I understandably rushed out into the woods immediately upon reading the little message. I was uncaring of the fact that I was only in a simple set of tunic, trousers and nothing else protective.

My limbs now riddled with small scratches did not register as I came upon the same body of water as yesterday. Taking a giddy and anxious breath in, I called out.

“TIM WHERE ARE YOU? GET YOUR ASS OUT HERE. COME ON.”

The response was almost instantaneous. Rustles and cracks sounded out as something large rushed my way.

My excitement to meet him again was almost killed when I was reminded of what he looked like now. Seeing him as a monster was enough to have me step back.

As I have seen before, he was hideous. The added knowledge from Ruvyn did not help. My best friend was now a travesty upon life.

Seeing him wave excitedly for me too with his massive leg arm was at least enough to push that thought down. The carved “Sup” in the earth helped too.

“Sup to you too.”

My reply was a little broken up as a tear left my eye. He was really there.

The doubts have disappeared after I replied. Unknown to myself, I had been walking forward. It was only Tim’s hand coming down in a slam in front of me that stopped my advance.

I looked uncomprehendingly at him and he pointed at himself. He pointed at the rotting and black flesh writhing slightly with something that was most definitely not life. I stepped back.

“No hugs huh? I would have thought you to be a great hugger now. So many arms and all.”

The rebalancing bad pun directed at him was received well enough. Tim rumbled with laughter from all of his mouths.

I repressed a shiver at the sight.

Tim dug a finger down into the dirt and began writing. His poor handwriting was now fully exhibited in the longer sentence.

I had to strain my eyes, but the message was received.

“I could have proved the dumb blond stereotype by letting you just hug a pile of corpses.”

He ran a wing over the writing.

“But then I would lose the value of seeing more dumb blond stuff.”

All of the remaining skin on his various faces pulled tight into smiles. I narrowed my eyes at him.

He kept writing.

“So how’s it going”

I began to retell my stories to him. Tim feigned falling asleep after a while of me rambling on about magic and the technicalities of it. I still went on.

Five years have elapsed since my reunion with Tim. The communication problems have only made themselves more conspicuous as time went on. He could not exactly talk.

He tried of course. It just went nowhere beyond guttural growls. That was a source of frustration that only grew more and more.

I wanted to share the things I found. Back then they had been memes and now they were spells and my own advancement in magic.

I still did share. But without any noticeable response, things just felt off.

I tried having Olivia as a translator. She herself was nice, if a little formal in speech. But translations could not get me the true blue Tim reactions.

But our time together was not without fun. Lacking chit chat, we did another thing together. We went out hunting monsters.

Like before with games, Tim continued to carry me. The guy was an abomination that probably only feared dragons at this point. I simply had to throw my spells and have him do the tanking and crowd control.

We each had something for ourselves in the end.

With all those free field practice expeditions, I naturally got over the basics of each magic schools and acquired more advanced spells in my three best fields, fire elemental magic, illusion magic and the simple yet effective bare casting.

Though I termed them as advanced, they were mostly the intermediate spells commonly used by mages here given a rework by me.

The upgraded [mana bolt], [exploding bolt] was worked into a [shock bolt], replacing the standard force explosion to a more focused shockwave to double down on the internal damage.

The standard [fireball] was given just a bit too much mana for a burst of fire on contact to make the aptly named [burst shot]. To accompany the instant delivery of pain and destruction, I also took up the already well crafted spell [flaming stream] for prolonged firepower.

In the illusion department, I did very well with weaving together lifelike images, but they took just a little too long for my liking.

My solution was again to turn everything to disorientation. In the place of a realistic image, I went all out to simply overwhelm the senses of my opponent with extremes in all senses. A bright flash, a loud bang, an intense burning smell and taste would assault anyone hit with [mental assault].

Regrettably, my earlier progress with self enhancement under Laura’s tutelage stalled out completely when she was occupied with doting on the baby and I only got to [physical enhancement: lesser] to double my own, well, physical traits.

Lightning magic came in second on my affinity chart and I was only able to work the basic and localized [lightning palm] into the total coverage of [lightning body] just to remove a need to be a competent hand-to-hand combatant.

