36 Chapter 35: An Unusual Compliment.

"I mean, seriously, I get being hungry and everything, but what would you have done had I been a bad guy, huh?" I continued my incredibly long rant about how stupid these kids had been through sheer facts and logic; my mother would have been proud: "What if I wanted to bring you to an isolated place and steal your organs?"

"Why would you want our organs?" The boy asked in a feeble voice, looking back up at me like a beaten dog.

"How would I know? I'm not an organ thief, but someone else might be!" I replied, completely outraged that he dared question my fatherly rant.

Facts and logic indeed.

My first lesson was very detailed about the many things that could have gone wrong had they followed anyone else just as carelessly. My favorite example was that someone could have used them as a carrot while taming a tiger with the carrot and stick method.

My arguments grew increasingly farfetched to the point that not even they could take them seriously, because why would a small girl who called herself a princess and came from a different world want to suck their blood and then enter inside their hand?

It's not like that had personally happened to me, no way.

My hour-long rant was very detailed and increasingly weird, but I could see that it was good enough to give them a feel of who I was.

Maybe I seemed crazy to them, but if that was the case, then I would make sure that they would end up as crazy as I was; there was no way they would follow strangers after this, or they would suffer the wrath of a very disappointed doctor with a very loud imagination.

"Is it over?" I heard the girl whisper to the boy in a voice low enough that a normal person wouldn't have heard it.

"I hope so," her brother replied, but his uncertainty was palpable.

Yes, it's over, but if you follow a stranger again, you might have to hear this lesson again." I replied with a smirk, calming down from my fake rage.

"We won't do it ever again, teacher." They replied in chorus.

I waved off their words and finally went on to the next most important thing: "Good enough. Now, take those shoes off, both of you. Let me take a look."

They looked at me carefully, so I continued, "Stop looking at me like that; I'm a doctor."

I took a look at their irritated feet; there were cuts here and there, and those shoes were absolutely awful, so this wasn't exactly unexpected, but holy shit.

"Okay, for now, use these..." I mumbled as I passed them two pairs of sandals after bandaging their feet and applying a lenitive creme, "These should be enough for now; I'll get you real shoes when we get back to the city."

I stood up and prevented them from saying anything: "We will rest here for an hour; take your time."

"Yes teacher." I replied to the boy while the girl stood up, coming close to me under the curious gaze of both her brother and me.

I raised an eyebrow when she took hold of my shirt and said, "Thank you."

My brain short-circuits. What was this cute creature?

"No problem, kid." I replied stiffly, tentatively deciding to just ruffle her hair as a slight show of affection; these two deserved at least this much.

Maybe I had taken the right decision after all.

I deposited two tents on the ground and left to leave around the place many more detection runes. I was going to turn this opening into the most watched spot in the entire forest.

A few minutes and probably close to a thousand runes later, I said, "Jasmine, do you mind coming out?"

"You clearly overdid whatever you were trying to do; you can probably feel every single movement in this place." She said this as she appeared behind me, keeping up her bad habit.

"If anything moves in a hundred-meter radius, I will know it." I replied with a smug expression, proud of my clearly overcomplicated waste of energy.

I needed better and more efficient scouting runes.

"Yeah, yeah," she dismissed my boast, even if it was true, "so, what do you need from this princess?"

"I think we should change the plan; going after the seed is too dangerous with the kids." I said with a firm voice that there was no way I was going to put their little heads in danger, especially for what was just a boost in combat abilities, something that I had basically never used beyond snapping the neck of a magical rabbit.

"I think so as well; what to do?" She mumbled with a hand on her chin.

"The best course of action should be to go to the capital and set up shop, get everything settled, and only then return to take the seed." I replied after thinking about the situation.

As far as she had told me, these seeds were meant to strengthen the power of the Evil God's Profound Veins, something that I wasn't exactly eager to use since using them meant feeling a great deal of pain coming from my own body.

I could numb my pain receptors with intent-laced energy, but it was still something that would heavily stress my body to the point of possible damage.

She thought about it for a bit and eventually nodded, seemingly coming to my same conclusion: "That might be the case; it's a pity, we aren't too far from where the Seed should be."

She seemed really disappointed, though. "What if we go there and see if there are any immediate dangers? At most, I should still have two of those hiding pills."

Her eyes lit up, and her mouth morphed into a smirk. "You would give something this precious to the kids?"

"Obviously, I also still have one of those blades of grass; I can probably find a way to replicate the effect if I study them enough." I replied, knowing full well that I probably had way too little of the primary material to actually do anything with it.

"If you're really able to do such a thing, I will teach you that mind communication technique that I know you've wanted for a while." She replied with a smirk on her face, telling me far more than her words did.

She didn't believe that I could do it.

"Bet." And that was more than enough to push me to prove her wrong; I didn't care about the telepathy technique, only that she believed that I couldn't do it.

