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It had been 6 years since I was reborn and I had learned a lot about the world in the time since I got the language down. In my last life, I didn’t think I could become bilingual, but luckily a baby's mind really is magical. Thanks to my mother reading through her book collection to me every day, I was able to speak and write almost instantly. The village's name was "Glorywood Heights". Once I was able to talk to my neighbors myself I quickly figured out why all of the villagers seemed to have so much time on their hands. This valley was the place where adventures from all over the world would go to retire. Post game zones are nice. Its founding was a famous story in one of my mother's books.

It was written that a few hundred years before, Glorywood Heights was started by a highly skilled disgruntled mercenary company that was trying to avoid being forcefully conscripted into a war by a tyrannical king. They slipped away in the dead of night and once they crossed the border the king issued a bounty for each of their heads. A manhunt ensued that spanned across half of the southern continent. A local lord gained news of their whereabouts and sent a small army after them. With no where else to go, the group eventually fled into the monster infested mountains until they found a place to make their last stand. The army caught up to them, but defenses had already been raised at the choke of a string of valleys. The situation turned into a siege but due to the harshness of the terrain and the giant beasts that roamed the region and the army was eventually repelled.

Once the mercenary band was safe they came to realize that the place they were at was practically paradise for people like adventurers that could easily deal with the threats that lurked the area; and chose to settle down. After word got out about a group practically besting a nation, others started looking to join them. Refugees from their original nation began to seek their protection, so the heads of the group officially named their village and decided to make a government they could believe in, unlike the one they had just fled from; one based on skill and merit.

Each citizen's rights were directly tied to the adventurer rank they had achieved out in the world. Nearly anyone who made it to the entrance of the valley would be accepted, but if you had never worked for a nation's guild in your life then you could expect to essentially be a slave. Mid ranks could reasonably live out a humble quiet life, while positions in government could only be held by those of the highest ranks. In time the village had begun to draw in all sorts of people. Adventurers who had already made their fortunes, would be disciples, escaped convicts, and craftsmen hoping to work for some of the most powerful warriors in the land all started to migrate up the mountain pass. Officially the area was on dwarven territory but the local clan paid little mind to the monster slayers that had taken up residence on their mountain and quietly left them to their own devices; effectively leaving Glorywood to operate as its own autonomous region for centuries.

There were a few reasons why all of this was important to me. The first was that it made me realize why the goddess had chosen to reincarnate me here. It was, by all measures, the safest place in the world. Crime and monster attacks were incredibly rare because it was protected by the most competent scouts and fighters money could buy. Also, in over 200 years they had never participated in a war, successfully removing my most common cause of death. The chances for someone like me, who seemed to walk straight to the grave every chance they got, just dying were beyond low.

The second reason was my father, Kenelm Imminas, the man in the field. He was once a part of a nation's premiere adventurer group as their front line man-at-arms. He was also the kind of guy people might have described as "the enemy of all women" during his hay days. Although he has calmed down in his waning years, if you told me he had 50 illegitimate children running around I wouldn't be that surprised. At the age of 30, his group broke apart when he accidentally impregnated two of its members. Luckily for the three of them, they had more than enough money to live on comfortably for the rest of their lives, so they decided to get married and go back to Kenelm’s home village of Glorywood. With nothing better to do, he spent his days building his harem, raising his family, and working as a member of the village's council; the highest position someone could hold under the mayor. He was rich, hard-working, handsome, and politically powerful. The list of reasons for me to hate him was endless, but in the end, what that meant was I belonged to a highly influential family with 6 mothers and a father. It was a life that left little room for want, especially parental attention.

"SWING"

I swung my stick, mustering the loudest yell I could.

“YEART”

"SWING"

I swung again.

“Ye...”

"SWING"

My back fell onto the fresh spring grass, my lungs felt like they were about to collapse. Some might say forcing a 6 year old to train until burnout is cruel and unusal; but as someone who had watched themselves die in battle so many times, and whose very existence was practically on the line and, I wasn't going to be the one to complain.

"N… No more… please…. God…"

I gasped for air, each of my words punctuated by a deep painful breath. My 9 year old big sister Avice twitched her wolf ears while leaning against her massive training sword. Her eye’s pierced me with shame as she looked down on me along with our instructor, Ken Imminas, our father. They both gave a sigh as they watched me try to keep the soul from leaving my body.

