The next morning both travelers opened their eyes before sunrise. After quickly freshening up, they saddled the horses and continued on their way.

Alex was not the quickest learner, but today he felt already much more comfortable in the saddle. Finally he could observe the picturesque scenery around them while crossing forests and fields of the Navada region. They mostly rode in silence each minding their own business, except when from time to time Alex couldn’t hold back his curiosity, of course, for educational reasons.

He learned some stuff about the political and economical situation in the capital as well as the relationship with the nearby countries. Jacobo was not the most chatty person he had met in his lives, but was polite enough to answer Alex’s questions.

While it seemed the man was uncomfortable talking about politics, he was much more relaxed when speaking about his own ‘craft’. Without holding back Jacobo willingly explained why he immediately executed the members of the two noble families and afterwards killed of all their servants as well.

Turns out, the Qi masters were capable of destroying their own heart, thus committing suicide at their will, but the family members and servants were unlikely to know anything useful. Therefore it was more beneficial to brutally execute everyone as a deterrence to others rather expecting to gain anything valuable through interrogation, or rather – torture.

Jacobo was more optimistic about what they would find in Perez family’s castle. Even though Cesar Perez managed to slip away, it was unlikely he would return home – for him it was much more urgent to inform the rebel forces about the events.

Obviously Cesar presented quite a bit of headache to Alex. The man was the strongest Qi master from the two families and, even though he couldn’t compare himself to Jacobo, Alex was a helpless child compared to him. It was a given that at some point the man would come after him, but for the time being Alex could lay low in the city and after five, six years he would grow enough for his previous acquaintances to be unable to recognize him.

With days going by Alex became more and more comfortable on horse’s back and they kept increasing their speed. Even though during the last several days they even switched their horses to arrive as fast as possible, it still took them nine days to reach the capital.

Jacobo didn’t give the reason for doing so, but Alex didn’t care. If the ‘local double-o-seven’ was in a rush, it was important. The only thing that surprised him was the size of the kingdom. Even though it was smaller than the Holy empire, according to Alex’s estimate, they covered close to thousand kilometers. That meant the Hallancia kingdom most likely was bigger than France and Germany combined!

When they arrived at the outskirts of Zamora, the capital of Hallancia, Alex began to wonder why after his third incarnation he continued to incarnate in worlds with medieval culture. Or was the technological advancement focus only in few civilizations?

Watching the long line of merchant and peasant wagons and carriages waiting to be allowed inside the city walls, Alex realized that these people were not much different from their counterparts in the modern world he was once part of.

They had the same problems and joys. Yes, they didn’t have TV’s and toilet paper, but it was more hygienic to wash your butt anyway, rather than smear the sh*t all over like it was a butter on a slice of bread. And regarding the entertainment – maybe it was much more fun to meet your friends and acquaintances in an alehouse after a hard day of work, rather than sit on a couch staring at the TV screen like a zombie.

“Gael!” Jacobo’s shout woke Alex up from daydreaming.

Jacobo had a peculiar token that allowed him to directly enter the city without waiting in the line and even more – the guards saluted them instead of searching while surrounding people watched the two with envy.

After entering Zamora, they rode along the city wall on the inside for ten or so minutes until Jacobo instructed Alex to ‘get down from the horse and grab his stuff’.

Currently they stood at the front door of a relatively large, compared to the other nearby buildings, mansion and the double-o-seven was hammering at its door so hard, Alex thought it could break any moment. Luckily it held out for several minutes until finally a tall and skinny man with an unkempt hair opened it.

“Gael, I brought you help.” The moment man showed his face, Jacobo immediately said without greeting first.

“Don’t want her!” Gael said in a hearse voice after throwing a quick at Alex and intended to shot the door.

While Alex was caught by surprise how Gael instantly recognized him being a girl, Jacobo wasn’t.

“She practices Qi” He said stopping the man from closing the door.

Gael paused for a second, but then shook his head, “Don’t care!”

“She can read and write fluently, you won’t regret it.” Jacobo quickly added.

A case of theft: this story is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Finally Gael turned around and seriously inspected Alex. Meanwhile Alex could take a better look at him as well. It was hard to tell the man’s age – he could be anything between forty and sixty. Obviously he was very indoorsy, but his skin was more gray than pale, even somewhat greenish. The crooked nose accentuated the penetrating stare he currently was casting towards Alex, but latter pretended to not notice it and looked back feigning curiosity.

“Conditions?” Gael asked.

“Just look after her for the time being and don’t let her run off.” Jacobo said, “Of course, the more you’ll teach her, the more useful she will be.”

Gael stared at Alex for few more seconds and then said, “Fine! But you’ll owe me one!”

“No!” Jacobo left only one word behind and disappeared.

For some reason he was in a rush to leave, but at least Alex caught a glimpse of his movement and it didn’t seem like the man teleported away.

