From his tiny room on the second floor of his grandparents’ house, Andric emerged. Nobody had seen him over two weeks, but he spoke with Alda every day. As soon as he descended to the first floor of the house, Alda rushed toward him and checked his body, which had been deeply injured the last time she saw him.

“Are you okay? We should’ve gotten a doctor to check you,” Alda said while lifting Andric’s clothes and checking his skin. After a few minutes of looking wherever she could reach, she found nothing wrong.

“I told you, I was fine,” Andric said, and the two of them sat in the sitting room. Andric looked out the window. Judging by the time of day,  he guessed that Gasto and Roza were both working in the fields that surrounded Einburg. He clenched his fists, then said, “I reached Human realm third stage a little while ago.”

“Ah? That’s good!” Alda was confused at first, but she then happily embraced Andric.

After Alda left home, she rarely meditated, and she didn’t have a meditation technique to use even if she did. After she had Andric, she didn’t meditate for many years, until Andric asked her about it. Then, after several years of on-and-off meditation, she hadn’t made any noticable gains. From the little contact she had with her brothers, she learned that her oldest brother was at the seventh stage of the Human realm.

According to the laws of the martial way, a child’s rate of progress in the martial way was predetermined by how much potential their parents had and the realm-at-conception of their parents. When Alda thought about her own family’s poor martial talent, it made her wonder what kind of martial talent Andric’s father had. After sixteen years had passed, she could finally think about those kinds of things without hurting.

“You don’t have to worry about me. When I leave, I’m going to keep practicing my meditation technique and grow even stronger.” Andric and Alda sat back down, and Alda began filling Andric in on everything that had happened in Einburg while Andric was in shut inside his room.

What she took three hours to explain could’ve been summarized in one word: nothing. At least, according to Andric’s interests, nothing happened in Einburg. The merchant caravan still hadn’t arrived, nobody had died, nobody had given birth, nobody had married, and nobody switched factions. A few youths who were indifferent toward Andric came to check on him, but Alda had turned all of them away. None of Audovacar’s group came, and neither did Miss Erminhilt.

Andric was surprised that townspeople he didn’t know would check on his well being. If anyone, he expected Miss Erminhilt to come, but she didn’t. If it wasn’t her, he would’ve expected Miss Erminhilt’s mother or father, who were doctors.

The most important information that Andric learned from listening to Alda was about something that was going to happen in the future: the arrival of the merchant caravan. The previous day, a townsperson came by to tell Alda that the merchant caravan would be arriving in two days. The merchant caravan would arrive one day and leave the next, or they might stay a little longer depending on what troubles they encountered before arriving at Einburg.

Alas, Andric could do nothing except wait for the merchant caravan to arrive. He didn’t feel like saying goodbye to anyone. He wasn’t sure what kind of relationship he had with Miss Erminhilt, but he knew it was one he couldn’t afford to have. He decided to ignore it and hope the problem disappeared on its own.

Unknowingly, Andric had fallen into the mentality of a martialist. His worldly desires, such as those for companionship, had faded into nothing. The longer he paused meditating, the more he wanted to resume. Over the course of the last two weeks, he had developed a thirst for power. He remembered some of his younger centuries from his previous life, when he experimented with thought energy and mana to create perfect spells. The sense of discovery was exhilarating.

“Are you sure you want to go? If you want to stay, I’ll work something out so that you don’t have to leave,” Alda asked near the end of their conversation.

No matter how much she told herself that Andric would be fine, she couldn’t help but worry. She knew that, in the town of Einburg, having Human realm third stage at fifteen years old was considered excellent, but it couldn’t compare to what some people had obtained after dozens of years. Talent to reach the Novice realm could never defeat someone who had actually reached the Novice realm.

The world outside Einburg was dangerous. Alda had traveled for a short while with an older brother of hers, but she didn’t even go more than three hundred miles away from Einburg. Mahtzig was much more than three hundred miles away from Einburg. Along the way, there was no telling what kind of dangers Andric could encounter.

Towns like Einburg were actually pretty safe when compared to the rest of the kingdom. The town wasn’t on the border, it wasn’t surrounded by huge forests or mountains, it wasn’t along a major trade route, and there were no sects nearby. If a powerful martialist ever came close to Einburg, it was only to travel past it. A few martialist came to have their meridians opened by Instructor Hubert, but they were usually in the Human, Novice, or Apprentice realm, and they left quickly.

