“Does anyone else know?” Hadjar asked.
He appeared calm. He was eating soup and talking peacefully with the harmless, old lady. But he was ready for anything. He’d already found at least four escape routes out of this room and a few items that he could use as weapons.
“Do you mean the natives?” Gnessa laughed. “I love them, of course, but they’re like pets. They’re simple, harmless. They’ll never guess the truth.”
Hadjar remembered the powerful bodies of the native men and the explosive tempers of the women. He could’ve argued with the healer but said nothing. Regardless of the situation, it was always better to listen more than you spoke.
“I’m so sorry about your parents, Hadjar,” Gnessa took the empty bowl from him. “I didn’t know them. I was just a simple student of the Scholar back then. The royal treatments were beyond me, but... They were good people. Yes, the Kingdom had been poor under their rule, but the people... were happy. And now…”
She waved her hand as if to dismiss the thought, stood up, and took out another jar that was full of simple forest berries. The witch offered them to Hadjar, and when he refused, began to eat them with gusto. The native’s way of life could probably still affect even the most enlightened people.
“The merchant said that there are no settlements left in the south and the cities are empty. All the people have been taken to mine. Is that true?”
“It’s true,” Hadjar nodded. “Primus signed a treaty with The Darnassus Empire, which is at war with The Lascan Empire. If Primus delays the delivery of Ore even a little, we’ll be wiped off the map. A legion of Imperial soldiers has been stationed in our country.”
“The Warlord has his reasons, surely you can sympathize.”
“I can?!” Hadjar felt furious.
“Yes, calm yourself, Prince without a crown,” her amber eyes lit up. “Or do you not know the story of what happened fifteen years ago? When your father and uncle went off to yet another war?”
Hadjar stood still. Even if he wanted to, he could never forget the day his parents died. What had his father said before he’d died? “It was an accident."
What’s the story? What happened at the border?
Gnessa paused and then shook her head.
“I mustn’t tell you. I didn’t see it for myself. My teacher had been a military doctor back then. One of the injured officers told him. One of the commanders had told that story to the officer. And my teacher’s maid told it to me. I don’t know how much truth and how much falsehood was in that story. But know this—your uncle had a good reason for what he did.”
“What?”
The sorceress was about to say something, but then she smiled slyly instead.
“I’m a witch of the forest, aren’t I?” She slapped her knees. “You’ll find everything out on your own, Hadjar. And now, take this.”
She pulled out another drawer that had a lot of parcels inside. They resembled the one Iry had tied to an arrow and shot near the deer. She pulled one out and put it on the table next to Hadjar’s bed. He immediately concentrated and felt the aura emanating from it. It was the aura of a beast at the Alpha stage.
Such a stone would cost at least five hundred gold coins in the city. It was a huge amount of money, even for a nobleman.
However, these stones weren’t used for trade around here.
They were used in hunting.
“I can’t accept that,” Hadjar protested immediately.
The villagers had already done too much for him. The fact that he’d helped the hunters had just been payback, nothing more.
“Accept this gift, stranger,” Gnessa slammed the drawer shut and pushed it back under the bed. “I told you, the people here are simple. Don’t offend them with your refusal. They wouldn’t understand your reasons.”
Hadjar sighed and nodded. It would be stupid to deny that he wanted to have the stone. It would greatly increase his chances of breaking through to the next stage— The Stage of the ‘Bodily Rivers’.
He would have to open his meridians and allow energy to circulate through his body in order to open up new horizons.
“I want to give you one bit of advice before we part, Prince Hadjar,” the witch stood at the door, her head turned away. “Don’t seek revenge. It’ll burn you from the inside until there’s nothing left and you’re a shell of your former self, wandering the world.”
Don’t seek revenge?
For his father’s death?
For his mother, who died in his arms?
For his sister, who still didn’t know what had happened?
For the ten years, he’d spent living as a persecuted freak?
For the people who’d spent all this time enslaved?
For a country that had become not even a vassal, but a slave to the Empire?
“I'm not looking for revenge,” Hadjar could hardly restrain his fury. Gnessa took a step back because his blue eyes were blazing with the force of his wrath. “I'm not going to the capital for revenge. I’m going there for justice.”
“There is no justice in this world, Prince. And if there are other worlds, then there is no justice there, either. People don’t know how to be fair.”
Hadjar chuckled and lay back on his cushions.
The wise woman shook her head with a heavy sigh and walked out the door.
Maybe people didn’t know how to be fair, but Hadjar strongly doubted that, after recent events, he was still a man. In any case, his heart was clearly from another tribe.
Chapter 28
Hadjar rested and slept until the evening, and then decided to work on his cultivation. He sat down in the lotus position, crossed his fingers and began to breathe evenly. He absorbed more and more energy with each breath, a lot more than he could’ve managed back when he’d lived in the Palace.
