Book 3. The Long Journey. Chapter 124. Euleanian Nobles.

Too tired to keep himself standing, Mikaela sat down heavily on his butt. He looked at Laien with a greatly satisfied smile on his face, though he was too busy breathing to say any words of thanks. He had been too absorbed in the fight to think about such things, but the realization of just how much progress he had made started coming to him now that he was catching his breath. “Laien really is the best teacher for me,” he thought merrily and laughed a little, beginning to feel a bit less exhausted.

“That was great, thanks,” he managed to say, wanting to express his gratitude as fast as possible. Be it magical or martial training, thanks to Laien he learned how to enjoy both of them. He couldn’t wait to grow stronger so that he could fight Laien and Raphael on equal grounds, not to mention that he very much looked forward to seeing the reaction of his parents when they learned how good he was doing. He could bet that his mom would praise him a lot while his dad would be thoroughly shocked.

“My pleasure,” Laien said without exaggerating in the least and also sat down for the time being. He had also benefitted from this spar a lot; the completion of the Aspect of Humility was one thing, but he was most happy about the subtle evolution of his spear arts. The approach Mikaela had towards the Profound Mystery of Shifting Currents was different from his too, so the two of them benefitted from each other even in this field. There was nothing he could possibly complain about.

“Say,” Mikaela brought up after catching his breath properly. “Can we spar tomorrow too? And the day after? Could we just spar every day?” he asked eagerly, causing Laien to chuckle in amusement. By the looks of it, Mikaela had really gotten addicted to training with him; he was undoubtedly exhausted at the moment, but he was already thinking about the next time they could spar.

“We can spar more if you want,” Laien said with a smile. “Tomorrow and the day after is fine, but after that Yin and I promised to have a fight with Reian, so we will need to call a day off. As for anything further along, we will think about it later,” he clarified, picking his words in a rather careful manner. Mikaela didn’t yet know that they would be leaving the Ruishi Federation in five more days, so he didn’t want him to mislead him into having misguided expectations.

“Okay,” Mikaela said contentedly. “Are we going to go and take a bath again and then eat some good food at that canteen?” he inquired after a second of thought, feeling both quite sticky and increasingly hungry after all this physical activity. Of course, as a skilled water-element practitioner, he could clean himself up within seconds and he could take out something to eat from his interspatial ring, but he preferred to instead enjoy himself just like yesterday.

“I’m up for that,” Laien said with a chuckle. “We should first see if the rest of us doesn’t want to do some active training though. I’d like to spar a bit with Yin too,” he mentioned, knowing that Yin was in the mood for some light exercise. His Qi was just about stabilized too, so there would be no problem even if they went at it a bit harder, though they probably wouldn’t do so.

“Mm,” Mikaela nodded in understanding, then glanced at the group of youths and men and called out. “If any of you want to train or spar, then go ahead! We’ll be going to the fort later,” he declared, apparently having assumed that since he and Laien were in an agreement about what to do next, everyone else would follow. And well, he was most likely right about that.

As startled as everyone was by Mikaela’s sudden declaration, they soon realized that right now was the only opportunity for them to do any physical activity. While the youths started chatting among themselves, Yin went ahead and walked up to Laien and took out his twin swords. The two of them exchanged a glance and headed to the side, then without exchanging any needless words started sparring, all the while limiting the usage of their energy and focusing on their insights and technique, just like they would usually do in most of their regular spars.

Luca, Lea, Daniel, and Raphael decided to spar with one another for a bit, more for the sake of getting the needed amount of daily physical activity than anything else. After all, it wasn’t often that one could quickly improve his ability like Laien and Mikaela did. The opportunity needed to be right and usually, one needed to have enough accumulated insights and experience to make a breakthrough. As such, the events when one’s strength increased explosively weren’t all that common, though they could definitely be prompted to happen by pressure and dangerous situations.

As for Arslan, he didn’t feel all that comfortable to ask if he could spar with any of the four originally unoccupied youths, so he had decided that he wouldn’t bother. He was the youngest and the weakest one here, so he didn’t want to waste anyone’s time. To his surprise, however, Mikaela approached him at one point and asked if he didn’t want to fight for a bit. He had been a bit embarrassed to accept, but when Mikaela told him that he could enjoy some light exercise while Arslan himself got in some proper training, he had no excuse left and agreed with a smile.

Perhaps as expected, Johan and Albert remained on the side, not planning to join the exercise of the rest of their companions. The two of them weren’t skilled with weapons at all, at least compared to those friends of theirs, and their martial talent wasn’t all that high to begin with, so they didn’t really care about training that much. Moreover, they had enough sense not to force their way into an activity they simply didn’t belong to; although those guys wouldn’t have refused them if they asked, they preferred to keep their distance and allow them to train and spar in peace.

