Tanya is a model baby. She never cries or acts out or does much of anything at all, all she does all day is listen for more words so she can learn the language faster. So any swats she receives are just the bitterness of her carer.

She tolerates the swats, as at least this woman is keeping her fed. Tanya is not even her own child so she should be grateful she is being taken care of at all. Though maybe this woman is still some kind of relative and that is what obligates her to keep Tanya fed and alive, in any case she should be grateful for being cared for at all.

When the woman isn’t close enough to listen to, Tanya has nothing to do but think. Nothing but time to think on her mistakes, on the people she cared about who she will never see again, on how much more she misses her battalion of battle maniacs than she thought she would, on Visha and her smile and her coffee.

Most of all, she has time to think about THAT BASTARD BEING X! Murdering her with that monster full of magic wouldn’t achieve anything for him! All he did was get her killed, and a lot of nearby civilians killed! If he wanted to kill her that badly why couldn’t he just have given her a stroke in her sleep! That meddling freak really was a devil masquerading as a god!

If anyone walked in on her when she is busy channeling her incandescent rage against that power mad bastard Being X, they would see a face that should not be showing on a baby. No infant should have that amount of rage on her face. Though whenever Tanya hears her carer coming closer she puts on a neutral expression again, and goes back to being the calmest most well behaved baby in history.

She can learn to walk fairly easily between the age of 1 and 2. What's more, by now simple sentences have started to make sense.

The old lady, Ms. Wen, complains about monsters, about her ex-husband putting her out of his sight, about the village head, about taxes, about the weather, about the harvest, about the neighbors, about dogs, about Tanya's blonde hair, about merchants, about 'young masters', about having a baby foisted upon her, about the crumbling village well, about chickens, about her own cooking, about mice and gnats, about Tanya being too quiet of a child, about the sun being too bright, about how there's nothing to complain about lately. It's surprisingly useful for vocabulary. The frequent arguments with neighbors reveal that she was probably an ex-mistress, not an ex-wife, of whoever left her here. She gets a small bag of bronze coins every few months, which never fails to set off a whole day of complaints.

She is being kept in fairly good material conditions compared to the last hut though. A man wearing some sort of official-looking robe comes by a few times, and mentions that it's the least they can do for 'another orphan of the [something] beasts'. This one's bigger and warmer, and she has her own bed, and nicer food. Ms. Wen takes diligently good care of her and mostly stops swatting as she continues to be quiet. Though she often has a rotating list of several other small children to look after, whose parents come pick them up again later.

The fact of the monsters sure is worrying, there isn’t much to do about that now but maybe Tanya can prepare herself. At least in this childhood she has adequate nutrition, so she decides to get to work early building up her body.

She toddles around as much as she can to build up stamina. But her little body really can’t do all that much just yet. Oh for the days where she could magically reinforce her stamina.

Wait a second… an idea occurs to her… did she have the mana aptitude she had in her last life? She is pretty sure she has the same body as her last life, she can see the same blonde locks hang in front of her face, and she is pretty sure her eyes are the same colour when she tries to look at her reflection in drinking water. So maybe she would have a aptitude for magic like in her past life. She isn’t exactly sure if you could even manipulate mana when this young, but maybe…

She carefully reaches for her mana like she has done tens of thousands of times in her past life, trying to see if it’s there at all.

This results in a sharp pain in several points deep inside her body, particularly in her lungs.

That is not the warm rush of mana she is used to! Let’s not poke around with anything painful while her body is still so small and vulnerable.

Eventually though, she gets bored, being a toddler is boring. She wants to be able to DO something, anything. She can’t even help around the house with a body so tiny and weak. So she tries reaching for her mana in the smallest most gentle way possible, calling for the barest trickle of mana. Not enough to power even the slightest of glow spells. Does that make a difference?

Time passes. She experiences a third winter, and gets gradually more capable. People mutter about her where they think she doesn't hear or understand sometimes. Cursed. Unnatural. The other toddlers are incredibly boring.

Her exquisitely careful experimentation with mana is much more interesting. Over time, she can discover that there seem to be a bunch of invisible pathways for mana inside her body. She doesn't really have mana of her own, anymore, and is instead pulling it from the air- Or something. It works better when she takes deep, rhythmic breaths, at least. Pushing mana down the invisible pathways in more than incredibly tiny amounts hurts. Taking too much mana from the air hurts. Holding onto mana that she's taken from the air hurts, though more in a muscle-straining sort of way than a something-is-seriously-wrong way. Shaping the mana she manages to draw in into her old spell formulas, if she holds onto enough at once, if she holds onto it long enough, does, eventually, work.

Tiny amount of increased stamina here Tanya comes! Remembering the complex spell formula for physical reinforcement, the simplest spell she knows, actually took her a few days but she manages to get it right soon enough. She makes sure to properly memorise the spell formula for her more complex spells that she certainly cannot cast now, but might be able to in the future. She begins running her physical reinforcement spell as often as possible, keeping it on whenever she can just to feel that familiar flow of magic, so she doesn’t feel so weak and helpless all the time.

