I nervously paced up and down the cold hall, running my hands through my mess of black hair. My head snapped up at the sound of a door opening, but it was just a maid who scurried off to refresh a bucket of hot water.
“Pilus. Relax,” Atlessoa said from the floor where she sat, leaning against the wall.
“I should be in there,” I muttered again.
“The best priestesses in the capital are with her, nevermind the fact that Sera is one herself,” Nodel said. “You would just be in the way.”
“Besides, Sera told you to stay out. She didn’t want you to see her… like that,” Atlessoa added.
I frowned. It was not just my Earth sensibilities that were in conflict with this, because in the Kingdom, most births were at home and the father was on hand.
Being the king and queen of the Kingdom, though, we had a lot of additional resources. With a full staff and a team of healers, my presence was unnecessary, and possibly even a distraction. Of course, I was an extremely capable healer myself, though I still kept that secret pretty close to the vest.
Ultimately, it came down to the fact that my wife was still rather shy. Given that there was no question that all her needs would be met even if I was outside of the delivery room, Seranedra had asked me to wait until she was healed and cleaned up before seeing her.
I was about to grumble my complaints again, but then a newborn’s cry rang out from the room.
The world seemed to dim around me as my focus became entirely occupied by the sound of the shrill new voice coming from within the room. I barely noticed the maids leaving the room with a bundle of dirty linens and buckets of used water.
“Pilus. Pilus,” Nodel said, shaking me from my reverie. I looked up and saw a priestess smiling at me from the doorway. She motioned at us to enter, and I found my feet almost too clunky to move.
Atlessoa gave me a gentle shove, and the two women who were practically family managed to get me navigated through the door as my brain tried to catch up with the present moment.
In the bed, already cleaned and healed but still glowing from the birth, sat my beautiful wife with a small bundle of cloth in her arms.
“Come meet our son,” Seranedra said to me with a big smile.
A son. I walked over to her side in a daze, sitting on the side of the bed and looking down at the fussing baby in her arms. A small, wrinkled face looked up at me.
I heard Nodel and Atlessoa congratulating Seranedra and me, but all my attention was captured by the eyes of my boy.
“Hello, Siral,” I said to the infant, a smile breaking out on my face as happy tears welled up in my eyes. “Welcome to the world.”
* * *
The capital was full of celebration at the announcement of the birth of Prince Siral Horuth, but I left all of that in the hands of others. My focus was entirely on my family, tucked away in the palace, and learning first hand about fatherhood.
Not that there was much I could do at this point. My son Siral needed little else aside from sleep and feeding, which I could not directly provide. I would normally have provided for Seranedra’s needs, instead, so she could focus on keeping our son happy, but with the palace staff all of our needs were met.
Siral was named after Seranedra’s grandfather who had sadly passed away during the pregnancy, after helping us make reforms in the Church and figuring out the best way to further unify and improve the Kingdom. Despite having access to any healing he would need, old age ultimately made itself known, but we had the chance to tell him that we would name our first son after him just before he passed.
There was no way of knowing if our first child would be a son or a daughter. I could probably have used 3-point magic to figure it out, but had decided against it. We were both glad we were able to fulfill our last promise to the man so soon. Naturally, we would also have been thrilled to have a daughter, and I hoped that we would get to have both in the years to come.
I was walking around the room in slow circles while holding Siral as Seranedra took a nap. He was still awake, for the moment, and I lowered my voice to the barest whisper so as to not wake my wife while I addressed our son.
“Just so you know,” I said softly, in English. “If you’re reincarnated from another world, you can tell me. I was too.”
Staring down at my son’s face, I tried to make out any change in expression, but did not notice anything unusual.
Even if he was, he might not speak English. He could be from elsewhere on Earth, or from another world altogether. In time, he would learn the local language, and I would keep asking him until he was about three and a half or four, which was when things really clicked into place for me in my second life.
Truthfully, I hoped he was not, because I had guilt about stealing my true childhood from my own parents in this life. I had no idea what kind of relationship I could have with my son if I found out that he was actually another middle aged man living a second life. I had no idea if there was even any chance of it, since I did not really understand why I was reincarnated in this world.
