The journey was calmer than I expected, of course the fact that we went as a fleet of 4 ships might have had an effect on this.

  The ship we were on was a galleon and it was very big, according to Sergius there were 70 people on board. One of the other 3 ships was a galleon a little smaller than ours and the other two were small trading ships. We were travelling as a crew of 124 men, so we were not only going to help Lady Mira, but also to trade. All the ships had the sigil of the leviathan on their flags, which was the symbol of the Cornetia family.

  And it was also on this journey that I realized why Lady Mira was being followed and wanted to go to Xadora. As Arthur said, they were looking for an artifact, she did not say exactly what it was or what it was for, but she said it would help her find something. It wasn't my place to question them, but I wish I could have joined them, it would have been more fun than wandering around and hanging out with the nobles in the castles.

  When our ship reached the harbour of a city called Argensir, I was mesmerized by the sight. Mirstone was architecturally very similar to Rosarium, with a few buildings of more varied design, such as oval roofs, but in general it was full of architecture like that of Renaissance Italy and Greek-Roman temples, but this... Argensir was very much like those fantastic medieval books.

  Red, blue and grey clay-tile roofs, stone walls, thick wooden windows - it was exactly what you think of when you think of a fantastic medieval city.

  After our ships were docked at the harbour in a large area where the flag of our house hung, we finally got off, and as I felt my legs trembling, I saw that Arthur was like me. When I realized that he was looking at me nervously, I said in a low voice, “It's just mal de débarquement, you'll get used to it,” and he responded instantly, “I don't know what you just said, but it annoyed me.”

  I chuckled and shook my head a little and looked at the crew who were laughing and looking at me. They were all generally nice people, some of them were a bit aggressive, they could fight among themselves, but they made the long journey fun. Arm wrestling, regular wrestling, drinking contests, card and dice games... There were plenty of activities to pass the time on board.

  Sergius, Mira and I hired a carriage and set off for the lord's house where we were to stay while the men went to the trade ships and started unloading the goods without any rest.

  The city was crowded, too crowded, and what struck me most was that it was very hard to see any elves, mehum, argon or demons. Almost everyone here was human. After travelling through the crowds for a while, we went towards the left side of the city and came across a big bridge. There was a small cliff between the city and the huge castle in front of us, and a long river running down to the bottom connected to a huge goal.

  As we approached the castle 4 guards wearing cream and white full plate armour and helmets covering their entire faces stopped us at the crossing and after Sergius spoke to them briefly they escorted us into the castle. Two of them had long spears, one carried a big bow, and the other had a sword on his left hip and a mace on his right.

  After we arrived at the castle, the big gate opened upwards and we entered the huge garden. The manor house inside the castle was huge, the building was L-shaped, with stone walls, orange and red clay tile roofs, a nice simple look. It had 3 floors, the first two floors were lower than the walls, the third floor was above the walls and I think it gave access to the view, I was going to find out when I got inside.

  After we got off the carriage we started to unload our stuff and waited for someone to come and help us, but no one came.

  Sergius had told me when we were on board that we, or non-humans in general, or more precisely non-Xadorans, were not very welcome here. I wasn't expecting harsh racism and I thought he was exaggerating a bit when we didn't get any bad looks in the harbour, but it was really rude to be treated that way here.

  The strange thing was that even Sergius hadn't expected this behaviour, he came up to me, stroked my hair and said, “Something's wrong, but don't worry, I won't leave you here if this nonsense continues.” He turned round, there were a few other knights inside wearing full plate armour, like the guards who had met us on the bridge, but I had also seen about 10 guards wearing smaller armour. Sergius looked at one of the knights and said, “Come and help us,” and the knight immediately replied, “I'm not your slave,” and Sergius shouted back, “Then move your racist arse and get someone to help us!”

  The knight hesitated for a moment and changed his relaxed posture.

  Some words came out of his mouth that I couldn't understand, and when Sergius replied to him, I think in his own language, I realised that the knight had clenched his fist. Eventually another knight came up to the knight Sergius was arguing with, and after whispering something to him, the man went into the manor.

  In a very short time a beautiful woman, who looked to be in her late thirties, with short blonde hair and blue eyes, wearing a long white and blue dress, came hurrying out of the palace. Sergius approached her as she walked quickly down the stairs, clutching her dress, and he smiled and said, ‘My lady, there is no need to hurry.’

  The lady had a worried look on her face, “I'm so sorry, if I had known you were here..."

  “It's not a problem.” Sergius took her hand and kissed it when she came to us.

  “You haven't changed a bit,” the lady said with a smile.

  “It's just one of the blessings of elven blood, but before that, I would very much like to continue our conversation inside.”

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  “Yes, you are right.”

  After Lady Mira had gone over to her and greeted her, I went over and took her hand and she looked at me in surprise. I kissed her hand and greeted her with my head.

  “I am Altevia, Eliar's son.”

  ‘I'd heard Eliar had a son, but I didn't know he'd raised such a handsome gentleman.

  I'm Ophelia von Silberhafen, pleased to meet you.’

  She was nicer than anyone else here. At least she wasn't a racist. We entered the manor, led by Ophelia, after the four servant girls from inside had picked up our luggage and bags. She quickly led us to our rooms on the third floor, where we were to stay, then our things were unpacked and the rain started. I had heard that it often rained in Xadora, but I didn't expect it on the day I arrived. It wasn't a bad thing, after all, rain was my favourite weather. And it was the perfect weather to lie down and sleep, especially as I was tired after the long journey.

  Ophelia and us went to our rooms to rest after chatting for a while and talking about a few small things like our journey. I think she had a daughter and two sons, but we didn't meet any of them during the day. Arthur was already looking for a chance to go to bed and he fell asleep instantly, and I woke up in the middle of the night after sleeping for a short while.

