It was pleasantly warm today.
June having just arrived, summer had come knocking as the sun shone brightly without clouds.
Honestly, it was the perfect day to go out and play, standing next to a window I looked out from within the corridor as I watched my little sisters playing outside and having fun.
My face loosened by this, almost making me forget what I wanted to do, but only for a moment as I returned back to where I was about to go finally stepping in front of a wooden door carved with intricate and beautiful markings.
The place I lived in was considered a mansion, being a mansion it had a lot of doors and many long corridors, every door in this house had a board hanging from it to indicate what kind of room it was, only this door alone didn’t have a board as it had once belonged to my father who had died a year prior.
Usually nobody was allowed to enter this room without the permission of my father who used to manage the house, but nowadays anyone could enter as they pleased though no one did that other then our mothers, in fact there was a silent agreement between our mothers where they would each be able to spend a day inside this room by themselves, almost as if they were pretending that father was still here to spend some quality time with him at night.
-Heh…funny really..
I laughed, about to knock the door, but before I could even do so a voice behind that door spoke to me first aware of my existence.
-The door is unlocked, you may come in.
Hearing that rough but dignified voice, I knew I had the right person and without even hesitating I pushed the knob of the door entering as a wall full of books came to my view just like I remembered the last time I came in.
Other then the enormous shelf of books, there was a office table with leather chairs, 2 on the front and 1 on the back facing a window outside.
A king sized bed stood on the very back of the room and beside it was a big wardrobe which had a giant mirror on it that would let the person see the entirety of the person.
Everything in here was in top condition, I couldn’t even see a single speck of dust which was always the case whenever I came into this room to be taught by father, I always wondered who it was that cleaning this place, I once thought that it was father himself, but knowing him and how he was allergic to dust it didn’t really make sense, furthermore before I and the girls were doing the household chores, I believe it were my mothers who used to clean the mansion.
Maybe it were my mothers this time as well, cleaning the room of their deceased husband.
-Kyro ? My son..what brings you here ?
Finally returning my focus back to the person I wanted to meet, I looked at her as she sat behind the office desk on father’s usual spot and favorite place next to the window.
Her expression was a bit surprised as she sat in a very loose manner as if she was just hanging there, but over all it seemed as if she wasn’t displeased by my appearance as her cheeks loosened while looking at me.
Just like me this person had black but long hair and dark brown eyes, she was very tall for a woman at least 190 cms and also very muscular with sharp facial features to boot and a few scars present on her hands and lower jaw.
Anyways this woman was called Cornilia Ravenguard, and she was my birth mother who brought me into this world, in total I had 11 adoptive mothers, only this woman was a my true mother and even though I call every person my father was wed to as mother, in reality I only ever considered this woman as my true mother since she actually taught me a lot of things over the course of my short life.
I knew that today was her turn to be in this room, having studied everyone’s schedule ahead of time I wanted to make sure that I would be able to have some one on one time with my mother to talk about few things which is why I was here.
Feeling a bit nervous about the conversation I was about to have I gestured towards one of the leathers chairs before asking.
-May I ?
My mother nodded not saying much before I gently sat down and faced her while preparing my words.
-Mother…tomorrow I am going to turn 15…
-…
The atmosphere around us immediately turned still the moment I said that, I almost felt as if a vacuum had been created hindering me from breathing, but I knew that it was just a illusion and not reality, taking in a small breath regardless of the sensation my head immediately cleared as I saw my mother momentarily close her eyes before opening them again and looking at me, this time more sharply then before.
-Sorry…I didn’t mean to, I was just a bit surprised, going back to the conversation, indeed you are about to turn 15, you will both awaken your blessing and become of marriageable age, I take it that you want to talk about that which is why you came here ?
A bit of sweat flowed down my cheek as she said that, I slowly tried to wipe it away to not seem disorderly, while doing so I couldn’t help but remember the days my mother brought me outside to train, her drill sergeant persona and the actually motherly persona of my mother were 2 completely different people and having seen both sides of her for so long I couldn’t help but gain a bit of a trauma, my mother was scary after all even though it wasn’t her intention to be it couldn’t helped as she simply was born and raised this way, just thinking about the olden days I remembered how I couldn’t even speak to her without stuttering.
Thoughts such as these made me feel at ease for a second before I returned to the conversation.
-Yes, specifically I want to talk about my marriage…Mother I know that the laws says that I am supposed to chose women of the same grade as me, but what I wanted to ask is whether or not I could..
-Could what ?
Being suddenly interrupted like that out of nowhere, I almost hiccupped as mother made a especially scary face, but I kept it down, being steadfast and knowing what I knew about my mother from experience and listening to my father I first decided to calm her so we could talk more evenly.
Doing so wasn’t very tough as I simply rose from my seat and slowly made my way towards her, all this time my mother kept her eyes on me and didn’t say anything before I gently sat down on her thighs leaning onto her chest.
There was a significant change in my mother’s expression the moment I cuddled up to her, she still tried to look tough, but it was very clear that her face was loosening up and her eyes quivered with a gentle light even her hands couldn’t keep themselves from holding me as she lightly touched my face.
