“Uuueh! Uueh!”
“Congratulations Stella! It’s a boy!”
The woman congratulated the newly made mother, Stella, as she handed over her newborn son to her after wrapping the baby in a clean blanket. The woman had a smile on her face while sweat covered her forehead, she looked very exhausted.
“Thank you, Gloria,” said Stella while she made a grimace from all the pain she was feeling. “I don’t think I can ever thank you enough for this,” she said to Gloria as she lowered her head slightly towards her with tears in her eyes and a smile floating on her face. Her breathing was rough and she had pearls of sweat on her skin that glistered in the light.
Gloria was Stella’s closest childhood friend, they had grown up together in the village and were as close as sisters. Stella said a few more words of appreciation as she received her baby with her frail arms to finally begin breastfeeding her son. The labour had been a long and difficult one and at one point Gloria had even thought the baby had died during it.
“Stop it you… even if you flatter me you won’t get anything out of it,” said Gloria while turning her head away, her cheeks turned red as roses from blushing. She scratched her head slightly at all the praises and thanks she was given that she didn’t feel that she’d earned, “You did all the hard work Stella. I only helped out a tiny bit… there’s no need for you to lower your head to someone like me, we’re friends after all.” she said as she felt bashful and left the room, she glanced back at Stella and her baby inside of the bedroom, happy from the bottom of her heart to see her childhood friend’s baby arrive safely into this world after struggling for so long.
It made Gloria appreciate the small miracle of life once again after such a long time. She let out a small sigh at the scene in front of her, a mother holding her newborn son like he’s the most precious and the most sacred thing in the whole wide world.
“Yes, yes, yes. All very good and all, now Stella, chew on this leaf for a bit,” A third woman inside of the room said as she put a yellow, long leaf with smooth texture into Stella’s mouth, “That’s it, put it on the side next to your back teeth and chew it by grinding it between the teeth. It will help to relieve the pain.” The third woman in the room who’d helped with the birth was the village elder, Yuzari.
The house Stella lived in could barely be called a house, it was more of a cottage. The windows were boarded up with planks instead of glass and everything was either made out of wood or stone. There were only three rooms in the entire cottage. A small kitchen with a stone stove was to the left from the entrance to the cottage, it was cramped but wide. It could fit two adults standing side by side. The entrance only contained a small shoe rack and lead directly into the living room, the room was in a rectangular shape and fit around four adults inside, it had a small round short-legged dining table and the only chair in the room was next to a tiny table close to the left wall that had the kitchen on the other side of it. On the small table there was some spools of threads, cloth, needles and other sewing tools commonly used by a seamstress. The last room was to the right from the entrance, it was a small bedroom that could only fit about two adults sleeping inside of it. The bedroom had a boarded up window and a small dresser inside next to the living room wall with some drawn portraits of Stella and her husband framed on top of it and a small box that could be called a jewel box.
Inside the box were not your common types of jewelry but things like sea-shell earrings, necklaces and wristbands made from shells and corals by her husband as gifts for Stella. Next to the box laid a small silver hand-mirror that was decorated with intricate flower patterns on it. The mirror had been gifted to her as a dowry from her mother when she married her husband 2 years ago, it was a mirror that had been passed down throughout her family, from mother to daughter for many generations.
In the center of the living room was a fireplace with a big cooking pot hanging over it with a couple of hooks that hung down from the ceiling. The roof could be opened up in the center with a simple lever to let out smoke and hot air from the cooking fire when it was used. To use it you’d fetch hot coals from the kitchen stove’s fire using a pair of iron pliers and add it to the fireplace.
There were no beds in the cottage, only blankets that had been given to Stella by the poor villagers as gifts to celebrate her child being born. Stella was resting on a bed that was made by stacking a few thick blankets on top of one another and a bundle of blankets was used to help raise her upper body and assist her with sitting up, she held her baby that was sleeping soundly in her arms.
