Volume 1

Chapter 9

It’s the first day of spring and also the first day of our new routine. It’s just another change on it, but at least we seem to have found a solution for our problems.

The most urgent problem is: Grandma’s house is on tatters.

The roof need to be undone, the good parts preserved and the bad ones turned into firewood.

Of course, since this was calculated damage grandpa has been assessing the place from time to time and, counting with the damage made by the winter snow and winds, a group of three to five should be able to complete the work in a week total. It would be a lot more if the wood needed to be prepared and the nails ordered from the blacksmith, but these things have been taken care by father and grandfather on winter.

Except we can’t just go there and work because it’s spring!

The fields need to be tended, the orchards as well, and the seeds need to be planted.

Usually everyone above the age of ten would be on the fields, with the exception of housewives which are babysitting young kids and Ann, who wouldn’t stop her training no matter what.

So, this year Ann will help at the planting and we will leave the rebuilding of grandma’s house to the second-from-last week of spring, when grandpa, hopefully, will have completed his quota of planting for the year.

Of course, this means the water gathering chore will be exclusively on mine and Jacen’s shoulders.

Seeing as I need to keep low-profile on my aura, this means expending most of the day to go to the river and then back, only so Ann can help at the fields.

Not to mention I still have to tend to my wood splitting chore and help around the house, since mother’s belly is pretty swollen already.

This means I and Jacen will mostly become househusbands.

What a pain.

But it will be a problem if mother gives birth and grandmother’s house isn’t done yet, so let’s do our best.

I mean, there are some plusses also, right?

I won’t have to go through the hag feast again, and grandmother will keep training us at night, when she has returned from the fields.

*sigh*

Let’s go with this….

***

First day was ok.

Wake in the morning after sleep on sister’s arm. Eat breakfast with everyone together. Split wood.

Take my bucket and go to the river with Jacen.

Then again.

And again.

And again.

And again.

Mother complains we are too slow and need to go faster.

We go again.

Me and Jacen help mother with lunch.

And then we eat.

The hags come with their sons and daughters.

I sweep the house clean, including taking care of the ashes in the brick oven, and Jacen takes a time off to go play with his friends.

I make midday snacks. The hags now want tea with their snacks, since mother has gotten so much from grandmother. Damn hags.

I help making yarn.

Night approaches, the hags go away.

I help mother with dinner, and Jacen soon joins us.

We finish dinner in time for grandfather, grandmother, Ann and father come back home.

We all eat together.

Before sleeping me, father and Jacen go to the kitchen and take cloth baths. Since mother is pretty much sure I can remember how to do it by now, this means I sweep most of my body by myself Jacen sweeps my back. In return I sweep his.

Since that dream I have been feeling a little weird about touching him, but I guess I need to get over it.

I mean, father’s penis should be much more of a trauma for me at this point of life.

Can you imagine the trauma of noticing your father’s penis being larger than your forearm?

It’s one of the most emasculating things I have ever experienced in my life. The experience of being harassed by the hags included.

If I didn’t know this is just a perspective trick, I would be seriously downhearted by now.

Anyhow.

Me and Jacen help sweeping father’s back together, since he is large and this is a good bonding moment.

Mother doesn’t bathe because she isn’t doing much work during the day, while grandma, grandpa and Ann take baths in the river before getting homer.

Father could take one of these as well, but It seems he doesn’t feel much like it those days. No. Instead I have to remember the scene of a humongous penis dangling a few centimeters from my face.

Thanks dad.

Next grandma checks on my progress on the [Aura Hidding] technique, gives me insight on it and corrects things I’m doing wrong, like imprinting weird colors or forms in the aura.

Then it’s reading and writing classes for a little bit. Grandmother teaches me, Jacen and Ann on cryptic. After she teaches basic math to Ann and Jacen, while I try to read some of the human language of this world.

It’s a bit difficult to do it by myself, but with perfect memory she just gives me a piece of paper, reads out loud what each word means and I try to copy and understand the grammatical rules by myself. It’s almost like a game of deciphering a lost language.

After that we go to bed. I hug Ann and Jacen… hugs me I guess…

That is a bit awkward, but since he doesn’t have an erection or anything I guess it’s fine.

I sleep for an hour and wake.

I gently leave the bed and resume training qigong and [Aura Hiding]. Since grandmother has given me permission to, I also do a late-night training consisting on using all hiding techniques at the same time.

[Aura Hiding], [Aura Analysis], [Aura Sensing], [Shadow] and [Cotton Step]. I put all of them to use and keep sweeping the boundaries of the house while looking for things like movements of insects and the breathing rhythms of everyone.

It’s difficult as fuck. The sheer amount of information I need to deal with is insane.