It could’ve been the result of growing older, his body getting stronger naturally, or maybe it was because of the dragon heart. It was useless for him to try and guess his own age: the neural network stubbornly kept track of it only from the day Traves had died and Hadjar had been reborn.
The Prince continued to breathe. The amount of energy in his nodes kept increasing. It burned and raged in every center and at every point, he’d opened during his training.
Someone’s talent for cultivation was determined by how long they were able to keep the power contained in these ‘bodily nodes’. The longer a person was able to hold the power in, the more they were capable of improving their martial arts.
Hadjar had never achieved much in this field. His talent had always been below average. That changed for the better, of course, after his rebirth, but not by very much.
Now he could hold more power, but there were still many practitioners, even in the Palace, among the children of the nobles, who could surpass him in this art.
The dragon hadn’t been able to produce a miracle and Hadjar was still totally average, even if a bit above pure mediocrity.
The energy kept accumulating. The burn of it grew more painful by the second. It raged in his nodes violently and chaotically. His body felt like he was on fire. Sweat was pouring from his forehead.
If someone had come into the room at that very moment, they would’ve seen clouds of steam rising from the body of the young man sitting on the bed.
But no matter how much it hurt, Hadjar continued to absorb energy from the world around him. He knew that if he stopped the process of evolution at that moment, the energy would burn through his ‘inner body’, setting his cultivation back by a couple of months, at least.
That was the reason why many practitioners hesitated—the fear of failing to transition from one level to another. After all, it was relatively easy to go from one stage of the Bodily Nodes to another. The same could even be said about the Transformation level. Who would want to revert back to the initial stage of the Heaven Soldier for a whole decade after feeling its very peak?
That’s why the practitioners needed a variety of resources. They helpe
d them cross the boundaries of the levels without fear of ‘rollback’. There was an endless struggle for these resources. Of course, the ‘core’ of the Alpha Stage beast was not the most coveted of trophies, but it could still help Hadjar.
Therefore, when his nodes were overwhelmed by the energy and seemed as if they might collapse at any moment, the Prince reached for the parcel. He felt the power of the beast’s aura; after Hadjar managed to withstand the blow, he took another breath.
This time, he didn’t draw on the energy of the world, but the power coming from the beast Core. And if the energy that was always present around him could be considered peaceful and calm, the one that rushed to answer the call of the Core…
It was fierce and not at all malleable. It didn’t want to quietly assimilate into his nodes. It raged at them like a storm.
It was battering the walls of the nodes, tearing them apart, inflicting hellish torment upon him. Hadjar still kept quiet. He only clenched his teeth tightly, summoned up all his courage and began to pull in the energy that answered the call of the beast core.
The Prince manipulated the energy in the decaying thread and tried to ‘push’ it into his body. He did it over and over: once, twice, ten times, a hundred times, a thousand times. Another flash of agonizing pain and a new round of struggling with the power of the beast awaited him after each failure. Hadjar thought about only one thing—whether the power contained in the Core would be enough.
He could not afford to fail.
He spent the whole night struggling to advance, but, by morning, he’d finally succeeded. A thin, blue thread flickered within his body, and energy now flowed through it from his nodes.
Hadjar, exhausted, fell back on the bed.
The pain gradually receded. He felt immensely proud at the fact he’d succeeded and he also felt a lot stronger than before.
“Status,” Hadjar groaned out.
The Prince could see, in digital form, the things that other people could only feel. It was his little advantage.
Name
Hadjar
Level of cultivation
Bodily Rivers (1)
Strength
1.1
Dexterity
1.3
Physique
1.01
Energy points
1.7
Hadjar read the message from the neural network. There was nothing unusual and extraordinary to be found. Surely there should’ve been more…
“What?!” Hadjar exclaimed, instantly jumping up out of bed.
He read it again... and again… and again, but he hadn’t been mistaken. His energy points were pathetically low.
At some point, Hadjar realized that those were really his stats and burst out laughing. You’re a damn dragon, he thought to himself and laughed. So, that’s what you meant, you winged bastard! Damn you to hell!
What a pathetic sight! Any normal practitioner of the Bodily Rivers would’ve had at least one and a half times more energy at the first stage.
The Master had told him that such a practitioner should’ve been able to use the ‘Scorched Falcon’ Technique almost five times. Hadjar wouldn’t be able to use even the ‘Fried Sparrow’ thrice. He was almost one and a half times weaker than any other, even the most unlucky, practitioner.
Hadjar shrugged off the message after he recovered.
Don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. It’s better than being crippled. And who said it would be easy? Even if he had ten times less power, he would still have arms and legs and a good head on his shoulder—he wouldn’t complain. He would keep plowing ahead, never slowing down.
Writhing in pain from his aching wounds, Hadjar left Gnessa’s house. She'd already gone off somewhere.