The development was only for the elven side of my heritage and the human version of magic has not been practiced much beyond the basics.

In other news, the baby was also popped out a month or so after I met Tim.

She was named Layla and I was officially an older brother. Her birth had also proven to me that the hybrid being problematic superstition definitely has grounds within reality.

The first one, me, was me in all of my reincarnated glory and the second one, even with the successful ceremony, is unable to externally channel magic.

Ruvyn was expectedly distressed and spent almost every waking moment of his time trying to solve Layla’s condition. His efforts proved fruitless from trials after trials and Laura simply had him give up on his wild goose chase.

This was not all negatives though. Since mana could not go out of her body properly, they ended up passively casting a sort pseudo self enhancement on her.

The kid has one heck of a grip that challenged the durability of my own fingers far too often for my liking. That sort of disposition naturally made Layla a mother’s girl, what with Laura being the only one in the house that could handle the little powerhouse.

I wished I had her strength.

The couple still had their own responsibilities to attend to. Ruvyn had his monthly quota of things to make and send out. Laura had to still go out and forage or hunt our perishables. So it oftentimes fall onto me to take care of little Layla and play the role of responsible older brother.

Babysitting duty was the most life threatening aspect of those five years. A fork thrown with a force that could dislocate fingers was an instrument of death in anyone’s book.

So to even tend to Layla meant I had to exert my own [physical enhancement: lesser] to remain safe.

Thus, nerve-wracking as it was, those sessions with my little sister were and still are effective times of training both my magic and reaction to unexpected attacks. Those attacks changed through the years from the original spoon of suffering to crayons of catastrophe to dolls of destruction and to the tackle hugs of havok of the now.

“Brotherrrr.”

Doubled physical strength, endurance and toughness did not equal an immovable center of gravity.

My face plant did earn a cute little giggle so things were not all in vain.

“Play with me brother.”

“Alright.”

To accompany my reply, I grabbed a prepared stick outside of the window.

“There, go fetch that.”

Layla pouted indignantly at me.

“It’s not funny. And playy with me. Mom and dad are busy so you have to play with me.”

I have long learned not to argue logic with a child and simply complied.

“Alright, what do you want to play?”

“Can we play that game from the day before. The one with magic bad guy and strong hero.”

My inclination to comply was lessen greatly at the mention of that role play. One that involved me being the villain and getting beat up by a little girl with the strength of a man.

I still got ready for it though and hyped myself up for the villain’s role. Layla got her armor and toy sword equipped and we walked outside. Right into a squadron of shady looking characters heading towards the tower.

The platoon was split into two separate units. One had a more eclectic mix of individuals and equipment with most carrying the common theme of rugged and worn gear for mercenary.

Beside the, assumed, mercenary corps was a much more uniformed gathering. Each individual had on matching sets of black cloaks with glowing white runes etched onto to them.

Their equipment was also identical with each one holding onto what looked like, amusingly enough, satellite dishes on top of magic staves.

Leading it all was a peculiar looking individual. His overall appearance was hidden behind a sleek deep green overcoat with leaves decorating the elbows, cuffs, shoulders and waist, and a mask with an owl motif.

In his right hand was a very large and intricate bow made from some sort of crystalline deer’s antlers and on his back a quiver of arrows to match the bow. On his left arm was a silver armguard that was made up of and array of spikes and scales and in between the scales glowed a pulsating mix of green, yellow, blue and red.

An RGB joke would have been made internally was I not in a bit of panic. Instead, I immediately pulled Layla with me and ducked into the tower.

“Laura, Ruvyn. We have some company, the bad kind.”

No reply was given, but I did hear some shuffling up above before Laura came rushing down the stairs holding a large package. It and two smaller packs she took from behind her were unceremoniously thrown into my lap.

“Brandon. Take these and Layla, and head out through this,” she signaled towards an entrance that opened up from the floor. I obeyed silently and grabbed Layla.

The small immovable object did not budge and called out to her mother.

“Mommy, where are we going? Where are you going?”

Laura’s serious demeanour softened as she turned to her daughter.

“Honey, mommy is just going out for a bit. You be a good girl and stay with your brother, Ok?”

“Why can’t I come with?”

