2nd Arc

"All that work and effort you put in and your pet project barely even did anything," a taunting female voice seems to laugh softly from nearby. Turning my head to look, I see a woman with shining silver hair and a voluptuous body vaguely hidden under layers of draping silk. Her eyes were solid white except for small golden pupils and she was watching me with a salacious gleam.

Looking back down from my seat on a small cloud, I watch as hundreds of mixed mortal races ensure the deaths of thousands of undead creatures by removing the heads before dragging them to the small moat around their town. It was true, I had worked hard to cultivate this undead army to be a real test of Chuck's abilities but only succeeded in making him improvise a few techniques.

I wanted to see Chuck get hands-on with the enemy to see how far he could go in a real fight!

"It was a good show, still," I reply nonchalantly, trying to sound bored without actually being bored. "But, what brings you here, Fatima? Certainly not just to enjoy the show."

"Not much, other Chuck," she replies with an outright smirk before returning her attention to the ground below. "Of course, I'm sure you are well aware of the fact we are well aware that you played with the flow of time in our world. How do you think we are to deal with that, other Chuck?"

"Since it's only one of you, it can't possibly be to remove me from your dimensional plane," I reply with a smirk of my own, earning myself a scowl from the goddess hovering nearby. "So, let me guess, you're going to babysit me for the rest of his life? I couldn't have picked better company to keep, myself."

"I would rather accompany the kid than babysit you, but we dont get to choose the companions the gods give us," Fatima laments while sitting on nothing at all. At least I used the pretense of a cloud to blend with the color of my bathrobe yukata.

"I'm a stray celestial being and you're a god yourself," I reminded her. "This world's god of life and love, I believe? There's a number of you beautiful ladies in this world's pantheon."

"Ah, I am surprised you remember," she says with mock surprise, raising her fingers to her mouth to gesture surprise as well. "We have only met, what, three times?"

Smiling and looking down toward the edge of the upper class districts, I easily spot Chuck at work in his parents' property. "I can already imagine the only life and love here is with that kid, so calm your...self. Since you're here, at least I'll get to know what I am and am not allowed to do on the spot. Can I ask you something, though?"

"By all means," she says almost conversationally, now.

"Was that you or Rayen who switched out the kid's attacks?" I ask with open honesty to keep the mood similar.

"It was the boy," she replies after a few seconds of thoughtful silence. "He was responsible not only for about a third of the holy water made but also for blessing all of them. His will simply enacted itself into triggering the hallowed ground into expanding itself to a certain length of the artifact network. Quite forcefully. Rayen did not even bless the preemptive, only the soldiers."

Neither of us said anything as we both watched Chuck move on from crafting prep to wisp handling, just idly enjoyed the show. If I did not know any better, I would have called this something of a moment between us. However, I knew better, and I knew better than to break the silence.

I had plenty to keep myself occupied with, though, considering all of the recon I had done in the neighboring regions. After initially uncovering the future plot of these events which should have taken place almost five years from now, I had spent almost all of up until today searching. There were few surprises left in this country concerning the kid's life, but I was not upset.

"You know we can read your mind while you're actually here, right?" Fatima asks suddenly, interrupting Chuck's moment of his wisps' attempting to condense a core. "And, for you information, we hit the reset button on a number of those 'plots'. Your kid will have to find his own trouble to get into for a while."

"Oh for the love of-"

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Name: Chuck Stan

Title: Adjutant

Class: ????

Race: Halfling Hillman

Age: 8

Level: 0

EXP: 56066

Strength: 41+(10)

Endurance: 300+(10)

Agility: 247+(10)

Intelligence: 150+(10)

Willpower: 440+(10)

Luck: 777+(10)

Piety: 333

***

"His magical stats are alright, but his physical status is still a bit lacking," my father remarks after my parents finish going over my status window. We had just finished dinner and my brother had raised the question of bringing me along for a special operation.

Because of their overall stats, teamwork, abilities, and equipment, Gryn and his friend were taking an advance evaluation mission for the Guild to see if they could enter at B rank. As his parents, mom and dad were going to be the evaluators because of their own outstanding ranks and achievements. We knew this was coming up, and I had always planned on just laying out my own wards and undergoing heavy training.

Even if it was only a few days, I could accomplish a lot of trials and training from having the house to myself.

Now that the actual mission had been decided upon, Gryn decided to ask if I could join them on the trip. Probably because of more than in spite of my own assurances of 'relaxing at home' during this time, my parents seemed to take my brother's request quite seriously. They had actually asked to look over my stats, which was equivalent to a training review.

I thought I was doing fairly well, but I was only allowed to do so much. Because my brother ha spent longer and longer periods of time away from home, I was allowed to spend more hours training and has less restricted research. This was probably mostly due to my needing to refine and enchant a better version of my voided sword.

I had only just recently completed both dual swords and sword-and-shield training regimes, but the equipment I was given was intentionally light. Still, with longer hours I was able to make a good deal of progress in Strength. My Endurance pretty much skyrocketed in contrast.

Apparently, my father was not as impressed as I was.

