Dried leaves crunched on the feet of a silhouette of two persons, one is a short, stout person with a helmet that points out like the boars of the teeth, and the other is a taller feminine figure that runs with a cape and hood as they marched ahead of the forest.

"Oi, Serilla, the damn Jarl's army will find us here if we do not come back by night. Besides, what are we looking for?" A short bearded man, with blue eyes, wearing a viking helmet with two horns sticking out, holding a giant axe, asked the hooded blonde woman with pointy ears, dressed in light green robes with brown leggings.

"Shhh! There's a passage in this forest where the Demon King's subordinate's army secretly held garrison in this vastly vegetated area. If you don't keep your mead-drinking mouth of yours shut, you'll awaken the spirits that haunt this place," the blonde elf hushed.

"Wasn't that one of Sylvennia's Hero's great expedition to take out one of the Demon's subordinates as soon as they fought them fifty-four years ago? That place was barely touched by any treasure hunters and hoarders. They couldn't find any single fickle thing as they are left empty. There's no bloody point in going there in the first place," The dwarf spat.

"Meadrokk, with the tip of this arrow, I can paralyze that mouth of yours if I stab you with it. There's more to it than just being empty. A prophesy I heard from my mother," 

"You elves believe such a fairy tale like that coming from whatever your parents tell you? The adventurers of this torn land could not even find a single dime ever since the war got fiercer. Now you suddenly believe a tale from gods knows where about a certain prophecy? If we don't get back, we will be executed for deserting the army. We're not even called adventurers in the first place. Just mercenaries trained to fight another noble's greed," 

"I will slit your throat like a cow and leave you bleeding in this forest. The wildlife won't be kind to you when they smell your blood, just like my family sold out from those greedy Silvennians. If there's one thing I like here in Alimanya, they don't treat our kind like slaves. Brexons don't even give you a single coin for an effort you made to find a single ingredient in uncharted caves as an adventurer. Now I walk here and act like a mercenary only to be running in a single thread between death and desertion!" The elf swiftly placed her poison-tipped arrow on the throat of the dwarf, threatening him as the dwarf tightened his lips, gazing his eyes at the woman looking down on him.

He replied to her with a nod, lowering the arrow she held on his throat. He sighed as she turned around and continued venturing through the forest.

"Lady... I'll tell you this... If it weren't for those lads who escaped the border of Brexon kingdom, we would have been beheaded as we head back,"

"You would have been beheaded. I would have been placed in a cage for hundreds of years, satisfying the high nobility with their lust! In the first place, this land here is not that different compared to the rest of the kingdoms. It's where who benefits from them, and I choose to stay in this harsh land,"

"You were insane as I was. Running away from the masters who took us, only to find another one that still treats us like dirt. We better hurry up. Jarl Vyndun's guards would be searching us by now,"

Serilla grabbed a small light blue crystal shard from her pouch and held it with her two hands. Meadrokk kneels down and scoops up the dirt with his hands, creating a small hole on the ground. Serilla then placed the crystal in the spot. The two then placed the dug-up dirt on top of the crystal then smoothed the ground to ensure the ground may not be visually uneven.

"Oi! You there! Get back in line now! The Jarl has been growing impatient by the second," One of the guards holding a torch, dressed in Scavian viking armor raised his voice as he found the two heading back in his location.

"Pfft.. Fucking Scavs, I should have been recruited by the Ghelts. They would have been lucky that my axe wasn't piercing their necks by now," Meadrokk spits on the ground while being escorted by the guards.

As they walk back from the forests, there revealed an army that consists of Scavian soldiers, dressed in light and heavy armory, that wields different kinds of weaponry such as halberds, axes, shields, swords, and bows as well as they march across the open lands beside the forest.

---

In the village of Aldweld, one of the places held fiefs of the Gheltan people of Alimanya. Located nearby in one of the territories contested by the Gheltan and the Scavian, the household of the Hoffberg family bore a new child, William.

"I-it's a boy! Praise the gods and goddesses!" An old woman's voice cried as the sound of a baby crying is heard from across the room. The old woman in a hood gave the baby to the mother, holding him in with gentle care.

