"This will be your quarters for the night sir," the maid, whose name Jacob already forgot out of habit said as she bowed at him with a polite, well-practiced smile. Her long brown hair flowed up and down as she raised her head and gestured inside, "if you need any of us, just ring the bell on the right side of the bed,"

"I will, thanks," Jacob said as he walked inside the spacious room, years of going to hotels and the like had already made him used to the fact that maids like the one closing the door behind him aren't simply necessary to be remembered, come to think of it, what are the chances that she'd be the one to go here the moment that Jacob rings the bell?

Undoubtedly pretty low, unless the Duke wants to spy on him and thus, sending in someone like her repeatedly under the guise of a "personal maid" would be a pretty good move on his part.

Okay, maybe he was getting a bit paranoid about the Duke's motives, but he can't really help it, Duke Lezatian is a pretty complicated man and Jacob had seen a bit of the man's wants with their talk about his "explosion" spell earlier. A tired sigh escaped Jacob's mouth as he laid down on the queen sized bed and thought about what the Duke had said to him earlier-

"I see, so this spell of yours is capable of creating some sort of... temporary... explosion? Was it?" Duke Lezatian's expression was that of intrigue as he steepled his fingers together and leaned closer to Jacob's face, the butler that he had called into the study looked old and grizzled, a clear sign that he has been working for the Duke for... probably most of his life.

Possibly even when Duke Lezatian himself was still a child.

Said Butler- who didn't introduce himself, oddly enough, - is currently taking down notes with a calm stride and focused face, as though Jacob's words held some semblance of the truth of the universe and that wasting a single second not listening to his explanation is the greatest sin of all. When Jacob nodded, he saw the butler perk up as the fingers that held the quill tensed up, ready to write down his words as he said them.

"Yes," Jacob answered, fearing for his life at this very moment, he didn't know what the hell he just introduced to this world by telling the Duke about explosions of all things. Really, he should've thought better than trying to impress the man earlier, "what it does is fairly simple, it grabs the nearby mana, then creates a reaction that makes it so that the energy reacts violently, and thus creating an explosion that you can similarly see in weapons like the Flintlock pistol,"

"Interesting, very interesting." The Duke replied, smiling. "And how is your research going? I wanna see the results for themselves if I were, to be honest,"

Jacob scratched the back of his head as a fake show of being sheepish, this was an opportunity that he simply couldn't miss, with the right answer, he can possibly get the Duke off his back and since Horos, a God asked him to grab a Class Ball, Jacob deemed that it must be pretty hard to obtain within Dungeons due to how rare it is and thus- "well, I kind of don't have the class for it at the moment so things are going slow, I hope that I can get a Class Ball soon and change it though,"

The Duke smiled knowingly, "Well, my friend, you don't have to worry," he turned to the Butler and the two exchanged nods, a moment passed and the Butler stood up and left the room and Jacob's blood ran cold as he watched him leave, "I can get one for you, right as long as you promise to show me results in let's say, a month from now."

He was left with no other choice back then but to nod and accept the deal since the Duke "generously" offered him a Class Ball from his personal treasury. Who was he to refuse such a gift? Not even a prodigious mage can do that, not when he doesn't have a noble title of his own, let alone the authority, manpower, personal power, and wealth to go along with it.

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The Duke had him outclassed and Jacob had to smile as he took the Class Ball and placed it inside his Port.

He... had the class ball with him at this very moment but he didn't really want to take it out and use it in fear of someone watching him. And also just in case someone from the Duke's family decided to ask him that they wanted to see the Class Ball, he still thinks that its something that's not typically seen outside of rich households, and though the Duke's family is rich, he assumes that maybe the children are forbidden from seeing it in fear of them grabbing the ball and using it for themselves- hence why the very real fear of the four children of the Duke asking him if he can let them see the Class Ball that their father gave to him as a "gift".

A knock on the door made Jacob's heart rate spike up. Still, he quickly collected himself and yelled, "Coming!" standing up, he fixed his clothes, went to the door, opened it and- "Xecania," he greeted with a brittle smile while looking around the hallway for her father, again, he didn't want to know what the equivalent of a shotgun is in this world, let alone risk it getting pointed at him by a very angry father, "what brings you here?"

If Jacob were to be honest, he didn't really know how to react to the girl standing in front of him, on one hand, she's pretty kind and he didn't exactly mind talking to her, and that's not to mention that she's pretty knowledgeable about the Kingdom and its history, which he currently wants to learn about in order to familiarize himself with the world.

But on the other hand- Xecania's Dad is the only person so far to not react to Jacob in awe or even fear, if anything, Jacob had the impression that the man thought of him as someone entertaining. So really, Jacob didn't know what to do or even say in front of someone like Xecania because, at the end of the day, he's too scared to do anything substantial, let alone be confident.

To his words, a smile and a calm expression was the heiress' response as she said, "I want to continue our conversation earlier, if that's fine with you?"

"Oh- sure! Sure!" Jacob backed off from the door and let it hang, he met Xecania's eyes through the slightly ajar opening and held back a frown. Honestly, Jacob didn't know what's worse, him risking his life by getting the Daughter of the man who owned the mansion he is currently in enter his room or him throwing her out and not letting her inside and risk offending her and the rest of the family by denying one of them into entering his room.

Which by his right, is something that he can do, even if they own the entire thing but medieval customs are weird and Jacob didn't want to risk anything. Denying her should also be the sensible thing to do in this situation but Jacob wanted to trust the girl in front of him, Xecania looked like she didn't want to do anything else other than talk so Jacob thought that letting her in shouldn't be the worse thing that he had taken a risk on.

"Honestly, I didn't expect you to come so suddenly," he started as Xecania stayed outside, feeling awkward, Jacob scratched the back of his neck, "Are you coming in or..?"

"Oh- sorry-" Xecania snapped out of her daze and chuckled, "I just thought that maybe you'd want to do it in our family's library since there are more books there,"

"That'd be great!" Jacob forced a smile and got out of his room way before Xecania entered it, "come on, I'd want to know more about the Dukedom's history, and possibly about other stuff as well,"

He ignored the way Xecania blushed (and assumed it's because she was flustered about their misunderstanding instead of her getting something out of the last few words of his sentence,) and walked down the hallway, the girl in tow.

It was only a little while- of them trying to recover from the awkward atmosphere - later that Jacob realized that he didn't even know where the library was so he turned to Xecania, "uh, I... don't really know where the library is?"

The girl, now recovered, smiled, "thought so, but don't worry- we are technically moving in the right way, we just need to go down the stairs and head back to the way we came," she said, pointing behind her, "there should be a horse or two willing to carry us this late in the night."

Jacob chuckled awkwardly and looked away from Xecania's eyes, "sorry,"

"It's fine." The Heiress replied.

Jacob only hoped that their time in the library won't be as bad or awkward as this one.