It turned out that there was even some night life in the Paradise city. Many pirates could be heard further at the docks, but most who were awake drank near or in their houses.

During the day Nick learned from Billy that there was even a small brothel where the big and sturdy women he saw earlier were employed. That was the reason pirates respected them – they were everyone’s precious gems who no one dared to offend, otherwise to get banned from the only brothel in this sausage city could be even worse than execution. Billy even recommended one particularly skillful lady, but she was quite in demand so Nick needed a decent sum of money and to sign up few days in advance.

Nick slipped through the shadows while nearing the warehouse district. He had two missions to complete till the sunrise – first, stack up on weapons for when the captives were released, and second, kill both alchemy elders and blow up their den.

First part didn’t seem that hard. When he approached the warehouse, he noticed only two half drunken guards sitting at the door and sharing a flagon of alcohol. If one didn’t take drinking into account, the discipline in Paradise city was even better compared to Aurora’s barracks.

Nick managed to enter the warehouse by creating a small opening on the other side and, since he didn’t have any preferences, he just filled the meteorite ring he got from Holy Order’s deputy elder with any decent looking sword and saber. When the whole cubic meter was full, he left the warehouse and returned to his king White’s residence.

Although he didn’t use much Qi when storing the weapons, it still consumed a bit, thus, before going against the two Qi masters, albeit old ones, Nick decided to recover to full strength.

An hour later he was at the big fence. Despite having two hours till sunrise to perform this task, he still wasn’t clear on how exactly to proceed.

The guard at the gate was in a similar state to the warehouse guards, except this one was drinking alone. Nick easily vaulted over the fence ignoring the drunk and carefully neared the house.

There was still light on in the workshop and master Sten seemed to be engrossed in his research project.

‘Let’s check the old witch first.’ Nick stealthily entered the house and sneaked into the bedroom.

Old madam was lying in the bed like a starfish on her belly and the thin cloth, that most likely was used as a blanket, was thrown down on the floor.

The thin old lady only in her underpants was not the most pleasant sight for Nick’s eyes, he shivered, but soon regained his calm.

‘Thank god she is not sleeping on her back.’ Nick inwardly sighed with relief.

He started to weight his options. He had already planned out the finishing touch, what’s left was to figure out how to neutralize both Qi masters. They might not have any considerable combat power, but if they woke up the surrounding pirates, everything might be lost.

If he could manage to stealthily kill the old man in workshop first, the lady would be an easy picking with how deep in her sleep she was. On the other hand if he killed off old witch first, there might be some Qi fluctuations that the sensitive alchemist Qi master might notice.

‘May be I can use it to my advantage?’ Nick looked around once more to completely familiarize himself with surroundings.

The room was simple. There was only one entrance, one window, big bed in the middle and couple of medium sized wardrobes – one on each side of the bed. Since it was already dark, he didn’t need to hide inside the wardrobe, but squatting down behind the one at the door had to suffice. And in case master Sten didn’t notice anything, he would proceed to the workshop right after.

Nick took out a long thin needle covered with a dark liquid that he prepared already back at the king White’s residence. He slowly closed up on the sleeping elder and with a swift movement inserted the needle in the back of her head all the way in till it hit her forehead from the inside. Madam Sigrid opened her eyes in shock, spasmed few times and stopped breathing.

Nick quickly removed the needle, closed her eyes and crouched behind the wardrobe. He held his breath and took out the second needle that was similar to the one he just used. For two minutes nothing happened until old man quietly called out, “Sigrid?”

‘How sensitive is he! She basically didn’t make any sound!’ Nick was shocked.

After another minute he heard slow steps as master Sten slowly came in.

“You didn’t die, did you?” Old man probed, but when he didn’t receive any answer he continued, “This year you already tried to trick me like this few times. Just because you are naked I won’t sleep with you, now is not the time!”

It sounded like he was angry.

‘Seriously? This is how these old freaks play around?’ Nick’s youthful heart was shocked.

“Come on, old hag! Stop playing me for a fool.” Master Sten kicked Sigrid’s leg, “You can’t be dead for real!”

Old man finally appeared to be distressed. He quickly got onto the bed, took his dead woman in his arms, checked her vitals and started shouting and shaking her.

“Stupid old hag wake up! You know you can’t die before me!” It sounded like he was even crying.

‘Oh, when your loved ones die, you feel sad? What did you feel when you killed hundreds or even thousands of others?’ Nick was already behind the old mourning man and inserted the needle at the bottom of his skull so deep it came out through his left eye.

Nick held back the vomit that rushed up his throat while the old man convulsed few times and dropped on top of his dead wife.

‘Thank god they are not fighters or even sword masters. Even a microscopic amount of this poison should cause instant paralysis and then death, but these two managed to hold on for several seconds. Did they have some special poison resistance?’ Nick sat down on the bed and took few deep breaths. From how it looked, he didn’t kill both elders with the poison, but with the needle damage to their brains.

