Sitting at my favorite window and overlooking the sprawl of Nialdon, the pitter-patter of little footsteps drew my attention. I turned in time to catch a small child as he threw himself at my lap, which was good, because my old bones couldn’t handle that as easily these days.

  “Gigi,” the toddler whispered.

  “Yes, Varden?”

  He leaned in towards my ear. “Varrel said you have candy.”

  “Oh ho,” I murmured. “She told you?”

  Varden nodded.

  “And you want one?”

  Varden nodded more wildly.

  I set him down on the ground, showing him my empty, weathered hands. “Watch,” I said, and with a flick of my wrist, a candy appeared. Varden jumped up and down in excitement, reaching out eagerly, and I handed him the candy. He thanked me and ran away squealing, meaning I would likely have more great-grandchildren tromping over in search of candies soon.

  [Manakinesis] made for good sleight of hand.

  Standing up to the sound of my knees cracking, I failed to subdue a grunt of effort. I felt every year of my age, now, both the decades of Michael Carter and those of Tovar, son of Hildan and Berrel—husband to Felris, father of four, grandfather of eleven, and great-grandfather of twenty-nine (and counting).

  Many of those grandchildren and great-grandchildren were also named after myself and Felris in some way. Varden and Varrel got their prefix from my suffix, and another set had the “To” prefix that me and my siblings had. There were also quite a few “Felris” derivatives and related chunks of name scattered throughout the families.

  Everyone was visiting the manor a lot, these days. It was pretty clear they were trying to spend as much time with me as possible.

  I shuffled through the manor, accosted quite pleasantly by more candy-seeking children, for whom I produced impressive feats of magic—predominantly making candy appear from all sorts of locations, at least until I was told by their parents to stop spoiling their supper with the stuff. I only handed out one more piece per child after that before cutting them off.

  It was a gigi’s duty to spoil, after all, and it wasn’t all that long ago that I had been sneaking candy to those very grandkids, despite my children’s requests to not spoil their supper.

  Nialdan had continued to develop and was firmly on the rise, especially with the unification of Argadia and Dulth kingdoms to the greater nation of Argadulth. Dumb name, in my opinion, but at least we had peace. Our dungeon output had stayed mostly consistent, ebbing and flowing in different years while dealing with different circumstances. We lost an entire crop of fae fern one year, a couple of decades back, and had to start over with samples taken from the grotto, with concern about losing the resource entirely. Fortunately, the new batch took, and we were able to replant the grotto samples within the year, before the ecology suffered for it.

  With the dungeon’s output, mages were on the rise in Argadulth. I hoped it would be enough for when the next human-demon war began.

  “It will be, or it won’t be,” the admin said. “You know I can’t tell you. Besides, you’ll be gone soon.”

  “That’s true, but my family’s still here. Obviously I’m going to worry about them,” I said, stretching out in the metaversal borderland. Here, my joints didn’t ache, which was very appreciated.

  “I’ll tell you this much,” the admin said, leaning forward as if we risked being overheard. “It almost certainly won’t be for another hundred years. I’ve got to put some plans into motion and get some pieces into position still, and these things take time.”

  “How much can you affect the world?” I asked, curious.

  “Less than I’d like,” he grumbled. “Mostly, I give revelations and blessings, and rely on those pawns to employ my will in-world. If they fail, I have to start over with someone else, so it’s not a sure thing. Actual intervention is… rather costly.”

  “Hmm.”

  “On that note…” the admin said. “When I’m choosing the next set of champions, do you want me to include your descendants? Or exclude them? I can go either way, so might as well leave it to you.”

  I hummed again, this time in much deeper contemplation. “I think… exclude them,” I finally said. The blessing would give one or more of my descendants the ability to fight for humanity directly, but I wasn’t sure I wanted to put the onus on them. They could still contribute without being chosen for the responsibility, but it would be their choice. Or at least the choice of whoever they, in turn, needed to obey at a societal level, but there was little avoiding that.

  “Sure,” the librarian-looking higher dimensional being said with a shrug. “Given enough generations, though, that might not be possible, but that’s likely a few wars away.”

  Thinking about descendants over a thousand years away was a bit difficult for me to comprehend, so I set that aside for the moment. “I still don’t really understand why the wars are necessary.”

  I knew by now that much of what confused me about this world was a product of this endless cycle of war, trading wins and losses back and forth between human and demon conquest. Language and ideas polluted culture in both directions, and technology, knowledge, and advancements were lost en masse every time the victor switched from one side to the other, causing a massive population shrinkage among the losers. The admin ensured neither side died back to extinction, and the cycle continued.

