It is the middle of the night, almost everyone in the camp that is not on night patrol seems to be sleeping. Lucia tried to sleep again but you can only sleep so much before your body refuses to sleep more, especially if you are a kid. We were able to rest a few hours but we woke up in the middle of the night and couldn't sleep anymore. I discovered that if she sleeps I can too and that helps me a little mentally, my stress just goes away.

Since we were awake I decided to finally test what my soul does to the body and her soul in detail. The findings were strange if I had to use a word for it.

The first test was to see how much intelligence she had without me. The answer? Zero.

Without me completing her soul she is just instinct and emotions. She tried again to run but this time I was prepared so she didn’t even leave the bed. Guess the instinct to get food and water to survive and the sadness and rage she has because of dad and mom will probably control her if I don’t hold her back.

The other one is that I have a direct connection to the body without needing to link myself with Lucia, but doing that eats her soul away and I am in no position to do that. She can’t do rational thinking without my help but she still is her own person, I will not kill her just because it might be a little inconvenient for me sometimes, if wasn’t for her I probably would have done some questionable things while in this body, but since it’s not all mine I have to respect it a little more.

The other test was how much of me is her when she is in control? The answer? In numbers, probably 50%. When she is in control she can think and rationalize almost the same as me, pretty much feels like I am controlling my body while looking from outside now that I really am paying attention to what is happening. The major difference between us is that the body and her soul somewhat weigh down my mind when she is in control in contrast to me where the body and her soul doesn’t affect me one bit when I am 100% in control. It is no stretch to say that even when she is in command, it still is me there, it’s just everything else that changes my thought process in a way that I can’t process without all my soul so I feel like someone else is in command even though I am technically in command all the time.

This might just be speculation using nothing but what ifs, but if I somehow increase my soul I probably would be able to truly control Lucia’s soul since part of my soul would be there and I would technically still have my full soul on the side. But that also begs the question if a body can hold two complete souls or more without anything bad happening? Lucia’s soul is incomplete so I think that’s the reason nothing is happening with the body or our mind.

Anyway, the results are that She is me and I am her for the most part, and until her soul more closely resembles mine or mine hers, we will still be two persons on a body.

I give control to her side for now, she was helpful, shame I can’t thank her. She rushes to the toilets while the sun is rising and people are beginning to wake up. By the time we are back to our provisory tent the Boss and Aria are there looking for me.

“Good morning Boss, Good morning Aria.”

“Good morning kid, how was your night?” Asks the Boss.

“I didn’t sleep much, but I rested plenty.”

“Good, we are going to eat at my Tent with the Boss and you're gonna have to prove you can do what you said yesterday” Says Aria who appears to be in a rush for some reason.

Both of them are using lighter clothes, cotton shirts and pants. I guess if Aria used anything besides that she wouldn’t have peace in her sleep.

I nod positively to let them know I still remember what I said about my abilities. I can’t do shores with this body for now, but I can write, read and do math. I can’t 100% read everything, the alphabet of this word is strange, it has 35 letters, but some of them are kinda obsolete, but people still use them in older words so I couldn’t really just use it the same way as the normal alphabet used in my old world.

The boss and Aria pick my food for me while picking theirs and we walk to her tent. There we eat breakfast. I love the milk in this world, it’s naturally sweet, I don’t know what made cows evolve like this here but thank you very much, I hate plain milk but I can drink this no problem. When the Boss said that they were the strongest mercenary group I was thinking they only had the strongest people, but now that I saw the kitchen at full power, there were at least 40 people cooking for everyone. We got fresh baked bread, even mom couldn’t bake bread and she couldn’t exactly leave early in the morning so I never ate fresh baked bread in this world. It's very good, a little low on salt, but very good. After a few minutes we finish and the boss addresses me.

“Ok girl, before we start this I have to let you know something, I can’t remember everyone's name, I deal with a lot of people, more than you probably can count and I have to remember their faces and names most of the time, so please don’t take personally when I don’t call you by your name. If you don’t leave me with an impression that sticks I will probably not remember your name either.” he says while finishing his sandwich.

“Ok, Boss, but I have a question, I know Miss Aria's name but not yours, what is your name?”

“My name is Henry, but don’t call me that, that is one of the rules here. I am the Boss, remember that”.

Lucia is slightly confused by this but accepts it.

“Anyway, here are some papers, finish them while Aria watches you, if she says you pass you can stay here with her, if you don’t you are coming with me to train” Says the boss while leaving.

“Ok!”

