K’len was one of the worst kids I have ever had the pleasure of making acquaintances with. He had the spoiled rich kid vibe already and we were only 6-year-old toddlers! He is also the one that has the most followers in our age group, which is mostly due to him having the most toy varieties, a virtue of his uncle being a carpenter. He was also one of the reasons that I even got bit by that snake. Gilli, as a children's game, was about hitting a fist-sized oblong seed with a stick making it rise into the air, after which you try to basically hit a home run with the seed. If anyone catches the seed while it is in the air, the batter is out, otherwise, the one to hit it the farthest wins.

Now, as lazy children in case the seed goes out of bounds, a general unspoken rule is that whoever hits it has to bring it back. But K'len, being a spoiled rich kid, instead made others do his work for small amounts of bribes. It was in the same way my previous self was duped into getting the seed back, and the rest was history. To think all of it was because of a horse toy, that wasn’t even that good by earth standards. The reason for my internal exclamation was because of what I heard from K’len during playtimes. The man in front of me was an absolute shithead and my instincts about him being a scumbag weren’t wrong.

K’len’s dad, according to K’len at least, was an “epitome of manliness”. His dad apparently didn’t take any instructions from his mom and when she was rude enough to instruct him, he beat her up. I distinctly remember him saying something that was confusing at the time but horrifying now that I know the implications.

*Flashback*

“Fucking hag! Just wait till I grow up!”

“Hey K’len, what is wrong? Why are you so angry?”

“It is my fucking hag of a mom, she won’t cook me my favourite food.”

“Hey, you said a bad word! And my mom said we have to eat all the food or we will end up shorter than the shrubs.”

“Tch! Whatever! Wait till I grow up and become strong enough. Then, I will teach the hag what it means to be a man, just like dad does!”

*Flashback end*

It was bad enough that the man in front of me was a scumbag, but to think that he was indoctrinating his son in his scumbag-ness was worse. But for now, I will put on a polite smile to get out of the conversation as fast as possible.

“Ah yes, K’len is one of my good friends. He even shares the toys he gets from his uncle.”

“That is good, I heard you got bit by the green nightmare snake, are you ok now lad?”

'Tch, asking a kid who suffered an entire day’s worth of nightmares yesterday about the nightmare, it is as if the dude is trying to trigger trauma.'

“Yes, a little nightmare wouldn’t scare me. Luckily it was me instead of K’len, otherwise, I wouldn’t know what would happen to him.”

Hmph, take that, it is only because I am special that I survived the ordeal, your son would have ended up like a retard in the same position. I was further saved from continuing the conversation when other adults joined in to ask questions on how I was able to reduce the time to find the starting mana, so I gave a small lecture on how I accomplished the task. By the end of it, all of them were praising me for my simple solution, which was more accurate.

“Well, that’s enough guys, I only have till sundown to train with this guy before his mother takes over, so break up!”

“Hmm? His mother will take over? Isn’t he trying to become a fighter?”

Immediately K’len’s dad asked with sudden curiosity.

“Oh, Ilyon, I didn’t tell you guys about that yet, right? Well, the case is that Cyclos is also trying to learn to become a healer from his mother.”

“Oh? Trying to train your son to take up the vacant village leader, captain?”

“Well, it’s not like we can’t be without a village leader for longer, right? It has already been 2 generations without a proper village leader. As much as I love the village elder council, if we do not have a unified leader, we as a tribe will never grow.

And actually, it was not my decision to have him trained in such a way, it was his own decision. Even after warning him that he wouldn’t have enough time to play anymore, he still chose to pursue both paths”

Dad said with obvious pride on his face, if I was in his position and my child did something similar and took great responsibility for the future, I too would be proud. But currently being on the opposite side, it was a bit embarrassing.

“Oh? Looks like we have a future tribe leader here. Better be ready for some competition young Cyclos, because K’len is also aiming for the same spot.”

That was obviously a lie because if K’len was working towards the same goal, a blabbermouth like him wouldn’t keep it to himself. This meant that Ilyon here wanted to train his son to be a tribe leader after hearing that I would probably become one. While I was not sure what being a tribe leader meant yet, from the job title at least I could guess this was supposed to be the top leader of the village. However, I didn’t understand how the village could function without an effective leader for generations and why in the first place the leader position was vacant in the first place.

“See? That's nice, you will have someone to talk about now Cyclos. Anyway, now scramble you guys! I am trying to teach here!”

Eventually, everybody cleared off, and it was just in time for Cylix to return from archery practice. He was looking absolutely spent, as he was sweating all over.

“I have finished basic archery with Mr.Gerys, Mr.Roc”

“Good, good! Rest for a while before we continue with spear practice. This time Cyclos will join too”

“Ah?”

“Yes? You have reached mana exhaustion, right? We can’t do much more as we have to let you recover in time for your lessons with your mom. So, we will be training your skills next, always remember Cyclos, reinforcement only gives you the body required for the hunt but not the skills required! So, most of the time training here will be training with a spear, archery or learning more about the animals we hunt so that you can survive better!”

“Yes, Mr Roc!” Cylix and I spoke simultaneously.

