“Madam stay with us, please stay with us, Madam!”, the Hero could hear several voices call out from around him though he found it quite difficult to make out. He felt as if something was blocking his sense making it difficult to make out anything around him.

But at the very least he could make out the hurried steps of several people running around and several desperate cries and quiets sobs as people worked in a panic. The Hero tried to open his eyes, but it felt as if his eyes were being held down by some great force.

And as he slowly managed to lift his eyelids he was greeted by an intense light which immediately forced him to close his eyes. He opened his mouth to ask what was going on, but he found he had no strength to speak and could only make a few soft noises.

He thought to himself, “What’s going on? What happened to me?”

Then suddenly himself be lifted up and dipped into a pool of ice water. The water was incredibly cold, yet as he soaked in it he felt his body grow warmer. And as he soaked in the water he slowly began to grow tired and what little strength he had to remain conscious slowly vanished.

But as he was nearing the end of his consciousness he could make out the sharp cries of a newborn child, and the loud boom of a door opening.

~

The Hero opened his eyes and sat upright and looked around. He lay on top of a relatively large crib that appeared especially massive to him. The crib was white was painted a light grey and inside of it was a large plush pillow covered in a soft cotton sheet. Around him were several other smaller pillows and small blanket.

As he looked around the room he saw a familiar maid cleaning the room he was in. She noticed he was staring at her so she gave him a beautiful smile and waved at him before continuing with her work.

The Hero sighed, “Just what's going on”

It’s been nearly been a year since he was inexplicably reborn and other than when he was taken outside by the maids to eat or to be washed or to be fed a variety of bizarre ingredients or items he was mostly confined to his crib where he slept. At times they’d bring him toys to play with, but since mentally he had already grown up, he found no interest in these toys and instead would spend most of his time observing the world from his crib.

In the beginning, he could barely understand what was happening as his bodies senses were still developing making it quite difficult to see anything or move around. And while he could hear relatively well, his hearing was still impaired slightly and even then there wasn’t much talk around him anyways.

Most of the maids would just say a few words playfully or wave back at him while smiling. He wasn’t even sure where his mother or father went. But in the end, he was confined to this one room, with his baby brother.

So to put it simply, living as a child was frustrating for him. He simply had far too many questions. Where is this? Who am I now? Why am I still alive? What happened to the Demon King? What about the Holy Empire?

But there was nothing he could do, even with his memories his body just couldn’t keep up. Whenever he tried to speak it came out as gibberish and the maids would just fawn over him. Whenever he tried to move around he’d quickly grow exhausted and at the beginning, he found it relatively hard to crawl let alone stand up and walk. And whenever he tried to use his magic, he found that for whatever reason the spells wouldn’t form as they should.

Once when he tried to cast a spell as a test, he accidentally caused a large fire in his room nearly killing him and his baby brother sleeping beside him. Luckily some of the maids were capable of using magic and quickly came to his aid otherwise he would be the only Hero ever to have accidentally killed himself with his own spell.

Also to add to his frustrations, the Hero looked down at his hands and a golden ray of light began to form the shape of a ring. But as the light began to consolidate it suddenly disappeared causing the Hero to sigh helplessly, “This doesn’t make sense. I can sense the Divine Artifacts left behind by the other Heroes, but I can’t even summon one of the 7th Heroes rings.”

The Hero lied back down again and stared at the ceiling, “Perhaps I’m not a Hero anymore. I should have sacrificed myself in the battle to give birth to another Divine Artifact for the next Hero so this centuries Hero should have inherited it along with the rest of the artifacts...”

The Hero paused, “But that should be impossible...or at least theoretically. But that also means I might need to fight the Demon King again, and a stronger version this time too...”

Hiro sat back up,“That settles it time to train!”

The Hero turned around and began to do push-ups on his crib before falling down, “Or well...let’s wait a few years”

~ 4 years later

“Young master!”

“Hmmm?”, the Hero looked down from the tree he was hanging onto with a single hand and saw several maids were staring up at him in panic, “Yes?”

One of the maids rushed over to the base of the tree, “Get down from there young master that’s dangerous!”

“It’s fine, this is training”

The maid shook her head, “It’s dangerous!”

The Hero sighed and jumped down from the branch he was hanging on to. The maids below panicked and ran over to catch him. But he kicked himself off the tree as he was falling and landed safely on the ground beside them.

“Young master!”

“I got off the tree, isn’t this fine?”

The maids paused, “That’s…”

Then suddenly a tall woman in a maid outfit appeared behind the Hero and smacked him in the head, “Just because you got down doesn’t mean what you did is alright. You’re a child for god's sake.”

The maids panicked, “H-Head maid you hit the young master.”

The head maid shook her head, “It would do him good to learn not to play these sort of pranks. Now listen here you...you?”

The head maid looked around and clenched her fist, “That rascal where’d he go! All of you come with me, find the young master!”

The maids hurriedly responded, “Y-Yes!”

…

The Hero sighed and looked at his hand. His hand was seemingly coated with a thin blue translucent layer that slowly pulsed before vanishing.

“1 minute, 36 seconds...”, the Hero shook his head and turned towards the bookshelves behind him. At the moment the Head Maid was lecturing the housemaids he’d taken the time to sneak away to the manor’s study which was surprisingly packed.

There were so many books, not even the walls lined with bookshelves could fit them all. A lot of them were just stacked on top of each other in large piles of dozens of books. This made it incredibly difficult to find any one particular book, though he didn’t mind.

There was a limit to how much one could train with the body of a four-year-old, and frankly, it was an amazing feat in its own right that he could exhibit as much power as he could at such a young age. However, since he couldn’t spend all day training, and with nothing else to do the Hero immersed himself in books in an attempt to find out just to figure out what was going on.

Though over the years the more the Hero read the more troubled he became. Lugh, Raizel, Syl, Ifring, Wale, Tribole, Renton, Belion. These were the names of the eight nearby kingdoms and empires. Lugh, Raizel, Syl, Ifring, and Wale made up the Five Elements Alliance which was in conflict with Tribole the largest of the nearby kingdoms.

Though Tribole appeared to be quite smaller than the Holy Empire from what he could recall. As for Belion it was a trade federation located to the south-west, and Renton was the country he was currently in and was bordered by the unexplored frontier.

The Hero didn’t recognize a single one of these countries, in the past, there was no Five Elements Alliance, no trade federation, and Humanity was almost entirely ruled by the Holy Empire and the Church of the White Sun. Yet here there were eight countries he had never heard of.

Perhaps in the century between his time and the current era the Holy Empire had fallen due to its severe losses in manpower during the final battle with the 9th Demon King. However what was even more concerning was that there were no records of a Demon King, let alone a Holy Empire.

The Hero couldn’t help but sigh once again, “Just what happened after I died, has it actually been a century? Perhaps the Heroes of old have reincarnated too. Does the Demon King still exist? None of my questions have been answered…”

Then as the Hero was lost in thought the door to the study opened.