Flying Time

The nights for serfs came early, as the only source of light they had was from their fireplace. Around four in the afternoon, Rodin and Theresia were already back from the fields.

"Oh my, if it isn't Krena! Are you here to play with Allen again today?"

Theresia asked, smiling warmly at the sight of the two children covered in dirt from head to toe.

"Mm-hm! I played knight with Allen!"

Allen looked both relieved and exhausted, indicating that the play session had just ended. He had remained on the defensive from start to finish.

"I'm glad to hear it," Theresia replied. "But it's about to get dark soon.

Make sure you get home safe, all right?"

"Mm-hm! I'll be safe! See you tomorrow, Allen!" The girl who was still bursting with energy dashed off, her wooden sword still in hand.

Rodin, who through his talks with Gerda was mostly aware of what was happening, placed a sympathetic hand on Allen's shoulder. "Good work, son."

***

The family then bustled to prepare dinner. There was one thing that was now different about this scene.

"Here you go, papa," Allen said as he dished out the fried beans. Ever since he turned three, he had started helping out with the housework. There was a good reason for this.

"Mm," Rodin replied gruffly.

Theresia rubbed her son's head. "What will we ever do without you, Allen?" she murmured thankfully before slowly and carefully settling herself into a chair. The bulge of her belly indicated that she was pregnant again.

This second child—which she and Rodin had been wanting for a while now —was due around the turn of the year. Because she was already quite far into her pregnancy, Allen had decided to help out with the housework so as to lessen the burden on his mother.

During dinner, Allen suddenly said, "Papa, mama's tummy is getting bigger, so I'll help with harvesting the potatoes."

He had seen Theresia having to suddenly stop and recollect herself several times over the past few days. Because he had the strength of an adult, he thought he could handle potato harvesting without issue. What's more, even though he still had no intention of explaining everything about being a Summoner to his parents, he thought this a good occasion to reveal a bit of what he was capable of thanks to the buffs that the cards were giving him.

Rodin froze, looking shocked and at a loss for words.

Theresia joined the conversation. "Allen, honey, you're still young. You can go ahead and keep playing with Krena!"

"That's right, Allen," Rodin added. "You helping out around the house is already more than enough. We will need your help with the fields in the future, but until then, play as much as you can."

Back when Kenichi—Allen's identity in his past life—had been a child, it had been his duty to clean the house's bathtub. In his mind, he was pretty much equating this with helping out in the fields.

Rodin saw it differently, however. For him, working in the fields was hard labor, something that he did because it was his duty as a serf. It was not fun, nor was it something that a three-year-old could be expected to take part in.

On a more fundamental level, he did not think being a serf was anything to be happy about either.

There was a large rift in the value system held by Allen and Rodin. Allen had now lived three years in this world, but before his reincarnation, he had lived thirty-five years as Kenichi. The value system and common sense from back then still strongly affected his thoughts and decisions now.

'No dice, huh. Well, I am only three years old. Guess I'll increase my daily training menu starting tomorrow, then.'

Despite the difference in values, Allen could tell that there was no point in pushing the matter. He had offered because he preferred spending his time with his family if given the chance, but it was not as if he could not find other ways to utilize his time.

"Oh, do you want to hear what Krena did today?"

"Sure, honey. Tell us!"

Sensing that his offer to help with the harvesting had caused the air to grow a bit heavy, Allen decided to change the topic to a funny story about his play session with Krena that day.

***

October was nearing its end, signaled by the albaherons—the creature which Allen's name was derived from—flying northward.

The harvesting was almost over. It was completely hunting season now.

Ever since the start of the month, the men of the village had started getting together to go on hunts on days when they were all free. This year, they had already gone on two hunts in the midst of the potato harvesting period.

Accordingly, Rodin had also gotten quite busy as of late. As someone with a burly 180-cm-tall body who had always dreamed of becoming a hunter, this was the time of the year that he always looked forward to the most. This year, he needed to work especially hard to ensure that Theresia, who was pregnant with their second child, got all the nutrition she needed.

Naturally, Gerda also participated in those hunts, so both Allen and Krena were growing up quickly and healthily. Everyone who participated in a hunt would gain a portion of the game's meat. As the serfs' diet was mainly composed of plant-based protein from sources like beans, the great boar meat served as a valuable source of animal protein.

The hunting party had gotten so proficient now that they could normally manage ten to twelve hunts each year.

From January to March, the game of choice would shift to the white deer, a Rank C monster that looked more like an elk in spite of its name.

However, it had white skin that camouflaged very well within the snowy landscape. As such, they were considered harder to hunt than the great boar.

'Well then, how did my experiment turn out?' Allen thought as he checked in on the Insect H that was currently inside a hole that he had made Beast G dig yesterday morning.

"Oh, you're still alive, Denka! This proves Summons can stay materialized for a whole day."

This current experiment that Allen was conducting was meant to determine how long Summons could remain Summoned. This world had neither walkthrough sites nor online forums, meaning he had to figure everything out on his own. Now that he had been granted full permission to come and go inside his family's front yard, he was taking the opportunity to test out a few things.

What Allen had just called out loud, "Denka," was the nickname that he had assigned the grasshopper Insect H. It was possible to set names for each kind of Summon, and there was no change between using "Insect H" or "Denka" while Creating, Summoning, and Synthesizing. All of these Abilities could be performed silently, activating automatically as soon as Allen willed it.