“So youthful,” Jugal said with a laugh, observing the bunch of training kids with a weird sense of melancholy in his heart. How long had it been since he hit the wall and could no longer improve his cultivation or insights at all? More than three hundred years if he recalled. His life was certainly pleasant, he couldn’t deny that, but he needed to admit that he missed having a goal to look forward to and he missed the satisfaction the sense of growth brought to him.

“We old folks can’t compete with the kids,” Richt said with a sigh. He was a martial master of the sixth rank while Jugal was a marital and spiritual master of the fifth rank, but the two of them truly were lacking in spirit compared to those kids. When had been the last time they committed themselves wholeheartedly to training? Decades ago or centuries ago? It indeed was a somewhat lonely feeling, watching the young spurts grow and develop amongst each other as someone who was far past the early part of his life.

“Is it the second time we agree on something?” Jugal asked with an ironic smile, then laughed and waved his hand dismissively when Richt gave him a suspicious look. He wasn’t trying to pick up a fight, at least not this time around. “Look at the positives, at least they intend to go to the fort. We can use this chance to report all those events to Elder Samuel,” he brought up, trying to change the subject and lighten up the mood. He didn’t feel like bickering with Richt for once and moreover, he didn’t like to be in a melancholic and sulky mood to begin with.

“Yes, that’s good,” Richt agreed briefly, not really sure how to interact with Jugal when they weren’t arguing about something. Since the opposite was equally true, the two of them didn’t engage in any kind of a leisure chat and simply stood there without speaking, waiting for the kids to finish their physical exercise.

Around twenty minutes later, everyone was satisfied with the amount of training they did. Of course, a normal ‘training session’ could easily take many hours, but they had come here to keep themselves in shape and not to undergo a rigorous training regime. There wasn’t anyone who opposed the idea of taking a bath and going to eat something nice either, though Lea was a bit grumpy since she would be the only one excluded from the first part of those two activities. As the only girl in the group, however, she had little choice in this matter unless she wanted to enter the bath with the whole bunch of adolescent boys, and as daring as she was, that idea was far too crazy even for her to consider.

The rest of the early morning went on to pass as the youths planned; the bunch of boys had some fun in Elder Samuel’s private bath, Lea took a shower and a different place, then the whole group headed to fill their bellies with some good food on someone else’s bill. Using this opportunity, Richt sent his two subordinates to Elder Samuel with the orders of reporting the events which happened thus far.

Admittedly, Elder Samuel wasn’t all that thrilled to have his work interrupted, especially since he was in the middle of clearing up the aftermath of the fall of Elder Sophie’s faction, but since the matter involved his youngest son and the most talented young practitioner of his country, he allowed the two men in and seated himself comfortably, intending to listen through the rough picture of the interactions of those two with Laien, Yin, and Arslan. However, after nodding away at the mention that the group seemed to be getting along really well, his expression started to drastically change when the two subordinates of his started describing the duel between Raphael and Laien.

He almost grew angry when he heard that Laien told Raphael he would hold back for his sake, though when he learned how their duel progressed, he couldn’t help but feel disbelief. He had never thought that Raphael was actually hiding so much of his strength, but what came as even more of a surprise was that apparently, Laien was still far stronger than Raphael! It was ridiculous to hear the two men compare the strength displayed by the boys to elite martial masters of the fourth rank, and it was even more ridiculous to hear about the way the duel ended, with Raphael making some kind of a great breakthrough but still failing to overcome Laien, and by quite a large margin at that!

“If what those two are telling me is the truth,” Elder Samuel thought to himself. “Then that story about those two boys fighting off the experts of Yimar Furi’s… and Laien stopping a Grand Magic on his own… I did suspect there was some truth to that, but I never thought that story was entirely true!” he thought in amazement. He had been impressed when he saw the aftermath of Laien dealing with Elder Sophie and her twin guards, but it looked like that little display wasn’t even the tip of the iceberg! He had always thought that the experts of his country were qualitatively best in the whole world, but faced with that story about Laien, he was forced to revise his assumptions.

“And that’s not even all,” one of the two men continued, his voice obviously excited. “Today, we saw that boy Laien and young master Mikaela spar…” he began describing and by the time he mentioned the spar between Mikaela and Laien, he got Elder Samuel’s undivided attention. Mikaela was Elder Samuel’s favorite and most favored son, so it was to be expected that Elder Samuel would be very interested in hearing anything of even relative importance as long as it had something to do with Mikaela.

