The Laziest God Mortal Reincarnation

A week had passed since my meeting with the faction leaders, and I still hadn’t managed to speak with Miarielle alone.

That alone irritated me more than I liked to admit.

Not because I enjoyed speaking with her, she had the unsettling habit of answering questions with half-truths and dry looks, but because I knew she had told the others something important.

Something important enough that they had agreed to help me return to human territory before I ever revealed the two greatest bargaining pieces I possessed.

My identity.

My SSS potential.

And yet every time I tried to find her, she was elsewhere, meeting scouts, checking supplies, speaking with the other leaders, or simply vanishing into the hidden base as if the forest itself had decided to keep her from me.

Lyssairia had been no help.

When I asked her where Miarielle was, she only replied, "Busy."

When I asked what exactly her mother had said in that meeting, she replied, "None of your business."

When I asked why she was the one answering instead of Miarielle herself, she stared at me for three full seconds before saying, "Because I’m here and she’s not."

Infuriating woman.

She did, however, reluctantly explain one thing.

Her mother had been spending the entire week trying to decide the safest route that would get me back to human territory without getting everyone escorting me killed.

That was apparently meant to reassure me.

It did not.

What made the week worse was that after the meeting, Lyssairia had effectively kidnapped me.

She called it ’keeping me under observation.’

I called it being dragged into her house and told I was not allowed to leave.

According to her, if the wrong refugees saw a human child wandering freely through the hidden refuge, then questions would spread faster than fire in dry grass.

Questions led to fear, fear led to panic, and panic led to stupidity.

Since beastkin and humans were currently trying very hard to kill each other across the border, she had decided that my continued invisibility was in everyone’s best interest.

At first, I hadn’t minded.

On the first day, I spent nearly the entire time sleeping.

It was, in retrospect, the last peaceful day I had known in that house.

On the second day, Lyssairia discovered the full extent of my laziness and reacted to it with personal offense.

Since then, every morning before sunrise, she had woken me up and dragged me into training until late at night.

She never increased the weight of my dear pillow the way Master Valerian had.

Instead, she chose a crueler method.

Her training was purely physical.

No lectures. No attributes. No anatomy books. No healer theory.

Only pain.

Lyssairia had decided that if I was going to cross beastkin territory alive, then the first thing I needed to learn was how not to die when something fast and murderous was trying to hit me.

So she taught me how to dodge.

By attacking me.

Relentlessly.

The first time she did it, I was convinced she had simply grown tired of my existence and chosen violence as the cleanest solution.

If not for Mana Aegis, I would have died within the opening breaths of that so-called lesson.

Unfortunately, once she learned about Mana Aegis, she stopped holding back.

Which was how I found myself once again stumbling backward across the training space behind her house, breath ragged, hair sticking to my forehead, while Lyssairia advanced on me with the calm focus of someone who considered my suffering a necessary educational tool.

"Left," she snapped.

I moved right.

Her wooden practice blade slammed into the barrier over my shoulder with a crack of force that sent me staggering.

"That," she said, tail lashing once behind her, "was your other left."

"I was panicking creatively," I shot back, barely managing to regain my footing.

"Try panicking intelligently. Creativity can come later."

She moved again.

Fast.

Far too fast.

I saw the blur of her shoulder before the strike came low. I jumped back, barely avoiding the sweeping hit, only for her free hand to snap toward my face. Mana Aegis flared invisibly, and the impact still rattled my skull.

I groaned. "Are you sure this still counts as training?"

"Yes."

"It feels more like attempted murder."

"If I wanted to murder you, we’d be done already."

That was not comforting.

I took another step back, breathing hard. My legs ached. My arms ached. Even my dignity ached.

Lyssairia circled lightly, not even winded. "Again."

"I just survived again," I protested. "Shouldn’t there be some sort of reward system?"

"There is."

I waited.

She tilted her head. "You get to continue living."

I stared at her. "You’re a deeply cruel person."

"And you’re still too slow."

She lunged.

This time I forced myself not to retreat blindly. I watched her shoulders. Her hips. The shift in her weight just before movement. Master Valerian had taught me how bodies were built. Lyssairia was now teaching me how those bodies tried to break other bodies.

Her strike came high first, a feint. I flinched, nearly committed, saw the twist too late, and threw myself sideways as her real blow cut low across where my ribs had been.