-I’m sorry, I scared you..
-No its okay, I understand how mother is, you’re just worried I know…
Lightly making up with my mother we continued to cuddle as we silently sat like this for another 5 minutes or so, how long we would need to stay like this was beyond me, but since mother was happy I decided I would stay until it was enough.
And eventually it seemed as if mother calmed down as she looked at me with her clear eyes.
-You already have someone you want to become you’re wife do you ?
-Ehm…
Her guess was a bit off mark, but I simply nodded trying to explain.
-Yes…but not really..
It was difficult to explain, but getting this opportunity now I wasn’t going to throw it away forcing me to explain my thoughts.
Being a accountant in my previous life and having to do chores for the most extend that I lived, the only real skills I had were either domestic or to do with documents and numbers, my father in fact immediately recognized my abilities plus my mature mind the moment I demonstrated them and didn’t hesitate to make my position within the family only second to his, he also taught me everything I knew, teaching me history, biology, physics and other subjects he was interested in since he loved books so much.
Through gaining all of this knowledge, my already high understanding only grew as I worked day in and day out, and when I finally was asked by my father what I wanted to be when I grew up I answered.
-A businessman, I want to be a merchant.
The reason I chose to become a merchant was because this world didn’t have a laid out road for me to use to be successful like my previous world where I simply needed to study a lot.
And by playing by my strengths, while I didn’t know much about business I was still a accountant who could recognized numbers and documents meaning it was easy for me to know where cash flowed at all times.
Hearing my answer, my father wanted to know why I wanted to be a businessman in which I replied simply because once I turned 15, I would need to leave the house and create my own place together with my wives which is why money was necessary no matter what.
He laughed at that, telling me that it was a good and sensible goal to have before ordering a large amount of books regarding business and such the next day telling me to read them all while sometimes even inviting some merchants to teach me.
Going by how I lived my previous life it was almost identical because even though in this life we weren’t really poor we were still considered poor in the standards of nobility.
Yes, we were nobility, though honestly we may as well be barely considered peasants with the amount of meager wealth we had for nobles.
The rank of our house was Baron the lowest hereditary rank, the way our territory made money was mainly through growing crops, but since our territory was a rough terrain it was difficult to grow a lot of things which is why we were so poor for nobles as we didn’t have any other specialty.
Because of this we needed another channel to create money which is what my mothers do as they were knights for hire, generally acting like mercenaries but with rank to help other nobles to deal with troublesome cases like bandits, they were popular as well since they were reliable and not unknown people that could simply take the money and leave.
Taking everything into consideration, our house barely stayed operational each year.
And now that father died from sickness and I would need to go and make my own family, there were a few things that I needed to straighten out before I left.
Fortunately I wouldn’t be the only one who would leave, everyone that was of marriageable age which was 15 was likely going to leave as well to become brides once their blessing was determined.
Through this the financial pressure would likely very much lessen and since we still had 3 more boys who were just like me very well educated and trained, domestic issue’s would likely be easily resolved.
And what were “Blessings” you may ask ?
Well they are close to magic as they determine almost every single thing about how you live your life afterwards.
On a second thought there does exist a origin story for the reason why these blessings exist as well thinking about.
In short it is said that when the supreme goddess first ever created life on the planet she made, she made sure that every living and conscious being would have a role to play for the rest of their lives so they wouldn’t be lost on what to do.
These “roles” manifest when the individual has fully grown or become a adult.
For Humans this is when they turn 15 years old.
And be it Monsters or Humans both call these “roles” as “blessings”.
Basically a Blessing allows the user to be good at something depending on what the blessing itself is.
For example: there is a very common blessing called “Farmer” which allows the user to be better at farming crops, there is also a blessing called “Warrior” which makes you better at combat there even exists blessings that are more specialized like “Swordsman” that make it so that you are better at using your swords and this isn’t all either.
There also exist “Blessings” that are inherently better then others meaning roles that are much more important then some.
“Magic Knight” for example is a blessing that allows the user to use magic, close-quarter combat and wear heavy armor.
And yes, magic exists in this world, but from what I heard even the most basic magic wielding “Wizard” blessing is extremely rare so I haven’t personally seen it or anything.
In either case, from what I had gathered there exist 4 grades of rarity of blessings each being stronger then the last.
These grades are called common, rare, epic and legendary.
Farmer’s and Warrior’s belong to common blessings.
Specialized blessings like Swordsman are rare.
Anything to do with magic like a “Wizard” is at the very least epic.
And something like a “Magic Knight” that can do magic and something else is Legendary.
Now on hindsight this all seems very unfair if you consider that not everyone is equal the moment they gain their blessing, people with stronger blessings would obviously stand at the very top with the people with the weaker blessings not being able to do much.
And since Blessings are both inherently random and genetic, people who copulate with individuals who have powerful blessings like themselves will raise the chances that their off-spring will have a powerful blessing as well though it is not 100% guaranteed since blessings are still heavily luck based.