The person most scared over Andric’s departure was Alda. She couldn’t easily let her baby leave.

“I want to see the capital. This little town is too boring for me. There’s nothing interesting going on. Every day, it’s just more farming. There’s got to be better things out there!” Andric confidently said. Alda gently smiled, remembering similar reasons for why she left Einburg in her youth.

Alda stood up and walked to the fireplace. A painting of her family hung over the mantle, painted when she was a small child. It had all of her brothers and sisters in it. Gasto and Roza were standing behind their children, a quarter of a century younger than they were in the present. Alda looked at the painting for a few seconds, then picked up a letter. She returned to her seat with the letter, then gave it to Andric.

“This was sent from your Uncle Raban, shortly before your tenth birthday. It’s the last letter we have from him, but the address should still be good. Memorize it, go to his house, and explain why you’re there. He’s always been a good brother to me. I’m sure he’ll take you in,” Alda explained while looking at the letter.

Andric looked over the address on the letter a few times, thoroughly memorizing it. The city of Mahtzig was spread into numbered districts, and each house had the name of the family living at it posted outside. In Einburg, nobody had a second name. In Mahtzig, Uncle Raban’s second name was Einheim, By convention, Andric’s second name would also become Einheim.

After memorizing the address, Andric gave the letter back to Alda, and she returned it to the mantle. She then sat back down, and they were both silent for a few minutes. When it became awkward, Alda stood up and said, “You must be hungry, right? I’ll make you something to eat,” and walked into the kitchen.

Andric stood up. He looked into the kitchen, then faced forward. He still had the rest of the day to spend time in Einburg, and the amount of time during the following day would depend on exactly when the merchant caravan arrived. If he worked hard, he could open his diaphragm-lung meridian, but he already decided he wouldn’t do that. He could find Miss Erminhilt, but he had also decided not to bother her. He could get his revenge on Audovacar and the others, but various problems would arise after doing so.

That evening, Andric ate dinner with his family. They were unusually quiet during the meal, and they finished quickly. With, perhaps, only a single day separating them from Andric’s departure, Gasto and Roza were thinking about how things would really be once Andric left. They worried that Alda wouldn’t be able to get her life together even after he was gone. The last few weeks, when Andric retreated into his bedroom and didn’t come out, had shown that Alda couldn’t leave her child’s side. In those two weeks, she never left the house for longer than an hour. Gasto and Roza worried what would happen to her once she was separated from Andric by hundreds of miles.

What Alda felt for Andric could be classified as an unhealthy obsession. She wasted her adulthood by taking care of Andric, and she was hesitant to let him go. At the same time, she knew she eventually had to let him leave. In short, Andric was Alda’s life. Other women of her age were married, raising their family, and occasionally working. Alda only had Andric, and that had been true for fifteen years.

The next day, Andric and Alda spent the morning in the sitting room, stitching clothes together. In the last decade, Alda had gotten very proficient with a needle, and some townspeople wanted her to join the textile workers in making clothes. Einburg had many women who worked in the field with their husband or stayed home to take care of their children, but not many were able to work long hours and craft textile that could be sold in Mahtzig for high profits, and even less had the same level of skill as Alda.

Andric looked over at his mother and saw the great amount of skill she had in the art of threadcraft. She had spent a long time making Andric’s clothes from scratch and scraps, and she did all the repairs on Gasto’s, Roza’s, Andric’s, and her own clothes. Although she didn’t come from a family that had worked with cloth for generations, she had the same level of skill.

Shortly after the sun reached its zenith, the merchant caravan arrived outside Einburg. Fifty-to-sixty wagons gathered in a grass field, and hundreds of merchants set their camps. The merchant caravan was like a small army when it moved, but it transitioned into a bustling marketplace when it stopped. Shops opened on the wagons, displaying goods that could be bought at that time or could be ordered from the capital. Smaller pedalers carried their wares around Einburg, trying to sell small gadgets or find out what else could be sold.

Normally, Andric avoided the merchants from the caravan. He had no money, so he had no reason to interact with them. This time, he was going to leave with them.

A townsman came to Andric’s house and led him and Alda to the merchant caravan. He spoke to the owner of a wagon that took passengers, then him paid fifteen silver coins. The merchant caravan would leave at dawn, meaning Andric needed to leave home before sunrise.