The same night as I was about to go to sleep. I heard a knock on my door.

 

KNOCK! KNOCK!

 

Who is it in the middle of the night? I said, “Who is it?”.

 

The reply came, “Young master, this is Sebastian. I am sorry for disturbing you this late at night, but the Duke asks you to come to his office.”.

 

This late at night? What could be so important? Anyway, I was called so I have to go..

 

“Ok, I’ll be there.”, I said. Then I got out of my bed, opened the door and went towards my father’s office.

 

Sebastian had already left, well I told him I ‘ll go so it’s ok.

 

I arrived in front of my father’s office and knocked at the door.

 

KNOCK! KNOCK!

 

I heard my father’s voice say, “Come in.”.

 

I went in and saw my father was there, along with a man wearing a black cloak with a hood. One of the guys from the morning.

 

As soon as he saw me the guy in the cloak put down his hood and bowed and say, “I greet the young master, I am Sieg, leader of the shadows of the Ackerman Dukedom.”.

 

“Shadows?”, I asked with my eyebrows raised.

 

“That’s what they are called.”, said father.

 

“I see, why did you call me this late at night, father?”, I said.

 

“It’s about the training you mentioned. They were busy so I could only contact them at this hour. Anyway, Sieg here will be the one to train you. Hear the details from him.”, said father.

 

“I see. Thank you, father.”, I said to father and he nodded.

 

I then turned to Sieg and said, “Thank you for agreeing to teach me.”.

 

Sieg said, “No, it’s an honor for me to be able to teach the young master. Actually, I never thought I will be able to teach the young master, considering my profession.”.

 

I nodded and said, “Alright, what’s the schedule?”.

 

“Ahem. Yes, I don’t have any missions for a while so we can start from tomorrow and do it almost every day, I will be training you in alternate days with Kent. So, tomorrow you will train with me instead of Kent and the next day with Kent and so on. And me and the Duke have already talked with Kent so that our training is kept a secret. So that the madame doesn’t know”, said Sieg.

 

“Alright.”, I said.

 

“Then you may leave.”, said father.

 

“Yes..um..before I go,  I would like to ask you something Mr. Sieg.”, I said.

 

“Yes, young master. What is it?”, asked Sieg.

 

“The way you came in, in the morning. Do you always come in that way? Because from what I can see, I don’t think you came in through the main door now as I would have known if that were the case.”, I said.

 

Well, it’s true as him coming in would cause a decent amount of commotion to at least reach Cindy.

 

Yet from what it looked like, there wasn’t even anyone waiting outside the door of the office to escort the guest out as they would normally do.

 

Sieg answered, “No, young master. We shadows usually appear inside the office through a warp portal made exclusively for us. This is it.”.

 

With this he showed a rectangular silver block of metal with a magic circle inscribed on it. It was designed like a solid metal book with the magic circle as it’s cover. It’s not a real book though as it cannot be flipped or has any pages, it is a solid lump of metal.

 

“Each member of the shadows has one and they can use it to directly teleport to the Duke. There are 30 of us in total. But in order to do that we have to channel our magic in it. This morning, we came back from a long and hard mission and we barely had any magic left. So, we used the little magic we had left to teleport safely in front of the mansion so that no outsiders can see us. We, had no other choice.”, said Seig.

 

“I see. Ok, then I’ll see you tomorrow.”, I said and left and went to bed excited for the training that starts tomorrow.