Aria cleans the table a little and gives me some pens and pencils as well some rubber. I didn’t even imagine that rubber existed in this world, much less one you could use as an eraser for pencils.

“You can take as much time as you want, but if I have to leave and you didn’t finish I will have to take the paper with me and you will continue when I finish”

I nod and start reading the paper.

I thought that it was going to be a standard test like in school but they gave me a piece of their budget and asked me to check if everything is alright.

“I'm going to need more paper, Miss Aria.”

Aria is confused but gives me more empty paper sheets.

As I read this more troughtly Lucia gives up and gives all control to me, she, even with part of my mind, can’t really decipher this paper right now no matter how much of a genius she probably is with part of my knowledge.

Now that I am 100% in control of this ship I get the full picture of this paper. Lots of weapons were brought, they were all swords but not all of them came from the same place, so different amounts of sword, with different prices. If it was something like 10 or 20 swords it would be nice, but we are talking about two to three thousand swords from more than two hundred shops. I can see why Lucia couldn’t read this, it’s really confusing if you don’t have experience with finances, lucky for me I was an accountant for a lot of people who preferred to deal in books rather than spreadsheets, doing this by hand will easy, easier since I don’t have to take into account taxes or laws.

Assuming everything in the paper is true, after doing the maths, a total of 2847 swords were requested, that same amount was received but we paid for an extra sword from each place we brought one we didn’t get it. This took around 20 min if my mental clock is not wrong but something is bothering me so I ask Aria a question.

“Miss Aria, is everything here true?”

“As far as I know, yes.”

“Then someone is stealing money from you”

Aria takes a look in the now inscribed sheets of paper that I used after a while and asks me to explain. I do my best to sound like a little girl.

“You paid for swords you didn’t get, if everything is true doesn’t that mean someone is taking money? It’s bad to take money that isn’t yours.”

“Wait here a little” Says Aria as she takes all the papers I used and leaves.

I pretty much do nothing for a good 10 minutes. When the Boss arrives with Aria and a guy I never saw before.

“Kid, is it true what you said to Aria?” Asks the Boss.

“I think.”

“So you are not sure?”

“If what is in the paper is true, then I think I am right.”

“How did you get to this?”

“I was taught that you need to read everything. If you multiply the number of swords you got from each place by the number of swords we paid for, you paid for more swords than you got.”

The Boss started to look at the paper he gave me and the ones I did my math for a while. The more the time passes the paler the man seems to become. His face is plain, he has short hair and brown really short hair. He is using some common leather clothes, like the ones you can get in any village. I probably need new clothes, it’s not really uncomfortable to sleep in this dress, but I don’t think I should. Also I have no more underwear besides the one I am using right now.

After a few minutes the Boss speaks.

“Barley, how a kid that is only … how old are you kid?”

While putting my chest out like I am proud.

“I am 5 years old!”

“How can a 5 years old kid be better at your job than you?”

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“Boss, I might have missed something, but I swear I know nothing about it.”

“Do you see that kid over there?” points to me. “If you don’t find who is stealing out money, she will have your job forever.”

I intervened.

“Boss, didn’t you say I could fight for money in a few years? Were you lying?”

Everyone stops for a second, Boss and Aria start to laugh really hard and the man called Barley is a little more alive but still in panic.

After a few seconds, Boss calms down and speaks to Barley again.

“Barley, you're going to get all of your men and check all the big purchases we did in the last 6 months as well our budget to see if anything is wrong.”

Barley just shakes his head to show he is understanding what Boss is saying. Right now Boss is kinda pissed but he is restraining himself.

“Also, from time to time I want copies of the reports to be delivered to her,” Points to me. “So she can check if anything is wrong. I also want to know who did each report. If a report turns out to be wrong I want to know who is in line for the chopping block. Remember to tell this to everyone.”

Aria intervenes with something.

“And if for some reason the person or group who is stealing from us try anything against this girl I will stop providing my services till they are found and taken care of. Remember to also tell this to the others.”

Barley’s face goes past pale and I can see his bones for a second. The thought of what will happen to his team if Aria leaves this place must be worse than death.

“Alright kid, you pass with flying colors, you are smarter than most of our soldiers, guess I will have to try to remember your name now, what was it again?”

“Lucia”

“Ok Lucia, here” Tosses me something out of metal.

“This is a badge of our group, while you have it you can walk around the camp freely, just remember to show it to people if they ask and don’t enter other people's tents if they don’t let you.”

Aria speaks too.

“Also, don’t go to the Red Tents, kids are prohibited there and you will be punished if you go near it.”

