After returning to the academy grounds, they directly went to the headmaster’s quarters. He resided in a small house in the residential area where all elders lived and currently the truck sized Neo was dozing off at the entrance. Either he recognized the newcomers or didn’t care, elder Fata and Alex entered undisturbed.

The spacious living room only had single table and chair as well as a couch, and a tea table at it, if one didn’t count the shelves at the walls full of books. At first Alex was surprised seeing the simplicity headmaster lived in, but it did make sense since it fit his character well.

“Here!” Headmaster’s voice came from a smaller room.

“How is he?” Elder Fata asked seeing her student lying on a bed while headmaster kept applying a dark green, weird smelling paste on him.

The sun through the small window directly shone on the bed accentuating Reino’s pale complexion, but at least he was alive.

“Not bad at all considering where he fell from.” Headmaster said, “Obviously he has a concussion and multiple broken bones, but nothing a few weeks of rest can’t fix. What did you find out?”

“Reino was attacked by Bullco Deriva and his silver crow, but undoubtedly there was someone else involved, because he left without a trace, most likely with the help of someone’s avian spiritbeast.” Elder Fata reported.

“Deriva?” Headmaster furrowed his brows, “They are one of the great families, but why …”

“That’s the boy we expelled a couple of months back.” Elder Fata said, “He already had multiple offenses and the last was his attack on Reino during the beast core hunt. From what I heard, he was later banished from his family as well and left taking away quite a few precious heirlooms. In fact, Deriva’s have been looking for him all this time.”

‘What the hell? While it’s completely normal for one to empty the treasury if they got kicked out, in the world riddled with monstrous beasts there is a chance someone can’t be found? No wonder I couldn’t smell anything!’ Alex thought to himself.

“To think we taught such person for years.” Headmaster sighed.

“The world is full of bad people.” Elder Fata shrugged, “The question is – how do we find him?”

“No need, Deriva family will take care of it – I’ll write a letter to their head tomorrow informing him we spotted his former son. Luckily Reino is safe, but we’ll have to raise the question about the security of our students in the elder council.” Headmaster said.

They talked for a while more and the subject of Alex finally responding was also raised. Luckily none of the present was in the mood of immediately exploring it, thus he was left alone for now.

During the next days Reino remained unconscious, but to Alex’s surprise his relatives didn’t come to visit. In the end he figured that the headmaster simply didn’t inform them because the kid’s condition wasn’t that bad.

For the time being they both could stay in headmaster’s place and, while it was convenient with the old man taking care of Reino, it came with a downside for Alex, or so it seemed at first.

On the second day headmaster called him into the living room ‘for a talk’. He sat on the couch and attentively observed Alex for a couple minutes while sipping tea.

“Since there is no need for us to continue playing hide and seek, we can finally talk like grownups, don’t you think?” Headmaster finally said with a wide smile.

Alex looked back at him silently. Even if he had a human body, he wouldn’t answer that.

“Let me ask you this – do you have a human consciousness?” The old man asked and continued to observe the wolf pup in front of him.

During the past weeks Alex multiple times played out this conversation in his mind, and even though he knew how he intended to answer, he still hesitated.

Feeling it, headmaster said, “If you are, I give you my word I’ll treat you as a human from now on and no one, including me will touch you against your will. Exactly the opposite – I’ll tell you everything I know about the situation you might be in and we can try to figure a way out, for your next life that is.”

‘Even though the chances of him realistically helping me are slim, this offer is much better that anything I imagined.’ Alex thought and nodded. In fact, there was nothing for him to loose anyway.

“Great! You see, you caused quite the confusion when you helped Reino to find the beast cores. Those mechanisms were made by the previous headmaster and were supposed to serve as a test for the future generations in order to find a group of young geniuses who will, according to my predecessor, restore Lionsburg to its former glory. It should’ve been four people and their four spiritbeasts to accomplish it, but … well … you two did it and the headmaster’s prophecy turned out to be wrong.” The old man explained.

‘No wonder. While it wasn’t that hard for me to find out, realistically I’m over thirty and have a bit of experience. Any of the elders in the academy would’ve done it easily as well. But for the kids who learn here those places are hard to find, especially since no one says they should look for them. In addition, everyone there considers each other a competition and don’t have any intention to cooperate.’ Alex thought to himself.

This text was taken from Royal Road. Help the author by reading the original version there.

Seeing the wolf nod, headmaster continued, “Let me ask you this – were you in some way related to the academy in your former life?”

When Alex shook his head, headmaster exclaimed in surprise, “Not bad! Then you definitely had a previous experience with formations, right?.”

Alex looked back and tried to shrug. What could he say? The alarm systems he dealt with were basically the formations of the modern world. And even though he never created one, he cracked quite a few.

“Alright then, since the misunderstanding is cleared, let’s talk.” Headmaster said.

And they talked, a lot. The old man soon realized that the man in wolf’s skin knew how to write, at least some words and quickly relocated them outside where Alex could draw words with paw in the sand. They continued to converse till late evening and then through the next day taking only short breaks to take care of Reino and even then the headmaster went on explaining the principles of the medicine here.