But again, cheat body, cheat skills.

I finish the night by sleeping with the family for just thirty more minutes.

***

First week was ok as well.

Father decided to take his baths on the river more than at home, which is good.

Mother bathed with us three times or something.

At first she was a bit shy, probably because she knows I have perfect memory, but… I guess she eventually realized - is there anything in her body I haven’t seen before?

Thought so.

Or maybe she just perceived how weird it is to be ashamed of being nude around your two sons which are bellow ten years old.

Nope. Me being a pervert who would get an erection because of her nudity doesn’t has a thing to do with that. Not at all.

Nope.

Anyhow.

The week was fine.

***

Second and third weeks.

Fine. Just boring, but fine.

Got permission from grandma to hunt the insects I see using a technique called [Wind Needle]. It’s a mix of the cladding, hardening and sharpening techniques.

However, you clad a small bubble of air and makes a needle with it by hardening the air in a certain form.

Weirdly grandma doesn’t seem to have the concept of air. There isn’t even a word for it. She said I should clad the [wind] around me and got a bit scared when she saw me cladding the air.

I mean, isn’t it a lot easier to clad air than to clad wind?

When I explained there was a “thing” around us which we breathed, like vapor from boiling water but invisible, she first looked puzzled and then amazed to be able to create aura needles without the need to clad small wind currents, but instead cladding air.

Of course, I said I had learned this from a ~dream~ of some sorts.

***

Fourth week.

We had laundry day this week.

Now, laundry in this world is a weird thing.

First, there is no soap. So, most of the times mother just boils some water, puts it into a big basin and have them cook for a bit in there. After that she removes any stains by scrubbing and go to the river to wash them completely.

Now, even while being seven months’ pregnant mother would still go to the river with me and Jacen to teach us how to wash the clothes. But she didn’t do it this month, because…

Second, there is one time in the year when mother does a special kind of washing.

So far I had only seen she do it once, since on my years here I didn’t actually care for what was going on with the clothes.

It was quite surprising, let me say, to see my mother mixing ashes with water and then ordering me and Jacen to stomp it with our bare feet.

It’s called [lye] and it seems to be something which helps cleaning the clothes.

Third, there was a whole year worth of greasy clothing to be stomped all day long, let rest in the buckets for a night, then stomped again, then let to rest in a new bucket with more lye for another night, them be scrubbed for a whole day.

Fourth, after all that scrubbing, we had to take this years’ worth of clothing for five people, boil it and take it to the river.

Once there, mother taught me and Jacen how to kneel on the river basin and scrub the clothes even more, eventually also beating them with a wooden stick.

All while mother talked with other woman who were doing the same thing as her.

So this was a hell of a week full of washing.

***

Fifth week. I’m glad there’s no more washing.

Sixth week. Sister is getting a bit tired of plowing the fields. For some reason this translated on she holding me stronger when we hug at night.

Seventh week. I felt something on my back this night. Oh gods, please let it be just a slimy bug… it isn’t. Poop-brother, I swear I would break your skull if I didn’t know you are deep asleep right now.

Eight week. I have become a master bug hunter. And also mastered the [Aura Hidding] technique. Grandma said I should keep this one active at all times to the point where it’s active even when I’m asleep. So, to make it an unconscious act. She also taught me a more advanced version of the [Aura Cushion] which is the [Aura Armor]. It’s just a mix of the [Aura Cushion] with hardening on the outsides, but it’s pretty difficult to do and dangerous as well… grandma said she wouldn’t let me try by myself if I hadn’t the regeneration powers, since it can hurt pretty bad. And indeed It can. I lost many small pieces of myself to this thing. Luckily they all grew back again.

Ninth week. Mother’s belly is freaking HUGE! She can barely move around the house, so I have taken the cooking duty full time. It seems grandma did it when she was pregnant with Ann, but today it’s my turn. Well, not that I hate cooking.

Tenth week. Just one more week until we start rebuilding grandma’s house. Everything seems to be ok. Also, my night training is giving great results. I can already have a small conversation with grandmother in the cryptic language and also write a little bit on both the cryptic and the common languages. I have mastered [Aura Armor] and although I can’t keep [Aura Hiding] unconsciously yet, I have achieved a level of mental development where I can keep tracking of it with ease. Grandma has also accepted to teach me a technique called [Aura Needle], which is the advanced version of [Wind Needle]. It’s a lot harder, since I have to create a small “mass” of Aura and harden only that, and then shoot it, but I think I can do it if I try hard enough. I mean, I do have a lot of spare time at night.

***

And it’s here!

First thing in the morning I helped mother making rice porridge, and then me, Ann, Jacen, Father, Grandfather and Grandmother went to grandfather’s house.

