Chapter 43: Revelations Within the Rain
Armored Dragon Calendar Year 417 – Claude, Age 12
[Narrator]
The meeting in Gustav's house started calmly enough.
They had gathered to discuss the smuggling routes, the remaining slavers who had fled into the forest, and the logistics of tracking them down.
Then Eris mentioned the ring.
"This belongs to Ghislaine," she said, holding up a small band of metal. "I found it among the recovered items."
Gyes's expression shifted. Darkened.
"Ghislaine..." He spoke the name like it tasted bitter.
"She was the disgrace of our family."
The room went still.
"A wild, uncontrollable girl," he continued, switching deliberately to the human tongue so everyone could understand. "She brought nothing but shame to the Dedoldia clan."
"An idiot who broke things. Who couldn't follow simple instructions."
"Who—"
"That ring," Gyes cut himself off, nodding at the metal in Eris's hand, "was something our mother gave her after one of her reckless episodes. A pity gift."
"There was no meaning to it."
Eris's face flushed red. Her hand moved toward her sword.
Claude moved faster.
The kick caught Gyes in the chest. Sent him flying through the open doorway.
The beast-tribe warrior crashed into the mud outside, skidding several feet before coming to a stop.
The remaining attendees sat frozen. Beast-race members who had never seen a human child strike one of their own with such casual violence.
"Ghislaine is amazing," Eris declared, her voice shaking. Tears were forming at the corners of her eyes.
"Extremely amazing. To say such things about her... hic."
Claude had already dragged Gyes back inside by his collar. The warrior was too stunned to resist.
"She's someone I'm indebted to," Claude said flatly. "Even if Ghislaine has some unusual fashion choices, looking at the people here, she seems fairly normal by comparison."
Gyes opened his mouth to protest.
"If you were anyone else," Claude continued, his voice dropping to something colder, "I would have killed you for speaking about family that way."
The room went silent again. A different kind of silence.
The kind that came from recognizing that the threat was absolutely serious.
No one in the room moved. Beast-tribe members—warriors by birth and training—sat still as held breath. Even Eris had stopped reaching for her sword, though her hand remained near the hilt.
Only Ruijerd showed no reaction. He watched from the corner with the stillness of someone cataloguing rather than responding.
"Will you apologize..."
Gyes looked at Claude. At Eris.
At the faces around the room—his kin, the elders, the younger warriors who had watched a human child move faster than any of them could track.
The calculation behind his eyes was visible: pride weighed against something colder. The recognition that the threat had not been performance.
"I'm sorry," he said at last. The words came out measured, neither rushed nor overly formal. The apology of a warrior unaccustomed to giving them. "For what I said. About Ghislaine."
"Good." Claude released him.
"Remember something. Your past choice to abandon Ghislaine was a mistake."
"Family is something that must be protected no matter how troublesome they are." His eyes swept the room.
"Unless they actively wish for your destruction, you don't give up on them. Ever."
Ruijerd nodded slowly. The ancient warrior understood what Claude was saying.
Perhaps he was the only one who truly did—not because he was wiser than the others, but because he had lived long enough to lose the things the speech was about. He knew the weight of what couldn't be recovered once it was gone.
Claude held his gaze for a moment. Then moved on.
[Claude POV]
The rain had been falling for three days without pause.
Perfect conditions for training.
I called the warriors to the platform at the village's eastern edge—reed roof above, edges open to the weather. The kind of shelter that acknowledged the rain without surrendering to it.
Fifteen showed up. More than I expected. Gyes was not among them.
"Again," I said, after the fourth repetition of the footwork drill.
Complaints came in Beast-tongue. I didn't speak much of it yet, but frustration had a universal quality.
I waited them out.
These warriors had spent their lives as apex predators in their own territory. That had made them effective in most confrontations and sloppy in the small things that mattered when apex predators met other apex predators.
"Footwork first." I spoke through Ruijerd as translator, since he had insisted on observing. "When you lose your footing in a real fight, the technique doesn't matter. The strength doesn't matter."
"We don't lose footing," said one of the larger ones. His voice carried the specific certainty of someone who had never seriously been surprised.
"Correct. Which is why this is boring." I met his eyes. "And why you're going to do it again."
"We came to fight—"
"You came because Ruijerd asked you to. And because Gustav's grandchildren need warriors who won't embarrass them when something worse than slavers comes."
Silence.
I let it sit.
"One more hour," I said. "Then I'll show you something that actually hurts."
The quiet that followed wasn't agreement. But it wasn't refusal either.
The rain continued.
By the end of the session, two of them had stopped making the same mistake twice. Not enough—but the beginning of enough.
I catalogued them as I worked: who learned by watching, who needed to understand the reason before accepting the method, who had the frustration response that would make them dangerous under real pressure.
The information would matter later.
Dedoldia needed better warriors. And what Arbalest would eventually need were warriors who could work across species lines, adapt to tactics they hadn't been trained for, function as part of something larger than their individual strength.
This wasn't only service to the village.
It was selection.
I dried my hands on a cloth already damp from the air and went back to the weapon box. Three hours of light remaining, approximately.
There was still work to do.
[Rudeus POV]
The incident with Gyes showed what I'd been missing.
His absolute commitment to protecting the people he cared about—it wasn't just strategy or obligation. It was bone-deep conviction.
I found myself wondering where it came from. What had happened to make him value family so intensely that he would attack a beast-tribe warrior over an insult to someone else's relative.
The questions kept accumulating.
I was walking through the village paths when I ran into Geese. The monkey-faced adventurer had been helpful since we arrived.
Always willing to lend a hand with rebuilding or share information with fellow humans.
"The human kid with the weapon box," Geese said when I asked about Claude. "Word's spreading about him."
