Bittersweet

"Isn't he hating me too much?" Huvel smiled bitterly as he had that thought.

He was working on improving his mana pool while he was waiting for new stocks of ingredients for potion making. He absorbed world energies around him and converted them to mana that his body could store. After converting and storing more mana than his mana pool could handle, he released the excess mana through some spells and repeated that routine.

Before, world energy around his room was so small and dispersed that he could only complete a routine once a day. But, currently, there was a large amount of dark energy in his neighbourhood. The amount was large enough for him to repeat the routine 4 or 5 times. That dark energy was actually the negative emotions from the direction of Laurent's room.

The Dark Grimoire stated that one with Dark Prowess could use dark emotions in the place of world energies to make mana. Before, Huvel discovered that he could get some mana when he ate the vegetables in his meals which he concluded to be the effect of Light Prowess. Though, it was not very useful because the amount of mana obtained that way was too small.

He thought negative emotions would be the same way – the amount of mana that could be made using them would be very small. Thus, he was genuinely surprised to learn that he could get a lot of mana from Laurent's emotions.

"He is a mascot for me! He is a big help to me even when he hates me!" Huvel had a broad smile on his face as he thought. "Then, should I torture him a little more?!"

"Achoo!" Laurent in the next room had a sneeze.

It was already in the afternoon when he woke up. He felt better than he thought he would be in just one day. His back was not in pain. The most wonderful thing was that he longer felt the hot pain in his bottom – a suffering that felt like sitting on a burning firewood. The recovery was too fast that he felt a little bad for cussing the culprit for a whole day.

He got up to wash his face. He glanced to the door that was a few steps away as he exited his room.

"It's a relief that the young sir kept his promise and did not try to do anything yesterday." He sighed. "Anyway, I can't let him know that I've already recovered."

He could not bath the day before although he felt very gross because his back was too sore to move. He washed his whole body thoroughly before he left the bath. Shortly after he returned to his room, a knock rung on his door.

"Mister Armon, I'm bringing in your lunch." A servant voice followed after the knock.

"Is it already lunch time? Come in." Laurent replied. He was not aware that the sun had already past overhead.

"It is already two hours after lunch time. The meal was already cold but master ordered me to warm these up when you woke up. And this is a pain killer pill master gave you to have after lunch. Then take your time. I'll come again and collect the tray later." The servant said and left the room.

"The young sir still sees me like a human!" Laurent was touched.

He had the lunch and stayed in his room for the whole day. In fact, he planned not to leave the room until the end of the week. Since he was relieved of pain, he slept early in the night. He was already in deep sleep when Huvel came to his room. He locked his room before sleeping. However, he was not actually safe because Huvel had the master key of all rooms in the house.

Huvel inspected Laurent' body with his spell.

"His body is fine now. He should not feel back pain anymore. My potion is actually decent. But it still didn't show effects immediately. I need to work on that later." He thought.

"Let's see, hmm… his anal inners are also healing well. It might still hurt a little since this is his first time and the inners were bruised. It's too bad that this world did not have lubricant products." He sighed inwardly. "Now that I think about it, should I make some lubricants for sex? Last time, when I applied the potion, it had enough moisture and lubricating properties to let my finger slip in well. Maybe, I can make something based on that!"

He was excited with the thought of inventing something new to the world and stood up before he remembered something and looked at Laurent.

"By the way, there is not much dark energy now. He doesn't hate or resent me anymore?" He thought and slowly shook his head. He left the room quietly.

-----

"Then, I'll leave now Sir Huvel," Laurent said as he slightly bowed his head. "Thank you for your patronage."

Laurent was all smile since he woke up. He still held a grudge against Huvel for doing many things to him but he was happy because he could finally leave his house! Their contract had ended. He put on his best clothes to celebrate the day. He also wore a thin muffler around his neck to hide the love bites.

"Are you leaving now? I thought you would stay one more day if I made you unable to walk. But you can actually walk today. Your endurance is really astonishing." Huvel bluntly said, wearing a face that looked sad.

Laurent almost face-palmed himself. On the third day after their first intercourse, Huvel discovered him being completely recovered. He bedded him several times since that day. Even if he locked himself in the room, Huvel barged in using a spare key and did indecent things to him in the name of punishment for running away. He could not get a peace of mind even for a single day.

Laurent shook his head as if he was refusing to remember the past few days.

"If I stay one more day, I might really die." He copied Huvel's style of saying things bluntly.

"You are not suited for such scary words." Huvel said bitterly. "Go back and rest well. I will visit you next month."

"Huh? I've received the payment, sir. You don't need to visit me again!" Laurent blurted.

"Don't be so mean to me my dear Laurent," said Huvel; he had recovered his usually grin. "I'm just afraid that you would miss our passionate days too much. I don't want you to be lonely and wet yourself by having dreams of me."

"What?!..."

Laurent was dumbfounded by Huvel's shameless speech. His face was red in anger and embarrassment. He did not say any more word to Huvel and got onto the carriage. He left the gate of Mastero courtyard, without looking back once.