Yet, by the time the man finished speaking about the success of Laien’s unusual teaching methods, about Mikaela improving by leaps and bounds, and about the fact that Mikaela appeared to have grown extremely fond of Laien, Elder Samuel’s mind had turned absolutely blank. His son suddenly started enjoying marital practice and very much at that? His sword arts have grown to a level comparable to that of a true master all in one go? He was infusing Secrets into his spiritual energy and was using Elemental Law of Water in a way similar to Laien, which even Jugal couldn’t recognize? And to top it all off, he appeared to have grown extremely fond of Laien? This was too much for Elder Samuel to digest all that once. He leaned back in his armchair, wondering how in the world had the reality grown so crazy that he couldn’t differentiate it from daydreams.

Coincidentally, as if the world itself decided that this was the moment to pick on Elder Samuel, a messenger from the kitchen came knocking at this very moment.

“Elder Samuel,” the man bowed politely and proceeded to say with an awkward look on his face. “Master sent me to inform you that the expenditure for the meals of your guests has already exceeded four thousand platinum coins… and he is asking for the permission to request a delivery of additional ingredients from the capital for another four thousand…” he informed helplessly, sparsely able to imagine how much wealth this bunch of kids had eaten through in mere two meals. Did those kids not know the word ‘restraint ‘? Their Head Chef was also crazy to be happily feeding them all this expensive stuff! He could bet the man was happy to be able to cook all those rare dishes, damn maniac!

Hearing how much money had been spent on simple food, Elder Samuel almost started coughing up blood. Even them, the Grand Elders, would at most spend fifty to one hundred platinum coins each on one meal, and they wouldn’t have them more often than once per month or two! Good Heavens, what were those children thinking?! Were they ordering the most expensive stuff on purpose? Did they have any idea how annoying it was to manage the country’s budget?!

“…” Yet, as Elder Samuel recalled the mindboggling report of those two subordinates of his, he could only swallow the words of complaint. “Tell the head chef that he can spend up to twenty thousand platinum coins on the meals of this bunch for this week,” he forced the words out, feeling his throat clench in unwillingness as he was declaring it to be okay to spend so many coins. However, if he considered the benefits that a good relationship with Laien and Yin could bring his country, and maybe more importantly, the benefits it could bring to Mikaela and Raphael, he just couldn’t make any other choice. Still, he very much came to hope the boys wouldn’t return here any time soon… or that at the very least, they would then pay for their own damn food!

“T-twenty thousand?” the messenger repeated, not sure if he heard correctly. This amount of money could buy a mansion in the best district of the capital! Was Elder Samuel really intending to spend all of it on the food for some children? Yes, those kids were surely talented, but it was too much!

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Elder Samuel said with a helpless laugh. It already pained him to say it once, he didn’t want to say it twice. There was no way he could write-off an amount like that as the Council’s expenditure… well, he could, but then people would accuse him of abusing his power. Thus, in the end, he would be forced to open his own coffins and pay up through the nose. Still, he had saved up a considerable amount of wealth, so although a bit painful to be spent on food, twenty thousand platinum coins weren’t all that much to him.

“U-understood,” the messenger said in disbelief, bowed and went to inform the Head Chief about Elder Samuel’s decision, with which the man would certainly be ecstatic.

“Do you have anything else to report?” Elder Samuel asked the two men, by this point almost expecting to hear some additional, shocking revelation. However, since the spiritual training Mikaela did with Laien happened behind closed doors, the two were unaware of the details and thus, Elder Samuel was spared from experiencing further shock for the day. “If there’s nothing else, then return to your duties,” he said offhandedly, his brain too numb to consider the pointlessness of having those two men be assigned as guards to the boys.

The two men, on the other hand, were rather jealous, though also understanding, of the generous treatment the kids were receiving, so they didn’t bring anything else up and left the chamber as instructed, leaving Elder Samuel temporarily alone, with his own thoughts.

“Should I send over some talented girls here?” Elder Samuel asked himself, tempted to consider the possibility of marrying Laien into his country or even his own family. He would be more than willing to give up one of his younger nieces if Laien was interested, but after a moment of consideration, he realized that he would be overdoing things a little bit. He had a feeling that by playing a matchmaker he would only achieve the opposite results to the ones he desired, so he gave up on the idea.

“I could send some magic inheritances over to Laien though…” he mused, thinking about who would be best to contact with this regard. Originally, he didn’t think that sharing his country’s foundation with a ‘potential talented ally’ was a viable option, but Laien’s extreme talent and his apparently very good relationship with Mikaela made him reconsider. He wouldn’t be able to give much to a marital practitioner like Yin, but as far as magic went, he could be more flexible.

“I’ve heard that Yin is as strong if not stronger than Laien too…” he mused, though was too scared to wish for a confirmation to that piece of information. If those two boys were to ever end up being enemies of his country and if they were allowed to freely develop in the future, then it would be a complete disaster. Luckily, they were friends with Arslan, with whom they signed an alliance, and they came to be friends with Raphael and Mikaela. This knowledge allowed Elder Samuel’s heart to ease up quite a bit.

