Chapter 1: Pains of all kinds.
My pride, arms and legs hurt. Well I suppose only one leg truly hurts the other is just a phantom pain that assails me as it's no longer there. I had left my home of Maybur City in the south to try and make it big as an adventurer in Xyrus.
It seems I wasn't as prepared as I thought I was, at just 16 years old I've lost my right leg from the knee down during a dungeon dive with a party I had formed there.
The city truthfully was just a glorified village, maybe just large enough to be considered a town rather than a city but they had big dreams. While the villagers didn't treat me with outright scorn immediately upon my arrival I could tell they were still looking down on me.
Only a local farmer welcomed me back when I returned as we had been friends since childhood. His name was Royce and he managed the biggest farm in Maybur City. Without him I may have stayed in the depression that I returned home with.
He gave me work in his fields, and while I had lost a leg I still had mana that I could use to enhance my body. I had never found my elemental affinity, but that's not uncommon in augmenters.
A year passed quickly and during that time I spent my off time crafting a prosthetic leg. In Xyrus it's possible to get artificer made ones that would be a lot stronger than this, but as I long as I fuel it with mana it will remain strong. I wasn't good enough to make it into an actual foot shape so I just brought it to a point and then flattened it out at the end.
It looked like I had attached a chair leg to well my leg, but it wasn't long until I was moving as well as I had before I lost my leg. This gave me the confidence to renew my sword training. While I hadn't stopped advancing my core, my practice in the sword had obviously come to a pause at the lose of my leg.
While I wasn't planning to become an adventurer again, I could at least regain some of my tattered pride by protecting the town. That's how I passed the years.
In the morning I would meditate as soon as I woke up before the light and then I would practice with the sword for a while before doing a round along the outskirts of the village. When that was finished I would help Royce on his farm, and any animals or low ranked mana beasts I killed in the morning I would spread out amongst the villagers.
Within time they began to accept me again and I started to be seen as a reliable figure in the village. They no longer saw me, Stratton, as the failure who returned because he had nowhere to go. They saw me as watchman, protector and now provider with meat from the animals I hunted.
14 years later
The bed creaked as I sat up swinging my legs to dangle off the side. Even after 14 years for some reason I can still feel my other foot touch the ground even though it's not there anymore. I feel the same flash of pain where there's no longer a leg below the knee and so I rub the spot as close as I can.
Eventually the pain fades and I grab my prosthetic leg sitting beside my bed. It's quality had improved throughout the years, going from a light wood that was slightly uneven. To now being the perfect length and made of a heavier sturdier wood I had found in the forests surrounding our village.
I had grown accustomed to the "chair leg" like ending where it was just flat at the bottom so I kept it that way. The bottom was capped in a fine, but stripped leather like you find at the bottom of boots to keep it from slipping on wood.
A pad made of a soft animal pelt and some wool from sheep was placed in the pocket where my knee would go and then I would tighten some straps around my lower thigh to hold it in place. Then I pulled on my soft woolen breeches, of course I would have to change into a sturdy pant before my rounds, but I liked to be comfortable while I meditated.
I was hoping that today I could finally break into the yellow core. I had been stuck at light orange for 6 years now, but I didn't let it get to me. I was no longer some skippy adventurer trying to gain fame and boost my own ego. No, my responsibilities now were much more tame.
My happiness now came from seeing that no mana beasts had encroached upon the outskirts of the village. This meant the townspeople didn't have to band together to pay for an adventurer party to come down here. We were successful enough in our own right for trade between villagers in our city, but transporting our goods from here to the nearest transport gate in Cam City was a dangerous undertaking.
The villagers had begun to rely on me to keep them safe, and they always thanked me profusely when I brought loads of game back to spread out amongst everyone. It was time like these where I was thankful I had found that storage ring in the dungeon before I lost my leg.
It wasn't a a very big one, nor did it have anything in it when I picked it up but it was enough to carry a few of the bigger creatures I killed. I would then carry the smaller ones like rabbits, foxes, birds and squirrels on strings around my neck. Nothing went to waste from the animals.
The meat went to butcher, the pelts to the tanner, bones to farmers to be ground up and sprinkled in with the manure to be put in the fields. I had also become something of a healer, I would gather the necessary herbs and berries for the medicines the village needed on my hunts as well.
I shouldn't be having idle thoughts while meditating, but today is the anniversary of when I returned to Maybur and funnily enough my birthday. Meaning I am now 30 years old. Getting up I head to the bathroom at the right of my bedroom.
It's nothing special, but it has a sink where you pump a handle and water will run through the spout for a few seconds. This water usually has to be refilled every week depending on how much I use. Above the sink is a mirror and looking back at me is a grizzled weather beaten man.
My face while light was stained from the constant exposure to the sun, wrinkles forming above my brow. A scar traced downward below my left eye all the way to my chin, but was somewhat faded. My stormy grey eyes held a fierceness to them and my shaggy, curly dirty blond, nearly brown hair fell to my shoulder.
Grasping a lock and holding it out I decide to give it a bit of a trim. Inspecting my growing facial hair I decide the same for it only to pause. I stroked my beard absently and thought back to the fading memory of my parents, I had my mother's hair and I remembered my dad having a large but maintained beard.
