Next morning Nick went to the palace’s kitchen and patiently waited till Paul brought the seafood and they quickly agreed to go fishing together the day after. But Nick’s experience in reality was not what he was expecting.

Although Paul mostly delivered seafood to the palace, he didn’t fish like others with nets and fishing rods. In fact, his ‘fishing’ style was grabbing a harpoon, jumping in the water and trying to impale the bigger fishes. Those ‘bigger’ were about one to one and the half meter in size and it was amazing to see how the huge Paul’s stature nimbly swam around reefs to catch his pray.

What Nick couldn’t understand was how Paul could even see anything under the water. Although it didn’t sting his eyes, while swimming he himself could mostly see only fog. Turns out Qi masters could use their Qi to create a thin and transparent lenses on their eyes and it would work in a similar way to the swimming and diving goggles that were used in the modern society during underwater activities.

Although Paul was not a Qi master, he loved the sea and swimming since young age and as soon as he started to practice Qi in the army, he tried to learn this technique. Similar to Nick, he didn’t care about swords and fighting people – he only wanted to dive in the reef. But it took him several years of practice and even then he could not do it for long periods of time.

When asked if he could share his experiences, Paul gladly taught Nick everything he could.

“You see, it is easy for a Qi master and they almost don’t need to practice to learn it. But for us, Qi practitioners, the Qi density is very weak and from a gas-like substance we need to create small lenses that are similar to the ones made of glass. At the same time we don’t have the accuracy and control of a Qi master, therefore the effort we have to spend on this is not really worth it. Normally Qi practitioners will choose to increase their amount of Qi as soon as possible rather than wasting their time on useless skills.”

“But we … don’t we train our ability to manipulate Qi this way? Even though it is hard, it should pay off later when I become a Qi master, right?” Nick was pondering aloud.

“Hahaha!” Paul’s laughter made their boat tremble on the water, “Only you would use word ‘when’. Regular people like I use ‘if’. Do you think it is so easy to become a Qi master? But I am sure you will, you have talent and persistence.”

‘I don’t really have talent.’ Nick thought to himself, ‘Zia has real talent! But since my Qi pathways were cleansed while I was in the womb and then strengthened afterward. I just need to use this advantage. Doctor Marbel also said my pathways are super wide and if it is like that, I’ll accumulate Qi in the amounts others don’t have. I’ll just increase the size of my ‘batteries’!’

“But how exactly you compress the Qi like that? Are there any techniques?” Nick asked.

Paul looked at him, “I don’t think there are because, as I said, Qi masters can do that quite naturally, but Qi practitioners don’t bother because it is useless for them. I learned how to do this myself and I can’t really explain to you, even if I want to. If you decide to learn it, you will have to go through the trial and error process yourself. From my experience I can only suggest that you should learn how to materialize Qi outside your body and then solidify it. Later you’ll learn to shape it and create the lenses in front of your eyes.”

“So the first step is like this?” Nick asked and a very weak, thin mist appeared above his palm.

Paul looked stunned at the small palm and then started to laugh again, “Hahaha, yes, just like that!”

Nick suddenly got an idea, “Are there any Qi gathering techniques that can be used under the water? I have three different for being still, walking and running. When I use the last one I don’t feel tired at all and can run for hours.”

“I haven’t heard of any. Pearl divers use some breathing technique to replenish their strength between the dive attempts and trained people already can stay under water for twenty, may be thirty minutes.” Paul pondered, “I don’t see any reason for such technique to exist.”

“The Qi is natural energy that exists in everything and everyone. I think, if I can perform a Qi technique while swimming and diving, I can increase the amount of time I use for the Qi training and combine pleasure with training.”

Nick’s idea didn’t sound too bad for Paul who spent most of his days during summer on the reef. And, despite him being over sixty years old, he wouldn’t mind to get his hands on a technique that would strengthen him and allow to do more of his favorite activities.

“When you think of such technique, you’ll teach me, alright?.” He laughed.

“It’s a deal!” Nick smiled in return.

He was different from Zia – he just wanted to enjoy life, travel and run around forests and beaches. With the help of Sun kingdom’s power he will destroy the Holy Order anyway, therefore the strength for him was not his priority. He practiced Qi to increase his speed – he still wanted to master elder Sonor’s movement. But if he could use Qi and even train while diving on the reef, why wouldn’t he?

From the next day on, he started to practice Qi manipulation. Idea sounded simple, but the execution was the hard part. The thin mist on his palm formed nicely, but any effort to solidify it was fruitless.

‘No wonder it took Paul years to learn it. It’s really hard!’ He thought.