  As a result, though, the two sides weren’t all that different. They performed magic in different ways, and there were some physical differences in terms of how the two sapient species looked. They couldn’t interbreed, either, so the two populations could never become one. But the conflict didn’t seem essential, and peace would elevate both sides, the same as it had in Argadulth.

  “You know the phrase ‘competition breeds excellence’?” the admin asked, and I nodded. “It’s basically that at the highest scale. You’ll see it over and over in System worlds. The System rewards conflict, and souls come out stronger as a result. Peace leads to complacency, and complacent people don’t push themselves the same way. Look at your own progress since you started your family.”

  “Hey, I did pretty well for myself.” I pulled up my System to take a look.

  After becoming a father, my priorities had shifted. We had staff to help, but I wanted to be a hands-on father who took a comprehensive role in raising his children. Training and study had slowed, but not stopped. At first, I started picking up spells that directly helped me with child-rearing; [Induce Sleep] was a huge help early on, [Pain Reduction] was a wonder during growth spurts where I had to hold back on healing, and [Calm Mind] helped with tantrums. For the worst of those, [Mute] offered a reprieve.

  This narrative has been purloined without the author's approval. Report any appearances on Amazon.

  If using magic on my children was cheating as a father, so be it. Call me a cheater.

  Beyond that, there were a multitude of utility spells that I picked up. [Locate] was good for lost toys, [Farsight] was good for watching them from a distance, [Repair] fixed torn clothes and broken dishware, and I couldn’t say enough good things about [Clean].

  Once the kids were grown, I was able to start thinking about other spells, but after going through Somnial’s library, I realized that a huge portion of the grimoires were rather intense area of effect attack spells. That made sense against an army of demons—or humans, as it were, when Somnial halted Dulth’s aggression back in my early teens—but they simply weren’t all that practical in my actual life. I also had combat capability with my elemental magic already, and had continued to level those up.

  I learned a couple AOE spells, nonetheless—[Shadow Swamp] and [Magma Field], neither of which were within the capabilities of my previously acquired creation and control spells—before I realized that most of my life hadn’t actually been one of conflict and battle. I knew I would face plenty of both in lives to come, but there was significantly more value in acquiring more utility spells that improved my day-to-day life, since I would have many, many days to come.

  Shifting my focus to Somnial’s wider collection, then, I continued picking up spells that would help me across both the rest of this life and future lives. In addition to a few more creation and control spells, I learned [Unlock], [Detect], [Gather], and [Purify], which were all fairly straightforward. [Discernment] was a spell for identifying truth from lie, which was a little less useful in daily life because of casting time, but was useful in sorting out issues in my domain as the lord. On the flip side, [Mind Shield] protected from spells like discernment and mind reading, so I learned that next.

  Thinking about future defenses, I started looking into magic within that school, and learned [Barrier], [Containment], [Boundary], which each had slightly different effects, and also [Preservation], which was similar to [Containment] but with stasis. Somnial’s artifact box, which I sold before leaving Ivarnel, had a similar ability.

  This all happened at a much, much slower pace than I had acquired spells at as a student. Between family, my lordship, the dungeon, and just learning to live and enjoy my life in the present, I wasn’t spending as much time memorizing spells. I also had to work on my stats, and that all took time as well, though they also grew as a matter of course in living my life, to a point.

  My Body was the first to slow, as I aged and didn’t feel up for pushing myself as far. I had healing spells in case I hurt myself, but eventually, I let it rest until I was a young man again in my next life. Mind and Will both continued to grow, the latter being the easiest to grow by pushing what skills I already had up to higher levels. In the end, I only had the kind of stat level that anyone potentially could have in a single life, except most people only peaked in one or two stats; I had pushed all three.

  The most major shift in my training came later in life, when I really started facing down the fact that this life would be coming to an end. I realized I had no idea whether or not my chants would work in future worlds, and so I started paying much closer attention to the shape of mana itself, presumably the same way demons used it. In private, whenever I could, I worked on my [Mana Manipulation], trying to copy the structure of my spoken spells.

  It took years of practice, but I was finally able to use raw mana to create a small flame, without the chant for [Create Fire]. I didn’t achieve a new skill for it, presumably because whatever I had done was already covered by those two spells, but I was thrilled at my success anyway.

  Eventually, I settled into the role of doting grandfather and great-grandfather. Even knowing I had lives to come, it was hard to fight my biology; the drive to progress slowed in my twilight years. In the end, I was quite satisfied with a life well-lived.