She exercises more now she can magically increase her stamina, and it is clearly Tanya doing exercise and not engaging in playtime to anyone paying attention to her. She works on getting stronger with a single minded determination no child would have. In the afternoons you might find her doing after lap after lap of the hut as she works on her stamina.

Tanya barely speaks as a toddler, unlike all the other loud toddlers, but when she does speak it is usually to offer to ms. Wen to do simple chores. She wants to earn her keep and make sure she isn’t abandoned for being too different from the other children, and the best way to do that is to be useful.

People seem to think she's so determined because a beast killed her parents. They don't stop her, though nobody really goes out of their way to help her either. Ms. Wen will shamelessly use her to pick up more demanding chores as she becomes capable of them. Helping cook. Spinning thread. Cleaning things.

Age four, and she's become a bit of a spectacle for the neighbors. Older teens and men from the village militia occasionally use her as an example- 'Look, you lazy lout, you can at least try as hard as Sunny Tanya does!' Stories, told in the fashion of old-style fairy tales meant to terrify children into obedience, talk all about the immensity of the heavens and all manner of demonic beasts and plants who want nothing more than to eat tasty humans, and include heroic mages who purge the beasts and defend the innocent.

This world seems a good deal more magical than her last, and more unfamiliar. None of the countries in the stories seem familiar, perhaps the amount of magic and monsters and super mages has made this earths history diverge too much, if it even is an earth.

She wonders what Being X is playing at sending her here. The level of adversity isn’t worse than her last life. Maybe Being X will send monsters her way, something that causes so much collateral damage sure seems his style. Maybe the first monster was his work too. Killing her parents would be in character for him, to try to make her life more difficult. The joke is on him! Her new carer seems to have more resources than her parents did.

Tanya is happy to do harder chores as long as she gets fed, though she might want more food if she is made to keep burning even more calories. If she gets the chance she will even show off some basic math skills, she hasn't seen any books around so her numeracy skills should be an asset.

She will also take advantage of her popularity? Infamy? With the militia to request to practice spear work with them. She can just use a short stick to practice with if she is allowed to. She knows how to use a bayonet but there is more than enough difference between a bayonet and a spear to make her want practice with the primary weapon the village has access to.

She is getting more efficient at running her body reinforcement spell, wich she keeps active as much as she can, and maybe she is getting better it bringing in mana from the air by breathing differently, though maybe that is just from her getting older.

The militia go along with it for exactly one session, then the village head comes out, frowns at her, and forbids giving Tanya any sort of martial training. He stares Tanya down and says, 'You should stop cycling. You are like a frog at the bottom of a well, thinking that what you see is all that there is to see.'

He-

Cancels her currently active body-strengthening formula, expressionlessly.

Then he leaves without explaining any further.

...Ms. Wen is happy to pile more and more demanding chores on her, no matter how the neighbors gossip about it being cruel. She overhears gossip about how she'll never get married at this rate.

Age five.

Well the village head obviously knows some kind of magic!

Tanya can’t do all her chores without the stamina boost from her spell. She keeps using it just to keep up with chores but the village head obviously thinks there is something wrong with the spell. Maybe it’s bad for children's bodies? She does not want her growth stunted the way it was in her last life. She does not want to be a living chibi character even as an adult, like the way it was seeming she would end up as in her past life, not that she ever made it to adulthood. He never explained why she shouldn’t use it though, and she hates the feeling of being weak. So she maintains the spell at least to do her exercises and chores.

A 5 year old might be old enough to be taken seriously. So she marches (in her mind she was marching quite seriously, though to an outside observer it looked very cute) to the village heads hut and knocks on the door. If she was doing something wrong he should tell her what it was! And she wanted to know why she couldn’t practice with a spear! There were monsters out there, she needed to know how to defend herself.

The village head, a man who seems remarkably hale despite apparently being about eighty, sighs and lets her in.

"You are ridiculous, child... Showing talent this young will make you a target. It will bring trouble to this village. Tempering your body this young will stunt its growth as well, you are already too late to avoid this entirely. Insane death-seeking lightning child."

“This wasn’t something you could have just told me? Could you not have told me there were consequences a year ago? If I had known why I should stop I would have stopped, or at least known to only do it in secret.” She stays calm on the outside, but is rather mad that the village head just kept her in the dark for a whole year. A vague allusion to a parable is not enough info to make decisions on! Has he never heard of effective communication? You can’t expect your subordinates to know what to do if you never instruct them properly.

The fact her bodies growth would be stunted again pains her heart a lot more than she would have expected.

Will she be stuck as a chibi forever? Did Being X really have a loli fetish? She had only thought that as a joke. But this was two lives in a row… Damn that self righteous bastard, playing at being a god when he was a lolicon!

"It would have just given you new ideas. Just like how I am not going to give you any instruction now. You should wait until you are older. When you are ten, perhaps."

