They continued.

The nightmares continued.

Each night, Astolfo was mercilessly dragged to a place he had never known. Every time, he would be in a body that was not his own, unable to control even a hair on it. He could only groan in his agony as unbearable pain and inescapable emotions of the body tormented his fragile mind. Death flooded his sight, and powerlessness his mind and soul, as everyone he seemed to ‘care’ for died in his arms.

By his arms.

Confusion and fear were the only thing on the boy’s mind for the entirety of the day before another dream shook his mind off the previous one and gave him something else to fear and be confused over.

Carrying a pair of sagging black bags under his eyes, Astolfo watched as the luscious golden-brown concoction flowed into the teacup filled with milk. With fluid movements, Astolfo scooped up a spoonful of sugar and stared at it for a few seconds. Satisfied, he nodded and poured the sugar into the teacup. He lightly stirred the tea from top to bottom for exactly thirty seconds, making the milk, sugar, and leaves blend.

A sudden itch erupted in the back of his neck. Astolfo’s eyes widened as he grabbed the teacup and gracefully rolled to his side.

“Astolfo—!”

Crashing into his previous position was a handsome young man with fluttering red hair. The boy, Luka, tilted his head in surprise at his younger brother’s unexpected movement.

“Haah, you scared me.” Astolfo sighed.

“Hehe. Nice dodge.”

Astolfo shook his head and met his brother’s eyes. “Why aren’t you at school?” he asked.

“Brew me a cup too?” Luka stuck his tongue out as he shamelessly asked Astolfo for a cup of tea. He couldn’t have told him he skipped because he was worried about him, it would have further distressed the child. Shaking his head once again, Astolfo brewed a cup of tea for Luka and they both stepped out of the house.

Under the luminous shade of the two suns, the kids sipped on their tea in unison.

“Strange…” Luka said, with an odd look on his face. “It ain’t salty, nor is it sugarless…”

“What do you mean, strange?! It’s because I added sugar, alright? Sugar!”

Seeing his brother’s outburst, a faint smile bloomed on Luka’s face. “Sure, you can make great tea the second time if you put salt in your first one. I’ll just believe that.”

“Tsk.” Astolfo turned his head away and a bout of silence followed. The sounds of the rustling grass and the squawking birds carried by the glistering wind made for a place that anyone could relax in with no need for words or actions.

“Astolfo… How are your dreams?” Luka asked. The Kirsches had known of Astolfo’s recent plight since the day it began. At that time, the child couldn’t do much else but depend on them.

Unfortunately, they could barely unravel anything from Astolfo’s explanations. Strange giant buildings, disgusting monsters, and an adult man named Astolfo killing them while suppressing his emotions? It sounded more like what one would read in a fantasy book written by a person with queer ideals and less like a nightmare.

As for what he said about feeling the person’s emotions and experiences, it was very difficult to believe. Well versed in magic of all kinds, Ophelia was certain that there wasn’t a type of dream magic that could transfer someone else’s life to another, much less someone living in a book.

In the end, they could only accredit it to the recent experience with the wyvern that Astolfo went through. They tried their best to understand him and help him through his disillusioned state, but fact remained that they couldn’t understand Astolfo’s plight in its actuality.

“They continue… the nightmares. It’s better than before, though. I can bear it,” Astolfo replied. Receiving no assistance or solutions, the boy had no choice but to bear it. Luka understood this and decided against continuing this matter. ‘If he keeps feeling someone else’s emotions, then he just needs to drown them out with his own!’ This was the conclusion Luka reached and tried his hardest to make Astolfo enjoy his day as it went by.

It certainly wasn’t unhelpful.

**

“Congratulations, Astolfo. You are in your twenties now,” said a tall man with messy brown hair and thin glasses. The man carried a gentle smile on his face and a bottle of alcohol in his hands.

“Twenties, huh,” Astolfo muttered as he stared at the midnight sky. The fragments of Earth’s broken moon backed with the majestic purple mass of stars created a stunning scenery. Even in such disorder, it looked perfect to Astolfo.

“You know, Joren… I feel lost.”

“What do you mean—” Astolfo’s face was gelid, but his eyes wavered. Being his friend of old, he could tell that a torrent of emotions was raging under that cold face. “So much keeps happening, and we can only watch helplessly.”

Joren quietly walked next to Astolfo and leaned on the same railing as him.

“I can’t stand it. We just keep running away, hoping for someone else to solve things for us… How can I let something like fate control my life?”

Joren opened the bottle of alcohol and took in a small gulp. “What do you mean, something like fate? What can go against fate? Even if the entire world union with their SS-ranked monsters and the Demon king’s joined hands, they wouldn’t be able to handle fate.” With a sigh, Joren extended the alcohol towards his friend.

Astolfo grabbed the bottle and looked down its mouth. He clutched the glass bottle in his hands and turned his wavering eyes towards Joren. “Then, I just need to get stronger than all of them.”

“Kafk! Kafk!” Astolfo coughed awake as he sat upon his bed. The boy with red hair that reached his shoulders looked out the window to see the twin suns awaking alongside him. Instead of leaving his bed, he remained seated and stared at his hands. His dream today was quite peculiar.

His body wasn’t only younger, but also much weaker than usual. His surroundings looked fresh and his emotions unique. But none of these truly stuck out. What consistently resounded in the boy’s mind were the words that Astolfo spoke out.

“Leaving things to fate… to something else… aren’t I doing the same?” Astolfo said. He found nothing after asking around for help and eventually accepted the dreams as a part of his life. He asked someone else to fix things for him, and when they couldn’t, he left it to fate. This realization, coupled with the strong emotions the dream imparted unto him, set ablaze a fire in Astolfo’s torpid eyes.