“Good, Now Cylix, sit down, close your eyes and try to see the mana within you. It comes from the heart and spreads throughout the body. Your tired state makes your body instinctively pull the mana towards them as they try to heal. Try to feel the mana following from your heart towards the area that pains you.”

Well, I guess this is what the process would have been if I couldn’t sense mana. Dad was trying to gently guide Cylix through the process to sense the mana. I too decided to chip in to help Cylix.

“Cylix, imagine that you have three eyes instead of two, and your third eye is here inside your head. This third eye is not like your other two eyes, it doesn't see the world like our normal eyes. It instead sees the unseeable like our mana.

Now try opening it as you try to sense the mana inside of you, around you, in the ground, in the air. Mana flows everywhere.”

Cylix tried to stay focused for a few more tries but eventually failed to sense any mana. Dad immediately stepped in to try and reassure him.

“No need to worry, as I have said before, it takes a long time to reach even for geniuses from the village. Cyclos is the only outlier, but as I said before, you don’t need to be discouraged. Take him as your current goal before the dragonslayer, and try to surpass him! Cyclos will also try not to stay complacent and let you surpass him, so try to keep up with him in that eternal chase until you one day surpass him as a warrior or your chase ends!”

Cylix immediately regained a bit of the spirit and nodded to show that he understood.

“Good! Now try to keep a mantra or a set of instructions like my or Cyclos’s words, and repeat them to yourself every time you try to sense your mana. This will help you stay focused throughout the process. If you have trouble remembering it, we will both be happy to help until it becomes second nature.

Now that you both have rested for a bit, we will start practising the spear”

He handed both of us a spear and as I tried to keep the spear upright, I imagined myself looking comical as I wasn’t even a quarter the size of the spear. I looked to my side to see how Cylix was faring and saw that he was in the same position as me as he was struggling to keep the spear upright himself. Seeing a 6-year-old kid trying to hold on to a full-length spear made me burst into laughter which in turn caused me to lose the flimsy hold on the spear as it came crashing down. Apparently, Cylix too thought that it was too tough as within seconds of my spear hitting the ground, he too hit the ground.

I looked up to see my father wearing a sheepish face as he said. “You guys are acting so mature that I forgot you are still toddlers. Wait for a second, I will bring some sticks your size.”

Which when I thought was actually true, we acted nothing like your typical 6-year-old. Maybe mana can help us mature faster? Or maybe it is due to our special conditions. My memories of living life as Angelo and Cylix's orphan status and losing his family must have made us more mature than other children around. Eventually, dad came back with sticks our size as he started teaching us how to handle a spear. Things like proper holding positions, stances for the spear and then he taught us some kata containing all the spear attacks and before we knew it, it was sundown as we started walking back to my home through the mushroom lit streets of the village.

“Hey, Dad, what are those mushrooms that give off light called?”

“Those? They are called moonshrooms, because you know they give off light like the moon.”

This naming, well even on earth most things were named similarly stupid reasons anyway. Walking through the streets we were just passing through the market when I noticed something peculiar at one of the stalls.

“Hey, Dad, what’s that?”

“That? That's a mana crystal. A naturally occurring ore that we use to power the wards of the village?”

“Wards? Mana crystal?”

Cylix asked, confused, I too was a bit confused. I understand these words as I have seen plenty of stories that feature these concepts but didn’t know how the systems of those stories compare to the real world.

“Well, Mana Crystal is like any other crystal in the world, but something makes it so that the crystal can store mana in itself. We have the largest mana crystal beneath the beast-repelling rowan tree. The magic generated by the tree powers the crystal which in turn powers the village wards.

The tree itself makes berries whose smell repels the beasts. That is why we do the yearly beast repelling festival where we collect the rowan berries and make a paste out of them and apply it to the village borders and it is also the reason our village borders are red in colour. The wards however are a bit of magic from the time of the village's founding and were a gift by the founder and are one of the reasons we have been safe staying in a single spot all these years. They create a somewhat magical-beast repelling shield around the village which gets stronger as we get near to the rowan tree.

I don’t know how that works, your mother is one of the most knowledgeable people in the village. If anyone knows it is probably her so you should ask her. That reminds me, she asked me to buy some papyrus for your studies. Let's take a quick detour.”

We followed him to one of the stalls which was filled with study goods like papyrus, ink, and quills. Sigh, writing with quills would surely be difficult, but I have to get used to it as this is my life now.

“I want 4 reams of parchment please.”

“That will be one stone”

“One stone! It is hardly worth one stone! It is at most worth half a stone”

“No, no, this is top quality…..”

Thus, dad and the shopkeeper started bargaining with each other. In the end, we got the 4 reams of parchment, along with two ink bottles and a couple of quills all for the expensive price of 1 fist-sized salt stone.

Yes, you heard it right. The currency used in the village is salt stones. This is because the nearest salt mine is very far away, excavating the salt and bringing it home was a huge and dangerous effort. Since we are a mountain village and there is no sea near us either so salt is limited and hence ended up as a currency of the village. Along with grain as the smaller denomination of the currency, so the richest people in the village were either the hunters or the farmers, followed by the healers and lastly the tradesmen such as the carpenters, and blacksmiths.