The fresh new rays of sunshine in this new world shined down upon me for the first time that morning.

It would have been so nice, the soft warmth of the sun mixing with the gentle tunes still playing around me from the soundproofing music box at the foot of my bed.

It would have been, had it not been for the uncanny accuracy of this fantasy world’s sun.

Directed with the omniscience of the sun god himself, the electromagnetic radiation from said celestial body bombarded my light receptors right through the fold of skin that protects them.

I lost the battle of attrition against the daystar and blearily rose into a sitting position to avoid the burning my eyes were receiving.

Up and not about, I took a moment to try and rekindle my loving relationship with sleep again. Only to get a quickie for a moment and told to move on right afterwards.

Mind just clear enough, I got down from the bed, moved to the door, after a few attempts, opened it.

By the point I was out of the door, my mind was at the impasse to wakefulness and the completely unfamiliar hall that greeted me was enough to push me through.

Once again confused, I was left with two options, explore on my own or call for a guide.

Being lazy and not wanting to go stumbling into something that I should not, I took a breath and called out.

“Hello? Ruvyn? Laura? Is anyone there?”

“Down here,” came Laura from a spiral staircase to the left of the corridor.

Now with a direction, I began my descent into the unknown and, judging from the nice smell, food.

Upon exiting the staircase, I entered a sort of kitchen area that had a nice little homely feel to it.

On the left wall with all of the cooking equipment was, judging from the same brown hair I saw before, Laura fixing up breakfast while humming a nice tune.

Now that I had a better look, she really had a nice contrast going on with Ruvyn.

Her features were soft, but not overly so and carried a very energetic quality to them, a major divergence from the serious Ruvyn.

Moving a bit to the right and focusing on the center of the room, my eyes landed on the man himself, Ruvyn, sitting at the far end of a dining table and reading a leather tome of some sort.

Both pairs of eyes turned towards me as I entered the room. Before an uncomfortable silence can befall us, Laura spoke up.

“Good morning Brandon. How was your sleep?”

“Good morning to you too. And my sleep was great.”

“Oh. That’s good to hear,” she gave a pleasant smile before motioning with her hand to the dining table, “Now you go over to the table and wait with Ruvyn while I finish up breakfast.”

With that, she moved back to tending to the food.

I walked over to the table and took up a bit of upper body exercise as I tried to climb up onto the seat. The seat design helped a little and I was on the seat after only a bit of exertion.

Once on, I settled down, acted natural and tried to take a small peak at what Ruvyn was reading. The first thing I noticed was that this book was hand-written and had a lot of random notes from Ruvyn himself.

Another thing was that one of the illustrations I saw in it looked a lot like a fireball. Even more intrigued now that a bit of fire was involved, I casually leaned on my right elbow to get a closer view of what he was reading.

My interest was noticed, however, when Ruvyn spoke up.

“Hm. Does this book interest you? You can have it in just a minute.”

I turned up to make look at him, apparently looking a bit hesitant, as he continued.

“I’m just checking some old notes. I already found them so you can have it if you want. Though this is advance pyromancy so I don’t really know how you are going to read it. Maybe I should get you some basics first. That and some mana manipulation too, from what I could feel from last night. But-”

Before he could continue, two plates with bacon, eggs and toast were dropped in front of us and Laura hugged Ruvyn from behind while saying in a smug tone.

“Oh, You definitely felt a lot of things last night.”

The added eyebrow wag was enough to shade Ruvyn’s cheeks pink and have him spluttering a bit. I was decidedly uncomfortable as well and just focused on the meal to find some sort of distraction. And I, surprisingly, did.

The food may have looked similar at first glance, but a bit of further inspection showed some inconsistencies.

The eggs were a bit bigger overall and had a more reddish tint to their yolks. The bacon had a bit less color and appeared greyish. Only the toast seemed completely normal if a little greasier than what I usually had.

I looked up again from my plate as Laura put down her own near Ruvyn’s and pulled a chair to sit next to him. She probably noticed me looking rather intently at my own food and asked.

“Everything looks fine right?”

Getting the convenient chance to ask more about the food, I spoke.

“Yeah. I’m just curious about what these are. They looked familiar to me, but they are not exactly the same. So what are these?”

“Oh. Right. These are fried hara eggs and crispy fried pieces of extra fatty mulsef. And fried bread.”