  As I walked down the long hallway, there were windows to my right and rooms to my left. I was in a small room with a window, a bed on the right and a small wardrobe on the left, and an en suite toilet. The other rooms were probably the same, this was the part of the manor for hosting guests.

  As I walked down the corridor I met a few guards and they didn't react to me at all, and I'm glad they didn't, because I was hungry, and I could get violent at any minute over a racist comment.

  After wandering around for a while, I saw a place where the light was on and I opened the big wooden door and saw a young girl with long blonde hair with bangs and blue eyes kneading flour. She had rolled up the sleeves of her white loose white robe to her elbows and two middle-aged women in yellow dresses were watching her. In the center of the huge kitchen there were two tables with a gap between them, on the left side, closest to the window, there was a stove made of fire stones, on the right wall was a cupboard with jars of ingredients and various herbs, and next to that cupboard were 3 large refrigerators.

  “You are getting better every day, my lady,” said one of the women, and at that moment I walked in and all three of them looked at me.

  We looked at each other for a while and then the blonde girl was about to take her hands off the dough and clean it up when I said, “You don't have to hide it, I like to spend time in the kitchen too.” and she stopped.

  “You're Lady Ophelia's daughter, aren't you? I'm sorry, I don't remember your name.”

  Her eyebrows furrowed, she wasn't a racist was she? I never understood this racism thing, I didn't understand it in my past life either. I mean, no matter where they were from I was always nice to everyone, even to French. These people were really weird.

  “I am Ing-”

  “Oh, I remember Ingrid von Silberhafen, right?

  I'm Altevia Aulus Cornetia, nice to meet you,” I said as I approached her and took her hand, even though it was full of flour slop, and kissed it.

  “Most of the things I've heard about you guys seem to be true,” she said as she quickly pulled her hand away and broke eye contact. I continued to look into her eyes.

  “I wonder what you've heard about us.”

  “Uneducated and disrespectful, interrupting a lady is unacceptable behaviour-”

  “I've changed my mind, all I want to do is eat something sweet and go back to bed, can I get something from the kitchen?”

  I heard her make a noise like, ‘Tsch’.

  “Take whatever you want, I'm not going to argue with my mom because of you,” she said and continued kneading the dough.

  I looked at her strangely for a while, then I opened the fridges and looked for something sweet. I saw a few types of pies, but they were too heavy, and I didn't really crave apple or strawberry pies.

  I took a jar of milk from the fridge, then some nuts, pistachios, sugar and two eggs from the cupboards and put them on the table. Normally I would never make something using ingredients from someone else's kitchen, but Lady Ophelia had said, ‘Make it feel like your own home, if you want something you can do it’, so I felt comfortable.

  As I put a bowl and a fire stone on the table Ingrid said, “What are you doing?” and I replied, “Ice cream.” She looked at me in surprise and I added, “I don't normally like nut ice cream, but I want to make something my squirrel will like.” Arthur had been able to eat a lot of sweet and dairy foods when we ate on the ship without any problems, so I guess his body was adapted to a lot of foods, so I didn't think ice cream would be a problem for him.

  “I can't let you do that, you're under our responsibility here.

  Siburg, can you help him?” She sent the woman with the green hair over to me and I looked at Siburg with a smile, “I'll do it myself, thank you.”

  ‘I said you can’t,’ Ingrid had an annoyed look on her face.

  I sighed, this was her house so I had to respect it... I jumped off the stool below me and watched Siburg take the whisk and whip the eggs and sugar together. And while she was preparing the ice cream mix for me, I was naturally very bored.

  “You know there are schools in the Rosarium, even for the commoners, don't you?”

  She lifted her chin and looked at me, “You'd be an ancient nation if you didn't have schools in your cities-”

  “There are some in the villages, too.”

  “So? That doesn't change the fact that you're still disrespectful and interrupting me.”

  “I'm correcting your mistake.”

  She looked at me silently and said, “Not only that, but you still use primitive, cruel systems like slavery,” and I nodded.

  “Yes, that's true, and don't get me wrong, I hate slavery too, but the empire forbids the enslavement of innocent people, so criminals work for the empire’s people rather than filling the prisons.”

  She squeezed the dough in her hand, “That's wrong…” and after a short moment she added, “You're a weird kid.”

  “And you're pretty, I wish you'd be more friendly to me instead of tolerating me,” I said, and she squeezed the dough harder.

  “And the rumours about you guys being lustful are also true! A little boy is trying to flirt with me!” she snapped, and I took a step back. I didn't know if I had grown old enough for people to start paying attention to what I was saying, or if the Xadorans were too serious, but I was surprised by her immediate reaction.

  But I couldn't hide my smirk, “Yeah, I know more than twenty men who would love to be that dough,” I said, and she looked at her hands in shock, then at me, then sighed.

  “Your name is Siburg, isn't it? Can you grind me some kafe and heat it up?” I said looking at the woman next to me and she looked at me with puzzled eyes, “Do you want to stay awake?” she asked and I shook my head.

  ‘’Kafe makes me sleepy."

  It was really like that, both in the previous world and here, coffee made me sleepy. Siburg had prepared the nut ice-cream mix and put it in the freezer and was about to put my kafe in a cup when I asked her to wait. I took the ice-cream mix and ran my hand around it for 5 minutes and managed to chill it and even freeze it. I put my ice-cream in a large cup, made a small pit in the center and poured my kafe there.

  “What have you done now?” asked Ingrid, after she had put the pretzels in the oven and I replied, “Affogato it's very popular where I come from.

  Good night.”

  After taking a small spoon, I went back to my room and fell asleep after sharing my dessert with Arthur, who, as I expected, was awake but didn't want to get out of bed.