On it, he saw empty plates and cups, with ten different candles which emitted bright yellow light, enough to lighten up the entire room.
"A greenhorn," Jacob snorted, as he raised his eyes and met with Thomas', "food is going to be delivered using a long-range superpower, one that one like you won't even dream to have."
"Humph," Thomas didn't know why this dude was acting haughty and arrogant, but he didn't like this youth.
*Fwoosh!*
Just before anyone would say anything, a unique sound appeared out of nowhere. Thomas turned to the table, and there he saw the empty plates getting filled one by one, showing different kinds of food out of nowhere.
Most of the food here was meat, roasted and well grilled meat. The cups got filled with pink fluid, one that Thomas never saw before.
And that wasn't all! When he looked at the meat, he noticed how weird the meat pieces were!
The meat he was familiar with on Earth was formed of bundle shaped muscles and fibres, but these pieces… They were formed of crystal-like stuff.
"This…" Thomas pointed at the meat in the plates, feeling more surprised the more he examined them. There were weird scales, fish bone-like pieces, and even one piece of meat got little eyes that covered an entire side of it.
"Of course, someone coming from a retarded place as a village won't know such an extravagant meal," Jacob found another chance to pick at Thomas, pointed at the plates before adding in more arrogance, "I used to have such meals once per month with my family!"
"For real?!"
"Wow!"
"Jacob is the best man I ever met!"
Thomas moved his eyes around the three friends next to him, feeling like they were a bunch of fools or idiots. Especially Lara, as her comment made him feel something rolling in his stomach.
"Stop showing off like this when you got no credit to do so," and just as the place looked like a circus in Thomas' eyes, Lucy came, slowly knocking on the ground with her heels, taking each step in an elegant and refined way.
She was heading towards the table, and yet her eyes were fixed over Thomas than the table, more than anyone else here, "you got to eat such a meal once per month? In my home, I used to eat this meal once a week!"
She landed her words as stopped at the table, picked up a fork, placed it over the piece of meat that got many eyes. She carefully picked a group of five together with a lump of meat underneath.
"Try these out, and you'll pray to get such a meal on your table frequently," she even winked to Thomas, placed the fork in her mouth before turning around and started to walk away.
"A… Aren't you going to eat?!!" John was jolted awake, asked in the middle of his amazement and enchantment with her elegance and beauty.
"No thanks, I give my share for the newcomer to try and eat to his fullest," she said these words without even turning around, kept walking until her image vanished. And yet her heels kept ringing for a long minute after.
"Sigh! I'm now frustrated with you!" Bick turned to Thomas. And just from the look on this dude's face, Thomas knew he wasn't joking.
"Yes, what's your secret exactly? Huh?" John even joined his friend and looked at Thomas, sizing him up and down as if he was seeing him for the first time, "why the princess is showing such interest for you? Huh?"
"Perhaps it's his superpower," Jacob suddenly laughed, "or perhaps our princess felt empathy towards him. You heard her, she donated her share of the meal to him, hahahaha!"
Thomas turned towards the all hostile Jacob, resisting a familiar rage inside, a strong urge to go and choke this bastard to death.
"Let's eat before they'll lose their Qi," Lara patted on the two's backs, and even gave Thomas a deep glance.
"What Qi?" Thomas followed the three on the table, while asking what he didn't get, "and what's special about this weird meet?"
"It's Qi!" John said, feeling little satisfaction to know things that the one preferred by the princess didn't, "these all came from monsters at the Isolation Zones. This meat, these drinks, they are all filled with Qi."
Thomas placed his pot on the ground and sat next to it. He looked at the meat, and now he got little understanding about their weird shapes.
"What about these drinks? Are they alcohol or something? Whiskey, Scotch, anything like this perhaps?" Thomas grabbed a cup next to him first, while Bick started to distribute plates over, giving him double anyone's share.
"What are you talking about?! I never heard of these… Tiskey and korch!" Lara blinked twice before adding, "these drinks are done in a special way, by superheroes with powers that can affect water and fluids."
"They call these potions," Jacob paused, before adding, "make sure to remember this. Repeat after me, potions!"
"Screw you," Thomas got fed up with this jerk a long time ago. And so he decided to show little hostility in return for what he just suffered on this dude's tongue.
"Oh, the cub has claws, hahahaha!" Jacob found it lovely and amusing for Thomas to retort back.
"Let's eat," Lara said again, "or else don't blame anyone if your food lost Qi."
"Tsk! It's already cooked a long time ago," Jacob placed a piece of meat in his mouth, before shaking his head, "it lost fifty percent at least of its Qi!"
