Chapter 1

  Dear god what a racket please somebody shut that woman up if she screams any louder I will have permanent hearing loss.

 Wait…What? Screaming woman …my memories are a little blurry but I am pretty sure the last time I checked I was being left in some dark stinking hole in the ground I hadn’t even seen the sun in two weeks let alone another person so why is a woman screaming in my ear?

 I tried to turn my head to look for the source of the sound, but my head was being cradled in a woman’s hands I couldn’t turn it no matter how I tried. Not that I tried that hard I felt absolutely exhausted. I was actually grateful to be supported like that I sure don’t feel like I could hold myself up right now. That said I was quite curious to see my surroundings and the first thing I was…. Lord of the rings cosplay? The hell?  

Some blond busty beauty with pointy ears wearing a dirty green wool dress was holding me in her arms!

 So yeah one technique for dealing with torture is to create an out of body experience, it’s not your pain it’s happing to someone else that kind of thing.  Taking that one step farther you create a warm fluffy delusion to make you feel happy,  apparently my brain thought a blond busty elf would make me happy hahahahaha good job brain…wait why am I a baby then? I never had a fetish like that, stupid fucked up brain!

 Well yeah let’s just go with it for now. I didn’t have long to appreciate the hottie holding me anyway I found myself being passed too another woman a black haired flat chested girl with pointy ears and red eyes given the sound of her voice she was the one screaming earlier. The sound of her voice you ask yes she was currently speaking to the blond bombshell strange though I couldn’t place the language. Ah I should say here that I am quite talented linguistically speaking I am fluent in seven different languages and I understand at least in part a dozen more. This seemed almost like English it certainly sounded Germanic but I still couldn’t place it.

Ahh crap so sleepy the whole world started turning fuzzy then I blacked out.

 So yeah it wasn’t a delusion I was a baby….. THE FUCK…..well it beats being tortured hahahahaha.

As to how this happened …. No clue now moving on. So it’s been a few months now and I have pretty well figured out the language even made a few attempts at conversation they didn’t go so well, poor kid will probably never be the same. Ahh I guess I should explain the nurse that would be the blond elven beauty Sierra had a five year old daughter named Sin she was somewhat of a conversationalist, and by somewhat I mean she went around all day asking freaking annoying questions.  The rest of her day was spent air quotes playing with me. Manhandling was more like it putting me in her old dresses and putting her mother’s makeup on me.  Now I like being in drag as much as the next man unless the next man is a wandering transvestite. So I had had enough when we were alone I spoke out.

“Yo she-bitch the fuck you think you doing HUNNH put lipstick on me again and I swear to god I will burn your house down with you and your family in it!”

  I know I know it wasn’t the best thing to say to a five year old girl but I had spent the last thirty-three years of my life in the butt crack of the world, also hindsight is twenty-twenty.

I imagine the scene was really quite humorous her lying on the floor coloring with her mother’s lipstick and me still wearing the dress squatting down and grabbing her hair and pulling her face up to mine and me with a candy stick coming out of the side of my mouth like some Cuban cigar giving her and me giving my very best baby rape face hahahahaha….yeah I am sick.  

Well her reaction was priceless and I was never put in a dress again so I think it all balances out in the end.

I guess this is the part where I stop joking around this might be a good time to explain my previous life was fucked up. I don’t particularly want to spend a long time discussing it as I would rather forget all of it if I could but I can’t so here we go.

   I was born white what nationality I have no idea sometime when I was five or six my parents thought a safari would be fun. So we went to Africa long story short…they died killed by a band of rouge soldiers I won’t go into details of their deaths except to say I wish I didn’t know the details…they didn’t have a peaceful death. And what happened to me you ask it seems white children make great child soldiers the native soldiers are suspicious of their own but put the white kid in cute clothes and it looks like a tourist was separated from his family.

After a few years of drug running, fighting, and whoring myself I finally escaped that hell. A weapons merchant thought I would be useful so I was traded for two crates of ammunition. That was what I was worth to the soldiers. At least with the weapons merchant I didn’t have to whore myself out, I even learned quite a bit their group. It was almost like a highly dysfunctional family. Ray was an ex-navy seal he taught me boxing, knife fighting, and tactics, I was already pretty good with a gun. Felix was a little redheaded girl former I.R.A and the eod specialist she could turn anything into a bomb. She also taught me how to drink. Saurtobi an older Japanese man was the planner but he also was proficient in judo, jujitsu, and real Kenjutsu not this kendo crap but a real way of the sword, ah he was also an incorrigible liar.