Two minutes later he quickly removed the old man from the bed and started spraying powder all over the house. To this day Nick remembered how he burned his hair and eyebrows in front of Angel when they fled the Holy Order these years ago. Back then he was trying to light up a bonfire and used few random flammable powders, but this time he already prepared similar mix beforehand. Nick was not good with naming things, so he just called it the ‘burning powder’.

After finishing his preparations, he checked the house for anything useful. Nick took all the books and notes he could find as well as the boxes and sacks with ingredients from the storage. Similarly how he cleaned up the Holy Order, he would check on everything later, but from what he saw, the largest haul was a chest with rank three beast cores in it.

During the years Nick had used up all his reserves from Holy Order and only had high rank beast cores left. He even bought cheap ones in Aurora’s alchemy shops to be able to continue his refinement practice.

There were no hidden rooms in the house or basement, at least Nick couldn’t find any, therefore he moved the old man’s body to the workshop and generously poured his ‘burning powder’ all over the place, especially concentrating on the old man.

Then he checked his surroundings, chose the most convenient escape route and lit up this den of the evil old pair.

Nick barely managed to jump over the fence when the whole house was already burning in huge red and blue flames. Knowing that in few seconds this place will be swarmed with pirates, he used all the speed he could muster to get back to king White’s house. After half a minute he was already below his window when king White with a loud bang rushed out through the front door without even opening it. Nick grinned, nimbly jumped through the window and got in his bed. Then he took off everything except for the underpants and closed his eyes as if still sleeping.

Two minutes later he heard soft steps behind his door.

“No … no … you can’t put fish in the stew, it’s disgusting!” Nick murmured in his fake sleep similar to how he did it many times on the ship. Then turned on his back and after some moments murmured again, “I’m an artist, stop ordering me around!”

Just to be safe he continued this act like this for another half an hour with five or so minutes between each ‘sleep talk’. To his surprise he never heard how the person who came to his door left and had no idea if they left at all. Nick felt extremely uneasy, but there was nothing he could do, so after a while he did fall asleep for real.

In the late morning Nick came in the kitchen all unkempt and grumpy.

“What did you burn here? Why everything stinks this badly?” He asked and complained at the same time to the pirate who usually served the king.

“Master Sten finally burnt his house down.” The pirate patted Nick’s shoulder and explained, “We knew for years this was bound to happen sooner or later. King Red said that the old man was close to a big discovery, but apparently made a lethal mistake last night.”

“Oh, I thought I had a dream of something burning.” Nick nodded, then suddenly started cursing, “Damn that old man! I still needed few spices for ‘Omlette Du Fromage’! How can I make it tomorrow if we only have few things in the warehouse!”

Then he suddenly turned to the pirate, grabbed his hand and asked in panic, “Quickly, tell me, is there another alchemist we can get ingredients from?”

“Sigh, no. You’ll have to manage somehow.” Pirate looked sad as well.

Everyone in the Paradise city knew Nick will prepare some kind of ‘omlette’ thing tomorrow and they really looked forward to it. The ones who were on the “Queen Elizabeth”, while drinking last night, among other stories, praised Nick’s culinary skills to the heaven. Pirates were used to have only cookies and salted ham with cheep beer on the ships and mediocre food on land as well. When they heard that royal chef will prepare feast for them, pirates almost couldn’t wait two more days.

Nick didn’t stay in a bad mood for long. He had to cook king White something good for breakfast and to plan a lot for today as well.

After half an hour he helped Billy to carry king’s breakfast up to his study. Besides king White, there was king Red sitting at the table as well. When they entered, king Red noticed Nick and, without saying anything, in an instant appeared at his side. Then she grabbed his hand while looking at him sternly and after a short moment let go by snorting and saying: “Useless.”

Nick didn’t bother with her. Inwardly sweating because he almost didn’t react in time to fake-clog up his Qi pathways, he motioned Billy to put the food on the table.

“King White, I didn’t know you had a guest and as you can see I made the breakfast only for you. Do you want me to prepare something for king Red or I can proceed with organization of the venue for tomorrow?” Nick asked trying to sound sophisticated.

“Who the hell is he?” King Red apparently was in a bad mood.

“My new cook.” King White didn’t feel better, but still dug into the small hill of food Billy put in front of him.

“But he’s useless.” King Red got confused.

“Yup.” King White shrugged and didn’t bother to explain.

King Red stared at him with stupefied face that screamed, ‘At least explain something!’

Both Nick and Billy turned to walk out, when she shouted and pointed at Nick, “Wait. You there, what’s your name?”

“Nick. If there is nothing else, I have a lot to do.” He turned away again and tried to walk away.

“Stop!.” King Red angrily shouted and then turned to king White, “I don’t like him!”

“No one does.” King White said with full mouth and nodded.

“Then why is he still alive?” It looked like soon there could be steam coming out of king Red’s ears. Nobody explained anything to her and didn’t listen either.