“This is grown up business. Now go with Brandon before you make mommy mad.”

Layle gave another petulant pout before following after me.

The tunnel led out into a clearing to the west of the tower. I led Layla further left to hide deeper in the forest from whatever attack this was. I was taking extra care to look behind me every few steps to make sure we did not have a tail.

My extra attention to the rear yielded no results. I was about sigh in relief as the treeline. We were just a short distance away from the finish line.

It was inevitably disheartening when before we even made it to the line of trees, a group of mercenary emerged to bar our way. I sucked in a cold breath and held Layla’s hand tighter.

My eyes were darting around frantically for left and right to look for more of them even as I took step after steps back. They kept up with our retreat step by step and Layla could no longer hold her agitation in.

“Brother, Who are they?”

I replied in a whisper with my eyes still trained on the mercenaries.

“They are bad people. So I need you to run with me when I say run, ok?”

She nodded and I primed an extra large [shock bolt] behind my back.

“Run,” I yelled while lobbing the orb in their direction.

An explosion marked our mad dash back to the safety of the tower. I turned around for a split second to find no force chasing after us. I ran with my heart in my throat. The misplaced organ blocked all of the thanks I gave my luck that they underestimated me and didn’t dodge or block my distraction.

Back inside, I was about to call out to Laura to tell her that the way out was block when I saw that the tower was compromised. Standing in front of me was another dressed in an almost identical outfit to the figure leading the invading force.

The only visible differences were that the mask was styled after a fox, the glowing effect shuffling was only between electric blue and red, and the metallic bow had limbs stylised after a lightning bolt and an elongated flame.

I pushed Layla behind me and shakily prepared another [shock bolt]. Before the three seconds charging time could finish, Laura’s voice came from the cloaked person.

“Brandon? What are you doing back here?”

“Why are you-. Nevermind, the exit was blocked so I got back here.”

She remained quiet for a bit before walking pass us both and into the tunnel. Her voice echoed out from within.

“Come on, follow me.”

The command was spoken with a much more serious and even voice. Soon Layla and I were outside again.

The same group of mercenary was standing just outside of the entrance, looking clearly intimidated by Laura’s presence. Now a little more secured with adult protection, I had a small burst of satisfaction at seeing most of their appearances marred by grass and dirt. The insightly appearance was most likely courtesy of my own attack.

Some of the guys in the back must have noticed my rising smug and directed a few heated glares in my direction. The small bout of aggression was quickly stymied by Laura’s own glare.

“Back away from my children!”

The threat was punctuated with Laura drawing her bow with a wildly sparking arrow generated from her armored limb. The group looked about to retreat when a commanding female voice called out.

“Stand your ground. I’ll handle the traitor.”

The leading figure from before was back with an arrow of his, or her after the voice I heard, own drawn and trained onto me and Layla from just outside the tree line.

“Stop aiming at my kids, Charlotte. It got old the first time.”

The now identified Charlotte let loose her arrow in reply and I could only futilely try to duck. Laura let loose her own charged shot and broke right through the regular one from Charlotte.

The fight began from there with Laura advancing towards the group while knocking back and letting loose three more of the sparking arrows. The mercenaries entered their own formation and a shield of earthen brown rose up to block the arrows.

A large explosion of dirt and grass followed the impact and I assumed this was another one of Laura’s own tactics to make herself a smoke screen.

The smoke screen did nothing though as it was quickly cleared away in an explosion of air coming from the other side.

Charlotte stood amongst the men with her bow up with a swirling green arrow knocked. Laura dodged to the side when the arrow of condensed wind came at her and used the explosion’s force to charge forwards.

Now running, Laura split her bow into two separate blade. One lit up in electricity and the other wrapped itself in flames.

Charlotte wasted no time after her miss and readied another arrow. The yellow projectile was another miss as it hit the ground ahead of Laura.

My conclusion was too rushed. Charlotte clearly knew what she was doing when the ground erupted into a wall of spikes and forced Laura to roll to the side, effectively cancelling all of her momentum.

Now slowed, Laura had to deal with the mercenaries surrounding her. They did not prove to be much though.

Laura just weaved in between them and all of their attacks, and kept close within their mix to ensure confusion and no clear line of sight for Charlotte to take potshots. They all eventually went down and it turned into a shoot out between Charlotte and Laura.