It was in a sorry state.

I mean, it was a house mostly like ours, but a big piece of the roof was caved in.

It was right over the kitchen, so at least the floor boards had been preserved.

Regardless, the first thing to do is to take the whole roof off.

So that’s what we will do.

Mother will stay at home and prepare our meals for us.

She is nine months pregnant, but the hags can help with at least this much, even if it’s spring.

Stay well ma.

So, as the adults start to work on removing the roof I and Jacen am in charge of taking everything and storing it neatly.

Ann isn’t with us because she went to the river take the water mother will need to cook. My wood splitting was done last night before we went to sleep, so there’s no need to worry about that.

Anyhow.

This world is really something else.

The outer layer of the roof is made of straw, so taking it off was simple. Time-consuming, as people tried to preserve as much as the straw as possible, but simple.

Even I could help with that.

But when late afthernoon came people started working on the wood, and that was just as impressive as the 300kg pig father brought home time ago.

There was no need for crowbars or hammers. The adults just grabbed the wood on the right spots and lifted it with the use of a little bit of aura.

Of course, knowing which are the sweet spots and which wood is to be taken off first is valuable knowledge, but it’s really weird to see the beans being taken from the roof with bare hands.

Not to mention the nails.

They are taken out of the wood with only the fingers. Grandfather seems to be the one in charge of this task.

Just amazing.

Of course, I can’t do much more than observe and help carry light stuff. We are in the open here, so if I’m to start lifting half a ton wood beans things would be weird.

But it’s interesting work indeed. Plus, everyone has a healthy face at the end of the day.

And then… river bath!

My first river bath in this world!

Was anti-climactic.

Since it was almost night we just quickly undressed, submerged in the water briefly, scrubbed with cloth, dressed our clean clothes and returned home.

At least dinner tasted delicious.

***

I’m glad I can talk stuff out with grandma. You see, I had an ingenious idea today, while I worked on the roof.

If I could use [Toxin] on the [Wind Needle] wouldn’t I be able to create a poisoned ranged attack?

[Aura Needle] would be like shooting my own foot, since an aura-eating disease would affect me as well.

But the air inside the [Wind Needle] isn’t directly in contact with me. It’s been restrained by the [Hardening] effect of the aura and will be released only when it hits the target.

Also, if I inject a lot of aura inside this air it seems to be possible to create a [Air Slime], which must be the weirdest thing in this world.

A slime made of air. Grandmother said they are probably the most harmless and fragile creatures in the world, but if I create one in a confined space which I had previously infected with the [Toxin] spell…

Wouldn’t I create a slime made of poisonous disease?

I’m feeling like Al-Kaeda now. Making antrax bombs.

So, the two of us went to the backyard this night to try my hypothesis…

First I casted [Toxin] on the air inside the [Wind Needle]. Then injected some aura. Approximately the same amount I did when creating the water slime.

Fun thing: Since I have [Aura Analysis] I can now see what is happening. First it was just air, then after the [Toxin] spell it become a collection of green-ish blue dots, then with aura some started to eat one another, until…

There was just one big dot of green-ish blue aura color. With the [Aura Analysis] off I couldn’t see it, but the poisonous air slime was there.

Grandma took a chicken and I lightly poked it with the [Toxic Air Slime].

The thing moved inside the chicken by itself and then popped into nothing. The chicken seemed to feel something, but there was no result.

I tried again with a plain [Air Slime], but it popped as well.

Then, I tried one less time with just the [Air Needle] + [Toxin] combo… and this time the chicken died a few moments after being injected with it.

So, it seems indeed the [Toxin] spell has something to do with bacteria. But, more interesting than that… doesn’t that means that slimes are actually bacteria which mutated by eating others and receiving huge chunks of magic power?

Very interesting.

Oh, yes, since we didn’t know for how long it would keep being poisonous we obviously didn’t eat the chicken. We stored it on a box, but when we checked back it had turned into a smelly red slime grandmother said to be a [Flesh Slime]. Those things can melt and eat flesh pretty quick, so I poked it with an [Aura Needle] and burnt the remains.

No more hex rats, please.

***

Second day of rebuilding.

Things got slow now.

We have to take all nails out the wood, so this is a task for the whole day. Since Jacen and I can’t be seen using aura to do this with our bare hands we have been tasked with helping mom and bringing things to people on grandmother’s house.

Tea, snacks, beer… these kind of things.

Boring days are boring.

***

My new hobby is to make late night experiments with grandma.

No, not that kind of experiments.

The scienc-y kind.

You see, the [Toxin] spell seems to be very interesting indeed. It increases the life of pathogens in stuff and so on.