I innocently ask even though I am pretty sure what that place is.

“What is there?”

“Adult stuff!” Says both of them.

I stay in silence letting them know I will keep that in mind and analysing the design of the badge. It looks like a cop badge but with a purple dragon in it.

“Anyway, I will be going. For today stay with Aria, starting tomorrow I will have something for you”

Then he leaves. Aria is looking at me with the face of a proud mother. Until now she was kinda cold towards me, but now she is hugging me so tightly that I am almost losing my breath and with a smile. I make Lucia take control again so my evil thoughts won’t affect my body while those perfect boobs suffocate me in a hug.

For the rest of the day I just follow Aria around the camp, except when she goes to the Red Tents. I finally got a good idea about how the camp is structured and how it works. First, this entire camp is mobile. By walking around and hearing things it looks like the Maka Kingdom is employing the Purple Dragons to fight a giant group of bandits who arrived from the Beast Continent and are trying to take the city near here. Also looks like this job will probably take a while, people are talking about years. Other kingdoms seem to be helping the bandits by what some of the soldiers are saying.

Another thing I got is the divisions in the camp. There is the Female Area, the Male Area, the Couples Area, the Red Area, The Command Area, the Food Area, the Training Area,The Hospital Area and an unofficial kids area where the few kids in this camp usually stay when their parents are out. Looks like I will be staying there alone for a while even though there are more than a few kids around. Guess all of them are with their families.

Aria is not only the Medic and Healer here, but she is like the supervisor here. She checks on everything to see if it is running as it should. During our walks around the camp she was being constantly called to heal people who tried to take my sword from the tent I was in. After the fifth time she just asked to walk around with my sword and if someone asked why? To say she said I should. I did that.

After lunch, where I ate some meat and the fruits from yesterday, a report from what I think is Barley’s team got on my hand. This time it's almost 30 pages. If this is just the finished product I pity them. I don’t want to imagine what they need to go through just to make this happen, but I have the feeling I will in due time. Before I do anything with it I need to stop for a little. Meat and fruits is not something I enjoyed eating together so I need to make sure everything stays inside. Aria pretty much forced me to eat everything. After a few minutes I ask for supplies again and Aria gives them to me, this time I will need a lot more paper, luckily it seems like one of the exports of the nearby city is paper so we can pretty much get as much paper as needed.

I start doing my thing, Lucia gives complete control so I can use everything in my brain. From lunch to dinner I spend the day doing math and reading very poorly written reports. I guess you can’t expect high level professionalism from everyone. I only leave my seat to go to the toilet and grab some sweet fruit in the kitchen. I wish there was more honey available but when I asked for it one of the people in the kitchen just told me to get something else. Honey is too hard to get to share with a kid for no reason. So I am eating that strange fruit that Aria gave to me before.

By the time I finish it’s already night and Aria is nowhere to be found. Nothing in the report is wrong, so at least the part I got is clean of crime. But this gave me an idea of how much they spend and receive for their services. 80% of the income of everyone in the camp goes to keeping the camp stocked with food and goods, from potions to weapons and armor. Everything you can imagine is being brought, except milk and leather, these are more often acquired and sold by us than used. I give control back to Lucia so she can go look for Aria since I can’t get my dinner by myself if it is the same thing from lunch, I would probably drop it on the ground before I found somewhere to eat.

After a few minutes of walking around I see more movement of people in the Hospital Area than normal. Looks like a group came back from combat and there were a lot of injuries, luckily no deaths on our side by what it seems. Aria is commanding the other medics and healers, there are a lot of injured people, I do a quick count and there are around 200 people there for just 30 medics / healers. I guess she will be there for a while, even the other soldiers are helping. So I decided to try and secure food by myself so I went to the Kitchen Tent.

“Sir, can you give me food?” I ask the first person I see behind the counter to the kitchen.

“Hey, you are the new girl that The Boss and Aria are taking care of. Why are you alone?” Ask the guy behind the counter while looking around.

“Aria is healing people and I haven't seen Boss since this morning. I am Hungry, I want Food!” I say while screaming a little. I am really hungry right now.

“Calm down girl, I'm going to get your food, it is some of that new fruit and meat, right?”

I have no idea but I answer anyway.

“Yes!”

“Here, come with me.” Says the guy while holding a plate in his hand.

He opens the counter so I can go to the kitchen, he serves me on a table you can’t see while on the other side of the counter that is adjacent to the kitchen.

“Here, some meat and fruit.”