“I just wanted to be able to do more things before getting tired. Now I have too many chores to do them with just the strength of my body. If you had told me it was unsafe I could have stopped getting more responsibilities before it was too late. I could have grown up normally! You demanded I change my course but took no responsibility in informing me why. You didn’t tell me why I should stop, or show me a safer way to do it.” She scowls in a rather un-childlike way when she says this. The rumours of her being cursed are much more believable when witnessing that look on the face of a 5 year old.

The fact Tanya’s growth will be stunted really is stinging a lot more than she expected, and the part of her that was a HR manager was disgusted by the half assed job the village head did in warning her. If he had worked for her in her first life he would have been fired very quickly.

“And if another monster attacks? Only my mothers corpse shielded me from the last monster.”

For someone in charge of the whole village, this man had no sense of responsibility at all.

"You currently look like a child, whether you truly are one or not. You should remember to act like one. I will not be absent again until you are grown, and that pathetic thing would not have killed a single person if I was not away, this I will swear if it alleviates your fears."

She huffs and turns around and stomps away back home. Wich ironically was rather childish of her. She maybe should have been more polite to the person in charge but he was such an ass! Someone like him shouldn't be in charge of a ramen stand, much less a village.

When she gets home she asks ms. Wen to give her less chores, telling her the village head told her to not push herself so hard. Though it is obvious even to ms. Wen that Tanya is not happy about this.

Ms. Wen harrumphs and goes and talks to the head and then comes back subdued (and complaining), and gives her fewer chores.

Age six. Nothing much happens. The gossip about her gets a bit more open. She's striking, and pretty, and still definitely not wife material with that attitude. An older boy, maybe ten or eleven, 'loses' his militia practice spear, which is nothing more than a sturdy stick with a carved point, really, near her, wink wink nudge nudge.

She gives one of her incredibly rare smiles to him. Even when she is glad about something she is usually subdued. But this one act of generosity makes her break out into a genuine smile for the first time in a few months. She shouldn’t approve of someone breaking the rules and losing property that isn’t theirs, but the village head is a grumpy jerk so Tanya rationalises it.

She watches the militia practice when she can and tries to copy the moves behind her hut every chance she gets, she is even tempted to turn on her body reinforcement spell just so she can practice more. Some of her knowledge of using a bayonet applies but she also has to unlearn some lessons to wield a pole-arm affectively. So she is glad she got the practice in.

She tries to help out ms. Wen with less physically demanding chores to make up for the lost labor the village heads demand resulted in. If she gets a chance to show it, she can be shown to be very good with money and accounts. Tanya tries her hand at cooking by herself but is shown to be totally hopeless at cooking unsupervised without direct directions.

It’s not a bad year, even though every time she uses her spell to train more she winces internally at the idea of being stuck tiny and weak due to her growth being stunted.

Age seven. Ms. Wen doesn't dare confiscate the spear even when she suspects it.

Being known as a reliable counter of things, at least, is a novelty for the village. And old man - not the village head, a different man - teaches her basic literacy so long as she helps him count things coming in and out of the village's little communal granary. They use characters here rather than an alphabet, but none of the kanji-equivalents are familiar. The granary also has the only writing in possibly the entire village.

And during the winter of the year she would turn eight...

Another beast attack. This one is some sort of enormous spider, or at least following a spider-like body plan. It has flesh and bone and muscle and fur, not chitin. The village head smites it with bolts of fire and takes it to pieces using a long bronze sword in a fairly showy battle. He clearly does know how to fight, at least.

The real trouble comes during the cleanup. One of the lumps of flesh being gathered up to go on a bonfire outside the village turns out to be some sort of egg. It bursts open and gores the teen that was dragging it with some sort of proboscis. They fall to the ground, writhing in pain.

Tanya is the next closest, and the eight-legged thing turns towards her even as shouts of alarm go up all around and the militia gather their wits.

It’s been almost a decade since she was in combat, but the rush of adrenaline and focus comes to her as natural as breathing. In her last life she was recruited by the empire’s military mage program at the age of 9, being 8 years old and better fed and having done physical training actually makes her considerably more physically combat ready than she was then. She pushes mana into her body reinforcement spell harder than she has dared to before in this life, feeling the pain in her lungs and those spots along her body that hurt when she takes in too much mana.

She kicks off the ground with a stomp loud enough to be heard a hundred metres away, rushing for spear the teen dropped when he was gored. She scoops it up, it’s a lot longer than the one she was used to practicing with but in her adrenaline and magic doped state it barely felt heavy at all. She stabs it into the monsters face, the face is usually a weak point. She feels the spear catch and sink in a little, but less than she would have liked. A spurt of nasty dark monster blood catches her across the face as she pulls the spear out and steps away.

The beast flails at her with its limbs, one of its legs almost clipping her arm before her well honed instincts make her duck, she even manages to instinctively use her mana to push herself out of the way faster than she would have been able to do naturally. Nothing as insanely complex as a flight spell, just changing her vector slightly to help her duck quicker. Now she is low she stabs at the beasts stomach. She feels the spear catch into its flesh and then slide against a bone, stopping it from penetrating deeply. She snarls in annoyance, her usually angelic 8 year old face almost feral with anger against her enemy.

