Continue On, Struggler | Chapter One, A Chance.

…

"I had a dream."

The boy, brought by the light of the full moon, faded when it turned quarter dark. A familiar face replaced it and stood still there in its glow. The entire world seemed to grow still with him.

"Under the full moon…" Griffith. "…I was a child embraced by nostalgic warmth."

Guts was speechless, breathless, powerless in his wake.

"But when I wake from the dream," Griffith continued to speak, white hair flowing with the Elfheim petals, "only a vague sense of longing remains…"

Confusion, shock, and fear were the first response.

"That, too, will soon disappear…"

And then, it was realization, anger, and rage - an all-encompassing rage aimed at all. The man in front of him, himself, and the world around him.

Rage.

"…with a single tear like morning dew."

Hate.

After it swallowed him, all that remained was darkness.

…

The light stung when Guts next opened his eyes.

Confusion was his first reaction. One moment, he and Griffith locked eyes, and then….

He felt so weak, then and now. He couldn't move. He was there, Griffith, standing right in front of him—the man he wanted to kill more than anything, the object of his vengeance, but he stood there slack-jawed instead of acting.

It was the only thing that could free him from his trance. The perpetual chill up his spine. The cold steel that traced up and down its length in slow, tempting strokes. It growled hungry, whining for him to strike, to spark it and its uncontrollable flame.

He did.

But what happened after that…? All he could remember was darkness. Casca… Schierke, Farnese, Serpico, Isidro, Puck… and all the others?

Did I fail again?

Was this what this was? Death No, he and his soul had been branded for sacrifice. Death meant an eternity of torture, being dragged into that whirlwind of consciousness that he had seen take that apostle, the Count, and being subject to its ebbs and flows. Yet, the first thing he saw was light. Weak as he was, he could still feel, still breathe. That meant that it wasn't done. He wasn't done. He had to get up and fight, do something; otherwise—

That's when he noticed it; from the corner of his vision, a pair of blue eyes loomed over him.

They belonged to a blonde woman, concern etched on her face. When they locked eyes, it gave way to a relieved smile. He opened his mouth to ask—to demand she tell him what happened, but he could only muster gurgles and whines. He tried hard to squeeze a word out, but all that came out was nonsense.

Guts began to panic, to thrash around but he could barely move his body. In his panicked state, he noticed that the woman wasn't alone. A man was standing next to her, smiling too; although, his smile seemed more forced.

They were young, younger than he was, and they didn't seem to mean any harm. Guts relaxed a bit seeing that.

The woman opened her mouth and spoke for the first time, but none of the words made sense to him. The man did the same. Then, another voice sounded from somewhere else in the room, a woman's.

Guts tried to sit up and see, but his muscles weren't reacting at all. At most, he could curl his fingers and move his eyes around. That was bad. Even his worst battles had never made him feel this weak.

Just what happened between me and Griffith?

Suddenly, the man said something, leaned down, and Guts found himself being lifted into the air. With ease. He tried to pry himself from the stranger's grasp, but again, his body was unwilling. Then, in the midst of his struggles, he noticed something that sent a pang of fear through his entire body.

Guts was a grown man who towered over most. So, why did this man seem so large up close?

…

Around a month passed since Guts first awoke and answers as to what happened to him remained sparse, but a few things became apparent to him since then:

First, he had been turned into a baby. A detail that Guts only picked up on when one of the adults, the blonde who he assumed was his mother, lifted him in a way that allowed him a glimpse of his body. It was small, stubby, and flabby—just like a newborn.

