After climbing a spire or rock seventy meters tall, training martial arts the whole morning, and getting beaten up by brawny hunks and mighty eagles, I should've awakened as sore as one of those rave kids from the reserve. But no. I woke up completely refreshed. I even felt stronger than yesterday. It might be my imagination. Belle was knocking on the door.

"Sandra, I have your breakfast. You have to get ready to go soon or you'll be late for your training."

Can't have that. I can't be late for my morning dose of blonde goodness. I washed my face and ate my breakfast. On the way out, I gave my instructions to the staff.

"Arwia, start teaching the children. We will talk about making some teaching aids in the afternoon. Belle, make sure everyone is washing their damn hands. Before eating, after relieving themselves or after messing with earth or other things. They can wash just because the sky is blue for all I care, so long they wash. Aristunn, make sure the guards are rested. Do you train?"

The eunuch was taken by the question. "Sometimes."

"Then divide the guards into three squads. One squad is guarding, one squad is resting, the third is training. Do we even have training weapons? Training dummies?"

Arwia took the lead, "We can commission some."

"Good. Tell the people at the sawmill that I'll pay for it later when I go to pick up my weapons. Also, send a messenger to Abil-Kisu. I have some properties and business I want to sell him."

With their instructions handed over, I mount on Penny and go to the training grounds with two different guards. I made sure to get there at least a quarter of an hour earlier but Brandon was already there, training his sword forms. I could watch him train all day.

"Good. You are on time. Let's begin."

I dismount, put on the tunic he gave me, adjust the belt to keep it firm against my body and start my stretches. Brendan approached and watched. I was sitting on a bench stretching my lower back.

"If you are going to stand behind me, at least put some weight pressing my back down," I told him.

I felt a shiver as those strong, manly hands grabbed the end of my ribcage and pressed down. I was really limber than before. I felt like a gymnast. Taking advantage of his disposition, I asked him to help me with several exercises, relishing on the physical contact. I was trash for taking advantage of him like that when the objective was to improve my survivability but it was a guilty pleasure.

Horny girl, you are turning into Theresa.

"Why do you do these kinds of exercises?"

"To warm-up and stretch. This way I don't pull a muscle and get the most of my exercise. You guys should do that too."

"Well, we run around the outer wall before our training starts. But we don't bend, twist the way you do."

I looked at him and saw a faint sliver of pink in the nordic hunk's cheeks. Was he blushing? I decided to tease him.

"Well, I can guarantee it also improves reflexes, agility and the survivability of the troops. It also helps with morale as they already have all those nice endorphins running in their blood."

Great. Endorphins don't have a translation. "It makes their blood pump faster and stronger," I corrected.

"Well, you can go pump your blood with four laps around the place," He told me.

That was fourteen... fifteen clicks. I was ready and broke into a jog and then a full sprint. I wanted to see how my stamina was affected by my healing boon. I went halfway and still felt there was gas in the tank. I kept my rhythm, my sneakers had proper shock absorption and I kept going. One lap. Two laps. I fell into a state where you are tired but know you can still go on for just a while more. Where everything is burning but you have so much adrenalin and endorphin running in your blood you can go. I felt like Tom Hanks, actually. From coast to coast. Third lap.

Perhaps I was in a state where my exercise was starting to force my muscles into overload. Compared to voluntarily allowing that merchant to stab me in the heart, it was nothing. I kept pushing, focusing on my body. Circulate my chi, open my chakra, reach my cosmos, be mindful of my exercise, training at the thousand G pod, limit breaker, all that crap. I vowed to only stop when my body collapsed. I needed to know. So I kept running at the edge of my aerobic capacity.

I got tunnel vision. I kept seeing the dirt path ahead of me but everything else was a blur. I could keep going. I felt salt in my mouth. Sweat. It was warm. My lungs complained. You won a scholarship exam. Thousands of candidates. One spot. Yours. Sleepless nights studying. Kept a stellar GPA for three years and even found time to date. Learned five freaking idioms at native-level fluency. You'd eat Jennifer Lawrence for breakfast in that jungle. And hooked up with Liam Hemsworth. Nothing against Josh but his character was a creep, a whiner, and a sucker. I didn't want to enslave myself to a master but I also didn't want to nurse some poor crybaby. I want a partner to walk beside me as equals.

