Jacob kept reading the newspaper the entire time during their journey on the carriage. He was so engrossed in it that he forgot where he was.

He did not even become aware when they arrived at their drop-off location and the carriage stopped. The elder had to snap his fingers in front of his face in order to pull him out of his reverie.

"Ah. Yes, father. What happened?"

"We are here. Put it down for now. Read it comfortably at home." His father was already wearing his backpack.

"Ok. Got it." Jacob put the newspaper back into his backpack. He wore it and followed his father out of the carriage. After nodding toward the driver, the elder stepped into the forest with his son.

After about half an hour of trekking through the dense forest, they arrived at their well-hidden home. After laying his eyes on his simple wooden home, his eyes became full of nostalgia.

It had been less than a week since they left for the city. Their hunting trip was much longer than their visit to the city. But Jacob had experienced many things in Agoross in a short amount of time.

It had taken a toll on his psyche. His little heart had been feeling a bit insignificant in front of the majestic world. But after seeing his familiar home, all his hidden anxiety left him and he started feeling comfortable again.

He was not aware that his father purposely limited their stay in the city to two days. It was for Jacob's good. He gave Jacob time to digest everything in his home comfortably.

Otherwise, there were many other things in that large city that they could do. For example, the coliseum match the next day, the famous swings near the market they shopped at or the most expensive restaurant in the city.

He excitedly followed his father and entered the house. The familiar woody scent of his home entered his nostrils and soothed his nerves. He put down his backpack and after saying farewell to his father, entered his room and laid down on his bed to rest.

He was thinking about the newspaper he read today. In reality, he had already read the entire set of newspapers in an hour only. It was twice as fast as the reading speed of a common citizen.

Even after finishing it once, Jacob did not put it down. He started rereading it again and again until he was interrupted by his father.

That was a novel experience for him. He absorbed all the information he got from the newspaper like a sponge. He had come to know many things from it.

For example, the name of the kingdom he was in was the Ursus Frontier Kingdom. He also came to know that the name of its capital was Ursus City and the ruling clan was called the Ursus clan.

Quite possessive, are we. Jacob was impressed with the ruling clan's naming abilities, how they named the capital city and the country with their clan name as if they were afraid of people not knowing about their ownership of the kingdom.

He found many interesting things in the newspaper. But he could not understand many of them due to his lack of knowledge. For example, he found mentions of the sovereign clans in many places. He knew about sovereigns but had no idea about the sovereign clans.

He did not want to disturb his father this time. He had bothered him enough for the past few days. Even if his father would never become annoyed with him, he still felt bad for bothering him too much.

As a result, he decided to read the newspaper much more carefully in order to understand it. It was not as if he was reading it carelessly previously. He just thought so in order to motivate himself.

He did not manage to learn the meaning behind the term "sovereign clan" but managed to find a ridiculous thing instead. An entire page of the newspaper was dedicated to scheming and intrigue between two sovereign clans.

The page described their scheming in excruciating detail. How they fought tooth and nail at every kind of business. All the fields of life were involved in their schemes. Even cats and dogs were not spared.

Jacob found it funny how they killed cats and dogs after accusing those little animals of being spies from the opposite party.

How can cats and dogs be used as a spy? Ridiculous. Hmmm. Or maybe those animals were really being used as spies. Otherwise, the clans have really gone mad in their paranoia. That was Jacob's internal thoughts as he decided to ditch the matter about the sovereign clans.

He could not understand their thought process at all. Didn't they have better things to do instead of stealing each other's business?

What grabbed his attention was the news about his home kingdom in the local section of the newspapers. The local section was dedicated to the Ursus Frontier Kingdom and its neighbours. He read that,

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"At the birthday party of the heir of Ursus clan, the representative from the Red Horn Kingdom threw a drink at the heir's shirt purposefully and soiled it. He also insulted the heir with some unspeakable words.

The heir remained calm and ordered them to be removed from the party. The Red Horn representative is being claimed to be the young master from the ruling clan of Red Horn Kingdom."

No idea what is going on through their minds. Jacob did not think much about those political stunts. He did not find it interesting at all. What he was interested in that news was the mention of his home country.

In addition to that, he did not find anything else as interesting as the news about the great sovereigns. The rest of the newspaper was also a bit interesting to him because he was reading it for the first time.

But he soon realized that he would lose interest after reading similar news again and again in newspapers. Only significant events would be able to grab his attention.

After contemplating the contents of the newspaper he read today, he closed his eyes to rest his tired mind. He was mentally tired after reading the newspaper.

After that day, Jacob's life came back to its routine. He would get up early in the morning and do some exercises. After having breakfast, he would go out with his father to do woodcutting. He along with his father would remain busy till afternoon.

In the afternoon, they would come back with wooden logs in the cart. Jacob would eat lunch and take some rest.

After that, Jacob would train his archery skills. Then, they would cut the wooden logs into small pieces and pile them up at the backside of the house after being done.

Normally, they finished all their work till the evening. After that, Jacob would eat his dinner and take some rest. His father never took any kind of rest. It was as if he had endless stamina. Jacob did not become much impressed after seeing it.

He was used to such things in the past few months. His father was extremely mysterious. He was always surrounded by common sense-defying phenomena.

