Felix woke up early like usual and decided to start cultivating so it would be over and done with quickly. In the past, he would usually start by going to the library but decided to let that be his reward if he finished all his other chores for the day. He had been cultivating half a year by now and the truth was that he was only average at it. The most important part of cultivation was to keep your focus on your dantian and be in the present which he was really bad at doing. He had always been the type where his mind would wander off every couple of minutes about some other subject he enjoyed.

An hour passed before he stood up knowing he would reach the second stage of the spirit realm in only a couple more days. At around the same time, a servant knocked on his door and gave him the message he was to meet the senator in his study. The senator had returned from Rome two weeks ago and this was the first time he had called for him except the first day he had returned where he met up with the whole family. He didn't really have an opinion about his grandfather, the truth was that he couldn't read him and that was not something that happened every day.

“Please go to my father and tell him I won't be joining them for breakfast this morning,” Felix ordered the servant and got ready to go meet his grandfather.

He took a deep breath when he reached his grandfather's study and was told to go right ahead by his grandfather's personal secretary who would follow him everywhere he went. The study, unlike the Senator, was simple and he was sitting at the small table writing reports like an ordinary man. He had this thing about him where he looked like any other old man but you could still tell he was special.

“Sit down,” the senator said as he pointed to the chair in front of him. He put away his book and gave Felix his undivided attention which was rare. Felix was used to people ignoring him even when they talked to him, at first it had annoyed him but he had to admit that he did the same thing when he used to talk to a ten-year-old.

“Your father thinks you are too young to have this conversation but I disagree,” he said as he tried to size the boy up. He had general knowledge about him from the information his secretary had collected but never wanted to judge someone from someone else's opinions.

“Let me ask you directly then. Do you know what you want to do with your life?” He asked as he curiously waited for an answer.

Felix thought about it for a couple of seconds and didn't really know how to answer him. It would have been simple for the old him, money and power. But he was not the same person anymore, he had become a new person based on two different personalities. He did have a dream but he didn't think he could tell this man sitting in front of him.

“I do have a goal, but it doesn't align itself with the goals of this family,” Felix said politely trying to give and not give an answer at the same time. He thought about it for a couple of seconds and continued, “but to achieve my goal I want to become an alchemist. I wonder if grandfather can help me with that.”

The senator smiled understanding his meaning and said,“ You won't have to tell me if you don't want to. Every man has the right to his secret. As for the alchemist part, it's impossible. The law prohibits your kind from becoming members of the alchemist academy.”

“Yes but there is another law above that one that does,” Felix said smiling.

“And what law is that?”

“The law that you are a senator of Rome and that these kinds of laws don't apply to you,” Felix answered without any fear. He wanted to be direct as he barely ever saw this man and didn't think he would get a chance like this again.

The senator busted out laughing and was a little impressed by the boy. Not many people his age understood how the world worked. It seemed that the rumors about him were true.

“And why would I use my political power to help you? How can you be useful to me?” The senator asked curious about the answer.

Felix laughed and had to say he liked the old man, he could even say he reminded him of himself, “I didn't see cousin Publius shoveling snow before he was sent to one of the finest military schools in the country.”

“The other members are simply useful by being alive. They are granted special rights by the nation when they are born. Like you yourself know, you don't have those rights,” the Senator said honestly. He didn't want the boy to live in a dream world and wanted him to understand his situation.

Felix thought for a couple of seconds and asked, “how long are you staying before you go back to Rome grandfather?”

“Not for long I'm afraid, I have to return to the capital in the next four years.”

Felix laughed on the inside when he heard the number. People in this world had other perceptions of time than he had. To them, Four years was only like a couple of months as most of them lived for hundreds if not thousands of years.

“If you can guarantee my protection ill promise to show you how useful I can be before you leave,” Felix asked and the Senator agreed to it. He then stood up and bowed before he left the room. He could not say he enjoyed being punished for just being born but he also didn't really think about it because it wouldn't change anything. Besides, this was a walk in the park compared to the youth he had on earth.

He stepped outside thinking about what to do next. He needed to do something that was enough to impress the old man but not so big that it would shine the spotlight on him. As he walked around he forgot about the time and even left the inner city reaching the farms around it which he had never seen before. He didn't know for sure but these farms were part of his family estate if he wasn't wrong. Not too long afterward he reached a small farmhouse where cows were inside small cubicles being milked. The cows looked exactly the same as on earth but were three times as big.

Right then and there he came up with an idea but he needed to be able to prove it first. He walked towards the little farmhouse and saw a couple of workers who were taking orders from the old man who was clearly in charge. He greeted the old man and introduced himself as a servant of the house and told him he was gathering information for Herius.

“How many cows does the farm have in total?”

“Around two hundred and seven,” the farmer said as he counted the number every night making sure no cow went missing.

“And how many barrels of milk do they produce every day?” Felix asked curiously.

“It takes around three cows to fill up a barrel so I would say seventy barrels.”

He wasn't sure but it was around the same amount of milk a cow on earth produced, They produces the same amount of milk while they were three times the size?. Something was not right so he decided to ask further, “How many hours a day do the cows get to spend outside?”

“Only one hour per week sir. Most cows try to escape when outside and we need soldiers here to stop them if they try to leave like you know they are far too strong for normal humans like us to handle. This of course costs money so the owner said to only let them out for one hour per week.”

Felix thanked the man and left. He slowly walked back and immediately went to the library. “Do we have any books on cows master Sisenna?” Felix asked not getting his hopes up.

Master Sisenna didn't ask why he was looking for those books as it had become a normal thing for the boy to come to him and ask for the most random books. The library had more than ten thousand books and was one of the biggest on the continent, so looking by hand was out of the question. Sisenna opened his trusted documents and told him where he could find them. Felix quickly walked to the right bookcase and to his surprise found around seven books on the subject. This was something he liked about this world, they liked to research and document everything from the early rise of the republic.

He spend the next hour looking through the books before he finally found what he was looking for. “It seems I was correct, wild cows can give as much as one barrel of milk per day,” Felix said as a smile appeared on his face. This was what he needed, something to help the family with but not big enough to catch any unwanted attention. Reading all those random books on earth had finally paid off. He remembered reading a book at how captivity had decreased the milk production of cows and how the animal's antidepressants industry had grown bigger than two-hundred-fifty million dollars per year.

He quickly looked around and found the one book he was looking for, the anatomy of cows. He quickly opened the book and started to study it. He had to admit that it felt good to have a project again that he was passionate about, something to sink his teeth in.