He was even worse than me.

  It's been hours since we started practicing with the sword.

  As interesting as the runestones were, after a while I started to get bored and we went out into the garden to practice. It was hard to convince Julian to leave his room, and I could understand why. Just like me, he gets scared and panics when someone attacks him. It was hard to believe that my uncle or anyone in the family hasn't trained him, but he was very bad at footwork, perception and everything.

  “I don't want to fight, but if I have to, I want to be a long-distance mage.

  A lot of people say it's normal to be afraid of getting hurt, and most of the mages are cowards like me.”

  Even though it bothered me a bit that he calls himself a coward without any hesitation, it wouldn't be right to force him. But just because it wouldn't be right doesn't mean I wouldn't force him. I also had problems with fear, even though I've been training for many months, my body still shudders when someone attacks me, so we were actually a good pair for training. One of my problems was that the person I was training with was a giant like Nazir, and no matter how much I got hurt, even if I know I could use my ability to heal to my advantage, pain was still not something I could get used to. It was also not something I want to get used to.

  As he was defending himself, I pretended to swing my wooden sword at his left arm and stabbed him in the leg, and my eyes widened for a moment as he panickedly swung his sword at my neck. He had such a weak grip on his sword that it slipped out of his hand and I stared for a brief moment at his fist, which he stopped at the last moment. The fist of a little boy gave me goosebumps for a moment.

  At that moment a little memory came to me.

  He took two steps back and sat down on the floor, holding the place where I hit his leg.

  “You really hit me!”

  I got a surprised look on my face, “Don't they ever hit you in training?”

  When Julian shook his head, I said, “You're kidding me, right?”, and he reproached, “Who can hit a lord that hard!?” I slowly turned my head towards Nazir and he looked away.

  I sighed, “I think that's enough.”

  “What happened?”

  I handed Nazir my wooden sword and shook myself off, “Let's go to the Ocean, you can go there, right?”

  “Yes, but…”

  “But what?”

  “It's late.”

  It was dark, yes, but not that late. And also, “We have Nazir with us.”

  Nazir clasped his hands behind his back and looked at me, “It would be best to ask Lord Pedro's permission before you leave, my lord,” he said, and I nodded, ”I will speak to my uncle.”

  Julian looked worried but didn't say anything and when we went inside to look for Lord Pedro we met Orea and when I told her we were looking for my uncle she said we could go and she could inform him and we left my uncle's house.

  The Ocean was a really 'welcoming' place, most- or maybe all of the people on the streets seemed to know each other. I could see them chatting with each other from the balconies of the apartment buildings across from each other. And the apartment buildings were no more than 3 stories high, so there was no stifled look, on the contrary, whoever designed the houses had done a tremendous job. The walls were in shades of yellow, white and light gray, each apartment had a small balcony, and most of the houses had flowers and plants in the windows.

  But it didn't take long to realize that this was a ghetto, albeit a pleasant one. Although I didn’t know if ghetto would be the right term. It was a “business area”, it had an incredible network, everywhere I looked I saw people whispering, shaking hands or having fun.

  And another thing I saw was a strange logo...

  On the walls, on the fronts of some places, as tattoos on people... It looked like a handwritten M, or more like 3 successive waves. I didn't know what it meant or why it was everywhere, but it wasn't hard to understand that it was something important.

  As I was looking around, I heard Nazir say, “Do you like it here?” and I nodded.

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  “It's a nice place, especially the people seem very friendly.”

  Nazir laughed and I asked, “My father does business here, doesn't he? Do you know where he owns?” looking around at the restaurants. We were on a wide, long street and there were dozens of all kinds of places on the left and right sides of the road and we were not even halfway down the street.

  Nazir raised his head, looked around and pointed first to the restaurant with a big crab in front of it, “This...” then to the café on the left opposite it, with black walls and a design a bit reminiscent of modern cafes from my world, “...This...” then to the one next to it, with a similar design but more like an inn than a café, “...And this.”

  I looked at the places one by one and they were very busy and popular. Maybe I could do business in the future without much struggle-

  “All but those three, and the houses on the side streets, belong to Lord Eliar.

  And those three places, they pay your father a protection fee, so it's not wrong to say they're his.”

  I paused... I had a hard time understanding.

  “You're kidding, right?”

  Nazir chuckled, “Why do you think Lord Eliar hates talking business when he's at home?”

  How could one person own so many properties, in a time, city like this? How to manage all of this... The people who will take care of these places, the people who will work in these places, the safe flow of money... Well done to my father.

  “Are you okay?” Julian looked at me.

  “Yeah... Yeah I'm fine.”

