Months started to flow by. I finally achieved mastery of the language, meaning I no longer had awkward parts of each conversation that I didn’t understand. At the same time, I worked on progressing both of my primary magic systems. I was still a bit curious about this world’s various magic systems, and if I liked the local alteration and absorption systems, I might try to integrate them into my own style. However, there was no harm in establishing a baseline level of power to work with, in case something went wrong and I needed to help out during a raid. As for this world’s binding and manifestation systems, since they would require expensive food to power, my interest in them had decreased a lot. Unless I could find a way to circumvent the problem, a magic system that relied on external supplies just wasn’t that useful for me, either locally or in other worlds. I couldn’t help but wonder why the corporation that created this world had designed the magic system this way. After all, grabbing new magic systems and integrating them into a larger combat style was one of the bigger advantages of the Market - making a magic system that sucked was terrible for marketing purposes. Perhaps there was some sort of detail we were missing?

  Either way, it wasn’t my focus. Instead, over the course of the next year, I settled into my new life as a baker’s toddler child, and worked on rebuilding my runes and my alteration magic system.

  Combined, these three rewards brought me from 15,531 Achievement to 18,631 Achievement.

  I spent far more time and energy focusing on my attunement, since that was my primary magic system. The higher my attunement got, the stronger my Extinguishes and Renewals would be with the same amount of essence. With lethal threats constantly appearing in the skies, I wanted to make sure I could defend myself and my family in a pinch.

  This was also the reason I created my second rune, even though I was half-tempted to hold off on creating it until I had a better idea what powers I wanted. For my second rune, I decided to go for the same power as last world - the ability to spend a bit of essence to sense all nearby objects. It paired very nicely with my portals in previous worlds, making it possible to teleport around most projectile attacks and return them to their sender. It was also useful in a world where monsters could potentially sneak up on us with little warning if we were away from a city.

  However, I held off on creating a third absorption rune. I couldn’t change my rune abilities once I made them, so I wanted to be sure of what power I wanted before I made my next rune. This world still had a lot of unknown factors, and with a lifespan of 500 years and low chance of dying in the near future, I wasn’t in a rush. I could take my time and make sure I knew what I wanted.

  During those six months, we experienced two more raids - one two bell raid, and one three-bell raid. The three bell raid was a bit more dangerous than the two bell one - but luckily, there weren’t any fatalities on the street. By eavesdropping on my parents, I finally learned a bit more about the ‘bell’ system.

  There were scouts positioned at the edges of the island and in the leaves that constantly watched our former home. They had access to different ways of enhancing their senses, and spent years learning to recognize all of the types of monster our former home tended to throw at our island. Every time a group of monsters got close enough, they rang a bell to let everyone know a raid was coming soon. Bells ranged from one to ten bells, with ten being a near extinction event and one bell being a raid that posed almost no threat. Below five bells, people didn’t even bring out the real magic weapons, because the essence cost was too high to justify using on a swarm of weaklings. Instead, the weaker mages attacked low-danger raids, to hone their skills and aid the defenders.

  When I heard that, I couldn’t help but think of the fireballs I had seen during my first raid. In five minutes flat, they had wiped out several groups of moderately powerful, flying monsters. Those were the trainee mages of this world?

  As much as I disliked the limited regeneration of essence in this world, I had to admit, the actual power of the magic systems used here were impressive.

  Of course, after six months, something far more important than just gathering information happened. The third member of our group woke up.

   said Anise, as her movements rapidly became more controlled and balanced. If a few hours ago, she had looked just like a flailing toddler, now she looked like an adult trapped in an awkward body. A moment later, she squirmed over to me, and I engulfed her in a hug.

  I giggled, and my mother, who was reading a book in the corner, smiled when she saw her children getting along.

   I said, as I leaned closer for a hug.

   said Felix, who sounded sour.

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  I grimaced. Felix wasn’t wrong. Over six months, we had carefully observed Felix’s family. His family reminded me of a family from one of the dramatic stories written about nobles in our previous world. They constantly schemed and fought over attention, resources, and pride. Felix hadn’t been very involved with them yet, and they seemed to maintain certain boundaries - neither of us had seen any siblings die or get maimed as a result of infighting. However, the household Felix was born into seemed like a harsh one.

  Felix’s parents were a little bit better - his father was stern, but not overtly cruel. However, he still seemed a bit on the colder side - he reserved his smiles and affection for the siblings who excelled the most. Even though he maintained some boundaries, there was a reason his household was like this.

  His mother seemed much nicer. Unfortunately, she was very sick. She was basically bedridden most of the time, so her influence on her children was minimized. While Felix was probably joking about assassins, we would need to keep an eye on his situation. If possible, I also wanted to heal his mother - I suspected that would improve his family situation a fair bit.

  The two of us started telling Anise about Felix’s family, and I saw her little face scrunch up in distaste afterwards.

   said Anise.

   Felix mentally sighed at us.

   I asked, as I tried to change the subject. Felix didn’t seem very happy about his family situation this time, so it was probably time to move to a new subject.

  

  A moment later, Anise’s status screen appeared in front of me. I took a look at it for a few moments, before I shrugged. Anise’s Status Screen was neither great nor terrible - it could be considered weirdly average, if anything. Still, it could have been much worse.

   said Felix, while sending the equivalent of a mental shrug.

   said Anise.

  

   said Anise. She closed her eyes, and scrunched up her face in concentration. After a few minutes, Anise opened them again.

   said Anise.

   said Felix.

   said Anise. She sounded far more cheerful once Felix pointed that out.

   Said Felix.

  she said.

   I said.

  From there, the three of us chatted for several hours, as we caught Anise up on everything we had seen and learned about this world so far. As we talked, I moved into a better hugging position, and Anise managed to drape one of her arms around my back as well. It was a bit of an awkward position, but it felt nice to hug one of my friends and have them hug me back. I hadn’t even seen Felix in the flesh yet, but at the very least, I could hug one of my friends again. We chatted well into the night, long after my parents went to sleep, about our plans for the future. We still didn’t know enough about the world to make any concrete plans for the future yet… but we were starting to get a structural framework for what we wanted.

  Based on the information Felix and I had discovered so far, this world truly was in a desperate state. The people of this world had been kicked off of the continent, and were banished to a few flying sanctuaries. Worse, the number of sanctuaries didn’t seem to be very high - Felix hadn’t seen more than ten of them during the few times the maid took him to observe our surroundings. Each sanctuary could probably house a few million people, because they were absurdly oversized compared to their original purpose - but that was tiny compared to the original size and population of this world.Worse, even if we somehow reclaimed the continent and followed the path of the ‘old heroes,’ after a few thousand years any gains we made would probably collapse again. That wasn’t something I was satisfied with.

  I wanted to provide this world with real hope. Since the Market was gone, it was obvious that this world couldn’t expect any heroes to reappear in the future. We were the last wave that was likely to appear.

  So I didn’t just want to learn how ‘heroes’ worked and then copy their actions. I wanted a way to end the cycle. We just needed to figure out how to do it.

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