" Lord Ravan, welcome to my humble workshop " Lily the dwarf said with a smile on her face as Max strotted inside the cramped workshop with confidence.
" Welcome " the tiny apprentice repeated as Max resisted the urge to fiddle his curly dwarf hair as he took a seat.
" Master alchemist Lily, it's a pleasure to meet you " Max said politely, but did not go out of his way to butter Lily up.
As everyone took a seat, there was a brief moment of awkward silence which was broken by Severus's question
" If you don't mind me asking, why did you choose to put us at number6 when better vampire clans like the Caesar's are behind? " Severus asked curiously as he looked straight into Lily's eyes, gauging her expressions as she answered.
Lily chuckled a bit and then said " It's because a Lord came personally to recruit me and the fact that I've heard about the legendary exploits of the rising star of the vampire monarchy.
Rumours say your Lord is an unmatched tactician whose talent can only be considered inferior to Shakuni the terrifying.
Since such a reputable man has come personally to meet me, I must show respect where respect is due ".
The size of Lily's pupils did not dilate or constrict as she said these words, making Severus believe that what she said was the truth.
Nodding, Severus seemed satisfied with her answer.
" Indeed I too believe in giving respect where it's due " Max said as he paused and scanned the current state of Lily's lab.
It was spotless and clean with every alchemic ingredient neatly stored in their flasks or containers, that were labelled and sorted alphabetically.
Lily seemed to be as meticulous as the rumours made her out to be which is why Max decided to take a more frank approach to the conversation as he understood that a person with such a meticulous nature would be only interested in getting straight to the point and no other bullshit.
" In terms of offering environmental advantages, my territory might not be the best suited for you.
I cannot provide you with the semi-divine burners like at the big potion headquarters or give research grants as big as the monarchies.
What I can provide you with is lots of manpower at your disposal to gather any resource that you might need, a reasonable research grant and an undisturbed research environment for your alchemical practices.
Also, due to a recent lucky encounter, I've managed to get my hands on a lot of ancient alchemical potions and refinement methods.
One's used by the magi during the chaos war.
If you choose to join our organisation, I'll hand over all the acquired research materials and formulas over to you and even let you keep 30% of all profits from the potions sold from those formulas if you find a way to commercialise it and help start a mass production facility.
My dream is to transform a particular planet in my territory where it rains 24× 7 into an alchemical research heaven.
I'm already investing heavily in the construction of state of the art lab spaces on the planet and constructing a logistics port to ensure the smooth delivery of ingredients and shipment of produced goods.
If a reputed master alchemist like you does join us, it'll draw many young aspiring alchemists to settle on the planet as well which will be beneficial in creating a knitted community.
Naturally this project can be shaped by your guidance and be called your baby-child if you wish to do so, and this way, if it becomes something impressive in the future all credit will belong to you.
I don't want to recruit you to use your prowess to develop new products for the military, and don't even want to restrict your freedom at all.
The only thing I want is to lure as many talents as possible to my territory and I'm willing to pay a fair price to get them" Max said as he summed up the stance of the Bloodfall clan perfectly.
Lily pursed her lips as she heard this offer as this one had really put her into a big dilemma.
She had rejected BigPotions despite their confidence in snagging her up for having semi-divine burners that could help achieve high purity in advanced potions.
The reason for that rejection was because BigPotions already had three master alchemists and one grandmaster in their fold.
Although the benefits were good, she was going to have to wait patiently to use the burner at times and might not get priority in the organisation.
As for the other monarchies, their offer of pay was high and she had a lot of scope to grow there with promises of all her purchase orders being fulfilled, however, all of them wanted her to help develop and research potions that could be weaponized or used for biological enhancement, a field of research that she was not keen on delving.
Ravan's offer on the other hand did not promise to pay for all her resource requirements which meant that she could not be wasteful with her experiments and would need to often buy expensive stuff with her own money, but he also offered her lost research that could be invaluable and a way to make money together should she find anything of value within those lost notes.
His idea to create an alchemical hub was also appealing to Lily as she did intend to create a school of thought of her own now that she was a master alchemist for which such a tight knitted community of mostly newbies was very useful.
Overall the offer was tempting enough for Lily to consider it seriously, but somehow not attractive enough for her to agree instantly.
In the end she decided to think about the offer carefully as she weighed in the pros and cons of everything that Max said before deciding whether or not she wanted to listen to new offers.
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/// A/N - Chapter 9/30, that's it from my side on day 3 ///