"Huh. But I'm already a Demon-Fox. What's human about that?"
"A Demon-Fox is humanoid. But a Nine-Tailed Demon Fox Primordial's true form is a fox. A monster, technically. That's the difference."
I leaned back, exhaling slowly. "Who wants to be a monster, right?"
Stacy didn't answer. She simply gestured at the pile of books. "Well, here's your basic world knowledge. Oh, and one thing you won't find in those pages-our kingdom goes to war every five to ten years."
She said it so casually.
I froze. "...Excuse me?"
But she was already halfway to the stairs, fleeing like a coward. "Good luck studying!"
I slammed my forehead into the table. "Damn it. Dropped into a kingdom that's always at war. Just my luck."
avataravatar
Chapter 12: The Kingdom of Doragon
It had been about a month and a half since my new life began here, and I had to admit-I was finally starting to feel like I had a handle on how things worked. Well, "handle" might be too strong a word. More like... I wasn't running into walls every five minutes anymore. That counted as progress.
Stacy didn't hover around me the whole time anymore, which was a relief. At first she'd stuck to me like an overprotective hawk with a drinking problem, but now she only popped up when she felt like yelling at me, training me, or reminding me that I was still an idiot. Honestly, I think the reason she left me alone was because I spent most of my time in the library. Imagine me, nose buried in dusty tomes like some wannabe scholar. But hey, if this was going to be my new world, I wanted to know everything about it that I could.
And yes, I mean everything. History, geography, monster biology, why bread here is so damn hard you could use it as a weapon-if there was a book about it, I read it.
There was some good news on the personal front too. Lily had survived, and not only that, she had somehow landed herself in a relationship with Rebecca. I was happy for them. At least, I was until the day I caught the faint metallic tang of blood clinging to Lily's skin. My nose might as well be cursed; I notice everything. We had a very long, very awkward conversation about my "too sensitive nose" and her "shut up, it's none of your business." Spoiler: it was absolutely my business, but I let her win that one.
Still, none of that compared to the question that had been chewing at me since the start. Stacy once said something during one of our outings, something that had stuck in my brain like a burr: "Why would a kingdom be at war every decade?"
At first, I thought she was exaggerating. Then I found out the truth.
Of all the possible worlds reincarnators could end up in, I just had to land in one that ran on constant warfare. If it wasn't a hot war, it was a cold one-nations sprinting to see who could invent the most creative ways to stab each other faster. Lucky me. And as if fate enjoyed kicking me when I was down, we were currently in one of those cold wars.
The more I researched, the worse it got. Our opponent? The Federation. Supposedly the largest, meanest, most resource-hoarding superpower on the continent. And guess whose territory bordered them? That's right-the territory of the Marquis Draig. My new "family." Our job? To keep that entire juggernaut of a nation at bay. Alone.
I actually confronted Stacy about it once. She laughed at me so hard she nearly fell off her chair. Apparently, I'd "forgotten" that we lived smack in the middle of the Dead Forest, one of the most dangerous places in existence. The forest itself formed the natural border between us and the Federation, with only one passage that could be used as a military route. So really, the Federation wasn't just fighting us-they were fighting the world's scariest nature preserve at the same time.
That realization should've comforted me. It didn't. Instead, I had my first proper existential crisis here.
People say knowledge is power. Personally, I think knowledge is a loaded gun pointed straight at your brain. Because once I did the math and realized how massive this world actually was, I short-circuited for days.
Earth? Cute little marble compared to this place. This world was about a hundred times bigger. And our "tiny" Doragon Kingdom? Its landmass was the size of both North and South America combined. That was "smallest kingdom in the world" scale. Smallest.
Yeah, I needed to sit down after that one.
Thankfully, some things stayed familiar. Days were still twenty-four hours, weeks were still seven days, and months were still thirty days. The names of weekdays were even the same. It almost made me tear up-like finding a McDonald's in a foreign country. The only major difference was that the year had doubled in length. Twice as many months, numbered instead of named. Which meant birthdays were double the hassle.
Back to important things-the Doragon Kingdom. It might have been the smallest, but it wasn't the weakest. Not by a long shot. And the reason was simple: the Four Pillar Houses.
