Ethan frowned as he tried to process Ani’s guess. ‘’Can you explain the reasons for this assumption?’’

‘First, it was something bartender Bob said in Ehrendil: Battle not with monsters, lest ye become a monster. It was strange because from your memories I know that this is a quote from Nietzsche, and while it’s possible that there are similar quotes in Azora, the way he said it, doesn’t reflect well in Azoran. As far as I understand, there aren't many dialects in Azora because the civilization here is much older and well preserved.’

‘’Bob? What does he have to do with the Olsens?’’

‘Both he and Justin had a similar black ring with an ax symbol. It might be related because their design stood out among the other accessories the locals wore. Also, just like Kathrine, Bob was also interested in initiating a conversation with you. You’re giving a lot of clues about your origins. That might be their actual interest.’

‘’That’s a lot of might, Ani,’’ he said, leaning back at the corner of the tub. ‘’Is that all?’’

‘Another thing was Justin’s abrupt laugh at your joke, sugar momma. There is no such thing in Azoran. The term should be strange to him but not only did he understand your meaning, he also overreacted. This increased the said assumption’s possibility to 34%.’

‘’I don’t know, Ani. It seems a bit forced. We don’t even know the cultures of the other places,’’ he said with a troubled face, biting his lip. ‘’Even so, it’s not something I can ignore. I think the best move is to go and visit Olsens. At worst, I can learn what she wants from me.’’

Ethan pushed himself to get up and dried himself with a towel before absentmindedly walking toward the bed as he thought about his meetings with Bob and Justin. Should I speak with Bob first? It should be safer than Katherine... Forget it, if she wished me dead, I wouldn’t be alive right now. First thing tomorrow, I’ll go to the Olsens and see what that's all about.

He slept soundlessly and it was already noon when he woke up. Other than a slight headache, he was feeling quite energetic. Without eating anything, he went to the fancy bathroom once again. Since he was going to visit the vice president of Ehrendil’s council, he wanted to be presentable at the very least.

The outfit he chose was naturally the best he got, the wastrel noble robe that he bought from Audrey. It was mostly black with silver motifs on its loose sleeves, the shoulders were wide, and had a majestic white dragon image on its back.

Tying his hair at the back, Ethan looked at the mirror and found himself damn dashing… until he smiled. He was still missing a few teeth thanks to Travis’s slap, and it ruined his image completely. Sadly, not even the high-grade potion fixed that injury. There has to be dental care in this world… right? Maybe I should’ve talked with the adventurer’s guild about our rights.

Ethan shook his head with a wry smile and tried to remember Travis’s twisted face when he lost his arm. It immediately cheered him up, and he went downstairs merrily. There was a busy crowd in the mansion, almost everyone from yesterday was around, nervously talking with each other. He located Pete with a few others and joined them.

‘’Hey! Are you okay, Ethan? I heard what happened yesterday just now,’’ Rachel called, running from the kitchen.

‘’Yeah. I’m good. More importantly, what are you guys going to do now?’’ he asked, turning toward Pete.

‘’There will be a meeting in an hour. We’ll decide what to do there. I’m guessing many people will leave and we might even drop the mercenary business,’’ Pete informed. ‘’I was meaning to ask you. Can you stay around until the end of the meeting?’’

‘’I, uh, sure. I was planning to visit Ehrendil, but it’s not something urgent.’’

‘’You should talk to him, Ethan,’’ Michelle piped from the side, gesturing to Pete. ‘’We can still continue business as usual with a leader, but he is insisting that he is not fit.’’

‘’He seemed pretty fit to me yesterday,’’ he said, looking at Pete and lifting an eyebrow. ‘’Getting cold feet because of the crowd?’’

Pete shifted his eyes. ‘’N-Not exactly. I-I’m thinking what’s b-best for–’’

‘’Yeah, I get it. I know your medicine, come,’’ Ethan said, wrapping his arm around his neck and dragging him toward the outside. ‘’First, we need to find a dentist, though. That does exist, right? Right?’’

‘’I can help you with that,’’ Rachel said from behind before joining them. ‘’More specifically, my senior sister could help with that, and your order also should be finished, we’ll take it before returning.’’

Ethan blinked his eyes. ‘’Your what?’’

‘’M-My, you know… t-that’s what we call each other. I-It’s the custom,’’ she said, flushing a little.

Ethan stared at her, his lips pressing together.

Rachel moved toward the door. ‘’Hmph. If you don’t want it, suit yourself.’’

‘’Hold on. I do want it!’’ He ran after her with a grin, still dragging Pete.

The trio moved along the streets of Niamaris while chatting. Ethan’s hands were full of street food. Despite looking like a rich young lord, he was acting like a country bumpkin, buying everything that smelled good and giving toothless smiles to bad jokes.

‘’Hey, did any of you see Abraham? Beet was with him as well, why didn’t they show up yesterday?’’ he asked between bites.

‘’He must’ve activated his silence runes once it got noisy,’’ Rachel said, irritated.

‘’And even if you killed Leo in front of him, he wouldn’t spare a glance to you,’’ Pete added.