"He's beautiful... If I died holding him like this, I would be eternally happy in the afterlife," she smiled as she held her tears in her eyes. The eyes of her son sparkle as he continues to cry.

Her son calmly stops crying as he slowly takes in the information at looking at his own beautiful mother, a blonde beauty with blue eyes. He gazes at the reflection of her eyes and sees the reflection of himself in her, where his chubby cheeks, short blonde hair, and brown eyes were given to him.

His eyes teared up, and he cried again. The household of Hoffberg praises again as they feel their gods and goddesses had truly gifted them a beautiful child.

"Your father would be very excited to see you if he was here. He's out there fighting against the Scavians. Surely he will be happy when he sees his own son," She smiled as she rocked the baby gently.

"Honey, I'm home!" A voice of a deep, muscular voice emitted in the room.

"Laurence! You're back," The blonde woman called.

"Good gods, is that our baby?" He kissed his wife as he watched his baby sleeping soundly in his wife's arms.

He reached out his hands as if he asked his wife permission to carry his son, which she accepted by holding her baby in his arms.

"He has the same nose and eyes like mine, and he has your hair as well," He smiled as a tear welled upon his eye.

"You're crying, dear," 

"I know, Rose! Just let a man have his time to enjoy his tears!" He replied at his wife. 

The two couples smiled and laughed together as they watched their baby sleep tight.

---

Six Years Later

"Mom, I want to play with them!" The six year old boy, William jumped excitedly.

"Not now, sweetie. Eat your pie first then you can go ahead. It's gonna get cold," his mother replied as she held the freshly baked pie she made from the fire.

"But mom... I really want to play with them!"

"Sit down and eat. I've made so much effort making this pie,"

"Aww... Fine!" Stomping on the ground, William pulls the chair on the table and sits.

"Did you wash your hands before you grab the knife and fork?"

"Yes, mother..." He replied with a groan.

The sound of a knock of a wooden door is heard across the kitchen.

"Who's there?"

"Dad's home!"

"Darling, you're home early!" William's mother stood up and ran towards his husband, giving him a hug with wide open arms.

The two giggled as his father held his mother up and gave her a kiss on the cheek.

William glanced at them for a bit, then continued eating, mesmerized by the taste of his mother's pie. 

"Son, come here! You didn't greet your dad yet," His father called.

Chewing on the last pieces of his pie, he approached his father and opened his arms with a stuffy face and bits of crumbs across his mouth. Laurence hugged his son and carried him around as he circled across the creaking wooden floor.

He puts him down as William goes back to chomping his pie. After finishing another slice, he wiped his mouth with a napkin and hurriedly ran to the door as he played with his friends outside. His two parents watched as their little boy skipped outside the door.

William then approached the three kids similar to his age. Josef Hapsburg is a boy with brown hair and blue eyes, holding a stick as if he's mimicking a sword style. The other is Ella Marcus, a girl with long red hair, sparkly brown eyes swaying across her body, who seems to be standing on a small boulder, waving her arms as if she's trying to balance herself on the stone. Lastly, the other is Jorgen Mono, a strange boy with black hair, and brown eyes with a blank facial expression, sitting on the ground, holding his legs with both his arms, as he watched the two seem to be playing around.

"Hahaha! I am the Hero of Aldweld. And I will destroy the Demon King! Then I will make Alimanya a great nation, then I will unite the nation!" The boy proclaimed as he held his stick up high.

"Why would Alimanya become a great nation before you unite it?" Jorgen asked as he rocked himself with an unfazed look.

"I am the demon king! I will disguise myself as the Hero, then I will kidnap the Hero and then place him in the cage!" William said as he snuck up behind the brown-haired boy and made a crouched-out posture, ready to pounce the kid.

"No! You can't do that! The Demon King is the bad guy. He can't disguise himself to be the Hero. That's unfair!" The brown boy turned around and pushed William away from him. The other boy sitting on the ground tilted his head as he glanced at the boy with a questioning expression.

"I am the Demon King. I can do anything that I can to make me stop the Hero," William sneered.

"Don't worry, Hero! I will save you. With my healing powers, your wounds are healed!" The redhead kid approached the pretend Hero and reached her hand on the boy's shoulder with a tap.