Allen had assigned the following names to his available Summons:

___

Insect H: Denka (Grasshopper)

Insect G: Hopper (Frog)

Beast H: Mousey (Mouse)

Beast G: Moley (Mole)

Bird G: Chappy (Parrot)

___

'These look more like names for pets than Summons, huh', Allen thought somewhat self-deprecatingly as he looked through the pages in the grimoire displaying the creatures' Statuses.

He knew he could change the names as many times as he wanted, though, so he decided to leave them for now.

'Well then, next thing.'

The little boy left the grasshopper in the hole and turned around to walk toward the tree growing in the yard. He gathered ten stones and placed them at his feet. Then he picked up each one in turn and threw them toward the tree.

'If I remember right, the description for Hell Mode said, "The only Skills you start out with are the skills tied to your class." In my case, that would be Summoning. But that doesn't mean that I can't get other skills, right?'

After throwing all ten stones, Allen retrieved them and added a stroke to the tally marks that he had been drawing on the ground. He then repeated the process over again.

'For now, let's do a hundred throws every day. I wanna figure out the conditions for obtaining skills.'

Allen was working hard at leveling Synthesis up, but there was little to it beyond expending his MP three times each day; this was not nearly enough for the hardcore gamer inside him.

As early as possible, he wanted to figure out whether he could obtain skills unrelated to Summoning and, if so, what those conditions were. So he decided to use the rest of his time to experiment with gaining other skills as well.

In short, Allen was attempting to gain a skill similar to "Stone Throw."

The stone throwing training regimen that he had taken up usually took him the entire morning to complete. One of the few advantages to having been reincarnated from birth was that he had all the time in the world to perform tedious trials like these.

***

"Let's play again tomorrow, Allen!"

"Sure thing."

Today's session of playing knight had just finished, leaving Allen thoroughly exhausted.

Upon being prompted by Theresia, Krena sped off home, still filled with energy. It was dark there at night, as the roads that far out into the outskirts of the village were not lit.

Traveling without clear visibility was dangerous, regardless of how energetic the little girl was, so Theresia always made sure to remind her to head off before the sun set.

'If Krena keeps coming over every day like she's been doing, I just might gain a skill related to swordsmanship before stone throwing.'

As always, Theresia's cooking graced that night's dinner table, and the family of three gathered around the sunken earth. Serfs lived frugally and had few possessions, but that did not necessarily mean they ate poorly.

Rodin, for example, had a 180-cm-tall, well-built body capable of performing manual labor from six in the morning to four in the afternoon, day in and day out.

The amount of calories that he burned was significantly higher than that of the average person in the modern era.

That said, they had very limited access to ingredients like oil and meat, which meant the only way to ingest the amount of calories needed was through quantity. Their diet mainly consisted of potatoes, unleavened bread baked with wheat flour alone, beans, and a thin soup cooked with dried summer vegetables.

"You were throwing stones at that tree again today, weren't you, Allen?"

Theresia suddenly asked. It was only natural for her to want to ask about this odd new behavior her son seemed to have taken up recently.

Allen simply nodded and said, "Mm-hm."

This prompted Rodin to join in the conversation. Theresia had told him about this before, and his curiosity was similarly piqued. "Why were you doing that?" he asked.

"You said there are monsters outside our house, papa. If they appear, I'll throw stones at them to protect mama!"

Allen delivered this answer that he had thought up ahead of time with the most childlike and endearing smile that he could muster. The reason his parents had kept giving him for not allowing him outside of the house was because "there are monsters outside," so he was using that to his advantage.

This frontier village was surrounded by a wall, and there were only very weak monsters nearby. However, there were times when a few of them would slip in through small cracks in the wall. While easily defeated in short order by guards or other adult villagers, the monsters' stats still made them a threat to children, especially the younger ones.

'The weakest is a rabbit with a horn on its forehead, right? I still remember how delicious it was.'

Rodin had managed to bring one of these home on two occasions. They had been the size of regular dogs from Allen's past life.

Apparently there was an unwritten rule that these monster intruders belonged to whoever caught them, so there was always a scramble in the village any time one got in.

"Awww, Allen!" Theresia was so touched by his response that she reached over and wrapped her son in a tight hug.

"Is that so! Is that so!" Rodin joined in and tousled his son's hair, filled with pride at the courageous young man that his boy was growing into.

Theresia let go and looked into his face. "Of course, you'll be protecting Krena too, right?"

"Mm-hm!"

The truth was Rodin and Theresia had both heard from Gerda that Krena was already far stronger than horned rabbits. This was why it was her making the trip to their place every day instead of Allen.

"You've been having fun playing knight with Krena every day, so who knows? You just might have a Talent! I can't wait to see the results of the Appraisal Ceremony when you turn five!"

"Oh, I'm sure he'll do fine, honey."

'Hold on, new word! What's that?' "Apprezelseremonie?"

"That's right, Allen," Theresia replied. "When you turn five, the gods are going to tell papa and mama whether you have a Talent or not."

She continued to explain that in this world, all children who reached five years old had to undergo a ceremony that examined them for inborn Talents.

Allen's parents assured him that many people did not possess a Talent and to not get his hopes up, but to him, it looked more like his parents were the ones getting their hopes up.

From the sound of it, possessing a Talent was one of the few ways through which a serf could rise through the social ranks.

And so the days passed with Allen continuing to throw stones in the morning and play knight with Krena in the afternoon.

In addition to helping Theresia out where possible, he also diligently converted his MP into Skill XP and conducted further experiments during whatever time remained.

Time flew by in the blink of an eye.