I was born and raised in a small, unnamed vilge on the outskirts of the nation of Titania.

  It was so out of the way that it took us days to get the nearest teleportation rey that connected the entire country.

  To this day, I do not know why it even existed, given the constant threat of monsters and so little support from the capital.

  Our amenities were also a decade behind the current times; looking into our vilge would make someone think they had entered history.

  Even our healers were out of wack; they performed basic spells and sold them off as high-level procedures.

  The best thing to happen to our vilge was the traveling merchants who brought knick-knacks from the world beyond and stories of heroes fighting demons and mighty warriors able to call upon the might of the storms upon their foes.

  Everyone, especially the children, would gather around, listening with wrapped attention and spending their hard-earned coin on the new ‘toy of the month’ the merchants had to offer.

  I was one of the few who never enjoyed the intrusion, but that was partly my fault. I truly believed the world outside our little vilge had nothing to offer me. My destiny was to live out my life here.

  Just like mom and pop.

  However, reality was not so reasonable, and change was always bound to happen. To our little vilge, it came in the form of a girl. If I knew my future, I would wish I had never met.

  But fate was not so kind.

  …..

  My dad was the captain of the guards, and my 13-year-old self was very curious about who came to visit.

  But my dad was tight-lipped, and my mom was no help either.

  But my inquiries would soon answer themselves.

  Overnight, one of the barren plots near the walls of our vilge popped up a huge mansion. And I was not being hyperbolic when I said this.

  It was bigger than anything I had ever seen, even rger than the school or the church.

  Speaking of school, that day, a new arrival joined the 20 or so students that comprised our entire school.

  It might have been the teenage hormones talking, but she was the most beautiful thing I had ever seen.

  Lips as red as the blood roses my mom kept, Hair as bck as the night sky with glowing sparks that reminded me of the stars. Her rge emerald eyes highlighted skin as pale as ivory and a small, adorable face. The only mar in this beautiful picture was the strange sorrow he felt swimming behind those eyes.

  I was no stranger to sorrow and hardship, but hers made her even more mysterious. Her presence had a magnetic pull.

  I was not the only one who felt it. Every eye in the css was drawn to her.

  But the illusion was immediately shattered as soon as she opened her mouth. She was an arrogant little shit whose haughty attitude was matched by her scornful mouth.

  I had my fair share of abuse, but even I winced when she made a particurly persistent boy cry with just her words.

  However, despite her btant haughty nature and verbal attacks, no teacher reprimanded her. When I asked my father, the only words given to me were that I should stay as far from her as possible.

  And so I did, and the world I knew soon became normal, only with this new girl added to it.

  Her prickly nature made everyone give her a wide berth and leave her alone.

  However, that turned out to be impossible for me. In his infinite stupidity, Pops got infatuated with one of the stern maids who worked at the mansion and decided to work in the mansion to pursue his wiles.

  “I guess it’s that time of the month again.”

  I could only sigh and agree when my mom uttered those words.

  I loved and venerated Pop, but if there was one thing I did not like about him, it was his inability to hold down any of the women he flirted with. Everyone else I knew had two, three, or even four mothers, but I had only one.

  My Pop would always lose interest quickly and mom was the only one who could keep his attention long enough to make it formal.

  Mom constantly compined about needing more help in the house, but Pop was Pop. Strong, protective, and very adverse to commitment. The only two things he ever really committed to were his job and mom.

  But to get close to his newest crush, I was assigned as the bodyguard of the mistress of the household: who turned out to be the haughty girl.

  It was probably the first time in my life I was happy to be a null. After all, nulls were a super rare existence in this world, and not a positive one at that. They were like one in a million, and the gift they got to be so rare was the inability to process mana at all.

  In a world where magic was the basis of everything, being a null meant I could not even do the basics, like turn on the heater in our house or even the light in my room.

  When a doctor from the capital came to see me, I thought I was saved, it turned out there was no cure for my constitution, and he wanted to take me to the capital to research me. He quietly left when I cried, my mom yelled, and my dad threatened to end his life.

  The months following that discovery had been shit. Add to that, I became an easy target to tease and bully. It got so bad that one day, I came home sobbing to my parents, wishing never to have been born an abomination.

  That was the first and st time Mom ever hit me.

  “You are not an abomination!”

  She said as she held my shocked body close.

  “You are the kindest, sweetest, and best son to exist in this whole wide world.”

  It was also one of the few times I ever heard my mother cry.

  The next day Pop took me to the training yard in the back of our house and beat the shit out of me.

  “A man must be strong.” He had said.

  Weird words to say to someone you left at an inch of his life, but I agreed. Pop was strong enough to make the rules. It all came under the guise of teaching me how to fight but all he did was beat me up

  This went on for a couple of days, being beaten to the ground by Pop and raised back up by Mom during the night.

  After about a week of this abuse, something happened. I managed to block a hit, something impossible for my human body when held against the magically enhanced body of my Pop.

  This was the day I learned how to become strong and also the day I learned what abilities were.

  It turned out that abilities were something people innately developed, and they did not depend on magic like everything else. Since I could not depend on the former, I went hard on the tter. Hard enough that the only thing that mattered was getting as many as possible.

  Sadly, after getting my sixth one, I could not get any more, no matter how hard I tried, but in the process, I became the second strongest person in the vilge next to my dad.

  I didn’t even mean to do it; it just happened. First, I defended against the bullies who told their elder siblings. Then they came, and I beat them up too.

  The parents got involved, and I might have beaten them up by accident, which involved the guards, and I might have beaten up a couple of them, too. In my defense, they were not wearing their usual armor, and they ganged up on me like my bullies. My body reacted, and down they went.

  That fight was brutal, only rivaled by when Pop went serious.

  So that brought me back to the day I was being used as a bargaining chip to get into some dy’s pants. I hoped that I was a null was terrible enough that they did not hire, but sadly, my Pop insisted on a demonstration, and the one thing I could not do was lose on purpose; it would tarnish his worth, and I would not allow that.

  The fight was stupidly easy, too; the maid started the fight with all these fancy magic circles that left her wide open, so I rushed in and struck a blow at her temple, cleanly knocking her out.

  “Honey! No!”

  My Pop cried out as she had gone down like a sack.

  “Couldn’t you be more gentle?” He asked incredulously as he carried her in his arms.

  Despite his words, I could see the glint of pride in his eyes. I knew I did the right thing.

  And so I became a bodyguard to the bitchiest girl I knew in the vilge.