After half an hour one of they youths gave up and asked, “Elder Jerold, I’m pretty sure everyone here has the same problem. We all can realize that the person in question might be fast and agile, but he doesn’t even carry a weapon! How can we assess his power?”

“That is a good and stupid question at the same time!” Elder sternly answered, “How do we call a weapon that we don’t see? Anyone? Of course, a concealed weapon! Did the level of danger rise a bit?”

No Qi sword masters were afraid of combat, in fact, their way of life was to fight, but fighting an unfair or even dirty battle was their weak point. Unfortunately such battles couldn’t be avoided and they had to learn how to fight those in order to survive.

“I’ll help you a bit more. Now imagine this young boy was the one who killed emperor Osman in his bedroom, sneaked out four girls from his castle and then was the main reason they managed to leave the Nestri continent! And all of that while he was still a Qi practitioner!”

At this point no disciple was able to keep his eyes closed as they stared at the elder in shock. Everyone knew king’s daughters and their friend Kate killed the emperor and few of them, even girls, were wearing the new wristbands showing their support to the young heroines. But elder wouldn’t make up lies just to prove his point.

“You all are disciples of Sword sect and are entitled to a bit more information than general public, but this information is not to be spread further. In addition,” Elder Jerold looked around him, “I can assure you that this is only tip of the iceberg if we speak about him, but, unfortunately, I can’t you provide with more details. I can only tell you one more thing – do you know what is the thing he likes the most? It’s to practice! While we are just talking here, the three of them are not only on the way to prince Andrew’s camp, but they are practicing along the way and I can assure you that they will be back before dark if they said so. Now … close your eyes again and visualize your fight with such harmless looking, but frightening opponent.”

Some time ago every elder in the Sword sect was gathered for a meeting and carefully listened to master Marozzo telling the unbelievable tale of a young boy living in the Royal woods and practicing by himself. Elders learned all the details from their sect master and many implemented some of Nick’s training elements in their practices and teachings as well.

What Nick didn’t know was how king from time to time sent his old master some updates on new additions to the young boy’s training program and the elder deeply respected his innovative style of thinking. Even more, under his guidance Zia at the age of twelve was already comparable to some Qi masters while being a Qi practitioner! If at old age one didn’t recognize such genius, he had lived his life for naught.

Of course, elder Jerold exaggerated for the purpose of this lesson. These were young elites of his sect and no wonder they were so arrogant, therefore he found another ‘use’ for Nick and how he could help in their advancement without his knowledge or asking for his permission.

Nick and the two beauties were oblivious to of all this. They darted between the trees while laughing and teasing each other. Zia had the hardest time because of her sword that almost doubled her weight, but she clenched her teeth and persisted – this was the path she chose and stubbornly refused to abandon.

Just as Nick expected, they arrived to Andrew’s camp within two short hours stirring up the place in total chaos. These soldiers were far away from home deep in the jungle and suddenly two otherworldly beauties with slightly blushed faces appeared in front of them. Few days ago, when the disciples from the sword sect arrived, they already got to observe some beauties from a far, but now it was too much for their exhausted minds to bear.

Prince Andrew was immediately notified and the trio were brought to his place. Indeed, ‘place’ was the correct description for the light construction covered with palm leaves under which prince spent most of his time.

Before bumping fists with Zia and Nick, Andrew gathered the last remaining royal willpower he had and greeted YunYun, but to his great surprise saw fist extending towards him and after being startled for a moment, he bumped it while laughing loudly. Nick and Zia were similar and the new friend they brought along was made from the same material as well.

After the introductions Andrew didn’t manage to praise Nick for his great luck with women when a big round pizza appeared in front of him and his reaction wasn’t much different from Zia’s. Nick didn’t bring many, but thankfully he ordered few before departure and now, even if they were cold, friends could enjoy these delicacies.

“What brings you to this hot hell?” Andrew finally asked after fulfilling his animistic desires and brutally devouring the poor pizza.

“Shouldn’t I be the one asking it?” Nick laughed back, but then got serious, “Sigh, Holy Order.”

His friends expression changed as well, “I have few reports sighting them, but nothing specific. Ten or eleven days ago one of my guys got back badly wounded and before passing away he managed to retell how he was assaulted by few people in dark red and one of them was in hooded robe.”

“Hmm, then it’s not that bad.” Nick slowly spoke while holding his chin.

“What?” Prince was confused.

“Sorry, the fact that your soldier died is terrible without any doubt, but he brought back valuable information and his power to survive to get back is commendable.” Nick explained, “You see, if those people are really from the Holy order, then the hooded one should be their elder. Those are the good news – he isn’t neither elder Jan nor Sonor, otherwise your guy would have stayed in the jungle. Most likely that is one of the new elders or elder Silvio, and, actually, I hope it’s that moron.”