I hit the ground hard, rolled badly, and gasped when a sharp pain tore through my side.

Lyssairia stopped.

For one hopeful second, I thought she might show mercy.

Instead, she planted the wooden blade against the floor beside my head and looked down at me.

"Better."

I blinked up at her. "That was better?"

"You noticed the feint before you got hit."

"I still got hit by the ground."

"The ground is slower than most enemies. Learn to lose to it less often."

I shut my eyes for a brief moment and seriously considered staying exactly where I was until my body forgot how to move.

Then her voice came again.

"Get up, Al."

I didn’t move.

"Al."

"I’m thinking."

"About what?"

"Whether pretending to die will end today’s lesson."

"It won’t."

"That answer came too quickly."

She crouched slightly, bringing herself into my line of sight. Her golden eyes were sharp, but not mocking. Not entirely.

"You’re improving," she said.

I frowned at her.

That almost sounded like praise.

"You no longer freeze every time I move," she continued. "Your body still chooses the wrong direction half the time, but at least it chooses."

"How inspiring."

Lyssairia ignored the dryness in my tone. "When we leave here, hesitation will get you killed faster than weakness. I’d rather bruise your pride now than bury you later."

Something in her voice made me open my eyes fully.

There it was again, that strange contradiction she carried so naturally.

Irritating. Sharp-tongued. Violent in the manner of all practical teachers.

And yet...

Underneath all of that, she was worried.

Not enough to be gentle, of course. That would have been unreasonable.

But worried enough to grind survival into me with her own hands.

I pushed myself upright with a groan. "You know, if you were less terrible at expressing concern, people might like you more."

Lyssairia rose smoothly to her feet. "If you were less terrible at dodging, this conversation would be shorter."

"That is not a denial."

Her ears flicked once.

Victory.

Brief, tiny victory.

Then she ruined it by attacking again.

I barely managed to twist aside as the wooden blade whistled past my shoulder. She pivoted at once, pressing forward without pause, her strikes flowing in rapid sequence, shoulder, ribs, thigh, then head. I stumbled through it in complete disgrace, Mana Aegis absorbing what little I failed to avoid.

Every impact still hurt.

Not enough to cripple me, but enough to remind me that a barrier between flesh and pain was not the same as invulnerability.

"Stop relying on the shield!" she barked.

"I’m not relying on it," I panted, ducking under another swing. "I’m surviving with it."

"Same thing, if you get lazy."

"Everything becomes laziness with you."

"Because with you, it usually is."

She stepped in too close, faster than I expected, and struck my ankle lightly with the practice blade. My balance collapsed instantly.

I yelped with absolutely no dignity and fell backward.

Lyssairia exhaled through her nose. "And that is why footwork matters."

I lay there for a moment, staring at the sky above the training yard behind her house.

My whole body felt unpleasantly rearranged.

"Do beastkin children go through this too?" I asked weakly.

"Some."

"And they survive?"

"The smart ones."

That was not encouraging either.

I sat up slowly, wincing, and rubbed at my ankle. The moment my fingers brushed the spot, soft green light flickered instinctively around them. The pain eased a little.

Lyssairia watched that in silence.

After a moment, she said, "You’re doing it again."

"Healing myself?"

"No. Wasting mana on small pain because you dislike discomfort."

I looked up at her. "That is a completely reasonable thing to dislike."

"It is also how you empty yourself before the real danger starts."

I let the green glow fade and clicked my tongue softly.

She was annoying.

More annoying, she was right.

Lyssairia rested the practice blade over one shoulder. "Again."

I stared at her in disbelief. "Again? I can hear my bones complaining."

"Then they should learn faster."

"I miss sleeping."

"You miss avoiding effort."

"I can miss two things."

Her tail gave the smallest twitch, almost amused.

Then her expression sharpened again, and she shifted her stance.

I rose with a sigh that came from somewhere deep in my soul and raised my arms, preparing for another merciless lesson.

One week.

It had only been one week since the meeting with the leaders.

I still hadn’t found a chance to corner Miarielle and demand answers.

I still didn’t know what she had told them.

And somehow, instead of resting quietly until the day of departure, I had ended up trapped in Lyssairia Veyra’s house, forbidden from stepping outside, and beaten daily in the name of survival.

Truly, fate had become far too comfortable ruining my peace.

Lyssairia’s golden eyes locked onto mine.

"Ready?"

"No."

She attacked anyway.