Jay picked up his sword from the ground and Albus did the same before leaving the training ground.

Gellor looked at Lucius and spoke, "Should we head back to the mansion, Young Lord Asher?" 

"If you guys are done here and don't want to spar anymore, we can head back." Lucius replied.

"Of course, we should head back. We can after all spar later if we want." Gellor replied right away.

"Forgive me for taking them away for this spar, Young Lord Asher." Donald said.

Lucius simply shook his head to assure him that it was fine, and he did not mind it. To him, he had taken this chance to get a gauge on the strength of the guards here. From what Lucius had seen, Jay was one of the strongest among the guards if he excluded Donald himself.

If Albus could match Jay in a fight like this, then Gellor's other companions must not be weak either. Or so he thought. Lucius knew that to get a more accurate measure of their strength, he would have to let them use their gifts as well.

Gifts were one of the major factors that could decide the outcome of the fight. If he took the example of Kiana, even if she could not match Jay in terms of sword fighting, all it would take her would be one second to blow off his head.

Even with her previous gift, Kiana was no less deadly. 

The same could be said with Jay now. If he were to use his rare ranked gift Flame Burst, who knows what the outcome would be. Lucius did not know what Albus's gift was and thus he could not fully judge his strength, but from what Kiana had told him, all of Gellor's teammates had rare ranked gifts.

Thus, the outcome of this fight if both the parties were allowed to use gifts could swerve in either direction. Lucius even felt tempted to use Nexus on Albus to see what his gift was, but thought that it would be better to wait and just ask him later. Not only would it save his Aether, he would be able to get more information that even the owners of the gift did not know.

"Let's head back then, shall we?" Lucius said before walking toward the mansion.

Gellor and his companions followed behind him while Capitan Donald continued his daily training with the guards. This training was something that the Count himself had ordered to be done. He wanted the guards to be trained every day without fail so that if anything troublesome happened, they would be ready to deal with it.

After all, the Count was not at the Mansion always and left the safety of his family and property to the guards. Thus, he put Donald in charge and with his personality, it was ensured that the guards would never be allowed to slack off.

And if they truly did dare to slack off, a grueling drill session would be waiting for them at the hands of Donald. Lucius approved of this and even wanted to increase the regimen later on. Right now, they mostly trained their physical skills, but he also wanted them to train their gifts.

Lucius knew that training the gifts was different from the physical training, in that they could not standardize it. Everyone's gift could be different and thus they would need different kinds of training for it. 

That was the reason why Lucius wanted to analyze their gifts, learn more about them and then devise a training plan for them. He wanted there to be strong warriors under his hand that were better than these.

If Lucius compared them to the servants of the Barron clan in his past life, he reckoned even one servant would be enough to take down ten guards just with their physical skills. And if he considered magic, then perhaps all of the guards could be eliminated by one servant.

There was a lot of road ahead of Lucius and he knew he could not travel alone. There will be many obstacles in the way that would need more than just his own strength to overcome. 

Lucius didn't just pursue physical or magical power, he also wanted political, social, financial, and economic power. Only when he had all of them, would he consider himself to be qualified to compete against the world.

These were the minimum qualifications and if he wanted to rule the world one day, he would need to put in far more effort.

Gellor looked at the back of Lucius and found it to be a bit strange. He couldn't put a finger on it, but Lucius made him feel a bit uncomfortable. Gellor could only think that he was feeling like this due to being a stranger on the mansion's grounds. After all, there was nothing that Lucius had done that should have made him feel like that.

But despite ignoring the feeling, his instincts that were honed through battles with beasts kept on flaring up from time to time. 

'What's up with me today?' Gellor couldn't help but ask himself.

But if Lucius knew what Gellor was thinking, his opinion of him would rise up by a few notches. Alas, there was no way Gellor would say something like this and Lucius could not read the man's mind either.

They soon reached the mansion and at the entrance, Kiana was already waiting.

"I've prepared the meeting hall, we can head there directly," Kiana spoke.

"Thank you, Kiana." Lucius said and entered.

Gellor and his teammates nodded to Kiana and greeting and followed behind them, before finally settling in the meeting hall. Each of them took a chair at the table and felt a bit nervous. They couldn't help but feel the atmosphere had suddenly changed.

"Well then, now that we are all here, I guess we can begin with the work." Lucius spoke.

"Yes, Young Lord Asher. Please do tell us what is it that you need of us. I assure you we shall do our very best to accomplish that." Gellor assured.