Chapter 6: Deal (yes, this is the right Chapter...)

"Hey, I would like to have a word with Martha."

Instead of using some kind of shady tactics to approach her directly, I simply bothered one of her closest friends and followers when we met on the school's corridor.

"Wait, what?"

In this new world, the social hierarchy had to be built from the scratch. With all the old rules mostly gone, the new world order was based on not how rich or strong one was, but how far his talent would allow him to go. Obviously, at first it was the typical law of the jungle with everyone trying to settle in the right order with their fists and schemes, in just a few months the common interventions of the new governments that made sure to teach everyone what would happen if a promising person were to die an untimely death or even be sustainably hurt made it so the interpersonal conflicts returned to their form from before the earth's change.

Yet, while the way in which most of the tensions between the new classes of people were solved has returned to its usual state, it didn't mean the society did so as well.

"As I said. I need to have a word with Martha. Tell her that Kristov will come to pay her a visit during the herbalism lesson."

Instead of dealing with one of the followers of the girl that I had to see, I simply passed the message in a confident tone before moving further down the corridor, exactly where one of the few lessons that were actually interesting and up to the current times would take place.

Thinking about it, now that my mom had to remain in a sort of a rune made out of the growing herbs that were supposed to absorb magic, the problem of learning how to handle herbs and other plants became one of my priorities. And this was also one of the reasons why I decided that despite how risky that was, contacting with Martha was something I simply had to do.

Due to the timing of my arrival, it was only a matter of a few moments when the class started to quickly fill up with students. Out of all the subjects that one could take in this damned high-school, this was one of the three that had any interests of the students. Outside of the obvious leader of physical education and the runner-up of applied physics, herbalism was the only other subject that could realistically help the students on their path of cultivation, hence it's popularity.

"I was told that you wanted to talk with me?"

Just hearing this soft voice was enough to make my heart melt. Just one year ago, I could enjoy its vibrant tone on a daily basis, yet now…

Taking a quick glance to the side, the first thing that came to my view was Martha's long, golden hair. As if generating its own currents of air, it floated gently right above her neck, coating her delicate face with its golden hue. Her eyes only pretending to be glued to the figure of the teacher that was now starting her lecture, in reality, her golden pupils were taxing me with quite an honest dose of curiosity within.

After all, it was the very first time that I contacted her ever since the moment when I decided that I no longer had the right nor the reason to stand by her side.

"You were told correctly. I need to ask for a favour from you."

Instead of playing around with little talk, I came at the true topic of today's meeting right away. Reaching to one of my pockets while keenly observing every move of the teacher, I passed the small package to the girl that I once hoped to go out with.

"Hmm…?"

Humming cutely with her sweet voice, Martha didn't press the issue, simply accepting the package and waiting for my explanation. For someone who I abandoned so suddenly and decisively, she surely didn't act as if she had any grudge about the way I cut our relationship back then.

After all, if she was naive or stupid, we would never become friends in the first place, not to speak about forging such close relationship that nearly half of the school already believed the two of us were a thing!

"This is a petal from a certain plant… that I managed to get my hands on recently. Given how I can't really cultivate myself, I can't test whether its proclaimed capabilities are correct. What I would like to ask of you, is to test in any way you wish whether this single petal really can allow one to raise their cultivation within body cleansing stage by one grade, and if it actually can do so… Then set the price for it and take the burden of selling it around."

As strange as it might sound to give up the potential of monopolising the profits from selling the petals from the plant that system gave me, there was no way in which I could safely liquidate it with my current means. Right now, if anyone were to ever catch us doing this deal, it could be easily explained as Martha sponsoring my family, something that I could easily name as her just returning the favour for what my family did for hers in the past.

On the other hand, I couldn't really consume all the petals that this damned flower produced. After just a single night, two were already growing out of its stem, with three more already in making. With how short this plant was, my mother had to take care of plucking the fully grown petals by herself in order to ward her new living area from the influx of magic that could kill her!

"Today, I would like to announce one thing. While some of you might have already discovered it, those pieces of mint that survived the curtain and adapted to the new world can be of great help in cleansing the post-training trauma of your bodies. Given how most of you are still in the bodily cleansing realm, I don't think I need to emphasise on how useful it might be!"

Hearing the teacher's words, I couldn't help but feel my fury getting irked on several instances. A curtain? Just another fancy word that the world came from to soften the negative feel that the actual word that population used to describe the even of the last year had. After all, it was way easier to explain to the kids in school that what happened a year ago and changed our world beyond any imagination was just a tiny winy curtain rather than a fully-fledged apocalypse!

On the other hand, the fact that this damned young teacher just had to bring up the matter of mint, something that anyone with any brains noticed long ago, right when I was trying to sell my herb to Martha…

This entire idea stemmed from the fact that the herb from which those petals were coming from, indicated that the area of our house was simply too rich in magic for it to safely contain. Yet, as much as I wanted to move my mother away from the house, I couldn't allow my parents to sell it either. In the past few weeks, the basement already proved to be my only chance at completely curing her in the future, not to speak about changing my own future from being the ultimate and complete trash, into someone capable of travelling all the world imaginable and profiting of it!

That's why, I had to find a way to obtain enough money to buy a new place for my parents to stay, where I could use all kinds of herbs and methods I would later discover that I would deem possible to keep all the magic away! But in order to do that, I needed to get quite a lot of money, something which I wasn't able to obtain while being known to be unable to cultivate at all!

"I'm sorry, but I already broke through to the body reinforcement realm, so I won't be able to test it myself."

Starting her response with an apology, Martha at least didn't give me the petal back, but instead took it with her other hand before reaching with her now free right one towards my own fingers. Grasping my palm with her soft hand, she squeezed it lightly, as if wishing to wire all the feeling of loneliness and depression that our separation caused in her soul. For some reason, I could tell that this single moment of grasping each other's hands server the role of an ointment on her mental scars.

"But don't worry. I will ask one of my friends to test it out. If it really proves to be effective…"

With her eyes momentarily moving towards the teacher, I instantly understood what this former, unofficial girlfriend of mine meant.

The post-training trauma that the teacher spoke about before, was nothing else but a huge amount of impurities gathering just below the surface of one's body. Thanks to the constant efforts to improve, one would then proceed to carefully and violently wash his body, in an attempt to clean those impurities away. Sadly, most of the time, most of that inner dirt would remain, making it so that any further attempts at training would only bring an adverse effect.

By lessening these phenomena thanks to relaxing and cooling one's body down, mint, especially this magically improved one, was often regarded as a go-to herb for anyone practising within the body cleansing realm. In short words, it was used as the most important herb that could help one skyrocket through the ranks of a body cleansing! Something that was strangely close to what I was currently offering to this girl, who outside of dealing with her social life as the queen of the school in terms of beauty, influence and the sheer talent, had to also present herself as the heir to a corporation that my father created and sold to her family when the bills for my mother's healing therapies started to rack up!