Jacob had spent three hours teaching the fundamentals of Alchemy and Inscription Patterns. He had had to mix it up a bit to avoid people losing focus. He had learned this lesson the hard way. Humanity was not ready to work for three hours on the same task over and over.

At least, that was most of humanity.

While people ran away as soon as Jacob declared that time was up, Helena and Juliet went up to him. Juliet didn’t care that much for Inscription Patterns, but she had heard Helena wanted private lessons from Jacob and found it suspicious.

Even though Juliet did not believe that the blonde vixen wanted to charm Jacob and have him reveal even more powerful secrets to her, it was better to keep an eye on her. And the thought of Helena being better than herself made Juliet angry. Not jealous, plain angry.

“Helena, your work is stunning,” Jacob said while looking at the girl.

“You are a good teacher,” she smiled warmly toward him.

It’s not jealousy. It is not.

Juliet had a hard time seeing the two get along so well. She had an idea of what they had said to each other, thanks to the Ancestral Bond. But she wasn’t a 100% sure of what had gone down between them.

“You are a good teacher,” Juliet parroted.

“Your work is great as well, Juliet,” Jacob looked at her reproachfully. He knew what she was thinking.

And no, it wasn’t nice.

It involved her fist and Helena’s face.

The rest was left to imagination.

“This completes most of the classes you have to teach, right?” Juliet asked before Helena could fish for more compliments.

“Yeah. We have to figure out the mining situation yet, but Hektor has said he will take care of that. He’s terrible at Inscribing Patterns, but he’s a decent smith.”

“Isn’t it going to take a long time?” Juliet asked, concerned.

“Yeah,” Jacob sighed. “Everything we are doing is going to take a long time. You can’t make blacksmiths and Inscription Pattern specialists in a month. It will take years before this operation will run by itself. Before then, we will need to pump gas in it at every possible occasion. If we leave the people alone to do do things, they will never reach their full potential; or maybe they will just get lost along.”

“So, aren’t you going to go for some expeditions too?” Juliet asked, curious.

It had been a week since the battle between Linda and Hektor, and Jacob was now at the Peak of the Cockroach Realm.

“Yeah, I need to go and check out a few things. I’m also worried about my aunt. I get the feeling she’s gone and got herself into trouble.”

Linda had disappeared together with the three main Elders of the Hell Devouring Sect and only God knew what they were doing.

“She’s a weirdo, but she’s strong. She gave a fight to Hektor himself.”

“I don’t want her to give a fight to any other person on Hektor’s level, though. If we meet a proper evil Tyrant while we are—”

“JACOB!” one of such Tyrants started screaming.

The Vermillion Tyrants landed on the ground and dispelled two huge vermillion wings of fire at his back.

“People are dying by the hundreds in St. Liam! There’s a goddamn plague!”

“A plague?” Helena chimed in, confused. “There are plagues in the apocalypse?”

“Very few natural ones,” Jacob spat. “Hektor, are you telling me we have to deal with the goddamn Plague Doctor, now? And he is in the place you gathered all those people?”

“Yes! I tried tracking the man down. But you know how the story goes. No one known who caught that bastard in his past life. He spread diseases in my empire and I waged wars because I didn’t know of him.”

“Hektor’s talking about the Plague Doctor, sometimes called the Tainted Tyrant. He’s an expert in Gu, poisons and diseases you can breed inside your own body. He has one of the foulest Hidden Constitutions.”

“The Venomous Plagued Body,” Hektor cringed.

“The Venomous Plagued Body,” Jacob continued, “it’s not a disease, as it sounds. It makes him immune to almost everything. He’s one of the most dangerous individuals who ever existed. He slayed millions upon millions of people before anyone noticed there was an individual capable of that. And even then, it was mostly left to speculation. I tried tracking him down—”

“I did too! And my network of intelligence was one of the most capable on the whole planet!” Hektor looked genuinely angry and in distress. If there was something he feared, that was an invisible enemy, someone he couldn’t just reach and char to death with his flames.

“I don’t understand,” Juliet frowned.

“This man is the most elusive person on Earth. To this day, we don’t even know if he actually existed for sure. All we had was an off-limit zone where we think he died. Several hundred kilometers were turned into a wasteland that could kill even Dragons with its foul gasses and poisoned waters. No one knows how it happened, but some people suppose that a hidden expert managed to find the Plague Doctor. If seeing such a plague wasn’t so unnatural, we might have not thought about him. I’m surprised he started killing people so early, to be honest. The man has always been the most cautious and sly bastard.”

“Or woman,” Hektor said. “We don’t know if he’s a male or a female. We don’t even know if he belongs to another race. However, some people miraculously survived what we think was close contact with him and told the story of a very unassuming man, a sweet and warm person who even saved many lives when the moment had required him to.”

“And we have no idea on who the expert who killed the Plague Doctor was. Some monsters kept hidden and the one this guy and the Plague Doctor fought was a battle among shadows.”