Talk about going into a tangential rant there.

And then something picked me up. I struggled a bit but then something held the back of my head. The magic ended and I turned into a pumpkin. My body was burning.

"Sandra! Sandra! You there! Get some water!" I heard Brandon shouting.

All I could do was keep my breathing stable. I could feel muscles randomly firing and twitching everywhere. My cheeks were spouting flames. Not literally. Inhale through the nose, exhale through the mouth.

I felt cold water splashing over me. Stealing away the heat.

"More water! She is burning."

I heard a story once. I never fact-checked it. Do you know why camels are used in the desert? Because when they are tired, they lay down and rest to keep going. Horses are stupid and run until they die. No offense, Penny. It is probably a lie.

Time went by and the heat stopped. I regained control of my muscles. I was tired and hungry though. I opened my eyes. I was on a bench, guarded by the two eunuchs. I stood up and checked the sun. Almost noon.

"Hey, guys. I'm fine."

My limbs felt like lead but I was fine. I stood up on uneasy legs. I held onto one of the bodyguards' arms. I was drenched. My hair was clinging to my face.

"Glad to see you awake, mistress."

I glanced at the bench. There was a pool of mud underneath. "For how long did I sleep?"

"Not very much. Are you really feeling well?"

"Yeah. Just tired and hungry. Let me dry myself."

I synched on the water's resonance. So long the complexity was lower, Decompose could remove atoms from other compounds to synth the one I wanted if I wasn't gentle. So I had to force the water out slowly. I felt it run out of my hair as if my whole body was hydrophobic. Most of it evaporated and my body cooled by a lot. I was shivering at the end. I moved to an empty and dry bench and summoned the cooler bag. I took a carton of orange juice and a triangular mayo chicken sandwich.

I looked inside before dismissing the bag. I was halfway through my food. And Theresa was mighty irresponsible by packing mayo without proper cooling.

But it tasted otherworldly. Pun intended.

After finishing the sandwich at a speed that would put some competition eaters to shame, I topped my stomach with water from my canteen. It was only half-full because I didn't refill it from yesterday. I basked in sunlight for a few minutes, warming myself up. I stood up and went on to find Brandon. He was instructing some soldiers.

"Miss Rinaldi! Glad to see you standing up. Forgive me but I have to ask. Why do you push yourself so hard?"

That was a good question. A man of few words knows how to put worth in each one, so they say. I blinked at him.

"Because I need to know my limits. Because soon enough another idiot like Hama-Tula will look at me and see not a person, but a merchandise or a piece of meat. So I need to be stronger. I need to know how hard I can push myself. I need to know the limits of my powers. And as you can see, I am perfectly well."

He smiled. It was warm, and I melted inside. "Those are good reasons. You almost broke our record. Do you know how many laps did you run?"

"No idea. I stopped counting on the third lap."

Brandon pointed at one of the soldiers. He took a step forward and knelt. "You ran eight laps, milady. I'm deeply moved by your endurance and resilience. I'm sorry I laughed at you. I'm sorry I called you 'a stupid wench'."

I ran for almost thirty kilometers. Daaang. In what, three hours? That's... amazing. I shoved that aside to pay attention to what was going on now.

"Am I supposed to do anything?" I asked Brandon.

"You can do whatever you want to this guy. He failed to show proper respect."

I frowned and shook my head. "Stand up and strive to improve. Throw away your biased views. That's all."

"Thank you, milady!" He returned to the formation.

Brandon looked at him, at the other soldiers holding back the hazing that was sure to come that man's way. Then he faced me.

"I think we are done for today. Go and rest. Until tomorrow."

I bowed. "See you tomorrow, instructor. Thanks for your hard work."

I returned home. Thirty kilometers was a lot. I didn't break any record or anything as I spent about three hours to run that but this resilience is unexpected for good old me. I wasn't a couch potato but far from athletic. And some weird thought came to me. What if my boons were shared through my bond with Penny? It could be the reason the mare likes to run so much now. Did she have any condition that hindered her stamina and bonding with me fixed it? I'd have to ask the horse merchant at the caravanserai. But if I had to say, Penny did look more impressive than when I found her.

