“I’ll call you Wakizashi, what do you think?” He infused his own Qi in the dagger and it felt as if it became a part of his own body.

Until now Nick tried to use Qi in any thinkable way as means to practice and no other objects felt like this. Previously he had infused his Qi in daggers, knifes, bows and even arrows, and, of course, rune papers and alchemy equipment as well, but they still felt like foreign objects.

“Do you like it?” Julian grinned.

“A lot.” Nick honestly answered while still looking at the dagger.

“There is another downside – it has no sheath. Even if you craft one, it will fall apart very fast. But from what I guessed you have means to carry and hide it. My grandfather used to carry it in the ring I am wearing at the moment.” Julian continued to explain.

Nick nodded. He could not take his eyes off this masterpiece, “May I have a request? If you think it’s insolent, please forgive me.”

“Just say it. I’m not a king, you can speak freely here.” Julian nodded.

“Until half a year ago I never thought I would ever need to carry or use a weapon. And I still stand by what I said in king’s study – I don’t intend to run around killing people. But when the attack on the palace happened, I was forced to realize that only with strength and speed I might not be able to protect my loved ones.” Nick looked up at the Rollen family head, “I will need skills and techniques to fight some evil people from time to time. So, may be your grandfather had set of techniques that he used and I could take a look at those? I don’t mean to copy – I want to create my own and only need an inspiration.”

“Hahaha, I was waiting for you to ask” Julian laughed as a small book appeared in his hand, “I’ll lend you this, give it back when you are finished.”

“Thank you!” Nick happily took it and immediately opened to take a look.

“You can read it back at home, I still have some work to do tonight. Sigh, Steven still has a long way to go till he can replace me.” Family head turned serious again.

“I think he is very talented. And he loves the sword. He will be a good family head when the time comes.” Nick smiled in return.

“Time will tell.” Julian Rollen shrugged, “Now off with you! If you have any new ideas again, you can contact me directly.”

Nick couldn’t wait to get home to play around with his new ‘toy’. He experimented with it till late and even skipped his usual meditation and the strict sleep schedule.

The dagger was as amazing as king and Julian Rollen described. Even Nick with his puny amount of Qi compared to an actual Qi master could manage to cut through steel. It was an incredible feeling.

As much as he wanted to continue testing the dagger, he was on a quite tight schedule. The plan to sneak in the treasury was ready and all they lacked was practice. During the next month, besides the regular training, both Zia and Nick started to imitate the break-in. They climbed up a tree on one side of forest lake, Nick shot the arrow with attached rope to the other side and then they one after another dashed over. It might sound easy, but was nothing like that in real life.

It was already hard to shoot a precise arrow at a hundred meter distance with a rope attached, but besides precision they needed the penetrating force that had to be strong enough to hold the weight of the rope and a person moving on it and without Qi infusion in both – bow and arrow, it was basically impossible.

In addition they didn’t have freedom to just stand around and make tries one after another. If they were lucky, they could get two, but that was already very unlikely.

Fortunately their tedious practice started to pay off as they were getting quicker and smoother in execution.

When weather got warmer and the snow melted, they tested out the effectiveness of the ‘stealth powder’ as Nick named it. They both managed to meat up during the night in the palace and then proceeded to sneak up to their target location – building from witch they planned to get over to treasury. Everything went better than expected and it didn’t seem that anyone noticed their movements.

Nick was still not hundred percent sure if there was a Qi master guarding the roof, but if they were careful, it was even possible to knock out one with the strong tranquilizers he had.

While they practiced, the New Year’s festival came and brought a big surprise. Meyer family announced a new dish they were now serving in their most expensive restaurants. It was called ‘pizza’ and its taste was even acknowledged in the palace. Everyone from high to mid-level aristocrats tried to book some tables to get to taste this amazing dish.

Needless to say that Zia, Nick and the three aristocrat boys celebrated New Year while feasting on pizza at the “Sunshine”.

To Mason’s big pleasure, Nick couldn’t stop praising Meyer family’s ability to research and develop a new product. In a short span of half a year they created multiple types of cheese and this time some pizzas really did taste like he had back in San Francisco.

Obviously, from that day on Nick with Zia in tow started to frequent “Sunshine” much more often.

It was year 709 according to the Sun calendar and Zia was already ten and theoretically was considered a young lady. In this medieval society young girls often were married away at the age of fourteen and sometimes marriage agreements were already made even at the age of ten.

This all earned deep scorn from Nick as he called all involved parties perverts and pedophiles. Zia didn’t know what a ‘pedophile’ was, but since she knew term ‘pervert’, it was easy to guess that the former was also something very bad.