He reached the village by following the trail—fortunately, there weren’t any wild animals in this part of the forest. The ones that were so powerful that they could’ve leveled the village to the ground weren’t interested in this settlement and its inhabitants.
They were busy fighting for territory and resources: all sorts of magical roots, herbs, and stones, just like humans.
The whole world was constantly struggling to gain more power.
If the piece of music titled ‘Six Moments before Life’ was true, then, in Hadjar’s opinion, the native gods had created a very ugly system.
“Hadjar,” as soon as he went through the gate, the villagers ran up to him.
“How are you?”
“Have your wounds healed?”
“Was Gnessa really scary?”
“Will you have lunch with us?”
“Let’s go to the river.”
People swarmed him, eager for his attention. Hadjar was no longer a ‘wanderer’ or ‘Bull’ after what the hunters had told them. Now he was one of them. Someone who had risked his life for the others. There were husbands, sons, grandsons, and fathers that hadn’t died in the forest thanks to him.
Hadjar smiled.
It had been a long time since he’d felt like he belonged anywhere. Like someone who would always be welcome.
“I’ve promised to play the Ron’Jah,” he reminded Lida.
“Then let’s go to the meadow. You can play for everyone there.”
And so the crowd moved toward the creek, everyone voicing their approval in a hum. In the meantime, on the other side of the village, the merchant had arrived. He was leading a donkey loaded with bales behind him. He kept his goods and other various knick-knacks in those bales. But apart from them, he also had news from the outside world.
Chapter 29
In the evening, some of the men from the village gathered in the central square, by the fire. There were about seventy people present, sitting on the makeshift log benches. This was the local Council that ruled the village, second only to the chief in authority.
There were no women there.
The natives hadn’t heard anything about feminism, and the enlightened customs of the outside world didn’t matter in this village. They lived according to an ancient creed: ‘the husband says it—his wife does it.’ As for the women, they did their best to subtly ‘set their obnoxious husbands on the right path’.
Hadjar, who’d never really gotten a chance to do something like this back on Earth, was content. He was feeling particularly comfortable thanks to the pipe of strong tobacco he’d bought from the merchant.
However, the reason why this meeting had been called was the merchant, and not the men’s desire to sit around and smoke.
The pipe was the only thing Hadjar had bought, apart from an inferior, rusty sword. He’d gotten a whole deer skin after the hunt, as part of his reward. He’d bought a sword and a pipe with the money he’d earned from the sale of the skin, and received a few silver coins as change.
Hadjar had often smoked back on Earth because it had been one of the few activities that his body was capable of. In this new world, he’d managed to forget about the habit. But now he could afford to start smoking again because his practicing body had the endurance needed to do so safely.
After thanking Robin for the honor of being allowed to attend the Council, he sat there, silently smoking and inspecting the sword lying on his knees. Honestly, the misshapen hunk of metal was unworthy of even being called a kitchen knife, but since he didn’t have anything better…
Robin sat down carefully due to his bandaged foot, setting aside something that was all too familiar to Hadjar. It was a wooden crutch, similar to the ones that had replaced his legs for a long time.
“You live in a blessed place, it’s much better than the outside world,” the merchant said, wiping at his lips with his sleeve.
He was small, with a sparse beard, slim as a rake, wiry, and had bright eyes. He looked like one of the pickpockets Hadjar had seen plenty of at the fair.
“What’s going on out there?” The chief decided to ask immediately.
The old man, despite his deceptively simple appearance, was tenacious and meticulous, as a ruler should be, delving int
o all the details and not leaving anything to chance. He approached this the same way he’d gone about training Robin, who was to take his place in the future. Hadjar learned about all this from the villagers with whom he’d spent the whole day.
When night fell, everyone went home to try and show off their new purchases.
“War,” the merchant replied immediately. “Admittedly, there’s always a war going on out there. But this time, his Majesty is very angry. The Empire won’t help him, so he’s gathering troops to fend off the nomads.”
“Are they attacking from the south?” Hadjar asked, after raising his hand.
No one took any liberties here. Everyone could only speak after the elder’s permission.
“From the south, yes,” the merchant agreed. “They attacked from the south before. But now they’re attacking from the east, coming down from the mountain tops. There are no Imperial legions stationed there, so they come in and freely rob, rape, burn, and ravage the settlements.”
“And what about the King?” The elder asked.
“They say that the King even sent his own son to join the army. He doesn’t love him, but he adores his daughter. People tell amazing tales about her clothes and servants.”
“The King has a daughter?” Hadjar raised his hand again and asked, feeling confused.
“Don’t you know anything, kid? For sure he does. She’s the most beautiful girl in the Kingdom. Her hair is pure gold. Her eyes are like emeralds. Her skin is whiter than snow. And if she’s wielding a sword, you’re better off burying yourself in the ground than facing her. Everybody’s waiting for the day when Elaine becomes a Heaven Soldier.”
Stone Will Page 18