"Confident. But that's my girl, right Penny?"

As if she could understand me, Penny snorted. We crossed the gates, I left her to go to the stables and went indoors. I still wanted something to eat.

Inside, I heard the children repeating something Arwia just said. They were sitting on the dining table, and Arwia was standing up, lecturing. We made eye contact and I gave her a thumbs up. She just smiled and kept on with her lesson.

I dove into the kitchen, outside the building. If it were inside, everyone would die cooked. The chimney ran tall and had an arc connecting it to the building's second-floor roof to give it support. A colorful awning was all that spared the food and the cook from the elements. By the oven, Belle-Sunu was spreading gravy on the kebab meat standing upright on a spit. The meat, not the girl.

"Belle, can you get me some food fast? I'm starving."

She glanced over her shoulder and returned to her work, "Just a minute, Sandra!"

I went to the basin and washed my hands. A few minutes later, I was eating a succulent and delicious kebab. The food was wolfed down in a very unladylike manner and I was going for seconds before I knew it. I was turning into anime protagonist material. All I needed now was the tsundere, the aloof loli, and the childhood friend.

I filled my belly and rested for a while. It wasn't noon yet. My stupid starvation-induced thoughts vanished.

"Aristunn wanted to talk to you. He's at the slave pens."

I nodded. "I have to remodel the place and also think of a better name. I'll go there to take a look."

I crossed the backyard, waved at the two gardeners and reached the slave pens. The place would be at minus four stars. It was dark, dirty and gloomy. Two guards were at the door. Some hay bales were piled up on the side of the building.

They stood at attention. "Mistress." They didn't shout.

"At ease, and call me by my given name. Sandra. What is going on here?"

"Nothing, Sa-Sandra. Aristunn is inside, checking some things."

I walked with firm steps inside. the ground wasn't stone, it was dirt covered with straw. The straw was moldy and I cursed myself for not checking it before. I really had to get better at grasping the whole picture. It had several cells with the doors open. I could see the people I brought resting against the walls, doing nothing. They weren't even paying attention to the door of the cell.

"Aristunn, are you in here?" I asked out loud.

It was like kicking an ant nest. They jumped and for a moment, looked frightened. "Mistress!"

"Okay, everyone. Calm down. Where is Aristunn?"

The eunuch came, looking flustered. "Mistress Sandra. What brings you here?"

I smelled something on him and decided to not ask what he was doing here. It was none of my business.

"Aristunn, you wanted to tell me something?"

"Yes, Sandra. Abil-Kisu invited you for dinner in his home. You may discuss business with him at that time."

I nodded. "Good. Now go and get yourself cleaned."

He blushed and ran outside. I wondered if he was really a eunuch but then again, it was none of my business. If someone was getting some, more power to them.

Without much to do in there, I also went outside, turned around and gave the building a good look. It was made of sandstone bricks like the house but it had poor ventilation, poor illumination. It was a prison before it was a habitation. That had to change. I had to go all over the place and make it mine. Claim it. That included the guardhouse, the barracks, the stables, even Hama-Tula's untouched bedroom. No, seriously, the last person in there was him.

I needed materials to make my transformation real. I went back to the main building and into a pile of porous, black to light gray rocks that looked somewhat vitrified. The slag. There should be over two tons of the stuff there already and I knew for a fact that they were bringing more as I looked at the pile. Some empty crates were next to the pile of rocks, probably for me to fill with the iron and other materials. Well, time to work.

The first order of business was to prepare some crates to hold fine-grained particles, like sand and other stuff. For that, I took a crate two plastic bags and some slag rocks. I placed the crate over an open blue plastic bag to catch whatever fell through and started to remove the silicon from the slag. Focusing on fine control, Decompose removed the silicon and I started to lather the inside of the crate with a thin layer of silicon, filling in the gaps. If it weren't four times as light, it could be mistaken for silver. The already porous slag rock became brittle and I stowed it in the second plastic bag.