All I knew was that if he was, I wanted us to be able to work together, and not to create any unnecessary distance or schism between us because he felt the need to hide it from me.
I also did not want to confuse the poor boy if this was his first life, though, so once I had confirmed he was not a reincarnator, I would leave that behind and focus instead of raising him to the best of my ability. With the friends and family I had, he had a massive extended support system which would help him learn and master whatever he wanted.
When it came to my direct family, they were thrilled to welcome the new boy to the world.
“He’s gorgeous,” Sharma murmured as she cradled Siral the next day.
“He really is. Congratulations, Pilus,” Horg said, clapping me on the shoulder.
Stolen story; please report.
“Thanks,” I said, beaming. I turned to my siblings. “What do you think?”
“Uh,” Varus said, scrunching up his face in thought. “How long before he can spar?”
I chuckled. “Probably not until you’re already an apprentice, and even then he won’t be much of a sparring partner for you. Sorry, Varus.”
“Do you think he’ll have a talent for magic?” Mari asked, holding her light enchantment nervously. “I hope he does.”
The light enchantment was something I had given both Mari and Varus to help them use their MP while they were young to encourage it to develop, safely, as they grew. Varus often forgot to use his, but Mari had been incredibly consistent with it, tracking her magic through her bracelet, the magic meter I developed for the Kingdom, and reliably dumping her MP into the magic tool. When she leveled up, she had been quick to notice that each use required less of her total MP, which only encouraged her to practice.
“Yes, he’ll probably have some talent for magic, but it’ll be up to him if he wants to learn it,” I answered. “And if he does, he’ll have a lot of great teachers.”
“Will I be able to help?”
“Sure, if you work hard at your apprenticeship.”
Mari planned to take an apprenticeship with the Church, of her own volition, in order to learn more about healing magic. She was already getting private tutoring from Nodel in theoretical 4-point magic and from Atlessoa in theoretical 5-point magic, when they had time to spare with my sister, who they had both more or less adopted as a little sister of their own as well. When Mari decided she wanted to be a healer, Sera had wanted to teach her 6-point magic, but she was worried about how well she would be able to teach. Frankly, learning formally at the Church provided better resources, so Sera instead connected her with the best priest she knew in the capital and planned to just help her study what she would be taught by the Church.
Sharma and I helped, too. I mostly taught her math and tried to help both her and Varus train the most efficient ways possible without putting them at risk. Secrets from Earth I largely kept to myself, and was still deciding what I wanted to share once they were old enough to actually start trying things out.
I really enjoyed spending time with my siblings and helping them both improve in whatever ways they desired. Some of my time would be occupied by Siral moving forward, but it would be months before he could even roll over, and years before he could actually learn about stuff like swordplay and magic. By the time Siral was really able to start learning stuff, Mari would be close to graduating from her apprenticeship and Varus would be entering his own.
Whatever Siral grew up wanting to do, he would have plenty of help getting there. That was obvious for a prince, but in this case, it was more about the incredible network of people in our lives that truly cared for him.
The early days of fatherhood blended together a bit, especially once some sleep deprivation started to build up as Siral turned out to be a bit of a fussy sleeper. We could have left him to a staff of maids, but both Seranedra and I wanted to be the ones to care for him. Fortunately, things in the Kingdom were good, so I was able to leave a lot of the goings-on to my incredible staff of advisors and take naps as needed, but it did not quite compare to getting a solid full night’s sleep.
While each day felt long, they also seemed to pass quickly. In no time at all, he was holding his own head up. He began to smile at us. When he first rolled over on his own, I knew it would only be a matter of time before he would be crawling, then walking, and then talking.
At no point did Siral give me any indication of being reincarnated. Everything seemed to be progressing normally for the boy, happening at the usual time for a child and with no huge surprises. The only surprise to me was how quickly the winter passed, and after holing up in the palace with my family for the entire season, I realized it was time to turn my focus back out for a while and catch up on the other important happenings in the Kingdom and my life.