The cottage rested on four pillars, raising the building's wooden foundation off the ground by twenty centimeters. Only the fireplace in the livingroom and stone stove in the kitchen was touching the ground underneath the cottage with their own stone foundations.
Stella and Gloria lived in a poor village called “Mud Skuttle Village” or “Muddskutt Village” for short by the locals. The village was located on the far north-eastern side of the Tenebris continent. North and north-west of Muddskutt was the great north-eastern forest that spanned for several miles to the west and north until it reached the Holy dragon-spine mountain range, it wasn’t called the “Holy Dragon-Spine” mountain range because there were dragons living there, it was named that way because the mountains looks like a giant dragon’s back that was sleeping under the earth and spanned from the north-eastern ocean coast to nearly the center of the continent, the mountain range was so tall and untraversable that it completely shut out any notion of traveling from the northern side to the north-eastern side of the mountains.
To the east of the village was an enormous inland sea, it was simply called the “eastern inland sea” since there was only one.
The monsters inside the great north-eastern forest are all pretty weak compared to other places around the continent, on the the northern side of the mountain range there was another great forest that had monsters that are many times stronger than in the north-eastern forest that the Muddskutt was located next to, there was hardly any dangers coming from the forest against the villagers other than the occasional stray monsters that would sometimes walk out of the forest looking for food in the village’s fields.
When a monster did come out of the forest and unearth some of the crops in the fields, it would flee at the first sight of humans nine out of ten times, the villagers felt relatively safe and would continue to tend to the fields regardless of the monsters. On the coast of the eastern inland sea the fishermen would dive and hunt in the nearby coral reefs with their small rowboats and use harpoons or nets to catch fish, clams and crabs to bring back home or sell at the village’s fish market or to traveling merchants.
The eastern inland-sea was connected to the eastern ocean via an enormous river that would take you two days to row across to the other side, and from the inland-sea to reach the ocean would take a week with a sailboat. The dangerous monsters in the ocean wouldn’t voluntarily swim to the inland sea unless there’s a shortage of food, or a dangerous new predator appeared that would threaten and change the entire ecosystem in that entire area, forcing them to flee from their habitats to look for new food.
Unfortunate events would still happen regularly, even in this somewhat “safe area” around Mudd Skuttle village. Occasionally a unlucky fisherman would encounter a strong sea monster and lose his life at sea or a farmer would encounter a rare monster that would rather attack them than flee back into the forest. Most of the farmers would only end up with small injuries since the monsters around the village were rather weak, but the less fortunate ones that were unable to run away in time could get gored horribly by the monster and later die from an illness after the injury had been left untreated for a couple of days.
The Muddskutt village were too poor and too far from larger villages and cities so they didn’t have a priest capable of using healing magic and there were no doctors able to treat the wounded, they could only use the basic medicinal herbs and bandages to treat the wounds and hope for the best. Those desperate enough would head to the nearest neighboring village or city to request treatment at the church or clinics there, but healing magic or healing potions would cost a small fortune. Even if they survived they would be unable to pay off their debts and be sold off as slaves to pay the debt. Most people would rather choose to end their life as a free person than become a slave who can’t even choose when or how to die out of their own free will.
Stella’s husband had been one of those few unfortunate fishermen that had gone out to sea one day and never returned. His boat was found washed up on the coast of the eastern inland sea a day's trip away from the village, they assumed that he encountered a strong sea monster or met with some kind of unfortunate accident that had ended his life since he never returned.
The buildings in Muddskutt village were mostly cottages and huts that had been raised off the ground like Stella’s cottage was. Since the ground in the area is always wet and muddy the village was named Mudd Skuttle village. The village was also surrounded by a 3 meter high wall made out of wooden logs planted into the ground, bound together and fortified with hardened mud to make the walls more sturdy. The main entrance was located on the west side, there was only one guard guarding it at a time. A smaller gate on the east side, the opposite side of the village.
The mud also had other uses, the villagers had used mud for so long that they became proficient with pottery and ceramics and also used a specialized hardened mud mixture to repair holes in their buildings and the walls of the village from time to time.