The boy with black hair then stood up and picked up a stick, holding it with both hands. Making a sword stance that seems a bit too familiar. William looked at the boy with black hair with his eyebrows raised.

"Zweihander? No, it's a bit too short to be that. Japanese style stance?" William thought.

William then picked up the two sticks that were the same length of his arm to his shoulder. 

"You will not stop me from my objectives, Hero. Resistance is futile," William said as he posed a Kali stance with one stick over his right shoulder while the other stick he held in the other hand stuck out in front of him.

"What the heck is that? That pose is so funny. You look like those Scavian tribes, my dad keeps saying. If you have an axe and a shield, you would look like them," The brown-haired Hero chuckled.

Taking this opportunity, William rushed forward and swiftly made a light strike on Josef, immediately having to parry it with his sticks.

Jorgen ran forward with a thrust on William's torso only to have it blocked by his other stick, pushing it away from himself. William then retreated backward as he made a slight distance between himself and the three.

Jorgen then pushed forward, leaving Josef and Ella behind, with Jorgen making a flurry of slashes on William, which are precise strikes that strangely are not as reckless as William thought.

"Strange, this kid really excels in swordsmanship. He had precise strikes where none hit the vital areas. It's as if he's trying not to be reckless but failed to hide the fact that he's certainly a master", William thought as he blocked all the strikes with his sticks.

He retaliated back by sweeping his sticks across Jorgen, with each hit consecutively hitting him in a continuous but fluid motion, in a way that makes him look as if he's attacking him without stopping.

Jorgen blocks each hit without being fazed as the strikes William made grow stronger and faster. It came to the point that he had to pick up the pace and block it as much as possible.

It came to the point that his wobbly stance started to tense, and his legs began to move apart as if he was trying to lower his center of gravity. William observed Jorgen, noticing a pattern in his blocking as if he had shown a sense of mastery in that form of sword art. He purposefully lowered his speed to make sure Jorgen would gain the upper hand and grab the opportunity to strike him back.

The black-haired boy raised his stick up and performed a quick strike on the head but with a light tap. William didn't realize the fast blurry motion that Jorgen performed above but felt the light tap on his head as if saying he won.

William stared at Jorgen, who looked back at him with a questioning expression, then laid down on the ground with his arms wide and rag-dolled himself.

"Amazing, Jorgen! Victory is ours! The Demon King has died," Josef puts his fist up while Ella smiles as she looks at the brown-haired Hero. 

"Indeed, we won," Jorgen places the stick down and smiles back at Josef.

"It looks like uniting Alimanya to crush that pesky of an Empire would be earlier than I thought," William thought as he smiled while feeling the itchy grass on his cheek.

"Hey! You kids over there... What are you guys doing?" A familiar voice called the kids.

"It's uncle Laurence!" Ella called as the kids arrive at the man with iron armor.

"We were just playing pretend heroes, uncle."

"Ahh, I see... Who's the demon king?"

"It's William! He's right over there," Josef pointed at the direction of William, who is still lying on the ground.

"I see. Well, you kids should go back home. Your parents are worried," Laurence patted the brown-haired kid, then glanced in the direction of his son.

"Hey! William, get up there. You're gonna catch some bugs on you if you stay there," William's father called as he approached his son. The blonde boy stood up and wiped himself off the dirt from his body, with some of it sticking on his shirt.

"You one dirty kid. Anyway, you had fun playing with them? It's time to go home, your mother's worried, and I still need to guard the village," 

"Yes, I had fun. We were playing Hero, and I'm the demon king,"

"Why didn't you pick the hero?"

"Because Josef said that he wanted to pick hero first, so there must be someone that should be the demon king, right?"

"Right... You didn't tell him that you want to be a hero?"

"I wanted to, but I don't think he likes it," William lied.

"Hmm... Well then, you should head back home now. I have to protect this place from bandits. They're starting to grow in numbers a lot by now,"

"Are the bandits bad guys?" William asked.

"Yes, son. They are. Now let's go," his father insisted as he escorted him to their house.

---

William arrived at his house and closed the entrance door. He felt a presence behind him as the shadow seemed to be lingering at his back. He turned around and wondered the strange feeling he is getting as if it is mad.