"I guess that's it for today's training Dad. Should I carry him back to the house?"

The disappointment in his eyes rivaled that of my family from my last life when they egged me on to get a job.

"I still expect you two to get in two hours of running before nightfall. When he's back on his feet get him around the valley a few times."

On a good day in perfect condition, I could get about halfway around the valley before having to call it quits.

"You're… a demon…"

She handed her sword over to our father and tossed me onto her back. I had no strength or will to resist.

"And don't let him sneak off on you. I saw the boy nose deep in a rouge training for dummies book the other day."

I was hiding in a closest. How the fuck does he always know?

I could feel the girl's tail wag back and forth as she held her nose high in pride.

"I seriously doubt this one could ever get away from me."

They gave each other a quick wave before my courier jumped over a bush into the forest. Ever since the first day I met my half-sister Avice Imminas in the mansion, she had always stayed with me. My working theory was that my father gave her the instruction to "always look out for him from now on" and she took it a little too literally; going so far as to sneak into my room almost every night to sleep next to me. One of the reasons I wanted to start my training as early as possible was to get strong enough to graduate from being strangled as her hug pillow. My most recent plan was to pick up stealth magic to slip away, but I was nowhere near close to putting that into practice.

Obviously, the first thing I did after learning to read, was to go find a beginner's guide to magic, but it wasn't nearly as easy as I had hoped. Supposedly mana is controlled by a part of the brain that develops all the way into adulthood, so even if I followed the written instructions to the letter, not much would happen. I had only recently started getting basic spells to manifest after years of trying. The abilities rouges used were mostly just an extrapolation of basic wind magic. I had managed to cast light breezes a few times, so I decided to put my focus into that school. Creating vacuums to block sound was still a long ways off, but doing things like making a cushion of air under my foot to soften my steps felt attainable.

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It didn't take long for us to get back to the mansion, both my mind and body were taxed to their limit so it felt almost instant. Avice's speed only increased with every year, so I could never quite get used to the way she would dash through the forest, nearly running into tree branches before ducking out of the way at the last second.

Both of our mothers, Catrina and Farrien, were outside hanging laundry as she carried me into the kitchen. The two were close friends that you could often find doing chores together. Avice and her mom were both technically slaves but I never once saw my father treat them as anything but family, going so far as to let them take his last name. I had finally had enough time to catch my breath

"Surely you aren't going to make me run later right?"

Avice clicked her tongue and sighed. She addressed me while shaking her head in disappointment.

"You're never going to make it if you don't start taking this seriously."

"Make what?"

She dropped me onto the floor without a care in order to start hunting for food in the refrigerator. This world did have some modern conveniences, but technology hadn't yet passed what could be done with basic spell casting. Somehow, watermills and windmills were capable of generating mana that would then be distributed through the valley using power lines.

"At the rate you’re going? Make it halfway down the mountain. By the time I was your age I was doing full laps around the valley every day for fun."

She came out of the fridge chewing a hunk of some sort of raw meat and tossed me an apple-looking fruit. That was all the food I was going to get until dinner.

"There is no world you can compare humans and beastmen in terms of physical development… You know, you really should cook that meat. Do you even know what it is?"

She shrugged at the question and ripped off a piece with her mouth. Bits of food sprayed as she talked.

"What are you going to do if you're too weak for us to leave at the same time? I'm not going to able to wait around on you forever."

Besides monster parts, the main export of our village was fresh well trained adventurer parties. Towns and cities in the Southern continent would pay stipends to keep a party stationed locally. Since a person's rights and privileges were directly tied to their adventurer rank it was common practice to have the kids in Glorywood party up after coming of age in order for them to earn their place. Very few chose to stay since the well of respect and prestige that a child would leech off their parents while growing up, would eventually run dry.

I couldn’t help but keep analyzing the hunk of bone and flesh in Avice’s hand.

"Actually, isn’t that the basilisk steak from last week? If it is, I'm pretty sure you have to prep it in some way since it's literally poisonous. Also, stop talking and eating at the same time, it's disgusting."

