Three days passed since I revealed to Aisnam the events surrounding Markas, and we fell into a new routine of sparring and having fun every day while she spent the nights cultivating.

None of my skills had improved, but my storage of Qi Strands barely cleared a thousand, which was far more than I had been expecting. It didn't take long for me to realize that the side effects of her forced breakthrough and her even more intensive recovery actually helped me.

With the most recent breakthroughs, she didn't have the control to keep a tight hold on her cultivation, which made her Qi leak, quite a bit of it being devoured by my essence.

Even in a conservative estimate, I had enough to push myself to the peak of the Ninth Stage of the Qi Gathering Realm.

Especially since I didn't need to deal with any pesky bottlenecks like other cultivators dealt with. Not many cultivators had the luxury of training until their understanding of the Gate transformation technique reached Perfection, let alone actually surpassing it.

For example, Aisnam was barely at Major Familiarity when it came to the Gate Transformation technique, focusing more on her palm and talisman techniques.

Not that I was complaining. Her relative skill distribution worked wonders for me. Too bad she seemed not to know anything about other cultivator arts, be it alchemy or formation mastery. I would have loved to have learned some about any of those techniques.

As the evening turned into night, I prepared myself for another calm night where I stayed alone while she cultivated — she always cultivated at night to put the increase in the cursed Qi density to good use — only to be surprised by her approach.

"I need your help," she said.

"Of course," I answered, hoping that it wasn't something too important, which was less about fearing some hard work, and more about the fear of solving her problems openly, therefore blocking the System returns.

"It's a simple thing, but very important. I want you to watch a talisman, and light a firework if that talisman is overwhelmed," she explained. I looked at her questioningly. She continued. "I need to leave with the Queen for a couple of hours. We're just going to check a couple things. It's more of a precaution than anything."

I made sure to look worried. "I … May I ask a question first?" She nodded. "What exactly is down there?" I asked. Her reluctance to speak was clear. "I just want to understand my responsibility better."

She sighed. "You're right…" she muttered, but still, she didn't talk immediately. "There's something locked there, something that needs to lay undisturbed. I — her Highness needs to maintain its protections. It's one of her missions as a cultivator."

"And, how about this curse effect? Was that supposed to exist?"

"Somewhat, but the effect would be far weaker, not enough to harm a mortal if they hadn't been living here for years. Unfortunately, the protections failed, which resulted in her injuries."

I wanted to ask whether they were damaged or sabotaged, but ultimately, I didn't want to do anything that might hurt my Freeloader status. I had already pushed my luck with that medicine delivery, but luckily, hiding the true difficulty of it prevented her from treating me differently.

Still, I was curious about her answer, so I asked that question indirectly instead. "Was she breaking through a new realm when the accident happened?" I asked. Her face tensed, but she still nodded reluctantly. "Unlucky," I commented, doing my best to sound like a naive fighter who could never imagine a betrayal.

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

"Yes, unlucky," she said, her tone enough to confirm my guess. Someone had sabotaged her deliberately. "However, don't worry about it. Her Highness already improved its protections. Nothing will happen in a few hours."

I shrugged, accepting her argument. However, the fact that I had no fear about what lay underneath helped that.

My presence here was certainly risky, but my visit to the cultivator market showed that, for someone who had no cultivator family or sect, there was no such thing as absolute safety, only degrees of danger.

Even the Freeloader System didn't change that.

"Is there anything I can do in case of a problem?" I asked.

"No, just send an alarm," she said. "Now that she recovered, her Highness is capable of handling any problems until the formation master arrives." Then, she looked at the window worriedly. "We need to leave, be careful," she said, and stepped outside.

Amusingly, a figure actually jumped down from the upstairs window. I fell on my knees to the figure as per the local custom, which nodded. It was fortunate, because I could never hide my amused glare, and it would be hard to explain to Aisnam why I was grinning like a loon in front of 'the Queen', which was actually some kind of pupped she dragged with her Qi.

Not a particularly well-made one either. It certainly explained why 'the Queen' chose to jump out of the window rather than use the stairs. She expected the darkness to hide the coarse nature of the puppet.

"Not bad," I said to myself with a chuckle once they went far enough. I was glad for the effort, as it showed that, even after recovering, Aisnam wanted to maintain her fake identity to interact with me.

There was only one inconvenient point about the identity. As the supposed personal maid of the Queen, she couldn't show that she was rich, therefore, I didn't expect any expensive gifts to come my way. Still, I didn't plan on confronting it. I would be screwed if she decided to change things.

And, while money and gifts from her would be useful, nothing compared to the value of the Qi I received from her.

Ultimately, I was happy to be her secret boy toy. Even if I decided to confront her, I would do so after the visit of the formation master, which didn't feel like it was particularly near.

I wanted to see if I could get a lesson or two out of pity.

However, that was for the future. Since I couldn't leave, I decided to use the chance to go upstairs, and check what she had, and more importantly, what she lacked.

In a sense, reverse-theft.

I might not give them directly, but luckily, I had the identity of a mysterious apothecary ally, who might decide to give her a few rewards. Of course, this time, I couldn't confront her directly. I wasn't sure if I could trick her now that she had recovered.

I might have tricked the cultivators back in the cultivation market, but back then, none of them were invested enough to actually discover my identity. And, none of them were as familiar with my body as Aisnam, which only increased the chances I could be discovered.

A new method was necessary.

I was careful as I climbed the stairs, avoiding several traps, some ordinary, some talismans. Luckily, none of those traps were actually new, showing that she trusted me not to go upstairs.

I might have felt guilty if it wasn't for her own good in the most literal sense possible.

However, once I was upstairs, I wasn't able to find much. Almost nothing. The only positive was the Qi in the room. It was rich, pure, and dense, an excellent cultivation environment, especially with the walls layered with protection charms to keep it so.

Unfortunately, it was completely useless to me. Even if I wanted to create some more talismans, I could easily create a copy of the environment in the secret tunnel thanks to the dense Qi.

Other than that, every precious thing in the room was related to talismans. She had a stack of talisman paper — which could be useful, but not worth the effort — an ink bottle, and a brush that looked like it was about to fall off in pieces. There were no spirit stones, no incredible weapon, not even a few potted spirit plants to radiate Qi to make the room.

The talismans were the only thing of actual value. Some of them were on her desk, stacked, ready to be used. The others were set up in a careful arrangement. Cleansing talismans pulled the Cursed Qi in the houses, a pattern of protection talismans kept them in place, and the purification charms converted them into pure Qi.

They were completely useless to me, as they were the only things I didn't lack.

I examined her desk suspiciously, wondering if there was a secret compartment or something, but I decided against trying to find anything.

It was too risky.

Instead, I returned, waiting for Aisnam to return.

I wanted to ask her some questions about what was going on in Markas.