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“Here you are,” Reian said with a sigh, looking at the richly-stuffed table before the bunch of kids. “Arslan, Laien, Yin, I will need to borrow the three of you for a while so after you are done eating, come with me,” he said with a slight smile, not quite in the mood to enjoy the cheerful atmosphere in the dining room.

“What is it about?” Arslan inquired, wanting to at least know where they would be going. Or could it be that he shouldn’t have asked because it was something that needed to be kept a secret? Just as he started worrying about that, however, Reian answered straightforwardly.

“The top nobles of the Grand Camp want to meet you and I guess you’re going to take those two with you anyway, so that’s about it,” Reian explained with a little smirk on his face. He couldn’t go into the details here, but he could say this much since the meeting wouldn’t be kept hidden anyway.

“Oh.” Arslan nodded in understanding. “I’m already full, but Laien and Yin are still eating, so wait a little longer,” he said with a smile and glanced at the two. They had eaten so much yesterday and yet they were devouring just as much food today. It truly made him wonder where were they fitting all of those dishes because just their one stomachs couldn’t possibly be enough to accomplish such a daunting task.

“No need to hurry,” Reian said with a laugh, the tone of his words and the expression on his face causing Arslan, and not only Arslan, to raise an eyebrow. Could it be that Reian wasn’t looking forward to this meeting and maybe even held it in somewhat of a contempt? It was half-unexpected, but after thinking exactly about with whom this meeting was happening, most of those present came to have a guess or two as to why Reian’s attitude towards the meeting seemed to be so negative.

“Give us an hour then,” Laien said with a smirk. “It’s only appropriate to let your stomach rest a bit after having its fill,” he added and chuckled at the pleased and meaningful look he received from Reian in response. He wasn’t planning to make Yin or himself uncomfortable if it wasn’t absolutely necessary and in this case, there appeared to be no hurry. Thus, the two of them could freely take their time and enjoy this oh-so-incredibly-tasty meal to its fullest.

“I will wait in the canteen,” Reian said with a smile and left the private dining room, leaving the kids to their own devices.

The following hour passed in the blink of an eye, spent by the youth on eating, resting and chatting. With the time to leave having come, Mikaela spoke up.

“Where are we going to meet up?” he asked, unwilling to find himself in a situation where they would waste time looking for each other.

“That’s a good question,” Laien said with a quiet laugh. “I wonder where we are going to be meeting those nobles. In the Grand Camp or outside of it? Hrm, how about y’all come along for now and we will decide where to meet up along the way?” he suggested and was met with a unanimous agreement. No one wanted to stay in the fort for anything else, so regardless of where they would head, it would be convenient for them all.

On the way out, Reian told them that the nobles were waiting in the same building they had spent the night in. As it was, the meeting would be held on the ground floor in the large living room, so it was quickly decided that those who weren’t participating would wait on the second floor. As for the issues of overhearing something they shouldn’t, the sound would be sealed-off with Qi, so there would be nothing to worry about.

As such, about fifteen minutes later, their whole group, naturally accompanied by Jugal, Rich, and the other two guards, entered the large building in the middle of the temporary ‘village’ outside of the Grand Camp. Subsequently, Reian, Arslan, Laien, and Yin split off and headed to the living room while the rest of them went up the stairs, leaving the ground floor unoccupied.

“Reian,” Arslan stopped for a moment and said quietly. “Do I need to know anything before we start?” he asked, having gotten enough experience from his interactions with Elder Samuel to know what needed to be done before any kind of negotiations.

“Not that much,” Reian said with a smile, pleased to see that Arslan was thinking ahead. “We don’t really know what they are going to want either, but obtaining their cooperation will be… helpful though not absolutely necessary. I think all three of you can guess it already, but those men aren’t the most honorable or pleasant of the bunch to deal with. I wouldn’t give their word much credit,” he explained without beating around the bush. If he could, he would have told those nobles to screw off, but he knew that antagonizing them now would be more trouble than it was worth.

“Got it,” Arslan said confidently, not even feeling all that stressed. Compared to the weight of the negotiations he had had with Elder Samuel, this meeting now was apparently of relatively low importance. As such, he would make sure to use it to calmly learn even more things so he could grow into someone who deserved to be called his father’s son and was suitable to rule Makarash.

“Okay, let’s get it done with,” Reian said and gestured the boys to follow him. A moment later, the four of them entered the living room and were met with all the people who were present there. Seeing the four men who looked to be Euleanian nobles and the guards who accompanied them wasn’t a surprise by any means, but the addition of General Julien was a bit unexpected to the three youths. Could it be that this meeting would be a bit more problematic than they expected? Either way, this silent question of theirs would very soon be answered.