With Zia gone, Nick could concentrate on the training even more. After getting few pointers from master Marozzo three months ago, he now was more or less satisfied with the Wakizashi style. Although there was always a room for improvement, he decided to put it to the side for now and focus on Qi manipulation. The only other thing he practiced was alchemy, although not more than a couple of hours every evening.
In fact he didn't do alchemy only for fun. To keep his financial situation stable, Nick began to concoct healing pastes for the palace and later even some healing elixirs and antivenoms. The latter was in a way specific product, but with the knowledge gained from the Holy Order's books he could create some really high quality ones.
While practicing alchemy he realized that the resistances he trained, or rather, was tortured to acquire, so hard for – fire, cold and poison, had gotten much weaker since the time he did the three month long 'detox retreat'. Although he still didn't care much about hot summer days or winter's chill, he had to be careful with getting poisoned while practicing. There were few risky incidents during past months, but everything ended well.
Of course, he and Ben still went together on their morning patrols, sometimes chatted, sometimes just walked or ran. Ben had cured his injuries and practicing the three Qi techniques gave him enough tenacity to at least keep up with Nick. He also informed his young teacher that most likely he'll become a Qi master very soon, just like Paul did, and that made Nick delighted.
Nick also visited auntie Maria and baker Bruno from time to time. The latter still refused to take the opportunity and work with the Meyers family as the baker of the original pizza, but since that was Bruno's own choice, Nick didn't bother much.
Mason, Steven and Chris were already considered young men and had hands full with their family matters. Although they sometimes hunted and dived with Nick, lately the bunch mostly met only over a pizza feast in the "Sunshine".
Meeting Steven became even less possible after his engagement with princess Conny was announced. Although their marriage was still a couple of years away, they spent a lot of time together and Conny even liked to accompany Steven in his training. This was not a common practice, especially between aristocrats, but Steven was the heir of Rollen family and his majesty didn't seem to mind, therefore it didn't even cause many rumors.
While Steven was busy with Conny, Chris was busy with "Queen Elizabeth". In fact, everyone in the Evans family was busy with her, or rather – 'it'. The "Queen Elizabeth" was going to become the biggest ship ever built and will be named after the current king's late mother – queen Elizabeth. Also, the construction process had only started and the ship-launch was scheduled around eighteen months later, right after the New Year's celebration.
The importance of the event was that it was not only the biggest ship ever to be built, it would be the biggest ever merchant ship. Because of the marriage between the Styx kingdom's crown prince and princess Cira and the fact that king Alexander Maxwell was already married to the current queen Hua who was a princess from the Lethe kingdom, relationships with the Eastern continent had never been closer.
Therefore Evans family rushed to exploit this matter and increase the trading intensity with Styx and Lethe kingdoms creating a triangle sea trade route between the three capitals. It would've been much easier and cheaper to build two or three smaller merchant vessels, but the head of Evans family, Winston, considered it a personal challenge and the whole family and wanted to fulfill the dream that had been around for many generations.
Of course, the shipyard of the Evans family had much bigger capacity and there were multiple projects built at the same time, but this was the most important one and every single member of the family was somehow involved, even Chris and even Kate.
With everyone busy, Nick mostly spent the time on training, but also started to make plans for himself. He was quite strong for his age and his current speed could even be compared to some Qi masters. Therefore he decided it was time for him to start fulfilling his own dreams and travel to see the world. Taking revenge on the Holy Order will take some time and he still had to grow in strength, but he could train while traveling and enjoying life at the same time.
When he told about this plan to Ben, the old man thought for a bit and suggested that Nick should wait and use the unique opportunity to take his first trip on "Queen Elizabeth" when it will go to the Eastern continent some time later. The eastern traditions differed from Mainland quite a bit, they had their own architecture style and even seeing its flora and fauna would be a new experience for him.
Nick liked the advice, especially because it gave him a decent amount of time to prepare. He used his access to the palace's library and studied there some books on the Eastern continent while still practicing and honing his own skills.
He had spent many months patrolling the Royal woods with Ben and his survival skills were passable. What Nick paid more attention to was the Qi manipulation, as usual. He could already manage to create Qi lenses underwater so he could see without goggles and, although he couldn't keep them up for long, it was already impressive.
Earlier this year he created the cliff scaling technique after listening to master Marozzo's advice. Until then he trained Qi only as a repel force, that allowed him to, for example, walk or run on the water and gain explosive bursts of speed. The old man suggested him to start learning the opposite effect and that way he would almost master the two main ways of Qi application before even becoming a Qi master.
Despite him being unable to stick to a ceiling and stay there for a while, Nick learned how to climb vertical cliffs that were the natural defense wall for the palace territories from the eastern side. The palace guards at the bottom and the top were just shaking their heads in the beginning while watching the poor boy from time to time to stubbornly fall off on his back, but later it was already a common sight for Nick to be able to scale these cliffs almost like he was crawling on stairs.