She pushes off the ground and into the air, jumping above the monsters many limbs to stab it from above, adding the weight of her fall to her spear lunge. The spear digs in deep, a fair bit below the neck equivalent of this thing as she lands on top of it. Her years of mage flight experience helping her keep her balance as the monster bucks under her. The stab she just made was probably fatal but just to make sure she pulls the spear out and stabs it a few more times into the monsters abdomen, before spearing it in the head. Each stab splashing dark ichor all over her, leaving her covered in blood as she methodically hunts for vital organs to make sure it stays down for good.

Eventually the monster stops struggling, she hops off its back but stabs it in the head one last time just to make sure. Covering her in even more blood and brains. She doesn’t realise it but the rush of adrenaline and the accomplishment of winning in combat have left her smiling. Someone charitable might say she looks like an angel of battle, most people would say she looks demonic with how much monster blood she is covered in and the unhinged smile she unknowingly has on her face.

She goes over to the fallen teen to check if he still has a pulse.

The village head is in motion the moment he hears the first scream. He leaps in great bounds across the village, and lands-

-Just in time to see Tanya covered in monstrous gore splattered all around, standing over a bleeding person screaming in pain.

The village head stares, then sighs in resignation. "Solve one problem, and you keep a hundred others away."

He summons fire to his hands and reaches out, the sudden swirls of magic painfully obvious to Tanya's over-stretched system-

Everything stops. There's a faint golden tint to the world, overlying all the gore, all the shouts and screams. The boy, the same one who gave her his spear, is still. No blood flowing. The militia are still. A ball of flame in the village head's hand like a beautiful gem, frozen mid-flicker, is still.

The painted mask he keeps attached to his belt floats up towards her slowly.

"Lao Fen is about to kill you, lost child. Pray for salvation, oh violent one. For even in this state my mercy shall find you, if you have faith. This world has no scientific advancement, and even the mightiest mages know that they are nothing before my wrath."

The moment the world goes still, the familiar anxiety and horror floods her soul. She had hoped she would have longer before this sanctimonious bastard directly intervened in her life. She is practically shaking with rage by the time the mask comes before her.

”Your mercy? YOU ARE THE ONE WHO KEEPS THROWING ME INTO DANGER! that’s not mercy, thats blackmail. You kill so many people just because you can’t get over one mortal pointing out your MANY flaws. You only bring damnation and ruin!”

A lot of the grief at losing her last life suddenly comes flooding through, now she is directly facing the being responsible for it. Her last life might have been scary and difficult and filled with enough bloodshed to fill a lake. But she had people that she cared about that he tore away from her! Even if she didn’t already hate Being X for his many many flaws. She would not, could not, ever forgive him for that.

”Wrath is the only thing you know, you fake devil.” She spits some of the monsters blood out of her mouth, trying to hit the mask. “If you want to hold my safety as a bargaining chip to make me say the words. Then like last time I have no choice but to play along. But I will NEVER mean them. You already took everything that mattered from me, a lack of indoor plumbing and electric lighting won’t change anything. You will never gain worship because you are fundamentally unworthy of it.”

She has had 8 years to think of what she might say to him. She hopes she can jab at Being X’s ego with this, since his ego and need for validation is the only thing she really knows about him.

"Human beings so often claim they will never do something. Or will always do something. And yet such solemn vows, I have seen, are so often broken in a mere few decades. The blink of an eye, truly."

“It is the definition of insanity to try the same fucking thing over and over and over again, and expecting the result to change. You can make me pray to save my life, but you can never make me mean it. As long as free will is on the table I will take as many choices as I can that keep me away from you.”

Tanya gets ready for time to start again. At least Being X intervening had warned her about the village chief. And if she had to she would stomach singing Being X’s praises if it saved her life. 

The mask floats back to its place on the village head's robe with a faint chuckle.

The village head, Lao Fen, she can judge with her experience in combat.

He's rusty. He may have been quite the deadly combatant at one point, but that must have been long ago. His movements are just a bit slow, just a bit unsure, as if remembering patterns they knew once long ago but have all but forgotten. His body might be very powerful, he may be able to throw fire from his hands, but these are not things he practices every day, or even every week.

And he's a beast hunter. He's not used to killing people, let alone little girls. There's hesitation in his eyes, the same hesitation soldiers have to be trained out of.

Which might give her an opening, if she can predict which way to dodge.

“You said nobody would die while you were here!” She yells at him as she leaps out of the way of where she thinks he is telegraphing a fire blast from his hands.

She doesn’t know the boy is dead, she still hasn’t had the chance to check his pulse. But he easily could be dead and the chief promised he wouldn’t let anyone get hurt. She fucking knew she was right to keep practicing combat! in any case she is both blaming him and trying to throw him off guard. 

“I had to kill the spider-thing myself!”

She has no idea how she is going to take him down. He is a lot bigger than the freshly hatched spider monster, has way bigger reach than her, and probably is much better at dodging a weak wooden spear sized for young teenagers than the spider was. What she wouldn’t give for a gun that she could enchant the ammunition for. A weak artillery spell should take out even a mage as imposing as him since he doesn’t seem to be casting any shields.

