Shortly after Skaya departed, the Commander had Alex escorted to his room. He considered cultivating, but instead decided to take a few minutes to process everything that had happened in the past few days.

A Djinn randomly appeared and turned him into a cultivator. Earth was technically invaded by a magical empire intent on using its people as cannon fodder in a war against some sort of beasts. He was picked up by the niece of the Emperor of said empire and declared her heir. Magic was real. Cultivation was real.

He briefly wondered if maybe he had lost his mind. Delusions of grandeur maybe? Did a friend drug him and this was just one long LSD trip?

A knock at the door managed to pull him from the bizarre train of thought. He went over and pressed the button to open it, revealing one of Askren’s soldiers at the door. As his eyes took in her average height and athletic build, he racked his brain to remember her name, but didn’t think they had ever been introduced. She stood there holding a metal tray with a variety of foods on it.

“Good evening, sir. The commander requested we bring you some food, I hope I’m not intruding…” she said nervously.

“Not- not at all,” Alex forced out, attempting to restart his brain. He stepped to the side so she could enter the room. She quickly walked over to the desk and set the tray down.

“Is there anything else I can do for you, sir?” She asked, her eyes, which he now noticed were a vibrant green, shifting around the room. Alex got the distinct impression she wanted the answer to be no.

“No, but thank you…” he let the sentence hang.

“Corporal Vill,” she supplied.

“Thank you Corporal Vill,” he finished. She ran a hand through short cropped brown hair and turned to leave.

He glanced at the tray and didn’t see any utensils.

“Actually,” he started, and she froze, “Could I get a fork?”

Tensed shoulders relaxed as she turned back to him, a relieved expression on her face.

“Of course, sir. I’ll be right back with that. I apologize for the oversight.”

That was weird, he thought as she left the room. Why was she so tense around him? Thinking back, it wasn’t the only time it had happened with the soldiers. Sergeant Torval had panicked when she laughed at him, and even the Commander had been tense before they’d laid down the chain of command. Did it have to do with his status as the heir to house Skaya?

Before he had a chance to think more on it, Vill was back holding a napkin, fork, knife, and spoon. She’d also brought a metal cup.

“I thought you might like some water as well, sir. I’d have brought wine, but they don’t allow alcohol on troop transports.”

“Water is great, thank you,” Alex responded, “Can I ask you a question?”

“Of course sir, we are here to serve,” she responded.

“Why is everyone walking on eggshells around me?”

“Sir, I’m not sure-”

“Please,” Alex interrupted, “Don’t lie to me. Just be honest. My entire world has been flipped upside down, and the last thing I need to deal with is a bunch of people that could kill me with their pinkies acting like I’m a ticking time bomb.”

The corporal longingly eyed the exit, before her eyes returned to Alex and she seemed to deflate.

“It isn’t really my place, sir, but everyone is worried because nobility and royalty have a certain reputation. They...” She trailed off, looking for the right words.

“I think I get it,” Alex replied, “They tend to take advantage of their station and the lower station of others. Is that an accurate statement?”

“Yes, sir,” she replied nervously.

Alex felt a sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. He had a bad premonition about his new status. It seemed people lower on the social ladder than him were going to be terrified of him, and people at the same level or higher were a bunch of pricks.

“What have you all been told about me?” Alex asked. If they knew he was from Earth would they act the same way? And why hadn’t the Commander relayed their conversation to his team yet?

She appeared genuinely confused at the question, “Not much sir, just that you are the heir of House Skaya and a cultivator. That puts you in line for the throne and in the upper echelons of nobility.”

Alex laughed, maybe he had an easy resolution to this problem after all.

“I’m from Earth.”

She stared at him, dumfounded. After several seconds, her brain appeared to have processed the statement enough to begin functioning again, “You can’t be from Earth, sir. The emissary wouldn’t just pick up some vagrant from-”

“From a backwater planet and name him heir to her house?”

A mortified expression crossed Vill’s face, and she began to shake.

Alex held up his hands, “Relax! Seriously, I don’t mind you saying it. I’m not going to freak out and demand you be flogged. We’re just trying to have a conversation. Why does no one know I’m from Earth? We’ve been speaking English this whole time.”

“Standard practice for subjugation missions is to only speak the native languages for the duration of the mission. It helps put the populace more at ease. It’s just habit at this point.”

He had to admit that made a lot of sense. His stomach chose that moment to growl at him, and Alex remembered he hadn’t eaten in days.

“Can we talk while I eat?” He asked sheepishly.

Once more Vill glanced at the door, but she nodded in resignation and handed him the utensils and cup. Alex walked over to the desk and sat down to eat.

---

Alex stared at the door after the Corporal left. It took a fair bit of effort, but Vill eventually relaxed around Alex. They talked about a lot of subjects, but foremost on Alex’s mind was how shockingly similar their societies were. People worked, ate, slept, and looked forward to the weekend where they could spend time with friends and families. Well, they worked on something akin to six day weeks, with four days of labor and two days of relaxation. And everyone spent roughly three hours of every day studying the Esoteric Arts. Pretty normal, if you ignored the magic.

