Jacob looked at the mighty walls the inhabitants of St. Peter had erected. With Aunt Linda directing most of the new Magic users, St. Peter had basically leveled off a huge portion of the ground near the city and was now filling it up with buildings.

They would need some space soon since Jacob had sent teams to scout the other cities. Fort Mountain was but one of many little towns and villages all around St. Peter. They had already provided help to many, ensuring they had ways to get food and clean water and distributing some extremely weak Cultivation Techniques.

Jacob had still nightmares about wasting all the Demonic Beasts’ blood to inscribe the Cultivation Techniques. But it had been worth it. Those places had calmed down, and he would soon go inspect them in secret to decide how to bring them in the fold. St. Peter needed to stand united, and now that they had some unity, a foundation to build upon, they could start looking toward the future.

Mankind was way better off in this region than any other part of the world, Jacob thought. But he still needed to help as many people as possible. If only he had been stronger, he would have already started roaming around to help the city further away.

The main problem was that strong monsters inhabited almost all the coastal areas. Jacob had a mental sense of the power distribution, but he had started trying to map out the density and the likelihood of meeting extremely strong monsters in certain parts of Italy before going on any travel.

Anyway, he would worry about that later on.

Juliet finally knocked warily on the villa’s door, scared that Jacob would feed her some poisoned food – or Alchemic product, like he said – again.

“Hey,” Juliet smiled toward him.

Things between them had been a bit weird, to be completely honest.

They wouldn’t have been if we hadn’t shared a damned Ancestral Bond, Jacob mulled over.

“Got the Alchemic Lasagna working,” Jacob smiled.

“Well, I think it needs a better name. ‘Alchemic Tagliatelle’ already sounds quite boring, honestly. Why don’t you give them one of the names your aunt suggested.”

Aunt Linda had started butting in every instance where a name had to be given to something. They all had some weird connotation, like the ‘Heavenly Profound Walls’ or something like that. She had truly weirded out Jacob, but some people had seemed to like the names and labels she was coming up with.

She was even pushing to rename the cultivation realms. Jacob had severely forbidden her to do so, but she started getting a little cult following going on in St. Peter. She had never been popular, but the apocalypse had made her weird enough to get many hidden freaks to join her.

If Jacob had become the Conspiracy Theorist King, Aunt Linda had become the Geek Queen.

“I don’t know, I’ll come up with something,” Jacob grumbled.

“Well, better do it before your aunt does.”

Juliet laughed and patted him on the shoulder.

His ears flared up a bit.

You old goat, come on. She’s fifteen, has some decency, for God’s sake.

“Sixteen, actually,” Juliet said. “I went to school one year later. I thought I told you.”

She was getting better at picking his emotions apart through the Ancestral Bond and reading his thoughts.

“Whatever, too young is too young,” Jacob declared.

“I think we should talk about it at some point,” Juliet said with more maturity than he had. “After all, we already know everything about each other. I don’t think that ignoring things is a good thing.”

Jacob knew she was right. Hell, he even agreed with her. But what he had was also experience. There was a massive can of worm he didn’t want to touch, even with a ten-meter pole.

“Nah, I’ll pass,” Jacob said, rising a thumb in her direction.

“Whatever you want,” Juliet didn’t argue.

She has matured a lot in this past month. She seldom acts like the idiotic imma-fight-you girl of before.

“Ouch!”

Juliet punched his arm, almost flooring him.

“Well, at least you proved me wrong,” Jacob said with a sour smile.

Marcus and Lucius ended their shift and went to rest a bit before training while Jacob and Juliet were heading toward Luis Albert’s office.

“How’s the man?” Jacob asked.

“He’s…” Juliet was trying to find the word.

“Still not processing his grief and throwing himself at work. Well, he lost a child. Marina got close to him, and I hope that will keep him sane enough.”

“Women saving the day once again,” Juliet laughed.

Jacob gave her a sad smile. Whenever they talked about Frederick, he couldn’t muster up the will to laugh or joke around.

A month had gone by, and Jacob still thought about it every night. The kid had sacrificed himself, and he had done nothing about it.

One night, he had realized that if he had told Frederick that he, Jacob, could have taken care of whatever threat with his famed hidden card… Well, things might have gone differently.

His reincarnation had not gone as planned. He had imagined breezing through this new life thanks to his knowledge of the past one. But, oh boy, hadn’t it been the exact contrary?

The best thing to do is stop acting moronic.

That had been his solution. Stop acting like an ass, be kind to people, trust others more. Share more with the rest of humanity. Of course, there would always be bad consequences, but there was no reason to jeopardize other people’s lives because of his fears.

Now, after trusting more the residents of St. Peter, they were much better off. Of course, there had been a fight here and there, plus a couple of people who tried to kill each other or go kill people in other towns, but apart from your usual apocalypse-murdering, nothing was out of place.

Plus, twenty days ago, Luis Albert had rolled out the first version of the Contribution System, and it was going great. The man had revised his first draft, thrown himself at the task with all he had, and did a splendid job. Now, Luis Albert had devised a new Contribution System for the imminent immigration that Jacob had planned.

And they were on their way to go see what marvel the man had come up with.