"No way!" what Jacob said made the other three panic. They hurriedly started eating, and from the bitter expression on their faces, Thomas could tell what that jerk said was true.
Thomas got four plates in front of him, with six cups filled with pink fluid. He played with the cup he held, while muttering to himself, "a place without whiskey, without scotch, or any alcohol… What a weird world is this?"
Thomas wasn't the kind to be addicted to drinking alcohol, but he loved to do that from time to time. He loved how he'd look normal while drinking, only feeling nothing until he'd lose consciousness without any warning.
"It's…" the moment he placed that weird fluid in his mouth, he felt a feeling that he never imagined experiencing before. It was as if some sort of a bomb got inside his mouth, exploding with amazing flavours and energy inside.
"Delicious, right?" Lara laughed. And Thomas couldn't help but notice how she changed her look over him since Lucy spoke to him, "try the meat then. It's a waste that this meal was prepared a long time ago, leaving more than half of their Qi to be lost. Or else, you'll have experienced a much better meal than this."
"It's great," Thomas nodded to her, without showing any interest or something. To him, she was just medium grade in beauty, not even the type he'd like to talk to.
Even the princess every male here wanted to speak to wasn't even enough to make Thomas think about her. In his eyes, Lucy was just special thanks to her background and family, the main reason everyone here was interested in her in the first place.
No one noticed that the reason behind the low Qi in their meals was thanks to the harmless looking pot Thomas placed next to him.
If anyone had a superpower to see Qi in the air, then he'd see torrents of Qi moving constantly like rivers, coming out from the meat and potions, heading straight towards the tree in the pot.
And soon enough Thomas would experience the fruits of all the weird things his tree was doing without his notice.
During eating, the three kept talking about how eating this meat and drinking these potions was going to help them at the upcoming test.
Thomas listened attentively while learning more about the upcoming test. It seemed that their bodies could absorb and store Qi energy. And any Qi rich sources like meat and potions, like Qi stones, were used before the formal test to increase one's potential in scoring a good grade.
Thomas didn't leave a single piece of meat or drop of potions behind when he heard these words. He didn't know what grade he'd end up at. But if there were ways to help him score a better grade, evade the F grade, then he'd not flinch from using them.
"See you tomorrow then," the party got disbanded after eating, as this was the last meal for the day. Jacob kept his silence all the time, only glaring in a hostile way towards Thomas from time to time.
The latter got used to this rude dude and decided to ignore him.
"See you tomorrow," Thomas went towards his room while the other three each went in a different direction. But they all were heading to places on the second floor, which told Thomas all the bedrooms were on this level.
And when he entered his room, he got to see lots of new things there.
The first thing he noticed was how many wood pieces were used on walls! He even mistook walls to be made entirely out of wood. But when he looked closer, he found a few spots that were void of wood, having metal scraps to be used there instead.
"This world… Don't they know how to make good looking metal or what?" he shook his head in disappointment, got his coat off, placed his tree pot in the middle of the room, and started to closely examine everything in here.
His place had one big room that worked as a small hall, and one with a big bed. There was a bathroom at one corner, and aside from this there was nothing else.
The hall he was in got its floor made entirely out of wood, covered with two diamond shaped carpets that almost covered every single inch in the place. When he walked over the carpets, he noticed how they absorbed the sounds of his footsteps, releasing nothing but small bellows of dust.
That told him this place didn't get touched for a long time already, perhaps years. In the middle of this room, there was a wooden table with metallic legs, four seats made of leather and wood, plus something in the middle of the room.
It looked like a lamp, with a thick chain that attached an oval shaped piece of glass with the ceiling. But there wasn't any switch to light this lamp on, and he didn't know if it was going to light up if there was one or what.
On the opposite wall there was an old-fashioned fireplace, lined up with pieces of wood, with the interior made of black metal.
There weren't any wood logs in there, and he didn't know how he'd lit a fire, or even if he needed to do so in the first place.
The atmosphere felt timid and warm and didn't need any fire to warm it or anything. On the side of this fireplace, he found small lamps that got attached to the wall directly, with smaller oval shaped glass pieces there compared to the one hanging from the ceiling.
Thomas looked around, but he found no switch at all. But when he searched, he found a closed box at the corner of this room, filled with Qi balls.
"Twenty-five Qi balls… I bet they are used to lighting these lamps and such… But I don't know how to do it!" he got curious to try and use this world's coal source. So, he grabbed the box under one arm and started to meddle with the lamps at the wall with his other one.
*Click!*
Just as he was touching the lamps, he heard a muffled clicking sound as a small part of the lamp metallic part got pressed inwardly, before a small box ejected from the other side.
