I was born of the 1st day of winter, babies born when I was were supposed to be scholarly and wise.

If my life would have ended up like it was expected to I probably would have gone to the imperial city and studied to become a teacher for my village.

Suffice to say that didn't happen.

From a young age my father and mother were busy workers, so I found myself often left in the care of my aunt.

She was a lovely woman, a beauty that stole the hearts of many of classmates.

She ran a small library, lending books to anyone who could read.

She made a habit of regularly tutoring me once I turned four.

I was frequently given the chance to sit in her library and read books of all kinds, this was the time when I found out about adventurers.

Adventurers were officially imperial backed explorers, typically pompous noble children with a party of armed guards doing the fighting whilst they did all of the "hard" work: charting dungeons and bringing artefacts back for scholars to study.

This kind of life was unappealing to me, being a lap dog for the emporer who refused to show his face to his people didn't sit well even with my young self.

I read more and more as I grew and discovered both the true adventures aswell as books on magic that were poorly hidden away by my aunt.

The true adventures weren't an official group, they were a group made up mostly of the more eccentric common people. They refused to hand over their discovered places and objects and shared knowledge only with other true adventurers and very trusted confidants.

The books on magic I found covered things far more advanced than what was taught in schools even to students years older than me, I studied them regularly without my aunts knowledge.

This was how I spent most of my early childhood, reading and studying magic as well as other miscellaneous things.

As my body grew a solid goal formed within my mind:

Become a true adventurer.

The magic I was learning gave me an advantage as I progressed through school but ontop of that, I began to study various animal types, knowledge on tradinf and economics, types of monsters, dungeon architecture, geography, enchanting and alchemy amongst various other topics that I thought would be of benefit.

From seven through to ten years old my studies increased even further as I began to actually hunt monsters with the magic I had learnt, this was when I realised that my body itaelf was lacking.

I was underweight and had virtually no developed muscle, my body was frail and weak as most mages bodies tended to be.

This was when I began to take extra classes in school as well as spending hours travelling between villages and studying the way different guards corps fought.

I learnt directly during school, worked on my body strength, then went to the library and studied.

Ontop of that I regularly hunted monsters to test my progress and sold what they dropped to earn money for more books from other libraries as well as food to help my body develop and hopefully actual tutelage in various fields eventually.

I was both mentally and physically progressing, my early teens were spent mastering this routine and becoming smarter and stronger than even many of the villages adults.

By the time my fourteenth birthday rolled around I had made the decision to use the small fortune I had acquired to pay for a few tutors to aid my studies.

Soon I was studying under the village blacksmith, the most skilled mage the village had at the time, the former guard captain as well as a specialty alchemy and enchanting tutor.

I kept this level of learning up for as long as I could before my skills reached a level I was more than satisfied with.

On my seventeenth birthday I formally said goodbye to the tutors who had helped me and decided to take on my first major monster hunt.

I learnt many lessons from the following week of agonising pain, namely that I needed proper equipment.

But also that information gathering was the only thing that kept me alive.

My curiousity was unmatched by anyone I knew but even I was unsure if I could pursue monsters stronger than that without dying extremely young.

I spoke to my aunt first about what I had been preparing for, she was calm and told me that she had known and only left me to my own devices because of how seriously I took it and how much preperation I had made. She gave me her approval to follow my dreams without guilt in my heart for betraying her.

My mother and father were kind people who overworked themselves trying to provide for me, when I eventually mentioned that I had been secretly training to be an adventurer for years they were angry but came around once they realised that I had already made enough money to provide for myself easily for years to come even if they never worked a day again.

With my parents and aunt's support and thirteen years of training under my belt I decided to get my career as an adventurer started in a big way.