I'd read enough propaganda to recite their titles in my sleep:
Marquis Anlit, Shield of the South.
Marchioness Anabald, Shield of the West.
Marquis Kuni, Shield of the East.
Marquis Draig-my illustrious new family-Shield of the North.
And then there was the one surviving Duke house, Duke Boei. Supposedly the "support pillar." Another duke house had existed, but they'd been the ones running the human experimentation that ruined half our lives, so... yeah. Not around anymore.
Each Pillar House guarded a border. Anlit handled the seas, Anabald dealt with the Beast Kingdom, Kuni kept the Demon Kingdom at bay, and the Draigs got stuck with the Federation-and the Dead Forest as a bonus. Meanwhile, Duke Boei was supposed to provide support wherever needed, the reliable babysitter of the kingdom.
On paper, it sounded reasonable. In practice? Insane. One house protecting an entire border indefinitely? Good luck with that.
That's when I learned about my new family's little military quirk. See, each house ran its own army, but the Draigs didn't play by normal rules. Everyone else used squads and companies. We used lone wolves.
Literally-our "teams" were made up of a single soldier. If two wanted to pair up, sure, but that was the exception, not the rule. It made our numbers laughably small, but the quality? Terrifying. Stacy told me flat out: if you got accepted as just a soldier in House Draig's military, you were already considered knight-level by normal kingdom standards.
At first, I thought the books were exaggerating. Then I remembered the poor soldier who'd bolted when he first saw me and started connecting the dots. I asked Stacy, and she casually explained that guy had been a baron's personal soldier, not a Draig soldier. Oh. My bad.
And then she said something that broke my brain: if the Draigs wanted to take over the entire kingdom, they could. Even if every other noble house united against them.
"Bullshit," I said.She smirked. "Try us."
That was also the day I learned Stacy herself was Vice-Captain of the infamous Black Ops. The Draig military had a proper name, but nobody used it. The world called them the Black Ops-three thousand strong, feared everywhere. I laughed when she told me, until I realized she wasn't joking.
Naturally, I asked if her husband, the Captain, was stronger than her. She laughed so hard she nearly choked.
"No, he isn't. Don't let the title fool you. In the Black Ops, there are plenty of people stronger than him. He didn't become captain because he's the head of the house. Would you follow someone who treated you like a tool? No-he earned that position. He built a reputation, fought like hell, and people chose him. By the time he was twenty-two, they wanted him as their captain."
I blinked. "So he's... just really good at networking?"She slugged me in the arm. "No, idiot. He's the kind of man who treats every soldier like family. He knows all three thousand of them by name. That's why they follow him."
I stared at her. "Three thousand names? No way. I can't even remember my classmates back home."
"Exactly. That's why you're not captain material."
Ouch. Fair enough.
When I wasn't getting roasted by Stacy, I dug into the world's power system. It was surprisingly game-like. Kill monsters, get experience. Drag their corpses to the guild, get money. Simple. But classes were the weird part. Apparently, your class didn't just drop out of the sky-it was based on your life experiences before level fifty. Everything you did mattered. Cook a lot? Might end up with a cooking-based class. Spend years training? That shaped your path. Even small things added up.
Passive skills were even stranger. They didn't show up in your status window-you had to figure them out yourself. My eyes, for example, weren't normal. They glowed sometimes, and books hinted at passive effects. Did I know what they did? Nope. Helpful.
Stats worked as expected-you leveled up, you got stronger. But the boosts varied by class. Stacy, with her rare class, got four to five points per stat each level. On top of that, she had a berserker boost that doubled it to eight to ten. When she casually mentioned legendary classes started with nine to ten points and could stack boosts, I nearly fainted.
If I ever got a berserker boost, I could jump eighteen to twenty points per level. I short-circuited again just thinking about it.
I asked how to unlock one. She smirked. "Figure it out yourself."
Of course she wouldn't tell me.
Normal skills were a nightmare to learn. The big one everyone whispered about was the Sword Domain. To get it, you had to invent your own fighting style and rack up ten years of weapon experience. Minimum. If you pulled it off, though, you could double your stats for a whole minute. Sixty seconds might not sound like much, but in this world, sixty seconds was enough to wipe out ten thousand soldiers.