‘’Don’t speak badly about my favorite guy. He is above worldly concerns. What do you mortals know?’’

‘’You don’t really think that he can create his golem army, right?’’ Pete asked idly.

‘’As long as you can rain money on him, I think it’s only a matter of time. The dude was one of Earth’s best engineers, hand-picked by Ani. Don’t let his conduct misguide you.’’

Pete frowned and hesitated to speak. ‘’E-Ethan, I’m not sure about this being a leader thing. I d-don’t have Leo’s confidence or charisma. There is fierce competition out there. Wouldn’t I just drive our group toward a cliff?’’

Ethan opened his [Void Mute] to cover three of them. ‘’What if I told you that I know a safe haven, not only it’ll give your guys priceless skills and artifacts after testing them, but you can also settle this place, build a city and make it your base of operations? Oh, and it comes with an option to teleport all over the continent.’’

Pete and Rachel looked at each other in disbelief. It was Rachel who spoke first. ‘’What’s the catch?’’

‘’Well, if you move without waiting for me to do some investigation, you might encounter the old owners that returned someday,’’ he said. ‘’Although their tiers would be low, personally, I wouldn’t want to mess with angry ascendants.’’

‘’But the skills and the artifacts? Could we acquire them and return back?’’ Pete asked in a hurry.

‘’Sure. In exchange for some basic maintenance work and entertaining a friend of mine.’’

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

‘’I think we have a lot to talk about.’’

‘’No problem,’’ he said, taking another bite from his crispy roast duck. ‘’That senior sister shouldn’t take much of our time, right? I’m guessing we’ll buy some kind of elixir?’’

‘’Nope. It's a good ol’ dental implant, but much faster,’’ Rachel said, and explained after savoring Ethan’s expression, ‘’You see, growing a tooth is a bit complicated. Only some of the high-tier healers are capable of this, and naturally, they are hard to reach and expensive. I saw my senior sister doing an implant before. She said that it’s much cheaper and could hold for a century without any issues. Also, once you make a breakthrough for tier-9, you can regrow your teeth yourself, but make sure to remove the implants beforehand.’’

‘’Huh… How about missing limbs? Does regrowing an arm difficult as well?’’

‘’No, it’s actually more simple. Depending on their skills, most of the high-tier healers could do that, and much easier if you have the limb undamaged.’’

Ethan pursed his lips. ‘’If only I knew.’’

‘’But forget about going all foolhardy,’’ Rachel warned. ‘’Master said that there are some rare skills mixed with soul attacks which makes the healing very difficult if not impossible.’’

‘’Actually, we made a small library for ourselves,’’ Pete said. ‘’You should check that out, there are many books that are not available to the public. Not in the free cities, anyway.’’

‘’Nice! Just what I need. I’ll definitely visit.’’

They arrived at master Ruth’s place shortly. The ground floor was a potion shop, the second floor was a warehouse, and the third floor was the workshops of her disciples. It turned out Rachel had two senior sisters and one senior brother in total.

Ethan greeted them all with exaggerated bows, and they all seemed pleased. So much so, that senior sister Hailey didn’t even ask for money from the surgery of three teeth implants. It was hardly a surgery, though. She first gave him an anesthetic potion which numbed his mouth but didn’t hinder his speech. Then, with the help of three different artifacts, she finished the job in 15 minutes.

Since he was already here, he also restocked his potions. He bought 40 mid-grade potions of all kinds and 2 high-grade health potions for emergencies, planning to give half of them to Beet. I need to train the little terror with his spatial necklace; he has to store the potion with an open lid and summon them to his mouth. Otherwise, there is no way he could drink potions with those scythes, and it'll be still me who helps him drink it.

After that, they went to master Ruth and took Ethan’s two bottles of elixirs. She only charged him 20 mana stones in total and didn’t even ask where he got the Aether Bloom or what he was planning to do with the elixirs. Indeed, the kind lady, who looked about 30 years old, was exactly as Rachel mentioned.

Ethan was holding these Aether Blooms for months now, so the moment they left the building he took out one of the bottles and chugged it down right away. Like an ice-cold lemonade on a hot day, it refreshed his very being and gave chills all over. With pressure on his chest, Ethan had to take some deep breaths to adjust himself.

‘DING! You have gained 50 INT stats.’

Only after hearing Ani, he gave a satisfied smile. Man, I feel like I’m turning into one of Pavlov's dogs. How could this DING sound make me so happy? he thought as he checked his new resources.

Health: 1300/1300

Mana: 1800/1800

Stamina: 798/800

Awesome! Maybe I should just grit my teeth and kill some more birds in the Wish Well, just enough to get me tier-4. Though, I really didn't feel like it at that time.

‘’So? How much essence did you get?’’ Pete asked from the side, tilting his head.

‘’A damn 50 stats!’’ he announced proudly.

‘’Stats?’’ Rachel repeated with a frown. ‘’Like in the games?’’

‘’You… you didn’t make a stat panel?’’ Ethan asked in disbelief and shook his head after seeing their confusion. ‘’You don’t know what you’re missing. What’s the point of cultivation if numbers don’t go up?’’

