Chapter 2. Home

The sun was high and bright when Emma woke Ken up the next day. As the pair walked leisurely and chatted the whole way home, the sun was already setting when they finally got back.

The supposed orphanage is nothing more than a typical countryside house that their adoptive mother inherited and decided to use as a place to raise children without any family.

The house is two stories high, with 6 rooms, and large open spaces for dining and gathering, the century old wooden house is quite impressive in size even for the countryside and would be considered a mansion fit for a noble family if it was built inside the city walls.

"Hey hey everyone!!! Look who is back!"

"Ken! Emma!" a group of children screamed.

Thanks to the world been at peace and this country being particularly peaceful, there aren't too many orphans, especially in this small rural village. Including the pair who have already turned 15 and would be considered adults now, there are 7 total orphans living here with their adoptive mother.

Beth was 14 years old when her mother passed away from an illness that left her with no more relatives. When she was 16 and working a day job at a nearby village. She found out that someone had abandoned their newborn child and disappeared. At just 16, she decided to take in the baby and over the next 20 years, Beth took in 10 abandoned children with 7 still living with her and raised them as if they were her own.

The family could survive thanks to the small plot of land attached to the house which allowed them to grow enough crops to not starve. Other than working the fields year around to grow whatever they could each season, the older kids would also try to hunt from small animals in the woods, fish in the rivers and streams and go around the neighboring villages trying to do any odd jobs they could get.

Other than Ken and Emma, Gwen at 12 is the next oldest. With human ears but a spotted orange cat tail, she happens to be a human and beastman hybrid. Juila who is 10 years old with long fluffy rabbit ears got a long thin scaly lizard tail. Kevin and Melvin are a pair of twins of 7 years old. While their face looks exactly the same, Kevin's got elf ears with a bushy wolf tail while Melvin's got wolf ears but no tail. Erika is the youngest of them all and is only 5 years of age. When you just look at her, she seems like a regular sheep beastman but when examined closely, her webbed fingers and toes are the definite traits of having merman blood.

While the different races have coexisted in relative peace for around two millennium, racism and prejudice seems to be deeply ingrained. Been mixed is seen by most as inferior since each race believes they are the most superior and by mixing their blood with any of the other race, it devalues their heritage and makes the offspring a lesser being.

Growing up in a beastman kingdom has taught Ken and Emma that been different means you get treated differently, but once you get to know someone and if they are kind at heart, race matters less and who you are becomes more important.

As the years passed, Ken would get fewer and fewer side stares and have less people murmuring behind his back when he is doing an odd job outside of the village. For the folks in his actual small village, they have been treating him and his siblings with kindness for as long as he could remember.

"What took you two so long to get home! Tell us everything you saw in the capital!"

"Before that Gwen. Guess who got accepted to the one and only Dragonspire Academy!"

"Did you really get selected Ken???!!!" All the kids started going crazy and screaming to know what took place during the selection.

"Sure did! Even the king himself came and greeted me after I got selected!"

"The king even offered Ken one of his daughters for marriage" Emma added.

As the children were completely captured with excitement, Ken and Emma reenacted everything they experienced in the capital, only leaving out the part where Emma broke down crying.

After hours of been questioned about every little detail on their trip, their mother had to step in to tell the kids it's time for bed and that the pair must be tired from such a journey.

With only 8 members of the family left still living at the house. Ken, Emma, Gwen and Juila each got to have a room to themselves while the twins share a room, and their mother sharing her room with Erika. Saying their goodnights, everyone headed off to their respective rooms and turned in for the night.

Once they were back to their regular daily life, the days flew by, and it was already Sunday. For his last day before attending the academy. Ken decided to make a trip around the small village to thank everyone for taking care of him and his family and to ask for their continued help while he's not there to take care of the family.

The small village consists of 30 houses spread out around the area, all the houses are hundreds of years old but built with great quality and quite large with different sized farmland around each. According to old man John who runs a small market out of his house, this area used to belong to some nobles who built the houses here as vacation homes so they could enjoy hunting and fishing in the forest, lake and streams nearby.

