A few days later,

Mack opened the door of the hotel room and saw Lorin inside, talking with Harlack, but once she noticed that Mack had entered, she gave a small bow to Harlack and another one to Mack and walked out of the room, her walking was yet to improve, but she felt way better with her legs healed, and that could be seen on her serious but joyous expression.

Once Lorin left the room, Mack closed the door while saying, “She seems to be recovering very fast” as a passing comment, with no importance.

“Indeed. Next time, don’t cut people’s legs off, or I will use your contributions to pay for the nano-implant” Said Harlack, but not feeling a bit of pain by using his contributions points to re-grow Lorin’s leg and fingers, for Harlack she was indeed perfect for the plan.

Changing the subject, Mack asked, “So… why did you ask me to come here? You could have just said using the mind link.”

Harlack looked at a silver metal box by his side, and pointing with his nose, said, “They are ready, I thought it would be a good surprise”

Mack looked at the silver box, and indeed, surprise could be seen on his face as he said, “Already? …. but Bantay said it would take two weeks to finish…”

“Just open!” said Harlack, feeling apprehensive already. He had not opened the box and was eager to see the finished work, too.

Mack didn’t make ceremony and quickly removed the locks of the metal box, revealing its contents, but before he could inspect in detail, a paper note caught his attention by the corner.

Mack grabbed the note shook his head slightly and said, “I can’t read” and gave to Harlack.

“I did a few improvements based on your request. I hope you enjoy it. Also, the payment was already taken,” said Harlack, reading the words on the note.

‘Right, the payment. I almost forgot about that, so he already took a small piece of iron from the swords.’

Seeing that Harlack stopped reading and put the note aside, Mack’s gaze went to the Itens inside the metal box, and there he could see a small breastplate, dark red, almost indistinguishable from black, the breastplate color was the natural color of the warlock metal, but instead of slightly shiny like the swords, it was opaque.

Grabbing the breastplate, Mack felt the cold metal in his hands and he slowly passed the fingers over the scales that formed the breastplate, and felt the small and minuscule thorns over each scale that were carver and said “That must have been a lot of work to do, he did as if the breastplate is a huge snake”

Mack put the hand inside the breastplate and felt a soft layer of something akin to leather, then he grabbed a knife a put between two scales and raised one of them, only than Mack noticed that each scale was thin as paper, Mack noticed how the scales connected to each other to form the breastplate and felt that no gap existed between each other, only a direct hit that could come from a odd angle aimed to pierce between them could pass the scales, but that, was no problem for him.

“He did in this way to give you mobility. In old times, people used entire armors made of thousand of scales. It was one of the most impressive ways of doing armors, but took a lot of time to make them, to tell the true, I’m impressed Bantay made this so quickly.” Said Harlack.

Once Harlack said that, Mack nodded and said, “I will try using it”, then he removed his typical warlock clothes but kept his ‘shark skin like’ battle suit that covered his entire body, and said Indeed,” while nodding when putting the breastplate. The leather inside was good and didn’t cause discomfort, and once Mack put the breastplate over his body, the rear of it connected by itself as if was magnetic.

“Just for the breastplate design and those magnetic buttons at my back, I can tell that Bantay is indeed very talented as a blacksmith”

But once the breastplate covered around his torso, from the neck to his waist, Mack noticed something else going on, he felt the surrounding essence different but didn’t know what happened; he looked at Harlack as if to ask for an explanation, but the old man kept a smile plastered on his face as a child would when doing a mischief.

“What?” asked Mack, a bit angry already but also a bit curious. He could tell that the old fogey had done something.

To Mack’s frustration, the corners of the old man’s mouth curled up even more, but he didn’t say anything.

“What? Tell me already!” Said Mack, shaking both arms in front of him as if not understanding what was happening and begging to know.

“Look for yourself,” said Harlack, conjuring something akin to a mirror made of water from nowhere.

Mack never saw the old man create ‘a spell’ like this before, but his focus when to the image reflected on the water mirror, because there, Mack could see a red bloody ‘V’ letter in the middle of the breastplate.

“The fuck? A V?” but then Mack remembered the oath he made to himself back when on the third floor of the tower. The cringe scene of him promising to become ‘fear itself’ than cutting his own hand in a ‘V’ for vengeance and dropping blood on the ground. “That! You remembered! Fuck! That was way to cringe! Even for me!” said Mack, slapping his own face in shame.

“The paint will fade in a few minutes, but your face! ohhhhh god! That was worthy! HAHAHAH”! Laughed Harlack, almost losing balance and falling on the ground.

Mack sulked in shame and awkward, but didn’t say anything. He could only endure. Someday he would have his vengeance against this bald devil and his bald blacksmith.

‘Endure Mack, endure! This ‘bald evil union’ will fall someday, just like the hair in their heads.’