The following months followed a similar pattern, as they were wont to do. Training filled his mornings, complete with sparring with his new friends. Lios found it increasingly easy to get along with them and to let himself be dragged back into the world of childhood. Of course, it was still awkward at times, but it was also fun. Even though he had the mind and memories of an adult, it became easy to sink back into the mindset of being a child now that he had others around him whose lead he could follow. It had started with Rose, who still came out to play music for everyone as she practiced her singing and lute.

  After training, Lios would alternate between studying for the majority of the day, hanging out with his friends around town, and working. He wasn’t the only systemless child who found themselves working, but there were not many. Most kids didn’t start working until they were fourteen, their parents giving them time to truly decide their path. With the system, it was difficult to shift paths as one grew older; not impossible, but difficult and often a painful experience.

  Because of this, most kids kept themselves at the first threshold of their first class until they were certain what they wanted to be or do. At level ten, one would be able to select their class; at level fifty, they would be able to both upgrade their class and select a second one. If someone decided they didn’t like their class before then, they would have the option to switch to an entirely different class, but that would revert their level back down to level ten. If they were to do this at the level one hundred mark, they could take a new class, but it would bring them back down to level fifty.

  The last thing Lios found himself doing was studying in the evenings. He would often sit outside and read until the sun set. Sometimes Rose or Brioche would come over and distract him, but he welcomed the frivolity they brought with them. It was a joyful distraction, and one he felt he would miss if it went away.

  He had begun to move on from just reading theory to practice writing the runes, having had it hammered into his head that even the slightest mistakes could cause the spell to fizzle or react violently. Slowly, he moved from simply writing the runes to crafting a few sample spells. He couldn’t test them just yet, but figured it wouldn't hurt to make them before he was fully ready.

  It was during these study sessions that Lios asked himself how he would cast his spells in combat. The toughest part about using runes in a fight was finding the time to write them, and write them perfectly at that. Sometimes he would try out different things, starting with writing them with his sword tip in the air. He quickly realized this wasn’t a real option, at least not by itself. His opponent wouldn’t wait for him to slash the air a dozen times, and if he was disrupted during the casting, the spell would be negated. Plus, it felt slow and obvious.

  The second thing he considered was using pre-prepared sheets of magical paper like the boy from the festival. The one who had used inscriptions rather than incantations. There were two distinct reasons this wouldn’t work. Number one, magical paper turned out to be very expensive. And the second reason, more important than the first, was that unlike inscriptions, runes had to be imbued with mana when they were written. Inscriptions, on the other hand, could later have mana poured into them to take effect. This meant that in preparing the spells, Lios would need paper that could hold the mana for long periods of time without the mana fading or dissipating.

  He quickly nixed that option.

  After a few months, well into summer and nearly into fall, he decided to try writing the runes in the dirt with his feet. He was slow and clumsy with it at first. Of course he was; he had never tried to write with his feet, at least not like this. At most, he had written romantic proclamations in the sand at the beach, but that hardly counted in contrast to what he was doing now.

  Even with the clumsiness, however, he found it fairly easy to write the runes around him. He had to move slowly to get the lines right; meticulousness was his friend in this. In the end, it took him around fifteen minutes to get the first set of runes right. He left them etched into the dirt as he stepped back.

  The first time he didn’t do anything with a sword, but looking at it now he was able to start visualizing how he would write the runes during combat. His father had taught him a decent amount of footwork techniques, ways to move and flit around a battlefield, but he started to realize that those basics he was taught wouldn’t be quite enough.

  If he wanted to produce spells using runes, he would need to be more graceful. The techniques he knew were a touch too simple; they were solid techniques but were easily seen through and lent themselves more to a style of swordsmanship with little movement. The rune circles, as far as he could tell, required him to flit around the battlefield, guiding whoever he was fighting and those around him to make the space for the spell circle.

  It took him a few dozen attempts over the course of several weeks to figure out what he needed. Of course, the answer was fairly obvious when it came to him, nearly causing him to smack his forehead in his frustration. He needed more footwork techniques. That was it. But how could he get them here in Arborton, where the majority of the warriors used the same fighting style, a style that didn’t take a combat genius but could instead be taught to farmers in times of war to mitigate deaths by clumsiness?