Running my hand down from lip to my neck I let out an exhale.
"Maybe I'll grow it out then, for pops. I suppose I'll leave the hair for mom as well."
Voicing my musings came out in my gruff yet soft voice as I continued to stare at myself in the mirror. With it decided I just cleaned up the ends and edges of my beard and hair, but left the majority of it. It didn't look half bad honestly.
Now it was time for my sword training. I always leave my sword hanging on a rack by my bed, and grab it as I head towards the door.
It was a chilly morning and all I wore was my woolen breeches as I stepped out on the grass still covered in the morning dew. At first I begin my training without reinforcing my body with mana and I also start off with a wooden sword made from the same wood my leg is made from.
It's an exact copy of my real sword except this one is at least a few pounds heavier. Not enough to throw off my form, but enough to make my swings quicker and more precise when I switch to metal. The start is just to warm up with basic slashes and stabs, but slowly they become more complex.
Some of the combos are my own creations and others I copied from swordsman I had seen but made them my own. After an hour of warming up like that I move to my little training ground I've set up. Really it's just several posts of wood with wooden beams connecting them, which made it seem like the beginnings of a building.
How we it was actually just heavy trunks of wood from the same wood my sword and leg is made of. I cut them to be varying sizes with the biggest being 3feet long and 3 feet across. The others would be 3 feet long but only 1 or 2 feet across and Vice versa with the length.
Some were on shorter ropes so they came back faster and others on longer ropes so they had more delay and could whip wildly in unpredictable directions. Unpredictable should be used loosely though because after the many years of doing this it's hard to be surprised.
All in all there are 20 different logs strung up on ropes and to start it all I have to do is knock over the stick outside the circle with a rock. First I pull out the thing I started adding to this routine 7 years ago, a soft leather blindfold. I tied it tight onto my my head and everything went dark, but I had done this enough times now I knew where the stick was by heart.
With the familiar "clack" I knew I had hit it and prepared for the first log. I always tie them up in different ways for the next day but after every day for 7 years sometimes you accidentally reuse an old pattern.
The first log that's closest is directly behind me and it's the heaviest log, but I could feel another coming right beside it. I take one step to my right avoiding the heaviest log but catching it on the side making it knock into the other that I had heard. Immediately I duck under another before having to jump over a low swinging one.
This brought me into a crouch and I swung away another log and spun as I stood to strike another with a resounding crack that sent it flying. Slowly I settled into a rhythm and began to reinforce my body with mana as I increased my pace. I was now dodging with as little movements as possible while sending back powerful strikes at the logs.
With the reinforcement I was beginning to hear cracks and feeling splinters of wood being sent flying. I continued like this for another hour before I finally stopped. Pulling off the blind fold I see the longs broken up into many smaller pieces perfect for kindling a fire, so I begin bundling them up and taking them to my bathroom.
There is a smaller fireplace with an opening outside connected to my bathtub, so that in these cold months I can take a warm bath if I like.
With a quick soak to wash away the sweat I redress into my hunting and gathering gear. It's made of mostly leathers connected by animal pelts the tanner had put together for me. The leather covered vital areas like the chest and back, fore arms and shins, but left the rest covered by pelts for better maneuverability.
My trek had been the same as usual, starting with a survey of the outskirts and finding nothing amiss I traveled deeper into the the surrounding woods I began my hunting and gathering. I had decided to try out some new spots to see if there were any new kind of plants I hadn't seen before when I heard it.
The sound of a baby crying.
"Waaaah! Wah!" My ears prickled and I ran through the internal lists of mana beast I knew of for any that imitated humans. However the only ones I could think of usually imitated the cries of a woman , not a baby. Unsheathing my sword I begin to creep quietly towards the sound of the wailing.
I was quick and silent, not disturbing the local wildlife at all until they saw pass and they scurried off. They too were listening to the crying baby and if they were then predators could be too. If this wasn't just a mana beast trying to make a snack of me.
Those thoughts were immediately dispersed though as when I came upon the location of the sound I was met with a basket made of pliable twigs spun together. And inside wrapped into a thick blanket was a little baby who seemed to stop crying as soon as they saw me come close.
I kept my guard up and surveyed the surrounding, but couldn't find any footprints of human nor beast. No indication of who the baby was either, just a sprouting of silver hair with bright piercing green eyes. I lifted the basket up to get a better look of the baby as after seeing the hair and eyes I immediately thought elf, but we are much too far south. The baby's round human ears dispelled any thoughts of it being an elf anyways, though I suppose it could be a half elf?
Years ago that would have been a cause for concern but not long ago we were still at war with the Elves. Now we are in some unsteady truce with them, that could probably swing either way.
Shaking my head from those thoughts I hold the baby close and think long and hard about my next option. With a nod to myself I head straight back to the village. It seems that I'm going to have a new family member for the first time since my mother passed away when I was 11.
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Alright first chapter done. Think next chapter is going to be another small time skip with flashbacks that skim over the pains of taking care of a baby.
Again like the synopsis said, this fic is HEAVILY inspired by the book I recently read "My daughter left the nest and came back an S Rank adventurer". Meaning the entire premise is going to be the same, but I'm adding slight differences as this is in the world of TBATE.
Hope you enjoy.
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