They did all right by me but no good thing lasts forever I was maybe 20 and a deal went wrong only Ray and I made it out. Ray just didn’t make it out in one piece. Still he looked after me set me up as enforcer for this Mexican drug cartel. My day job was as a tattoo artist which was just a front for the cartel but turns out I was pretty good at it I enjoyed it quite a bit that lasted ten years or so before something went wrong. A rival cartel got me took me to some compound who knows where and would alternate between torture and sticking me in this little hole for days on end.

So yeah it was a charmed life, BULLSHIT. Now I have my second chance I don’t know why and I don’t care either but I will make the most of it.

So who wants to hear about my new life now that I can understand what’s going on for starters I live in a two bedroom house with no bathroom or plumbing of any kind. Apparently this world’s technology level is somewhere around the Middle Ages but with the existence of magic people rarely get sick and most injuries can be healed relatively quickly and yet no one thought to come up with a magic toilet?

And as to what my family does well my mother her name is Silla she is the pharmacist and healer for this village she is also a dark elf which is one of the magic races, my father Dante is a mountain of a man who is a blacksmith by trade as well as a city councilman and chief of the militia and a human. What does all this mean you ask, it means this really crappy house is actually one of the nicest in the village.

So why did I only introduce my parents by their first name? It’s because they only have one name only nobility has two names or more.

Magic that’s right mofos I can use magic now. I started learning simply by listening to my mother explain to customers about her process naturally she didn’t let any trade secrets slip but I could piece stuff together with enough time.

Basically I this world there exist three classes of beings there are magic beasts, magic races, and humans.

Magic beasts are crazy fantasy monsters that don’t die of old age and have indeterminate growth and the ability to use magic. An example would be a magic lizard that isn’t eaten after a hundred years or so grows into a crocodile like beast and after five hundred years it’s something like a dinosaur and after a thousand years it becomes a dragon and gains the use of magic.  Magic races like elves and dwarves and such can use magic once they learn how and they to have an unending life span. Finally you have the humans that only live maybe a hundred years and can’t use magic. So how there are still humans well humans are smart lil bastards and they discovered something very cool called soul energy.

Soul energy is something like Ki or chakra or whatever you wanna call it but just discovering it wasn't enough after all soul energy takes a long time to cultivate so humans created soul weapons.

Matter and energy are indestructible right well so is soul energy and humans found a way to transfer soul energy upon death to objects. This was a massive leap for humans but it still wasn’t enough after all even if you collected the soul energy of six generations that lived till eighty you still only get a four hundred and eighty year energy which would put them on par with maybe a two hundred year magic beast or a twenty year old magic race. So humans learned cultivation methods through meditation to increase the rate of soul energy growth. This increased energy growth by ten times the amount.

Finally humans learned to extract soul energy from magic beasts.

this brought peace between humans and the magic race after all humans were only too happy to kill the magic beats that ate the magic races and the magic race learned to make magic weapons to give the humans making them stronger still.

All that leads to me a hybrid. My father was a human who possessed impressive power saved my mother a dark elf from a magic beast. They fell in love and here I am yay for love.

What does that mean it means my mother is an elf and like an elf I can use magic and like my father I can use soul energy in fact I even brought my soul energy from my previous life with me. Hahahahaha funny story bout that the meditation cultivation that they use is pretty much the same as the exercises Saurtobi taught me for calming and centering myself before a fight so when I was born I possessed a two hundred and forty year soul energy. So I guess I have no choice but to aim to be the ridiculously over powered hero hahahahaha also it’s not like baby’s can do much so I ended up doing the exercises a lot over the first few years. I am still not sure if soul energy goes through growth phases like children do or if I just spent so much more time on the exercises because I was bored but by the time I was four years old my power had swollen to the three hundred year point.

Now I told you I could use magic so why the big ass explanation on soul energy? That’s because magic is soul energy just not yours. Soul energy is the energy inside of you magic is the energy of the entire planet that has been around for millions if not billions of years collecting energy.

