The plan was more useful than I thought, after the two prisoners were brought to the mansion I asked Érica and Irina to trap the Demon and give him more poison, just to make sure he doesn't wake up.
Meanwhile, I bring Rakan who was the Mage I wanted to hire to the room, I called Vanessa to take a look at him, I wanted to make sure he was ok since she is always accompanying a Demon.
Vanessa decided to call Érica when she found a curse on Rakan's body, it looks like it was a slavery curse, which means it wasn't just the slavery necklace around her neck, it seems that this Demon wanted to make sure that Rakan wouldn't be able to free himself of slavery.
Érica was able to temporarily stop the effects of the curse and Vanessa was able to remove the bondage necklace by canceling the magic on the necklace.
After they did that I called Lyra to wake up the Mage while she keeps her body's mana frozen so he can't use any magic.
All I wanted was to talk to him, but for that, I had to make sure he would listen to me, after Lyra gave Rakan a few drops of antidote he soon starts to open his eyes.
"Why am I still alive?" (Rakan)
"I said I'd want to hear from him later." (I)
"So the person with the mask was a simple Dhampir child?" (Rakan)
"I may look like a child, but I assure you I'm not a child." (I)
"Apparently not a Dhampir either, maybe a Vampire?" (Rakan)
"So tell me, why don't you just kill me like you did that Devil." (Rakan)
"So you know he's a Demon?" (I)
"After 20 years how could I not know?" (Rakan)
"I said before that I can release you, I can still do that, but I also wish you could come work for me." (I)
"Why would I do that? Trade one Demon for another." (Rakan)
"I'm not a Demon, all I want is to hire someone talented like you, I needed a qualified theoretical Mage and you're the best I've found." (I)
"I'm flattered, but I don't seem to have much choice, I'm in a place I don't know, I can barely move my body and my mana is frozen." (Rakan)
"I can't trust you, who knows what you might try to do." (I)
"Wise decision, but tell me, what would you do if I turned down your job offer?" (Rakan)
"I won't do anything, I'll just let you go, but what happens next is none of my business." (I)
"Do you really think I'm going to believe you're going to let me go like this?" (Rakan)
"Exactly what I will do, I don't need to do anything against you, I have nothing against you, to begin with." (I)
"But before you decide aren't you interested in at least hearing my proposal?" (I)
"…" (Rakan)
"You will have a team of mages as subordinates, it's 1 combat mage and 1 theoretical mage for each element, at least for most elements." (I)
"Furthermore, I have a large number of books in almost all areas of magic, many even banned." (I)
"I'm not going to set deadlines for you to do your work, all I want from you is that in addition to your research on magic, you also teach people who need it." (I)
"Anything you need from money, tools or books can talk to me or one of the people in my group later." (I)
"…" (Rakan)
"What do you think? I think it was a really good proposal, right?" (I)
"Are you serious? That's the same as giving me everything I need for my research without having to give anything in return." (Rakan)
"Not even the Mages Guild would make a job offer like that." (Rakan)
"Anything you research will be of use, what I really want is your experience and knowledge." (I)
"You are crazy?" (Rakan)
"You don't need to offend me either, I'm aware my proposal might be a little strange, but I don't need much." (I)
"…" (Rakan)
"Almost forgot, I just have to ask you one question, you don't have a prejudice against any race, do you?" (I)
"Of course not." (Rakan)
"Good thing, after all, there are many different races on my side, no matter how skilled you are, if you can't live with other races you won't fit in working for me." (I)
"Hahahaha…" (Rakan)
The more I talked the more surprised he was, he even called me crazy when everything I was saying was true, in the end, he just burst out laughing out of nowhere.
"I can't believe I was freed by a madman." (Rakan)
"I don't have a place to go and I don't even have a job, besides without support I'll be killed when the Demons find me, so I have no reason to refuse such a tempting offer." (Rakan)
"Before that, I have to say that there is no going back, so think about it, my only demands are that you are not prejudiced against other races and that you are loyal." (I)
"I spent twenty years trapped in hell, whatever the crazy reason that brought you to me, I'm grateful." (Rakan)
"It will be a pleasure to work with you." (Rakan)
I was right, he accepted it very easily, I tried to be as honest as possible and that helped I think.
