“Hey, wake up.” Something weakly prodded Solera’s shoulder. He stirred, getting drool all over his cheek.

“Wake up, wake up.” The meek voice said again. Solera opened his eyes to see Qiao, who was standing on his toes to poke Solera awake.

“It’s dinner time.” Qiao mumbled, before walking back to his bunk. Groaning, Solera got up and looked around. Chip was packing things into his backpack, while Guinness was sitting on his bunk, staring into space.

“Where are we eating?” Solera asked, rubbing the sleep out of his eyes. He doubted Chianti had packed too much food onto the bird.

“We’re staying at a transport hub for the night.” Chip said curtly. “The bird needs to sleep.” He nodded to Qiao, who was loading talismans into his backpack.

Solera climbed down from his bunk to put on his boots.

“Come on, Guinness. Let’s go.” Solera said to Guinness, who looked up at him, puzzled. “Let’s go,” Solera repeated, standing up and tugging on Guinness’s shirt. Chip and Qiao walked out, with Solera and Guinness trailing after him.

Children were filing out of the common room onto the back of the bird, talking energetically with one another. In contrast, Chip, Qiao, Solera, and Guinness were completely silent. Solera could notice the intimidated expression of a Peat city kid when he looked at them.

Solera sighed. What a queer situation he was in. Chip was quiet because he didn’t like noise. Qiao was quiet because he was too meek to speak. Guinness was quiet because he had nothing to say. And he was quiet because he didn’t know how to talk. But perhaps this was for the best, as Solera was sure he would’ve been the outlier in any one of those talkative groups in front of him.

“What’s up, Solera?” Chianti patted his shoulder as he passed through the door. “You try two balls yet?”

Flustered, Solera shook his head. Chianti laughed. “Well, don’t. It was a joke, you’re not supposed to know how to do it right off the bat. Come see me tomorrow morning and I’ll teach you a little bit about controlling.”

Solera stepped onto the eagle’s back and smoothly slid down its wing.

“Whoa, that’s hecka cool!” A boy shouted behind him. Blinking, Solera turned around to see a small group of kids standing next to a rope that hung off the eagle’s side.

“Oops.” Solera mumbled, scratching his head. He hadn’t seen that rope, and had thought sliding down the Bamboo eagle’s wing was the obvious thing to do.

“Show me how to do it!” Another kid excitedly walked up. “I need to get girls!”

Solera was amused. In his opinion, this boy in front of him knew much more about that subject than he did. He was deliberating on what to say when Chianti also slid down the eagle’s wing. The boy looked at Solera, then back at Chianti. With a weak smile on his face, he turned around and ran over to Chianti.

Chip snickered as he saw this. “Dumbass.” He muttered, shaking his head in amusement.

Chianti clapped her hands. “Well, I hope you’re all settled down now. If you guys have any problems, come talk to me during dinner, which, by the way, is in that building.” She pointed at a fairly large building in the small village they had disembarked at.

Solera looked around the village. They had landed at the village’s transport station, which housed eagles and other transport monsters. Across from it was a large inn, apparently the place where they would both eat and spend the night. The village streets were fairly empty, with only a few people walking around here and there.

Solera ate the dinner in silence. Next to him was Guinness, who scarfed down the food like a ravenous pig. Several people had started conversations with him, but after a while they all turned around and chatted with another table. Solera could see Chip talking with some merchant on the other side of the restaurant, although he wasn’t sure what they were talking about. When he and Guinness finished eating, Chianti gave him their room number.

Qiao was already in the room, snoring away. Seeing this, Guinness flopped onto the bed as well and began sleeping. Solera stood at the door, scratching his head. He had just slept!

After a few moments of thought, Solera sat down and began to meditate. His mind calmed, entering a tranquil state where he was not paying attention to anything, but could sense everything around him.

The tiny trickle of power pouring into him from the rift in his head turned into a drizzle which nourished his inner Lake and the soul within. Through copious amounts of meditation, the amount of power that flowed into someone at any given moment would slowly increase. The long-term benefits of meditation were huge, but Vinoh had always looked down on it.

“There are so many better things you could be doing other than nothing.” Vinoh had said, rolling his eyes. “Practicing your swordplay or strengthening your channels and muscles will take you much farther. Besides, if you need power so much, you can get it just by eating the food here! Don’t worry about meditation until much later, son.”

Vinoh’s words had some truth to them. The benefits from meditation were far too low compared to training. The effectiveness of high-quality food which had been saturated by power would far overshadow power gained from meditation, and would even directly help in a person’s cultivation. Thus, Solera only meditated when he had nothing better to do.

Of course, he could go do some training exercises, or practice controlling some more, but it was nighttime. He wasn’t really feeling it. Time trickled by as power trickled in. In the wee hours of the morning, the door opened, startling Solera out of his meditation. Chip had walked in, a tired expression on his face. He was holding a bag which he set on the ground.

Even though the noise Chip had made when he had entered wasn’t loud, Guinness woke up. After a moment, he slapped himself and took out a toothbrush, stumbling into the bathroom.

Chip looked at Guinness, then at Solera, who was sitting in the corner. After a moment of internal deliberation, he collapsed on the bed and started sleeping as well.

As for Solera, he waited until Guinness climbed into bed before meditating again. Like this, the entire night passed. A few hours later, Chianti began banging on the doors, telling the children to wake up. Chip woke up, swearing under his breath. After checking his bag, he grabbed his toothbrush from his backpack and headed into the bathroom.

After breakfast, they all boarded the Bamboo eagle again. Solera went to Chianti’s room with his helmet and balls. She opened the door, a faintly glowing helmet encasing her skull in its squishy material.

“Heh, Solera.” She smirked, inviting him in. “The reason you can’t viably control more than one ball is because quantity, in control, is all about mind splitting. I don’t know how to teach mind splitting, so I really can’t help you with that. So when I suggested that, I was just pranking you.”

Solera nodded dumbly.

“Man, my jokes are never funny when I explain them.” Chianti grumbled, closing the door behind her. “By the way, do you even know if you’ve split your mind?”

After a short test run, it was clear that Solera had never “split his mind.”

“Well, that’s fine.” Chianti shrugged. “Nothing’s stopping you from honing your individual control skills.”

She took out her own ball, setting it on the ground. “Let’s play a game! The goal is to smash the opposing player’s ball into the opposing player. Anything goes, as long as the only thing you do is control the ball.”

Several hours passed as Solera continuously lost every game. In the end, his brain was too tired, and he could only stumble back into his room, dizzy and disoriented. After manipulating the ball for so long, he had half forgotten how to walk.

Inside the room, Chip had taken out a mortar and pestle, and was grinding some material into fine powder. Solera stared, befuddled.

“You… you know how to create pills, too?” Solera asked, rubbing his eyelids. Surely, the sleepiness was getting to him.

“Yes.” Chip said, an annoyed look on his face. “But I’d rather be creating explosives. Damn this bird’s turbulence.”

Solera didn’t know what to say to that, so he collapsed onto Guinness’s bunk and fell asleep.