Now the power difference is obvious but what if you try to use such power without safety precautions….you explode think of it like trying to grab power lines from the biggest power plant ever with your bare hands then funnel that power without burning to a crisp. Magic races learned to use runes and spoken word even numbers like components of an electric circuit to complete a process without burning themselves up. The magic beasts have a different method that evolves there bodily growth but I don’t really get it so I will leave that for latter.

The simplest way to think of the two is as in a game soul energy which comes from within boosts your passive abilities like your speed and strength. Magic are like the crazy ass powerful special attacks that take forever to charge.

When I turned two I started to draw using sticks on the muddy ground  clearly I was no Davinchi painting his Mona Lisa I didn't have the dexterity or the body control but I still remembered my techniques and proportions so it was far from a two year old scribble I could even write. The first time mother saw she only arched her eyebrow took be by the hand and led me inside that’s when mother started teaching me rune magic.

My magic studies went well sort of I never really studied in my other life so I wasn't that much better than a two year old there but I was focused and determined to learn. When father saw how abnormally focused I could be he sensed a maturity beyond my supposed years and so even over mothers complaints he taught me how to use soul energy and weapons.

 That’s how I started combat training at the age of three.

I am now four years old for the last two years I have learned rune magic and soul energy usage and I have made quite the great strides in improving them.

 I had combat training in the morning before father went to work at the smithy mostly just running laps around the house and strength training, what you didn’t really think they would give a weapon to a three year old did you? But it was enough to wear my small body out so when I got tired I would cultivate my soul energy and then practice my judo, boxing, and other fighting arts by myself till lunch then after that it was rune practice for a few hours then sin would come by after the village school let out and we would play till father got home.

Now you might be wondering why I would play with the girl who once put me in dresses? I could spin you some lie about how I needed to blend in with normal children or how it was a sign that I had forgiven her and moved on, but that would be complete bullshit I didn’t care for any of that. The real reason was that she had inherited her mother’s voluptuous body. As it turns out Mrs. Sierra was only half dark elf her mother was a succubus and had gained certain family features THANK YOU GOD FOR GENETICS. Now I am not some pervert, who would sexually assault a child, but that child would one day grow up and so would my big bad wolf HOWL hahahahaha.

It seemed prudent to make a good impression now which was harder then I first thought. I had completely forgotten the whole baby talking and threatening her thing.  

And that’s how two years passed relatively uneventful. Ow except for the part where I changed how the world used magic forever hahahahaha.

I was four almost five when on a dark and stormy night (cliche much) father and the militia found a wounded wood elf bearing an important message for a kingdom in the north.  He was traveling as fast as he could when he was ambushed by a magic beast in the woods outside of town. Father was late that night when he came barreling through the door carrying the wood elf like a baby in one arm. As he explained the situation mom was already busy treating him. Things seemed a little touch and go for a while but the managed to stabilize then work on healing him. Of course I helped too I made the runes to heat water and I changed his bandages.

When he woke up the a few days later I was again changing his bandages.  He quickly grabbed the knife I had used to cut the bandages with and slashed at my face. He got me…good I couldn’t help but scream but that only lasted an instant. My training took over and I backhanded the knife moving it away from my face and I hit him with a flat edged fist to the throat that made him drop the knife. Drawn by my scream mother rushed in to see the patient she had worked so hard to save choking with a crushed wind pipe.

Being so focused on him taking another shot at me I never turned around when mom came in which made her next action so unexpected. She shoved me out of the way hard not even glancing at me I went face down on the floor at this point father came in and saw mother leaning over the stranger healing his throat seeing the situation well in hand he noticed me lying on the floor when he came over and rolled me over. I heard his breath catch and his face go pale then he was yelling for my mother to get over here. As he waited for mother to respond I told him what happened.

Father instantly leapt up and pushed mother aside fearing the strange elf would hurt her he pinned the elf under his massive body and roared at mother to see to me. This was the first that mother had focused on me she too went pale and started to shake. It seemed I made a pretty gruesome picture

There are lots of blood vessels in the face so I am sure it looked pretty bad. Honestly it was far from the worst pain I had ever experienced. To them though what they say was there precious little boy a mere four years old with a blood covered face the thick red blood flowing from my right temple into my right eye across the bridge of my nose and down my left cheek. The bastard had got me good.

