A complicated Family

The pleasant smell of wet grass mixed with the scent of flowers greeted Leander on the other side of the portal, he found himself in a front yard of a two-story house.

The front yard garden was full of flowers and flora he'd never seen before, both on Earth and in the other world, assuring him that he'd been reincarnated in another world again.

Elentiya guided them into the house despite the simple appearance on the outside there were ornaments that looked very expensive on the inside making it clear that this house didn't belong to an average person, Celine seemed to be familiar with the place.

When they passed through a corridor with portraits of several people her expression changed, her eyes lingered looking at all those portraits of different people, her expression was unreadable to Leander.

They arrived on a large balcony that gave a view of the mountains in the distance, the cold wind whipping against Leander's face reminding him of his former lives when his guild participated in missions in the mountains.

There was a table there, full of pastries and cakes, They settled there and started to eat in silence, both Celine and Leander were so hungry that they almost forgot they were in a life and death situation a few minutes before.

Both Leander and Celine took a long time eating and recovering from the exhaustion that had built up in their bodies.

Elentiya glanced at Celine with a worried look almost as if she was asking for help, Celine understood the signal and took Leander's hand.

She was extremely nervous, Lydia's betrayal made her sad and angry at the same time, and she still couldn't understand all her motives, as if that rollercoaster of emotions wasn't already enough for a day she was now preparing herself to tell her Young brother the truth about his Family.

Being the daughter of someone like Elentiya she had o be prepared for everything, though right now she felt completely unprepared and scared, she was scared of Ferran's reaction to the truth, fear of being despised by him.

'Please don't hate me' She thought

"Ferran I want you to meet your real mother" She finally said with an awkward smile.

"Real mother?" Leander was putting the pieces together already but he had to react like a child.

'I'm some kind of bastard son?' was one of the most likely explanations in his view for Elentiya fabricating such a lie.

It wasn't the first time that he had a fake family, He remembered one time he was born as the bastard child of a noble man who constantly cheated on his wife, the man didn't even hesitate to get rid of him, by giving him to another Family.

"You see...Mom hmm I mean—''

Celine was struggling to come up with an explanation, all that story was really confusing and she had no idea how to explain everything, that was when Elentiya decided to take the wheel and explain in her place.

Elentiya looked at him, seeing his confused face still dirty with dust from the battle brought pain into her chest, her son almost died today and it was her fault, her decisions brought pain to the people she loved the most, and right now she was about to make him suffer even more by telling that his life was a lie.

A lie told by her, his real mother. After gathering all the courage she could muster Elentiya started her explanation.

"Ferran I'm your mother... I know you are probably confused right now about everything that just happened but I need you to listen to me first...

I was really happy when I discovered that I was pregnant, but when you were born I found out that you had a disease in your mana system and would probably die prematurely, you have no idea how happy I was when you turned seven, you remained completely health

Of course, we had to be careful because we didn't know how that disease would behave after that is why I decided it would be better if you did not practice magic and forced your body to exhaustion"

'So this is why they don't let me practice magic... interesting' Leander never felt anything when he practiced magic in the forest but the memories of his partially conscious self showed him how the disease simply was gone after his full counciuness took control of the body.

"I have a pretty dangerous... job so I thought it would be better and safer if you had a normal life, with a normal Family".

'So basically You find out your son had a disease and what you do is get rid of him, really?'

That was the first thing Leander thought, but considering how Elentiya had been deceived by her own daughter, he couldn't imagine how much more perilous the "job" she mentioned was, it was clear to him it was something related to nobility since an assassination attempts were common in this environment.

She took Leander's hands between hers.

"There are a lot of bad people out there who would hurt you because of me, so I sent our sister to take care of you... but I didn't expect one of them would choose that path

You are probably confused right now Ferran but Lydia wasn't your mother...I am ...I don't expect you to forgive me for lying and honestly, I don't think you have to, but I swear I will do everything I can to catch up to you, I will give my best to be your mother this time".

'I see...'

Strangely now things made sense, why they lived in a house in the middle of nowhere, why Celine and Lydia never talked about family, how they had food in the middle of nowhere, it was always provided by Elentiya.

Elentiya was worried about the impact this revelation would have on a child, but she had no idea Leander was a reincarnate who didn't care about family and never considered himself as her or Lydia's son. He felt that a reincarnate may be reborn as a baby, but he or she would never be a legitimate child, making the entire parent-son connection a farce.

'She not telling me the entire truth thought'

Leander knew she was leaving some things uncovered; What was that job of her's so important that she couldn't quit, not even for her own son who had a disease?

His confused expression. That Elentiya mistook as a shock was actually him connecting the dots in his mind.

'All this time both Lydia and Celine were my older sisters, but what could be Lydia's motivation... power, money, Elentiya has both of them, she probably a noble and this type of things are common in families like this'

'But something doesn't add up on this, why is she so powerful, usually noble are really lazy and just let their soldiers do the job unless in this world nobles are more active on the field of magic...'