But only pathogens? Or any kind of microbe?

Today’s experiment is designed so we can discover that.

I’m casting [toxin] in a bow of milk with some left-over cheese from a previous batch.

Theoretically speaking, if the [toxin] spell is a spell capable of making all microorganisms multiply and become active, this should make milk into curd pretty fast.

So, let’s try and…

Yeah, no.

It has spoiled too quick. The curd isn’t even sour. It floated on top of the milk a bit and then sunk right at the bottom. I tried fishing it up with a wooden spoon, but it seems there’s no more curd here.

Just ultra-spoiled milk. This thing may be pure lactic acid.

The spell is too strong to do this.

Aaah, how will I explain this to grandma… I said I had a dream where this worked, so now I have to come up with an explanation…

***

In the end I told grandma it had failed and she said it must have been just a common dream then, and not a [dreamer’s dream].

Pretty convenient if I must say so.

Regardless, she allowed me to buff the milk with aura to see what we get. I thought it would be a regular slime, but this time we got a weird urchin-like thing.

Grandma quickly tossed the thing in the fire. It seems that was an acidic shelled slime. A variant form of the acid slime which has a shell over it.

Why would a slime get a shell?

Isn’t the main point to be invulnerable to common blows?

No… thinking well, slimes in this world aren’t invulnerable to physical attacks at all. They are like small balloons full of liquid. If you pop them they explode.

Having a shell should be an advantage at the end.

Oh, and don’t misunderstand. It was an acid slime, but it wasn’t as dangerous as it sounds. It was born from lactic acid after all. It probably was as acid as vinegar or something.

Anyhow, I wonder if that evolved from a bacterial spore? I’m guessing this should be the case.

***

Third day of rebuilding. Nails are out, now it’s time to start rebuilding. Again, me and Jacen can only help a bit since the way of nailing the nails in the wood is fantasy-like as expected.

Yes, people do It with their bare hands. Just put the nail on top of the wood, your tumb on top of the nail, and press hard. It’s there. Nailed.

Now, this is also a time-consuming job, not because of its nature but because it’s difficult to find good positions to stay at while working at the roof.

Ann almost fell a couple times already.

I guess some things only experience brings us.

***

Ok, I have reworked the experiment.

This time I won’t be using the [toxin] spell but just giving a little bit of aura to the cheese base we need to make new cheese.

Mother said I can do it only once more since she doesn’t want to expend all of our cheese base, but that’s life.

I’m confident it will work this time.

Under grandmother’s eyes I took the milk I have let to rest at the beginning of the day. It was lightly sour already, and had a nice crud.

I took the crud and put into another bowl. Then, I took the cheese-base and poured aura in it until I could see the small blue dots moving inside with [Aura Analysis].

Then, right into the bow it goes aaannd…. We wait.

A little salt and it should be done by tomorrow.

…

Let’s see, let’s see… it is… a slime.

A damn white slime.

Why does everything magical in this world gives birth to damn monsters?!

Grandmother says it’s a common earth slime. According to her they are mostly inoffensive, unless you get suffocated by it.

We just popped the thing and tossed the remains in the fire as always.

The insides where a bit sticky.

***

Fourth day of rebuilding.

We finished putting the wood back in place. Now is time for the most boring and time-consuming of all the tasks so far:

Weaving the straw into it.

Me and Jacen can help on this, so we are doing our best. Still, it really doesn’t help that the straw needs to be weaved on leaves bigger than me.

I start to question why don’t we use wood and create a wood ceiling.

Grandma said the problem is the amount of nails needed. We would need a lot more, so everything would become too expensive.

Where are the iron slimes when you need them?

***

So, I can’t just use magic power on microbes or they go nuts and become slimes.

I also can’t just use [Toxin] or things get too spoiled.

And, yes, I have tried using less of the chant. However, it was useless. Even when casted on just a tiny piece of maturing cheese it would make the whole cheese decompose in a lot of goo instead of maturing faster.

My only other option is to try to change the spell by singing it with slightly different tunes until I find one which allows me to increase the speed of fermentation without destroying everything in the process.

But this grandma has forbidden me to do. I won’t disagree, since there is a chance I will cause an explosion or something even worse, like the birth of an aerial disease which can affect the family.

It was pretty dangerous already to even learn how to cast [Toxin], so much that when father taught me how to do it we trained outside of the house, near the toilet.

So, no explorations on creative uses for the [Toxin] spell tonight.

Instead, grandma said I should start training the use of [Aura Hand] and [Aura Weapon]. They are advanced versions of the [Aura Needle] one, where I can make a simple hand or a simple weapon made of aura.