This tale has been unlawfully lifted from Royal Road. If you spot it on Amazon, please report it.

  Mother in her shaky voice spoke her healing spell then grabbed a towel to clean the blood but even with the blood gone I couldn't see anything on my right side the knife had probably cut through my pretty deep…that bastard really did get me good.

While mom held me and sobbed I could still see father his whole body shook with rage as he raised his right hand which glowed with a pale light ready to smash the elf’s head in. At least the elf wasn’t stupid he had already recovered his senses and remembered being attacked by the magic beast and clearly he had been healed so he put the pieces together.

“WAIT!” he cried “I am Lindis Allister cadet magi-knight of Elfhiem.”

That got fathers attention later I learned that the Allister family was the oldest known wood elf lineage and possessed great influence, lands, and gold.

He then began to apologize profusely for harming the son of the couple who had rescued him and explain his mission in carrying a reply from the nobility of Elfhiem to a letter sent by the principality of Wan Que.

“I swear on the father tree and the name Allister I will see your son has the care of the finest healers of Elfhiem and gold repayment besides and gold for you as well for my care and treatment. Please allow me to leave I must make all haste in my mission let me leave this in my place until I can return.”  

He reached into his satchel that sat on the stool next to his bed and produced a small dagger made of wood that curled around and formed the letter A in flowing script, the mark of the wood elf family Allister.

After that father released the light from his hand and let him go much to my dismay. The guy promised to pay up and gave us a wooden dagger and we were supposed to be fine with that?

Seeing the doubt on my face Lindis looked thoughtful then reaching for his belongings he went through the contents of his satchel he said

“I have precious little to repay you with now beside my oath but aside from the letter of Elfhiem and my sword you may take anything you wish take it all even and send me on my way wearing nothing but my sword if you wish.”

he laughed at that but I could only frown after all who had heard of an exhibitionist elf?  

As I looked through the contents he was right he was traveling light and fast. There wasn't much there just a small coin purse, travel papers, the wooden dagger, the letter, a spare bowstring for a bow he no longer had it must have broken in the attack. Then I saw something that got my attention paper good parchment paper a good quill pen and red ink? In the four years I had been in this world I had seen only charcoal writing sticks but no ink. He noticed my gaze and softly chuckled

“you have a good eye young master this vial and parchment are the most valuable things in my bag.”

he then got up and went over to the table on the other side of the room he set the parchment down and dipped the quill in the ink and then began to explain as he wrote.

“This is no ordinary ink it is thousand year old dragons blood a very precious thing.”

he looked over his shoulder to watch me as he finished writing.

“Do you know how to read boy?”

this teen calling someone boy was almost laughable but I just nodded my head

“good then watch this as the ink dries it disappears.’

And indeed it did there was no sign that the paper had ever been written on “then you simply apply soul energy or magic to it  and tada!” the ink blazed back to life glowing blood red it gave off an eerie light.

This way you can send secret messages. I had to admit that was pretty cool.

“Still that’s not all it does it also acts as a magic insulator strengthening the power of even simple runes while protecting the user from backlash.”

this really was precious in order to handle more power you need more runes but with this even only a few runes could be really powerful. I took the paper from him and applied my soul energy to it sure enough it became visible again but there was hardly any light just a soft glow. I was somewhat disappointed that it didn't blaze with light like when Lindis showed me. Lindis noticing my disappointment explained

“you’re using soul energy right? that’s why it seems duller magic is a much stronger energy source so it shines brighter, still to even make dragons blood visible with soul energy is very difficult you must be quite strong.”

I should explain here that while soul energy and magic are the same type of power how you use it is completely different with soul energy you pull it up through your body and the push it out it is very fast and requires no preparation.  Magic is different magic requires runes or some type of guide  that you pull it through before redirecting it but at no point do you ever bring it into your body it is slow but immensely powerful.

Being able to master one process is difficult and only elder elves can use both, Ow and me.