And while it gives the person a direction in life when they turn into a adult what if the individual already knows what they want to do before hand ? No one can choose their blessing after all, just like how a kid who dreamed to be a baker gains the “Thief” blessing, they can still pursue their dreams and become a baker but in the end they will never be as good as a person who has the “Chef” Blessing or the “Baker” blessing.
Nothing can be done about people like these who gained blessings they didn’t want.
But there is something to be done if you want to become stronger and get a higher grade blessing.
This act is called “Promotion”, what it basically does is advance the grade of your blessing, say going from common to rare and rare to epic all the way up to legendary.
The thing is the only way to do this is to strengthen your original blessing, and this is done through improving the skills your blessing is based upon, “Farmers” need to farm while “Warriors” need to fight and “Swordsman” need to practice their sword skill.
Eventually when that training reaches its absolute limits one can push through and promote themselves into a higher grade, which is where 3 things can happen when you promote.
1. You strengthen your original blessing but now more befitting the grade it was promoted to.
2. Your blessing changes or evolves into a higher ranking blessing, “Warriors” for example when they promote can change into “Berserkers” if they have a disposition for it.
Or 3 which is the rarest. You gain another blessing of the same grade you were supposed to promote to.
But in the end promotion isn’t something easily done, within 10 people only 1 may be able to promote themselves from common to rare and promoting from rare to epic is said to be even harder usually only 1 in 100 making it much less legendary which is said to only succeed within 1 in 10000.
And this is taking into account that those 10000 all work their hardest, with plenty resources to use.
Father used to say perseverance was the most important aspect when it came to promotion and that no matter what kind of talent you had you would eventually get there if you worked hard enough.
Now finally all of these factors play into how society works in this world.
It is often seen that you should only do what you are good at basically what you’re blessing was, between a “Warrior” and a “Chef” no one is going to take a “Chef” to fight bandits even if the “Chef” is more skilled in fighting since eventually the “Warrior” is going to surpass the “Chef” no matter what.
It seems to me as if your entire life is determined by what kind of blessing you get the moment you come to age and with how everything else is going it only seems natural that you have to do everything you can to promote your blessing if you want to have a decent life.
Blessings are also very much connected to how marriage in this world works as well.
Males choose their wives and then settle down somewhere to make more offspring.
In the olden days this method was not used, especially by the nobility who simply opted to trade their boys with another house with boys of equal rank so they could both benefit equally.
But as things like “Blessings” came into consideration and how those with a stronger blessing would lose out if they trade their sons with boys of weaker blessings, it was decided that marriage would be only done between people of the same grades of blessing and that the man would choose who they would wed.
This law was created by one of the only emperors of this world that had once united all 5 human kingdoms within the continent and to this day this law was continued to be practiced as it yielded very effective results with the way males now had a choice on who to marry and how it made them less rebellious and more willing to marry.
From this alone you can see how blessings are the vocal point in marriage, once I get my blessing tomorrow and report it back to the kingdom official, I would be send a list of potential marriage candidates who wanted to marry me from which I could choose from, once I made my decision I would travel to a location specified by the government for a meet up with the candidates to see if they really suited me, it is then that I can make my decision whether or not to marry.
After that each respective house will then start another round of negotiation, since the woman are the ones initiating marriage they need to pay sufficient amount of dowry to the family the male belongs to, to actually succeed in the marriage.
The price ranges by quite a lot the cheapest being 100 gold pieces while the most expensive being 100000 gold pieces which is considered a prince’s dowry.
After everything is said and done minor preparations will be made, a new list is made if the male still didn’t wed his required amount of woman and then given only 3 years of time to marry 10 woman and another 3 years to birth 20 children.
If neither of these requirements are met within the given time span the kingdom usually steps in themselves arbitrarily make their own decision on who the male is going to marry while also forcing them to breed with a woman of their choosing.
This is the worst possible scenario which is why most males quickly choose their partners and make children as fast as they can so they won’t be forced by the kingdom and risk being send to one of those male brothels they use to impregnate common woman.
After all in this world only nobility and people with high positions are allowed to have a husband, and if you wanted to get pregnant you would need to go to a government ran brothel and pay money for a one nights stand, the men there are also usually very old men or disabled individuals making it even worse.
Now back to the topic at hand.
Keep in mind that the male will only leave the house once he weds his 10 wives, where they will go is mostly decided by the newly created family though it has to be within the kingdom for which I already had an idea, once I leave, my title of nobility is stripped as well, but the kingdom is still going to keep tabs on me since I was such a valuable individual as a male.
And in regards to who was going to inherit the Ravenguard house, it always came down to the last born male in the family.
Why it was this way and not the other way around I wasn’t exactly sure, but since I was the first born male it meant I was at the very last when it came to issues of inheritance, in front of me there were already 3 others, with the last 2 staying in the house to continue the bloodline while the third and forth, which was me, leaving the house to make a living for ourselves together with our wives.
Now, with the lengthy explanation out of the way.
I should now go back to the main point.
Looking into my mother’s eyes I finally made my request to her in a almost hesitant voice.
-Mother…may I take a monster as a wife ?
I could already see extremely dark lines come over my mothers face as she looked at me piercingly almost questioning what I just said.
A Place Of Legends 