{Note: The story will start with Elkend as a seven-year-old boy.}

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Elkend gave a passing glance to the older bruised boy who's silently crying behind a tree, hiding from his tormentors.

He saw some of the village kids throwing rocks and verbally abusing him earlier, but didn't make a move to stop the bullying.

One of the leading bullies, Gheinn, was the son of the leader of the hunters—the hunters are a team of people who learned how to hunt and are usually sent on expeditions deep in the forest to hunt for food; they are rarely assigned something other than hunting.

It was safe to say that Gheinn's father was a respected member of the village.

All it would take is one passing comment from Gheinn in-front of his father, and all the positive reputation that he built with the villagers by helping around would come crashing down.

It would do Elkend more harm than good If he were to step in and try to stop the bullying.

So for now, he would ignore the blatant nepotism and bullying as he walked to the local blacksmith.

His mother, for some reason, apparently put in a request to the blacksmith; two wooden smallswords.

It was strange. As far as he knew his mother hadn't taken any students to teach, so why would she be interested in not one, but two smallswords?

So with those thoughts, Elkend walked to the blacksmith shop—the size was roughly two houses— and pushed on the door to see the blacksmith standing before a furnace in the corner and hammering on the mineral that was glowing with heat.

Elkend stepped in and closed the door behind him, and observed the strange and fascinating assortment of weaponry and objects while waiting for the blacksmith to finish what he's doing; If only out of politeness.

Turns out that the blacksmith's job wasn't just to create weapons—a blacksmith made nails, furniture, locks, horseshoes, saddles, doors, and much more.

The blacksmith, aside from farmers and hunters, was essentially the heart of the village—without a blacksmith, they wouldn't have weapons to hunt with, and without weapons to hunt with, they wouldn't have food, and if they didn't have food, they would starve and die.

He continued observing the blacksmithing shop while humming to himself a song from when he was Tanak—(No, those memories still hurt).

On the far right corner were two furnaces, one of which the blacksmith was working on, an anvil, two pairs of bolt tongs, and three huge barrels of water next to the anvil that were no doubt used to cool off metal.

And on the left side on the wall was an interesting assortment of weaponry that were hung upon shelves and nails—katanas, rapiers, claymores, longswords, sabers, crossbows, longbows, recurve bows, composite bows, and a table directly under the series of weapons—there were also two boxes under the table that looked like they were filled with different types of metal and steel.

Elkend was, indeed fascinated with the assortment of weapons hung upon the walls, that he didn't even see or notice the muscular brown-skinned man coming up behind him.

The tall man raised a single eyebrow at the child observing the weapons, and out of politeness, he faked a cough to alert the child to his presence, "Ahem!", the child tensed and spun around and tilted his face up to face the blacksmith.

Elkend stared at the man.

The guy is almost two meters tall, holy shit!

The man barely blinked in response at the staring child.

The blacksmith—whose name was still currently unknown, just raised a single eyebrow in response.

Elkend opened his mouth, hesitated, and then closed it again.

Was the guy mute...?

Elkend hesitated once before he finally stuttered a response, "H-Hello?"

The man stared at him with a blank expression for a couple of seconds before finally, he busted out laughing and said, "Ha! Took you two minutes to stutter out a response kiddo! So? What did ya need from me? Blurt it out, I'm busy, y'know?"

Elkend quickly took a second to mentally recompose himself after that disaster and tried to calmly say something in response.

"Sir, I'm here to collect the two pairs of smallswords my mother told me to get..? T-They're both m-made out of wood, by the way."

The man—He should really ask him for his name—frowned at him in confusion before his eyes widened in realization, "Ah! Ya here for those tiny swords? Well, why didn't'cha say so?"

The tall blacksmith crossed half the room in huge strides towards a door that was next to the assortment of weaponry that Elkend hasn't noticed until now and opened it to pull out two wooden smallswords.

Honestly, 'smallswords' was an understatement.

The two smallswords were long. The overall length of both of them was 21 inches, but the length of the wooden blades alone was 17 inches long. It was large for a seven-year-old boy.

Elkend expected the smallswords to be very heavy but, strangely enough, when the blacksmith promptly dropped them into his arms without any warning whatsoever, he found them easy to carry...?

The blacksmith laughed at his baffled expression and explained, "Smallswords have no cutting edge and are designed to be light; the way to fight with a smallsword is to thrust at your opponent! Now now, get out ma store boy, I need to make a saddle and a door!"

With that, the blacksmith promptly pushed the still-baffled-Elkend out of his store without another word.

What the...?

Shaking himself out of his stupor, Elkend started carrying the smallsword with him to their small house at the edge of the village.

He took a smallsword to his left hand and started experimentally swinging it on the way home.

He noticed that true to the blacksmith's word, the sword did not have a cutting edge, but that was to be expected since it was made out of wood. But even then, the design of the sword pointed to not having a sharp edge, which he thought was pretty weird; was it really a sword If he can't cut something?

