《Bug-Hunting as a Heretic》 Chapter 1 Daniel died, as he lived, alone. If someone was to ask if he regretted dying in such a manner, he would take mild offense to the idea. Why was dying an activity that required things he normally avoided? He wasn''t much of a coffee person, should he regret dying while not surrounded by coffee? But more than that it was the implication that was annoying. That life choices could even be a mistake. Or that he wasn''t living his life on purpose. If it was something you decided for yourself, then accept the consequences don''t whine about them. Make your choice and live with it. Die with it. Besides, even if Daniel had felt such regrets you wouldn''t catch him searching for some bystander to blabber them at.
Daniel came awake with a start. He must have passed out. Or he should have passed away. But here he was. Surprise changed to confusion. He could hear people speaking but it sounded like it was coming from someone underwater in another room. That is to say clearly communication but also an indistinct drawn-out booming drone. Also, his vision was messed up beyond what blinking rapidly could fix. It was a blurry, queasy mess, like trying out someone''s glasses. He thought he could make out several figures, Was that the booming droners? It seemed so. But they were giants. Perhaps the non-glasses he was borrowing were messing with his sense of scale. Looking down and squinting there was something he could make out, although barely. He was naked, and there was a tube going upwards from his stomach and ending into the much too big hand of someone standing behind or above him. The dawning realisations about what situation he was in were abruptly cut off as he was brusquely wiped clean and then passed into the waiting giant arms of what was undoubtedly his new mother. Being held was bizarre. He felt vaguely patronised by the way it was helping him calm down. Even at this distance, his mother''s face was a blurry outline. About the only detail he could be sure of was that she had blonde hair.This narrative has been purloined without the author''s approval. Report any appearances on Amazon. So this was reincarnation. And one that started just after birth for some reason. Not that he really minded skipping that experience. But how did this work exactly? Daniel didn''t know. His mind swirled with assumptions to challenge now that he knew this was possible. Too many questions he wouldn''t be getting answered as a baby. Except that too was an assumption. Maybe everyone here had been through the same thing and was waiting for him to ask. He tried to speak and found he could not. Dumbness could be added to the list of nearly blind and almost deaf. He wasn''t about to try it out but he was confident crying or other emotive sounds were possible. Attempting actual communication ran into an empty space in his mind. It felt like running his tongue over a gap of a missing tooth. Daniel worried that the sensation might be describing brain damage. After a while, he was passed around to several other people in the room. He couldn''t tell much about them apart from gender and the color of their clothes. Halfway through he was amused to find that he thought a man in green was probably his father for no apparent reason. Was that baby instinct or was he just talking himself into thinking something stupid? He was struck by how strange it was to be touched by so many people. Even with limited perception, the overflowing affection was obvious. Daniel had been told several times in his life that he didn''t like to be touched. He didn''t know what it was about himself that made people decide this for him. If there was a meeting he hadn''t been invited. It seemed that the people here had not got the memo. As he was passed back to his mother he started to worry over the idea of having a new set of parents. In Daniel''s past life, his family had been a disaster area that he couldn''t get away from fast enough. The idea of unconditional love between parent and child was horrifying from either end when applied to his own parents and siblings. In later life, his mother had tried to reconnect. Mainly she would alternate between worrying about every facet of his life and apologising for bothering him. And in truth, it had been a bother. The connection at that point was one-sided. He got the impression he was being mean by not feeling the same way or being willing to pretend to. New parents were an imposition that Daniel somewhat resented. He was uncomfortable with some couple following him around and getting invested in his life. And he was fiercely against having people in charge of him. Unfortunately, as a newborn, he didn''t have many other options. As Daniel calmed down some more he felt himself start to drift towards sleep. But then he felt the need to urinate. Or, more accurately, he just went. Any control or inhibitions were gone. Normally he would find it interesting where that line fell mentally of what was lost. Except... he was distracted by some definite oddness in the actual mechanics of what was happening. It was almost as if he was going from the wrong place. Which made no sense unless- Oh shit. I''m a girl Chapter 2 Lying in what he assumed was some sort of crib a couple of days later, Daniel tried to take stock of his apparent new life. It made him miss having access to a pen and notebook since used to have a habit of scribbling notes and making lists to help