  “For someone who didn’t live through any major wars, yeah,” the admin shrugged. “You did fine, I guess.”

  “I’ll build on it in my next life,” I said. “Which is probably pretty soon.”

  “It was nice to have someone interesting to watch during my off-season,” the admin said, shooting me a grin.

  “Yeah, yeah,” I muttered. “But, seriously, thanks for your help in this life. I… had no idea what I was doing when I got here.”

  “You still don’t,” the admin said with a laugh. “But you’ll figure it out.”

  * * *

  The bed was soft and comfortable, but despite that, my body ached. I wheezed a breath in, but it felt insufficient. Both those things had become a constant, now. I couldn’t chant, so I couldn’t heal, but even then, it probably wouldn’t help much.

  Time was always the great equalizer.

  I was surrounded by a flow of family, coming and going so that I wouldn’t be alone. The only unchanging fixture was Felris, who sat by me as much as was humanly possible. I was, selfishly, happy to go first.

  Despite my stats and skills, biology was biology. Maybe when I had double the Body stats or more than what a normal human could possibly have, it could possibly extend my natural lifespan. In this life, my first eleven years were hard, and nutrition had been meager. That impacted my growth, stressed my organs, and ultimately, was a lingering presence over the rest of my years, despite the upswing in living conditions and quality. I had still done much better than the average commoner, who rarely lived to see as many descendants as I had.

  Felris was still in good shape, thanks to having an abundance of resources growing up, and I had kept her healthy with healing through our years together as well. She, in turn, had picked up some healing and pain reduction spells, and as she finished a chant under her breath, a warmth washed over me, temporarily pushing back the worst of it.

  I took the opportunity to speak, as I could feel the end approaching.

  “Felris,” I whispered.

  She leaned forward so I didn’t need to raise my voice, lightly squeezing my hand in hers. She didn’t respond—she didn’t have to. Decades together made most words pointless, now, but there were things I still wanted to say, and my encroaching death made me loose-lipped.

  “You know, I’m actually from another world.”

  “Is that so,” my wife said, entertaining what was surely my end of life ramblings to her ears. She smiled at me, and while gray and wrinkled, she was still the most beautiful sight I had ever seen.

  “I didn’t really expect much from this place,” I continued. “Train my stats, get some magic. And I did.” I sucked in a ragged breath. “But I also met you. You made this life worth living, Fel.”

  Tears threatened to spill from her eyes, but she held them back for me. My own vision blurred with some as well.

  “Thank you for everything,” I managed to say, before I felt the vaguely familiar situation of my soul passing on, leaving my body, and my second world, behind.

  My perception shifted from body to soul and I found myself drifting back towards the vortex of souls spiraling down into the Engine of Reincarnation. At the edges of my perception, I felt the scouring nature of the process make its attempts to strip my soul of its gains and render me back to my base parts, but my memories and the rest were safe thanks to [Metasurvival].

  So I persisted. I couldn’t say how long I spent in the flow, because time didn’t really exist here. It wasn’t until I was through the Engine that I found the familiar sensation of reality, how I knew it, as I once again went through the process of being born.

  When I reached up to stretch my arms, I took in my new, orange hands.

  All four of them.

  so close to doubling up on that acronym's meaning that I decided I wanted it to be that way. I may change this again before publishing to a different "MC" name because I'm still kind of still unsure about it, but like I said, this is fairly unimportant and might literally never come up again after this point.

  A word of warning about the coming life: this was MC's happily ever after moment, and the next life will be a lot harsher at times, particularly through the chapters that are currently available on Patreon. That's the next five weeks of content to be posted here on RR, with Patreon being 15 chapters ahead. I also think that, like the chapters of Tovar's early life (which I was able to bulk post, as it was the start of the fic) these chapters are best read in a shorter time frame than the nature of serial webfiction generally delivers, particularly due to how I tend to write.

  don't think it's so rough that I need to add the "sensitive content" tag to the story here, as I already have "graphic violence" listed, but I may add "sensitive content" just to be on the safe side (as I did Worldseed and Re:Chimaera) and to future-proof, starting next week.

  tempted to hiatus here so I can bulk post those in a month's time without falling behind on Patreon, but I have pre-agreed shout obligations through to March, so I won't be doing that. I'm also not particularly trying to up-sell you on my Patreon, though you're and read ahead (and now's probably the best time to do that). Rather, if you're interested in MC's next life, it might be better for you to just take a few weeks off from this fic and come back to catch up/binge once things are ramped up, because I think these chapters are significantly better in a bingeable format than thrice weekly serial chapters, personally. (Though, I feel that way about every story.)