Chapter Text
My name is Elian. That name was written on a note left with my sister and me when we were abandoned here, in the village of Rosemary.
But regardless of what this ten-year-old redhead might look like on the outside, my story started long before any of this.
Once upon a time, I was an ordinary college student, and I died in the most unremarkable way imaginable: under the wheels of a truck. After that came rebirth. Emperor, God, I'd had many names, and the titanic power resonating in the hearts of those around me made even more of an impression than any title. Back then, destined by blood to become the greatest of mortals, I rejected that fate and became something far more elevated. But...
That's not quite my story anymore. Here and now, I am Elian, a soul separated from that deity and sent into a new world to experience it, serving also as a backup plan in case that other me manages to die, stupidly or otherwise. In essence, we were one, yet each of us was complete and independent. Meaning I could live in this world mostly however I pleased, though it was preferable, both for my own sake and for what you might call my "core self," that once I'd gathered enough power and knowledge, I'd rekindle the barely-alive link between us and exchange what we'd each found.
But that wasn't my primary concern right now. Because I live in a small village, I've only heard about local magic secondhand, and through my prior knowledge and a whole lot of trial and error, I've confirmed exactly two things: I have a source of it, and it's still growing. Living now in the body of someone who is decidedly not the main character of some goddamn manga, something my core self arranged before I was even born here, I approached my own development with considerably more ease and calm. I'd already run that survival gauntlet in my previous life. So why push myself to the breaking point again?
I was sitting in the village library with a book, lost in philosophical thought. And I would have stayed that way if the nearby door hadn't suddenly swung open.
"Lian! Are you in here?!" A girl's voice yanked me out of my thoughts, casually butchering my perfectly good name, as always. She was ten years old, with red hair like mine, though unlike my standard shirt and trousers, she wore a sweet little dress covered in daisies.
"Erza, keep it down in the library!" came the stern voice of the librarian from the entrance.
I sighed with a warm smile, stood up, and went to meet them.
"Oh, come on, Aunt Azalea," I said. "It's just the three of us in here most of the time anyway. You weren't reading, and Erza would have pulled me away regardless."
"Aunt?" The woman, somewhere in her early fifties, repeated the word and flushed slightly, then turned to address the other party. "Oh, fine. Only because you have such a sweet brother, I'll let it go this time, Erza. But quieter next time!"
"Of course, Aunt Azalea," the girl said obediently, and the two of us stepped out into the street.
The village of Rosemary was small but spread out, a clean, tucked-away corner of nature at the edge of civilization, not far from the sea, in the south of the country of Fiore. The village was named for the rosemary shrub, though all manner of plants grew here, flowers especially. And some of the locals had a fondness for naming their children after various plants as well.
"I don't know why she's still upset..." Erza sighed once we'd put some distance between us and the library. "It's been a whole month. And I've been calling the old librarian 'Aunt,' just like you said."
"Not a whole lot happens around here, so things stick. That's why she still remembers you reading the forbidden stuff," I said with a smirk, letting the memory surface.
"Lian...!" she hissed and immediately started looking around in both directions. Satisfied that nobody was nearby, she continued, "You said you weren't going to bring that up. What if someone in the village finds out?"
"And you told Azalea you'd never so much as touch those books again. So what's with you and smutty romance novels, anyway?" At that, Erza's face turned a spectacular shade of red, and she started scanning the surroundings all over again, which only made my grin wider. "Relax, nobody's listening. I already checked."
And I had, in fact, checked. Local magic was out of my reach, but from my past life I'd brought something over, an ability that was more promising in the long run than immediately useful. Namely: the Awakened Soul. Every living creature has what I'd come to call a soul. It consists of an "aura" that wraps around the being like a second skin, along with two cores within: an outer core, which holds the bulk of the soul's energy, and an inner core, where that energy is generated, the very center of a living being. After years of existence, I'd never encountered another creature with an Awakened Soul, and I hadn't managed to awaken it in anyone else either. But the ability gave me a significant number of advantages, all of them running on soul energy.
One of them was Sphere Vision, extending several meters in every direction.
"I wish I had abilities like that..." Erza sighed again.
"So you could read those books without even being in the library, and nobody could ever suspect a thing?" I asked, purely rhetorically, still in high spirits.
