Victor, followed by Lily, reached the basement quickly and knocked on the door then opened it, Hana was there busy looking with interest at a glass beaker that had a red liquid bubbling within. She was adjusting the temperature.

“You reached this stage already?” Victor asked in surprise, Hana was more gifted than he expected. This was the last step of formulating the blood pill. He expected her to take at least a couple of days!

“Yeah… Once the purification is finished, The Pill will be finished.” she said, “This will have to boil for another day though…”

“I don’t mind, this means you would have some free time to look at this…” he said as he gave her a notepad which she took and began to leaf through immediately. She was already amazed by the pill recipe he gave her in the morning, it overturned everything she knew!

“Oh, This is just a shapeshifter pill…” she said with disappointment as she read it, making Victor begin to wonder how common this thing was. “Wait… why are you using black windflowers and gold dust? This makes no sense?” Hana looked at him. The black windflowers were a kind of poison.

“This is a special kind with a much longer effect time!” He said as he took two bulging sacks from his ring and put them to the side, “I need you to make me 300 Pills… and it has to be done tomorrow!” he said.

“It can’t be done!”

“Take this, it is your reward, it has the recipes for 35 rare pills!” he interrupted as he gave her another notebook.

“Your pills will be done by noon tomorrow!” she said as she snatched it from his hand. For Alchemists, Recipes were everything as they were usually kept secrets by their owners, and only taught to very specific trustworthy people. The rarer a recipe was, the more expensive the pill would be, even if making it cost nothing!

“That’s good!” he said as he took a bottle of blood from his ring. “This is the target’s blood, make sure not to mix it with the ones you are using for the blood pill!” He warned as he gave Hana Nova's blood that he took the night he kidnapped her.

“What target blood? Didn’t the shapeshifter pill require hair strands?” she said as she carefully inspected the blood and then stored it in a separate compartment.

“This one is special…” he said, as he took an additional small blood bottle, “Make a couple of pills with this too…”

“Fine… I know what to do!” she said, “Do you want anything else?” she asked as she began to flip through her new recipes, not even caring why he needed that many pills.

“Not really…” He hesitated, “Oh, You might have not heard, but I am planning a mass wedding…”

“And?” she looked at him with a frown.

“Do you want to be a bride too? I don’t mind taking you as a concubine…” he asked, making Lily bite her little lip.

“Nope… We already have a deal!” she interrupted coldly. “I only do alchemy work for you!” she added, making Lily sigh in relief as she began to look at Hana in a positive light. She liked this girl.

“Oh…Don’t be angry, I just wanted to ask… You never know, I am that handsome after all!” he said, raising his shoulders.

“This is irrelevant! I would never marry you, even if you were the last man on earth!” she spat making Lily angry again.

“Are you into women then?”

“No! Why would you ask that?”

“Just wondering…” he said as he walked out without saying what was on his mind. It seemed that Hana still needed a lot of cooking to be ready. He needed another approach to get her.

Would she like him if he turned himself into a young boy? Nah, It would be very hard, and maybe borderline illegal! But… This was not a bad idea...

Lily frowned. Why was her young master smiling like an idiot?

…

In a dimly lit menacing meeting room, nine masters were sitting around a black marble table for their semiyearly meeting.

“Now that we finished discussing the budget for fixing the lights in this rotten base and no longer need to literally be a dark chamber, we can move on to the next subject at hand, the case of Victor Von Weise’s degenerate marriage!” a pretty secretary who was standing to the side said sarcastically as many assistants moved a stake of 10 files, distributing them around the table in front of each of the masters, and one in front of an empty chair.

“Yeah, I heard about that pervert Victor in the news. Didn’t we already agree to let him be? Why are we raising this?” a giant man who was at the bottom of the table said.

“Complications! From what we know, the bride escaped!” the secretary said, “And just today, Victor went to an Alchemist and bought ingredients for a shapeshifting pill, we think he will make the Alchemist he bought at the auction, Hana, prepare it for him!”

“Oh, I didn’t notice that… Now I understand what he is after,” one of the two women at the table said. “This little rat is smarter than he appears to be…”

“Fourth, you are the one responsible for the Wiren principality? What’s going on?” the young man at the head of the table said in a stoic voice.

“Ah… Yes… To tell the truth, this is very complicated. As you heard, Nova, the bride, ran away on the night Victor planned to propose to her! We have been searching for her but to no avail, but that girl simply vanished!” she explained.

“Nova? Nova Von Astrom? Isn’t she one of the girls on Caspian's secret list?” the other woman asked as she flipped to a certain page in the file in front of her confirming her knowledge, “Could it be that Caspian took her away?”

“No…Caspian has nothing to do with this,” An old man shook his head, “He had been busy conquering an A-ranked dungeon since last month and only returned to the sect yesterday. His mansion did get a message from her asking for help though!“

“Oh…”

“Victor seemed to have changed the wedding plan so that he would marry at least five women at once!” The secretary explained. “He described it as a dragon ceremonial wedding!”

“And now with the addition of the shapeshifting pills, we know why… He is definitely planning to change the bride and hide this in the chaos!” the fourth explained, “He plans to marry Nova, even if it were in name only! He was probably told about Caspian by his sister…”

“Would her family let him?” a man who was silent until now asked.

