When Nick finished, silence filled the room. Everyone was trying to digest his story. Unknowingly to them the whole night had passed.

Only after some time the empress asked, “What are your plans now?”

“As I said, we came here to find Angel. As soon as we meet up with him, we’ll go south and destroy the Holy Order. Additionally I hope that the Maxwell’s forces have figured out where the second sister of the Trinity is located and we’ll take care of her as well.” Nick said.

“You’ll have to wait until spring.” The emperor said, “I understand you have some cold resistance and you two have this unique Qi technique, but the cold in the mountain ranges is way too terrifying. I bet even your bird might not be there.”

“I agree.” To emperor’s surprise Nick said and nodded, “That’s why we are gathering information and not directly searching by ourselves. We have no death wish.”

“Good! Then it’s decided! You two stay here until your three lazy uncles will find out Angel’s approximate location. Come! I’ll show you to your room. We all have to rest – the night was too long.” The empress said and pulled the two youths away under the stunned eyes of her husband, sons and their wives.

This whole event started abruptly and ended in a similar fashion.

For the next two months Nick and YunYun did nothing else but practice. In the morning they trained by themselves going through their usual routine, then practiced with Nick’s uncles or sometimes even the emperor. In the afternoon for several hours they were busy with alchemy and in the evenings they read in the castle’s library. During all this time empress Elsa almost never left them out of her sight. At first the two were worried they would soon feel annoyed by the gentle and loving grandmother, but as it turned out, it was not the case. Exactly the opposite – firstly, they almost never felt her presence and secondly, her experience and expertise in Qi manipulation proved to be extremely helpful. Thus the empress was gladly welcomed.

Most nights the two spent in their dual cultivation and they only slept a couple of hours before the sunrise, not because they wanted to, but because they were not confident their young bodies could go without the sleep at all.

The main reason they persuaded the three uncles to spar with them was because during the Nick’s ‘duel’ with them in the arena both found out a crucial flaw in their approach. If they thought of a situation when they had to fight a larger and stronger opponent without using a weapon, their first reaction was to flee. And, in that scenario they would be successful since there were only handful of people in the world who could keep up with them. But if they were attackers themselves? Immediately the whole concept didn’t work and they had to think of something. But one couldn’t think when facing opponent – one had to immediately act and this action had to be an attack.

Thus they sparred with the three big guys tiring them almost to death, but after few days the trio began to come on their own without being asked and practiced with the two youths using their full strength. From what it looked like, Nick brought a fresh perspective in the lives of the whole Alpin family and not only the three brothers stopped frequenting taverns, they did their best to get back to their premium form.

Seeing the fun that was going on in his ‘back yard’, the emperor also began to take part in these spars. He gladly shared his experience with the younglings and didn’t shy off to ‘give some pointers’ to his sons as well. Of course, the latter part was the punishment for their recent behavior.

Seeing the two ‘weirdos’ being so popular, it raised a lot of interest in Nick’s cousins. Several of them saw their fathers loose to him, but it was not considered a real fight thus no one took it seriously.

Already on the second day Nick received a couple challenges from the two who already had become Qi masters and had to satisfy their curiosity. Needless to say that the poor young northerners lost quickly and miserably. Only now they understood the disparity between themselves and their fathers. Their old men, despite slacking off for the past few years were easily capable of sparring for at least an hour each, but their sons saw stars already after the first moves.

They didn’t give up though and tried to find a way on how to defeat these ‘outsiders’ who, for some reason, were heartily loved by their grandmother. After putting their heads together and few days of thinking they found a solution – they would challenge the two to a sled race.

During the New Year’s celebrations there was a tradition to run a sled race around the capital. The sleds would be pulled by dogs, domesticated wolves or even sealed ranked beasts and the rules were simple – all the participants started on a large snowy field south of the city and the one who made the full route and came back first would be the winner.

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Hearing about this challenge Nick scratched his head and said that it wouldn’t work since he had no idea how do steer a sled to not speak of commanding or directing a bunch of dogs. He offered an alternative – they would compete, but while the other competitors would drive their sleds, Nick would run on his feet while carrying YunYun and will have his eyes covered.