However, not even I have enough aura recovery speed to be able to keep those on all the time.

In the end I had to increase the time expended on qigong every night I order to increase my aura recovery speed even more.

Who would guess I would be pressured to increase this aura recovery speed I have been so proud of…

***

Fifth day of rebuilding.

More straw weaving.

At least we are at the end of the process already.

***

So, tonight we had another family reunion…. Kind of.

We finished weaving grandmother house’s roof today, so all that’s left is for us to move her things there.

This, however, means our private lessons will be no more.

What to do?

Well, the adults didn’t seem much concerned as they drank brown tea again. I guess it’s some kind of tradition for receiving and seeing people out.

Of course, mother didn’t have any. She is 9 months pregnant, so even this world has some restraints on this.

Good news is – I have witnessed the preparation of the tea. As weird as it may sound, it doesn’t take only the cocoa seeds to make it. In fact, I would say it is the least… the other ingredients include sugar, orange, apple and lemon skins, cinnamon sticks, cloves and a lot, and I mean a lot, of ginger.

Preparation is easy. You just boil everything together and then serve.

Anyhow.

I was talking about training, right?

Well, I asked grandma about it and she said I should focus on increasing my aura recovery speed for now.

It seems to be the way things used to be done in the Long Lived Clan – A “better to have a large income than to have a lot in the bank” kind of situation.

Still, can’t I keep learning in the meanwhile?

At least she promised to write some of the history of our clan and world for me, so I can train my reading and become more fluid. Right now I can remember all the words she taught me, but it’s still hard for me to actually read things. Getting the sense of how the grammar is put together isn’t easy.

So, for the next four or five months I’m to keep just training to increase my aura recovery speed.

That means a lot of qigong.

It seems a little boring, but she allowed me to try to do it while walking, and also keeping the spells activated and the [Aura Analysis] and [Aura Sensing] techniques activated as well.

It’s just insane to think on doing this much, but I really want to get an even stronger brain. Plus, it’s a world without TV, internet or even books where I’m not allowed to go outside for now. How am I to have fun if not by creating seemingly impossible challenges and defeating them?

So let’s do this.

In a few months, when I’m five, I will have to spend my time out of the house – like all kids my age.

Mother wondered if I shouldn’t be kept inside the house, but grandmother said it would be too suspicious. I must be out like a regular kid would.

I said to grandmother I wouldn’t like to be stuck to the other kids, but she said I should hang out with Jacen or find myself a quiet place. Since she wouldn’t be coming to mother’s house I’m allowed to visit her to train and listen to stories, but not more than three times a week.

There are a good couple hundred meters from the houses to the wall, so even if I didn’t mixed well with the other kids I could try and find a place amongst those to just sit by myself or something like this.

Yeah. Pretty rough.

Also, I didn’t get any tea today. Mother didn’t let Ann give me any. Sister still hugged me extra hard though. Guess I can’t go training when my cute older sister is hugging me so hard, right?

***

Mother’s labor started a couple days after moving grandma’s stuff back to her house. I got pretty anxious thinking either if I should be here to see it or not, but the family’s utter and total relaxation was a bit unsettling.

Mother herself was just chilling. Ann went to get grandmother but she was walking all the way there.

And I soon discovered why.

Mother’s labor took twelve hours.

First it was just her moving around the house. Should woman in labor get so stressed and prone to move around?

I mean, she was cooking dinner and sweeping the house!

I tried saying I would do that, but she pushed me aside, a bit angered.

Mother angered with me. It has been some time since this last happened.

Well, it was a few hours later that she seated on the ground and finally got grandmother’s and Ann’s attention.

Me and Jacen were made to go and prepare hot water and clean cloths.

Soon mother’s water broke and a weird scene started. She got into a series of positions for the next hours. She laid on her sides, stood against the wall, kneeled on the ground, even stood on all fours.

Then, she stopped and rested for a bit.

I was worried since her water had broken already, but Ann and Grandmother were calm, so…

Anyhow, after a break she started to push again, this time squatting on the ground with Ann holding her back and grandma under her, waiting for the baby.

Her screams were weird. I thought they would be of pure pain, but they were a mix of pain and strength, like how a weight-lifter does his best to lift a heavy set of iron.

There was some determination on that. Something that made me see mother as strong.

Well, mother is strong. Plus, this is her fourth birth. I guess she is used to it by now.

Soon little sister’s cry echoed in our living room.

…yeah.

It seems having the birth in the bedroom isn’t good. Plus, grandmother had the winter fire lit to guarantee the room would be hot and “just in case” something needed to be done.

Little sister was born and soon grandmother gave a knot to the umbilical cord, cutting it after with a knife.

