While the matter of the Demon King was important, indeed probably the most important thing for the world, it wasn’t exactly urgent. In fact, it wasn’t even something that could be sped up by trying to deal with it earlier. Thus, after some initial planning by William and some professors he trusted, he had no need to do anything further right away. That was good for William, because if he had to think about the possible end of the world (or at least of the humans) all the time, he thought he would go crazy. He definitely wasn’t comfortable with being even partly responsible for the future of the world. In his previous life, he was pretty sure he hadn’t been involved in any world-altering events, even circumstantially. Here, though it would only be affecting future generations, he would have such a part.

Fortunately, he had time to relax. One way he did that was by visiting his parents. They were his only family in this world, and they were very relaxing to be around. Mostly, anyway.

“William, dear, are you sure there aren’t any girls you’re interested in?” William’s mother asked. She brought it up almost every time they met.

“I’ve already told you, mom. I don’t think it’s gonna happen.”

William’s mother sighed and looked at his father. “I told you we should have had another.”

“After William?” His father grinned. “I don’t think we’d know how to handle a normal kid. He was both too easy and not easy enough.”

After that, the conversation naturally moved on to trading and other things. William was glad for the chance to think about “mundane” things. Things not involving the Demon King, and not even magic. William did a pretty good job of pretending to not care that he couldn’t use magic himself, especially since most people thought he could use magic now. However, it still bothered him, with the ability to use magic seeming to sit just out of his reach.

-----

Over the course of time, William received more people responding to his flyers about English. It wasn’t always one every year, but some there were more. Sometimes, there were fraudsters who really didn’t know anything. They may have known quite a bit about languages, and would have been relatively convincing, except they didn’t actually know what William was looking for. The English was just a gateway to studying reincarnation.

However, the arrival of anyone else who knew English (or knew of it), and there were indeed several, allowed William to know something for sure. Though it was only a few people out of millions, or hundreds of millions, it seemed there were still a surprisingly “large” number of people reincarnated from Earth. With memories intact, of course. It wouldn’t be possible to discern otherwise.

With the appearance of a few more people, William discovered a few things, and was able to surmise some possibilities. First, none of those who arrived to meet William had been born before the latest Demon King war. William thought this indicated that it may have been related to the destruction of souls, but it had some possibility to instead have a connection to another event that happened at the same time, though William knew of nothing.. William wished he had some way to find other reincarnated people, from other worlds, but he couldn’t think of any way to discern truth from lies in those cases.

He also knew there weren’t too many people who were reincarnated with memories, at least compared to total population. Otherwise, he imagined that there would be a larger change to society as a whole. This implied that not many people reincarnated from other worlds, or most lost their memories upon reincarnation, or both.

-----

William learned that the knights, at least, also kept detailed records. Not that he had access to the information, but he was easily enough able to learn that they had it. Which was good. He didn’t really expect them to just open up their records to any young wizard who came along and asked about it, so he was willing to be patient. He was working with Professor Pierce to organize information that would be helpful in persuading them to share the information. William hoped that the next Archmage would be able to put it to good use. He also hoped that one would be selected, since there hadn’t been one for quite some time now. Well, it was better than choosing someone unqualified.

As for the warriors from Liaoyang, they were very secretive. However, Zhan Shengrui knew they definitely would keep such information. At least, individual factions would, but it wasn’t likely that comprehensive records existed. William wasn’t even sure where he would start there. He also was putting together lists of others that participated in the Demon King wars. It was such an important event that every nation contributed, but William wasn’t sure if they knew how important it really was. Generally, he assumed they knew it was an issue that could lead the the extinction of the humans, but he doubted they knew that it was also, somewhat, a neverending war of attrition. Unless, of course, it was just the wizards that were affected, but William seriously doubted it.

-----

William still hadn’t given up on meditation. He had yet to sense even a speck of mana, though he wasn’t really sure what it would be like to do so. He wanted to give up, but he felt like he was making some kind of progress. The frustrating thing was, he didn’t feel like he was making any progress toward magic. This confusing feeling of progress and lack of progress was even more frustrating. William wasn’t even sure if he wasn’t just tricking himself into thinking something at all was happening.