The former was holding her ground and trying to pin the other down with overwhelming fire, wind, earth and water power and the latter was darting around and sneaking quick shots of lightning and large bursts of fire for cover.

My and Layla’s escape route was freed with this and I, shaken free of the shock of almost dying again, took the opportunity and ran with all I had. We ran, panting and shaking, through the clearing. The tenuous minute ended and we made it to forest on the tower’s eastern side away from the fighting.

At the tree line, my sight was no longer blocked from the front of the tower. I could see the weirdly uniformed group standing around and making up some sort of white barrier.

Inside of it was an indistinct figure that I could assume was Ruvyn with his blonde hair and the familiar purple mage robe. The sight of a trapped Ruvyn did no good for my anxiety right then.

Things only looked worse upon further observation.

Ruvyn seemed to be suffering quite a bit and was on one knee struggling to stay upright within the barrier. Layla saw her own father’s distress too and tugged on my hand.

“Come on. We have to help daddy.”

I paused to consider all of the risks and rewards involved in this before relenting.

“Alright, but I need you to listen to me, OK?”

I waited for her to nod before dropping the packs Laura handed us and continuing.

“Good. I want you to follow me and be extra sneaky. We can’t have the bad men see us.”

We both crouched low and made our way slowly towards the tower, leaning closer to the structure itself for some cover.

Once near enough, I could see that the shield was being held up by the weird satellite dishes they were carrying. The shrinking was due to them closing the circle around Ruvyn.

I made a tentative plan with that observation and whispered to Layla.

“Alright, Layla. I need you to stay completely behind me ok and crouch down really low.”

We stuck to the back of one of the figures and managed to get within range of them. I doubted the plan would have succeeded at all had their focus not all been on keeping Ruvyn down. Once we did make it there, I took five seconds to charge up a [mental assault] and whispered again to Layla.

“You see that bad guy over there holding the stick and hurting dad?” I pointed to our target. Layla nodded.

“When I hit him with this,” I pointed to the swirling orb of symbols that was my spell, “I want you to rush over there and take the weird stick thing and run with me.”

Seeing her nod again, I lowered myself into a running stance before throwing the spell and rushing in.

The spell hit and the guy was down holding his head in pain. Layla used the slumped person as a stepping board and grabbed hold of the freed staff.

The staff refused to go down without a fight so I had to get there with my own [physical enhancement: lesser] to help Layla pull out.

Adrenaline was flooding my system at that point with both our hands on the staff and in direct sight of the robed figures.

The stressful few seconds were soon over and we finally removed the staff. Our target was already getting up. In my stressed state, I could only think to give him a crotch shot before running off with Layla in tow.

If they haven’t notice when we first attacked, the shield dissipating definitely got their attention and soon every one of them had some sort of spell ready to fire upon me and Layla.

I simply sagged down at that point and threw my lot into Ruvyn being free and able to help us.

My bet paid off and I got to see how dangerous teleportation can be.

Ruvyn had bent down on the ground for one last time before teleporting directly in front of us. His right hand was extended and held a few pebbles.

Two flashes of purple went off, once in Ruvyn’s hand to the disappearance of all of the pebbles and again in the kneecaps of six of the uniformed men. Six crunch of bone breaking heralded the screaming and writhing of six men.

Ruvyn put up a barrier around us for protection and picked up some more pebbles.

“Thank you for that. That was a mana nullifying formation. It almost had me there,” he smiled appreciatively before setting his face back into neutral, “But I don’t think keeping you or Layla around here is safe.”

With those parting words, Ruvyn stepped out of our shield and its color change from a transparent blue to a milky purple. I just sat there and enjoyed the safety, uncaring of what this aether construct from Ruvyn might do.

Layla, though, was not inclined to his departure and struggled ardently against the barrier, managing to even distort it quite a bit. Her efforts proved to be more effective than just causing some minor ripples.

The shield cracked from her blows and bursted to deposit us somewhere down the cliff with noises of fighting still reverberating nearby.

Now freed, Layla called out to Ruvyn again.

“Daddyyy.”