  So, his first attempt to rectify his issue was to ask his father, who had reportedly been an adventurer or had wanted to be one before Lios was born. His father gave him lessons in the morning, even as the other kids showed up and practiced with him. They all started to pick up new ways to move, but Lios’s father informed them that most of what he knew wouldn’t be applicable until they got their classes.

  Most warriors had some sort of skill to help them move about a battlefield. Some didn't, resulting in their needing to master mundane techniques like Lios was currently doing, and even those that did needed some sort of base. There were a ton of known movement skills, from running and walking to flight and swimming skills. All this meant to Lios, however, was that he needed to find another way forward. He didn’t want to wait for the system to start mastering his runic spells.

  And so, his second solution came to him in the dead of night while he was reading his runic texts via lantern light. What was another way to move gracefully amongst a crowd? he asked himself. Dance. A simple tango or a complex salsa. The solution was to learn to dance.

  As it happened, this was something that Lios had enjoyed in his past life, though he was never good at it. After seeing it on TikTok he had joined an improv dance class but felt too self-conscious and only attended one session. In light of that, however, he thought back to some oddities regarding his mother and wondered if perhaps she knew how to dance. He didn’t ask his father, again feeling self-conscious, but worked up the courage one day while helping his mother cook supper.

  He stood at the counter carefully chopping some potatoes into inch-thick cubes. Beside his wooden cutting board were a couple of onions and carrots, all being chopped to go into a delicious stew with some tough beef. Well, it wasn’t really beef, having come from the local equivalent of an animal to a cow, the delogia. Most folk shortened this name down to delo, but even that sounded alien to Lios compared to the simplicity of cow. The meat from the animals tasted similar. Delogia were often used the same as cows, the males being used as beasts of burden with the females being used for milk and meat.

  As he thought about this, Lios stopped chopping, biting his inner cheek. He sighed heavily, getting his mother’s attention, who looked over at him curiously. “Mom, do you think you could teach me to... to dance?” He practically winced at the question.

  “You want to learn to dance? Is this about Rose? Are you planning to ask her to the fall festival next week for a dance?” A playful smile appeared on his mother’s face. She often teased him about Rose, and lately Maya too. “Is my little Alexilios going to finally ask her out? I have half a mind that you are too young for all of that!”

  “She might like that, but that’s not the reason I want to learn. A good bonus.” Lios ignored her teasing for the most part, but remembered that it was Rose’s birthday the same week as the harvest festival. It was equivalent to late September now. She would be getting her system, her first levels and more in just a week. “I was hoping for some long-term lessons though. I think dancing will help me with my fighting.”

  “Must it always be about fighting with you, LiLi?” Elaine huffed and resumed her portion of preparing dinner. She was trimming and cutting the roast into cubes.

  “Must it always be about me and Rose, Mother?” Lios replied in a tone belonging to an angsty teenager, rather than a young boy.

  “Watch your tone, young man!” Her tone was teasing, but there was a note to it that broached no argument. “To answer your earlier question, I can teach you to dance if that’s really what you want. It’ll have to take place in the evenings when you study your runes, though.”

  Lios nodded thankfully, resuming his chopping. “Thank you, Mom. You know... Now that I think of it, there's something else I’d like to ask.”

  He was thinking of all the oddities surrounding his parents. Specifically, not all the citizens knew how to read and write. The fact that they did wasn’t strange on its own, but his mother knew to read and write and speak four or more languages, and that certainly was strange. He had known for several years that his parents had some sort of secret; he had even heard them talking about it a bit at night when they thought he was asleep.

  “Ask away, son.”

  “Where did you learn all of this stuff? The other languages, dancing, the way you speak. You don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to, but... I am curious about where you came from, Mom.”

  Elaine stopped moving to look over at her son for a few moments before seasoning her prepared meat and moving it to the Dutch oven hanging over the fire. The meat sizzled instantly. She kept quiet, the only sounds were sizzling meat, crackling fire, and the knife thudding against the cutting board. She took her time to think over how to answer the question, methodically flipping the chunks of beef with her tongs. Only after they were all seared on the outside and removed to a tray did she speak again, several minutes after the question had been asked.

