The gentle breathing of a sleeping Nakama was the only thing Gaius could hear as he sat on his own bed. He hadn’t had the chance to look around the place, but there was a private curtain where he could wash himself. Not that Nakama would care about seeing him naked, though.

As for nature’s call…well, there was a shovel he could dig a hole with.

The girls had better amenities though, but Gaius wasn’t going to approach them with a mile-long stick. According to Nakama, there was a fierce lion that guarded the place, and to date, six Harvesters had been brutally maimed by the lion on duty. Gaius was sure ‘lion’ was a euphemism, but that was beside the point.

This was the first time he had a wash, ever since he woke up here. Unfortunately, the memories that he had triggered while doing so were basically him as a child playing with some rubber ducks. Good to know, but not useful whatsoever. Running his mind through the cultivation process, Gaius breathed in once more.

Within a second, he’d located the chilly energy within his lungs. It seemed that the experience of the previous time, especially the part where he disturbed the entire camp, had done something different to his body somehow. The chilly energy was not as disobedient as he had experienced the previous night. He wasn’t too sure why, but it was a good thing regardless.

Gaius closed his eyes. In the darkness behind his eyelids, he could sense the energy sending out tendrils to explore its new container. It was as though as he had brought a baby into a house full of bright toys — there was no stopping the energy from exploring as it pleased. Gaius could only hope that the energy wouldn’t suddenly undergo some odd mutation once it got bored with its new surroundings.

Time ticked by.

In the tranquil night, Gaius could not help but reflect on yet another couple of oddities he’d seen that night. His doubts had remained just under the surface of his mind in the day, but now that he had literally nothing to do but to sit on his bed and count, some new queries had begun to form in his mind.

First of all, the names in this world. Degurechaff sounded German. Ornielle…he wasn’t sure, but it sure as hell wasn’t English. Mai sounded Asian. There was no telling if Wickers was of English origin, but Chamberlain was a name too famous to be otherwise. Add on the clearly Japanese Nakama, and his own name, which sounded like something right out of the Roman Empire, and one might just notice the problem.

Four Cardinal Champions were summoned. Not five. Or six. Even if the people of this world adopted naming conventions similar to the Cardinal Champions, where did the other naming conventions come from? Did someone drop a book on baby names for all nationalities? That was improbable.

In that case, were there other people like him, who weren’t as well known as the Cardinal Champions? People who crossed over here, but who lived a life in an age of peace?

And if so, where were they? Did they ever return to Earth?

Gaius felt dazed for a moment, as he continued to create hypotheses one after another. The idea that there were otherworlders other than the Cardinal Champions, between the period of the Champions’ passing and Gaius’ own arrival, was able to explain why there were so many anachronistic elements in this world. And besides, the Constellation Heroes were living proof that humans could still be summoned to Orb.

In contrast, the other hypothesis he had to explain the overwhelming number of oddities was that one of the Cardinal Champions had brought an entire library from Earth with him or her to this world. That too could explain some questions, but as to whether it was likely or not, Gaius wasn’t too sure about that.

His chest throbbed.

29 minutes…Gaius frowned. The timing was too coincidental for the throb to be anything but that. Did that slight movement indicate a qualitative change in the chilly energy within him?

His frown turned into a grimace. The pain he had thought gone had started to return. That’s gotta be it, if the pain started to return.

For a moment, Gaius wanted to move on to the next step. But this level of pain wasn’t anything to him right now. All he needed to do was to focus inwards, and he would begin to ignore the pain. It was a small bit of effort on his part…and frankly, Gaius was curious what would one hour of imprisoning the chilly energy would contribute to his cultivation.

With a slight effort, the pain vanished. But unlike the previous times, Gaius didn’t distract himself with thoughts. If his suspicions were right, the chilly energy within him would transform every thirty minutes, and he wanted to capture the exact moment of that change.

Time ticked by again, this time far slower than previously, as Gaius was no longer immersing himself with questions. Gaius’ heart trembled slightly as the chilly energy squirmed, and then shock flooded his mind.

For every tremor the mass of energy within him made, there was a response from the air around him. Even with his sense of pain severely dulled, he could feel the energy outside him drill into his skin, reinvigorating any body tissue it touched as it tried to make contact with the energy trapped within his lungs.

The chilly energy within him squirmed one last time, and then gave up. In response, the threads of energy that had drilled into his body, stopped moving, and then scattered into the cells around them. None of them escaped back into the air outside.

Other than the dull sensations of pain within his lungs, Gaius now had a new sensation added into the mix, a cooling sensation within the flesh of his body. The attraction of energy was omnidirectional; even his scalp felt like there was cooling mint shampoo applied on it.

So, that’s why the sensations of pain intensify every thirty minutes, and even more so at the one-hour mark. It didn’t take long for Gaius to realise why no one else had noticed that one’s body would be strengthened and reinvigorated when they trapped the chilly energy for an hour. How many people in this world could block out pain entirely? He’d done so with knowledge on Earth, but there were few others that had the same, err, specialisation.

He wasn’t looking down on the inhabitants of Orb either, but the absence of technology on par with Earth’s despite the fact that civilisation here was at least a hundred thousand years old wasn’t giving him much confidence in Orb’s ability to innovate and adapt to new changes.

Gaius breathed out slowly, and this time, he wasn’t really surprised when most of the chilly energy failed to escape from his body, scattering in his throat to reinforce its weak point instead.

If the inhabitants of Orb discovered that they could replicate the same effect throughout their body with just the first step of the mantra, with no loss whatsoever, what kind of expression would they have on their face? Gaius shook his head wryly, and then took another deep breath.

He wasn’t intending to sleep today.