At that, the girl stopped dead and looked at me, standing equally still, in a whole new way. A flicker of genuine understanding crossed her face, maybe even something approaching reverence.
"I won't tell anyone," she said with a solemn nod and patted me on the shoulder.
"Right then... So where were we going?"
"Old man Cannabis's farm. The beans dried out. It's our shift next; Simon's already started."
I gave a knowing nod and fell into step beside her.
Soon, under the shade of a barn, we found a dark-haired boy vigorously beating a sack with a stick. Standing near him was a girl, also dark-haired, who had apparently just arrived.
"Hey, Kagura," I greeted Simon's younger sister. I'd already seen Simon today. I went inside, grabbed a sack of my own, filled it with bean pods, moved to where I wouldn't accidentally hit anyone, dropped into a low stance, and went to work beating the thing mercilessly. The point was to split the pods open so the beans would fall out and could be collected, which Kagura was already doing off to the side, and Erza now joined her.
Rosemary didn't have a large population. Erza and I, despite having been left here like a pair of strays, had been raised as their own grandchildren by an elderly couple, Marigold and Hawthorn. But everyone in the village had their part to play.
I, once the strongest being in the world, the greatest geneticist, and a whole list of other things, hadn't lost a single ounce of dignity doing honest work alongside everyone else. It didn't feel like a humiliation. The people here treated us with genuine warmth, despite what were essentially medieval conditions, with some very notable exceptions. The whole village gave off a sense of quiet, contented happiness. So why not add to that in kind?
A few hours passed, filled with work and easy conversation among our small group, and by the time evening arrived, we went our separate ways home.
Days like this had been the norm for a while now, as we simply lived in this warm, unhurried place. Simon and Kagura, living in a different house, were on good terms with Erza and me. Meaning the occasional joint fishing trip or camping excursion in the woods, plus plenty of shared work around the village. Whether that counted as friendship, I honestly wasn't sure. In my past life, I'd rarely spent time with people my own age, since most of my circle had been considerably older, both biologically and mentally. But when I'd half-absently said as much out loud, Erza had overheard and declared, with full authority, that yes, that was absolutely what friendship was.
With Erza herself, things were different. Warmer than anything else. Across what were essentially three lifetimes, this was the first time I'd ever had a little sister. My rather dark heart simply could not stop generating an embarrassing volume of fond feelings in her direction, which expressed itself in occasionally excessive spoiling of this girl who, to my great relief, was growing up to be anything but a brat. What puberty would have to say about that remained to be seen, but for now Erza was simply a little angel. A saintly one who occasionally teased me right back, but still.
And so our quiet life continued. Right up until the day I went to fetch water from beyond the village.
Sniff. Sniff.
"Smoke?" I said, puzzled, setting both buckets down on the path. "Is the forest on fire?"
I was deep among densely growing trees, on the way to the well, with no line of sight past the treeline.
Over a lifetime as a god, not as long as you might think, I'd picked up a broad range of skills. A fair number of them could be pulled off, however imperfectly, using soul energy.
Among them was medicine, in all its variety. I channeled soul energy into my nose, sharpening my sense of smell to a far keener edge. And then my stomach dropped as the realization crystallized: what was burning wasn't the wet wood of a forest. It was resin from torches and the village's own homes. And the fire was massive.
I kicked the buckets into the bushes, out of the way and out of sight, and immediately turned and sprinted toward Rosemary.
Soul energy flooded through my body, and my speed spiked. The body of a ten-year-old boy was suddenly outputting the strength of a very fit grown man. Trees blurred on either side, but soul energy routed through my eyes and brain pushed my reaction time in the opposite direction, and the world snapped into sharper focus.
By the time I crested the hill leading down to the village, any last doubt was gone. This was no ordinary fire.
Through the smell of saltwater and char, I could clearly pick out dozens of human scent signatures. And now, seeing it with my own eyes: burning houses, and people chasing villagers down. The attackers wore open balaclavas with the brim flipped up, patterned jackets, and carried swords and staves. They were rounding people up and funneling them toward a single gathering point at the edge of the village.
"Slave traders," I said, cold fury in my voice.