He put some sliced meat on the plate and a basket with some fruit in it on the side along with some water. I take my time eating until I am full. There wasn’t that much meat but it was the same amount I got earlier so I can’t complain. I ate a lot more fruit than before, those things don’t fill you.

After I finish I thank the guy who served me food and the cooks and go Back to Aria’s tent. If I am not there when she comes back she will probably freak out a little.

While there I spent a while reading some of her books since I have nothing to do while I wait for her and I don’t think swinging my sword here would be safe.

Most of her books seem to be encyclopedias of some type, where they detail behavior, power, abilities, biology, etc of various kinds of animals, monsters and even other races. Looks like there are a lot of other races in this world, elves, beast-people, demons, dwarfs, merfolk and some others. Before I know it I am asleep in her bed.

At some point in the night I feel something falling on me and I wake up in a panic.

“Ahhhh! Go away!” I scream on the top of my lungs looking for my sword.

Aria looks at me in shock; She is covered in blood and looks really tired. My screams seem to have woken her up a little.

“Lucia, it’s me, if someone should be screaming it should be me. Why are you still here?”

Fully awake myself I answer.

“I finished the thing Boss told me to do but you weren’t here and I don’t know where he is”

Aria looks at the table I was at and sees a stack of papers.

“Ok, let’s put this in a safe place for now and we will give it to the Boss later.”

She takes the papers and puts them inside her dresser and locks it.

“Lucia, did you take a bath today?”

“No, I don’t know where and I don’t have other clothes”

Aria’s face changes and she facepalms herself.

“Sorry sweetie, I was going to get you clothes but some injured people came and I completely lost track of time”

“It’s alright, if you don’t heal people when you can they will start to hate you”

Lucia remembered a memory of when mom didn’t heal an injured man that came to our house and for a few days we were harassed by people. Dad was away so mom couldn’t even leave the house. She probably still looks up to mom and dad a little, even if they abandoned her, guess that is normal, they were pretty much the only people she knew all her life.

Aria just grabbed my hand and we walked to the female area.

“Lucia, don’t think bad things about people too much, the word is much bigger than you think. Just because you do or don’t do something, people will not start to hate you just because of that. So be a good girl and everyone will like you, even if you sometimes do things they don’t like.”

I just nod my head.

We arrived at the bath area. It's a big tent with lots of tubs inside. Half of the medical team are women and they are all here. In the changing area Aria strips me and rolls me in a towel. Looks like towels are public and washed everyday, so if you need to take a bath you can just take a clean towel from the stand, they look and feel almost like the towels in my old world.

She drops me in a big tub with hot water away from the other women. Probably so other people can’t see my dick. She enters with me and we just stay there for a few minutes.

The blood on her skin begins to drop into the water but the water continues to stay clean.

“Hey, why is the water clean?”

“The tub has runes on it to clean the water. You know about runes right?”

I do not, I give a confused look as an answer.

“It’s ok, magic is way harder than numbers and reading, don’t feel bad for not knowing, after all you are just a kid.” She hugs me from behind.

“When you are older we will see if you can use magic, and if you can we will teach, if not just know that runes are what give form to the magic the people use and they can be put into itens, like this tub.”

I nod my head and enjoy the bath a little longer.

Only after everyone else leaves we exit the tub. She dries herself and me with the towels we took and for a few moments I took a look at her body. My earlier statement about her probably being able to cause a war were 100% correct, she probably can start one here too if she wants to.

When we go back I notice two bags there, Aria opens both of them and gives me some clothes from one while putting the clothes on the other. Some basic underwear and a simple white dress that I can sleep with.

After that she walked along with me to the kids' area where a tent was put there for me, there was a bed and a small dresser that I could open. She put me in the bed and started talking to me.

“Lucia, I need you to know that starting tomorrow you probably won’t be able to find me and the Boss around the camp too much. You need to know that everyone here is family and they will help you if you ask. I know that this word probably lost a lot of its meaning to you but we will truly help you if you just let us. So if you need anything you can ask anyone, the Boss said to help you and everyone listens to the Boss.”

Her words truly move me as a whole, I even tear a little.

She gave me a kiss on my forehead and put me to sleep on the bed.

“Goodnight”

“Goodnight Aria”.

That night both of us slept and for the first time in her life I think Lucia is having a dream, since I was sleeping with her I could see her dream. It’s home but it's Aria and the Boss there instead of mom and dad, the guy from the church appears but the Boss along with a lot of other people in purple gear fight him and drive him away. After that we all eat and sing. I really hope that is the future we get.