9. Young lad. Strip yourself down to the underwear, for me~

"Shit, that must be Alfred," muttered Luz after hearing the knock on the door. He immediately jumped out of his bunk bed.

Alfred, opening the door, simply sighed at the sight that awaited him. The room looked quite disorganized, and clothes lay on the floor. After voicing his discontent with a loud sigh, Alfred turned his gaze towards Luz, who looked like a zombie.

"Luz, follow me. I gotta bring you to someone," commented Alfred before turning his back towards the children.

Alfred, a man in his fifties, wearing a black suit with a white tie, had spotless white hair, which had no tinge of any other color. The scar running vertically across his lip combined with his aquamarine eyes made him look sterner than he actually was.

Luz gulped before following after the butler. And so the two left.

For Luz, it was the first time he saw the mansion from the inside, and they had little to no resemblance with the underground floor where the servants spent their nights.

There was far too much to see, from the beautiful frescoes on the ceilings depicting angels, demons, and humans alike, to the marble statues. These statues depicted unknown heroes or species that Luz had never seen before. The sight of all these made Luz halt in awe every few seconds to admire their beauty, as he had never come into contact with such art.

The most he had seen were primitive wooden sculptures carved by one of his fellow villagers. To put it into perspective, all the arts in this mansion were enough for a five-hour-long museum trip.

Alfred anticipated Luz's reaction and smiled since he always found overwhelming the newcomers with what awaits them here quite amusing.

"Follow me, Luz. We can't let you get seen like this in the mansion. You can look at these frescos later today," remarked Alfred before shaking his head.

"I'm sorry," apologized Luz hastily before following behind Alfred in silence till they reached the west side of the building before stopping in front of a double door made of ebony wood. Beautiful runes were carved into these two doors, and when Alfred knocked on the door, they even lit up.

To Luz's surprise, who had expected a magnificent being to open the door, a messy girl with an enormous mage's hat covering half her face swung open the door. The girl reacted the same way Luz did since she expected a package, not Alfred, with a new arrival.

"Argh, weren't you supposed to come like in an hour," cursed the female, who was surprised and embarrassed at the same time.

Alfred laughed it off before remarking, "I'll leave that young lad in your care for an hour or so.""Fine," sighed the girl before shifting her gaze towards Luz. But before she could drag the boy inside, Alfred hastily remarked: "The boy needs three different sets of clothes and three general shirts…"

However, before Alfred could continue, the girl angrily closed the door and muttered, "Don't worry, I'll take care of it, old geezer."

"Did she really close the door before I could finish my sentence?" asked Alfred, baffled, shaking his head.

"What an annoying girl," remarked Alfred in response to her rude action before resuming with his other tasks.

What Luz saw inside shocked him since a few crochet hooks were flying in the air crocheting various clothing parts. But that wasn't the only thing inside. This girl had a goddamn library for herself, and there were even a few skeletons sweeping the room.

'What the hell is going on?' thought Luz in amazement and awe.

Seeing him in such a state, the girl commented in amusement: "In shock, huh?"

"Yes, of course," stammered Luz, who fazed out.

Only now did Luz glance at her face, and the girl in front of him had hazelnut shoulder long brown hair, combined with jade green eyes. She had a human-like appearance if it weren't for the strange form of her ears.

"Well, if people can have different eye colors, they can probably have different ear shapes," Luz considered, without looking further into the situation.

It was only now that Luz noticed that the girl had changed her clothes as soon as he entered the room. Instead of her evening dress which exposed her body quite a bit, she wore now an emerald green blouse with a fitting skirt that went below her knees. The only that didn't change was that she still wore her big mage hat and that just like him, she still looked tired.

"Handsome boy, do you want that older sister to spoil you~?" she whispered in a seductive voice into Luz's ear, sending shivers down his spine.

Seeing how the lad got goosebumps from her words, she chuckled before telling Luz: "Now that I got your attention, follow me. We gotta take some measurements so that I can tailor a few sets of clothes for you.

After the two arrived at her workbench, she immediately took out a pair of glasses and a measurement stick before telling him with a grin going from one ear to the other. From what he had seen of her so far, he expected the worst, and he wasn't wrong."Young lad. Strip yourself down to the underwear, for me.~" she commented. "Excuse me?" commented Luz, who didn't expect that.

"Fine, I'm gonna do it myself," she sighed, and invisible hands immediately came out of nowhere, stripping the protesting man down to his underwear against his wishes. After that, they grabbed his limbs tightly while one of the hands shut his mouth tightly.

And so she diligently took her measurements while a floating notebook noted them down and anything else that was unusual. While doing that, she proudly stated how she had stripped all the servants till now. But when she took measurements for Luz's thorax, her jolly mood immediately turned into something serious, and her pupils shrunk.

"Damn… Something is seriously wrong with your mana core. Tell me, what the hell did you do? After I finish a simple set of clothes for you, we'll take a closer look," she remarked in a stern tone before the mana hand that forced him to shut up vanished.

Author note: Well, I quickly finished another chapter, hopefully, I haven't overdone it with the descriptions and well next chapter will probably come out after the 25th.