My heart was hammering, each beat loud in my ears, but I didn't let the rage swallow me. Instead I swept the area, stretching my Sphere Vision into a long, narrow cone spanning several hundred meters. What I found only made it worse.
"Hawthorn... Marigold..." My lips pressed together on their own as their images burned into my mind, the people who had become my adoptive family in this world, and who had just drawn their last breaths. Tears came without asking permission.
They must have fought back too hard. And they paid for it.
Hawthorn, fond of the occasional swig of hawthorn brandy, fitting his name, had been a responsible, decent man. Marigold, strict at times, especially with her husband, but with a sharp sense of humor beneath it all.
I let myself sink into the pain of it for exactly one second, then shook my head and wiped my face. The tightening in my throat and everything behind it, crushed down by sheer force of will.
Every second mattered now, and the people I still cared about were still alive. I moved.
"Hey! Where do you think you're going?!" I blew past some heavyset guy with a sword, using my soul sight to weave between the buildings and stay clear of the bastards everywhere around me.
It was loud, shouting on all sides, the sounds of people in pain.
And then I turned a corner and found Erza in an alley, crouched over a crate with Kagura inside.
A second later, two more men in their brim-up balaclavas stepped into the far end of the alley from the opposite direction.
"Lian!" Erza called out, spotting me.
"Kids!" one of the newcomers chirped with delight. Both were tall and lean, both carrying swords.
"More stock! Today's our lucky day!"
I moved without thinking. A heavy rock nearby. I lunged for it.
"Not a fucking chance you're taking us!" I snarled, and threw.
The rock connected squarely with one man's head. He dropped where he stood.
"ZEZIK! How dare you do that to Zezik?!" the surviving slave hunter shrieked. He leveled his blade at me. "You're going to regret that, you little punk!"
"Me? Regret it? Ha. Hahahahahaha!" I laughed, and then my expression went flat. "The real question is: how does a pathetic little worm like you have the nerve to point a sword in my direction?"
The air around me cooled as I let the Bloodlust loose, deliberate, targeted.
The man's grip on his sword trembled. He couldn't hold my gaze, and his eyes slid to Erza instead. Without another word, he exhaled sharply and lunged forward, at what he clearly thought were two unarmed children. How much of a threat could they actually be? Take the girl first, then deal with this unsettling kid who thought too highly of himself?
That move was all I needed. My legs, small, but carrying far more power than they had any right to, carried me past Erza before she could process what was happening. I let his broad swing go wide, stepped around to his back, and loaded up.
"Here's your answer!" I kicked him in the groin with everything I had.
The slave hunter froze like a wax figure, eyes blown wide. The entire universe seemed to pass through his pupils at once. A second later the sword slipped from his fingers and he went down to his knees.
"AAAAAAAAAA!!!" A sound tore out of him that no one should ever have to hear.
I came up behind him, clamped a hand over his mouth, and grabbed his throat.
"Who are you?! Where did you come from?! Talk! Or I swear I'll rip your trachea out right here!"
My hand loosened from his mouth. What I got in return were pained whimpers and nothing coherent.
"Useless piece of trash," I hissed with contempt. Then, setting aside the threat, I drove a precise strike into the pressure point on his neck. He went limp.
"Lian..." Erza called out, her voice careful. The fear in it wasn't about the situation or what I'd done. It was for me. And underneath that, a certain stunned surprise at what I was capable of, though the fear was drowning everything else out.
Fresh tears ran down her face, which had already been wet. "Grandma... Grandpa... They..." She sniffled. "They told me to run..."
I stepped around the body and pulled her into a hug without a word. Telling her everything would be okay would have been the biggest lie I'd ever told. So instead I gave her what she actually needed, and if I was being honest, what I needed too.
"I know," was all I said, as my shoulder began to grow damp. I held her for a moment, then pulled back with a heaviness I didn't try to hide. "I'd never want to let you go right now... I'm sorry. But we have to move fast."
She looked up at me with red-rimmed, uncomprehending brown eyes. Then, nearby, a crate lid eased open with a cautious creak.
"Kagura!" Erza remembered.
"Among others," I said, and moved back to the two unconscious hunters to go through their things.
"Lian. Erza..."
Her eyes were wet too.
