I was back home by the evening. Mom was cooking something. Before picking me up she used to be out almost all day, hanging out with friends, hunting, having fun. These days, she hardly ever went out of the house though. Sometimes, I had a feeling she might have been a bit too dedicated.

“So, how was the walk?” Mom said the moment I entered the room. She didn’t even have to look at me to realize, it was me.

“It was fine,” I said, hiding the book behind my back, expertly. Since she wasn’t looking, I slowly made my way to our room…

“Really?” Her voice had an odd mix of curiosity.

‘She knows!’ Gulping I stopped in my tracks. “Well, might have taken a little detour and stuff.” I chuckled.

“Who did you meet?” She lifted down an iron pot, set it down on the table and went back to get some plates and bowls and other stuff.

“Guy named James.”

“Oh, that imbecile.”

“Says, I have no mana or whatever that was.”

“You don’t seem to be that surprised.”

I shrugged. “Priest said the same.”

“Oh yeah.” She poured in some soup. Lately, all she made was soup. I was starting to think maybe Mom didn’t know how to cook other stuff? I didn’t have the guts to actually say it out loud though. “You didn’t eat anything, right?”

“Den fed me a weird red fruit, it was nice.” Looked like an apple but tasted like peach. It was pretty good. Actually, it was probably just a nectarine.

“Huh. You’re still hungry though, right?”

“Yes.”

Smiling, she served me some food.

“What else did you do?” She seemed a bit too curious about the whole thing. Then again, she always stayed indoors and my little adventure was probably piquing her interest.

“James can’t smile.”

You might be reading a pirated copy. Look for the official release to support the author.

“Women still flock around that thing though,” She chuckled. “Be sure to not end up like that.”

I smiled, pretending to be ignorant of what she just said. I was still a child for crying out loud. Yet, people just treated me like I was not. And there was a reason for that.

Apparently, southerners believed in reincarnation and assumed all mature kids are just kids with some past memories that helps them navigate the world. It was common knowledge and Den was hesitant to share it with me. But he still did. At least on the premise of ‘if’ I was one. But then he concluded I wasn’t, since the core differential between a reincarnated and a new human/elf was the fact that reincarnated people had way, way more potential than the new ones. And I was worse than even the typical average people of this world, so yeah.

That was kind of why people didn’t find mature children weird here. Lucky me, I guess. Unlike in the stories though, I kept nearly all of my previous life’s memories. Not just select few like language and swordsmanship stuff. Yes, the most common stuff was apparently ability related, not memory. So, reincarnated people didn’t know they were reborn and instead just considered themselves talented. This often led to oblivious pride, hence Den told me to never take my language skills for granted and be conceited about it.

“Oh, and I got this,” I finally showed the book.

Mom let out a knowing smile. “You know, you look real cute when you try hiding things.”

I let out a strained laugh, trying to hide the awkward realization that yep, this woman knew virtually everything from the start. “Some words are hard to read, can you help me?”

“Sure!”

***

Mom laid back against the wall, with a pillow behind her and the bed beneath us. She sat me down on her lap and put the book in front of me. I could probably read the whole thing on my own if I wanted to but I let her read it out to me. I kind of wanted to spend some time with her.

Lately with how I’ve been busy with practice and other stuff, Mom was kind of getting a little lonely… or so was my excuse. But it was me who got lonely. I had a feeling Den would eventually propose and they’d get married. She would have another kid and stuff. But before all that, I wanted to monopolize her. I wanted to be spoiled rotten.

“Well, you sure love this story.”

I cackled, and yeah- we had fun.

It was a literal four-hour story but the gist of all it follows-

‘This world existed for longer than ten thousand years but no one knows what happened before. Some theories have been proposed about how there were multiple worlds. A different world for elves, humans, demons and beastfolk which included merfolk. But strangely no one really knows if that is true or not. No religion has attempted to answer either. We also don’t know why this world has all of these mysterious races of people.

Our story starts ten thousand years ago, when a single God, the Dragon God Askavan (whom the church is named after) isolated the demons in the continent of Demonica and forged the rest of the lands into two continents. One- the west. And two- the south. Demons had long terrorized mortals; Westerners and Southerners alike were in constant battle with the demons. Askavan stopped this and he claimed to provide guidance to mortals and ended all conflict. Or so the church teachings went. But his guidance was basically just soft guidelines to live by, and the church had no real following or influence.’