I reached for the magic then I PULLED with all my strength as I dragged the power through the words on the paper. The paper exploded with light like the noon day sun dyed a bloody red. Startled and blinded I let go of the magic and the light and words faded away. As I blinked my eyes a few times still seeing spots from the light I looked around. I saw mom vigorously rubbing her eyes and muttering curses that I shouldn’t have heard so I made sure to remember them for later. Father was stoic and mountainous as usual though the effect was somewhat spoiled by the massive grin plastered on his face and Lindis, Lindis was flat on his ass looking shocked beyond belief hahahahaha that look was priceless.

“Wait, what ….how to use both Ki and magic….”

his expression shifted from stupefied to serious

"boy how old are you?”

 “Four” was my only reply.

“Name, what is your name boy?”

“Oldor”

“Oldor… the lost language?” he whispered.

Mother nodded “I learned it at the Elfhiem it was said to be the name of the father of all magic.”

Heavy who puts that kind of pressure on their kid to live up to a name like that? But all Lindis did was nod then he grabbed his bag said a quick farewell and all but ran out the door.

(I will be using Ki instead of soul energy from now on.)

 You can imagine I was quite excited to try out my new toy so the next day so I woke up at first light and I drew a picture I had thought all last night about what to draw so I got right to it I drew a picture of a shield with the runes for strong and hard. Then I tried to cut it, I used the knife that had cut me so easily just a day ago. I stabbed I sliced I chopped and I got nothing. The knife that cut flesh so easy couldn't even pierce a piece of paper. It was then that I got my brilliant idea mother had shown her bow that had a series of runes carved into it. I took one of mother’s needles and proceeded to tattoo my chest over my heart with the same shield drawing as my picture. The ink faded as soon as I was done leaving only a red patchy spot where the needle marks were. I tried using my Ki and the tattoo appeared with a faint glow. I carefully took the knife and started to slice into my hand. Or I tried to the knife wouldn’t cut more than the first layer of skin like it was a hardened leather. I took a deep breath as I let go of my Ki and started pulling magic through the tattoo into my body. The tattoo blazed brighter and the knife just slid off my skin. It wasn’t even at the level of good leather anymore my skin was hard as steel.

“HELL YES!!!”

whoops that came out loud. I quickly grabbed my stuff and ran out of the house before mom inevitably came to see that that was all about.

  Just a hundred yards east of the house was a boulder about the same size as a car in what was an old dried up river bed this would be perfect for my next test. I gathered my Ki through the tattoo and watched the light flare up as I took my stance. I lashed out with all my might a powerful right straight, Ray would have been proud it was a good punch. It crashed into the rock and my whole arm started to shake like striking a rock with a sword it doesn't hurt but the vibrations make you lose feeling in your hands. Not what I was hoping for still the rock couldn't hurt my iron arm then I realized I still only had the strength of a four year old well I was training so maybe I had the strength of a grown man but it was still pretty pathetic so I decided to take a break from hitting the rock and draw another tattoo. Since I was still blind in my right eye I decided to put the next tattoo on my left forearm I made a spiral of runes running from the back of my hand down to my elbow runes for strength, force, power, crushing, and piercing. I gathered my magic and pulled it into myself as the tattoos burned with fierce light I could feel the power course though me as I took my stance once again. This time I just used a light jab instead of a heavy hit relying on the runes not my puny childish body to strike the blow.

 Since I was born into this new world it had been one new thing after the other I had seen elves and magic beasts but this took the cake. My arm was gone; I could only see up to my elbow as the rest of it had been buried into the massive boulder. I tried to twist my arm free, I needn’t have bothered the boulder had spider web cracks running over the entire surface of it and as I twisted my arm inside of it the entire boulder crumbled.

There was a certain shock to it I am not really sure how long I had stood there staring at the pieces dumbly. The next thing I knew I heard mother and father calling for me as I turned I saw them running toward me it would seem the previous days excitement still had them on high alert.

“Oldor what the hell. Are you ok? What happened? Was that an explosion?”

and mother began with a barrage of questions I wasn’t sure how to answer them. Father just seemed to stare at the shrapnel remains of the boulder. Huummm when I broke the boulder maybe it was louder than I thought?