This is an adult warrior, even if he is rusty this is actually a good deal scarier than a dumb beast.

He scowls at the miss. Glances at the boy. 

"...Leg wound. No venom on these. He'll live, if I have time to tend to him.

A vicious young prodigy taking apart a spirit beast offspring at the age of eight. I truly do not care about you, little devil. I don't want to hurt you, but I don't want to bother helping you either. You're a wrinkle in the silk. I want this village to be forgettable and boring. So, it is time for you to go. Far away. Find a city. Find a sect that will train you. Forget this place ever existed. Or I will kill you."

The adrenaline is rushing and his fucking superior attitude while being a lazy piece of shit is pissing her off.

“You don’t want to hurt me? You forbade me from practicing with the spear. That spider would have killed him and killed me next before you even got here if I hadn’t practiced. How is that not trying to hurt me? How many more people get hurt because of your lazy attitude huh? Who gets banned from knowing how to fight next? Who else gets eaten by the monsters!. And now you threaten to kill a child! Despicable!”

This self righteous piece of shit, and he was trying to take everything away from her! Not that she had much in this village. But she was fed and was taken care of, and ms. Wen tried her best to raise her in her own way, and that boy was kind to her sometimes, she was useful and wanted and had found a niche doing accounting work for the granary. She didn’t want to give it up because of this jerk. “I try my best to help and you have me exiled! How is that fair! I save someone and you want to take everything away from me!”

Her face is still angry, but she is crying without realising it. The unfairness of it all. She had done her best and instead of being rewarded she was punished. She wanted to punch that fucking superior attitude off his face. But the rational part of her knew he was dangerous, even though part of her irrationally screamed to fire a gun she didn't have at him charged with an artillery spell.

But she doesn’t make any aggressive moves and the irrational part of her feels like absolute shit for being such a coward.

"Fair? It's not. No stupid justifications from me. I'm not doing this to 'give you drive'. I'm not doing this because you 'deserve better than this place', or to 'show the immensity of heavens and earth'. I am a selfish, evil, unfair man. Now. Go away."

She is tempted to start praying for power, so so tempted. But it would just be to smack this asshole around and vent her anger. Not to save her life. If she starts relying on Being X for anything less than life threatening danger then it means he’s won a little. The fact she can get out of this fight, this fight that Being X seemed to have set up deliberately to force her to invoke him for survival, is already a win for her.

She goes over to the fallen boy to check if he is really still alive, in case the old man was lying. And she will place his spear next to him, since it was his to begin with.

She turns to the village head and glares. “I am going to say goodbye to my carer, then I will leave.” Almost daring him to deny her even saying goodbye. Even though her more rational part was yelling to cut her losses and run.

He's still alive. Breathing fast. Combat shock. The village head ignores her and starts channeling light green fire, holding it over the boy's leg wound. He relaxes, and the village head leans down to whisper to him.

Tanya tells one of the other villagers to tell the boy thank you for her, when he wakes up.

She walks back to her hut and calmly enters. Not seeming at all phased she is covered in monster blood.

On the inside she is still in turmoil. Hating herself for backing down but also relieved she didn’t have to fight the village head, and sad she has to give up what little life she made for herself here.

If ms. Wen is there Tanya will calmly tell here there was a monster attack but no-one died. Otherwise she just starts washing monster blood off herself and gets a cleaner dress to wear.

Ms. Wen is not in the house at the moment. It might be for the best; She'd probably complain about the beast blood.

After a few minutes she sees the village head come stand in front of the hut, face stern.

She faces the village head, a mask of calm still over her, not wanting to get all visibly angry again. “I wanted to say goodbye to ms. Wen. She didn’t need to care for me so well, but she did.” She is now mostly clean and wearing clean clothes. Tanya had gotten pretty good at scrubbing off blood during the great war.

Tanya goes back inside and packs some supplies into a blanket to use as a sack. She knows how much money and effort her chores have saved ms. Wen so taking these small things is justified.

Then she leaves the hut without looking at the village head, if she does she might be tempted to punch him and take her chances.

Ms. Wen finds her on the path out towards the fields, and throws her latest pouch of hush-money coins at Tanya. "Since you're going anyway, take this useless trash out of my sight. And don't be stupid out there, girl."

Tanya is a little stunned ms. Wen would give her so much. “I’ll pay you back when I can. Thank you for taking care of me.”

She won’t cry. She won’t. It’s beneath her. She definitely doesn’t feel a tear almost escaping the corner of her eye.

"Don't bother with that. Pay me back by helping out some other poor woman whose man is bad to her."

Ms. Wen looks like she's going to go for one of her very rare hugs, but settles for a nod instead. Then sighs and turns around.

Tanya uses her reinforcement spell to rush in to give ms. Wen a quick hug around the waist before stepping back and composing herself again.

Then Tanya realises something. “Uhhm… I don’t… actually know wich direction the city is in…” 

"Oh... Child. Just walk along that road for a ways until you get to the river, then head upstream. At the split, cross and follow the road. You're resourceful. I'm sure you'll be fine. Unlike that boorish and brutal man, if I had any say in the matter!"

