My Harem Is Not What I Expected!

"I said, GET THE HELL UP!!" 

"OOOW, WHAT THE HELL?!" 

***

Rune was peacefully sleeping and having a lovely dream (although he couldn't remember what it was about) when he found himself half off the bed with the back of his head on the ground. He looked up to see his mother with a blanket clutched in her fist. Evidently, it seemed he had pulled the blanket out from under him and subsequently himself along with it, causing him to fall off the bed and hit his head. 

'Why does she look upset?' he wondered.

"What was that for? What did I do?" 

Norma sighed, "You promised to be more responsible and help with the farm this year, remember?" 

"You can't slip up now, Rune; just one more week until you will come of age. You remember the deal you made with your father and me, right?" 

Recollecting what he said back then, he thought, 'Ugh, that's right. In exchange for helping with the farm this year and selling our products, mother and father promised to let me go off to the adventurer's academy in the Capital.' 

"I'm sorry, mom, I didn't mean to oversleep. I was so excited since there's only a week left until I leave." 

"Why do I feel like it's not the academy you were up all night thinking about." Rune lamented to himself, 'She's got me there; I was too busy planning my Har- *ahem* I mean future.' 

As if hearing his thoughts, she spoke up, "Honestly. I Can't comprehend why you are so hung up on creating a harem of human girls; this world has a diverse range of women." 

"Who says I am?" 

"Have you ever been able to hide anything from me?"

Rune cursed quietly under his breath. "Damn this woman and her mind reading."

"Did you say something?" she said with a smile that didn't reach her eyes. "N-no. Not at all. Haha." 

"Alright then. I'll heat your breakfast. Come down and eat. After, you need to clean up and go meet your father. He went to take inventory today." 

Norma then left and, as if she wasn't just acting like a delinquent from a generic school manga, was back to her usual happy demeanor. 

"It scares me when she switches like that." he whispered to himself as soon as the door closed behind her.

*** 

Why had Norma used the term "human women" when she is a human herself? The answer was quite simple. Various races are non-human. These non-human races are referred to as "Beastmen." It is a blanket term that refers to any non-human race. They have a couple of Beastmen families in the village from the Nut-Kin race, a race with features similar to squirrels. When Rune was a kid, he once asked his parents why some people have the characteristics of animals, and they told him of the oldest surviving story about the Ancients. 

It all went back to when the old race of humans, who they now commonly refer to as the Ancients, were the only race in this world. They had highly advanced technology. It is said that they lived in large cities with buildings that reached the sky and vehicles for transportation far more advanced than horses and carriages, as well as many other strange contraptions. 

It is said that a calamity struck when their dimension collided with another and caused all kinds of anomalies. Monsters started appearing worldwide, as well as entrances to strange labyrinth-like caverns, which they now call dungeons, and people started gaining the ability to use magic. 

All of these issues caused society to collapse. The monsters encroached on the Ancient's territory during the confusion and killed many people. Some of them were very powerful and appeared both on land and in the sea. Cities fell, ships were wrecked, and countless people lost their lives. It wasn't only the monsters that brought upon the Ancient's downfall, however. Not all that gained these magical powers were virtuous, and some took advantage of the newfound abilities to wreak their own kind of havoc. Many crimes were committed, and those in question used their newfound abilities to flip the balance of power between the population and those at the top.

After many years, things finally settled, but a much more severe and long-standing issue arose—the population. The chaos had caused the population to dwindle severely to the point where it was inevitable that the Ancients would go extinct. 

 When it seemed that all hope was lost, a meeting was held with the surviving leaders of the world in one of the last remaining cities, and a strange being descended to offer aid. A member of the first beastman race, although he wasn't like the beastmen of today. He was a member of the Dragon.

The stranger told the Ancients that he was the Kaiser, or leader, of the Dragon and was named Ryujin Astera. He, along with his royal aides, had witnessed the atrocities wrought down upon the Ancients shortly after it began. It turned out that the dragons had their home transported to ours when the dimensions collided and fused. It's what they call the Sky Continent today. 

The Ancients had never seen or heard of dragons before, or at least not the kind that they claimed to be. It was very strange to them. They looked human but had many non-human features. Wings, tails, horns, claws. Some were present in one individual, while another might lack one of those features. 

Ryujin offered a suggestion. He explained that Dragons are considered the ultimate representation of nature, with features from various animals. He suggested that the Ancients use advanced technology to experiment with interspecies breeding. 

Using animals, they could create new forms of life capable of breeding with the remaining humans and solving the population crisis. Ryujin also mentioned that it would help their survival, as these new lifeforms would likely inherit certain traits from their animal counterparts. These traits would be a great boon in rebuilding society. 

Sadly, much of the population was lost, and with it, the minds that were knowledgeable in recreating many of their technologies. The best they could do would be to prevent themselves from going extinct. And so, the brightest minds gathered to research artificial insemination and create other life forms capable of helping the human population survive and rebuild what little they could. After years of research and experimentation, the project was a success, and the Ancients created what is now today's Beastmen—various races of different people with animal-like features. 

Oddly enough, not all of the newly created races were considered a success. The Centauri, Slime race, Merfolk, and Arachne were considered outliers and failures. 

As things got better, the Dragons retreated to the sky continent and became something like the protectors for the rest of the world. In exchange for saving the Ancients and preserving their tale in history for future generations, the Ancients agreed to let the dragons rule. The Dragons were mighty and knowledgeable; letting them rule would provide more stability in the long run, with little to no cost for the Ancients. 

Or so they thought at the time.

***

Whether or not Rune actually believed such a thing was hard to say. Making more people from scratch? It all sounded like some kind of fairy tale made up by someone with too much free time on their hands. It was only good for tricking children, at best.

With his mother now gone from the room, Rune groggily got up and slipped on a pair of pants before making his way downstairs. He was feeling rather good, despite his rough start to the day. 

'Just one more week,' he thought. 

'...Then I get to go out into the world.'