* * *
“There you are,” Rena said when I finally made it to the Tamers Guild farm northeast of the capital. I was in my illusory disguise of Bil the mage, but Rena was familiar with it. “I was beginning to think I’d need to hunt you down in the palace.”
“Sorry. Lost track of time with the baby.”
“How is he?”
“Amazing,” I said, grinning wide. “He’ll be crawling in no time.”
Rena smiled warmly back at me. “Glad to hear it. You want to bring him a barg puppy? We just had a litter.”
“...Maybe. Let me ask Sera first.” I looked around, spotting the orchard, and motioned Rena to follow.
The orchard was largely comprised of the sweet Malinae-type fruit which the Guild used the juice of to make healing draughts. It was spring, and they were already beginning to bloom. I could already smell the delightful scent of their pollen on the air, and soon it would be an intense perfume that would cover the farm until the flowers gave way to fruitset.
Despite knowing how to grow them quickly by using a special purple concoction I brewed, the trees were still fairly small. We were letting them grow closer to a normal rate, since there were more eyes on this farm than the one way out in Freehold. I had given them one boost of magical fertilizer near the start, just to get them to the point where they would produce fruit and avoid unnecessary losses, but they would grow to full maturity over time more naturally.
Tucked away just beyond the main orchard was a secondary orchard, one that was a more closely guarded secret between myself and Rena and a few other trusted Guild members.
I looked over the small group of ten skillfruit trees, which we had finally started to grow last summer. As with the rest of the orchard, we did not push these all the way to full maturity right away. I was missing having a source of skillfruit to advance my abilities, as I had been without for a couple of years now. The only skill growth I had seen was the points I had earned for reaching Level 48, thanks in part to the experience I had gained as a new father, which I largely put into 3-point magic to help it catch up to my other skills, with a few into Taming.
Pilus Horgson (Lv 48)
HP: 373/373
MP: 529/529
Status: Absorption (major), Protection (major)
EXP: 1056/4800
Skills: 3-Point Magic(++), 4-Point Magic(++), 5-Point Magic(++), 6-Point Magic(++), 8-Point Magic(++), Acrobatics(++), Brewing(++), Butchery(+), Cooking(+), Detect(++), Enchanting(++), Foraging(+), Horticulture(+), Inkmaking(+), Inventory(++), Knotting(+), Leatherworking(+), Literacy(++), Needlework(+), Negotiation(+), One-Armed(++), Ranged(++), Smithing(+), Stealth(+), Strength(++), Taming(++), Tanning(+), Two-Armed(++), Unarmed(+), Woodworking(+)
Familiars: Alcewing (Lv 3), Frosted Direfox (Lv 10), Mystic Tarand (Lv 7)
My level was quite respectable, but barely represented my true strength, which had been hugely inflated due to years of consuming countless skillfruit in Freehold. I had lost track of exactly how many levels worth of skill advancement I had gained, but when I sat down upon reaching Level 48 to calculate what my true strength was like, I found that it was closer to Level 75. Since that was the strongest level I had ever actually seen in this world, I was not in a huge rush to gain more power, but I was definitely not opposed to it.
The main problem with growing more skillfruit was that I had a very limited amount of red dungeon core crystal left to make the purple fertilizer potion with. Skillfruit trees would completely fail to produce fruit without it, but we had hoped last year to tease out enough vegetative growth by feeding it the minimum amount of fertilizer over the first year such that we could use the bulk of the potion to get a proper harvest of fruit in one season this year.
“I think we should push for a harvest this year,” I said, studying the trees. “I’ll get you the fertilizer. Can I leave it to you?”
“Yup,” Rena said. “I’m here often enough that I can feed the trees as needed.”
“Great. Any other issues so far, Guild Master?”
“Nope, Your Majesty.” Rena gave me a cheeky grin. “Now get off my farm and get back to your family. And let me know if you want a puppy. I’ve got a lot of interested tamers already.”
I chuckled and waved as I walked away, leaving my friend to her work.