“I could have beaten him, the cost just would have been too high.” Her face is dark again when she thinks of the village head. But the fact ms. Wen thinks she will be okay even though she is only 8 is a bit reassuring.

Tanya thanks ms. Wen again and leaves down the road. She doesn’t know how common monsters are out there so she keeps very alert at least for the next few hours.

No monsters menace her for the first part of her walk!

...The mana in the air gets noticeably thicker once she's far enough outside the village. Not immensely so, but noticeably. Perhaps 10%?

By early afternoon, she passes another unremarkable mud-hut village. This one perhaps even smaller and poorer than the last.  There's the corpse of another, junior sized, flesh spider monstrosity tied up to a bonfire. Whatever these are, they may have attacked multiple places at once.

Men tending wheat fields call out to her, Little Yellow, we've heard of you, what are you doing away from home? There might be more abominations about!

“I am heading to the city. For the crime of being strong enough to defeat an abomination and protect another child, I was exiled.” Why not take every chance to badmouth the village head. Maybe he can get away with being a tyrant through strength, but he deserves having a worse reputation at least.

“What direction did the monsters come from? The direction of the city?” She could probably take a few of the smaller spider things on if she was smart about it, but not a whole swarm of them.

Ah. Well. They shut up conspicuously when this is mentioned. (Her reputation has reached here, a bit, too).

Oh, no, the monsters came out of the haunted hills. Only a very brave herdsman takes his sheep out there. They're usually not very common, the wave from yesterday is the worst in a decade at least.

It’s probably none of her business… but she is curious. “Is this herdsman still alive? Or did the wave get them?”

Oh, no, Nobody goes out there, it was a figure of speech.

“Oh” Well, Tanya feels silly now.

Time to pretend nothing happened.

”Does anyone happen to have a spare knife? I can pay for it. I would feel safer with more than a sharp stick.”

Tanya probably won’t actually need it for self defence. A sharp stick probably worked just fine on humans. But having a blade was incredibly useful in most emergencies. What if she got lost in the wild? Even a shit knife made that kind of situation a lot more survivable.

She also had vague ideas of maybe practicing her mage blade spell, and that spell required a real blade to attach to, though she would probably only be able to manage casting mage blade if she kept the knife totally still. Movement would complicate the mental math way too much. 

These villagers awkwardly completely ignore her so called exile, and the fact that she's traveling alone, glancing over toward where she came from anxiously, and at her, a bit fearfully.

One of the farmers will part with a sturdy bronze blade, certainly more a tool than a weapon, for half the coins. It's the metal, see, that's valuable as much as the workmanship.

She thanks them very politely and moves on towards the city. They gave her much more than she expected. She was expecting them to not have anything to spare except an old kitchen knife perhaps. This tool is way better than she was hoping for. She could chop down a small shrub with this for firewood if she needs to. Plus with as short as she is its pretty much like a machete in her hands. She feels like Bilbo holding Sting, a knife meant for elves that is sword sized in the hands of a hobbit.

If the city is more than a days walk away, she will find somewhere clear to set up camp for the night.

The path contains a river! It's kind of lame for a river. Not quite small enough to be called a stream or brook, though.

And next to it, another village! This one has houses made of actual stone, a wooden palisade, and paranoid guards who won't let her inside, accusing her of being some sort of spirit. It's getting on to evening at this point.

Well, that sucks. Tanya will have to find somewhere near the river to sleep.

But how could they leave a child to sleep outdoors, she even had money to pay for lodging. Even if she was a spirit as long as she payed it should have been fine!

She will cut down some bushes for wood and spend the next few hours trying to simplify the artillery spell formula enough down to where all it has to do is start a fire. It takes her a while to get anywhere imbuing pebbles with this stripped down artillery spell, and she keeps using up all her mana and having to wait to grab more from the air. But eventually she can make a pebble make a tiny explosion when she very very carefully drops it on some tinder. Fire achieved!

As long as it doesn't rain it should be an okay night. She has a blanket and a fire, she has slept in worse conditions during the war.

It doesn't rain! It's honestly downright pleasant, light autumn weather. A bit cool overnight, but nothing intolerable.

There's a wooden bridge across the river. This is the point at which the dirt road changes to gravel, too.

An hour into her walk the next morning, she sees a woman who looks, somehow, despite all the gulf of cultural signals and fashion, like an annoyed bureaucrat. Something about the expression and bearing. She's on a horse, which has a neat saddle and bridle. She's wearing spectacles and a nice, dark blue robe and carrying several scroll cases, ends sticking out of the saddlebags. She has a bodyguard following on, on another horse. They slow down as they approach Tanya, looking curious.

Noooone of her business. Just keep walking and don’t meet their eyes. She is a peasant girl walking to the city, nothing to see here.

When you haven’t been specifically trying to earn merit, attention from those higher in station is usually troublesome.

The woman stops her horse entirely and offers a smile that's trying to be kind, as the bodyguard grows more tense. In the way of a soldier confronted with the unknown.

