Drei left the other three… sisters? Yes, I think it is good to call them sisters. She left her sisters behind and ran inside to get Adel, while Zwei ran in the direction of Mia, probably to hold her close by.

Both of them had witnessed how much Adel adores Mia and wants to see her. It was not an obvious decision, it required swiftness and awareness of the situation. They both exceeded my expectations. I would have done the same, but I'm me, and they are they, they are still very young children.

Adel was yet to close the training room door when we got there, lucky!

"Adel! Adel!" Drei called in a hurry.

"What?"

"Mia is just outside!"

"Wha… what?"

"Mia… Mia is in front of our house, can you come outside?"

"YES!... aham… yes." She was clearly excited, but tried to hold it in.

"Why did you come call me?" Adel asked but she had already shut the door for the training room and was walking upstairs in haste.

"Well… you like Mia… I thought you would like to see her… and I like Mia too, maybe we could be friends with them?" I can tell Drei was telling the truth, it was not ONLY to get Adel's good side. She truly liked Mia and wanted to befriend her and the children. She is still a pure child and does not know how to decide and lie.

"Oh.. good. It would be good if you were good friends with her children..."

Just before we left the front door Adel whispered, not too low that we would not hear, but still a whisper.

"Thanks..."

Outside, standing in the same exact place as before, the three sisters that did not still understand why the two others went running out of nowhere without warning, were looking warily at Zwei.

Zwei on the other hand was happily chatting with Mia, and turned to point in our direction with perfect timing, right when Adel stepped outside. That was enough for Adel to locate them and she ran to Mia. Again the same scene as always, with the two hugging each other warmly, could be seen.

Drei stayed behind with the lost ones.

"They are friends with each other, and Adel really likes Mia. Every time we see her Adel gets all happy and crazy. Let's join them."

"Ok..." They followed her and approached the group.

Still hugging Adel, Mia talked to us.

"Hello there, thanks for calling Adel."

"No problem!"

"Why don't you children go play together? There are chess tables over there… or do anything you want really"

"What is chess?"

"What?" I could see Adel twitching even as she was on Mia's embrace. And Mia did not miss this, she pushed Adel away enough to gaze at her face. "Adel"

"Ah… ahhhhh…sorry. I forgot."

"What do I do with you?" She gave a small flick on her forehead but did not stop talking "You promised you would be responsible and take this seriously. What were you doing that was more important?"

"Training..." Adel was clearly guilty, talking in an almost whispering voice, but we could still hear it. She was also avoiding looking directly into Mia's eye.

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"You… I can't believe it… aaah.. Forget it." She stopped with all the hugging and looked at us seriously. "I'll teach you myself, lets go" She headed in the direction that she pointed previously. And we ALL followed her, including Adel with a guilty-but-still-happy face. I'm not so sure she was sorry that she forgot to teach us how to play chess, and I'm not sure how important it is to learn it. But I am pretty sure she is happy to spend time with Mia.

We arrived at the same clearing we were at yesterday, but this time we passed the benches without giving it a second glance and headed straight to the small tables. Now that we were close to it I could clearly see that it was a chess table. There was a small box in the side of it that Mia took out several pieces.

I could not recognize any of the pieces. They were extremely different from the types I was used to from earth. Maybe it was a different game with the same name? But still played on the same board?

"Aside from your usual mana train you should also be training your brain, learning new things, developing memory and improving your thinking process and speed. One way we use to train these things is this game, we call it chess ...." She stopped for a second and eyed Adel.

"You ARE training mana right?"

"Yes! Of course! We are on the schedule with that" Adel replied with a tint of pride.

"At least that much…"

Mia continued to organize the board while considering something

"Since you already know this" and looked at her children, that were positioned right behind her "You can play by yourselves on the other tables if you want, or do whatever, but stay close by"

"Ok!" They answered while making eye contact with one another, then exchanging some words in a small voice, I could not hear it at all. Two of them proceed to sit on one of the surrounding tables while the other two continue to observe Mia.

Mia quickly finished with the board and started to explain the game to us, she was extremely good at explaining things, unlike our Adel.

This version of chess was somewhat similar to the standard chess that I'm familiar with, yet not even close to being the same. It had no king, the highest order piece here the Queen, which was actually called 'Queen', but it was also the only piece with the same name. All the others had different names, but the same function. A parallel with the name swap could be easily made.

The board was a bit different, easy to guess that it was to adapt for the king's absence. It was a 7x7 board instead of 8x8. No piece replaced the King, the only 'ruler' here was the Queen. The king was not even mentioned in Mia's explanation.

"The Queen is the absolute most important piece on the board and must be protected at all costs, you lose the game if she is taken down. She is also the most powerful one, she can make any move, but cannot be played two turns in sequence. That means that if you play with the Queen in one turn, on your next turn you must move another piece."

That actually complicated things a lot, maybe it was a COMPLETELY different game and no strategies that I knew of from my homeland could be used? Like I actually knew any chess strategy… I only knew of its existence, and could play on a completely amateur level. It is probably easy for me to accept these changes.

The other pieces... Rook was 'Root'. Bishop was 'Oracle'. Pawn was 'Seed' and Knight was 'Praelia'. I had no idea what that meant. It was my first time hearing it. Drei did not even think about asking what it was, she was just accepting it was the name of the piece. And for whatever reason, that name did not come with our built-in dictionary (the language pack we got on the first day).

It did not take long for the children to understand the game, I assure you that I took much, much longer to learn back on Earth. They were geniuses!

After that the rest of the day was spent on the same clearing, playing chess. At some point Adel and Mia had vanished and it was only the children playing, but it was an incredible fun day. I would say the best day of Drei's entire life… of… 14 days or so, if I'm counting right.

Every single time I remind myself that Drei is only DAYS old I get scared at how this society functions.

We played several games with different opponents, both between sisters and… colleagues? Friends? I would like to think of Mia's children as friends. Each game was actually pretty fast, with them being new to this and all. I said they understood the game, but it does not mean that they are incredibly good at it. They can play and that's it. Already amazing. Oh.. also, none of us sisters won a single game against Mia's pupils.

After a long while, of us bonding, playing and talking Mia and Adel came back.

"That's enough for today, let's go back, it's time for our daily mana training." I looked at the sun, and true enough, it appeared one hour or two from sunset. None of Adel's kids knew how to tell the time, and me? I was using my general Earth's sun knowledge as reference, but who knows how accurate it is, it's not like I did this before, I always had my phone with me. Why would I ever try telling the time by the sun's position?

Our friends were the first to react to Adel's call and started to clean up the chess pieces and store it accordingly, while teaching us how to do it.

We were already heading home, both of our teams headed in the same direction when Funf decided to address our tutors.

"Excuse me, Mia, Adel… How can you tell that it is already time for training? Or that it is time to go back home?" At the same time Mia started a bit angry at Adel, again.. And Adel just…

"...Sorry?... I forgot!"