"Killed a North Saint. Emerged from the Great Dungeon. Organized this whole village in weeks."
"What do you know about his background..."
"Just rumors." Geese scratched his chin.
"Apparently he's connected to some merchant group called Arbalest. They've been making waves across the continent."
"Arbalest..."
"Started about three years ago. Sell goods cheaper than anyone else. Nobody knows how they manage it." He leaned in conspiratorially. "Some say they have access to ancient production techniques. Others say they've made deals with demons."
"What do you think..."
Geese shrugged. "I think someone very clever is behind it."
"And if that someone is a kid who can fight like that..."
He trailed off meaningfully.
A voice came from behind us.
"It's the weapon box."
I jumped. Geese jumped higher.
Claude had appeared without either of us noticing.
"Stop doing that!" Geese protested.
"The weapon box," Claude repeated, ignoring the complaint. "That's how Arbalest undercuts the competition."
"What do you mean..."
"Inventory space for storage." Claude leaned against a nearby tree.
Casual as if he hadn't just scared years off both of us. "The prototype I showed them is about three by two meters. Limited capacity, but it can store items without weight penalty and without degradation."
Understanding dawned in Geese's eyes. "Transportation costs."
"You eliminate transportation costs."
"Exactly. Items that would break in transit arrive intact. Goods that require special handling don't." He shrugged. "Arbalest doesn't have better products. They just have better logistics."
To demonstrate, Claude reached into empty air beside him—no visible gesture, no incantation I could detect—and produced a small wooden crate. Solid. He set it on the ground between us.
"That has been in storage since Buena," he said. "Notice anything."
I looked. "It's... dry."
We were standing in the aftermath of three days of rain. Everything around us was damp, the ground soft, the air thick with moisture. The crate looked like it had come out of a warm room five minutes ago.
"Controlled environment inside the storage space." Claude tapped it once, and it vanished again—back into nothing. "The application for perishables alone makes it worth more than most merchant guilds earn in a year."
Geese's expression had shifted entirely. This wasn't abstract description.
This was a demonstration.
"And the box..." I said slowly.
"Only you can make it..."
"So far. The enchantment technique is... unique."
Geese let out a low whistle. "Those merchant guilds must be furious."
"And desperate. If they knew you were the one making them..."
"They don't. Mike handles the misdirection."
"They think the inventor lives in Buena Village." Claude smiled faintly. "Which was true, until recently."
"Mike must be biting his fingers, wondering if you survived the teleportation," Geese observed.
"Probably. But he's capable."
"The network will survive without me."
I studied Claude's face. The casualness with which he discussed trade networks and merchant conspiracies. The strategic thinking that seemed second nature to him.
Then Geese asked about the roads.
"I noticed the paved sections near Buena," he said. "Before the teleportation wiped everything out."
"Was that Arbalest too..."
"My project." Claude's expression didn't change.
"Fire and earth magic combination. Creates a material similar to asphalt."
Asphalt.
The word stopped me.
I kept my face neutral. Kept my breathing steady.
Asphalt. A specific technical term—precise.
From Earth—from my previous life.
Not the kind of word that should exist in this world. Not the kind of knowledge that should be available to a child from a remote village.
Unless that child wasn't originally from this world at all.
"Original magic at your age..." Geese was saying.
"Senior, along with you... what kind of monsters does Buena Village produce..."
But I wasn't listening anymore.
I was staring at Claude with new eyes. Running through every interaction we had ever had.
Every strange comment. Every moment that had felt slightly off.
Was he like me—a reincarnation?
Someone who had lived before, in another world, and carried that knowledge with them into this life...
The impossible maturity, the strategic thinking, the preparedness for disasters that shouldn't have been predictable.
But if he was a reincarnation... why hadn't he told me? Why keep it secret?
Unless he didn't know about me, or didn't trust me, or had reasons I couldn't guess.
Claude glanced at me. For just a moment, our eyes met.
Did he know? Did he suspect?
I wanted to ask. But I swallowed them.
Not here. Not now. But soon.
[Claude POV]
By nightfall, I was studying the language.
Beast God speech—the formal register Ruijerd used when explaining obligations, the shorthand the warriors used when they thought I wasn't listening, the particular cadences that shifted meaning depending on context. Memory fragments helped. Not from this world's languages specifically, but from the patterns that ran beneath all languages. Every system had its logic. Once you found the logic, the rest followed.
It was slower than I wanted. Much slower.
The rainy season had pinned us here for weeks already. Every day that passed was a day the teleportation victims had fewer resources, more distance between themselves and any safety. I knew roughly how many had died in the immediate chaos of the Metastasis. But the secondary deaths—the ones that came from exposure, from slavers finding people before rescue networks did, from simple starvation in unfamiliar terrain—those were still accumulating. Every hour.
And I was here. Writing phonetic patterns. Drilling warriors who resented the process. Waiting for the rain to stop.
Something pushed against my awareness. Impatient. The accumulated pressure of too many memories of inaction that had cost lives, compressed into a vague constant weight.
I acknowledged it and continued writing.
Impatience was legitimate. Acting on impatience without preparation was how the other timelines had failed. There was a difference between waiting helplessly and waiting while building capability.
I set down the notation.
The warrior training would improve Dedoldia's combat readiness—not dramatically, but measurably. The weapon box designs I had been refining required components only available here. The language study would make the remaining weeks of contact more efficient. All of it mattered.
None of it felt like enough.
Most things didn't.
I picked up the notation again and kept working.
Outside, the rain fell the same way it had fallen the day before, and the day before that. Patient in the way weather was patient. Indifferent to whether the waiting served anyone's purposes.
I had never been particularly good at patience.
I was getting better at it, out of necessity.
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