"Don't cry, kid," I said, pulling a pair of daggers and a couple of coin purses from the bodies. Then I walked back to the crate with Erza and handed Kagura one of the knives and both purses. "Take these. And promise me you won't so much as peek out of here until it's dark."
"But... what about you?"
I patted her on the head and gave her the most reassuring smile I had. Erza put a hand on her shoulder and tried to do the same.
"We can't all fit in there. And besides, Simon was grabbed at the edge of the village and they're moving him in our direction." Both girls stared at me. "Erza and I are going to do everything we can to get him free and get out."
Erza nodded, as firmly as she was able to manage.
"If we don't come back, don't wait. Head for the nearest town. Promise me you'll do that."
The tears coming down Kagura's face only came faster at that. But my hand stayed on her head.
"I need that promise, kid."
"I... I p-promise."
That was what I was waiting for. My smile warmed another degree. I lifted my hand and closed the crate.
"Erza, take the dagger and follow my lead. This might not work, but we have a real shot at getting out of here!"
"Okay." She took it and drew it.
In my plan, and I did have one, of a sort, Erza wasn't supposed to fight. But having a backup, even a symbolic one, never hurt.
When I turned back toward the two unconscious hunters, a voice boomed across the village.
"LISTEN UP, YOU ZOO!!!" The man I could see through my Sphere Vision wore an expensive-looking blue robe and had blue hair falling to his waist. If he'd kept his mouth shut, he could have passed for an aristocrat. "What in the actual hell is with all these bodies?! We came here for a goddamn workforce! A workforce! So why are half the people here dead or bleeding out?! Who do you think is going to nurse them back to health, you?! We don't need dead weight! What we need, and I swear to God, you pack of feral animals, I will say this one more time, are slaves who are healthy and able to work! The next person who drags in a cripple is going to become one!!!"
I straightened up, holding a longsword that in my hands might as well have been a two-hander, and let out a quiet, surprised sound.
"Their boss is actually pretty competent," I remarked, and Erza, tightly wound and thoroughly confused, stared at me. "Yeah... forget it. Let's go!"
And so we did.
As for the plan, leaving Kagura behind and bringing Erza was also part of it. Kagura was younger, and even at my slower pace, Erza could barely keep up. Leaving the little one in that hiding spot was objectively the safer call, and her odds of surviving that way were genuinely good. As for Erza, she was safe enough with me.
Even in a backwater like Rosemary, I'd heard things about what they called dark guilds. And from what I'd gathered, most of those collections of human garbage weren't anything special. There were no rumors of dark mages leveling entire city blocks. What did come up constantly were stories about gangs of thugs whose "magic" amounted to one artifact staff between them, capable of nothing beyond robbery and raids. So I allowed myself some cautious optimism. I couldn't take out all of them, not enough to save every last villager. But punching through a rabble like this with my skill set? That actually sounded doable. And since I also believed in not putting all my eggs in one basket, I'd brought Erza along.
At the worst possible moment, just when we had a clear path to break through, we ran into one hunter with a staff and another with a sword.
I accelerated and started cutting angles, just as a fireball the size of a soccer ball detonated right beside me, like a weak grenade. The shockwave nearly swept me off my feet. I caught myself by jamming the sword into the ground, while a half-meter-wide scorched crater opened up where I'd just been standing. My body tucked and kept moving.
"You call that aim?!" the sword-wielder laughed.
"That's my fault?! This little freak is bouncing around like a jackrabbit with a firecracker up its ass! You deal with him!"
"Pfft! Watch how fast I take him down!" The first one stepped forward with great confidence and immediately walked into my blade. "Ow, son of a bitch!"
A well-angled strike, full force, knocked his sword clean out of his grip and sent pain shooting up his arm.
"My grandmother could fence better than that! Pathetic!" I informed him of my assessment, then drove the pommel into his forehead and put him down. "Your turn!"
I swung and clocked the staff-user flat with the side of the blade.
I could have killed them, technically. But keeping them alive was also part of the plan, a necessary part, and one that had nothing to do with mercy.
"Can you still run?" I asked Erza, who looked frightened all over again and was also breathing hard. That fireball had gone off close to me, and she'd been a mess about it ever since.
