When Kyle started his next life, he found it much easier to adapt. He knew what he was supposed to know and what he wasn't supposed to know.
This time, he decided to ban the profession of merchant for himself. He didn't want to relive the same life again. He wanted to see many more facets.
Sadly, the instinctual rejection everyone felt towards him due to his True Sin Aura didn't make it easy. He had to try quite a few times, but eventually, he managed to land a job as an assistant in a smithy. He just needed to heat the ovens, transport metals, clean the equipment, maintain the equipment, and help the actual smiths.
Life wasn't easy since everyone had a negative disposition towards him. The smiths messed with him and purposefully gave him too much work.
Yet, Kyle just kept going. The exhaustion and pain of overworking his mortal body were nothing when compared to the Sin Flames and the Sixth Refinement.
He never cracked, and that eventually resulted in two camps forming amongst the other smiths. Some of them were impressed and accepted him, while some felt like Kyle was resisting too much. The second camp tried to mess with him in more and more obvious ways.
Eventually, one of the smiths got fired for what they had done. Two of his colleagues followed him, quitting as well.
Then, the head smith looked at Kyle and offered him the position of an actual apprentice. Kyle accepted.
Sadly, a week later, on his way home, Kyle was intercepted by the three smiths who had been fired. They pulled him into an alleyway and gave one of the guards a couple of pieces of silver.
The guard's eyes were distracted, counting the four silver pieces again and again.
The smiths took out their hammers and struck Kyle.
Kyle's bones broke, and his internal bleedings accumulated.
Eventually, one of the smiths lifted his hammer and struck Kyle's head with all of his power.
Kyle's mortal body died.
The smiths quickly scampered off, and a couple of minutes later, the guard rang an alarm.
An investigation was held, but it never really went anywhere. The guards wanted to throw Kyle's body into the wild, but the nice smiths paid for a proper funeral for him.
They knew the people who had killed Kyle, and they were furious. Yet, they wouldn't throw their lives away just to take revenge. To them, this would always be a tragedy.
One day after his funeral, Kyle vanished from his hole. Nobody would ever notice that the corpse had vanished.
'A tragic death is also a facet of life,' Kyle thought. 'Many lives are unjustly cut short. Sometimes, bad things happen.'
'If I had cracked under the pressure, I would still be alive. Sometimes, being stronger means dying younger. Strength doesn't always lead to a safer and longer life.'
Kyle left and went to a different place to start a new life.
Once more, he joined a smithy, but this time, things were easier. There was only one guy who hated Kyle, but he just decided to mostly ignore him and do his job.
A year later, Kyle became an apprentice, and three years later, he became an actual smith.
As time passed, his skills became far better, and eventually, he traveled to a big city to open his own smithy.
His skills improved even more, and his customers became more prominent and powerful.
One of these customers was a young soldier on his way through the military ranks. The two of them had a lot to talk about, and Kyle gave him some advice.
The soldier kept growing stronger, becoming an officer. Yet, he still kept visiting Kyle's smithy.
The officer found a wife, and the two of them even asked Kyle to watch over their child from time to time.
Kyle let the child explore the smithy as he kept smithing. Whenever it had a question, he would answer, and whenever the child was about to put itself into danger by touching something it shouldn't, Kyle stopped it.
As the child got older, it came to the smithy by itself, just wanting to talk with Kyle.
One day, a tragedy happened.
Both its parents died in a battle.
Sadly, the child only had an estranged uncle and two estranged grandparents. They really weren't the biggest fans of taking in the child, but if the law forced them, they would do so begrudgingly.
Yet, the child said that it wanted to stay with Kyle, who accepted it. He raised it as best as he could while still running his business, and eventually, the child grew into a young lady.
However, compared to other young ladies, she only had eyes for smithing. Kyle kept teaching her, and eventually, she reached the same bottleneck his mortal body had reached long ago.
He simply didn't have the physical capabilities to forge stronger metals.
He taught her some things about training, and she grew quickly. Her physical power increased, and her fame rose. By now, she was fully independent. She already owned a smithy that was even more amazing than Kyle's smithy.
For some reason, she didn't seem to have any interest in starting a relationship.
Instead, she devoted her entire life to forging more and more powerful equipment.
In order to save money, she even started hunting beasts by herself to supplement the metal with beast materials.
She eventually reached the Third Realm, but by then, Kyle had become old and weak. He couldn't even lift a hammer anymore.
She stood by his bedside with tears in her eyes, watching his struggle to breathe.
Kyle looked at her, wanting to see how far she could go.
Sadly, his time had come. He had already lived longer than he should have.
Kyle stopped breathing, and the talented blacksmith shed countless tears.
She gave him a grand funeral, and in the future, she would name her greatest weapon after him.
This weapon would end up in the hands of the greatest warrior of the Empire, who would go on to triumph over the nature devils, which were threatening the Empire.
He would become a Transcendent, and while he would exchange his weapon, he would never forget the weapon he had used to slay the king of the nature devils.
One day, he went to the grave of the person after whom the blade was named and performed a respectful salute.
But by then, Kyle had already become the supervisor of a big farm. While he had been interested in the blacksmith's fate, as a mortal, he was not supposed to know what happened after his death.
'Regrets and unresolved curiosity are part of death. I wish to see how it continues, but I can't. This is just life.'
During his next life, Kyle remained a supervisor on a farm until he grew too old to work. Not every life had tremendous ups and downs. Some lives just trudged along without much change.
The same pay. The same position. The same people.
With decades under his belt, Kyle was seen as the vice-owner of the farm, but he wasn't actually the owner. He was just very respected.
When he grew too old to work, he just sat at home, living his life until his body told him that it was time.
His life ended. This time, he hadn't forged any deep bonds. Everyone he knew, he only knew superficially.
A loner.
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