Synopsis
Cidd Ashen died alone at his desk in another world. No family. No friends. Nobody noticed until Monday morning. His second life wasn't much different. Reincarnated into the world of Anastacia, he spent two years as the invisible backbone of the hero party — doing everything, getting nothing, while the golden-haired hero Aldric took every bow and every credit. At twelve years old he was told he was useless and asked to leave. He raised his fist. He stopped. He walked away into the dark without looking back.One year later he was S rank. One of four in the entire world. Not because of talent. Not because of cheat skills from sympathetic gods. Because of World Gain — the ability to take a monster's skill after killing it and evolve it through sheer hard work into something uniquely, terrifyingly his own. And because the man behind the ability never stopped working, never stopped learning, never stopped being exactly who he was regardless of whether anyone was watching.Then a dragon destroyed a village. His fault. His mistake. His dragon that he didn't finish. In the rubble he found four newborn girls with no one left in the world. He picked them up. He named them Syla, Ren, Mira and Vera. He said I'm going to be your father. And he was.Ten years later Cidd lives quietly in the remote village of Ashfeld. He guards the perimeter. He fixes roofs. He makes food from a world nobody here knows existed. He builds devices that won't be invented in Anastacia for centuries. He trains his daughters at dawn in a clearing behind the house and eats breakfast with them every morning without exception and sits on the back step every evening under the stars.A story about a man who built everything from nothing.About daughters who will burn the world down before they let him be alone again.About guilt that becomes purpose and purpose that becomes love and love that becomes something this world doesn't have a word for yet.About what happens when the person who was always carrying everyone else finally has people who refuse to let him carry it alone.