I kept molding the silicon over the crate until it was waterproof and no wood could be seen from the inside. With time it would absorb oxygen from the atmosphere and turn back to rock but that was a slow process. The silicon would swell and break the crate. it was stuck to the wood now. Oh, well. I had to make this one crate a worthy sacrifice. So I took another rock and poured another layer of silicon, then smooth it out until there was no place for anything to snag on. Then on a corner, I made a channel and a beak. I'd pour the material I collected through there into bags or other crates.

I tried lifting the crate. It was still okay for me, but if it were full of something heavy, like a metal oxide, it would be hard for me. I thought of several means to make it work, like a swiveling mount but I didn't have time for that.

It was time for some serious Decompose montage.

I knew most of it would be calcium hydroxide or slaked lime. The most recent slag rocks would still have quicklime inside, but the ones that were left out in the open would've soaked water like a sponge. I didn't want to disturb the balance of whatever chemicals were inside so I couldn't take out just the hydrogen. Even taking the silicon would've damaged some other compounds that were not silica. I also decided to remove the compounds, instead of individual elements.

In a sample this big, there's bound to be some super reactive element or radical that is completely neutralized. Like phosphorus, fluorine, or an alkali metal. Some of them could ignite in contact with air alone.

I started to pull out the silicon dioxide from the rocks. Chunks of quartz, sand and probably glass came out and fell on the box. Sometimes flakes of the slag rock would break because I was breaking its structure and I had to fish them out. But it was too much material and I had few places to put that white sand. I was running out of trash bags. Another thing I forgot. Cleaning up the trash I brought from Earth. I bet that stuff would sell very well.

So I started to pour silicon on my frying pan and making disks. Cylinders. Conical frustums. Who came up with that name, anyway? It seems the cone is frustrated. Cones are happy! Party hats. Ice cream. I'll go with disks if you can forgive my french... Akkadian.

After the silicon was gone I removed the metals. Iron came easily. Aluminum too. The wind was blowing lime everywhere. I wasn't too concerned as I was sure this soil was acidic. Some calcium for the grass. I extracted the lime on the box and scooped it with the portable shovel into barrels. I had some nice barrels that were empty from the party. The innkeeper's barrels. I'll buy them from him or buy new ones. Once the lime, silica, iron, and aluminum were removed from the slag, I was left with two-tenths of the original material. There's where the gold was. I was hoping to find some real gold, but I meant the real juicy goods.

I put my hands in the pile of 'trace materials' I had and sensed for some signature I could recognize. There were sodium, chlorine, sulfur. Sodium sulfate. That was a useful chemical. Would I get it? I focused and pulled, instead of pushing away. I got a speck of white dust that tested positive with the portable lab for sodium, sulfur, and oxygen. Sounds good to me. Now that I had a sample, I started pulling the salt from the mix. I got about two kilograms. Quite a haul and it used up all the sodium. I had to extract the halogens in salt form with an alkaline metal or I'd lose them. So potassium chloride and potassium fluoride. I also got some potassium sulfate. All the potassium salts went into the same ziplock bag.

Two carts with slag arrived while I was processing the pile. They unload the slag where the previous pile was. They stopped to watch me work and talked about the metallic disks I already had piled up. I only had iron and aluminum extracted otherwise I think they would go nuts. Since I wanted to measure productivity, I didn't let them take the iron yet. I stopped working to process the new material and join it with what I already had.

All that was left was a pile of brown-gray heavy dust in the crate that should be mostly metallic oxides. I extracted magnesium and manganese in metallic form after mucking for a while. They were very abundant. Then I saw a speck of yellow while sifting through the dust. There was gold. I focused on the gold and pulled it toward my hand. It had the undesirable effect of ruining my necklace. I cursed. I was getting attached to that necklace. Oh, well. I put the ruby back in the gem pouch of my handbag and used the gold in the necklace as bait for the rest of the gold. At least I won't have to destroy more coins. The lump of gold from the necklace tripled in size.

The only explanation for that was they had bad metal shavings management. Everything that falls on the floor from the machining, hammering and other operations was swept into the slag pit. I tried silver and got a smaller nugget. What's left? Copper and tin, because they worked with bronze. Maybe some nickel and lead too. As I removed the metals, the pile of metallic oxides got smaller. Half the crate.

And I felt more tired from moving the metallic disks around than from Decomposing it.