“Ok. But what are haras and mulsefs?”

“Huh, the language transfer didn’t get all of the words,” She said curiously while looking over to Ruvyn.

“No, It could only deliver the basics and connect equivalent terms for him. I can only work in so much without making him braindead.”

“Oh. Ok. Anyways, a hara is a kind of grounded bird about this height,” she stood up and held her hand at around her thighs to demonstrate before continuing, “and we mostly farm them for meat and eggs. The mulsefs are really big and hairy herbivores that have three large horns on their heads.”

“The hara kinda sounds like a chicken from where I was from.”

“Oh. We have those too, but they are only abundant in the human kingdom. And now that you mention it, there were lots of stories about how your world shared a lot of terms with our own human kingdom. But no one really came out to prove those points. We would love to get things clear now that literal living proof is right here with us. That is if you don’t mind some questions.”

“Sure. I was a little surprised that you were so calm about having someone from another world like me with you. I expected a lot more prodding and questions, to be honest.”

“Oh, but we did prod you a bit at the beginning and questions can always be asked after you had your forced hibernation. Like right now.”

“Alright. That makes some sense. Though before you ask your questions, could you answer mine first.”

“I don’t see why not. Ask away.”

“Right. This feels a bit like back-tracking. But can I get more details about how you knew about my origins? I knew Ruvyn said something about the ceremony and my eyes. But I am still a bit confused on that.”

“Oh. We’ll need to explain a bit more about “foreigners” like you to make things a bit clearer. But I tend to skip over explanations a lot, so my Ruvyn is going to continue from now on.”

Hearing his cue to go on, Ruvyn finished his last bite and turned to us.

“Well. There had been plenty of documentation regarding souls traveling from another world to ours. These were mostly on child geniuses or overly intelligent beasts. Then after recording so many of these instances, the human race devised a way to artificially induce the phenomenon and the first Hero Summoning happened.These cases all shared one feature. A person that went through this will usually exhibit eyes that are almost glowing in the typical shade of blue during the first few days after entering our world with the glow being stronger for summoned heroes. Plenty of theories have been made over the years about the glow. But it is generally agreed now that the entrance to our new world accumulates a lot of mana on the soul and the excess mana is manifested through the glow. Further studies have also theorised about certain features of the summoning ceremony that made the “heroes” have more mana than natural occurrences. Things like ink composition, diagram design and-”

“Ahem. Honey, I know you can last quite long doing your thing, but I think that’s enough. And anyways, there you have it Brandon, your glowing eyes were what tipped us off back then. They are no longer glowing blue, but the blue has bled into Ruvyn’s own green to make them hold an emerald shade.”

She pointed to her own eyes and Ruvyn to emphasise the point before pointing back to her plate.

“Anyways. Let’s finish these before they get cold and I can bring you around a nice house tour while I take my turn to ask a question.”

Breakfast proceeded quietly after that. The couple spoke of a few things they were going to do after this. I tried to listen in for a bit, but the lack of context proved too much and I just went back to the meal.

The eggs tasted fine, if a little lighter than the eggs I remembered. The meat was a different story. It had the novel taste of being almost like bacon but still having a beef-like quality, a heavy hint of gaminess lingered over both tastes.

And, toast was just toast.

After the meal, Laura took me out of the kitchen and into the living room.

The room kept up the country cabin look with a rather simple table at the center with a rustic looking couch on its right, a pair of chairs in front of it and a small fireplace on its left. On the walls were a few pictures featuring a couple that looked like a brown haired Ruvyn and blonde Laura.

“Nice, isn’t it?”

“It is. But why do the pictures show altered looks for you guys?”

“Ah. That. Ruvyn did tell you about the whole taboo relationship thing between elves and humans right?”

I nodded.

“Okay. We both held some positions that would garner a lot of voices against us, and possibly even worse than words in many cases. So we had to go to ground and set up this new hidden life in the rural areas. The pictures are a part of the cover. I think they are unnecessary, but Ruvyn just had to go all in.”

“Oh. Cool. You guys running away from it all kinda reminds me of a piece of literature I heard about once.”

“Really? What is it?”

“I’d rather not talk about it. Things ended rather badly for them and I don’t want to compare your happy thing to that.”

