Cycles

Not long after the death of a certain infant in the dark alleyways of Torun, another baby was born with memories of his past lives.

From the moment of his birth, his family could tell that something was different about him. He never cried and barely reacted to anything. To them, there seemed to be an unnatural intelligence in the baby’s eyes.

Not long after his second birthday, the baby disappeared into the night, never to return to this family.

Relying on his magical abilities to hunt wildlife, he just barely managed to survive on his own.

Now, two years later, he had barely made any progress towards his goal.

“Man, I miss sex.”

Walking along an empty road, the child spoke to no one just to fill the silence.

“Sex was pretty awesome, but it’s impossible to think about it without remembering Raya.”

He spoke with a joking tone as if making fun of himself, the incongruity of a toddler reminiscing about having sex seemed comical to him. But for some reason his tone felt forced and his smile quickly faded.

“There’s also no porn in this world so I can’t get addicted to that again…”

“Ah, I forgot… this body couldn’t get it up even if I wanted it to.”

When the boy ran out of thoughts, silence hung in the forest. He kept walking all the same. Whenever a thought came to mind, he would speak it out loud, no matter how incoherent it was.

On this long journey, this was the only entertainment he had, apart from the monsters.

In this region, monsters were uncommon but because Pax purposely didn’t use any form of concealment, he would encounter them a few times a week.

This time, a strange spider-like monster jumped out at him. It was several times larger than him, with dozens of eyes covering its head, one large horn pointing directly up from its forehead, and about 20 long and spindly legs.

With indifference, the boy raised his hand and pointed a finger gun at the spider, chanting, “ –bang”

This was a new spell that Pax had developed. By launching a sharp bone projectile, the strength of Piercing Shot could be increased while keeping the mana cost the same.

The spider’s momentum was instantly killed as its head exploded, causing it to crumple to the floor. It twitched a few times before it fully died.

“I wonder how spider tastes”

A woman in a white sundress appeared atop the spider’s corpse, prodding it with a stick as she spoke,

“Careful, it might be poisonous.”

The boy didn’t seem surprised or bothered by the woman’s presence, simply responding by reciting knowledge he had picked up at some point.

“Spiders are venomous, not poisonous. If I don’t eat certain parts it should be fine… That said, this guy doesn’t appear particularly appetizing.”

“Oh, don’t be like that. Just consider this part of your punishment and eat the thing. It’s not like you’ll die or anything.”

With that, the boy resumed walking along the dirt road.

“If I listened to everything you said, I would have to restart the cycle so many times that Kael Drogo would end up dying to someone else or some fuckass disease.”

“Hmph, you’re no fun at all.”

The boy kept walking while ignoring the woman’s comments.

As he only stopped walking to sleep or cook whatever monster he came across, the boy made it to his destination in only a few more days.

- - - - - - -

“Finally, we made it to Stone Town”

True to its name, stone town was surrounded by a stone wall. As this was the town that lied on the eastern border of Old Artenia, it was built to be highly defensible. Though Artenia and its neighboring country, Ruhruden, were on fairly friendly terms at the moment, 50 years ago they had been on opposing sides of a war.

There were guards stationed at the gate to the town checking the identification of travelers and what products merchants were bringing in. It wasn’t anything too strict, but as Pax wasn’t a citizen of Artenia and didn’t have any sort of identification he probably couldn’t get through this checkpoint.

When nighttime came, he walked around until he found a suitable spot and simply jumped over the wall.

Landing in the slums, he hid in the shadows to survey the surroundings.

Truthfully, Pax felt like he might be acting overly cautious. This was a completely normal town and even if it wasn’t, Pax was strong enough to beat nearly anyone in a fight, child though he may be. The reason he was acting this way was because of his inexperience. If somehow the guards were actually attentive or some other strange event happened, his plans could be delayed.

Pax refused to let Fate conspire to ruin things again.

His goal was to go to the guild and act like a poor child running away from home. They would probably be understanding as to why he didn’t have identification and eventually let him get a Guild Identification once he showed a reasonable amount of skill.

But that would have to wait until morning, so he found a secluded corner in an alleyway and eventually dozed off, making sure to be ready for any surprise attacks.

- - - - - - -

“Adam?”

Huh?

“Adam! Are you seriously dozing off right now? This is important! Which one do you think is better?”

Raya gave a little spin to show off the outfit she was thinking of buying. Made from the skin of a Winter Great Toad, the light armor was brown and dark blue. Apart from accentuating some of her features, it also looked like it gave great mobility.

