———————————————————————————
”Hurry up, Shiro, we’re gonna be late!” Exclaimed Minise impatiently.
”Yeah, yeah, I’m almost ready. And besides, we can just teleport, remember?” I pointed out objectively.
We were currently getting ready to head out to the Adventurer Academy, where we’d be giving the current batch of students there a special lecture or some crap.
Specifically, Minise was going to be giving the lecture since she’s a new instructor there now, and I was tagging along as a demonstrator, since I can use all five Elemental Magic types and all.
Oh, and also, it’s been fifteen years since Samsara sealed away Kuro and the others. It was the 5th of June, 1692, and in the past decade and a half since that happened, it’s been nothing but peaceful.
All four nations have continued to maintain close ties despite that incident, and in fact, it almost seems like what happened helped further strengthen the relationships between each of the nations.
We did have multiple attempts to break that pyramid-shaped barrier that’s sealing them all in, but even with Divine Magic, the barrier was practically impossible to break from the outside. And so, all we can do is wait for those inside to unravel it themselves.
But that’ll probably take a while. By the time they do finally break free, I’ll probably be one of the only ones in this era who’ll still be alive. Minise too, since I’ve been controlling her aging process to keep her looking the same. She asked me to do it, so yeah.
Everyone else has aged and grown up normally, so the majority of them will be long dead by then. Well, those from the other races still look the same, since they age much, much more slowly than humans do, and a lot of them will probably still be alive.
Anyway, peace had been achieved, and here in the Rustlands, some pretty strict measures had been made to ensure and maintain the peace. There had been some trouble from the former Silvland citizens that were still blindly clinging to their religion, but once strict restrictions were placed, allowing the government to have the Adventurers crack down on those people, the conflicts they’d been attempting to stir up were quickly quashed before they could become real problems.
A lot of them were executed because they just refused to listen to reason and continued to spout their supremacist bullshit. And the world is a much better place without them.
So, yeah, things have been super peaceful lately, but there was one thing that had me concerned…Samsara’s warning about how him disappearing would destabilize the reincarnation process.
Any Reincarnators who came to this world after that would still be less than fifteen years old right now, but it won’t be long before we start seeing the effects of the unstable reincarnation process…here’s hoping that the issues arising from it are trivial.
Anyway, that concern is a big reason in why I accepted the Academy’s request to deliver a special lecture. Specifically, I want to see if any of the current students are Reincarnators.
The minimum age for enrolling in the Academy has been reduced to thirteen years old, so it’s definitely possible.
From what I’ve seen, the vast majority of Reincarnators tend to become Adventurers and show off their powers. Kuro, Rai, Cusnai, Minise, Selesa, to name a few that are still alive.
So, if any have reincarnated here in the Rustlands, or as it’s known now, the Democratic Republic of Rustlands, it’s quite possible that they’re currently enrolled in the Adventurer Academy.
Also, because I have nothing better to do. The monsters under Kuro, Azyl and Fuo’s control have all gone dormant, and all the other respawnable monsters are under Minise’s control, so monsters haven’t been a threat. Thanks to the wide-spread use of teleportation in travel, stuff like bandits and thieves haven’t been an issue either.
With no real threats to deal with, the only jobs available for Adventurers are stuff like resource gathering Quests, since wild animals are still roaming about, and finding lost pets.
The only time we get to fight are during tournaments…in addition to the annual World Combat Championship, each nation has started holding small tournaments throughout the year, and there’ve also been a whole lot of other events.
Concerts, talent shows, plays, you name it, stuff like that has become pretty commonplace in this world. And Abyss has been pumping out innovation after innovation, having found a pretty impressive replacement spell caster for Azyl.
They’ve been releasing simple movies, which are slowly but surely getting more and more detailed and complex with every release, and the most popular genres are romance, comedy, action…and porn.
This world officially has porn and porn stars now. Awesome.
Music is a thing now too, after Abyss started selling Spell Cards with songs recorded onto them as merch for the concerts they started holding.