The only export Muddskutt has is hardened ceramic roof tiles they produce and the sea produce they catch in the inland sea. Sometimes rare shells and corals that were useful in alchemy were found and could be sold to fetch a high price from a traveling merchant. On earth, pearls would have been a great source of income for this kind of village, but in this world a pearl had the exact same value as a rock, in other words, it was useless and not even considered for things like jewelry since it would just make the one wearing it look extremely poor, they might as well decorate themselves with pebbles in that case.
The gold the village made was barely enough to pay the annual government taxes each year for the protection of their lands from monsters and foreign invaders. Maybe if the mud was a limited resource they would be cheerful and make a profit... but there is no way that could ever happen. After all, it’s just common mud.
Gloria was a former adventurer that had left the village to see the world together with her three childhood friends. Nine years later she had returned back home to retire from the adventuring, she’d lost all of her friends during the years of traveling and adventuring together and returned to live out her life in peace and quiet in the town she grew up in.
Gloria never spoke to Stella about the circumstances of her early retirement and Stella never dared to ask her. Stella had wished to ask about her brother, Alexander, who set out with Gloria on their journey all those years ago, but after seeing the state of Gloria when she returned back home she’d bitten her lip and swallowed her questions, afraid of finding out the answers for herself... “Just having Gloria return home alive is a blessing.” she told Gloria after reuniting with her when she finally returned home after such a long time and buried her question deep in her heart.
Stella lived on the eastern outskirts of the village close to the inland sea because of her husband's profession as a fisherman. Anyone who visited her home would instantly recognize that it was a fisherman’s family who lived there from a single glance. There’s drying racks for fish outside, fishing nets hanging on the side of the cottage, and Stella had decorated the cottage with sea-shells and corals here and there that she’d gather while walking along the beach with her husband, she had quite the collection.
Gloria had settled as a permanent resident on the second floor of the village’s only inn. The “Mudskipper” inn. It was a large sized two story building that served as both an inn and a pub on the first floor and had bedrooms for rent on the second floor. It also handled all the adventurer’s guild requests and local requests of the village. It was also the only recently built building in the whole village of Muddskutt, towering over the rest of the houses in the village, the inn had been commissioned by the adventurers guild so that they could set up a branch office in the north-eastern region near the forest, they would get an easy supply of income from both the magic stones from the easily defeated monsters and the revenue from the inn that was under their management, it was truly a smart move to make an inn into a branch office for the guild.
Gloria would accept quests every now and then to make herself enough of a living, accepting monster subjugation requests or herb gathering requests while going inside the forest by herself. On rare occasions she would escort a merchant's carriage when he was leaving town and go shopping in the town she arrived at, and if she were lucky there would also be a request on the trip back to Muddskutt for another carriage escort and she’d earn double the pay from one single trip.
Gloria also has a tendency to proactively stay away from any request that involves water, since she’d sink in a matter of seconds if she ever fell into water deep enough for her to be unable to stand in and not reach the surface. One time she had actually gotten quite close to drowning in a hot spring and it became a trauma for her. Her companions at the time had thrown her into a hot spring inside the mountains without knowing that she couldn’t swim...
How could she drown in a hot spring you ask? It’s simple really. Gloria is very, very short! She is a half-elf that was abandoned in the nearby woods of Muddskutt and was picked up by an elderly couple in the village when she was only a baby. Half-elf’s share the elf’s racial trait of having long lived lives, hers is only half as effective as the real thing but it was still quite a sight. Even as a twenty six years young maiden, she had not developed more than a twelve year old human child and was only hundred and thirty centimeters in height!
That day was the first day of the month of wind, when Gloria would get an urgent request by the adventurers guild inside the inn.
“Oi Gloria! You’ve got an urgent request waitin’ for ya’!” The one who had called out to Gloria that was heading down the stairs from the second floor of the Mudskipper inn was the innkeeper Heinrich. The villagers called him Henry.
