This world seemed to place a lot more weight on martial prowess than the previous world William had been in. Sure, there had been knights and warriors, but not many that William had met. Here, everything was about warriors. Well, martial artists, really. Whether they used sword, spear, fist, or something else, they all had some common abilities.

Big Sister Li had brought some stories to William to read together. They were a lot like the wizard stories he’d grown up on in the previous world. People even flew and shot fire from their hands. It was just that it came from internal power, ki, instead of external mana. There was also much more emphasis on the physical body. William remembered that most of the wizards could have used some of that.

On the other hand, William hadn’t actually seen any of these things done in this world. He confirmed with Big Sister that they weren’t just children’s stories, and that the disciples he could watch training just hadn’t reached the right level. Apparently, people were very secretive with their special techniques. It made some amount of sense, but William still thought it was a way to end up with sub-par people in general.

William really liked Big Sister. She spent all her time taking care of him. Actually, William found that somewhat odd, since it was really all of her time. Presumably, she should have things of her own she needed to do. It certainly wasn’t something about William that had her assigned, or perhaps volunteered, to take care of him. Nobody knew he was anything special, except for her. So, William figured she had her own reasons for avoiding the rest of the family. He wasn’t going to pry into that, because if he needed to know, there would likely be plenty of time to find out.

Every day, William would have more stories read to him by Big Sister. “Okay Hui'Lam, since you enjoy warrior stories so much, I have another set of books I think you’ll like. These are about wizards and magic!” William hadn’t heard wizards or magic in this language yet, but after looking them up he got excited. This world had magic too? Maybe he’d be lucky and it was a different magic system that he could actually use. Alternatively, he’d be fine using these martial techniques, since they were close enough to magic after a certain point. He just hoped he could do at least one of those. “Okay Big Sister, let’s start reading!”

The story was about a wizard named Marcelor. It was said he was so powerful that he could call huge storms of lightning, and destroy mountains with a single fireball. The stories were fun, but William knew they were probably exaggerated, unless magic was more powerful here. That said, he could think of a method to call a lightning storm without using an impossibly large amount of mana, at least using the systems of the previous world. Marcelor went on many adventures, fighting monsters, dragons, and demons. He also gathered together wizards from around the world, and started a big wizard’s guild. William would have liked more details, but that was about what he got. It was the children’s version of the story, after all.

The biggest thing Marcelor was famous for was fighting a Demon King. William was actually slightly disappointed at that fact. Not that it wasn’t a good story, but that there was something like a Demon King in this world too. It was bad enough that humans would fight and kill each other when there wasn’t someone trying to wipe them out of existence entirely. Though, since it was a story, he couldn’t be sure of what exactly was true from it. He tried to let Big Sister know that he wanted to know the actual truth of stories, but he was still a kid, at best a toddler. Though he was a genius child, by some definitions at least, she still pampered him like one would a regular child, which often included shading of the truth.

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William discovered that Big Sister Li didn’t like watching people train martial arts. Whenever he would sit by the window, she would be further back, where she could only see him and not outside. There were also females among those training, almost as many as there were males, but Big Sister never went and trained. William wasn’t going to ask why, or even bring it up, because he had a feeling it would be a touchy subject. On the other hand, he had to admit he didn’t understand how women’s minds worked, so maybe he was thinking too deeply about it.

As he watched people training, William was disappointed to discover that nobody used staves. He did have to admit they were somewhat of an inferior weapon in many cases, since many similar things could be done with a spear, but you could also stab people with it. In fact, the training spears looked like staves, for the most part. Most people used swords or spears, or at least similar bladed weapons and polearm type weapons. Though, everyone in the areas he could watch just had wooden training versions of such weapons. After all, they were somewhere around 8-10 years old. It was a strange thing, seeing a culture that focused so much on martial arts. Or rather, the subculture that was his family.

William never went outside the rather extensive grounds that the Yu family, of which he was technically a part, owned. Despite that, he knew that outside the walls, there were the workings of a normal country. Farmers, artisans, laborers, politicians, scholars, and everything else that made up a country. There were also more people who trained as warriors, including other family clans, and various schools of martial arts. William wasn’t necessarily interested in a lifestyle that revolved around fighting like a warrior would have, but he couldn’t help thinking it would be useful to have such abilities. Especially if the Demon King were anything like the one in the last world.