He became lost in his thought for a couple of seconds before realizing both women were expecting his reaction, he had to act like a child but he had no idea how a child would react to this, he thought probably a real child would cry and probably be traumatized by everything that just happened or something like that but he was too tired to act like this right now, so he had to improvise.

"So aunt Celine is my big sister?"

He looked at Celine with eyes full of expectation.

"Yes, I'm sorry for lying little brother" she lowered her head in shame.

"I believe in big sister Celine, so I believe in you too," He said trying to sound like a child, hoping that Elentiya and Celine would buy his act.

Elentiya was so surprised to hear this that she simply hugged Leander; she planned to become closer to him slowly so as not to make him uncomfortable but it seemed as if a weight had been lifted from her heart.

"---Thank you, thank you, thank you".

Celine joined the hug as well, she felt like a huge burden had been finally lifted from her chest.

'Either my act skill had become too good or they are too desperate' He thought feeling bad for receiving an underserved affection.

***

The moonlight was coming in through the window painting the room a silvery color, the room was big compared to the one he was used to, and the bed looked very comfortable but Leander had decided that this was the right time to start his operation.

After the dinner, both Elentiya and Celine looked very tired and went to sleep, during the dinner Elentiya told stories from when she had him, she avoided talking about her work and clearly avoided talking about what Lydia had done, there were too many unexplained things about Leander's family in this life, he was not willing to wait for answers.

He opened the door slowly and walked silently through the corridor, he checked out both Celine and Elentiya to see if they were already sleeping, and after confirming that the two were asleep he got the green light to continue his exploration.

Opening the door next to Celine's room Leander discovered what appeared to be an office; A rectangular table was positioned next to the window and a bookshelf with several books was behind the desk.

On top of the desk, there was the map of a country that he assumed to be where he was now, what drew his attention were the notes scratched on the map punctuating strategic locations and points where merchants passed.

The table was a mess as if someone had been working there non-stop for a few days, a few drops of ink had fallen on the high-quality wood of the table leaving a stain, and the papers were a little crumpled showing thatelentiya had spent hours analyzing them.

A paper beside the map was reporting information about troop movements and conflicts that had happened recently, all letters and reports carried a gold seal.

'Is she part of the military?'

Leander could understand only part of the reports there since a good part of it seemed to be written in a different language, but he had been in enough wars to understand the purpose of reports and maps, it was the plan for a strategic strike, aiming to destabilize the enemy by taking away the route of merchants and leaving them without supplies.

'Taking the supplies and slowly weakening the enemy is not bad mom'

He decided to see if there was something interesting on the bookshelf but to his disappointment, most of the books were in other languages as well, the ones he could read were simply histories about historical heroes or wars that had happened in the past.

He had even found books on completely random subjects such as forging and painting.

'How such a powerful mage does not even have a book on magic?'

After a few minutes, a book cover caught his attention it was at the bottom of the shelf, the book cover was old and full of torn parts, but this was the book he was looking for.

'Finally a book about magic'.

***

Leander was in his room again, he took the book since he doubted someone even remembered that it was there.

On the first page of the book, the sun and moon were presented almost as mystical entities, as sources of energy and mana. After some stories and fables about how the sun and moon would have been formed The book revealed how every being in Rahgon was born naturally belonging to one of the two groups of magic in this world.

Solrien and Luavron.

The ones born with the blessing of the sun were considered Solrien mages and could use fire and Earth elements.

On the other hand, the ones born with the blessing of the moon were considered Luavron mages capable of using the elements of water and air.

After Reading Leander realized why he failed to use fire before he also noticed that all the members of his family were born with Solrien nature while he was a Lunavron mage.

'So I'm the outcast huh!'.

The book described how other elements were derived from these basic elements, solrien mages were capable of creating lava by overheating earth using fir, and luavron created negative charges in the air to create lightning.

Leander had a big surprise when he turned the page and found there was a third type of magic.

The book called this type of magic spirit magic.

The description in the book about spirit mana was: The imprint of a will on mana.

'What the hell does imprint of a will on mana means?' The concept sounded too abstract to him to actually grasp what this type of magic was.

He almost freaked out, after turning the page and finding out there was nothing more about spirit magic in the book.

"WHAT THE F—" he covered his mouth to prevent the volume of his voice from waking someone up.

The frustration was so great that he almost gave up reading the rest of the book.

The next section talked about the mana system. Leander remembered elentiya had mentioned it before.

The mana system was another new thing in that world for him, different from where he came from where mana was just accumulated in the body and used in magic circles to create magic, in this world, there was something called a mana system, it was something like blood vessels but instead of blood mana circulated.

According to the book the mana system also acted like muscles pulling or pushing mana out of the body, mages had to be able to control their mana system to form spells, and just like a muscle, it had to be trained in order to become stronger.

Leander finally understood why his spells were out of control, he had no idea how to use his mana system, and he probably had used it the wrong way.

The more powerful a mage, the more complex his mana system was, and the more control he had over his own mana system; the book stated how Everything in Raghon had its own mana system, even something like rocks or trees had a pseudo mana system.

The light coming from the window warned Leander that it was dawning, what to him seemed to have lasted a few hours had lasted all night.