  “That’s a complicated question, LiLi.” She moved so that he could see her, her face filled with weariness but no sadness or regret despite her heavy tone. “I grew up in the capital. Your father did too, as it happens, but we had different paths. You know... perhaps we should wait for your dad to get here to talk about this, now that I’m thinking about it.”

  “This isn’t just an excuse for you to dodge the question?”

  “It is a little, but I still think he would want to be present. How about you take the delo scraps to Bri and when we have supper, your dad and I will tell you everything?”

  Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings.

  Lios agreed, but still finished his portion of the food prep by tossing the vegetables into the same pot that had seared the meat. Once the vegetables had a bit of color on them, they poured in some beef bone broth and half a bottle of wine left over from a social visit with some of Ezekiel’s friends. After that was done, he left his mother to finish the meal, taking some butcher paper filled with meat scraps over to Bri’s den. He spent a good while with her, playing and spoiling the wily fox. She was a touch plump, pregnant he figured by some wild fox. He had never seen her mate; perhaps it had been a fling, or maybe he was out hunting for the two of them whenever Lios visited.

  After a couple of hours, with the sun close to setting, Lios made his way back home. The smell of stew wafted through the door as he entered the building, his mouth watering just by the proximity. His father was already home and sitting at the table. His armor was doffed, and he was methodically checking it over, a task he committed to at least once a week and especially after having to deal with ruffians or monsters gathering too close to the city walls.

  “It’s a good thing that the adventurer guild moved in with the ramp-up of monsters, but at least twice a week I have to reign one of them in. Usually the same group too. My job was much calmer before they came into town.” Zeke was complaining loudly when Lios entered.

  Lios didn’t miss the glance shared between his parents as he took off his muddy boots. His mother was in the process of filling wooden bowls with the stew, a thick slice of fresh bread sticking up out of the bowl. She set them on the table where everyone usually sat, and Alexilios took his spot quickly.

  “I think BriBri is pregnant.” Lios broke the building silence with a simple statement that startled both parents. “Her belly is getting a bit bigger, and it's either that she’s pregnant or that she has been getting too many meat scraps.”

  “That’s amazing! To think, just a few years ago she was on this table fighting for her life...” Elaine said, looking at the center of the round wooden table where they had performed life saving surgery and magic on the critter. “You’ll have to bring her pups around Lios. I imagine they will be as spoiled as she is...”

  “I think so too.” Lios had learned a lesson that his father evidently still struggled with. He stifled a chuckle at the sound of his father attempting to quell the burning of his first mouthful of potatoes and steak.

  “Hashhyshashyshahs!”

  His mother didn’t even attempt to hide her mirth as she chastised her husband. “Zeke, it just came out of the pot! At least give it a minute to rest. I swear you do this on purpose!”

  He winked at Lios while managing to look like a puppy caught digging in the trash by an owner who could never actually be upset at them.

  “Now, I told you about LiLi’s question, I intend to answer it.”

  “Okay... He deserves to know the truth at the very least.” Lios’s father sounded resigned, and a bit embarrassed.

  “Lios, you were right in thinking that there was more to our past than we told you. I’ve told you that your father was an adventurer, but never where I’m from. As I mentioned before, we both grew up in Port Airos. We did, however, grow up a bit differently.”

  “A bit? That’s a bit of an understatement!” Ezekiel chuckled at his horrid play on words while both his son and his wife rolled their eyes.

  “Anyway, I grew up in a... well, in a palace.”

  “So what, you were a princess?”

  “No, no, nothing that regal. But my mother was one once upon a time. She abdicated her claim to the throne long before I was born, though. I was set to be married to another noble child, a young lordling. As you might imagine, it was an arranged marriage, meant to bring our families closer for business purposes. My... fiance’s,” Her face scrunched up in apparent disgust, “name was Theodore Fontaine.”

  “That rat... I’m still convinced you should have let me castrate the philanderer after what he said about you.”

  “What did he do? And wait. Wait, wait. You said Fontaine, like the Duke? Like Duke Fontaine?” Lios knew a decent amount about the kingdom's political structure. The nation was ruled by a king and his advisors; four of these advisors were regional dukes. The duke for the area that Arborton was in was managed by Duke Fontaine, though he had never visited the backwater city. He was rumoured to rarely, if ever, leave Gildhall, the city that he founded that was rivaled by only a few others in Jorial. Instead, he allowed his lords and barons to manage the various regions and towns in his territories in his stead. The lord in charge of Arborton wasn’t so bad; he called for a tax but otherwise was happy to simply rake in some small income and let the city manage itself.

