Torra and I were at home with our mother, helping with harvest preparations and housework, as well as keeping an eye on our youngest brother, Tomas. The fourth child of our generation was the little clone of his sister Torra, but he was also a pretty fussy baby. I had a feeling when he was older he’d be hard to wrangle and was immensely glad I’d be able to split the babysitting load with Torra now that she was older.

  Berrel was pregnant—again—and was pretty far along, so we were trying to keep the work she needed to do to a minimum so she could rest her feet. Hildan was out hunting with Toldan, who was learning the ropes from our father.

  I had gone with them a handful of times, hoping to build up some experience that might bring me towards my level up, but honestly it just wasn’t a very good time for me. Truth be told, I didn’t see my father as a particularly competent hunter. Admittedly, he was limited to fairly traditional and homemade bows and arrows, as opposed to the compound bows or even firearms of my first life, so the fact that he could bag game at all was nothing to sneer at, but he was the type of man who demanded blind respect out in the field and wasn’t open to ideas or criticism.

  Sure, I was only a ten year old boy, and in most cases the ideas of a child could probably be dismissed in the face of adult experience. My natural inclination wasn’t to defer to authority, though, and while I wouldn’t openly admit it, I did have a lifetime of experiences from my first life—muddled though the memories were—and it was my nature to try and work smarter, not harder.

  This led to some arguments, and overall my estimation of my father had largely plummeted. That was hardly a surprise; it is the nature of boys to worship their fathers as children, only seeing their failings once they grow older themselves. I was just ahead of the curve.

  Toldan, being a younger child and one without memories of past lives, was much more obedient and full of blind faith in his dad. It was natural that my father would bond with him more and favor him. I didn’t particularly care, but it did mean I gave up on hunting pretty early on. I stuck with it long enough to manage one kill of my own, taking down a rabbit, but when I got no System notification for the kill, I decided to put my energy into other areas, like physical training and continuing to improve my stats.

  Berrel, while a stern woman and somewhat difficult mother to have as a young child, had become easier to deal with. That was probably in no small part due to me being so willing to spend time cooking and cleaning at home, taking care of my younger siblings, and the feedback from the other villagers she got regularly about how hardworking and helpful I was.

  Not to brag, but I was leagues ahead of other children in terms of maturity and usefulness—obviously, given my situation—and it didn’t go unnoticed by my mother. Had I been a regular boy, she would be raising four children, soon five, almost entirely on her own, and would be dealing with all the difficulties that came with it.

  Once, she had confided in me a bit about the loss of her siblings. It was something that stuck with her and had probably been a factor in why she ended up growing cold. With each child, though, it was like she gained something back that she had lost. Having a large family was deeply important to her, no matter the difficulties. The fact that I eased the burden by helping had brought us much closer over the years.

  My father had criticized me a bit about it, particularly when I told him I didn’t want to hunt anymore. It was mostly passive aggression—after all, I was also helping with the farm work, which he hated, and it was my help that freed him up to hunt more—but that had only further created distance in our relationship. He saw my cooking and cleaning around the house as a softness, a weakness, not a strength, but that was easy to dismiss. Generational patriarchal trauma was no doubt a factor at play, so I ignored it, instead focusing on being a better role model for my brothers.

  I’ll have to work extra hard to be a good example for Toldan, I thought, since he spends so much time with Hildan. I wondered how their hunt was going when I heard a commotion outside.

  When it didn’t immediately pass, instead growing noisier, I set down what I was doing to wipe my hands and head outside, but our front door slammed open before I could. Hildan staggered in, and I heard Torra muffle a scream.

  I looked up, and froze. Hildan was covered in blood, and was clutching his right arm—no, clutching the stump of his right arm. It was gone, and roughly wrapped with dripping bandages to try and stop the bleeding. My eyes darted to his side.

  “Where’s Toldan?”

  My father’s eyes dropped, and he grit his teeth as anger flashed across his face. “Gone. Killed.”

  Berrel’s knees gave and she fell to the floor, sobbing. Torra rushed to her side, also crying, embracing her mother. Tomas joined the cacophony, though he was too small to understand what was happening beyond everyone being upset and the iron smell of blood that was filling our home.

  I hadn’t moved. My heart was pounding in my chest, but I steeled my face. “How?”

  “Goblins. There’s a pack of them in the woods nearby. Th…” he started to say before his words got caught in his throat. He shook his head. “The villagers are putting together a hunting party before they get here and raze our fields.”

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  “Guardians protect us,” Berrel mumbled through her sobs.

  My mind stuttered momentarily over his words. Goblins? I had heard stories about them growing up, and things like “if you misbehave, you’ll get gobbled up by goblins!” but I didn’t actually think they were real. They couldn’t be terribly common if this was the first time in a decade that they had been an issue, but clearly, they were a big issue. My thoughts began to race as I adapted this new knowledge to my worldview, thinking about the implications and what needed to be done.

  With a force of mental willpower, I breathed through the racing thoughts and forced them to slow. There was a value in strategy but there was an equal value in being present in the moment. Deal with what’s in front of you.

  I nodded. “For now, let’s clean and re-wrap that wound.”

  Hildan’s eyes whipped up to me, angry, but then all the fight left them. He was pale and had clearly lost a lot of blood. He nodded weakly, then staggered to a chair and slumped down in it.

  “Torra, boil some water for me,” I said. She looked up at me through teary eyes, but listened, and quickly left to draw some. I helped Berrel up and led her to her bed. She moved like a zombie. “Try and rest. The stress isn’t good for the baby.”