The afternoon was the time that met Astolfo with the greatest amount of tranquility. Both his siblings were away at school, his mother in Gemuse town for her work, and his father out to… train, for some reason. It was the best time to sneak into his parent’s study and take his mother’s books on magic. He was previously forbidden from checking any of the books because of his weak state, but now Astolfo didn’t think it should be a problem.

After scouting the premises of the house, Astolfo sneaked into the study. Dust fluttered in the modestly sized, dark room. With shelves that could only seem gigantic to the child shorter than a hundred and forty centimeters. Every row of the shelves was filled with stacks and stacks of books on varying topics. Astolfo stepped along the length of the shelves while keeping an eye on the lowest rack.

“Mysteries of Dark Magic… Evil Gods and Influence… Psyc-psycho… how do you pronounce this? Umm, ah! Beginner’s Guide to Understanding Mana and Magic!” Astolfo grabbed the book and carefully pulled it out from the rack. His lips curled into a smile as he flipped through the pages of the book. It was just what he needed! With the book tucked under his hand, the boy turned on the light and sat on the floor. With a dedicated ‘humph,’ Astolfo began the new addition in his daily routine.

**

Astolfo’s daily life continued in the same way as before. He would wake up after seeing a long, lifelike dream that he now shrugged off. He would then freshen up and have breakfast with the rest of his family, after which Ophelia took on to teaching him arithmetic, language, history, and some geography for about two hours. Then, his mother would leave for work and he would play around with his siblings. At eleven, Charlotte and Luka would leave for the local school in Frucht, where they learned the subjects that Astolfo learned alongside the basics of magic and self-defense from the volunteer priests and teachers.

On the other hand, Astolfo would spend the next two hours with Vincent, where they would either chat, study, cook or play before having lunch. Post lunch, Vincent would leave to do whatever he did after warning Astolfo against doing anything reckless and reminding him of the magic tool that his mother had made for emergencies.

The afternoon was the best time of Astolfo’s day. He would take out all the frustration of the night as he vied to become stronger, the fact that it wasn’t without results contributed highly to his motivation. After many attempts, Astolfo could finally harness a fraction of the power of mana, both intrinsically and extrinsically. He learned of the various concepts of affinity, property, assimilation, and application. Albeit quite behind from people his age, for a sickly child, Astolfo’s practical progress was nothing short of extraordinary. As for theory, he had devoured more than seventy books and incessantly pressed on against more, amongst his peers, he had surely reached the realm of a true magic geek.

Once again, today, the boy went through the length of the shelves. Having finally crossed a hundred and forty-five centimeters, the giant bookshelves seemed a bit less intimidating to him. He pulled out the book titled ‘Inherent Abilities - What, Why and How,’ and flipped back to the page he was on. Inherent abilities were Astolfo’s next target. An ability that exists for one person and one person only, it could provide clues towards his dreams—

“—It’s useless.” A deep voice interrupted Astolfo. He dropped the book on the ground and turned to look at the red-haired man leaning against the door.

“Uh, uh…”

“You are trying to learn magic despite us telling you not to, huh? It’s useless.” Vincent walked over to the boy and picked up the book on the floor.

“W-when did you come here…?” Astolfo asked.

Vincent ignored him and dusted the book off. “Well, when I was ten I always wanted to become a strong knight or a wizard.” He walked around the shelves to place the book back while Astolfo followed him with small steps. “You see, brat. There’s a reason we told you not to touch these things.”

“Reason? What?”

“Both your mum and I are a fairly powerful wizard and swordsman. Thanks to that, Charlotte has great potential in terms of becoming a wizard and Luka in terms of swordsmanship… But you, you are in a league of your own.”

Astolfo squinted his eyes.

“You have no potential in either. And I mean no potential when I say no potential. Haha, I mean, even normal people have some aptitude! But you are too weak to even be considered normal. There’s no way you can control mana, let alone learn magic!”

Astolfo clicked his tongue inwardly and a victorious smirk covered his face. ‘This old man is too haughty for his own good,’ he thought and commanded the mana around him. A murky hue of gold covered his palm before a small fire lit up on his palm. Sensing the movement of mana, Vincent’s head almost turned a whole 180 degrees. His eyes widened when he saw the fire in his son’s hand.

“What… the hell? How… It should be killing you body to do this…” Vincent muttered. A monochrome tint spread in his eyes as he inspected Astolfo from top to bottom. “Or not?”

“Huhuhu! See! I am amazing, right? Right?” Astolfo stuck his tongue out.

“Amazing indeed,” Vincent said and grabbed Astolfo by the back of his neck. He lifted the little child and placed him on his shoulders. “You are coming with me. You want to get strong, right? I’ll train you.”

A sense of impending doom washed over the child. He had seen felt it many times in his dreams! He was sure that if he went with Vincent now, he will be screwed. “Noo, let me down! Don’t you have to train? Go train!”

“What train? You think the strongest man in the world needs to train? We are going.”

“Nooo, help! Help!!”

**

The two suns had started to set as Vincent gazed over the horizon from within a dense forest. “Hmm, this should be enough for today. Let’s go back,” he said. Under his feet was a tired and beat-up Astolfo, desperately pushing his hand outward as if he wanted to grab oxygen and put it in his mouth.

“Haa, haa, back?”

“Yeah.”

“Thank god…” Astolfo said before fainting. Vincent clicked his tongue and picked the child up once again. If he could speak, he should have used that energy to walk instead! Shaking his head, Vincent placed him on his shoulder and walked back home. On his way, a wide smile bloomed on Vincent’s face.

It was good. No, it was great.

He could have never imagined that his sickly youngest son had enough will and courage to see his training through the end. Vincent was going to whip him to shape now.