“Why are you interested in them? And how come you know details that even I don’t know.” Andrew still couldn't understand what to think.

“Well … they killed my mother.” Nick looked back at his friend, “And I’ve been hunting them for a while already. Until now I managed to kill three of their elders and a bunch of deputy elders and some Qi masters.”

“We.” YunYun plainly stated.

“Sorry, we managed to do that.” Nick gave her a guilty smile.

Out of everyone present only she knew in detail about Nick’s relationship with the Holy Order and it was still not everything. Zia similarly to Andrew also heard of this for the first time and grabbed her sword handle and angrily said, “What’s the big deal. Let’s go and kill all of them.”

She only knew that her friend suffered from loosing his family and deeply hated people who caused this suffering even without knowing who they were in detail – Nick’s first report in king’s study happened long ago and her memory was not her forte.

“Zia, if that was so easy, I would’ve called your Sword sect to help and we would just clean them up.” Nick patted her shoulder, “First, we will find them and then, if you promise to listen to me, we will make sure none of them will get out of these jungle.”

“Fine.” Zia hissed between her teeth. Patience was not her best virtue, but she tried to learn it.

“Andrew, do you have a map you can lend me? What we brought from Aurora only gives us some general information and I’m not even clear where we currently are.”

While YunYun thought this to be ‘normal’, Zia and Andrew looked at Nick in disbelief.

“Then how did you even come here? I mean, I understand Zia brought you here, but how did you find her?” Andrew almost stuttered.

“Oh, that was just a lucky coincidence. We ran for a whole day only to find ourselves near a small lake and it turned out that the Sword sect had a camp nearby.” Nick shrugged. It might sound irresponsible, but they didn’t have any strict plan from the beginning and were randomly looking for answers.

“Sigh, your luck …” Andrew looked at Nick, then YunYun and almost fell in despair. This guy’s luck was really something else and he preferred to not think about it. He took out map marked with multiple black dots and there were some red ones as well.

“We are right here.” Andrew pointed on the map, “And these red dots are the places where the Holy Order has been spotted. I can’t give you this map, but you can try and note down the information you need.”

“What about the black ones?” Nick asked.

“Ah, those are my headache.” Andrew sighed, “Those are bastards from the Lori kingdom running around my jungle and spreading nonsense about the doomsday that’s approaching.”

“Why don’t you just put them in jail or even kill them? Don’t tell me that you don’t have the power.” Nick was confused.

“It’s not that easy.” Andrew shook his head, “Similar to the Sun kingdom, we have a freedom of religion here, except you guys kill all of them in secret, but we can’t because of the close proximity to the Lori kingdom. Even if we kill a few, more will cross the Eternal river and continue to brainwash our jungle tribes.”

“But what’s the big deal if they change their beliefs?” Zia asked, “Religion is just … a religion after all.”

“The state religion of the Lori kingdom is based around worshiping the deity of fate, Lori. And here lies the problem – they base everything they do or say on ‘fate’ and persuade their followers to blindly follow their orders. And that includes giving away their wealth or migrating south to become slaves at the end.”

“And why exactly can’t you kill them? Those are obviously evil people!” YunYun was confused as well.

“We have always had free religion policy. Thousands of jungle tribes have different religions and many of them simply worship their local tree or a mountain. And I know what you want to suggest, but we can’t easily prohibit this specific religion because there are quite a few Lori believers even in our capital. In fact, it is quite harmless if the people are not intensely brainwashed.” Andrew sounded desperate.

“In that case isn’t it easy to solve it?” Nick grinned and the rest looked at him in confusion. Andrew just explained how difficult it was and if there was a simple solution, the king would’ve thought of it himself long ago.

“You probably are too close to this to realize.” Nick explained, “Just because there is freedom of religion, it doesn’t mean you can’t monitor it, correct? So, if I say there were many charlatans and even fraudsters who cheated your citizens, wouldn’t your obligation be to solve the situation?”

“You want me to kill them of under a lawful pretext, but I already told you …” Andrew tried to interject, but Nick stopped him.

“Listen till the end. If you have some citizens complaining about the fraud, but your country has free religion policy, you don’t have to start falsely accusing people in public. On contrary, you should give out permits to the preachers and allow to spread religion by law abiding people, of course, collecting a small tax in return covering your expenses. In addition you will inform your citizens of the rule that every real missionary or priest has to have a permit issued by government, otherwise he is automatically a fraud!”