No Longer The Hero | TBATE

Chapter 2 | Twin Horns

{Timeskip - 8 months}

It's been eight months since Athena had awakened and our family dynamic has changed drastically in a few different ways since then.

First of all because of her awakening most of my parents' attention got taken off me allowing me to spend more time purifying my core and just a few days ago I had broken into the solid red stage. Of course I didn't spend all my extra time just meditating, but also made sure to practice regularly with a wooden sword I had been given so I could get used to my new body.

'Although it seems easier to adapt this time.'

In my second life I struggled to adapt to a childish body and spent years training in order to recover my full fighting ability, but now that I had already gone through the process once I was pretty easily able to maintain my combat techniques.

The next thing that had changed is that when my father wasn't teaching my sister about mana and instead having her go through training exercises he also made me participate, saying something along the lines of 'You're the older brother so you can't let yourself be weaker than Hena.' or something like that.

In all honesty I didn't really care if my sister was stronger than me, rather, I wouldn't have to worry about her safety as much, but unfortunately, she wasn't. Well, at least not yet.

'But the real question is if this is legal?'

Currently I was watching as my father put Athena through this world's equivalent of spartan training, while also trying to teach her more about the workings of mana.

'He's running out of ideas'

Because of the fact that my father was avidly against reading anything longer than the newspaper and practically never tried to learn anything more than just the basics of mana, he very quickly ran out of things to teach my more than genius sister as she probably already knew more about mana than him.

And because of this, he resorted to just giving her extreme physical training that seemed to train her willpower more than her childish body.

'It kinda reminds me of Liz's training...'

After that though I decided that I wouldn't gain anything more from watching my sister suffer, and stood up to go inside.

'I guess I meditate before dinner.'

{At Dinner}

As we were all sitting at our dinner table shrouded in a comfortable silence my father suddenly stopped eating, drawing the attention of my mother as he spoke up.

"Honey, I've been thinking... I think it's time we get Hena a proper mentor."

Bang*

And in those words... a fight ensued.

...

My parents continued to argue for what seemed like a good fifteen minutes before finally some award winning acting from my sister managed to put an end to the argument as it was decided that we would go with her to Xyrus city.

'A floating castle... sounds interesting.'

I personally had no problem going to Xyrus since although there would be more risk involved when it came to people wanting to kidnap Athena, overall it would increase our living conditions and help both me and Athena grow stronger at a faster rate.

After the decision was made my parents sent a letter to their old adventuring group and a few days later it was decided that we would leave for Xyrus in a week along with them when they visited our town.