“Luliana, Nova’s mother, is already under too much pressure, she would be helpless to stop him. If news got out about her daughter’s escape, her son would lose all leverage in the family! And maybe even her stupid husband would be implicated!” the fourth said.

“Oh… and are we going to let Victor get away with this?” the giant man said with a smirk. He likes ruining other plans

“Do we need to? Caspian will definitely be there to crash the wedding!” the old man said. “You guys already know that he can’t simply let go of that girl!”

“Yeah, Caspian will definitely make trouble, but he is not the only one!” the fourth said, “Linda, that bitch is planning to cast a curse on Victor, she already asked our agent Kiki to buy some materials for her… From what I get, she plans to cast a nasty curse… from the materials she ordered, we believe that she will summon a netherworld succubus!”

“Oh… This is a mess…” the first said coldly as he pondered. “An utter mess…”

“I already sent master Amon to Vein city, he should be able to…”

“Interesting!” a man with thick glasses sitting to the side suddenly said interrupting master Fourth as he looked at the file in his hand.

“What’s the problem, second?” the first said.

“I have been wondering who would be Nova’s replacement. And from the data we have it can be one of seven girls…. I would bet that it would be that girl Lily…” he said. “She is Victor’s favorite!”

“And? Isn’t she a maid? He can just f*ck her all he wants!” the giant said.

“Watch it with your language, Tenth!” the first said.

“We already looked at her, Victor probably wants to marry her as his main wife despite his family’s objection!” the fourth said casually.

“That’s not the point!” the second interjected, “Did you see what she looks like?”

The fourth frowned, then opened the file in her hand, finding nothing. She began to touch the screen in front of her searching for data, then frowned.

“Exactly!” The second said, “There are two photos for her! One was captured at school, where she appeared ugly, and the other is from the data we got from the Von Weise archives… Although she looks younger, she is definitely a beauty!” he explained, “Now, why would Victor be ordering her to disguise herself? He makes her wear a veil all the time! There is definitely something here!”

“Oh… he is hiding a beauty beside him…” the other woman at the table chuckled. “It’s not unheard of for a man to be a little protective… I heard too many stories about the elders snatching their offspring brides!''

The first and second nodded.

“IMPOSSIBLE!” It was the old man who yelled and stood up after being startled. He even knocked his chair to the ground as he pointed to the screen as if seeing a ghost.

“What’s the problem, old fifth?” the first said.

“THIS GIRL, SHE LOOKS JUST LIKE VENUS WHEN SHE WAS YOUNG!”

“Venus?”

“VENUS VON KRONE!” he said, “No wonder Victor is hiding her, that bastard definitely knows! This girl is definitely a hidden Von Krone Princess!”

“What?” everyone said at the same time as they began to poke at their respective screens searching for the relative data.

"They do look similar indeed..." someone said.

“The head of the academy, That fat man John Trove, is a suspect of being a Von Krone agent…” the second said after a few minutes. “This….”

“Then that means…”

“Let’s not jump to conclusions!” The first said, “We are not sure yet… Even if she is a Von Krone, Victor could be simply hiding her because she is very beautiful…” he proposed.

“It’s definitely possible, but what if he knows her background, and wants to use the wedding to marry her in secret?” the second suggested. “We already know that Victor is smarter than he reveals!”

“The Von Krone family went into hiding 20 years ago. Victor would have no way of knowing about them…” another middle-aged man who kept silent until now said.

“Victor is definitely not to be underestimated… We already suspect that he has a hand in killing Dick…” another said.

“What to do then?” the third asked.

“Let’s just watch the fun for now! We don't have to do anything. The Von Krone would absolutely refuse to marry their princess to Victor, they might show their tail at the wedding!” the first said. ”And little Caspian would definitely be there. It would surely be an utter mess, and everything would be revealed,” he explained coldly.

“The Von Weise family’s reputation would be in an utter mess and Victor would have to bear all the responsibility!” the giant said.

“And what if he succeeded?” The fifth asked with a frown, “Victor would be in a very strong position with a marriage alliance with the Von Rosen, the Von Astrom, and maybe even the Von Krone!”

“That would be bad for our agents…” the second said. “Victor already has a good relationship with the Von Geldstadt family! He is friends with that Gary, and they plan to send that crippled girl Elise to marry him very soon. He is too powerful to be left alone!”

“Then we have to kill Victor… The wedding would be a perfect chance. If it ended successfully, I would order master Amon to strike!” the third said.

“I think we should let Linda do it…”

“Tobias Von Geldstadt would be a good candidate to pull the trigger…”

“No… We will do nothing about that!” the first said suddenly, silencing everyone. “It would be a huge waste to kill such a perfect piece….” he added.

“Then?”

“If against all odds, the wedding was a success, let master Amon check that Lily, then do a complete analysis on Victor. We might just do a little switch and promote a pawn,” he said, making everyone frown and then open their eyes wide as they understood his plan… It was an old plan that they abandoned a few years ago. This time it might just work!

“Janette… begin screening for candidates to implement the frozen A5419 plan… The target is Victor Von Weise…” the first said to his secretary.

“Understood!”

“And keep this hidden from old nine… That pervert might ruin it!”