“Hello, I’m Alex.” After they were left alone, Alex immediately introduced himself.

“Ok.” Gael said and went inside, but left the door open.

Alex sighed and picked up his luggage. Earlier Jacobo instructed to take everything with him – apparently he was set on leaving Alex here.

Alex entered a large, dusky room. If a normal family lived here this, probably, would be the main hall, but now the only thing here was a strange, somewhat sweet aroma. It took few seconds for Alex’s eyes to adjust and to his surprise he realized that the room was completely empty.

“Where will I stay?” He asked Galen who was currently entering another room at the end of the hall.

“Don’t care!” Galen nonchalantly said, but then paused for a second and added, “Pick a room on the second floor.”

Alex hoped he would get at least some kind of introduction to the house and to his new responsibilities, but since Galen ignored him, he decided to settle down first.

After going up the stairs, he found the second floor completely deserted. He counted six empty bedrooms in total with only few pieces of furniture in all of them combined. Alex picked one with the bed, brought over a chair, a table and a small cupboard from the other rooms, then opened the window to let some fresh air in and cleaned up a little. The whole house was filled with the sweet smell that could make one even feel nauseated, but Alex hoped he would get used to it.

Since there was nothing to do, he decided to join the host downstairs and see what exactly was going on here. According to Jacobo, Gael should’ve been some kind of researcher, thus he had to have books for Alex to read.

The door to the room Gael earlier entered was open, therefore after a soft knock Alex quietly went in. To his surprise, the room was almost as big as the hall, except this one had two large windows and the rays of sun brightly shone right in.

One of the walls from the floor to the ceiling was turned into a giant bookshelf and was packed by hundreds and hundreds of books and scrolls. Two other walls were also turned into shelves, but mostly held wooden boxes and jars of different sizes. While most jars were porcelain or jade, many were made of glass and inside Alex could see preserved plants or animal parts floating in some kind of a liquid, probably alcohol.

Gael was currently leaning over a large desk, but from the first glance Alex was not able to understand what the man was currently working on. There were multiple books open on the table and on one side it had stacked cages filled with small rodents.

“Stonefish needle extract combined with the purple nightshade juice. Failure … still easily noticeable by the fishy smell.” Gael said out loud in annoyed tone, but Alex noticed empty sheets of papers next to him as well as the writing utensils.

It could be that the man living alone was used to speaking to himself, but Gael accepted him after hearing about Alex’s ability to read and write, thus this could be the first task or a test.

Alex stepped towards the table, picked up the quill, dipped it in the inkwell and quickly wrote down the two sentences Gael said earlier before forgetting any words. He didn’t rush, but was not slow either and wrote words clearly, but kept letters small enough to be able to write a longer essay on the same page if needed.

Gael glanced at the sheet of paper evaluating Alex’s work and said, “Next. Doubling the amount of purple nightshade juice.”

Then he picked up an archaic looking dropper and carefully mixed liquids from two different porcelain bowls in another tiny glass flask. The thick, black one that had a disgusting smell Alex guessed to be the stonefish needle extract and the purple water was obviously the nightshade juice.

After carefully stirring the contents for few minutes, Gael picked another dropper and forcefully fed the mixture to a hamster-sized rodent he grabbed from a nearby cage. The poor animal spasmed for few seconds and inevitably died, but Gael sniffed it’s mouth, then the flask and shook his head in displeasure.

“Stonefish needle extract combined with purple nightshade juice, proportions one to eight. Failure … the fishy smell is still there, but the effect is too weak.” He said out loud and Alex immediately wrote it down.

This continued till the sunset. Gael kept mixing the stonefish needle extract with juices of various plants in different proportions and killing dozens of rodents. He made a longer pause to process two large buckets each containing a stonefish, but in the end it seemed he didn’t gain the result he expected.

After they heard loud knock on the door, Gael said, “Watch closely!”

Then he quickly cleaned up the table, threw the dead critters in a sack and filled another one with the things he considered garbage – obviously in the future this will become Alex’s job. And what Gael said next confirmed it.

“Starting tomorrow you will assist me. Now bring this to the guy at the door. Tell him, I’ll need the usual amount of rats and … right, since you’ll need to eat as well, tell him to bring the double amount of food.”

Alex took the two sacks and went to the door. There was an elderly man patiently waiting for Gael and was a bit surprised to see a new guy, but after listening to Alex’s instructions, he nodded, grabbed the garbage and quickly ran away only leaving behind a small box, covered with a cloth. Being quite hungry himself, Alex could clearly smell the meat stew under the cover, but unfortunately the food was meant for his new boss.

In the end it was not a big deal – as long as he cultivated Qi, Alex could easily fast for a day or two and after bringing the food inside, he went upstairs to meditate through the night.