“Aah? An urgent request in this shitty village? Have your brains finally turned into shit and dribbled out of your ears, shitty Henry? Are you messing with me huh?” Gloria scowled at Henry as she walked over and snatched the request certificate out of his hand that was stretched towards her over the counter. That action succeeded in pissing her off even more, Henry knew that she cannot reach to the top of the counter unless she climbed up on it so he had reached down over the counter with the certificate for her.
“Tsk,” she clicked her tongue at him before reading the request, “Let’s see, let’s see… hm hm… HMMM!!?” she sounded out a surprised noise as she suddenly jumped up and stood on top of the counter. “Oi Shit-for-brains Henry? What’s the meaning of this? Wet nurse? Are you messing with me, huh!? How the hell is this an urgent request!!” Gloria had grabbed Henry’s collar while pressing the certificate paper into his face and forcefully demanded an explanation from him.
“E-even if you ask me…” Henry was starting to sweat from his head as he replied with a troubled expression to her rough questioning methods, holding up his hands and shaking them in denial as surrender showed on his face that was being mushed by the request certificate in Gloria’s hand.
“Leave it at that Gloria.” The one who had called out to Gloria was none other than the submitter of the urgent request. One of the village’s two elders, Yuzari. She was resting her back against the side of the front entrance to the inn. The villagers called her Yu-ba for short. She was clad in traditional loose tribal leather clothes with a green overcoat over her and a bag over her shoulder. Her right hand was holding a staff with red spiraling wooden carvings circling in a spiral pattern and there were green colored runes following the carvings, on the top were several branches enveloping a small green gemstone that helped hold it in place.
“Stella has already gone into labour, we don’t have time to mess around here any longer, I need you to help me deliver her baby.” Yu-ba declared with a serious expression then she turned away and started to run towards Stella’s house without even waiting for Gloria's answer.
An urgent request is a quest that cannot be declined or ignored unless you wanted to suffer a huge penalty to your adventurer rank or be forced to pay a lump sum of gold to abandon the quest, this was so that if you chose to abandon the quest the guild could use the money to hire other adventurers or even mercenaries to carry out the urgent request. But there was no way Gloria would ever abandon this request, after all, it was a request to help her childhood friend Stella. As the most experienced woman in the village she had been requested by Yu-ba to help this time.
“Ah! Wait for me Yu-ba!” Gloria put the request certificate in her breast pocket as she jumped off the counter to run after Yu-ba. Before leaving the inn she shot a fierce glance towards Henry and said, “Wet nurse? What the hell were you thinking when you wrote that on the request shitty Henry! Don’t blame me if I beat you to a pulp after this!” then she ran out of the inn to catch up with Yu-ba who had gone ahead of her.
“... phew~ that was scary. Gloria is way too scary when she’s angry.” Henry mumbled to himself as he slumped down in his chair and wiped the sweat of his forehead with his sleeve. He was really hoping that she’d forget about this after she came back… he really didn’t want to get beaten up by Gloria again. Henry had teased Gloria about her height once before and had gotten a tooth knocked out from the flying kick to the face he got because of it, just thinking back to it made Henry shake in his boots.
Gloria had accepted the request without a second thought and headed to her friend’s house accompanied by Yu-ba, who was the one that had submitted the request to the adventurer's guild.
Stella's pregnancy had started about three months before her husband disappeared. She’d been forced to do everything on her own during the pregnancy, be it Cooking, cleaning or the occasional trip to the village to buy groceries from the market. She kept herself occupied with sewing new clothes for the baby, she didn’t know if it was going to be a boy or a girl so she’d kept the patterns and colors of the clothing simple so that it would fit both genders without much difficulty, she sew baby clothes first and then a robe for a five year old child that was similar to a kimono but thicker and at last a long scarf made from the brightest of white you could find, spider silk.
Gloria often came to visit when she was not out on her quests or helping around the village to cheer Stella up or help her with the cooking and cleaning. But Gloria has an incredible talent for turning ingredients into charcoal faster than you could blink, and when cleaning she would always use too much strength and break things around the house, which could be said is the opposite of helping out. The only good thing she gave Stella when she was helping was the occasional foot or shoulder massages to relieve some of her pains.