  As we kept walking I looked at Julian, “What do you usually do here?”

  Julian looked around, then stopped and said, “I hang out with my brother.”

  “Which one?”

  “Oh, sorry, I usually hang out with Sergius.

  He’s usually at that place over there, but I don't know if he's there right now.”

  I looked at the place Julian showed me. It was a place with red walls and stairs going down and two tall demon guards. It must be a pub or something.

  “Let's go check it out.”

  After I said that, we started to walk and a group of dwarves, elves, demons, something out of a dnd party came up to us and grabbed Nazir's arm. They seemed drunk and they seemed to know Nazir. Nazir declined their invitation to hang out but they insisted and I said, “You can chat with them if you want, we're going to check if Sergius is in,” and Nazir was about to decline me too when I looked at him with a frown. Slowly, I don't know if it was because he trusted me now or he didn't want to get on my bad side, he just stayed silent and nodded. Me and Julian went to the pub while he was talking to his old friends a little further away.

  I was walking towards the stairs when the demon at the door put his hand on my shoulder and said, “I'm sorry, I can't let you in by yourselves.” I rolled my eyes, did this stupid rule existed even in this world?

  I looked at Julian and said, “You don't know them?” and he shook his head.

  I sighed, walked into the street and saw two beautiful girls, one half elf and the other demon. I grabbed the elf's hand and forced Julian to hold the demon's hand while he looked at me in surprise. I went back to the pub with the girls and as I was heading for the stairs, the guard stopped me again and said, “I meant I can't let you in without a family member.”

  I took a deep breath and then I heard a voice that sounded familiar, “Captain?”

  I turned around and saw Yunus. His beard had grown a little longer and his hair was tied in a ponytail, he was wearing brown pants and a white shirt. He came up to us and asked, “What are you doing here?”

  The guard at the door looked at Yunus in surprise, “Do you know them?”

  Yunus gently tapped the guard on the neck twice with his hand, “Of course I know Eliar and Pedro's sons,” and as the guard's eyes widened, he said, “I'm sorry, my lord!” and bowed his head.

  “Do you want to go in?” As soon as Yunus said this, he took us by the shoulders and we started down the stairs.

  “Is Sergius here?”

  Yunus looked at me, “He wasn't on the ship, so he could be here, or he could be somewhere else in the Ocean.”

  “I remember him saying something about not wanting to go to Ocean.”

  “He always says that.”

  When we opened the door of the place, I saw that it resembled a pub with dark brown, black and red colors. On the right side, there were tables for 4 people against the wall, while on the left there were long tables for larger groups. In the middle was a long bar and a wall full of drinks and glassware. From the second step we saw a table with dozen of people on the left and Sergius sitting in the center. In between the laughter I heard a man with long horns start a conversation.

  “Hey, all right. Would you rather stuck on an island with a monkey that you can talk or someone from the Ocean?”

  Sergius took a sip of his drink and said, “Depends, maybe Alicia ? Otherwise monkey,” and the others at the table joined in.

  “Monkey.”

  “Monkey.”

  “Definately monkey, you guys probably fuck me in the ass when I sleeping.”

  “Why did you say Alicia?” The man who asked the question asked again.

  “She's a walking survival kit, also beautiful,” Sergius replied.

  “Right...”

  Then suddenly a half-elf brown-haired man at the table asked, “Speaking of beautiful, objectively, is there a model of a girl that everyone would fall in love with?” and there was silence.

  “Redheads?” There was another silence and then “Yeah…” said Sergius, followed by a halfling with short blond hair, wearing a long robe, “Redhead and an hourglass body.”

  I noticed Yunus walking towards the table, he chuckled and said, “Vampire and I have a special place in my heart for black lipstick.” After that there were a lot of “Oooooooooooooooooo!” from many people at the table.

  “Where have you been!?” Sergius shouted instantly, looking at Yunus, and then he looked at us and shouted, “Cousin, Julian!”

  When Sergius saw Julian looking at him, he said, “Come!” with a big smile and Julian smiled and walked under the table and sat next to Sergius. While Sergius was playing with Julian's hair, I saw Julian with a smile on his face that I had never seen before, Sergius gave him some of his drink and Julian drank it like water without any reaction.

  A beautiful half-elf woman who looked like a waitress, with a white apron and long pink hair, brought a chair for me and Yunus. She looked at Yunus and said, “Vampire? You know that she can suck you dry, right?” Then Yunus answered without hesitation, “What other advantages does she have?” The table erupted in laughter and... I laughed too. They were bullshitting and having fun, and the best thing was that I had no problem joining them.