Krol thought he was going to go through an amazing experience being reborn. He didn't know what to expect, but he leaned toward the whole thing being a mystical experience.
However, almost immediately after the lights went out for Krol, he was suddenly opening his eyes in a new place.
It was an experience nothing like he had expected at all.
'Why is everything so blurry?' Krol thought. He couldn't see anything at all, only weird flashes as he felt his body being moved around against his will. On top of that, his hearing wasn't perfect either but was good enough for the time being.
He could at least tell that he was outside of the womb, which he appreciated. Deep down, he had worried about going through the birthing process while being completely aware of it all.
While he did not know much about how things worked due to his previous situation, he did understand that childbearing was a traumatic experience for all parties involved.
There was an array of voices around Krol, coming at him from all sides at once. It sounded pretty hectic to him, and he wished he could see what was going on. He was completely unaware of the fact that newborns had limited eyesight and hearing for the first few months of their lives.
He would come to this realization later on.
"You did a fantastic job," a strong voice spoke. It cut through all other voices like a hot knife. "He is perfect." the voice spoke again. While it was a commanding voice, it was also incredibly gentle.
'That must be my dad.' Krol thought.
He had an immediate reaction to it. Hearing the voice made him feel warm and safe. He'd never felt that kind of warmth or safety in his previous life, so he did not know what to make of it.
It did make him happy.
"I carried him this whole time just for him to come out looking just like you." a feminine voice chimed in, causing a chuckle from both of the voices.
The voice was incredibly tender. Krol thought his father's voice was comforting, but this new voice was many times more comforting than his father's.
He immediately concluded that the voice belonged to his mother, which was hard for him to process. His whole previous life he had only Coco. While he did have parents at one point, they died early on.
While he hadn't had memories of them before, when Ash showed Krol all of his life and then all the ways his life could have turned out, his parents weren't people worth remembering in any of them.
If they had survived the plague or never caught it in the first place, in every single life where it happened, Krol had to go through unspeakable suffering.
That is why he originally forgot about them, it was a defense mechanism.
These voices carried more love than he had ever received from his other parents, possibly in all his lifetimes combined, even in this short of a moment.
'I'm happy.' Krol thought before feeling an intense warmth in his mouth and belly, which resulted in him passing out against his will.
•••
Krol had now spent six months in this new world, absorbing all the information he had been able to.
Firstly, Krol's new name was Leon Moldir, and he had been born into a family of great importance.
His new father was the King of Feravon. He knew it was a large country, but other than that, he hadn't much else to go on yet. He was surprised at how little his new family spoke of it, but all of their attention had been on him alone the entire time.
'Cheeky God.' Leon thought when he found out. He hadn't expected to be born into such a family.
He of course knew of kingdoms from his past, even if they were an archaic relic in his old world. It honestly frightened him, thinking immediately of immense family drama, assassinations, lineage disputes, etc.
However, he was pleasantly surprised to have not seen anything like that in his new family. His older siblings had all come to see him by this point, and everyone seemed to get along super well.
He had a much larger family than he expected, having one older brother and five older sisters. On top of that, his father and mother had many siblings as well. He had met so many aunts and uncles he had nearly lost track of them all.
He had learned that his grandparents on both sides had passed on, which honestly gave him much more grief than he felt he should have had when learning about it.
They did sound like lovely people, so he'd hoped to meet them in Ash's paradise in the future.
He was able to see decently well at this point, and his mildly muffled hearing had also cleared long ago, which led him to some more crazy discoveries about the place he now called home.
The first thing he noticed was that the place he lived in was gigantic. It was a very large castle filled to the brim with valuables, so he knew even before verifying that his family had to be some kind of royalty.
Secondly, something that surprised him even more than being a prince, was that this world was wildly different from his old one. He stayed in a room primarily with his mother for the first three months of his life. Then, one day out of the blue, a large red lion-like creature entered the room with his father.
The creature walked up to Leon, who still had developing eyesight, and when it finally rendered, Leon freaked out. He thought his family had just been crazy the entire time and instead had actually planned on sacrificing him.
However, thankfully, he learned that the royal family were all beast tamers. This meant they could befriend wild magical beasts. It was a specific type of magic that only his family possessed.
Once he learned about it, he was over the moon. He loved animals and had already steeled himself to be friends with as many as he possibly could when he got old enough to do so.
Leon knew Ash intentionally gave him such an ability.
There was also magic other than beast taming. He had heard about it but had yet to see much of it.
His youngest sister, Eli, had conjured something akin to a tiny tornado in the palm of her hand to entertain Krol. It had gone awry, and he had gotten a tiny cut because of it.
He, of course, didn't care. He was awestruck that such things existed in this new world of his. His mother, however, quickly banned any use of magic around him until he'd gotten older. It was incredibly annoying, but he had yet to learn how to speak or even crawl at that point, so he had no choice but to go along.
He tried to conjure magic on his own, but it was a complete bust. He had sharp mental faculties, but he was still only a baby physically and had no idea how to even use it anyway.
No matter how hard he fought, it seemed like he was just maybe slightly ahead of a normal baby. He would have to wait until he got his limbs completely under his control, along with his vocal cords, before he could ever hope to learn about how to do things like that.
The biggest issue he faced was that everyone seemed to always talk about him. While he did enjoy the attention, as he loved being the center of attention for the first time in either of his lives, it also meant he remained relatively ignorant of this world.
Information was what he needed, but the only thing he could do at the moment was patiently wait for things to move along. He would enjoy life as it was until then.