"Then let me get rid of this curse of slavery." (I)
I point my hand at Rakan while activating the Blood Servant skill while using a trace of my Aura through this skill, then red energy comes out of my hand and hits Rakan's body being absorbed little by little, then drops of my blood pass behind the pores of my hand entering Rakan's body.
After a few seconds a purple smoke leaves Rakan's body and the red energy stops entering his body, he gets up and kneels in front of me.
"My name is Rakan and I will be at your service from today, master." (Rakan)
"It reminds me that I forgot to say my name, my name is Zenos." (I)
"I hope you take care of me too." (I)
"Now let me introduce the others to you." (I)
So I spent some time introducing people to Rakan, he was very shocked when I introduced Érica to him, it seems he didn't think he would meet another Demon here.
To make him calmer, I told him a little about Érica, I also told him that she was human until a few months ago, it made him understand that Erica wasn't bad.
After that I introduced him to the improvised camp, I took the opportunity to introduce Rakan to his future subordinates when Rakan asked where we are I told him we were in a Dungeon which made him roll his eyes in surprise.
After that I let Ivan and Freya take care of him, I'll leave it to these two to explain the rest to him, I have a feeling that if I keep explaining things to Rakan we won't get anywhere.
As soon as I'm separated from Rakan I head back to the mansion and head straight to the basement where the Demon was still unconscious while being watched by Jade and Sapphire.
After confirming that the Demon is still unconscious, I go to him and bite his neck to drink his blood.
Ding!
I drank a lot of his blood, his blood tasted peppery, after that I gave him a blood replacement potion and more poison.
I'll leave the notifications for later, so I went to meet with everyone to set up a meeting to decide what to do with this Demon.
After a short meeting, everyone was informed of what was going on, the majority opinions were to kill the Demon and avoid future problems, but there were people who had different opinions.
I allowed Rakan to attend this meeting to see how we do things here, surprisingly he didn't want to kill the Devil, he wanted to interrogate the Devil, he wasn't the only one who wanted that as Elsaris, Kira and Ivan wanted to do that too.
But Elsaris said it would be better not to interrogate him here in the Dungeon, Elsaris said it would be better to interrogate the Devil along with the Black Market.
Elsaris argued that we had no safe means of arresting a Demon that we were not sure of its true strength, Elsaris said that it would be best to deliver that Demon to the Black Market with some conditions that would be interrogating the Demon together and killing the Demon after interrogation.
Elsaris said that if we do it this way we can get more information about the Makari Kingdom.
At first, I just wanted to get Rakan and kill the Devil, but Ivan, Diana, Érica, Freya, and Lyra kept trying to convince me to investigate this Makari Kingdom further.
They were born and raised on this continent, so I think it's normal for them to have the feeling of protecting their homeland, if it were up to me I wouldn't get myself into these problems anymore, I would just expose the fact that the Makari Kingdom is associated with Demons and leave the other Kingdoms deal with it.
During the meeting, I asked if it wouldn't be better to expose the fact that there are Demons in the Makari Realm to the other Realms, but Ivan argued that this might make the Demons act sooner, so we couldn't expose everyone about it.
I thought about telling some Realm in secret, But Elsaris said that wouldn't work, all Realms have spies scattered throughout the other Realms, the moment a Realm prepared to attack or investigate the Makari Realm the other Realms would know, it could take to complications and misunderstandings.
In the end, it seemed like the best strategy was for us to work from the shadows with the assistance of the Black Market who will be happy to let others fight their enemies.
Elsaris said that whatever the Devils are up to, they'll want to keep up appearances, so anything we do won't be known, we might even ask the Black Market to block information from us so no one can find out what's going on.
Irina surprised me by saying one thing during the meeting, she wanted to take advantage of this moment where we will be facing the Demons and the demonic faction of Vampires to collect a payment from the Black Market, but when Irina said what the payment was, Irius and I both looked at each other another and smile.
Elsaris said there's a high chance the Black Market will listen to our demands, so I think I have great motivations to fight this time, I'm even a little excited about the idea of fighting in the shadows hidden from people, it looks like a movie plot.