  My mother sobbed out Toldan’s name, but she did lay down, rolling over to her side and clutching her chest. I felt terrible, but I didn’t know what to do for her. Losing a child was probably her worst nightmare. The family she had built was falling apart. Once she recovered from losing Toldan, she would also have to deal with Hildan’s lost arm, which was going to be a whole other problem for us all.

  Leaving her to rest, I took over for Torra and sent her to get whatever clean scraps of cloth we had. I boiled some of those as well, then removed them from the heat and hung them up to cool and dry.

  Peeling off the blood-soaked bandages, I examined my father’s wound as he grit his teeth and slammed a fist into the table. This is a sword wound, I realized after a moment. The cut was far too clean to be anything else. I had assumed I’d be seeing something horrific like bite marks, but no; the goblins were tool users. That meant they had some intelligence.

  I was not a doctor. I wouldn’t even have called myself a medic. Still, my level of knowledge about basic healthcare was likely leagues above what I would find in the village otherwise.

  “We have to stop the bleeding,” I told Hildan. “Give me your belt.”

  My father glanced at me, uncertain, but undid the strap of leather he used as a belt with his good hand and passed it to me. It was a simple thing, with a pair of rings that could be tightened with tension rather than a buckle with stamped holes.

  “This is going to hurt. Bear with it.”

  I wrapped the belt around what remained of his bicep, above the site of the amputation, and cinched it as tight as I could.

  A groan escaped Hildan’s clenched teeth and his knuckles went white as he gripped at the table, but the man was tough, no doubt about it. He suffered the affair well; honestly, I’d have been screaming.

  I waited and watched for a moment. “Good. The blood flow’s slowing down.”

  With that, I cleaned the wound with the boiled linens and wrapped it with fresh ones, tying them tight as well. They quickly soaked red, and would likely need regular changing, but it was all I could manage for the moment.

  “All right. Lay down and rest. Try and keep the wound elevated,” I said. Hildan looked at me strangely, but he was too tired and weakened to argue, so he shuffled off.

  Torra had been standing over to the side, crying on and off, and when our father left to join Berrel she raced over to me and wrapped her arms around me, burying her face in my chest. “Is he going to die?” she sobbed.

  “Hopefully not,” I said, rubbing her back, then pulling away and crouching down slightly to match her level. “I’m going to go and see what’s happening outside. I need you to watch Tomas.”

  “No! Don’t go! The goblins will eat you!”

  “I’m just going to see what the village is planning. Maybe find someone who can look at dad’s arm. I’ll be fine. I need you to be strong.”

  Torra sniffled a few times, but nodded, disengaging from me and going to deal with Tomas. I watched her for a moment, sighed, then left the house and headed for the village square.

  It had grown dark, but I could see gathering torches, and made my way over. The men were grouped together and arguing about the plan, and I spotted Mishel. He was carrying a sword.

  This was no wooden practice sword. The metal gleamed with reflected torchlight. I saw the other villagers were armed as well, though with more accessible weaponry; axes and simple spears and some bows.

  I walked over to my sword teacher, who turned to me and immediately shook his head. “Absolutely not. Go home, Tovar.”

  “I can help!”

  “Your father lost his arm.”

  “My father didn’t have your training.”

  Mishel paused for a moment, but then scoffed. “You quit said training.”

  “I’ve been keeping up with my forms and doing my swings at home,” I argued.

  “With what? A branch?”

  I clicked my teeth shut, then scowled. “Well, yeah.”

  Mishel’s expression softened, and he took a knee to meet my eyes. “Tovar,” he said. “Right now your family needs you. We’ll take care of the goblins. Go home and take care of Torra. Think about how sad she would be if she lost you, too.”

  Frustrated, I scuffed my foot on the ground. “Understood.”

  Mishel clapped me on the shoulder and stood, turned me around forcefully and gave my back a push. I stumbled away, glancing back to see him turn back to the men as they finalized their plans to defend the village. It sounded like they were planning a guard, and wouldn’t head into the woods until daylight.

  Sorry, Mishel, Torra, I thought.

  The simple fact of the matter was that if I died, I would just be reborn again. Death was not sufficiently demotivating for me. Sure, it would be painful and was a waste of potential, and I would feel awful leaving behind Torra and Tomas, Berrel and the new baby, and maybe even Hildan and Mishel, but on the other hand, surviving wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows either.

  I had no idea how much damage the goblins would cause before this was all over, for one thing. They could obliterate the village’s forces and then overrun us, killing my whole family anyway. Or they could simply cause so much crop damage at this critical time of year and we’d starve over winter. Maybe we’d manage to pull through, but it would be rough. Berrel might lose the baby, and I’m not sure she could handle that after losing Toldan.

  Furthermore, Hildan was probably a write-off. The man couldn’t hunt or farm anymore. I would have to support the family. That meant the next decade of my life was going to be even more farming and labor than my first decade, with fewer breaks and no end in sight. Selfishly, I really didn’t think I could handle that.

  I had worked hard in this life because I had aspirations beyond this village. Once I could get some skills, I could more fully explore my prospects. If all I had to look forward to in this life was hard manual labor, for nothing more than a few skill points, dying now and trying again in my next life might be preferable.

  It took a decade for something interesting to happen in this village, as tragic as it was. I had no idea when I’d get a chance like this again.

  I sneaked into Mishel’s shop, and made my way over to where he stored the wooden practice swords. I picked up my old training partner, and gave it a few swings.

  This was my chance. It was a chance to gain a skill, and maybe even gain a level.

  I was going to kill a goblin.