Not only the little princess didn’t have any wish to marry, she even threatened to beat up those few youths who tried any advances towards her. She was acting more like a boy and had already long forgotten how it was to wear a dress. In fact, her attire was quite famous in the whole Aurora and multiple girls from aristocratic families tried to imitate it and during last six months some even tried to start to cultivate Qi.

Zia was generous with her ‘teachings’ towards these girls and, although all of them got confused when princess told them to run around, stretch, do strength and agility exercises, few actually started to make progress and could practice Qi. Of course, it was mostly thanks to the Qi master’s guidance back in their families and not because of this ‘palace expert’.

Be as it may, as a result Qi cultivation in Aurora’s younger generation started to bloom. Girls from aristocratic families imitated Zia and boys couldn’t let themselves fall behind and simply had to practice. The youths from simpler backgrounds also caught a wind of it and sought chances to practice and, since almost every family had at least one Qi practitioner and even if they had a primitive Qi technique, these youths could start to learn.

Both Zia and Nick didn’t care about it at all – both of them were going through all the steps and nuances of their plan once again. Tomorrow was the big day, or rather – night. Thus today they didn’t do any physical training and went to bed early.

There were around two hours till sunrise when both children met at the designated spot on the palace grounds. They checked their equipment earlier and the only variable left was weather. For their plan they needed either cloudy or even rainy night or exactly opposite – for the moon to shine brightly. They were in luck in the almost full moon was shining brightly half way to the west.

Silently they dashed along the walls while crouching and from time to time hid from patrols in bushes. They already knew the spot where they should scale the building – it was nicely covered from one side and another building close nearby cast a convenient shadow at it. The shadow was approximately two meters wide and stretched almost up to the very top.

They let the regular patrol pass and then like two black spiders silently crawled up. There was a two meter section that didn’t have any protrusions, but Nick already came here few nights ago and shot an arrow in an inconspicuous spot that would allow them to support themselves on their way up.

In less than fifteen seconds both of them already were crouched on a small overhang above the third floor window. Now came one of the hardest parts. From this spot Nick had to shoot the arrow with a rope to the treasury building and had to hit right below the roof. Besides the obvious difficulty of actually shooting the bow from a crouching position, the arrow whistle was inevitable and they couldn’t find any way to muffle it except to wait for the guards to make some unnatural sounds themselves in hopes it would mask the shot. It was normal for the bored guards stationed at the doors and the patrol squads to laugh at some joke or drop a piece of equipment that in the middle of the night would sound like a big bang.

Unfortunately for the both children nothing like that happened for a long time. The worst part was that Nick with the bow in his hands had to be ready to shoot at any moment. They were squatting like that for almost half an hour and Nick almost thought they will have to postpone the event and to think of something else when one of the guards on the patrol loudly sneezed.

When the first sneeze sounded, Nick drew his bow, with the second sneeze he aimed and when the soldier should have sneezed the third time, Nick let arrow go.

‘Bless you sir, please sneeze one last time for me!’ He prayed.

To his luck another sneeze echoed as soon as Nick let the arrow loose. The shot was good and he secured their side of the rope. Next part was difficult as well. Nick almost panicked when he realized he had made a huge blunder – they had never practiced to run on the rope during the dark. Still, it was already enough that he was nervous, he didn’t mention his concern to the excited Zia.

According to how they planned, he dashed first towards the treasury building. Zia held her palm on the thin rope to feel the vibrations from Nick’s footsteps. The moment footsteps stopped, she went for a dash herself.

The long hours and days they had spent on their practice finally paid off. In a few seconds both of them were lying on the only spot of the treasury house’s roof that was covered by shadow from the palace’s highest tower. This was also according to their previous plan.

Treasury didn’t have any windows. The only apertures it had were four ventilation openings, one on the each side, right under the roof. These openings were large enough for a big cat to enter or barely big enough for a ten year old child to crawl in, if it was flexible enough. Nick’s theory was that these openings led to attic, but he couldn’t see from the ground if there were any bars barraging the entrance.

After the next patrol went by, Zia still lay down on the roof but now was holding Nick’s left hand as he slowly lowered himself to the ventilation opening.

There were no bars in the way, but the similarly to the regular buildings or towers, there were some nail-like spikes to prevent the birds flying in to nest. Nick squeezed Zia’s hand once and they both stopped. Then he took out his newest equipment, the black dagger Wakizashi and, while channeling Qi in it, carefully cut the nails like those were wooden toothpicks. The entrance still was not smooth and most likely they will scratch themselves or tear their clothes, but this had to work.

As quietly as he could, Nick started to crawl in with his legs first. As soon as he felt he was stable, he squeezed Zia’s hand twice and she, while still holding to his hand, silently followed him. To avoid unnecessary questions, they practiced this exercise inside the cottage where Nick crafted a simple construction that had opening of a similar size. Although this was ten meters higher above the ground than during the practice, both of them didn’t seem to care about it at all.