The second thing he only figured out after he did some thinking; this body was different from his old one. He hadn't seen a single evil spirit since first waking, not once did he feel that warning burn on the back of his neck and the dread that it carried along with it. To him, that meant either one of two things: that the brand no longer affected him or he happened to be in an area that negated its curse. Sites like that were few and far between and seeing that his surroundings seemed less than impressive—there only being his crib, a few chairs, baby supplies strewn all over, and stairs leading up to an attic—he found it safer to assume that it was gone entirely. Add in the fact that neither his parents, nor the maid who also served as his caretaker, pointed to any sort of marking in that area and he had run out of ways to argue against the notion. Understanding that didn't fill him with any sort of relief, though. The brand was supposed to be etched into his very existence, a curse that would follow him to the grave, so if he was rid of it now…

The third and final thing was simple: Guts hated being a baby. Since Guts was a newborn, he was too weak to do anything outside of lying in his crib, where all he could do was cry out whenever he was hungry or pissed and shit his diaper. Humiliating as that was, the worst part was the inactivity. It put him on edge. Even before the brand, he had spent his whole life a wanderer. Staying in one place meant stagnation. Gave him the feeling that something was creeping up behind him, blade in hand, ready to stab him in the back. For a while, the crib, with its solid wood walls, felt like a coffin.

Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more.

That anxiety only weaned when it became obvious that he had nothing to worry about. No evil spirits had come. His parents, and the brunette woman who served them, seemed to be decent souls. He still couldn't understand a word of what they were saying, but they always spoke to him warmly whenever they came to check on him. That treatment didn't just end with him too. Never once did he hear them arguing through the walls.

Actually, the only noises that bled through those came at night, in the form of moans and skin slapping against skin.

On the subject of his parents, from what Guts could gather, they seemed to be the well-off type. The house was obviously well-built. It wasn't a castle, the walls being made of wood and the roof being made of straw, but the glass panes on the window said that the house didn't belong to a peasant either. They were most likely a low-ranking noble family or a rich merchant one.

As time went on, it became increasingly clear that Guts had nothing to worry about. That didn't mean he liked living like this, though. He may have the body of a baby, but he was still a grown man on the inside.

Guts hated needing someone else to eat, to wipe his own ass. If he ever got himself stuck in an uncomfortable or dangerous position, he had to cry out to correct it. At times, it made him wonder why he couldn't have been damned to hell instead.

…

Around half a year later, things were finally coming into place for Guts.

He was able to crawl now. Other than that, he could lift lighter objects too. Wasn't much, but he still felt grateful to be able to explore his surroundings, limited as it may be.

Unfortunately, his adventures quickly drew the attention of his parents.

"Rudy?!" His mother yelled out, making him jump. "What are you doing up there?!"

Gut was also starting to pick up the language his parents and caretaker were speaking. It didn't sound like any other language he's heard before, but enough of them felt familiar. Eventually, something clicked in his head and now, he was able to guess the gist of most of the adults' conversations. Through this, he was able to learn what they named him.

Rudeus Greyrat. Rudy, for short. That was going to take some time to get used to.

Turning away from the window, Guts found his mother hovering over him. She seemed more tired than pissed. Her brows were relaxed and she had her hands on her hips, instead of crossed over her chest - her go-to response whenever she was actually angry. She was frowning too, but there wasn't little anger behind it, so it sat limp on her lips.

"I take my eyes off you one second…" She was grumbling, but despite her frustrations, she still picked him up and squeezed him into her chest with her usual tenderness. Guts could feel her glaring at something over his shoulder. "How did you even get up onto the windowsill?"

"Oh, what's the matter with him doing a little exploring?" His father, as per usual, proved himself the more lackadaisical parent. "It means that he's good and healthy, doesn't it? At the very least, that's better than how he first was. I mean, he hardly cried at all."

Truthfully, his father seemed like a bit of an idiot. "Would it kill you to show a little more concern? He could've fallen and gotten hurt."

Once again, his mother proved to be the only adult in the room.

…

It didn't take long for his mother to be proven right.

A few days later, after his mother brought him downstairs into the dining room so she could start her chores, Guts crawled away and used a conveniently-placed chair to climb up and look out a window to admire the scenery. The Greyrat house didn't have anything of real interest in the front yard. His mother kept a garden, his father had a shed to keep his horse, and there was a dirt road just past the boundaries of their brick fence, but past that, it was all rolling green hills, patches of tree coverage, and faraway buildings. On its own, during the day, none of that proved to be very interesting. In the afternoon, things were different.

He got to watch his father practice swordsmanship and Guts would readily admit, he wasn't swinging that thing around for show.