think things through. The top of his theoretical notes would be underlined and circled and simply read: "GIRL?" His initial shock had passed into vague disquiet at the idea. A test drive would have been nice. Maybe a week as an adult woman to try it out and then back to the character creation screen so he could switch back to male. Ultimately his sex shouldn''t matter much as a child. Daniel had confidence in staying the same regardless of sex but also a burning desire to forget the whole thing. The threat of future female puberty in particular was something he did not want to think about. Did a cross-sex reincarnation make him trans? He instinctively rejected that idea. He wasn''t a fan of labels when applied to himself and he certainly was not going to be joining any sort of community. Besides, it was more intriguing to him to consider it as a separate level. For example, could a cis man be reincarnated as a woman in a man''s body? The terminology would need an extra dimension. Or more depending on how far the reincarnation rabbit hole went. The second thing to consider would be the abilities of his new body. He had little knowledge about the average newborn, but several things were not making sense to him. He still had barely any awareness of his surroundings. Adding to that, Daniel found he lacked both strength and coordination to the point he could barely move. Now perhaps children were normally born with such weakness or poor eyesight. Room to grow you could say, and he was simply on the extreme end of that spectrum. Except shouldn''t the same apply mentally? Like muscle mass and hopefully functioning senses, you could expect memory and intelligence to start low and develop over time. Would a normal baby brain even have the architecture to hold an adult''s memory and thought processes? Daniel found that doubtful. Maybe he would develop normally but from a head start and end up a super genius. Putting aside problems he couldn''t solve, he was still working at accepting life as a baby. He was surprisingly unbothered by having other people in charge of his bodily functions and cleanup. He just didn''t seem to be embarrassed about a standard part of being a baby. Which was convenient since he had expected it to be deeply humiliating. On the other hand, breastfeeding was a struggle. Tolerance was a fine aspiration, but honestly, the mental association with some sort of man-baby fetishism made him cringe internally. His mother picked him up and he sighed in release. It was strange how much his moods seemed to swing around her presence. More concerning was that his control over his emotions seemed to be slowly slipping, which was not a problem he had dealt with before. But it had been an insane couple of days, with time surely things would even out. Looking up at the blur that was her face, from somewhere he pulled the impression that she was quite pretty. Rationally attractiveness shouldn''t make much difference to suitability as a mother, but somehow it made him feel better.
Time passed. By Daniels count, he was 160 days old. Things had changed while staying the same. Again he was stuck in his crib going over his mental notes. But this time he felt like screaming his head off. Where was his mother? What could she possibly be doing? He could feel the frustration and anxiety as a physical force bearing down on him. But he was not becoming the thing he hated. And he had always despised people making annoying sounds to get attention. Loud music with no headphones. Motorbikes. Natural shouters instead of speakers. Car alarms. Drunks arguing in the street at 3 am. Anyone who ever used a vacuum cleaner. And there was no way to tell them to shut up and go away without engaging with them to do so. So he lay there waiting, his face scrunched up in a bug-eyed grimace, silently screaming when it got too much. His emotional maturity was gone. Any built-up callouses were apparently still in his old body with his new one having extremely thin skin. Each time he tried telling himself that things weren''t that bad but his negative emotions would still spiral beyond his control. He was quite literally being a baby about the whole thing, and he did not know how to stop. Being left alone was a pain that he didn''t have any coping mechanisms for. Each day that passed saw him more worn down, less able to resist. It didn''t help that he was becoming increasingly depressed over his disability. His senses and physical mobility had not improved and were still barely functional. Honestly, he had given up trying to pick out details visually or aurally. At this point, his best guess was that the problems were permanent. Daniel was starting to think that, assuming reincarnation was repeatable, suicide was the correct response. But that was quite the assumption. And either way, he lacked the capability to act that choice out. His blurred surroundings resolved into a blurred person as his mother picked him up. His anxiety broke apart and was replaced with contentment and a hint of hesitant affection. Part of him rebelled at even that much. The effect her presence had on his mood made him feel bipolar. But he was still sticking to the one-sided imposition theory. His lack of senses left him feeling like he was in a world of his own. In some ways, she felt closer to a stuffed teddy bear from his previous childhood than an actual human connection. Just something to hold onto when things got too much.