"Hmm… So I have to place one Qi ball in each lamp manually," he thought there was some sort of a general channel that'd distribute Qi around, but there wasn't.
He placed one Qi ball into the box, and it was fitting the space there. Then as he pushed the box back, he retreated a couple of steps, and waited for the magic to happen.
*Sizzle!*
As he expected, something happened. But unlike what he thought, it wasn't only light that came out from the lamp, but something else.
"This…" he felt no warmth, but he could feel something like wind hitting his face at this moment. When he stretched out his hand, he was surprised to feel slightly cold air moving out from the oval shaped glass piece.
"Interesting," Thomas kept testing and playing with his Qi balls and things he found here. The thing that got him by more surprise was the fireplace.
When he looked around it, he found one side that got covered with wood could be removed. And there he found space enough for ten Qi balls to be placed.
As he placed the balls in, bright green flames appeared from the fireplace without any warning. But that wasn't all, he felt like the room got a bit colder than usual, not warmer!
"Do people here have something against warmth or what?" he couldn't help but sigh, then moved to sit on the table. He checked his bedroom and the bathroom, without finding anything unusual there.
"What's your secret?" as he finally got alone, he shifted his attention towards his tree pot.
As he closely examined the pot, he noticed that the fog swirling inside got thicker. He didn't get what was going on, and so he started to check the outer part of the pot, trying to see if there was anything different in there.
"Everything is looking normal… What the heck…?!!!" and just as he found nothing wrong about the pot, his hands moved by habit and went through the outer crystal layer of the tree.
He used to touch the tree whenever he was bored and had nothing to do. For a reason, doing so made him feel more at ease and comfortable. But that wasn't what made him quite shocked when he touched the tree.
"Fruits?!!!" he couldn't see anything of his tree thanks to this dense fog, but he was sure his hands touched something circular attached to his tree.
He touched again and confirmed his early guess.
"One… Two… Three… Since when Bonsai trees give birth to fruit?!" he didn't know what was going on here. And out of his curiosity, he picked one of these globular things out to examine it.
"It's… A ball?!" he didn't find a fruit like he expected, but a ball, one that got a glass surface and white fog swirling inside.
It was in the size of a small pearl, in the size of a phalanx at most. When he touched its surface, he found out he couldn't touch the fog inside, not like what he could do with his tree at least.
"It's like the Qi balls in this world… Are they the same or what?" he took one of the Qi balls in the box he found here. As he placed the two balls next to each other, he could easily see many differences.
First it was the size. His tree ball was much smaller in size than the regular Qi balls here. In addition to that, he noticed that the surface of the Qi balls in this world was smooth. As for his tree ball, it was filled with delicate lines, faint but they were there.
"Both got white fog inside, but mine looks like pure milk…" Thomas kept examining the two balls and couldn't help but notice the difference in what each ball contained.
Despite his tree ball being much smaller in size, it gave him the impression to contain more of this white fog. It was so thick that it masked what was happening in its centre. As for the normal Qi ball in this world, it had flickers of lightning dancing in the centre, appearing to his eyes thanks to the thin white fog in there.
"I'll call you the white pearl then," Thomas threw his tree ball in the air, feeling like he got himself a rubber ball or something, "at least I can store you in my vest pockets without any issue."
Thomas tried, and he found out that he could store his white pearl in any of his pockets without any issues. Then he grabbed the other two balls out, stored them away.
"The fog… It got denser!" Just as he did so, he noticed a move inside the fog surrounding his tree. It seemed as if a fountain opened up and more white fog appeared in there.
"Interesting," Thomas leant his back and looked at his tree, "now I want to dissect you more than anything to know your secrets."
And just as he said these words, he felt like the entire tree pot trembled faintly. He blinked, but that trembling just vanished the moment it happened.
"I must be tired," he yawned, "I need to sleep then. Hopefully the world here will vanish the moment I wake up."
He took one of his white pearls out and thought about trying one in place of normal Qi balls and see what would happen.
But when he went there and tried, he found out that nothing happened.
"Tsk, you are indeed useless," he stored his white pearl in his pocket again, looked at the tree of his, covered by thick and dense layer of white fog, and couldn't help but sigh.
"I hope you do something for me in the end," he muttered these words before yawning again.
He stretched out his body and went towards the bed. He still had a slight hope that all this would be a dream, a hope that got shattered when he woke up in the morning and found nothing changed.
"I'm still here," he opened his eyes to be welcomed by the weird lamp at the ceiling. He moved his eyes around without even sitting straight, to find out he was still in the room, inside the villa, still in this world.
"Sigh! It seems I have to accept my new life then," he closed his eyes for long minutes, before firmly reopening them. The look on his face changed, as he started to take things quite seriously now.