He also learned a little bit more about the unit that operated under Commander Askren. They were part of an elite division of the Golden Roc military, their version of special forces. Vill had joined Askren’s unit just before the invasion of Earth. He also learned that even the Empire considered it an invasion.

“Look, we recognize we’re hostile invaders conscripting the local populace,” Vill had said sheepishly, “It’s just that we don’t have much of a choice in the matter. If we don’t, hordes of beasts will invade your sector, take all the available resources, and slaughter or enslave the local populations. The lives of hundreds of billions of people will be saved because we claimed sovereignty over your planet.”

The logic was somewhat hard to argue with, but having not seen a beast horde before, nor having any true understanding of what a beast even was, it was difficult to internalize that. The whole situation was still difficult to fully grasp.

At the end of the conversation, Vill had promised to let the unit know about his background so he could avoid having to have the same conversation with every member of the unit. Alex hadn’t really even tasted the meal, he’d been so absorbed in the conversation. It wasn’t every day you got to talk to a normal person from an alien civilization. It turned out Vill was from a somewhat backwater planet as well, though hers had been part of the Empire for millenia. She’d grown up poor, enlisted as a way to get off the planet and out of poverty, and managed to train her way into one of the premier fighting forces of the Empire, the Roc Imperial Marines. So as normal as a Navy Seal or Green Beret were in American society.

Alex lightly slapped his cheeks. He’d learned a lot, but the one thing that had really been hammered home during the conversation was the importance of strength. Nobility would gain him a lot of slack, but ultimately it was his strength that mattered. If he didn’t quickly rise in power, he would be considered a wastrel, likely lose his place as heir to House Skaya, and be treated accordingly. Which meant he needed to cultivate. A lot.

He walked over to the bed and sat on it, putting his body into a cross legged position. His eyes closed.

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

In.

Out.

Energy started to flow into his lungs. It wasn’t the same volume of energy he’d gained from eating the food Skaya gave him, but it was leagues more than he’d found on Earth. On Earth he was lucky to pull in a couple particles of essence, but here every breath brought in hundreds. Alex quickly directed all of that energy to his spine.

Time seemed to slip away as Alex filled the marrow in vertebrae after vertebrae with essence. After an indeterminate period of time, he felt the last vertebrae fill up and saturate. He began to feel something strange coming from his marrow, a sort of resonance between bones. The resonance grew and grew into a crescendo, until he felt something pop and a wave of nausea swept through him. He jerked from his bed and rushed to the restroom.

Alex barely lifted the seat of the toilet in time for a wave of tarry, black vomit to burst from his mouth. The only thing worse than the taste of it was the smell. Like heavily rotten fish. He lost track of the volume of vicous fluid that left his body. Just when he thought it was over, his stomach rumbled and he groaned. He switched to sitting and resigned himself to having a miserable time.

When that business concluded, he felt a stiff sweat break out across his body. Alex watched in horror as the same viscous, black substance he’d been dispelling from his body began to seep from his pores.

“Oh hell no,” he said to himself. He rushed to the shower and quickly turned it on. It took ages for the sludge to stop flowing from his pores, and even longer to scrub it all off.

Alex sat miserably in the shower as warm water flowed over him. His clothes lay, discarded in a corner of the shower. If every breakthrough was like this, Alex wasn’t sure he wanted to keep cultivating. Even thinking about what had just happened made him want to gag.

“Impurities are worse than the books could ever describe,” he muttered to himself. From what he remembered, impurities were imperfections in the human body turned into a physical substance. Cultivating helped purify the physical body and expel the impurities, making cultivators more perfect over time.

Eventually, Alex managed to drag himself out of the shower. He dug around the room, but wasn’t able to find a spare set of clothing. Grumbling to himself, he wrapped a towel around his waist and went to the door. He pressed the panel to open it, revealing Sergeant Torval with her hand raised, about to knock on the door.

“Sir!” she shouted, she snapped off a stiff salute. Her eyes glanced down at his mostly naked form, and he could have sworn he saw her lips twitch. Alex’s cheeks began to redden.

“Sergeant,” Alex said, “Any chance you could help find me some clothes? Mine are… well we should probably just burn them.”

“Of course, sir. I’ll help any way I can,” she said and stepped past him into the room. She gagged and immediately stepped back out. Wide eyes looked at him, “What the hell happened, Sir?

“I finished transforming my marrow,” Alex explained, “And please just call me Alex while we are on board this ship.”

Understanding dawned on Torval’s face, “Congratulations, sir. I mean, Alex. I’ll be right back with some fresh clothing.”

Five minutes later, Alex was dressed once more in simple training gear. He was looking forward to seeing what changes came with his breakthrough.