"If you guys would let me do what I want, I could have my Strength at one hundred by now, and could sill do it by the time im ten," I say quietly.

"We let you research voids and advanced refinement, you wanted that magic over body permissions," my mother reminds me almost casually, briefly waving a hand at me. "I think your stats are fine since you're talents are in production and support. You can easily carry a fully armored and armed man off a battlefield. You can almost carry his horse."

"Of course he wouldn't have a combative or even active role," my father says as if my mother had picked a fight with him. "This is Gryn and the gang's evaluation, not his. He's already cleared for B rank entry once he comes of age. If he chooses to do so. Now, should he be brought along?"

"I really don't mind staying at home," I say uselessly, wondering if my parents were not just having fun at my expense right now. They were both smart enough to know better than to leave me alone for too long. Even though, by technicality, I was over a quarter of a century old now.

I was probably around the age my parents were at when they had Gryn, though both of them were nearing the ends of their thirties, now. They didn't look it, though.

Both of them still appeared youthful in demeanor and their skin was smooth, but people with strong magic and backgrounds were known to have the benefits of longevity.

My parents were still relatively ignoring me, 'discussing' the pros and cons of my stat build as a way to argue about my training. Finally, Gryn chimes in again with, "We all know he could handle a single nesting ground by himself and we don't need him. As long as he stayed within a few miles of us, he could come back in moments by himself and you guys could so the same. Let him go hunting by himself instead of destroying the house."

My parents both turned away to look at Gryn on the opposite side of the table from me, so I could not see their expressions very well at that moment. However, I was pretty sure they were wearing oddly playful scowls. They were probably going to lead to that themselves at some point, possibly trying to leave me in suspense somehow.

When they looked back at each other, still ignoring me, they appeared calm and responsible. My father then says, "He has lessons at the temple tomorrow, we'll ask Father what he thinks. Between the two of them, I'm sure they can find a way for this to benefit Templeton."

Templeton is the simplistic name given to the combined town and village that had been razed by the necro-goblins when they rebuilt themselves. The new town was larger than the previous in sheer land, but only because the church of this world stepped in through Old Man to oversee the construction of a massive fort. The previous refugees were now a standing militia meant to augment the Guild despite being a religious faction.

Their primary function and training revolved around dealing with undead and dark magic, but to promote the growth and self-sustainability of the fort I worked with the old commander to come up with certain agricultural projects. For the past few years, Templeton's people and the Guild have been capturing or replanting wildlife into cattle and crops.

The evaluation mission given to Gryn and his friends had to do with a bi-yearly breeding season for a certain large game animal. They were basically giant goats that lived up in the mountains, every other year they would fight it out in the mountains to claim harems of betties. Once they had a few she-goats, they would come down into the valleys and forestry to nest.

The Guild had two functions in regards to their breeding season. One was to scout nests and either protect the breeding goats or deal replace the males with better breeding stock. Originally, the Guild only protected local settlements from scouted nests and the vengeful males who visited nests.

A few decades ago, the Empire agricultural ministers took interest om the goats and captured many of the world's populations of them. Then the Guild was imperially commissioned to control the population because of their inherent inclinations for magical variation.

Back then, one or two in ten big billies were specifically elemental inclined variants. Now, one in three show visible magical affinity with one in five of elemental base. The most common variations being stardust or earth element.

Not only were the animals naturally strong beasts of burden, averaging at the size of a Clydesdale from Earth, but the sought after stardust goats were the most profitable. Their coats were made of a crystallized keratin that could strengthen the conductivity of synthetic stones. Like a few other crystalline structures, it was possible to assimilate them into some metals for alchemical alloys.

My parents obviously wanted to catch for and cash in on Templeton's budding production and trade industry.

That night, though, all I could think about was being left alone in the forestry for what could potentially be long periods of time. I could hunt and gather as I pleased without worry of anyone knowing what I did to achieve this or that goal. I could train harder and perform more dangerous experiments with magic and alchemy while out in BFE.

If I played my cards right, I could even hunt a few of my own goats. Not only were their skins extremely thick, even the 'mundane' goats had highly conductive leather when even moderately refined. Gryn and his friends would probably want new gear after passing their evaluation- not to mention a few of them had grown a bit over the years.

The very next day, my parents brought me to the temple early to consult the head priest before my 'training' For two hours a day twice a week, I would come to the temple to study the various forms of what I called worship and miracles. I was even made to lead public prayers during holdiays and harvest events a few times a year as a form of practice.

He quickly agreed that it would be useful to bring me along both for the sake of Templeton as well as my own religious practices. The only difference in their ideals, though, was that Old Man wanted to make this a sort of pilgrimage. Since Gryn and everybody else were there to work, I was given the job of traveling the region and blessing the lands with practice rites.

The only problem I could find in this was that I would be pressed for time in both my own training and hunting.

Since Gryn's job was to scout and guard a nest instead of a village, though, my destinations were still fairly deep in the forestry and even up the mountains a bit. We were already in the middle of courting season, nesting season also lasted for a month by itself. I would spend that time traveling, praying, gathering, blessing, hunting, training, studying, and even subduing some large game.

*