“Alright. I don’t I would want to listen too. Let’s move on then.”

She then walked me out of the front door and into an amazing view.

The house was situated on a small slope that lead down to a small village community.

From my vantage point, I saw a few kids running between houses and adults going about their morning routines. The human activity stood out amongst the calm setting of rolling pastures and trees illuminated by the soft morning sun.

Taking my eyes off of the picturesque sight, I looked back towards the house.

It was a beige colored two-storey cottage with two symmetrical windows on each floor. Both sides were flanked by a few trees that lead back into the woods that surround the back side of the whole property.

A nice little garden was in front of it with beautiful flowers in colors ranging from yellow, blue, red and purple.

Behind the house, I could vaguely make out a silhouette of some sort of stone silo standing amidst the trees.

Laura saw me lingering longer on the partially covered structure and spoke up.

“We’ll be going right over there in a bit. You just have to give Ruvyn a little time to prepare something. In the meanwhile could you answer this one question for me? How common is it for people in your world to have harems?”

I choked on my own spit and coughed a little at the weird question before clearing my throat and answering.

“No. We moved on from that phase of society long ago.Why do you ask? Is it common here?”

“Not really, unless you count individuals worshipping certain gods of fertility. And I asked because that was present in a lot of the records of your people Ruvyn talked about. Even the “heroes” have them.”

“Oh. That’s understandable. And harems do technically feature in certain aspects of literature in my world. So it is somewhat popular with some.”

“Hm. Interesting. Are you an advocate of that then?”

“No. Monogamy is strong within my culture.”

“Good. I know it is not the same, but I don’t want any playboy for a son. I am a firm believer in one lock for one key.”

We had a bit of a chuckle at the statement. Laura took my small hand and walked onto a trail that led to the back of the house and the half-hid silo.

At the base of the structure was an opened door that revealed some logs and a few pieces of animal hide within.

A little disappointed at the apparently normal building, I was about to turn around before Laura put a hand on my shoulders and pushed me forward into the stone tower’s interior.

Once passed the hanging hides and stacks of wood, we reached an inconspicuous ladder that lead up to what looks to me like another storage room lit by a small lantern.

Pass the threshold of the first floor, I entered a room completely different from what I saw.

For one, the lighting in here was mostly white while my memory was of looking up into an orange-lit room.

But the most obvious difference was in the content of said room. My prediction was some more hides and maybe spices. Reality was Ruvyn in rather impressive mage garbs, glowing enchants included, setting down some books on a stone table to his right.

Behind him was a large stone shelf, glowing enchantments included too, containing a plethora of books and even a few jars with fairly weird contents.

To the right of the shelf was another ladder, but this one showed an entrance that actually hinted towards another one of these clean magic study I was in instead of an old cottage’s supply storage.

My attention was returned to Ruvyn when he spoke up next.

“These will be the basics in magic that I said you could go read earlier. They are the basics of mana manipulation for elves,” he pointed to the top one, ”the various basic spells of each magic school that elves can practice,” he pointed to the next one, “and, just in case, the basic spells for human use,” he finished by pulling out a book that looks to be a bit thicker than the others.

“Wow. Thank you.”

“It’s fine really. I know how enticing magic can be and you would have nothing else to do in the house. Laura can’t really take you out with her things since your body is still too young. And I wanted to try and teach someone. Many of my previous colleagues have taken on an apprentice and I once did too. But he was far too big of a brat to teach properly. ”

“I think Brandon is already way better than that guy by not hitting on me.” Laura chimed in.

“Right. I will be working up there for my monthly quota of artifacts and enchantments to send away. You are welcome to just read these and experiment a little here,” he gestured towards a magic circle in front of him, “with the shielding for safety. Just call me if there is anything you find confusing. Try to go over the included notes I have left before calling me.”

“Ok. So I should be reading the top book first then.”

“Yes, though just skip the first chapter if you don’t want to go into too much detail on how to work your mana organ. You seem to know how to do that already. But do feel to read it again for further details, I have made certain notes on possible mental images that might be more beneficial than others.”

“Yes, he gets it, honey. Now go do your thing and have a great day,” Laura said smilingly as she kissed Ruvyn on the cheeks and ushered him to the stairs.