‘’What’s he talking about?’’ Pete asked Rachel.

‘’I think Ani converts his gains to him in a game-like panel.’’

‘’Oh, the status screen, right? Honestly, I don’t see any point. But speaking of gains, I almost forgot about this,’’ Pete said and fetched a spatial bag before tossing it to Ethan. ‘’Here. Those were Leo’s possessions.’’

Ethan didn’t even look inside and tossed it back. ‘’I’ve recently killed your group’s captain. I’m not robbing you guys as well. Use it as a fund or something.’’

Pete sighed and took another bag before switching some items with the other. ‘’I knew you’d say something like that, but you should at least take this. These 100 mana stones were your bounty in the first place.’’

‘’Hmm?’’ He raised an eyebrow and considered it. ‘’Well… taking Travis’s money like this does sound good. Alright, but if you need any money let me know, I’m literally loaded right now.’’

With this, Ethan’s wealth climbed up to 120 mana stones, and he was itching to go for another skill but decided to hold himself until he reached the Mirasatra.

They returned to the mansion slowly, and Ethan explained everything they needed to know about Wish Well. He also made Pete drink some alcohol on the way, by any means necessary. As they got close, he sent Rachel away to talk with Pete alone.

‘’Come on. That’s the last one, drink it up.’’

‘’You said that for the third one before this already! I’m already reeking booze.’’

‘’So what? Drink it up, I know your limit.’’

Pete murmured some curses and gulped another mouthful. Then, he received a powerful slap in the face, almost falling down. ‘’What the–’’

‘’Take deep breaths. Focus.’’

‘’What?’’

Ethan helped him stand straight by holding his shoulders and looked into his eyes with a serious gaze. ‘’Remember, this is not about you. Everything you will or won’t do, will affect your people. From now on, there are two Petes. One is who you are personally, and another is the collective will of your group. Make the distinction between them clear and don’t let them influence each other.’’

Pete gave a dazed nod.

‘’Now, first send away the bad apples, you don’t need people who only look for profit or the ones who will follow you half-heartedly. Then, show the rest who the second Pete is. The will. Show its desire to do anything to protect, show how determined it is, and how solid its foundations are. Only after that give them the good news about Wish Well, but as we spoke before, don’t get into details. Just mention the good opportunity waiting for them all.’’

‘’Okay. I think I got it,’’ Pete said, looking pumped up.

Ethan patted his arm with encouragement, and Pete was already walking steadily from the front. Inside the mansion’s ballroom, about 100 people were sitting on chairs and chatting in low voices.

Pete directly went to the middle of them while Ethan found an empty seat and sat on it.

A guy who was sitting next to Rafael jumped to his feet and pointed at Ethan in rage. ‘’What is he doing here? We didn’t even bury Leo’s body, are we really going to welcome his killer among us? Did you all forget about the things Leo did for us already?’’

‘’Get the fuck out,’’ Pete stated calmly.

‘’W-What did you say?’’

‘’I said, get the fuck out.’’

‘’Who the hell do you think you–’’

‘’I’m the captain of the Earth Mercenaries! No. Actually, I’m changing that bullshit name. We’re now called Stardust. If anyone has a problem with that, get the fuck out of here, now!’’ Pete shouted with an ironclad authority.

Everyone was stunned. Michelle turned to look at Ethan with a weird look, to which Ethan replied with his own weird look. Well… I was expecting more of an ‘I have a dream!’ speech. I guess that’ll do as well. The wonders of alcohol on this guy…

In the end, only 15 people left with complaints, 2 of them were even biochip users. As for the rest, the more Pete spoke about their future, how they will share fortunes and disasters, how Stardust must be a single entity, and how important the trust they must build with each other, the more they started to look at him differently. When he announced the good opportunity for skills and artifacts, they didn’t even react strongly, because he already managed to light up hope in their eyes beforehand.

Ethan was genuinely impressed. He expected Pete to become a good leader eventually, but certainly not this fast. Who would’ve thought that the guy already had a talent for it? And who cared if he had to walk with a bottle of wine for some stimulation? With their long lifespans and ridiculous regenerations, he doubted that alcohol was even harmful anymore. Shaking his head with an amused smile, he [Blink]ed to the basement, to check out Beet before leaving for the Olsens.

What he found was a battlefield. Abraham was in the middle of the room, surrounded by rune shields, and controlling five flying small knives to attack Beet.

Beet was flying in the air, fighting against poorly controlled knives, while all his shades were attacking the rune barrier with passion.

Ethan slowly closed the door and left the two psychos to themselves. He [Blink]ed outside of the mansion, and arrived at his destination with a long-range teleportation gate and some more [Blink]s. The giant manor had a simple-looking design, pristine walls with plain but aesthetic colors, and a welcoming aura. It was like a small reflection of Ehrendil itself.

With anticipation in his eyes, Ethan approached the guards as he put on his easy-going smile and gave an order to Ani at the same time. ‘Record everything, and the moment your assumption goes above 50%, let me know.’