Having arrived at his mother's house, he opened the door and stepped in, then he closed the door using his foot, since his hands were occupied with carrying the smallswords, after that he started walking to their backyard where his mother told him to meet her with the two smallswords.

The backyard wasn't large, but it wasn't small either; It was big enough to run one whole lap around and get tired.

Due to his mother's status as an ex-adventurer, she had enough money to afford to purchase an Artisan Pergola that was made out of wood; It had three chairs and a table under the roof of it with about a dozen Lincoln roses surrounding the Pergola.

Locating his mother behind the Pergola, Elkend shouted while bringing the smallswords to his mother, "Mother! I brought the smallswords!"

Veanda nodded at Elkend and smiled, "Good job, Elkend, my boy! Now, do me another favor and go get the stuff inside the box that's under my bed, ok?"

Elkend let out a quiet, tired sigh but complied with her request. A minute later, Elkend and his mother were standing beside the Pergola; his mother wielding the wooden sword in her right hand and Elkend wielding the other smallsword in his left hand with a confused and scared expression.

His mother nodded approvingly, "Ok, your first lesson on swordsmanship will be—"

Elkend all but interrupted her with a confused shriek, "What the—! Where in—! Why will I be learning swordsmanship!? I've never wielded a sword in my life!"

Veanda sighed at her son's unwillingness to train but started explaining nonetheless,

"Elkend, my boy, you need to understand; this world is very dangerous. Kids get taught at a young age how to defend themselves, or in most extreme cases, how to kill. Rogue mages and wizards, undead mages and necromancers, magic bombs and terrorists, magical beasts that can destroy a kingdom in a breath. All these monsters and people roam essentially every inch of the world."

She took a breath to recompose herself but continued nonetheless.

"Death is very common, Elkend; no one would bat an eye If, hypothetically, word got out that a seven-year-old child was tortured and brutally murdered in cold-blood."

She saw his saddened, but resigned expression on his face as her seven-year-old child realized the cruelty of this world.

Veanda sighed. She couldn't force him to train if he didn't want to; he had a choice in this matter and this wasn't how she wanted for their first training session to start.

She started walking towards him and put a hand on his shoulder in a comforting gesture and then crouched down to look at her child in the eye and started talking in a soft voice.

"My dear boy Elkend, If you don't want to train in swordsmanship, then that's ok. No one can force you to do anything you don't want to, alright? I'll give you a day or two to decide, for now let us go inside the house. It's gotten too late right now; the moon is rising. Let's go to sleep."

With these parting words, she walked past her child and then entered their small house with him in line.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

It was dark.

The only light that illuminated the room was the soft moonlight that kissed the bedsheets that were made out of animal hide and silk while his pillow was made out of the feathers of an unknown bird.

Elkend stared at the ceiling lying in his bed while the sounds of his contraption played beside him.

He learned very early, that because of his mild sedatephobia, he couldn't sleep without at least some background noise. So his mom bought him a small wooden contraption that played a tick-tick-tick sound beside his bed; though thankfully she never actually questioned why he hated the silence.

He didn't want to explain the theory of phobias and how they work to a world that hasn't even discovered the usage of gunpowder; he hoped they would never.

Frankly, Elkend knew for a fact that the world was unfair; after all, wasn't he the one that once died and was given a second chance at life?

But, to put it in simple way, Elkend was tired. No, not the physical tiredness. But the mental one.

He was tired of waking up in the middle of the night and having a panic attack because he was still scared of this being a massive dream; that he was actually dead, and some cruel God or the Devil decided to play a massive prank and make him hallucinate a second life.

With those thoughts in mind, Elkend decided right then and there that he would train his ass off; if only to not die a second time.

Elkend Bulruk has tasted death once in life and found it bitter and sour.

Elkend Bulruk made a vow and a promise to the Gods that night while in bed.

He is not going to die, not now, not later and, frankly, he hoped he would never.

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

I have decided to write a bit of a snippet!

Enjoy, I guess lol. {Note: this snippet does not apply to the story and It will never do)

•••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••••

Elkend Bulruk was an enigma.

At least, that's what his village thought of him.

He was a boy who constantly made noise.

Whistling, tapping, even humming.

He would do anything as long as it made noise.

Although he made the effort to try and keep quiet, his constant noise making was still annoying to some people.

Once, two men were fed up with him and shouted at him if he would shut up.

Elkend paused and gave a slow, calculated blink as If he was contemplating what to do.

And then, in a split second—he was already running to his mom, fake tears pouring out of his eyes.

The two men collectively made a noise of horror once they realized what was he going to do. He was running to his mom, who's an ex-adventurer, and she could no doubt probably wrestle a normal bear to death.

•=•=•=•=•=•=•=••=•=•=•=•

In the end, the problem was only settled when they were assigned chores to do around the village as punishment.

The type of chores were one's that would no doubt last a month or two.

And all the while, Elkend would take rounds staring at them from a distance, humming loudly more than normal.

The little fucker was probably doing that on purpose to annoy them