I thought it was over by then, but grandmother and Ann stood by for some forty minutes until mother started to push again. She wasn’t putting so much strength on it anymore, but soon a weird… thing… came out of her.

I guess that’s that thing babies get wrapped on. The placenta or something.

Anyhow, grandmother put it on a bow and then casted healing magic on mother’s genitals.

The spell she used, however, was different from the one I knew. It was longer and more complex, on the level of complexity of the [Shadow] spell. She also didn’t need to touch mother’s genitals to apply it. She just casted it and mother started to relax.

“All”

“Yes grandma?”

“This is the intermediate level healing spell called [Deep Healing]. If you ever find yourself in a situation like this, don’t ever cast the spell on the woman’s womb, which is here. Cast it only downwards, okay?”

“Okay.”

Well, later grandmother said the reason why, and it seems a woman’s womb will remain open longer if I do that, which could make them infertile or even cause the womb to fall down.

Pretty nasty.

But you know what isn’t nasty?

Seeing mother holding little sister on her arms.

I mean, it IS kind of nasty because she is all covered in goo and I feel a weird jealousy swelling up inside me.

Really strong jealousy.

But I’m an adult in my mind, so I can control this.

Afterwards grandmother hugged mother and went back home. Mother went to sleep and father bound the baby tight with cloth, taking it to the crib in their room next.

He also forbade us from entering there, saying the baby should be kept away from any light for at least a week.

So this is why I was kept in the dark at the beginning.

It doesn’t seem very healthy.

***

Well, I totally understand Jacen now.

I don’t know why, but every time mother or father has to go and take care of little sister I feel really jealous.

Like, really jealous. As if I had been robbed of something precious. As if I wasn’t the important child of the house anymore.

Maybe indeed I’m not.

Damn. This damn feeling of not losing love.

Get a grip myself! Get a fucking grip! You are a reincarnated person, not a freaking drama kid!

But it feels so sad…

I have to say, I may have been showing a pissed off face the last days, so strong this feeling is.

Me, sis and Jacen have gone back to our room, so I wasn’t sleeping while hugging her anymore.

But fuck that. I just started to sleep with her again. If I can’t have mother’s love then at least I can have sister’s, right?

… what a fucking ridicule line of thought.

I have even accepted Jacen and his inopportune erections when he decides to come and sleep with us.

…it… doesn’t feel all bad.

Anyhow.

Let’s talk business.

I kept splitting wood, but I’m finally off the water collecting duty. On the other side, mother needs to rest for a few days, so I’m helping more with the house chores. The hags won’t be coming for a whole year, so we need to pay extra attention to knitting.

So, my routine is waking early, making breakfast, wood splitting, then sewing with mother, then making lunch, then laundry, then knitting with mother, then making dinner, then sleeping with sister for an hour, then special qigong training.

Now, this qigong training is especially difficult.

First because I’m trying my best to do it while standing up and walking around, second because I’m using most of the techniques and spells the family taught me while doing it as well.

That means to do qigong while moving and keeping active, at the same time, the [Aura Sensing], [Aura Analysis], [Aura Hiding], [Smoke], [Cotton Step], [Aura Armor], [Weapon Strengthening], [Sharpening], [Aura Needle], [Toxic Wind Needle] and even [Crop Growth].

The only ones I don’t use are [Ligh] and [Flash], since they would be seen from the outside.

How do I do practice using all of those techniques at once?

Well, first I took a bow and put some dirt in it. Then I prepared myself. Cladded with all the aura-cladding derivate techniques and spells, such as [Aura Armor] and [Smoke], I casted [Crop Growth] on a grain of rice while also doing qigong.

I usually cast it wrong and a single rice treant a little bigger than my legs grow, but it’s no matter. Next I train cutting each of the treant’s tentacles using either my sword-training twig, my spear-training twig, [Aura Needle] or [Wind Needle].

It’s impossible for me to use all those techniques at the same time now, but I do intend to come to a point where I’m able to use the spear on one hand, the sword on the other and still cast spells at the same time – so I’m working towards that.

And the best part of all is that I don’t need to fear boredom. Not only training at night, in the dark, is hellishly difficult and I need to use [Aura Analysis] and [Aura Sensing] to the fullest to just do as much as see around me, I also effectively battle against a treant every night.

I mean, even if the tentacles aren’t bigger than half a meter or something I still get excited, jump and do acrobatics to get away from the tentacles, and once or twice it almost broke through my [Aura Armor] by grabbing one of my legs or arms and squeezing hard.

If I’m not using the [cotton step] technique at all times I fear people may hear me. Thankfully the treant’s tentacles make only little sound as well.

Anyhow, it’s intensive battle, so no boredom here my friends! No boredom at all!