So the story came out and I showed them the rune tattoos I even went and found another boulder and broke it to the sight of a four year old breaking a boulder with a single punch must be even more impressive than I thought hahahahaha. After that we went back to the house mother it seems had been preparing breakfast when she went looking for me so I had my breakfast while they went in their bedroom to talk. I didn’t have a particularly good feeling about this future conversation but last meal before execution right, at least breakfast was tasty.

 When they came out they both had somber expressions on their faces.

“Oldor sit down we need to talk.”

Those are not words anyone wants to hear.

“Oldor how do you know it is that you did?”

“I broke a really big boulder with one punch?”

“No Oldor what you did was something that at least to our knowledge has never been done before.”

No shit a world first huh that’s pretty cool.

“Oldor in a few months you will turn five years old if you stay here you would go to school until you turn ten then you will be apprenticed to either your father or I.”

I nodded I had heard Sin talk about this before. She would be apprenticed to her mother Sierra as a nurse which seemed like a good Idea to me after all in eight years she would transform into a sexy nurse.

“But Oldor that’s only if you stay here”

I cocked my head at that this wasn’t quite what I was expecting. “Oldor what your mother is saying is that we know you can do so much more…you are meant to be greater than village life.”

“Mother father I do love you both very much”

I was a little surprised that popped out I hadn’t meant for it to but I really did feel that way this had certainly been the most pleasant time of either of my lives.

“And I may very well be meant for more but I am quite happy here and even if I wasn’t there aren’t a lot of other options.”

“That is where you are wrong son you see it might actually be quite fortunate but the Allister family owes you one and they will pay back what they owe.”

I shook my head I wasn’t following this conversation kept taking turns I wasn’t expecting hell I am still waiting to get scolded for breaking a perfectly good boulder or something. Father saw my confusion and explained.

“The Allister’s are a rich and powerful family they have any number of ways of opening doors for a better future for you.”

Mother picked up where father left off. “Indeed Oldor when they learn about you they would be excited to have you.”

Mother and father just started running over each other at this point

“When they see how strong you are they may want to marry you into the family!”-father

“Or they may even adopt you.”-mother

“At the very least they would want you in their honor guard.”-father

“And through it all they can provide a better education for you than we ever could.”-mother

It seemed they were feeding off of each other’s enthusiasm building in excitement until it seemed that they would explode.

In all honesty I was very content to live out my days in this village I had never longed for some great adventure. Instead it was these peaceful days I craved that acted like a balm that would sooth my soul. That said they were so excited to see their son have such any opportunity at a better life I felt a sharp pain in my gut and a weight settled in on my shoulders. As they kept rambling on I sat there with a smile on my face nodding the whole time while my thoughts turned inward. What was this pain, this weight? For the first time in two lives I truly cared about people. They had expectations for what I could become and I didn’t want to disappoint even if it caused me personal pain. I made a silent oath to myself to take this opportunity they so badly wanted for me and somehow use it to make their lives better.

It was another two weeks before Lindis returned. Dante and Silla sent me outside to play and it was sometime before they called me back in.

It was then that Lindis explained what the plan they had agreed upon

“Oldor I have promised to take you with me to Elfhiem I will provide lodging and an allowance even your school fees all out of my own pocket if need be but I will but busy with my own studies as well as student missions. You will have to look after yourself I won’t be able to and I can’t promise anything from my family I speak only for what I can do myself.”

“Do you think you can handle that Oldor?”

“Yes!”

I said while nodding my head vigorously. I didn’t really blame Lindis for being unenthusiastic after all if you went you to a seventeen year old guy who suddenly had a four year old dumped on you that would really cramp your style. Also I am an admittedly creepy little kid after all I have pasty white skin long straight black hair one red eye and a horrible looking scar on my face. Now add on the fact that I don’t act like a child at all I use bad language make the occasional death threat and blow up massive boulders with a single punch; Yeah whole lot to love here.

Lindis spent the night with us and I got my things together not that it was all that much we then spent the night and left out the next morning.

As we headed over the hill and I was just about to lose sight of mother and father I could still hear them yelling their goodbyes. I won’t lie the whole four years seemed like a peaceful dream one I feared I would never have again. Then we crested the hill and I set my face forward I did feel a certain anxiety and excitement battling in the pit of my stomach; my excitement won now onwards to Elfhiem.