Lao Tzu: "He who overcomes others is strong, but he who overcomes himself is mightier still."
After brushing, the Squires led them to a nearby building to get haircuts. The haircut was the same buzz cut that Tessa wore. Apparently, everyone in the order had to keep their hair cut short.
During the haircut, Alex thought worriedly, ’Wouldn’t it just regrow?’
He was worried that his Enhanced Recovery Talent would make a haircut a waste of time. But it turned out that he had no reason to worry.
The hair that was cut off remained cut. This made him nod in understanding and say, "So that’s how it is? Hair is mostly dead cells."
The person cutting his hair was confused by what he said, but they didn’t stop. With practiced and easy movement of their fingers, the scissors snipped his hair, leveling it.
When he saw the look on the barber’s face, he wasn’t surprised.
He thought idly, ’That’s why I have 100 units in my Memory Attribute. I know too many strange things, and I’ve experienced a civilization with a higher level of technology.’
After the haircut, they washed their hair and their faces. Then they were given clean clothes to wear.
They were given leather boots with wooden soles, plus thick sleeveless shirts and trousers made from an elastic material.
The shirt and trousers wrapped tightly around their bodies, accentuating their muscles. Then they put on a trench coat to complete the militaristic look.
During this process, Tessa was not around. Only the Squires and other Drones, like the barber and cleaners, were around. When he noticed this, Alex wanted to take this opportunity to ask some questions when the Big Boss wasn’t around.
He had a lot of questions on his mind that had been bothering him for a while. He wanted to know where gluttony worms came from and whether there were any other side effects he should worry about.
He also wanted to know what Tessa meant when she called herself a titan. Most importantly, he wanted to know what she meant when she said he was halfway to becoming a member of the order and what else he had to do to become a true member.
There were so many things he wanted to know, and there was also the matter of his hunger. But he had been warned not to ask questions, so he held himself back from asking questions.
Robert, on the other hand, didn’t seem to know that asking questions was taboo. He said to Roy, "When can I go home?"
"I want to see my sister. She will be worried about me."
Squire Roy said, "You will go home when you’re allowed to go home. That is all you need to know."
"But when will I get to know?" Robert asked again.
Squire Roy’s face was frozen as he said, "I don’t know, and if I did know, it is not my place to tell you."
When he saw that Robert wasn’t going to let it go, he quickly added, "As a rule of thumb, if you don’t know something, it is generally not your place to know. And when you haven’t been given explicit permission to do something, you shouldn’t do it.
"In this case, if you don’t know if you can go home, that’s because you can’t go home. When you’re free to go home, someone will tell you."
When Roy said he didn’t know, Robert was about to say, "If you don’t know, who knows?"
He was about to ask everyone who could know when he could go home. But now that he had to wait for an indefinite amount of time before he received permission to go home, he began considering changing his tactics to asking for permission to go home.
For now, he kept his mouth shut and did the things he was asked to do. They were given their clothes and were ushered to the next location on their agenda.
On their way, Alex relished the feeling of clean, high-quality fabric against his skin. For the first time in a long time, he was finally willing to put his finger to his mouth because it was clean.
’It is like I am a new man. Now, if I can eat something and solve this problem of hunger, everything will be fine and dandy,’ he thought leisurely.
So far, everything they were doing was outside the main building in the compound. The cell, bathhouse, and barbering station were all in smaller buildings placed around the main four-story building.
Their next location was outside the four-story building. It was a two-story log cabin with a chimney on one side. Thanks to the lit gas lamps, he could see more of its features in the darkness.
Even before they reached the building, they could pick up the aroma of food. In response, their tongues began to salivate uncontrollably.
Alex’s three-headed tongue came out of his mouth, looking for food. This time, he wasn’t the one whose tongue was eagerly searching for food. The two grew agitated and even picked up their pace to reach the food faster.
In no time, the two beside Alex took off sprinting towards the cabin. The gluttony worm also urged Alex to run as fast as he could toward the food, pressuring him by flooding his mind with painful hunger pangs, but he refused to move.
But then his body moved against his Will. His legs quickened, and he rushed after Robert and Barnabas.
Apparently, the worm could hijack his body, not just his tongue. His two normal eyes took on a look of horror as he wrestled for control of his body.
Unfortunately, the best he could achieve was to nullify the worm’s control over his body. He couldn’t regain control, no matter how hard he tried.
He and the worm fought while his body went slack and fell. Occasionally, his body twitched and spasmed as one of them tried to gain control, but he remained mostly immobile.