***

That apparition has returned.

You know, the white ghost thing?

It was gone for a while after grandma started my training, but it’s back now.

And I think I know what it is.

I tried looking at it with [Aura Analysis] and I saw literally nothing. So this thing has no aura at all.

It’s not a living thing from this world.

But it’s also another thing that has started to ignore me. It goes straight to my parents’ room and only after comes to look at my training.

So I developed a theory based on what grandmother had told me earlier this year on the subject of souls and the dead.

And I guess it got confirmed once wrote a word on the ground and then used [Light] to illuminate it. The thing read the writing and tried to pat my head.

Yep.

This is grandma.

She said she was a [Soul Walking Prodigy] after all.

She is the white ghost-like thing which has been creeping around the house all this time. Grandma’s soul, walking out of her body to check on us.

So this is why this thing only comes at random times. It’s when grandma gets worried or curious about us.

Normally people shouldn’t be able to see her, since she is only a soul going around, but I guess this is somehow another one of my cheat skills?

Or maybe I have developed this on my own. Grandma said people become able to see souls and ghosts if they go through intense emotional experiences while they are around. And I surely had my quota of intense experiences as a newborn trying to control his feelings.

So I can see ghosts.

Neat.

***

The next day marked two big events.

First, the day my little sister has finally completed three weeks of age, and a terrible secret got revealed to me.

Second, the day grandma came to our house and asked mother to talk to me.

Let’s go a bit at each time.

Little sister had been quietly laying on her crib this whole time – her face looking like a knee, just like all children this age.

Mother has been paying special attention to me all the while I’m next to the crib, and Jacen as well.

Do they think I will poke her or something?

I’m not older brother, you know?

Anyhow.

It was when I was looking at her weird knee face that it happened.

An ominous feeling.

A terrible premonition.

When a looked behind me, mother was holding that…

That bottle. The awful bottle of venom which made me suffer diarrhea for weeks.

“M… Ma?”

“Uhm? What is it?”

She is filling a tablespoon. A full tablespoon of ricin oil. The smell makes me petrified.

“That… that isn’t good for… baby…”

“What are you talking about? This is so she won’t get a constipation. All babies must drink this.”

This…. this can’t be right.

I never had constipations as a baby. You’re giving this terrible diarrhea-inducing venom to babies which aren’t even constipated?!

Little sister, I will save you. I will cast detoxification magic as soon as mother turns her back, don’t worry.

…except then you won’t poop and mother may think you need even more oil.

I will cast it only in your mouth, so you won’t be subjected to the taste.

Mother didn’t object when I proposed this much, so please calm down. Big brother will help you from now on.

Even if that bottle gives me the creeps.

Anyhow.

Grandmother came by noon.

Since she couldn’t get inside and I couldn’t go outside we talked from the window.

She said the skill I had and which allowed me to see her was a technique called [Soul Seeing]. Since it was convenient for learning I should be attentive. She would come and stay next to me while I battled the treant.

According to her only intense emotions and the presence of someone else’s soul is already enough to awaken the complementary soul-skills, like the [Soul Hearing] and [Soul Feeling] ones.

After I learned those we would be able to keep our training at night, while everyone slept. She while soul walking and I who don’t need to sleep more than a single hour every night.

I won’t even need to go to her house in order to learn, after I’m five.

That seems good. In the end maybe I can escape from the fate of being bored to death during all of the day.

After all, if she teaches me the [Soul Walking] technique wouldn’t I be able to go around learning a lot of new stuff?

I won’t be training my body, but I surely will be able to collect info and discover interesting things.

Let’s set for these two objectives.

First, be able to use all techniques and spells while also doing qigong. Second, learn [Soul] related skills, like the basics [Soul Hearing] and [Soul Feeling]. Third, use this to train harder with grandmother and learn nice things.

***

The day has come.

Sister’s birthday.

My training is going smooth and I have learned all the needed techniques. I can also use the spear and sword at the same time.

Still, I don’t feel happy.

Because we are going to grandma’s house to prepare everything for sister’s birthday.

Mother will stay home taking care of little sister, but I, Jacen and Father will go to grandmother’s house and prepare a big feast.

It’s sister’s last birthday party and also the one which marks her adulthood.

Tomorrow she will leave for the county’s capital to find a job and enroll at a dojo.

I’m sad.

Genuinely sad.

I mean, I’m happy sister is happy. She has been with a smile in her face the whole day and, when I hugged her and congratulated her on being an adult she lifted me from the ground and hugged me against her face.

That was nice.

But she is going to the capital, and I’m worried.

She is a trained person and has a lot of aura to spare.