Gloria and Yu-ba had rushed to Stella’s cottage in the middle of the night to help her with the birthing. Yu-ba had already been living with Stella for two weeks before this day as Stella was expected to go into labour very soon and was living alone at the time, so she decided to take it upon herself to monitor Stella’s condition so that she could respond and call for help when the time came. When Stella’s water finally broke they had prepared for it ahead of time and Yu-ba could leave to get more hands in the village. In the worst case she would try to do it herself, but she was very fortunate that Gloria was still in town and not out on a quest somewhere.
Gloria’s first words as she opened the door to Stella’s home was, “Are you still alive Stella, I’ve come to help out!” she called out, as she walked inside Yu-ba hit her on the head with her staff, “There’s a time and place for everything, and this is neither the place or time for such jokes.” she lectured Gloria as they walked inside to the bedroom.
When Gloria and Yu-ba arrived, Gloria saw that Stella appeared to be a bit malnourished, her cheeks had sunken in and dark rings could be seen under her eyes, her body had become thin, her lips was chapped and her hair had lost its luster, her skin's complexion was so pale it looked to be almost translucent, she looked to be in tremendous pains and was sweating profusely as she struggled with the labour pains.
Stella had almost used up all of her and her husband’s savings during the time of pregnancy to buy the food and cloth that she needed and she could not work the fields without risking to affect her own health and the baby’s. She stayed at home instead and lived sparingly on their savings during these 6 months without any income and lived on her savings.
“Gloria, grab the clean blankets and towels and wash your hands with clean water. We have one tub here with clean and warm water and two more out in the living room. It was delivered earlier by the villagers that I had requested when I first went back to the inn to look for you.” Yu-ba gave out some directions to Gloria as they prepared themselves and Stella for the coming ordeal.
“Yeah, yeah you got it boss,” Gloria made a nonchalant expression as she went back into the living room and prepared herself...
The labour had lasted for over 18 hours before the child was finally born. Yu-ba took care of the aftercare and then sat down on the chair inside the living room to rest and fell asleep within a few minutes. Gloria had collapsed on a blanket inside the living room from exhaustion and fallen asleep, making loud snoring sounds and drooling a bit from her mouth while she had a little smile on her childish face as she dreamt about hunting monsters made completely out of tasty stakes.
“Uhe-... uhehe… mister stake~... wait for me~…” Gloria mumbled in her sleep while she was nibbling on her thumb slightly and slept peacefully under her blanket.
Only Stella with her baby was still awake in the gloomily lit bedroom of the cottage. The only source of light was from the gaps in the wooden paneling of the window. The sound of Stella’s labored breathing could faintly be heard inside the room. She was holding her son in her arms while a strained smile started to form on her lips, her eyes only watching her sleeping son, her beautiful, perfect son that didn’t have a care in the world.
“... you must live, for your father’s part… and mine, my sweet little Alexis.” Stella whispers softly to her child as she strokes her newborn's head as he sleeps the night away.
----------
The second day of the month off wind, a certain child wakes up to face the brand new world, full magic and mysteries!
“Uwaaah~ I can’t see anything… ! All I can see are some fuzzy shapes… is this because I was just born?”
Takeda Rin, 34 years old, former teacher and sometimes an otaku or a hikikomori depending on his moods. Rin never got a girlfriend in his previous life and was a complete “virgin loser” until the day he died according to himself, he would call himself many things during one of his self-loathing sessions. Yesterday, he was reborn as a baby in a new and mysterious magical world and was looking forward to it a bit… he couldn’t have imagined that he’d have to start all over from scratch as a baby...
“Shit... this wasn’t quite what I was expecting… although when you really think about it, “reincarnation” really means just that huh, to be born again. Not to be transferred or teleported or the like, but rather a complete rebirth... What should I do now?” Rin thought to himself as he was realizing the situation he was in.