"Young miss, are you alright? Do your parents know where you are? It's not safe to go out alone when you're so little!"

If this turns out to be trouble she is blaming Being X.

Nobody ever cares about lone orphans unless society has become truly modern like her first life in Japan, and even then it’s mostly to get them off the street just so richer people wont see them and think the area is poor.

Nobody cared about orphans in the empire either and that society was close to being totally modernised, or it would have been after the war if they'd won. This society was so poor it had villages of mud huts and was infested with monsters. Seeing lone children should not be surprising. Maybe she had become too paranoid but her suspicions were raised. She probably should also keep in mind stranger danger, she was still a child after all.

“Don’t have any parents. It shouldn’t be too far to the city, the road has been very safe so far. I’ll be fine your ladyship.” Tanya is doing her best to be polite and unassuming. 

"No parents, truly? Where are you from? You have very pretty hair, I've never quite seen the like- I can't imagine the shame of a foreigner seeing this as their first exposure to our Gentle Water Kingdom. I'm sure we can get you home if there's anyone who would be looking for you."

"Honored Hao-"

"Shush, you." She says dismissively to her guard.

"-Perhaps we should just leave her to her business. She does not appear to be anyone of consequence."

"I don't know about that. That hair..."

“I’m not a foreigner. I was born nearby. My parents were killed by the monsters. The last two villages that way” Tanya points the direction she was travelling from. “Were attacked recently by them.”

She doesn’t mention her parents were killed in an attack years ago rather than the recent one. Let this person come to their own conclusions.

”Nobody is looking for me, I’m just going to the city to find work. Your guard is correct, I am nobody of consequence your ladyship.”

Tanya is suddenly very nervous, though she doesn’t show it. Why was this lady so interested in her hair? Did it make her valuable? Tanya could guess what happens to little girls that nobles found pretty in a society this backwards. Perhaps her hair made her exotic?

Maybe she shouldn’t have said nobody was looking for her, if someone was looking for her that might discourage someone from taking her, though anyone looking for her would come from the same dirt poor village she did and that wouldn’t discourage a noble from taking her.

"Hmmmmmm. Something is strange here. My intuition is buzzing."

"Surveyor Hao, what are you attempting to accomplish? She is clearly just a village girl, as she says. Old dress, cheap spear, walking along the road. We have duties to attend to."

"They will wait. They've waited a year and more already. This little dear is something interesting. If she is looking for work, we can send her to the estate, at least, no? What is your name, young miss? I'm inclined to give you a job. You could help out around the Hao estate! We Hao travel a lot, so it's bigger than it needs to be in case a lot of us are there at once. All you'd need to do is help the matron keep it clean. It would be pretty comfortable compared to sleeping in the dirt, you know."

The guard sighs.

Tanya backs away a few steps, doing the mental math for the body reinforcement spell in case she needs to bolt into the tree-line.

”Mother said not to go home with strangers. I’ll take my chances in the city.”

This rich woman being ‘interested’ in her is raising all sorts of alarm bells. Tanya does not want to be the pet of some minor noble (or maybe major noble? She isn’t sure how the wealth scales here). And nobody tries this hard to make you come with them unless they want something from you. Tanya can imagine what some people might want from a orphan little girl. Damn lolicons.

"Oh? Don't expect to come crying to our estate in two weeks when you start to truly starve if you leave now."

The guard nudges his horse forward, between his charge and Tanya, frowning down at her. "Let's move forward. The imperial census must be completed. I'm sure her village of origin will be able to tell us all we need to know, but we musn't dally, Surveyor Hao."

"You still amuse me, yellow flower. Last chance! An assured position is not something to throw away like offal."

Tanya backs away quickly from the guards horse that got close. Why did horses have to be so creepy. It definitely wasn’t that she was scared of how big they are compared to her, definitely not.

At least the guard convinced that noble to let her be. Maybe he worried about the reputation loss to his mistress if people found out she had taken a child. In any case, Tanya will not respond to them, keep her head down, and keep walking. Staying ready to sprint into the trees if she heard the horses come back in her direction.

The pair move on, bickering as their voices fade. Amiably for the bureaucrat, resigned for the guard. 

The road is busier up here! She passes: A sheep herder moving his herd along the road, a band of hunters who joke about her spear, a merchant in a wagon who glares at her suspiciously, a small boy on a shining white horse running very fast past her, and more villages, the road getting busier with each one. Nobody says anything to her except in passing. The merchants have food, though, and she has coins.

Tanya brought a little food with her, and she only left the village yesterday. Better to save her money in case of unexpected costs, and once she knows better what the prices for things are in the city. Tanya got rather good at rationing food in her last life anyway.

This long walk to the city is an awful lot like marching, which she hasn’t had to do since her days as a recruit. Once she became a aerial mage she travelled any significant distance either in vehicles of by flight. Marching sucks. 

At least nobody else is paying her suspicious amounts of attention, Tanya had been a little worried other people might get all weird about her hair again after that rich lady. But apparently rich perverts trying to talk little girls into coming home with them was not a common thing.