But she’s still a countryside girl going to try and live on her own on the big city.

I really feel like I want to be with her.

And what if something bad happens to her while she is going there?

It’s a long, long trip until the capital, even if it’s only our county’s capital.

It’s on the scale of a couple months on foot. Making measurements on this world’s units of length and roughly converting it to the metric system… I guess around 500km from here?

It will be a lot less if she can find merchants to help her on the way, but a two-wheeled merchant cart like the ones we have coming to our village doesn’t move much faster than the average walking speed of a person.

While the bigger ones, with four wheels and three to four horses pulling them… well, those won’t pass close to us. Our roads aren’t even large enough for them to go by.

That’s just saddening.

If sister at least had a horse, then I would feel less bad.

But what if she finds monsters in the way?

Or bandits?

Damn.

I will complain with grandma. We can’t have sister going to the county’s capital like this!

We just can’t!

It’s too dangerous.

…and grandma said she will be helping while in Soul Walk.

I guess [Soul Walking] is really useful, but to think grandmother can even cast spells while using it…

She said she will train me once I get the skill, but I wonder how it works since the soul form I saw had no aura on it.

Well, one more reason for me to increase my training difficulty.

I’m considering adding a second treant in order to make training harder, but that would be the maximum I can do for now.

Our kitchen isn’t so big as to allow me to fight more than two monsters at once. I won’t even be able to do my acrobatics if I do it.

Besides, if I mess things up like breaking pots or the such mother will be furious with me. So let’s avoid doing this much.

She just recently took back all the chores I was doing in her place, so I don’t want to receive special punishment.

So, let’s focus on giving sister a good party.

… how did I convert this world’s measurement system to meters?

Well, this world has measurements which are just like the anatomical measurements of earth.

Things like foot and inches.

I remember a foot of earth was around 30 centimeters, so I have been adapting thinking the “foots” of this world are somewhat the same thing as the “foots” on earth.

I may be wrong though… after all, a foot here is the measurement on when someone like father puts both feet one in front of the other and then measures the distance.

Is this right?

Besides, I remember the goddess saying this world was bigger than earth and that my original body would be crushed if was to be transported here.

Could the people be bigger as well?

I’m not sure, but the conversions seem ok from what I have experienced so far.

Houses have ceilings around 6 foot, or two meters, high and so on.

So I guess whatever the actual sizes are, they do correlate on some proportion.

***

Sister’s… no, Ann’s birthday was… okay I guess.

It was on grandma’s house, so Jacen and I got some sips of brown tea.

I wonder if we shouldn’t had done it?

I mean, while we were on the party it was all fun and games. Everyone was joyful and even if an old hag which seems to be somewhat related to grandmother and grandfather kept hugging us and trying to kiss us, it was fine. It was just a few times, and she was so… I don’t know… drunk?... she missed all the attempts and collapsed on the ground.

Besides, there was a lot of joy and happiness. Singing, dancing, talking and presents as well.

People knew of Ann’s dream, so the presents were very practical but very touching as well.

Father gave her his old sword from his adventuring days; grandma gave her an old chainmail I guess was hers from when she traveled around. Grandfather gave her a pair of shinning new daggers. Matthew, the blacksmith, gave her a crude spear. He seems to be a friend of grandpa, but to think he would go to this extent… well.

Other people gave her valuable things like herbs which sell well and someone even gave her some money. It was my first time seeing this world’s money, and it’s made of small round circles, instead of coin-shaped. I guess it’s made of copper by the color.

Anyhow, it was touching when father gave his sword to Ann. I thought I would cry, and some of the woman around indeed cried. Grandma didn’t, but I saw she had wet eyes.

And then, when we returned home…

Sister took a present from me and Jacen as well. And to think she would be the one going on the offensive… no, it’s Ann, of course she would take it if she wanted to.

I don’t want to say it was something I didn’t want to give her, but I thought we would do it alone. Instead Jacen joined in and things got complicated. Especially since he was more focused on me than on her.

Besides, we are so young we couldn’t be very big… maybe we could say she took ours but didn’t give us hers.

How didn’t mother listened to our moans is a thing I cannot understand.

Maybe she did.

Well, it’s official now.

I’m a sister-fucker redneck. And I’m enjoying every second of it.

Amen.

***

Ann’s back leaving the gate was a difficult thing to see in the morning. But I guess this is life.

I should train harder to be able to help her if she needs it. I need to become able to do [Soul Walking]. And I need to do it now. So let’s increase the number of treants to five and see if the emotion of trying to keep the tentacles away from mother’s cooking utensils is enough to make me see grandma’s soul or what. The faster I get this skill, smaller is the amount of time grandma will be training me instead of watching sister.