealth we got."

"But, Grandpa, what does this have to do with you sending me into the Magic Association? Did you expect that the descendants of the Chimera family would appear in the Magic Association?" Hill asked pretendingly puzzled.

"How is it possible, I'm not a cardinal who is good at big prophecies." The earl smiled and shook his head, "I just hope to find another great magician who is willing to protect the Balotelli family, but you——I am the most proud grandson—you are so lucky, and your achievements have far exceeded my expectations."

——It also far exceeded my own expectations.

Hill clenched his fists self-mockingly.

Keech on the other side didn't feel Hill's entanglement and depression. Since he moved into the old house of the Chimera family, he has never had a moment of leisure.Every day as soon as he woke up, Tina grabbed him to help him. When Tina finished his day's work, he could go back to his small room to rest.

Tina also lived in the basement like Kiki, but Kiki lived here because he couldn't find an extra room, and Tina took the initiative to live in it to guard the warehouse where magic weapons and alchemy materials were placed.As one of the organizers of this exhibition, Tina not only has to worry about outside thieves and enemy attacks, but also guards against some guys inside the magician who are guarding against themselves, so she simply lived in the warehouse and took on the last task in the warehouse. A line of defense.

——It’s not a 24-hour guard, and they still have to leave during the day.

After knowing the whole story of this incident, Kiki secretly slandered.

Since all the magic weapons that have not been sent to the booth will be put into the warehouse for unified storage, so, in Kiki's view, Tina is just using the guise of a guard to study other people's magic weapons.

Tina is not the only alchemist participating in this magic weapon exhibition, on the contrary, she is one of the lesser-known ones.After all, she usually studies low-end magic weapons that ordinary people can use, and the research on the ruins she participated in in the past six months is highly confidential, and many magicians don't know about it.

The reason why Tina was worried that Kiki was the target of the hijackers was because Kiki also participated in the investigation of the ruins and followed the whole process, knowing all the discoveries in the ruins like the back of his hand.And once those discoveries are leaked, it will not only cause shocks in the entire magical world, but also arouse the greed of many ambitious people.

Keech didn't take Tina's concerns seriously. He was more inclined to Hill's view, thinking that Hill was the target of the hijackers.Also because of this, although Tina repeatedly assured him that Hill's family would protect him well, Keech was still worried, and whenever he had free time, he used a microphone to contact Hill to confirm his safety.

After repeating this several times, Keech had a new trouble.

Hill only turned on the microphone in time in the early hours of the morning to talk to him and listen to him as much as he wanted, while at other times, he would take a long time to connect or turn it off immediately after it was connected.

Although Hill explained that this is because he has to attend some social gatherings recently and it is not convenient to use a microphone, Keech still can't let go.Several times, he heard a woman's voice through the microphone, and then Hill quickly ended the call and turned off the microphone.

Depressed, Keech simply stopped contacting Hill.

——You don't care about me, why should I care about you!

Keech thought sullenly.