Five years have bled into the tapestry of my new life here in Buskon Village, tucked within the borders of the Anthromus Kingdom. In that time, I have slowly pieced together the map of this sprawling reality, a world defined by five titan continents that dwarf my old life's imagination.
To the far west lies the Scaled Domain, a jagged crown of mountains where the air belongs to the dragons. To the east stretches Scuro, a land of shifting shadows, while the north is swallowed by the sun-bleached dunes of Orkenesia. To the south, the world is locked in the bone-chilling, eternal blizzards of Kryhan. But I was reborn in the beating heart of it all: Zysvie, the central continent. It is the crucible of civilization, a vast landmass carved into three great sovereign realms where humans, elves, and dwarves maintain a restless, storied peace.
In this life, I am no longer a social ghost. I am Felix Bardeen. My hair is the colour of a midnight storm—a deep, dark blue I inherited from my father, Bastro Bardeen. Once a A-Rank adventurer, he now limps on a prosthetic leg, pouring his restless energy into our family's legacy of weapon forging. My mother, Nellie, is the vibrant soul of our home, a "normal" housewife whose warmth is the only thing capable of softening my father's thunderous nature.
Yet, for all the grandeur of this continent, our reality is humble. We live on the jagged, lonely outskirts of Buskon, in a solitary hut where the silence of the plains is our only neighbour.
The transition from a cold death to a wooden cradle was a psychological storm I wasn't prepared for. For the first week, I existed in a catatonic daze, staring at the thatched ceiling and praying for the "Game Over" screen to appear. I was convinced this was merely a final, vivid hallucination born of a dying brain.
To shatter the delusion, I became my own inquisitor. I pinched my soft, infant flesh until the bruises blossomed; I stared wide-eyed into the flickering hearth fire, refusing to blink until the stinging heat forced tears of physical reality down my face. In dreams, pain is a muted echo, but here, it was sharp, jagged, and undeniably real.
Once the reality of my rebirth sank in, the frustration of the language barrier took hold. For months, my "parents" were merely sources of melodic noise. I spent half a year as a silent, wide-eyed observer, decoding the phonetics of this new world. I would catch a word, roll it around my mind like a smooth stone, and repeat it until the foreign sounds began to bleed into meaning. I told myself I was gathering intelligence to "conquer this world"—a defence mechanism to mask my terror—but in truth, I was just a lonely soul trying to find my footing in the dark.
Two years vanished in a heartbeat, leaving me with two stark realizations. First, the Bardeens were dead poor, living on the jagged edge of survival in a timber hut. Second, I had zero interest in the typical "hero's journey" of fantasy novels. I didn't want a throne; I just wanted to belong.
My new "father", Bastro, is a man of thunderous laughter and a voice that could shake the dust from the rafters. He's barely older than my brother was in my previous life, making our dynamic a strange, internal riddle. Nellie, my mother, is a radiant force of nature—charming, relentlessly positive, and kind.
Admittedly, the logistics of being a toddler with the mind of a grown man are… humiliating. There is a specific kind of embarrassment in being bathed or carried by a woman who is technically your "mother" while your brain screams in protest. It took years to let the words "Mom" and "Dad" slip past my teeth without flinching, but slowly, my body won the argument. This family is warm and vibrant. Yet, deep down, a cynical shard of Satoshi Kobayashi remains, watching and waiting, terrified that this kindness is just another mask that will eventually slip.
Trapped in the cramped cage of this toddler body, I found myself with an agonizing amount of time to excavate the ruins of my past. I spent hours sifting through the memories of my previous life—the failures, the bitter experiences, and the hollow way I had existed—cataloguing every scar so I wouldn't have to earn them again.
If my memory serves, I was twenty-two when the end came. Six of those years had been spent rotting in the self-imposed prison of a single room, preceded by sixteen years of living as a walking disgrace. I didn't just make mistakes; I inhabited a life built out of them. Socializing was a language I never learned, and I possessed no spark, no singular achievement to lift me from the shadows. In the presence of my siblings—each a rising star of talent—I felt my own light flicker and fail. Instead of fighting for a place at the table, I retreated. I slunk away like a beaten dog, hiding behind the convenient curtain of "lack of capability" to mask my cowardice. I was a loser who gave up before the first blow was even struck.
But as I stare at these small, unformed hands, a cold resolve has taken root. That version of me stayed in the grave. I have decided: the mistakes of Satoshi Kobayashi will not be repeated in this life.
The night struck 10:07 PM, but the night was anything but silent. Outside, the sky was a bruised purple, screaming with the hissing lash of a torrential storm. Every few seconds, a rhythmic ka-boom of thunder rattled the floorboards, vibrating through my very bones.
Felix pressed his face against the cold glass of the window, watching his parents struggle against the gale. They were frantically hauling heavy iron ingots and smithing tools from the "workshop"—a leaning timber shack that looked ready to surrender to the wind at any second. Even the main house was losing the battle; rhythmic plink-plink sounds echoed as rain bled through porous gaps in the ceiling.
He looked out at the vast, desolate plains surrounding us. Nellie's small vegetable plot, the result of months of back-breaking toil, was now a drowning swamp. In five years, Felix had never seen the land in such a wretched state.
"Am I really going to die after only five years?" he whispered to the shadows. "I haven't even cast magic yet. Does God have some twisted personal grudge against me?"
Then, his heart stopped.