Then Nick attempted to include Qi manipulation in everything he did and he noticed that his alchemy practice in the evenings became more effective when he infused Qi in small amounts in the product he was refining and his running became even faster when he released his Qi from the bottom of his feet. He tried to infuse a bit of Qi even if he was touching random objects like spoon while eating or glass when drinking. In the end he realized that he behaved like ‘mini-Qi master’, except the Qi amount he was manipulating was pitiful.

This discovery didn’t discourage Nick, it had the opposite effect. He started trying out things the real Qi masters did, like walking or standing on the water or climbing a steep cliff. The latter was a total fiasco, at least for now, but when he was putting his feet on the water, he felt some repelling force that theoretically could allow him to not sink if it became strong enough.

Thus Nick’s daily schedule became like this: in the morning he accompanied Ben through the Royal woods, then after a light breakfast he practiced with Zia physical exercises. After lunch he read a bit and then practiced Qi manipulation till dinner and then practiced alchemy. Before going to bed he was trying out the Qi meditation technique that elders from Holy Order taught him, not because he had illusion of successfully being able to perform it, but because it felt really pleasant and tend to clear his mind. If, by any chance, this could really help to strengthen his Qi pathways already at the Qi practitioner’s stage, even a little bit, it would be a nice bonus.

It might sound exhausting, but, in fact, Nick loved this routine. In addition to all of it, he sometimes visited auntie Maria and Bruno’s bakery when he was going out to the city to make alchemy and provision purchases. He was carrying his new backpack and found it amusing to pretend to put all the things he bought inside, while in fact stashing in the wristband instead.

His progress was also remarkable. One morning he even managed to keep himself standing on the water for a few seconds on the little lake near the cottage, but his concentration was disturbed by Zia’s surprised shout and he fell in the water right after that.

Zia was angry at him and pouted, because in her eyes it looked like he was holding out from her. But Nick patiently explained that he was trying to learn some things just for fun and Zia will be able to perform those later almost without practicing because of her amazing inborn talent. In the end she graciously forgave him after she learned he was doing this to develop a technique that would allow them to see clearly under water even before they become Qi masters.

Zia didn’t enjoy any of the stuff that involved thinking or, according to her, ‘excessive’ concentrating. She mostly practiced physical exercises and the perspective of swimming on the reef while being able to see everything clearly was extremely enticing.

Zia’s progress was remarkable. In a period of a bit over two months she was able to imitate Nick by walking on her hands upside down around the little forest lake. Her strength was growing at rapid rate as well as her speed.

She was still annoyed that Nick didn’t allow her to ‘play’ with him the whole day, but she learned to appreciate the three Qi techniques he taught her, because of those her endurance became almost inexhaustible. If a half year ago she gave a hard time to Ben because she wanted him to bring her bunnies, now she could dash around the forest trying to catch them with her bare hands. Almost every afternoon her laughter reverberated in one or another part of the Royal woods.

Another thing that annoyed her was Nick’s suggestion to postpone her sword training. Zia wanted to become an intimidating Qi sword master as soon as possible, but Nick asked her – doesn’t everyone just do same thing at this stage? How will you become the strongest if you do the same? This argument worked always without fail and in the end she figured out that the sword techniques are nice, but if she could slash at someone faster than her opponent could block or evade – she would win anyway. But if her opponent could manage to parry, she would just win with a brute strength. Thus eventually Zia approved Nick’s idea and tried to train her body and Qi as much as possible, at least for now.

At first Nick felt a bit torn regarding this. His initial intention was to push her more into reading so she could develop her own style or idea of a style in her mind before starting to actually practice the sword. Otherwise, knowing her, out of laziness she would take one existing technique and stick to it. But since Zia decided to train in the sword later when she will be stronger with idea to simply overpower her future opponents, it seemed that most likely she would use the sword as a rod anyway.

After thinking about it for a while, Nick understood that, in fact, Zia was already developing her own style, just in an unorthodox way.

The spring went by fast and the summer came. During this time Nick finalized organizing his library and the rest of the heritage he received from the grand elder. He even bought few shelves to put into wristband just for his own convenience. He now knew he was quite wealthy, but not really rich. The grand elder didn’t pile up money in his chests and boxes – those were mostly filled with different more or less rare alchemy ingredients. He even found large sack of opiates grand elder used on the poor girls he was replenishing on. Nick couldn’t understand why would the old man need so much of that stuff, but there was always possibility he intended to poison a city or two with it.

Nick also gathered documents related to Holy Order’s subdivisions and ‘backup locations’ as well as few lists of hidden members. He passed all that information to Simon Den – after all he was the head of intelligence, so he should know the best ways on how to proceed with this information. Although Nick didn’t know it, following his actions during the next few months numerous arrests and executions took place in the Sun kingdom considerably crippling the Holy Order.