And at this point, this world isn’t too far from the comfort level of modern society in the worlds Reincarnators come from. Well, maybe closer to like the 80s or 90s.
Because stuff like smartphones or computers are probably still a ways off, but television has basically been invented and implemented here.
Calls and video calls are in widespread use in terms of communication, Mana power plants have been built in every nation, and hooked up to all households and buildings, with everyday appliances and devices imbued with magic crystals so that they can run on Mana.
It’s basically like a pseudo-electricity. Stuff like toasters, ovens, refrigerators, air conditioners, heaters, blenders and so on, are totally commonplace now. Which is pretty damn huge.
Pretty much everyone in this world is now living a life of luxury in comparison to about two decades ago, and the development of this world isn’t slowing down any time soon. Especially since all the nations are collaborating and sharing their inventions with each other, with Abyss being the main driving force.
While I do feel kinda bored sometimes these days, I’m definitely not complaining about the fact that there aren’t any wars or conflicts right now. Here’s hoping it lasts…
———————————————————————————
Point-of-View: Rai Rumel
———————————————————————————
”Ahhh, I’m so old now!” I groaned dramatically, as I buried my head onto the pile of paperwork in front of me.
”You have been saying that almost every single day now,” Responded Jhin dryly.
”Hmph, easy for you to say, you can slow down the aging process of your host body, I look older than you do now,” I replied with a sigh.
”Stop complaining and finish your work for today, tomorrow will be quite busy. We have the group of children from Idyll coming for a tour of the underground dinosaur cavern,” He reminded me.
”Yeah, well, every single day lately has been busy as hell,” I grumbled wearily, before asking him, “By the way, did you look into that other matter I mentioned?”
”Do you mean the search for any new Reincarnators? No, I have not found any yet, but it is quite possible that they are hiding that fact to avoid attention. Many of you did the same, correct?” He pointed out in response.
”Well, yeah, but that was only because not-God, or Samsara, told us to keep it to ourselves when we reincarnated with our memories intact. Still, that’s definitely a strong possibility…if it were me, I’d at least want to learn more about this world before revealing something so major,” I reasoned thoughtfully.
”We could attempt luring them out somehow, but we also run the risk of putting them on their guard and arousing their suspicions,” Frowned Jhin in response.
”Yeah, maybe it’s best if we leave it be for now. After all, we pretty openly reference other worlds and reincarnation these days, we even hold open forums in which people can submit ideas for inventions and how to implement them, that’s why we’ve been able to implement so many things inspired by those other worlds so easily. All that should prove to them that this is a safe world for Reincarnators to reveal themselves,” I surmised with a sigh.
Still, the issue’s being weighing on my mind…just what kind of problems can we expect from an unstable reincarnation system, as Samsara mentioned?
Unbalanced power scaling in new Reincarnators? Or maybe vulnerable or unstable existences? The only way to know for sure is to find someone who reincarnated here with their past memories intact, after not-God was defeated, and then ask them about the reincarnation process they went through.
But there’s several reasons why they might want to hide the fact that they’ve reincarnated from difference worlds…for instance, they might feel weird about revealing to their families in this world that, on the inside, they’re already adults or something like that.
Additionally, factors like paranoia and caution are also potential influences in them deciding to keep it to themselves. Then there’s the more superficial reasons, like thinking it’d be cool to keep the full extent of their powers hidden, or just straight up role playing for the fun of it.
Maybe I’m being overly cautious since things have been so peaceful lately, after getting used to things constantly going wrong for that stretch of three or four years…but, hey, I’d rather be too cautious than too carefree…
_____________________________________________
Thank you for reading, I hope you enjoyed this chapter! Don’t forget to vote, and feel free to leave a comment, I appreciate any and all feedback and criticism!
Also, check out my Instagram account @aimdaqs for posts relating to this book.
Join the Discord server, I plan to tease upcoming chapters and future story arcs here, and you can also discuss or ask me any questions about the story and characters. Use the invite link to join:
https://discord.gg/sRbx9VbTVP