"I can," she said, an obvious lie, which I confirmed when I stepped closer and assessed her myself.
"Don't lie to your brother. Though honestly, you probably can't tell right now either. Okay, listen. Simon's going to be passing through about two houses south of here. Come on. You'll hang back, and I'll hit them from behind."
"Lian... I want to fight too."
I melted a little at that. Exhausted as she was, the determination to help was genuine. But I shook my head.
"No, my Erza. You can't do what I can right now. Please, trust me on this, because right now, this gives us the best chance of getting out."
Erza pressed her lips together and looked down. Then, after a beat, gave a silent nod.
"Alright. Let's go..."
We found cover inside one of the houses.
It wasn't long before the scene played out in front of us: four mages escorting Simon, two other men, and a woman. Names flickered through my mind for each of them. I pushed them aside and focused on waiting for my moment.
The moment came. My legs coiled and my body launched out of cover, straight at the sword-bearing guard trailing at the rear of the convoy. He managed to turn toward the sound of footsteps just in time to catch my blade across the skull, and went down.
Simon froze, hands still bound, like the rest of the captives.
One of the village men didn't freeze. He immediately threw himself bodily into one of the escort guards, while my blade crossed with another hunter's.
"Sad excuses for human beings," I snarled, and dropped my opponent in three strikes.
Then, no, I didn't go for the next one. I threw myself sideways and back, because one of the enemies had raised his staff and driven it into the earth, and my Sphere Vision was giving me the full picture of what was happening around me.
"Dream Magic: Instant Sleep!" the mage shouted, and I felt it, local magic rolling out in a wave around us.
My mind went foggy. Drowsiness hit like a weight dropped on my shoulders. But I held on, and pushed a surge of already half-depleted soul energy through my system to burn it off. The captives, the escort, and even Erza in the near distance, all of them dropped.
"You call that magic?" I straightened up and looked into the wide eyes of this so-called mage. "You had a full group, a magic artifact, and you still couldn't take me down. Embarrassing."
"You... you-you-you," he started, visibly unraveling. Not surprising, given that two of his four colleagues were already on the ground because of me specifically. "Lord Varick will punish you for this! You'll see!"
"Will he now."
"Yes! And I am now tactically retreating!" This individual dropped his staff, spun on his heel, and bolted.
And tripped on his second step.
"Lord Varick?!"
He hit the ground on his hands and knees, landing directly in front of the blue-robed, blue-haired mage who'd been giving orders.
"Oh! Oh! Great Mage! My beloved Lord!" The one with the staff immediately began bowing from his hands-and-knees position, which looked precisely like a dog dry-heaving. "This cursed boy neutralized the entire squad except for me! We fought bravely...!"
Varick, who had been studying me carefully up until this point, shifted his gaze to the subordinate. The man started to shake.
"What I meant to say is... we were being disgracefully beaten! Please, my Great Lord, deal with this boy! I beg you... I'm begging... please..."
Still pleading, privately predicting a world-class dressing-down from his superior, the man began kissing the ground near Varick's feet, then started crawling backward on his hands and knees, getting himself out of the space between me and his boss.
"Did I already call you pathetic?" I checked, addressing the retreating figure.
"You did," the "Great Lord" answered in his subordinate's place, genuine anger in his voice. "And it bears repeating. About three times over. So—"
He crouched down.
"You are the most pitiful, worthless, filthy, and stupid animal in my entire crew!!! Now get out of my sight! Swine!" Done with the subordinate, Varick exhaled and turned his attention to me. He took a few seconds to visibly collect himself, and then water began spiraling into his hands, pulling itself straight from the air. "And I deal with this almost every single day... Well then. Small as you are, kid. Show me what you've got."
My sight swept the area and noted that Erza was still asleep, still dangerously exposed.
Looks like I'm fighting, I thought, and for the first time all night, a trace of genuine uncertainty crossed my face. This mage is in a different category. I can't read his power clearly enough to gauge it. I don't know his techniques or his weaknesses. He could be seriously strong, he's clearly in charge for a reason, or he could still be manageable. The question is whether my luck holds today.
I looked up at the sky. My body was running on fumes. I couldn't last long, but there was something in me that had every intention of going all in.
"You'd better bring it too."
My body exploded into motion.
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