Another year passed, and William grew much more proficient with the language. However, although he was now perfectly capable of reading things alone, he still liked to spend time with Big Sister. She had plenty of insights into things, and was an interesting person. Plus, she was pretty much the only person he really knew in this world. William read various more scholarly things, but he still really enjoyed stories about warriors, knights, and wizards. Especially since they weren’t all fiction. “Big Sister, it seems to be story time now.”

“Great. Actually, this next book has the person you were named after. Did you know you were named after a wizard? Actually, your name came from the great wizard William Stevenson!”

“Oh? Cool, I was named after a wizard!” William was happy at that, then he thought for a second. “Wait- stop. William Stevenson?” He had to ask, because the name pronunciation wasn’t quite exact.

“That’s right! You pronounce that pretty well, too. So, the story starts with…”

“Wait, wait one second. Is he from Ostana?”

“Yeah! How did you know?”

“One more question… this country we are in is called…?”

“Liaoyang, of course.”

“Ahahaha, of course it is.” William stood up. “While I would dearly love to hear stories about wizards, I remembered I need to go do something.” Then, he left Big Sister where she was, confused, as he often did.

William went outside, lay down on a large rock, and stared up at the sky. Inside, he was nowhere near as calm as he looked. This… was the same world? Again? He was even named after himself! How did he not even think to ask the name of his own country even once in over a year? Eventually William just shrugged. Well, he was alive again. He like this world, too, so that wasn’t a problem. All he had to do was mentally throw away more of his notes on reincarnation, since he never would have guessed he would reincarnate twice into the same world, with his memories. He hadn’t had that much data, but he was led to believe that would be extremely improbably.

Although he was nowhere near calm or over the shock, he went back inside. After all, he was interested in hearing what people had to say about him after his death.

-----

On the way back to his Big Sister, William thought of something. How come he’d never heard of this kind of martial arts technique? He’d been looking for any way to do magic, so he should have heard of it.

Then, he realized. He had heard of it. He’d just unconsciously dismissed it because it “wasn’t magic”. He vaguely recalled a few references… Then grumbled about the state of records that had been kept by the office of the archmage. The records had indicated that the warriors were similar to knights, which wasn’t really correct at all. Certainly, they trained their bodies, but they were otherwise dissimilar to them.

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For a moment, William regretted the decisions he had made in his previous life. Maybe he could have gone down a different path. However, he considered this only for a moment. After all, he had done much to advance magic… even if he’d had to keep some of it secret, because not all wizards were as honorable as he wanted them to be.

The final thing he thought of was… would he be good at martial arts? Could he even do any more than learn how to fight with a staff or his fists? Most importantly, would he ever be able to shoot fire out of his hands? All he could do was give it his best. Though, probably when he was a bit older… and bigger. He could barely even hold a stick, after all.

-----

“Back from your… walk?” William’s Big Sister asked.

“Yes. I would very much like to read those stories about wizards now.” Indeed, William especially wanted to hear what they thought about himself. Though, it might be boring to hear, he could at least keep track of what they got right.

In fact, William found many of the stories highly entertaining. After all, it was a very impressive telling of his deeds. In the stories, he called lightning from the heavens, and breathed flames on his enemies. He even rescued a princess from a demon lord! It was very exciting. It was too bad that none of the stories were even close to true. It was obvious the people who wrote these books had no idea what he’d actually done. There were two things they got right. In all the stories, he had Chris in his hands (except the one where he killed a dragon with his bare hands to get Chris), and he was also depicted as hitting people with his staff fairly often. Obviously, the stories didn’t call Chris by his proper name, but just called him “the hexagonal crystal staff” or “the staff or power” or such.

Still, it greatly helped the enjoyment of the story that all the details were wrong, since he never knew what to expect. He kind of hoped that the versions in Ostana were more… accurate. After all, as stories they were fine, but history should be accurate.

“Hey, Big Sister, have you heard of reincarnation?” William had had to look the word up in a dictionary, obviously. It had been hard to find.

Big Sister nodded. “I have. Why?”

“I have a story about reincarnation. Actually, I’m the same William as the guy in the story!”

“Ohh, really? What was it like to fight the dragon?”

“Well… it was like… nothing. Since it was already dead.”

“I… see. Can you show me magic?”

“Nope. Couldn’t do it then, can’t do it now.” William paused for a second. He tried to feel around him for mana. Nothing. “Chris did it all.”

“And who is this… Chris?” Big Sister struggled on the name foreign to the world.

William pointed to one of the pictured. “Chris is the staff.” William wondered where Chris had gotten off to. Was he sitting in a cave somewhere, gathering dust, or had he found someone else he would let use him?

William continued his story, but obviously Big Sister thought it was made up. No matter. William would be able to convince her of it better when he was older. He couldn’t be too impatient.

She asked, “How about the battle with the demon lord?”

William described the battle as best he could. The chaos, the deaths… somewhat abridged in their form, since he was telling the story to a child. “Then, at the end of the battle, I died from my wounds.”

“Hmm, it’s a pretty good story. Too bad that’s not how the Archmage William died though. I know many of these books aren’t that reliable, but it’s well documented that he died from an assassin after the battle, not from his wounds.”

William looked at Big Sister in confusion. “Assassinated? What?”