Nick loved this exercise. If the danger factor of suddenly falling off was ignored, this was the perfect physical exercise that trained his whole body and at the same time improved his concentration and Qi manipulation. If he added reading in the library, grabbing pizza in the "Sunshine", practicing alchemy and meditating in the evening and result was – a perfect day!
He even managed to light up his old flame – language studies, as he found an elder in the palace who could instruct him in the dialect of the Eastern continent. The dialect didn't differ too much from what they used in the Sun kingdom, but it was still a pleasant nostalgic feeling to study languages again.
This way Nick 'prepared' for his trip for almost one and a half years.
Year 713 of the Sun calendar was marked by a grand event. "Queen Elizabeth's" launch caused a big commotion and most of Aurora's influential people were present that afternoon. Evans family didn't let everyone in their shipyard – only the people with invitation could attend the event. Despite the limitations a crowd of a couple thousand people could enjoyed the festivities.
In his speech old king Albert thanked the Evans family for paying a tribute to his wife and everyone drank some wine in her honor. Then Winston Evans, head of the Evans family, said few words and the ship was finally launched in the water with a big splash. The huge five mast tall ship entered the water dangerously swaying, but soon stabilized and floated in waters looking extremely grand and impressive.
The air in the Aurora bay was a bit chilly, but it was already the springtime and flowers and trees were blooming. The decorations of the venue were organized by Kate and she did her job beautifully. People drank and chatted till the evening when it turned dark, but afterwards continued the celebrations with their friends at home or in taverns.
Nick and the other youths also continued to celebrate in the already booked room at the "Sunshine". Pizza was as tasty as always and, although they didn't drink any alcohol, the atmosphere was lively and full of joy.
Nick knew that Steven and Conny would also go on the first voyage on "Queen Elizabeth", but the big news was that Kate and princess Beata would join them as well. Conny and Beata really wanted to visit their sister Cira, while Kate would join mostly to have some fun. Only the poor princess Belia had to stay at home since she really couldn't handle anything regarding the sea. She barely managed to endure the short trips to the reef on a calm day, but to travel for a few months on the sea was out of question. Thus the dream of uniting the 'five flowers of Aurora' was not meant to be fulfilled at this time.
Kate disclosed the details of the first trip as well. "Queen Elizabeth" would first sail south to the port city Ravi, where they would pick up a the main cargo of this expedition – tons and tons of silk. The eastern continent lacked this product and, maybe just for that particular reason, loved it a lot.
Then they would sail towards the east, first to stop in Lethe and then Styx kingdom's capitals. The whole voyage would take somewhere between four to five months depending on the weather. And, as per his majesty's request, they would stay for at least fifteen days in Styx kingdom so that the sisters could spend some more time together. This itinerary completely satisfied Nick as he was already contemplating if he should stay on the Eastern continent for a year, travel a bit and come back when "Queen Elizabeth" would make its third round trip.
When Kate heard that Nick would join them, she immediately used her privileges and upgraded his regular cabin into a luxury one that would be next door to hers, despite all his protests. Of course, she wanted to have more fun and that obviously included having more people around. Nick's weak cries for a privacy and time for training were completely ignored. Needless to say that Kate had already taken care of everyone else and all of them would stay next to each other.
Steven smirked at Nick's misery. He and Conny just had their wedding ceremony during the New Year's celebration and he was planning to spend most of his time with her anyway. Nick suddenly realized that this trip might not have been the best idea after all. To be squished between two people on their honeymoon and two bored girls for at least a month with nowhere to run was a gloomy perspective, but in the end he gave in.
After saying goodbyes to everyone, he boarded the ship just to realize it was much busier than a marketplace. Almost hundred crew members were organizing luggage of numerous passengers, showing the way to their cabins and managing little cargo boats that were bringing new waves of people.
Although Nick decided not to show off and arrived with a cargo boat as well, not by running on the water and climbing the ship afterwards, Kate still noticed his blond head. In fact, it was hard to not notice a person who was wearing blue trousers, white shirt and carried a small backpack as his only luggage.
"Nicky! Here! Come here!" She shouted while energetically waving her hand.
Nick noticed her standing on the bridge at the side of a middle aged man. She was wearing all white and looked extremely elegant.
"This is my uncle, Clayton Evans, he's the captain of the ship." Kate introduced, "As you know, everyone in our family is in some way related to the sea and father asked uncle to be the captain, at least for the first round trip."
"Hello, captain." Nick greeted.
Clayton nodded and immediately seemed to forget about Nick's existence. There were too many events happening at the same time and too many problems to solve for him to entertain the two youths.
Kate and Nick didn't mind. They went aside to not bother him and chatted till both princesses and Steven boarded as well.