The untrained eye might've seen it as nothing more than mindless swinging, but he kept to a pretty strict system of drills. First, light swings on a training dummy, where the main focus seemed to be footwork and general technique since he never made contact with his sword. When he was satisfied, he'd move onto much more serious swings. Again at thin air, but Guts figured that he was trying to preserve the training dummy.

Through those drills, Guts saw a little of Serpico in the man. Both were quick and agile, but what differentiated them from a boy like Isidoro was their fluidity. They moved like every step, every twist, and every swing had been practiced a hundred times over. The only difference between them was that Serpico swung like a retainer, prim and proper and shit, whereas his father swung with more ferocity, always putting more of himself into a swing.

That's what Guts wanted to see through the window, but as he climbed up onto the chair, he misjudged the leverage he had on it and started slipping. Still being a baby, he didn't have the grip strength to keep himself upright, so he fell back and tumbled onto the floor. He felt a jolt in the back of his head and heard someone cry out.

"Rudy!" His head throbbed and the world swayed every which way. Through the daze, he was able to make out his mother kneeling over him. She picked him up and pulled him into her so that his chin was resting on her shoulder. "Are you alright?!"

Guts didn't appreciate the volume of her voice. It seemed much louder than it should've, considering that it didn't hurt too much. He figured that it must've seemed a lot rougher a fall from her perspective.

"Aw, you're alright." His mother's voice relaxed when she realized that he wasn't dying. Softly, she started stroking the back of his head. Guts's first instinct was to get away from her outpouring of concern and affection. "Actually, just to be on the safe side…."

Moving over to the dining table, she placed him down on it and hovered a hand over the top of his head. "Leth this divine power be satisfying nourishment, giving one who has lost theirs the strength to rise again-Healing!"

A light appeared from her hand, green, bright, and comforting. Guts watched wide-eyed as the pain in his head faded.

Was that…?

"There we go, all better!" Guts didn't know how to respond. "You know, before you were born, mommy used to be a pretty famous adventurer."

Adventurer…? Magic…? Guts rolled the words around in his mind, getting a feel for them. Before his death, he only knew three people who could use magic: Farnese, Schierke, and Flora. Yet, his mother used it and had done so with ease. What the hell kind of family did I get born into?

"Did something happen?" His father came through the front door, probably having heard the commotion.

"Rudy climbed up onto the chair and fell." His mother didn't seem to appreciate his father's lackadaisical attitude. "I understand that practice is important to you, but you've got to be more attentive. He could've hurt himself."

"Hey, now, everything turned out alright." His father didn't seem to notice. "Besides, you know what they say about boys his age."

"He's not even a year old yet. Could you at least pretend that you're concerned?"

"Bumps and bruises are important for kids. Builds character, toughens them up, teaches them what to do, and whatnot. Besides, even if he did get hurt, you can just heal him!"

"What would happen if something happened and I couldn't heal him?"

"Ah, he'll be fine."

The grip his mother had on him tightened. Looking up, her face was burning red.

Damn, she's really angry, huh? Arguments rarely got this bad between his parents. They'd go back and forth on certain topics, but never this bad. How're you going to wriggle your way out of this one, man?

"Hey, you were always so worried about how he would never cry. Let's just take this as a sign of him being in good health."

His father closed the distance between them. He flashed her a cheery smile and gave her a kiss, and then they took Guts back up to his room together.

From the sounds that bled through the walls, it seemed that all was forgiven.

It's just that easy, huh?

A thought crossed his mind as he started tuning out the noise: his father had been aware of her magic too.

What the hell does that mean?

…

From that point on, Guts made sure to keep track of his parents' conversations. Doing so, he learned something important: not only had he been reborn into a new body, but into a different world.

His parents spoke about regions and countries Guts didn't recognize, and on occasion, his father returned from work and spoke of beings that obviously weren't human - beings that resembled the dark spirits that stalked him after Griffith's betrayal. Yet, he spoke of them casually as if they were regular animals.

That's when the realization hit him.

Now, all he could do was ask: what the hell does he do now?

…

Chapter End.