“Uhhhh…”

“If you keep being indecisive I’ll fucking peg you later.”

Holy shit, you really took this from 0 to 100 real quick! I quickly stammered out whatever thoughts were in my head, “The second one works better because winter is coming soon so you’ll want to be warm!”

She smiled and responded, “Alright, good choice.”

…

A dream of course.

The boy in the dark alleyway opened his eyes and woke up. His smile slowly faded as he got up to start his day.

“Now that I think about it, Raya brought up the idea of pegging fairly often, I wonder if she actually wanted to peg me… hah, I guess I can add that to the list of my regrets.”

He walked forward a few steps before bursting out in laughter.

“Haha… Ahaha. Hahaha”

Falling back to the ground, Pax laughed until tears started pouring down his face.

“Raya, I’m so sorry. I miss you. I miss you so much.”

- - - - - - -

“It’s been confirmed Alex, they’re both dead.”

Alexander Telantra clenched his fist when his secretary broke the news to him.

Anger and sadness churned inside him as he as he recalled the time he spent with the pair.

With a sigh, he got up and said, “Is that so…”

He looked out the window behind his desk and lightly touched it with his hand.

“Did we really do everything we could to protect them?”

Veronica paused for a moment to think before speaking.

“They wouldn’t have survived nearly as long as they did if not for you.” She paused once more before continuing, “We did everything just shy of throwing ourselves in front of Kael Drogo’s claws.”

For some reason anger surged within Count Telantra’s heart at those words.

Why was it that those kids were dying instead of us adults? What was I so afraid of that prevented me from doing more? Telantra couldn’t help but question his entire philosophy up until this point.

How could he continue watching as the world crumbled around him?

“I think… I think it’s time we formally declared our position in the ongoing war.”

Though his oasis may come under attack, indifference simply felt far too revolting to him now.

Veronica simply nodded and stepped out of the office, beginning preparations for what would come.

- - - - - - -

Pax made his way towards the market area of Stone Town. He would’ve bought some food if not for the fact that he was completely broke. Instead, he walked to the Adventurer’s Guild building.

To the right was a large wall with dozens of posts for requests while to the left were some tables for adventurers to drink and dine. Directly opposite the entrance was a receptionist desk. Since it was early in the morning, there weren’t many people there but Pax noticed that one or two of the individuals eating breakfast were staring at him.

Not minding the gazes, Pax walked up to the receptionist and asked, “Can I get an adventurer’s license?”

The woman looked at him for a second before responding, “Alright… What’s your name?”

“It’s… Pax, just Pax”

“Alright, here you go Pax. If you want to complete a request just take a post down from the wall over there and bring it to one of the receptionists. The difficulties range from F to S rank, but I would recommend that you take only F rank requests for now. Technically you can take any difficulty but keep in mind that receptionists can deny you the ability to take a request at their discretion. Also, all requests have a penalty for failure. You’ll see it written at the bottom of the post beneath the reward for completion.”

As she spoke, she handed over a small metallic plate that displayed my name and an ID number.

That’s it? Compared to the guilds over in New Artenia, getting registered here was much easier. Pax didn’t know if he should be happy about that, but since it worked out better for him this way he just went with it.

As Pax walked over to the board to check out how he should try making money, one of the men who were staring at him earlier called out to him saying, “Hey kid, you look hungry. Want some food?”

Pax knew better than to trust every person he came across but the thought of having real food for once won over in the end. Besides, he could beat up any random kidnapper if he had to. Thus, he obediently walked over to the table and sat down.

“Hi, I’m Derick. This here is Jacob. So what’s your deal?”

Derrick and Jacob were friendly but both of them seemed to be city guards. They wore gray standard issue armor and had swords by their side. Derick had gray and furry ears coming out the top of his head, probably making him something like a wolf-beastman. On the other hand, Jacob was a completely normal human.

Hold on, is the phrase completely normal human actually racist? Am I racist? It doesn’t seem like the word ‘beast’ is like a slur or something but shouldn’t there be a better way to go about this? Pax’s thoughts started to run off in crazy directions before he reigned himself in.

Though he wasn’t in any danger of being kidnapped, it would be inconvenient if these guards found out that he had snuck in illegally.

“I’m Pax. Where is my food?”

Derrick ordered an omelet for Pax and the trio waited in silence until a waitress came along with the meal.

As Pax took the first bite of his first real meal in a long time, Derrick finally spoke up.

“So why'd you jump over that wall to get into town last night?”