How hard could it possibly be?

"But what do I get if you fail in your foolish quest?" She replied, her smirk still present.

"What do you want? A new dress?"

"I was thinking something more like..." She mumbled, clearly not having thought about it in the least; she only said to act tough. "Yes, I believe a few dresses would be a nice enough prize, since there is no way you would be able to accomplish such a feat."

"Oh?" She kept challenging me; my pride wouldn't allow such a thing to go unanswered. "And why can't I?"

"You seriously want to replicate the effects of one of the most rare herbs, something that is unfathomably rare even in higher realms? How can that not be considered folly?" She replied.

"Bet," I replied, leaving it at that, my own face mimicking her own smirk. Maybe she had influenced me more than I would have liked. "Anyway, I wanted to ask you something else as well."

"What is it, oh foolish disciple of mine?" She replied while cracking her back while floating in midair.

I should have asked her to teach me how to float instead of using telepathy, but oh well.

"What was that constitution thing that you said the girl has?"

"Oh, yes," she mumbled, seemingly having almost forgotten about the matter entirely, "Constitutions vary from case to case; some make your body stronger, some affect your mind, some give your profound veins special abilities, like your Evil God Profound Veins, but her case seems special; it affects her soul." Explained the short but powerful girl.

"I see." I mumbled, somewhat weirded out, that the people of this world knew that souls existed and had proof for it, but nothing about modern scientific theories.

We had followed different paths to conquer our surroundings, survive, and thrive given our different starting points and resources.

very different paths.

"Yes, I don't know precisely what her constitution does, but it is almost awakened; the moment she begins cultivating it, it should begin to manifest, and at that point I should be able to understand what it is." She continued.

"That's interesting; I wonder how this thing will affect her development. I didn't see any significant differences in her Profound Vein Network compared to her brother." I replied, bringing out the scans that my glasses had done of the two kids.

You've already scanned them?" She asked rhetorically.

I replied absentmindedly, "I scan everyone," then proceeded to study the diagrams.

"The girl, Zhu, has seven of the fifty-four profound openings free to take in energy; Xue is at eight." I said.

"Their talents are very low level; no wonder no cultivator took notice of them; even if the girl has a constitution, they have no future as cultivators." She stated it flatly.

"That seems to be the case," I replied offhandedly with no expression as I kept analyzing the scans. "It's lucky I'm the one that took them in then."

"You'll open their profound openings with the Sky Poison Pearl, right?" She asked, knowing full well the answer herself.

"Yeah."

"I guessed as much," she replied with a chuckle. "I wanted to ask you something, disciple of mine."

I finally finished analyzing the scans and cursed the areas that still seemed odd—the same weird areas everyone else had. Something kept hiding from me. I cracked my back, and only then did I compute the words that she had told me: "?"

"Why did you accept to take two kids in? You're not exactly in a condition to take care of others, especially not right before going through a journey like this one." She asked.

"Well, he asked." I replied, taking my glasses off to clean them.

Damned things kept getting stupidly dirty; I had to make a glass cleaning thing.

"That's it?"

"Yeah, more or less."

"So you're going to take as your disciple anyone who asks you?" She asked, raising an eyebrow in incredulity.

"Well, not everyone," I replied, putting the now 'clean' glasses back on, "had this look in his eyes, a mix of hope and desperation; I couldn't turn that down, and have you seen their condition?"

"What about it?" She asked back.

"Bruises, cuts, marks, injuries, burns, malnutrition, blisters, infections, signs of hypothermia—I can go on." I explained, every single word sending a pang of pain through my heart.

"Again, what about it?" She replied.

"What do you mean?" I asked, almost outraged that I needed any more reason to help a child.

"There were tens, maybe hundreds, of kids in a possibly even worse condition than the two of them back in New Moon City; are you going to help all of them?" She clarified, her words stinging deeper than I thought they would.

I knew that I couldn't help them all, at least not personally.

"I will help them all; I will try at least, most probably not personally, but the consequences of my actions will make their lives a little less unbearable." I said it with conviction shining in my eyes.

Maybe this was the reason whatever God it was decided to bring me here to start a change; maybe there were others like me.

But maybe that was not going to cut it; I was going to spread my knowledge as far and wide as I could. "I'm going to use the princess that seems to be so interested in my abilities to get founds, open orphanages, and give them a roof over their heads—a real roof."

I didn't have a true plan, but I had time—enough time to make a plan and then to make that plan a reality.

She looked at me and sighed. "You're a really unusual person, you know that?"

"I will take that as a compliment."

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Gimme them stones and compliments, i need motivation.

btw, what would you guys rather see, a Harry Potter fic, a DanMachi fic or a Naruto fic, cause i got a very distinct idea for any of these three, i've written a rough outline for them, but i can't exactly write 4 fanfics at the the same time.

Peace between worlds to all of you.