Don't believe me? Ask the late King Doragon X. The guy personally reaped ten thousand souls in a single minute using Sword Domain. A living legend.
He was also the strongest king Doragon ever had, a man who died at eighty-seven on the battlefield, where he said he belonged. His achievements were insane. He single-handedly forced the Federation-the warmongers themselves-to sign a fifty-year peace treaty.
Fifty years of peace. Imagine that.
It didn't last, obviously, but for a while, people lived without war constantly breathing down their necks. That alone made him a hero. The more I read about him, the more I idolized him. A king who treated his people like family, who despised pompous nobles, who wanted real change. He even made it illegal for nobles to harm citizens without a valid reason. It didn't erase corruption, but it helped. Citizens could attend academies, walk the same streets as their ruler, feel seen.
He was, in short, the kind of king stories are written about. His descendants? Less so. The current king wasn't terrible, but he wasn't great either. More interested in politics and power than ideals.
I once asked Stacy what she thought of him. She shrugged. "Don't care. Politics are boring."
Can't argue with that.
"HEY! ARE YOU DONE DAYDREAMING!?"
Stacy's yell nearly made me jump out of my chair. I looked up to find her looming over me, arms crossed, foot tapping like she was scolding a child.
"Yes," I muttered, rubbing my ringing ears. "Thanks to you. Goddess, you're loud."
"Good. Then stop drooling on the books and get your ass outside. Time for training." She cracked her knuckles and dropped into a fighting stance.
I groaned. "You know, some people ease into training. Maybe start with stretching? Meditation? Tea?"
She grinned, sharp and wolfish. "Nope. We start with pain."
And with that, she lunged.
avataravatar
Chapter 13: Training
The stones in the training yard still held the night's cold like a grudge. Mist clung low over the flagstones, gloving my ankles in damp and making the grass around the edge glint silver. Somewhere beyond the walls, the Dead Forest breathed-long, slow, and patient. Birds hadn't committed to the morning yet; they only chirped in guilty little pockets and then shut up again like they didn't trust the light.
"Are you ready to start now?" Stacy asked, already limbered, already smiling that sharky, too-awake smile people only have at five in the morning if they're morally compromised.
"Yes, I will be in your hands," I said, still rubbing my ears from the pre-dawn wake-up scream that had peeled varnish off the hallway rails.
"Now," she announced with the drama of a stage actor, "you are going to be my first disciple. Amari didn't want to because of her... you know what."
I squinted. "I feel kind of happy I get to be your disciple, and also there's this little dagger of dread poking my liver. Why am I your first disciple? You seem like you've traumatized at least a dozen."
"Haha-no one wants her to train them," Rebeca called down from the balcony that overlooked the yard. She had a mug, a shawl, and the expression of someone watching a play she'd seen a hundred times and enjoyed every single time. "Good instincts, kid."
My tail flicked. "So that's what the danger feeling is. It's you." I turned back to Stacy. She was beaming, but the air around her had that subtle prickle, like it knew to step back. "No turning back now," I said, and was a little surprised to feel that I meant it. Fine. If I was going to be forged, I might as well jump in the fire.
"I'm happy you said that, Kitsuna," she said, already strolling toward the weapon racks lining the wall. "Have you ever used a sword or something like that in your previous life?"
"So we're really starting today? It's five in the morning. At least let me eat."
"No," she said, cheerful as a sunrise. "If we want you to chase that legendary class, we train. A lot. Now answer the question."
"I've held weapons. Used them, a little. Not for killing." I followed her, eyes running over the racks: spears in neat bundles; axes hung like metal moons; bows asleep in their frames; a row of swords catching the weak light like they were already moving.
"What weapons most?"
"Katanas and rapiers. Maybe cross wheels? I handled those a bunch but never learned to use them."
She paused and glanced back with a tilt to her head. "Cross wheels? Of all things."
"Neighbor back on Earth was a collector," I said, and couldn't help the tiny smile that slid in. "Any time he got a new piece, he brought it over. His favorite set was cross wheels. They looked ridiculous until you spun them, then they looked... inevitable."
"I see," she mused, eyes glinting. "Okay. We start with cross wheels. I want to see how you move them."