After taking some rest, Jacob would undergo some sets of various exercises such as push-ups, squats, lunges, burpees etc with some minutes of rest in between. He would end his day after that.

He was utilizing each and every minute of his day. He never slacked off. This was something he did since his childhood. He never slacked off as far as he could remember.

More than a year passed in this fashion. During the past year, Jacob had visited the city with his father a few times. They went to the city on the first day of every month to sell their cut wooden logs in order to earn the fruit of their hard work.

The amount of wood they sold was impressive and they were paid handsomely by the merchants there. They also had leftover wood back home which they did not sell.

They resupplied at the city. The elder also started buying newspapers for Jacob to read. He also took his son to see the live matches in the coliseum and visited many other places in the city they had not visited on their first visit.

Jacob was very thrilled during the first match and his blood boiled. The match was between a cultivator and a strong beast. During the match, he was very impressed by the cultivator fighting with some hyena-like beast.

Jacob paid extreme attention to the stunts and manoeuvres the experienced cultivator pulled during the match.

Except that, the cultivator did not do anything else. He did not fly off or shoot lightning bolts at the beast, shattering Jacob's expectations. He was just physically strong and fast.

After asking his father about this seemingly disturbing development, he came to know that the cultivator was too weak to fly or perform other flashy skills.

After that day, they started visiting the arena on their every visit to the city. They also started extending their stay in the city for a day or two in order to watch the fights.

Although the matches were very exciting for Jacob, he also had many intense moments when the fighters almost died under the claws of the beasts but each time, they were saved by others and the beasts were restrained.

He also watched a match between two middle-aged men once. It was an official match between the elders of two opposing clans in the city. Some business was at stake.

The arena was filled to the brim that day. It was a fight between two second-level cultivators and was very rare according to the conversations around him.

That was the first time Jacob was seeing two high-level cultivators fighting with each other. He had the same expectations from them. He wanted them to fight each other while flying.

But he was bound to be disappointed again. They did not fly during their entire fight. He looked toward his father but his father shook his head while saying a single word, "Weak."

Though, that little setback did not dull Jacob's excitement at all. He saw that the two cultivators were using strange weapons. One of them was using a red hot sword while the other was using a spear that sent shockwaves. The difference in quality between the two weapons was too much.

The fight between them was very impressive. They were very experienced with their weapons and displayed a beautiful battle. Jacob noticed that they were very light on their feet and were capable of doing some superhuman things such as jumping very high and initiating bursts of intense speed.

While fighting, their other limbs that were not using any weapon were not idle at all. They were using each and every inch of their body to beat the opponent.

Jacob judged that their physical strength was very high, judging from the sounds of collision between the weapons and the limbs. Whenever their weapons collided, dust flew and dirt was uprooted.

The sword cultivator was at a slight disadvantage during the entire battle. He could not take the hit from the spearhead and had to dodge or parry every time. This was to protect himself from the shockwaves of the spear.

Moreover, he also had to work very hard in order to reach the spearman. The reach of his sword was very short as compared to that of the spear the opposite party was using.

The battle was very intense and there were many near misses. The sword wielder managed to injure his opponent once and inflicted a large gash. In the end, the spear wielder took advantage of an opportunity and managed to hit the opponent with the shockwaves.

The sword cultivator was thrown backwards and rolled on the ground a few times. He was leaking blood from his mouth and could not get up. The spear wielder was declared the winner after that.

The spear wielder also did not come out unscathed from that fight. He had a large gash on his chest and it was bleeding continuously.

The swordsman had managed to reach him a few times and had injured him the last time. He was breathing heavily and had a pained expression on his face. He had almost lost.

The sword cultivator just had to hold on for a few more minutes for his opponent to bleed out but made a mistake during the execution of a parry and was defeated.

That was a very memorable match for Jacob. He learned many new things from it, especially about those special weapons. He was very much impressed by them. He wanted to wield them himself.

He added another thing to his wishlist. It was to buy those impressive weapons and wield them. But he did not dare utter a single word about his new wish to his father. He feared that his father would really buy such weapons for him the next day.

He did not want such a thing to happen at all. He knew that such impressive armaments would cost hundreds of gold coins at least. He did not want to burden his father at all. He would buy them himself when he would become a great cultivator.

In the past year, he had also read many newspapers. It was as he expected. He really became bored after reading similar types of news again and again. Nothing significant happened during that year except a couple of war declarations between some far-off kingdoms.

Everything else was ordinary. It was either a stray beast attack or some politics. He had asked his father once why nothing was happening. Had the war stopped?

The reply he got from his father was that it was a war of attrition. It was a slow grind that had been happening for the past thousands of years. Humans and beasts were always fighting with each other for every inch of land. Significant events happened but they were rare.

He also learned the meaning behind a sovereign clan from his father. The reply he got from his father was too simple that Jacob had to mock his intelligence for not arriving at the meaning himself.

The reply he got from his father was,

"A clan who has one or more sovereign cultivators in it is called a sovereign clan."

After that, Jacob also asked his father why were the sovereign clans fighting each other for every kind of business.

The reply he got was,

"Cultivators require resources to advance quickly. So, they try to grab as much resources as they can in order to fuel their cultivators and increase their strength. Greater the resources, greater their fighting strength, lesser the resources, lesser their fighting strength."

Jacob now understood why the clans were fighting each other. They were fighting for resources.