Then someday, the nobles just never returned, and the land was left overgrown. The houses were discovered by a group of travelers who decided to settle here and that's how the village was formed. According to old man John, their farmland used to be gardens before the first villagers converted them and it took travelling to the capital for Ken to finally understand what it meant to have a garden instead of using whatever land they owned to grow food.

Currently, 25 out of the 30 houses are occupied and including the family of 8, less than 100 residents regularly live in the village. Most of the villagers are either old folks or young children as other than tending their small fields for food, there aren't many other ways to make money out here in the countryside.

As Ken made his way through the village to say his goodbye and thanking everyone for taking care of him, his final stop is at old man John's market to spend some of the leftover money on goods for the family.

"Gramps! I'm here to buy some rice, flour, corn and maybe some meat. You home?"

"Ken! I heard you are leaving? Is that true? Tell me you aren't leaving!" A little girl with fox ears and tail came running out of the house.

"Hey Kate! I got accepted to the one and only Dragonspire Academy! I will be going off to the academy to learn all kinds of things and maybe one day become a knight or something if I study hard."

Old man John lives with his granddaughter Kate in the countryside while both of her parents are working in the capital and would only visit twice a year when most of the world takes time off for a week to watch the tournament hosted by none other than the Academy Ken just got accepted to go to.

"Come in Ken" Old man John called out from inside the house as the sad little girl devastated by the news walked back into the house with Ken.

At first glance, old man John is rather scary looking. A tall brawny man with bear ears, a stubby bear tail and a deep booming voice. Over the years Ken has heard countless stories of first-time travelers getting scared away when they saw him as they tried to buy goods from the store. In actuality, he is the sweetest man in the village who has always been given Ken and his family the best deals many times at a loss and provided them hours of entertainments with the stories he would tell them.

It was old man John that explained to Ken how the beastman bloodline worked. All beastman are born with animalist ears and a tail and the ears and tail will always be of the animal that's the most dominate and the personality of the beastman will largely correlate to the animal they got the trait from. And that is why when travelers see him for the first time, they are way more cautious due to the nature of a grizzly bear. Ken has always joked with the old man saying that he might be a panda beastman that got the wrong fur color.

In his words, due to who knows how many generations of intermingling, most beastman have so many types of dormant traits that their offspring can turn out to be any which beast. Just like he got grizzly traits while his deceased wife had tiger traits, yet their son turned out to have dog traits. Kate ended up having fox traits while her mother had squirrel traits.

What is supposed to be a market is nothing more than items laid out on tables and cabinets in the open area near the front of old man John's house. Locals, nearby villagers and the rare travelers who didn't get scared off are the main customers that will come to buy or trade the goods old man John has and with his generous personality, the store provides their family very little extra income while Kate's parents working in the capital are their main income source.

After telling the story of his adventurous day to old man John and Kate, a story he has now told at least 20 times to all the villagers. Ken bought some rice, flour, corn and oil from the old man, thanked him for all he has done over the years and got ready to leave.

For this small village, Ken has become the big brother figure for all the younger children over the years and like the others he has visited today with children, Kate was a sobbing mess as Ken left to return home.

Returning home with the goods, Ken handed the leftover coins to his adoptive mother Beth, who declined to accept the money.

"You should definitely keep that, Ken. We don't know what you will need to buy when you are at the academy and unfortunately, we don't have any extra money to spare. I'm sorry I won't be able to provide you with more money even if the academy requires you to buy more things"

"Don't worry about it, mom. You have done more than enough and I'm sure everything will work out just like it did when we were in the capital. Worst come to worst, I will just return home and marry a princess" Ken said with a smirk.

After having a farewell dinner party for Ken. The 5 younger siblings sobbed and complained for hours before been told to go to bed and for the final night in who knows for how long, Ken lay in his bed wild awake, too excited for his new adventures to fall asleep.