He tried to move his body but could at most only flail his chubby little arms and legs around clumsily and he got exhausted after only a few seconds of trying to move, even just moving his head a bit was exhausting. When opening his eyes all he would see was blurry shades, and when he tried to speak all that would come out was garbled baby noises. He had never felt so helpless and vulnerable before in his life… no that’s not true, he has been a baby once before after all, though he could not remember it.
“Even if I can’t see, I should be able to activate my skill, right?” Rin thought to himself as he was trying to focus his mind, looking for something that felt new or out of place inside his consciousness and body.
As he started to strain himself trying to activate “something” he started flexing his whole body’s muscles during the effort, his little toes flexed and his hands balled into tiny little fists and he almost rolled into a little ball under the blankets... By now he was holding his breath, closing his eyes and grimacing as he strained himself to the point his whole face turned red.
“Ooooohh! I feel something! Something is happening!” he was overjoyed at the feeling of something moving within his body, so much that he redoubled his efforts to gather all the power his little baby body could muster while trying to activate the change. “HNNNNGGG!!”
“FAAAART!”
“.............!!” Rin had for the first time in the 30 years of his life he can remember, shit his pants.
“Aaaah! So embarrassing~! I’m glad nobody was around to see it.” he thought to himself as he would probably die from shame if somebody saw him right now.
“sniff sniff.” A sound of somebody sniffing their nose could be heard inside the room.
“Yalda, Peli-tu asmeta? Hahaha! Jik-tu ato ess fili da fut kada kaodori.”
(Oh my, did you poop? Hahaha! Let's change you out of those dirty diapers.)
“AAAAH!” Rin screamed inside his mind. “There was somebody else in the room after all! If there was a hole I would like to jump inside and bury myself!” Rin couldn’t even cover his red face with his hands properly, it was the ultimate shame.
Gloria had been sleeping in the living room next door and woke up from the sudden loud fart noise coming from the bedroom and hurried inside only to be hit by a foul smelling stench. She then saw Rin’s current embarrassing situation and had started to change his diaper for him.
“Uughaa~!” Rin cried out several times as he was at the mercy of Gloria's treatment.
Inside Rin’s head there was a chaos of emotions and panic as he was being manhandled like a baby with no strength to resist the onslaught of Gloria’s encroaching hands. It was also a fact that he was a baby with no strength to resist…
“UUUUOOOOHHH!! Not there! Anywhere but there! Mercy! Have mercy on me! AAUGH!”
Rin felt his consciousness darken at the edges as he started to faint from all the shame of having all of his manly pride denied and stepped on by the hands of someone else with no regards to his feelings of it all.
“Aha! te izaaha~!”
(Aha! So cute~!) Gloria let out a small squeal as she had cleaned up the mess Rin had made and changed the diaper for him.
Rin swore in his heart to never make the same mistake again as his consciousness faded.
「 STATUS
Name: Alexis
Lvl: 1
Exp: 0 / 10
Age: 0 years.
Race: Palrevian (Human)
Gender: Male
HP 24/24
MP 1/1
Stamina: 8/10 (100)
Strength: 0 (5)
Agility: 0 (6)
Spirit: 1 (4)
Intelligence: 48
Wisdom: 99
Luck: 5
Skills: none.
Resistances: none.
Special Skills: [Shape Shifting lvl 1]
Titles: [Black Straw]」
Notes:
1Otaku (おたく/オタク?) is a Japanese term for people with obsessive interests, commonly the anime and manga fandom. Its contemporary usage originated with Akio Nakamori's 1983 essay in Manga Burikko
2Hikikomori (ひきこもり or 引き籠もり Hikikomori?, literally "pulling inward, being confined", i.e., "acute social withdrawal") is a Japanese term to refer to the phenomenon of reclusive adolescents or adults who withdraw from social life, often seeking extreme degrees of isolation and confinement. The term hikikomori refers to both the sociological phenomenon in general and the people belonging to this societal group. Hikikomori have been described as recluses, loners, or "modern-day hermits."