It was hard to get anything from there now. I had no idea what kind of materials were in that pile of flakes and dust or if extracting something blindly wouldn't cause the metals to ignite by reacting with the oxygen again. Phosphorus would do that. I got a ziplock bag with Phosphorus trioxide.

With that out of the way, there were not many things that would spontaneously burn if I reduced the oxides back to metallic form by removing the oxygen. I did that and got a pellet of metal but I didn't know which metal it was. The pellet was too small to decide by density and it had more than one metal. Transition metal, at least. I didn't think there would be any other group 1 or 2 metals in any significant amount. Without another choice, I went through the periodic table. Scandium, not detectable. Titanium, yes. Most of the pellet was titanium, to the frying pan with it.

I was left with less than half percent of what I started with. That was still ten kilograms of whatever trace elements were in the slag. It could be anything from lithium to uranium. I bagged it and tallied my metals. The frying pan had about 300ml of volume but not all disks were flush with the pan. Several of them had more or less material.

46 disks of iron ~ 109 Kg

880 disks of silicon ~ 307 Kg

70 disks of aluminum ~ 57 Kg

28 disks of copper ~ 75 Kg

9 disks of tin ~ 20 Kg

5 disks of nickel ~ 13 Kg

13 disks of lead ~ 44 Kg

15 disks of magnesium ~ 8 Kg

3 disks of manganese ~ 7 Kg

8 disks of titanium ~ 11 Kg

3 barrels of calcium oxide / hydroxide ~ 900 Kg

Sodium sulfate ~ 2 Kg

Potassium sulfate ~ 250g

Potassium-halogen salts ~ less than 100g

Phosphorus trioxide ~ less than 200g

Gold nugget ~ 2 shekels (in weight)

Silver nugget ~ 1 shekel (in weight)

Unknown oxides ~ 10 Kg

Looking at the list, I could tell their manufacture processes had too many losses. Those losses were almost unavoidable. Giving them only the iron felt like I was robbing them. I piled up the metallic discs inside the trash bags and stored them. A 100-liter bag could hold easily all my metals if I don't intend to lift it from the ground. The iron went into the crate and the silicon I was going to use it now.

I called all the workers and had them carry the silicon disks to the about-to-be-renovated slave pens. The first order of business was to remove all the cell doors. Decompose did quick work of the floor straw and other materials. Then I took the silicon disks and used Decompose to pour them on the floor, covering the entire building with a smooth layer of silicon.

I tried to walk on it and slipped.

Maybe too smooth was a bad thing. I had to add texture to the silicon. Something that could give a good grip but wasn't too rough for cleaning. My first thought was handprints. I just had to put my hand against the silicon and use my power for a fraction of a second. But it wasn't fashionable. The material I had plenty of was straw. That would work. I gathered the women and told them to gather the straw from the hay bales outside and weave them in a loose square pattern over the floor. While they wove the fibers, I went for the windows. I removed the bars of iron from the sandstone and then started to cut through the wall. We talked about life, the future, and silicon disks. They looked nice but

Slow-motion karate chop plus Decompose. It gave the windowsill a metallic finish though but it would gray out once the silicon oxidized. Let's put some sunshine in these gloomy slave pens. With the extra silicon I removed from the windows, I went through the walls filling in any holes and cracks. The beige-red sandstone had some metallic spots but I wanted to paint it later. Once the women finished braiding straw, I'd press the lattice against the silicon with Decompose to imprint and then I condensed the carbon from the fibers into chunks of graphite. One of the elder women came after me with a mop, removing the graphite and saltwater that was left from the straw. I learned to regulate the pressure to let just the texture sink in and not the entire straw lattice.

We worked on renovating the slave pens for the rest of the afternoon. It got an even floor and the work people did on it made them feel like the place was theirs. The lack of bars, doors, and narrow slits for ventilation also helped lift the mood. They took a new batch of straw from the hay bales for bedding, laid their hides on top and smiled at the new place. I needed beds.

I glanced up at the sky and saw the deep orange of dusk in the west. Beds would have to wait until tomorrow. Right by the time my body complained about getting some R & R, I saw Arwia, coming to call us for dinner.

Or call them for dinner. I had an appointment with Abil-Kisu.