Gaius felt rather refreshed as he walked out of the tent, but it seemed that the ordinary soldiers running around Heritage Basestation weren’t. There were rather telling hints on who these soldiers were too. Most of them carried what seemed to makeshift courier bags, and almost all of them were headed into the depths of this camp.

With a jolt, Gaius finally realised the reason why he didn’t see anyone of much importance on Orb proper. The authorities of Ark City were all sequestered somewhere within this camp, which actually made sense when he thought about it. The only way to get here was through special means, which basically increased the number of checkpoints someone had to pass through in order to arrive here.

Furthermore, the innate suppression that this place had on divine powers meant that even if human assassins snuck here, they wouldn’t have support from the gods, who were apparently hellbent on supporting the humans.

Gaius felt a pang of shame when those thoughts went through his mind. It had taken him a good few days to deduce the location of the beastfolk Congress, despite all the evidence pointing that way. He was, after all, someone who came from a more advanced world, and yet, his thought process and level of meticulousness still paled when compared to the people in charge here.

You really can’t beat politicians when it comes to self-preservation, no matter what world you are in. Gaius loosened his shoulders and watched as another three men run past his tent. He didn’t have anything he wanted to do before lunch, but he didn’t want to cultivate for another three hours on end, not when he was stuck on the second step.

Gaius poked at his throat for the umpteenth time since daybreak. The originally soft flesh on it now felt like metal, and an even more surprising change had happened to his body when he held the chilly energy in for one and a half hours last night.

His abdominal muscles were now all well-defined, with an obscure diamond-like quality faintly visible in them. His back muscles could even double for armour, and had Gaius not stopped his fantasies in time, he might have decided to re-enact the feat of crushing a stone slab on his chest with a sledgehammer.

It had taken him decades to even touch this muscular threshold on Earth, but all that and more had been achieved in a span of mere days on Orb. Gaius wasn’t too sure what he felt about all this, but he did feel that he had wasted his life back on Earth, doing exercises for a body inferior to his own.

Fortunately, his height hadn’t increased drastically, despite the improvements in just about every other aspect of his body. It would be a shock for Nakama if she woke up one day to find that her big brother increased by over ten centimetres in height.

And well, having a bigger physique wasn’t as good as it sounded on paper. In Orb, Gaius had begun to favour the adage that size wasn’t everything, especially where pure strength was concerned. Sure, he would be on the losing end if he met someone who trained in the exact same method and had the advantage of size, but the general plus points of having a smaller frame were too good to pass up otherwise.

“Lecturer Gaius.” A voice roused Gaius from his reverie, and he turned to look at the speaker. It was Nalus, the Campmaster’s son.

“I still can’t get over calling a human child Lecturer,” added the teenage boy, “but let’s put that aside for now.

Not like anyone asked you to raise that point up, thought Gaius, but he placed a smile on his face and said, “My sister is still sleeping.”

“I could tell,” said Nalus. His partially silver scalp was eyecatching in the day’s light, and as he made himself comfortable, Gaius could feel everyone in their vicinity give the tent an even wider berth.

No one wanted to anger the son of this camp’s leader.

“Rather, I wanted to ask you about your past,” continued Nalus, who, if he was cognizant of the effect his presence had here, wasn’t showing it. “Senator Alexandre was famed for his close combat ability, so if a child like you — pardon my words — could best him in that, it is something worth investigating. It might even give us leads on what family you and your sister came from.”

“I’m afraid you’ll be disappointed, Nalus.”

“You’re not willing to tell?”

“‘Not willing’ isn’t the issue, because the both of us can’t,” said Gaius. “My sister and I do not have memories of the past.”

“Which means that your skills are based on the result of muscle memory,” Nalus concluded. “How terrifying. If you remembered everything…”

“I may as well be invincible? I don’t think so. It’s been hard work trying to match theory to practice, and I don’t have leeway to try recalling my past in earnest either,” said Gaius, interrupting Nalus’ train of thoughts. “And not everything I remember can be adapted for the others either.”

“Maybe we should appoint you to a post we’ll call…ah, Recaller, and have you just try to remember as many things as possible,” said Nalus. “Might give us some unexpected results.”

“Have me strapped to a table and forced to remember stuff on the pain of death? No thank you.”

“I wasn’t thinking of that, but that is a good idea.”

“You’re the Campmaster’s son, but there are some things you shouldn’t say.” Gaius glanced at Nalus, his eyes suddenly aflame with a fey light.

Nalus held up in hands. “I’m just kidding. No strapping on the table for you.”

“Make sure it stays that way,” Gaius said.

“I hear you. Are all eleven-year olds this scary nowadays?” He shook his head. “You looked more like a seasoned veteran at the bar than a child just now.”

“The natural result of a fine upbringing at the slums,” replied Gaius. “Maybe you should go there incognito and all alone once in a while. Might pick up something new.”

“And get mugged in an alleyway?” The teenage boy shook his head. “Father’s going to burn down the whole place if something like that happened to me. Best for their sake, if I were to stay away from the slums.”

“Show-off,” muttered Gaius. “Why don’t you get your father to clean up the slums instead? Maybe pick up a couple of eleven-year olds while you’re at it? Who knows, you might pick up a gem like me or two.”

“That’s a good idea.” Nalus nodded. “Let me think up a plan for this…”

He fell silent as Gaius started swinging his legs, watching aimlessly as the light in the sky intensified.