“I’ll be out a bit like Ruvyn said. But I should still make it back before lunch and get you two fed, so just stay here and do your things until I call you two later.”

I nodded.

“Goodbye then.”

She made her way out of the tower and I started to open my books and work my way through them.

I did not skip chapter one of mana manipulation book and studied all of Ruvyn’s notes on mental imagery carefully.

Once finished with that, I tried to work the organ again and found it becoming active a lot earlier than before.

And found myself giggling a little when I saw that the chapter was on how to stop accessing your mana organ. It was still read regardless of irony and revealed some flaws in my execution of the technique.

The third chapter was where I felt I went wrong with my own training. It was on how to limit my own access to ambient mana. It should have been clear in hindsight that controlling a random amount of mana around me was not a thought-out approach.

After the reflection and careful read through of the third chapter, I connected again to the ambient mana with more focus on the amount. With an established control of roughly one cubic meter, I tried to move it again and jumped a little inside when the blob of mana actually moved where I wanted it to.

Chapter four was approached with a pep in my steps. And said pep was promptly stepped on and killed when I saw the intricate exercises involved in improving overall control.

I got a passable understanding of about one-third of the techniques before Ruvyn came down from the second floor.

He held a little revision on what I had already picked up from the book. Naturally, he found my practice lacking in many aspects and quickly gave remedies. I actually learned from him that these intricate exercises were practice for me to hold together a spell made up of symbols made from mana.

I asked more about the symbols, but was just given a promise on more books instead.

We continued to practice for the rest of the morning until Laura came around and called us both down for lunch.

Lunch was a meal made from a ther, some sort of pig-like animal with six limbs that were much more readily available locally than actual pigs from the human kingdom, and, surprisingly enough, rice.

It also differed from breakfast in the amount of conversation it had.

This was most probably due to all of the questions I was asking Ruvyn on how to work on my magic. Laura would jump in here and then to give a few simplified explanations when the elf was rambling with too much jargon.

After a nap that both adults agreed my young body needed, I was up and walking about in the area around my new house for some exercise under the supervision of Laura.

This proved to be equally as interesting as learning of magic through the many stories she was telling. Laura, being the sort of scout that she was, had a lot of interesting stories to tell. They ranged from humorous ones like drunks doing dumb things in the adventurer guild to much more exciting tales of her excursions deep into bandit territory to gather intel.

Interlaced with the stories would be little questions she had for my old life.

Feeling that it would only be fair, I told her about what I was doing when I was alive and explained the terms involved with the answer.

From that, I learned that college was a thing that was mostly exclusive to magical occupations and the other lines of work just have people working right after they enter adulthood at around sixteen years of age.

Other questions would be asked while I walked from tree to tree looking at their different appearances and enjoying the nature that was not there within my own city. We reach a fairly interesting topic when Laura asked.

“Hey. If there is both our world and yours and both are different, do you think there are even more worlds out there for us to explore.”

“Yes. There were plenty of theories involving that, but no one was ever able to prove anything. Me being here with you is probably the best proof anyone has gotten on those theories.”

“Wow. How did they come up with those theories then?”

“I don’t really know. I’m not too interested in those aspects of life. I worry more about the practical side of things like the tools and technology I have available to me than the theoretical thinking of realities.”

“I guess you are right. But then I always liked to travel around, picked my career after it too, so just thinking of possibly going to different dimensions really interests me.”

I continued to answer her questions about our world’s work on the multiverse theory with whatever I could remember from the silly discussions I had with Tim on the subject any time it showed up in a popular comic or movie.

My bit of time spent out and about ended around sunset when Laura went back into the house to prepare dinner and I had to go back in too.

Dinner was more reheated ther meat with more rice. The dish tasted a bit better after the second round of cooking.

Over the meal, Laura would tell Ruvyn about the things that I told her and Ruvyn would, in turn, ask me for clarifications of certain details.

He surprisingly did not ask much on the whole multiverse concept and focused more on the details of my own society.

Once the meal was over we all headed back to our bedrooms.

I was handed the music box-like device from last night and the books I was reading in the morning with strict instructions not to practice them in the night.

With that rule in place, I did not feel like looking at the mana training and just browsed through the basic spells. This only gave me a greater longing for more time practicing after I saw the intricate patterns of mana needed for the spells.

That night I dreamt of struggling through school again.