Back on edge again, I clamped a hand onto her mouth and gestured for her to keep quiet with my other hand.

Footsteps and voices were coming in our direction.

“You sure there’s something something down there?”

“Yes, I saw a flash of light and you all heard a girl’s scream right?”

“I think so, couldn’t hurt to check.”

“It could be a banshee for all we know..”

“Uhuh, I doubt that. Why would one be here anyways?”

“Well, there was that rumor of that midget necromancer Anne working around here. And our priest did find traces of undead taint too.”

“Could have said earlier you idiot. It’s too late now, we might as well check.”

The group of three were about to turn into the tree we were hiding behind when we struck.

I threw the opening salvo with a [shock bolt]. With them knocked back on their asses and disorientated, Layla went in with me to finish the job.

All the strength of a fully grown man focused into a tiny fist was devastating.

I was not even allowed time to worry over securing our opponents when from behind us came one more voice.

“Hey, wait up. Why did you all rush ahead, I was taking a pi-”

The last one was quick to react and already had his shield and sword out before I could get another cheap shot in.

“So you’re the freaks we had to catch for negotiations.”

He charged forward, swinging the flat of his blade towards my head, looking for a quick incapacitation.

With the height difference, I did not have to duck too deeply to avoid that and came back up within his guard for a heavy smack on his wrist with [physical enhancement: lesser].

Sword out of his hand, he tried to smack me with his shield, but Layla slammed into the back of his knee and knocked him off balance.

With her on his right leg, I went for the other one to completely knock him down.

The guy still had his wits about him and swung the shield to block my kick. I slid back from recoil and looked to see him struggling to remove Layla from his leg.

I went for a different approach. I had time to prepare some spells with Layla doing an amazing job as diversion.

Once he managed to bash Layla off with his shield, I was already throwing a [burst shot] at him. The guy blocked it with his shield like a normal [fireball] and earned some nasty burns on his uncovered areas after the follow-up explosion spewed fire around his shield.

He screamed out in pain but quickly pulled out from one of his pouches a glass bottle. Its contents were immediately poured all over his body. The burning subsided.

But before he could fully get his bearings, I took the chance to charge in on him.

I was late.

He still gained his bearings in time and swung out with his shield. I dodged like before, but he was ready.

He kicked out right into my chest with [physical enhancement: lesser] of his own and threw me right into a tree trunk. I braced as best as I could and winced at the sound of breaking bark from the impact.

My back and chest was in horrible pain. I bit it back and put a hand under me to get back up.

I never made it to my feet and hand the man’s two hands on my throat. I ignored the pain and lack of air and activated [lightning body] to hopefully shock him off.

He fell, but not from my spell. Layla was on his back, shocked too by my spells, and had both of her hands on his jaw.

“Let brother. GO.”

With a crack of broken bone, the man’s head turned one hundred and eighty degrees up. Layla’s eyes widened as his failed to close.

Pushed down by gravity, the lifeless body and Layla came crashing down on me.

I frenziedly scrambled to get the body off of me. I spared a moment to pant before rushing back and pulling the frozen Layla away from there with me.

I was breathing heavily and dry heaving after that and Layla was in no better condition. She was breathing faster than even me and kept turning back to the dead body from time to time.

None of these were good signs, but I had no idea what to do and just awkwardly hugged her in my own panic. Layla openly cried at this point.

“A...Am I bad? I k...killed him. Only bad people do that right?”

I took a deep breath to calm myself down as much as I could while still in the hug. This needed to go right to stop major mental problems in the future.

“No. It was only an accident. You didn’t mean to do that right?”

She paused a little and nodded. I forced a bit of pep into my voice from however much of it still left in my body at that point.

“Then you are not bad. You did not do that to him out of any evil thoughts. You just did it to save me. So you are my hero and a good girl, isn’t that right?”

She sniffed a little, but I could feel the small nod she gave on my shoulder.

I kept the hug to give her the time to settle her emotions. She eventually stopped crying and I pulled away from the hug, relieved that she seemed to have calmed down.

“Right, we need to go and get mom and dad now. Think you can do that?”

“Y..Yes.”

I kept my voice as positive as possible for her.

“Good. Take my hand and we’ll head back.”