"William!" His mother called as she stared at the boy with a menacing look.

"Y-yes, mom!"

"Your clothes are so dirty. I just washed those yesterday! That's it, you won't be playing with your friends again tomorrow," 

"But mom, I want to pl-"

"No buts! This is your punishment tomorrow. I want those clothes clean right now. After that, we'll have some dinner," She said as she phased through the other room.

William looked at his mother with a tilt of his head and relaxed body as she left the room. He sighed and went back to his room to get his mind off of that.

---

"If I wanted to make this work, I need people around me so I can build this torn nation. It is a matter of time when this village will soon be razed. I can't fight with my current strength, and without my 'Status' I got from my previous life, this would take a lot longer in the process," William thought.

He takes the diary he got from under his bed and jots down notes on his current plans.

For now, I should assess myself with magic. And with the punishment I got from my mom, I guess that would be the best time. Now that I remember, who was that Hero who disguised as me? It's been fifty years from now. I bet he must be dead or in old age, or worst, returned in my previous world. There's also one more problem, that Jorgen kid. He is extremely well-versed with swordsmanship but still acts like he doesn't know anything. Strange kid indeed. William thought as he continued writing down notes.

Placing the diary back under his bed, he takes off his clothes and wears a new pair. Holding his dirty clothing, he put it on the nearby table and opened his palm.  

"I do not even have to call out the name, do I?"

"Water Splash!" He shouted, recalling the times he had to use a convenient magic spell back as a hero.

Nothing came out of his palm.

"Wha? Nothing happened," He thought.

"Water Splash!" He called out.

Nothing happened again. The only thing that came out of William's palm was the small amount of sweat produced.

"What the hell?" He asked himself.

"Perhaps I should try... Imagining,"

Closing his eyes, he imagined trying to reenact the scene where he felt the water flow on his hand. The cold sensation of the fluids as it passes through the smooth layers of his palm until it flows down to the floor like the tap water left opened, running the water on the bathroom's sink. 

William opened his eyes as it turned into reality as the water flowed as he exactly imagined. The water he felt drips down on his feet, making the wooden floor wet with pitter-pattering sounds as the droplets fall.

"H-how do I stop it?" He asked himself as he tried to imagine himself turning off the faucet by rotating his hand clockwise. With every twist that he made, the water flow had reduced by volume to the point that the water he produced stopped.

"Isn't this a little too convenient?" 

Being aware of this new-thought knowledge he got, the power of magic that he used to feel where he relied on the 'RPG System' is vastly different from what it actually feels like.

"If it is this simple, shouldn't everyone would do it? Or would it have to be a specific requirement needed that I fulfilled that could be made?" He placed his hand on his chin.

He tried to remember a chant one of the mages used in playing tricks with the kids in one of the alleys of Sylvennian Kingdom.

"With the flow of water that crosses across the river, the gentle and stillness of its viscosity, I heed thee, Water flow!" He performed a fluid motion that mimics the movements of water, and with the last move, he pushed his palm forward, and water flew out of his palm.

"This is amazing!" He said as he jumped in joy as he made stomping noises on the wooden floor.

"William! You're being too noisy!" His mother called out.

"Sorry!" He apologized.

Strange, in a particular chant, this type of spell can be released. But without the kind of chant, the person must use his imagination to make out a spell in mind. However, it takes a lot of imagination and thinking process to do so. One has to memorize a long list of words to work, while the other must imagine a particular scenario or event. This has to be done through practice if done well. 

With the reliance on the RPG system, the system will do the magic for you, which is why Hero mages can summon spells without chanting. The amount of mana can be seen with the information given by the status. However, having been deprived of it, this would be a struggle for William.

"Fine, I'll clean these clothes first by hand. Sheesh, I should have started learning magic as soon as I can," He thought as he went outside, bringing a wooden bucket with him and some animal fat that could be used to scrape off the dirt from his clothes.

He walked outside, washed his clothes, and hung them on the tied-up strings filled with other laundry clothes. It may not be the best time to dry his clothes, but it is starting to get dark soon. He headed back inside his home as the sun began to sink under the village of Aldweld.