Tanya is thinking about her employability as she walks. She doesn't know if she wants the city to be less advanced or more advanced. More advanced means there are probably more jobs that would suit her advanced education, but also more competition of literate and numerate people. Less advanced means her skills would be more valuable, but maybe there wouldn't be that many jobs already open for her to put those skills to good use.

She's a bit less attention grabbing in a more cosmopolitan crowd- There's a few other blondes, more variation in skin tone and visible race, and even a redhead she passes once.

The city is overlooked by some sort of monastery complex on a hill. It looks very fancy, and there's a white painted wall. The city walls themselves are stone, with a shantytown crowding around the road as one gets close. There's a long line at the gate, with peddlers walking up and down past it hawking their wares- Food, random tools, good luck charms. She overhears a husband and wife waiting behind her muttering about her. They conclude she's probably an orphan, then proceed to ignore her. Most people are ignoring her, actually, she looks poor.

She IS poor, and an orphan. This is the kind of response she actually expected.

Now she sees how big the city is and the size of the shanty town, maybe she should first try making a little more money in the shanty town? Maybe the guards wouldn’t let her into the main part of city with her looking like this. Tanya doubts there would be many jobs worth more than a days food in the shantytown though.

She will listen for the prices the peddlers are offering to find out more about what things are worth in the city. So she isn’t ripped off by someone looking to take advantage of a child by offering them too little for labour costs. Maybe someone will even be offering a job even out here in the outer city. It’s worth keeping an ear out for opportunities.

She queues for the main gate unless otherwise distracted by opportunity. The worst the gate guards can do is say no, a little time waiting in line is a worthwhile opportunity cost.

There seems to be a street gang- Wolf fang accessories marking them out. They stick to the shanty areas and at one point a pair of guards chase one off seemingly just to make a point. Most of the trvallers are watching for pickpockets. The main road seems safe. 

Someone's selling - magic rocks? Most of them are junk but one of them feels like it has mana wafting off it, somehow.

Rocks with mana? Magic is weird in this world. Well, the mana is in the air instead of starting in her body so it was already weird.

Is this magic rock within her means? And won’t break the bank too much in case getting past the gate has some wealth test or something.

What's left of the bag of coins would probably cover it if she asked, given how haggle-able the peddler has been with other buyers.

Hmmm… nope. She needs that money more than she wants to sate her curiosity.

Back to queuing politely with everyone else. Queuing like this is making her feel a little nostalgic for Japan.

The checkpoint becomes more obvious as she gets closer. Eight guards, two with a clipboard writing things down, and a pair trooping up and down the line to keep order, all at least mostly putting up the pretense of diligence and alertness.

The guards smirk and chuckle to each other when they see the next person is a little girl.

"Your name and business in Pale Mist Valley City?"

Time to leverage that empathy little girls cause. For her name… technically she didn’t have a last name in this world, so she decides to use her old one.

”Tanya Degurechaff. I’m here to look for work. I know my numbers very well and can read a decent amount of characters. I handled the granary at my village because I knew my numbers better than the old man! Know anywhere that would need those kinds of skills?” 

Tanya tries to do a wide eyed cutesy childish look, but she is not sure it looked as natural as it could have. 

"Literate, at your age?"

"Some kids are smart, Xin."

"Can she really read? Hey, Kosa, let her borrow your scroll?"

Kosa shakes his head and walks over.

"Tanya, was it? Orphan? Being literate is rare this young. It's rare period. The Gentle Water Kingdom supports promising talents, so if you impress me, I will let you in and introduce you to the Magistrate office, since they always have need for more scribes and clerks. Wanna try?" He waves the scroll, which is dense with neat lines of writing.

Okay, maybe the limited vocabulary of a village of dirt farmers did not prepare her adequately for this.

“Wen De, farmer. Tepp, merchant. Ive never seen that character before, sort of looks like the one for Ox? Butcher. Don’t know that word, second name Song, don’t know that job. Kang, Labourer.” Tanya continues reading out names and jobs from the list, having trouble with many of the unfamiliar characters.

Tanya feels very frustrated at looking so stupid, maybe they wont want to hire her now. She thought she had learned decently well considering her circumstances but it was increasingly obvious there just weren’t enough written words in her village to learn from.

”I just haven’t had the chance to learn any of those words! But I learn words quickly I promise! I’m much better at numbers, those you can just figure out how it works by just thinking about it.” Or by having gone through relatively advanced education twice over.

Her frustration at looking bad in front of these guards and not knowing all the words gives Tanya a much more believable childish attitude than she had before.

This is actually fairly impressive for her age and background. It doesn't really compare to the Clan children educated properly from birth, though.

The guard trio confers briefly.

Kosa nods firmly. "Well, it seems you can read, at least a small amount. Perhaps there is a future as a clerk for you after all. You may enter, and I'll charge the fee for peasants rather than educated individuals - one copper shard to enter. Keep in mind you must pay the toll again if you leave. If you come to this gate when the evening bell rings and give me face for my time, I'll escort you to the district magistrate and give an introduction. What you make of that opportunity is up to you."