Out of the grey blur of rain, a man appeared. He didn't walk; he was simply there. Clad in a void-black hood, he stood a hundred meters away, an unmoving shadow against the chaos. He raised a single hand toward the roiling clouds and snapped it down. The gesture was sharp, authoritative—as if he were commanding the heavens to kneel.
Felix's confusion curdled into raw, primal terror when his head snapped toward him. His gaze pierced the dark, locking onto my face through the window. Felix scrambled back, his instincts screaming at him to run, but his body became a leaden weight. An invisible pressure anchored him to the floor.
He forced his head around, and his breath hitched in a silent scream.
The man was right there. At the window.
The glass was shut tight, yet his hand was inside the room, his gloved fingers knotted firmly in the fabric of my shirt. How? The window... it never opened...
"Please, don't kill—"
The world tilted and dissolved into blackness.
The hooded stranger stepped over the threshold like a ghost. He laid Felix's limp form onto the bed with an eerie, clinical gentleness. From the depths of his robes, he drew a dagger that gleamed with a wicked edge. With a swift motion, he sliced his own palm. As the thick, metallic-scented blood began to flow, he pressed the wound against Felix's lips, forcing the copper-tasting liquid down his throat.
The sound of Bastro's uneven footsteps and Nellie's voice drifted from the porch. The man stiffened. "Tsk. It is not enough," he hissed. With a ripple in the air, he vanished before the door could even creak open.
"The storm just... stopped!" Nellie's voice was bright with relief as she burst inside, shaking water from her hair. "I was so sure the workshop was a goner."
Bastro followed, his prosthetic leg thumping heavily on the wet wood. "The gods are temperamental tonight. But it's fine. We'll be out of this ruin in a few weeks anyway—oh, is the sprout already out cold?"
Nellie leaned over me, her eyes softening. "He must be exhausted from the noise. Look at this place, Bastro... it's a drowning wreck. Do we really have to wait weeks?"
Bastro grunted, drying his dark blue hair with a coarse towel. "Fine. I'll finalize the gold for that village house tomorrow morning. Give me three days to pack the heavy steel, and we move."
Felix woke the next morning with his head feeling like it had been stuffed with wool. His face was pale, limbs heavy, and the memory of the hooded man was nothing but completely erased from memories.
When he found out they were moving into the heart of the village, his inner-adult couldn't help but worry. "But Dad... what about the money? We're poor, aren't we?"
Bastro let out a booming laugh that filled the small room and ruffled Felix's hair with a hand that smelled of coal and old adventures. "I've got bags of gold tucked away from my monster-slaying days that you haven't even dreamed of, kid. Don't you worry about 'grown-up' coins. Just get ready to see the world beyond these plains."
The next three days were a whirlwind of activity, a frantic blur of folding worn linens and securing the few possessions they owned. Despite the lingering, phantom exhaustion from the night of the storm, Felix threw himself into the work, helping his mother wrap their clothes in coarse burlap.
As they cleared the final, dust-covered cupboard, Nellie reached into the shadows of the highest shelf and retrieved a small, rectangular box. It was crafted from dark, polished wood, its surface unmarked by the dampness of the hut.
"Felix, take this," she said, her voice dropping to a tone of quiet reverence. "Carry it carefully. It must not be dropped."
Felix's curiosity, honed by a lifetime of stories about hidden treasures, flared to life. "Mom, what's inside?"
With a mysterious smile, she knelt beside him and unlatched the silver hooks. As the lid creaked open, the dim morning light seemed to get sucked into the box. Nestled in a bed of faded black velvet lay a double-edged arming sword. The steel was unlike anything he had seen Bastro forge; it was iridescent, possessing a pearly sheen that made the metal look alive. Etched along the spine of the blade was a magnificent Dragon, its wings unfurled with such detail he could almost see the individual scales. The hilt was wrapped in crimson leather so vibrant it resembled a flicker of frozen flame.
"It's beautiful..." Felix whispered, his fingers hovering just inches from the crossguard. "Did Dad make this?"
Nellie shook her head, her eyes distant. "No, Felix. This was forged by your great-grandfather. It is the pinnacle of the Bardeen name—a blade of such perfection that even its creator could never replicate its quality. It is our family's treasure."
Before he could ask more, the heavy thud of a boot and the rhythmic clack of a crutch echoed at the doorway. Bastro leaned against the frame, a sweat-streaked grin splitting his beard.
"Admiring the old steel, are you?" he chuckled, his eyes landing on the dragon-etched blade. He stepped into the room, his voice booming with a sudden, fierce pride. "It's a fine toothpick, I'll give the old man that. But mark my words, Felix—one day, I'm going to fire up the forge and create a sword ten times stronger and more beautiful than that one. And when that day comes, I'll place it in your hands."
Nellie laughed, the sound bright and musical. "Always the dreamer, Bastro. Well? Did you buy the house?"
In response, Bastro reached into his pocket and produced a heavy, ornate iron key. He held it aloft with a triumphant flourish, the sunlight catching the jagged teeth of the metal.
"It's ours," he declared. "The move begins today."
Felix's parents began to bicker playfully about the logistics of the move, but he barely heard them. His gaze was locked on the crimson grip of the sword. For the first time in two lives, he felt a spark of genuine ambition that had nothing to do with magic or kingdoms. He didn't just want to carry a weapon like this. He wanted to understand the alchemy of the forge—to know how fire, sweat, and iron could be birthed into a legend.