Everyone knew of his speed and as a Qi master he could run long distances on snow without falling in, adding YunYun to the mix would increase the difficulty, but not by that much. The whole route was around fifty kilometers and, although dog sled could cover it in a couple of hours, a trained Qi master could easily do the same. The only variable was the removal of the eyesight, but YunYun’s presence compensated for that. In the end parties couldn’t come to any agreement and the cousins felt lost on how to challenge this youth.

Nick, understanding their predicament, said, “Why don’t you just go to Aurora during the Midsummer festival? The second international Olympic games are held there and youths from all over the world will gather to compete.”

Although it was not a competition for Qi masters, the others were immediately fired up. Following Nick’s advice they quickly organized a ‘last minute Olympic committee’ and sent a letter to Aurora informing about their intention to take part in the competition.

Now the castle youths had much more important things to do than to bother Nick and YunYun and they could go back to their regular routine.

While Nick and YunYun were practicing, the emperor and his sons did investigation on the Angel’s whereabouts. In fact, the huge shadow eagle has already been registered in their archives along with few other rank sixes that were spotted in the Northern empire similar to how the legendary beasts were registered in the Lethe kingdom.

Unfortunately during the last five-six years Angel has been seen in several different spots that were quite far from each other and now the main task was to find out where it was spotted last.

It took few weeks, but Alpin brothers finally found a couple of hunters who swore to have seen the shadow eagle in the mountain ranges close to the border with the Sun kingdom right when the winter started. This information was as good as any and Nick marked the spot on the map and decided to start with checking it out in the spring.

And the spring inevitably came. They had spent the most of the winter in Falun, but were treated like a part of the family and both, even YunYun, felt like it as well. Everyone was reluctant to let them go – Nick’s uncles, grandfather and, especially, the grandmother. While saying goodbyes, she hugged him for a long time and he had to promise to ‘visit often’ before she let them leave.

The young generation of the castle found all of this weird, but didn’t bother much – they had more important things to do. The whole world soon will witness the prowess of the northern people and they still had some time left to use for training.

The first destination now was the spot where the hunters reported sighting Angel last. It was somewhere near the border with the Sun kingdom, although in that region the border was not really distinct. In fact, it was impossible to mark it in whats seemed to be the endless mountain ranges.

While the snow was melting and the sunshine finally brought some warmth, both youths carelessly ran through the thick pine forests of the north. They still considered their every step ‘training’ and the improvement they had gotten during the winter time strengthened their belief in this approach even more.

Couple of days later they finally saw the mountains and their training difficulty increased. The thick pine forests were still there, but the mountain slopes became increasingly difficult to climb. But there was no reason for them to fall back. From their experience in the woods of the Lethe kingdom, they knew how the legendary beasts liked to live in secluded spots and there was no way Angel would live in a populated area after being captured and especially because, contrary to Snow, King Kong and Bambi, he had the ability to fly.

Thus Nick and YunYun climbed the mountains, shouted ‘Angel!’ from time to time, then run down from the slopes on the opposite side and climbed the next ones right after that. They didn’t have any illusions, hoping it will be an easy task to find their friend and searching for few a weeks only sounded logical.

Currently Nick sat on a high cliff, swinging his feet below him. YunYun sat besides, hugging him and resting her head on his shoulder. They stared in the distance a bit lost, but mostly annoyed. Deep down below them huge ocean waves crashed against the cliff one after another and the strong wind in their faces reminded they were still far in the north. It was the middle of the day, but the rain clouds were so thick, it almost felt like a late evening.

They have been sitting here for some time despite getting periodical cold rain showers and without paying any heed to the unpleasant weather. During their time in the north they havd long learned to constantly circulate Qi between themselves and now it happened automatically, and this practice held them warm on the most freezing mountain tops, not to speak about this little bit of cold rain.

They had spent almost three months looking for Angel and crisscrossed the Northern mountain range to the west and then back to the east coast where they currently sat. They didn’t become desperate, but mostly annoyed. Both of them experienced how one could trust a rank six beast more than any human and their Qi master’s intuition told them that Angel was all right. In addition, during the last few years, there had been multiple occasions when lone hunters had spotted him. But no matter how they tried, they couldn’t even catch his shadow.

In the taverns many hunters already started to tell stories about two crazy people who ran around the mountains, trying to find a divine being, climbing the highest cliffs and relentlessly calling for it. In the beginning both of them found it hilarious, but now even they had to agree that their actions looked ridiculous.