She glared at me angrily, still munching away on the cold lump of meat. I could see purple blood drip off the bone she was using as a handle.

"Hey, stop trying to change the subject! This is about you, okay?"

She slammed the meat onto the wooden counter, spraying me and my surroundings with juices. I immediately grabbed a dry cloth from a nearby bin and wiped away as much of it off as I could. Not wanting to leave a mess behind I begrudgingly went to work heating up water with magic and getting more clean cloths.

"Look, we've still got at least 8 years before we even have to start thinking about leaving… also it's not like we have to go together, we ARE 3 years apart after all."

You would think our ages were flipped from this picture though.

I noticed that each droplet I wiped up left an indent burned away in the wood. Thinking about what that would do to my insides made me shiver and look up at my sister in worry. Paying me no mind, she jumped up onto the counter to sit on it, gracefully crossing her legs in the same motion. She looked down at me with an annoyed scowl. This time she finished chewing and gulped down her food before responding.

"I'm worried about you. The only time you are ever diligent is with shit like this."

She motioned at the cleaning supplies I had amased.

"Watch your mouth"

"Sorry…"

Her ears folded forward. I couldn't help but sigh.

It's a good thing she's cute…

Behind us, I heard the door open. Glancing back I saw a girl and a boy around my age deep in a heated conversation as they entered the kitchen. Their names were Salabeth and Randir Imminas. I was told they were my niece and nephew. Both of them had been dropped off in the village by some of my much older siblings who still weren’t ready to settle down. Despite each of them having different parents an onlooker could easily mistake the pair as twins. They both had the same golden brown hair and slightly tipped ears revealing the bit of high elf blood in their veins. Even their faces were similar despite only sharing a single grandparent, my father.

How can one man's seed be so strong?

This was good timing for me though.

"Hey Sally, could you help me out here?"

I had already finished mopping the floor and had moved onto cleaning the whole countertop for good measure. The girl’s face brightened up upon seeing the two of us.

"Onii-chan?! I’ll help, I’ll help!"

There are some mistakes I will never apologize for.

She was the kind of girl you couldn’t help but just want to sit and listen to for hours.

"How was your first day of training?"

Seeing what I was doing the girl, Sally grabbed a cloth and moved to get it wet. Before she could get it in the bucket, Randir grabbed her wrist and confronted me.

"Why don't you mine your own bussing."

"Do you mean 'mind your own business'?"

"Yeah, that! You've already done too much damage to her already, it's your fault Sally wont stop arguing about becoming a witch."

This little half-elf girl and I were practically raised together since we were born less than a year apart. I didn't know if it was just her magical-lineage or because she was simply a genius, but whenever I read Sally books about magic she could immediately put the written concepts into practice. She was able to channel mana after only hearing how to do it once when she was 2 years old and she was able to cast basic healing magic at 3. Regrettably for the two of us, our family's profession was simply swinging around giant swords. Our father forbade us from finding a teacher from our neighbors so there was no one around to actually show us how to be a caster. I ended up nudging her in the direction of magic in order to use her as an example. Unfortunately, she was always capped by my ability to understand and describe the things I read about and I was capped by not having working examples in front of me. Progress was slow.

"But RANDY it's so boring… all we did was run…"

"It all starts with running around the fields to build up stamina, no rain no grain."

I'm not convinced that last part was what he meant to say.

"It just doesn't make sense. Why do I need to work so hard when I could just go find a sorcery instructor in the valley?"

"That's just not what we do in our family, also Grandpa said so okay?"

She wrinkled her nose in annoyance and pointed at me.

"He lets Manuel buy all of those books and do other stuff."

"That's different! He’s the only once that can read."

This girl had really started getting into her snarky phase recently. I felt bad for Randy who had been put in charge of her training that I unintentionally sabotaged. I decided to help him out a bit and interject.

"Hey Sally, the goal at the end of the day is to be an adventurer right?"

She looked over and slowly nodded.

"You're going to have to spend almost all of your time walking or running. There will be days where that’s all you’re going to do. The last thing you want to be is the one your party that everyone has to wait on."

Her face turned into genuine confusion.

"Aren't you just going to carry me everywhere?"

"No one would do that!"

Avice looked especially annoyed by that comment.