  “Yes, like the duke. His nephew was to be my husband, and I was to provide a bridge between the Jorgal household and the Fontaines. My mother married into the Jorgal house, you see. A house of minor nobility at the time, though with her inclusion they quickly rose to higher prominence.”

  “So then, what happened aside from Ted being a sleeze?” Her son asked, eyes flickering between his parents. A smile lit up both of their faces as they thought back, reliving the memory.

  “Well, I was an adventurer at the time. My family was quite a bit less important than hers. My parents run an inn in Port Airos, and adventurers pass through on a daily basis. The tables were filled with stories of peril and power, of journeys unimaginable. It made a boy dream, much the same as you seem to dream. So after I got my class, I joined a local guild, somehow getting accepted to one that was trusted not just by nobility but by royalty.

  “I befriended a man named Jericho. Jericho Airos. Yes, like the royal family, Airos. He was an adventurer too. Not anywhere close to the seat of the throne, and given his age, he was often overlooked by the other royals but never by the nobility. We joined a party together, made some decent money taking on missions that were always just challenging enough that he could level up, but not so challenging that he would get hurt.”

  Lios listened intently. His parents didn’t often talk about their past, so all of this was new. He had known his father was an adventurer; he had said as much many times. He had even mentioned Jericho alongside his other team members. A woman named Asya, a lupin named Rexi, and lastly a dwarf named Mikel Mikelson. He was the fourth Mikel in his family tree.

  “Well, we started to get tired of the curated quests. He wanted independence. He asked his family how to gain it. They told him, us, that they would let him go if he only attended the Stormlight Academy. We all decided to attend it with him. Somehow even I got accepted to the academy, let alone Mikel, who was about as sharp as a rock.”

  “Some rocks are pretty sharp, sweetie, maybe not the best analogy.”

  “Just so. Anyway, it was there that your mother and I met. I knew she wasn’t available, that after her graduation she would be married to Theodore. Even so, I couldn’t help trying to impress her. She was the prettiest woman I’d ever laid eyes on. I couldn’t get her out of my head after that first class. It started slowly, as it often does, with me sitting beside her in one of our lectures. I still remember the perfume you used to wear; it drove me crazy...

  “Anyway, one day I asked her if she wanted to study with me. For some reason, she said yes.”

  “It was because you had the highest score. You were always the best at Monster Management. Don’t let your old man fool you, Lios. He was accepted because the kingdom intended to make him a knight. He wasn’t always a guard or a trainer; once upon a time, he was a budding swordsman whose accolades were known to most of Port Airos. Ezekiel, the Blossom Blade, they called him.”

  “Oh fooey. That name was a misrepresentation, and you know it!”

  “No, it was not. Are you telling me that when you use your sorcery, your sword doesn’t become a hundred little blades that look like flowers?”

  “Well, no, my sword does do that but-”

  “Does that mean you don’t have the guard class then, Dad?” Lios interrupted the frivolous argument. If he let his parents continue, he knew they would end up oddly flirting, and given that they wanted another child, he didn’t like where that would head. Not with him in the house.

  “Ah, yeah, my real class is called Efflorescent Champion. Don’t tell anyone, not even Rose. It’s a svertim class.” The rarity of classes was delineated by different types of metals. Svertim was an alloy produced by the dwarves of Marthis. When used to indicate rarity, it referred to a rare class.

  The rankings were determined by how many stat points a class gave out per level. Starting with bronze rank classes with a twenty-five stat point per level distribution it then went to iron with fifty stat points, svertim with one hundred, orichalcrum with two hundred, elemium at four hundred, mythril with eight, and finally astrum giving sixteen hundred stat points. Details regarding any class above iron rank were highly regulated. Often, they were kept secret by the wealthy and powerful. It wasn’t only to hoard the knowledge, though that was part of it.

  No, it was mostly to protect their scions. Knowing what class someone had meant revealing their weaknesses. The more details someone knew about another's abilities, the more dangerous they were to them.

