“See you next time!” Hesna called while waving.

I waved back and caught up to Master, who was still sulking about the drinking games last night. His breath reeked of alcohol and puke. Dark circles lined his eyes and he grumbled something about card decks.

“Master, you overdid it with the gambling, didn’t you?” I glanced suspiciously at Master’s face.

He jolted, “Of course not, disciple. You can never have enough of poker and wine.”

I sighed, “Looks like you really did, Master. How many rounds did you lose?”

Master took one look at me and burst and burst into a half-bawl half-shout, “It was only fifteen out of sixteen!”

I snickered. Master was terrible at drinking, no matter how much he loved it. The two of us made it back to the cabin by mid-morning. Master managed to hobble into the cabin before collapsing out of hangover, falling into the hammock in his bedroom.

“Sweet dreams, Master.” I covered his body with a thin blanket and went outside to get a breath a fresh air.

The cloudless sky was bright azure and the sun shone like the day before. After filling jugs up with fresh mineral water from the running stream nearby, I went back inside the cabin to check in on Master. He was snoring soundly, so I closed the door gently and tried to find something to.

The living room of the cabin had a small table lined with wooden stools, a simple leather chair, a hole in the wall for a fireplace in the winter, my straw mat, and a bookshelf. The bookshelf was filled with dusty leather-bound books and chipped scrolls.

I bent down to inspect the titles of the old-looking tomes. The language of the kingdom was different from the Koqinian tongue, my native language. I was still adjusting to the writing and letters of the language, but I had become mostly fluent in it.

“The Tale of The Viper Snake, Cail The Great…” I flipped through the books, but found nothing too interesting.

I discovered a useful map on the third shelf though. It was an aged scrolled that unrolled to become a map of all the kingdoms of the continent.

In the continent of Jakreta, there were eight main kingdoms, excluding the minor territories that acted as proxies of major eight. The major eight were Venti, Ignis, Glacies, Tonitrus, Borinzol, Lux, Umbra, and Minvit. The first seven all represented one of the transcendent beings. Respectively, they were the kingdoms of wind, fire, thunder, nature, light, and shadow.

The Kingdom of Minvit, also where I was currently in, was a special case, as it could be thought as the crossroad of all other kingdoms. It represented no transcendent being in general, but held connections across the whole continent.

“Come to think of it…” I studied the map.

There was a large range of mountain in the south, directly under the range of the Kingdom of Minvit. The shape of the archipelago of mountain peaks was strangely familiar, as if I had seen them before. In fact, I believed that they were the exact formation as the mountains that had surrounded Koqnia.

I wanted to go there and see if there were traces of my last life there, but I knew I couldn’t. The area on the map clearly marked the area as Umbra’s territory. As one of the strongest powers if not the strongest among the major eight kingdoms, it was not to be messed with.

“I’ll think more when my apprenticeship ends.” I muttered, rolling up the scroll and placing it where it was before.

I ended up browsing for more books, which ended when I plucked out a thick tome that was titled “How to Cook Curry” out of pure curiosity why Master would house such a work. However, it turned out that the book was a mere half of a tome cut off from the other half. The pages split in the middle and the space that was saved from the half book was filled by a dusty blue leather notebook.

I pulled it out gingerly. On the cover were letters scrawled hastily in black ink.

“Diary of Zanharu.” I read out loud.

Turning the leather cover, I flipped past the blank first page and found the second page littered with words. They were all in Master’s delicate handwriting, arranged in orderly lines. I found myself engrossed in the story the diary told. Sounds of pages flipping filled my ears as I read page after page.

“They’re all blank after that.” I murmured to myself, slightly disappointed at the lack of update after the hundredth page or so.

Shutting the diary close, I positioned the books I had taken out to their original spots. I didn’t know how Master would react if he found out I had read his life story, but my gut told me to remove all the traces I had left.

Acting as if nothing had happened at all, I went outside again. Turning my head towards the sky, I told myself everything would return to normal again.