Alex ‘told’ him about the technological advancement in world he came from, of course skipping the details about his second and third lives, meanwhile headmaster explained the most popular theories on reincarnation and potential ways for Alex to return to being human again. Basically all of them revolved about practicing the force of nature in order to reverse Alex’s soul from degrading after the suicide.

When the headmaster tried to came up with new meditation methods that could be practiced while in wolf’s skin, elder Fata, who joined them at some point, suggested that if Alex wanted to be reborn as human again, he should do as many things as possible ‘the human way’, including the cultivation of the force of nature, and the other two quickly agreed.

Since Alex already could feel the force of nature, headmaster taught him a couple more advanced techniques that were usually taught to the second and third year students. In this regard the wolf pup being a beast had clear advantages compared to his human owner who only began his long journey in the cultivation world, especially since he somehow managed to already advance to rank four.

Regarding the latter part trio also discussed a lot since any spiritbeast ranking up was not only a rare occasion, but directly served as increase in their strength. Unfortunately Alex didn’t know when exactly it happened to him, but after some explanations and deductions he figured it out, but even then he only could describe the external factors and physical feelings he had at the time with the obvious one being the growth of his abilities.

While this information did not help the two expert beastmasters right away, it was a unique opportunity for them to learn it directly from a spiritbeast and will definitely be useful in the future attempts to potentially create techniques for their own spiritbeasts to raise in ranks.

They probably would’ve continued this discussion for a week or more, but were disturbed by the arrival of Satra, Reino’s mom. She somehow caught the wind of her son getting injured and immediately ran to the academy.

While it was relatively normal for people to get injured, Reino was still only ten years old thus she immediately demanded to let her take him home. There were no reasons for anyone to disagree and since he was stable, Satra brought her son home. Alex, obviously, went as well.

Of course, he promised headmaster to continue their discussions after he returned to the academy, but in all honesty Alex didn’t give a damn about the old man’s research. All he wanted was to spend his life cultivating the force of nature even if he had to pretend to be a guard dog just to not be one in the next life.

Currently he was in a convenient position – only two people knew his actual identity and Reino’s parents only considered it normal for the young pup to prefer to be around his master, especially since the latter was injured. Thus while Reino was unconscious in the bed, Alex lie in the same room, meditating undisturbed.

The cultivation process in the wolf’s body was somewhat inconvenient since he couldn’t sit in the regular meditative position like it was required, but Alex quickly got used to it. While the effect supposedly was reduced, he had no way of verifying that, thus he chose to simply ignore it.

Days quickly passed by and Reino soon regained his consciousness. He had no recollection of what happened and was surprised to find himself in his old room that only had a bed, wardrobe and table with chair in it. But he enjoyed the pleasant feeling of his mom taking care of him. Of course, after he woke up, she heaved a sigh of relief and could finally return to her regular duties while paying less attention to her little darling.

Reino didn’t mind though. Danilo was still on his first assignment from the academy and father – on a hunting expedition. Thus he was mostly left home alone.

While he would’ve preferred to practice at the academy or at least read, he was not allowed to. Since he knew that the sooner he gets better the sooner he’ll go back, Reino forced himself to sleep while his trustful wolf pup remained by his side.

For Alex, of course, this was the best possible situation. No disturbances, no inconveniences. No one was running around the house making sounds or … smells?

‘Wait! Something’s wrong!’ Alex suddenly realized.

He had the similar euphoric feeling when they sat on the cliff days ago and back then he also could not sense anything out of order. Later, when he thought about it, he realized that not only he couldn’t sense anything out of order, he couldn’t smell anything at all and for some reason didn’t find it disturbing. And currently the atmosphere in the house was the same!

‘Motherf*ckers! In the middle of the day?! They are clearly using the same substance … don’t tell me that after the attack no one from the academy or at least from the Deriva family came to watch over this house!’ Alex cursed when he noticed a shadow of someone silently moving on the other side of the door.

He glanced over at Reino who was deep asleep and inwardly grinned, ‘A guard dog, huh?’

Afterwards, as quietly as he could, he jumped on the desk, then on the wardrobe and then lied down while holding his breath. The invader didn’t let him wait for too long. The door silently opened and Alex saw the familiar face entering the room.

Bullco had a long, thin sword, something similar to a rapier, in his hand and was intently looking around, probably searching for him or some other spiritbeast guarding Reino who was soundly sleeping.

Alex didn’t try anything fancy. He directly dropped on Bullco’s shoulder and sank his fangs in the neck tearing off as large piece of the throat as he could muster before biting in once again. But this time he didn’t let go despite the stinging pain that assaulted him from the repeated stabs in his abdomen.

The gurgling sounds Bullco made while trying to scream from pain was like a music to Alex’s ears and he understood his quick defense plan was a success.

‘Ok, kiddo, good luck! There was someone from the Deriva family on the guard after all.’ Alex thought when he heard a man charging in wildly roaring curses at the devil spawn from their family.

Alex’s vision began to blur, but even then he didn’t let go and while continuing to focus on revolving the force of nature within him.

‘If there is a God, he can’t say I degraded in this life, can he?’ Was Alex’s last thought.