  “Don’t worry, I won’t go spilling your secrets, Dad. So, what happened after you had your study date?” Lios was genuinely interested. His parents didn’t talk about how they met, how they started seeing each other. Now that he had the answers he wanted about their past, he wanted to enjoy the sweet story.

  “Well, after that one we had another. Then another. Over time, I found myself in your father’s company nearly every day. Still, I was betrothed. We didn’t do anything romantic; he was ever the gentleman, unlike now. He would sometimes slip and give me a compliment, but he never went past that. We became best friends, doing most everything outside of class together. Theodore started seeing us together too. He went to the academy with us but barely paid me any mind. Something about how he already had me, so he instead pursued other women from school. Wound up catching some disease.”

  “He was pretty harmless, but the more he slept around, the more infuriated I became. He told everyone they were engaged but didn’t spare her more than a glance. Then one day he tried to swoop in, take control of her. He called her a whore while dragging her away from me in the cafeteria. He said no wife of his would be allowed to speak with dirt like me. So, I stood, and I challenged him to a duel. He wasn’t much of a fighter, and as your mother said, I had a decent reputation. Still, Theodore was always arrogant. He accepted the challenge.

  “We met at the training grounds, and of course a hefty crowd followed us. It was common for grievances to be aired out in the arena, and it was common for people to make a spectacle of it. Long story short, I bested him in combat. In doing so, I angered him even more. I knew it wouldn’t end there, but I didn’t expect what happened next.”

  Rage long ignored flashed across both of his parents’ faces. Elaine let out a snarl, and Ezekiel looked absolutely disgusted.

  “Theodore followed me home one night, with a group of his lackeys. At the same time, he sent a half dozen hangers - on to ambush your father, knowing he would only lose again if he came after Zeke himself. He and his friends kidnapped me on my way between class and my dorm. They shoved me into a dark room and tied me up. To their credit, some of his friends tried to talk him out of what he was planning, saying he was taking things too far.”

  Elaine’s voice was quiet, the memory carrying with it the same fear she held that night. Lios listened intently, watching both of his parents carefully. They both had taken on sullen expressions. When Ezekiel spoke up again, it was in a seething voice, his ire evident in his expression and tone.

  “I bested the folks who had come after me. One of them confessed, perhaps under duress, and led me back to where they were keeping your mother. Thankfully, Theodore hadn’t yet managed to execute his plan. He had spent too much time monologuing to your mother while cutting off her clothes -”

  “Zeke, he’s eight!” Elaine interrupted, then glanced at Lios, who was struggling to keep his own anger from his face.

  “You’re right. But you know he is smart enough to figure things out, if not now, in a few years.” She nodded reluctantly, accepting this truth. “Anyway. When I got there, I... Well, I hurt everyone in that room. They were all noble children and friends of the Fontaines, who have always held a good amount of influence. I was the one expelled from the school. Only my connection to Jericho kept me from being executed for my transgressions against the nobility. Your mother’s family, the Jorgals, tried to push her to accept the marriage even after all he had done.”

  “Obviously I didn’t. I followed your father, and we ran away. A year later, we wound up here and got married. Then we had you. For a time we considered being adventurers or even moving to Terraan or Marthis, but ultimately decided to start a family instead.”

  Lios got up and gave his mother a hug, much to her surprise. “I’m sorry you had to go through that, but I’m so glad you could escape from it. Thank you for telling me.”

  They spoke for a little longer, their ire at past events fading as they talked about more joyful things. After helping clean up after dinner, Lios and his mother went outside under the clear moon and stars, where she started to teach him to dance. He wasn’t as clumsy as in his past life, but he didn’t pick it up fast either. Mostly, he enjoyed the time with his mom.

  A small part of him worried that if she knew the truth about him, she wouldn’t see him as her son anymore. That she wouldn’t accept him. Even with the memories he had from before, he saw her and his father as his parents. That didn’t mean he had denounced his previous family, but that he had two sets. Two lifetimes worth of family.

  Even with these worries, he danced with his mother as she told him more about his father’s antics in school. She opened up and talked about some of her friends, other scions of powerful families. She talked about one strange boy who summoned animals and could even speak to them. About a commoner girl who became one of the more powerful wizards at the school, who even became a knight before graduating.