Some sort of gathering was going on in the room he was in. He was fairly sure his mother was there, but so far he was left in the crib. His by now iffy count was at day 335. Daniel was mortified with himself. He was upset that no one was paying any attention to him. Only 335 days for him to degenerate into an attention whore. He''d become emotionally reliant on other people. Disgusting. It hurt but he dug deep into stubbornness and clung to not crying out at least. At this rate that bug-eyed grimace was going to grow into a permanent feature. A pair of hands descended and seemed to be checking him over. It definitely felt more clinical than affectionate. A light shone in his face, adding credence to the idea. Probably a doctor checking his eyesight. Good now get to work fixing it doc.This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. The hands receded and Daniel peered in the direction they came from. Blinking rapidly, Daniel was shocked to see the fog of blur recede somewhat to reveal a gray-haired man that he presumed was the source of doctor hands. It wasn''t perfect, but he went from near blind to short-sighted over a couple of seconds. At the same time, the background droning resolved itself into mixed conversations in a language he didn''t recognise. Daniel felt his gaze drawn to his left like magnetism, and to his wonder he found the strength to sit up and turn to look in that direction. There was a young woman standing there. Blonde hair, blue eyes, fair skin. She looked terrible. Worry warred with exhaustion on her face leaving her seeming wrung out. Daniel started to wonder what was wrong with her but then stopped. He knew. She looked how he felt. He stared at her, searching for a way to offer reassurance. He smiled hesitantly and like a mirror a matching smile broke through the worry on her face. She said a few words that he couldn''t understand. The mental speech gap still seemed to exist but regardless he would not have been able to articulate himself at that moment. Tears in her eyes she moved forward to sweep him up into a hug. When she was done hugging Daniel sat on her arm and looked around the room. He felt unbalanced, not sure what to think. His mother''s hair was in range so he grabbed a handful and stuck it in his mouth. She turned to him in mock affront to remove it and he smiled sheepishly. Was that an instinct or just him acting as he thought a baby should? He couldn''t really be sure. Either he was turning into an infant or he was cosplaying as one. Both were pretty embarrassing. But he just needed to get over it. He was never going to be a natural child, so he might as well just do what he wanted. He had spent too much time only able to overthink things. Things were getting better and today was better off enjoyed. The room was filled with a bunch of people who he got to meet, as far as a baby could meet someone. Daniel didn''t think he had ever been interested in meeting people before, but nearly a year with no stimulus had done wonders. There were three young men in their twenties who were clearly brothers. Each had the same brown hair and eyes as well as a similar slant to their face. Brother 1 came with a mischievous smile on his lips and a slightly stressed woman on his arm. Brother 2 had a more stiff manner shared by his probable wife and had a collection of preteen children as well. Leaving brother 3 as a quiet single content to hang back, although the soft smile he was sharing with Daniel''s mother hinted that he wasn''t alone. Lastly, to round things out there was an older couple of potential grandparents. The next morning Daniel discovered that whatever weirdness went on the day before, his parents were ready for it. His crib got moved from his parents, his diet got moved to solid foods and his schedule got changed to match his shift from disability. The house they were living in was a large three-story home spread around a central hallway and staircase. The top two floors contained bedrooms and a living area, while the ground level seemed for communal use as much as anything else. In the mornings after breakfast, Daniel would be taken downstairs to a large room that ran to the left side of the hallway. Three separate groups from outside would come and spend time there. First, there were young children, from Daniels age to maybe 5 or 6 years old. Secondly, there was a group of older women watching the kids while mainly sitting around gossiping. And lastly, there were a couple of teenage girls whose purpose seemed to be doing any actual work and getting bossed around. His family was not a part of any of these groups but would reappear in the afternoon and spend time in the upstairs living room. Daniel guessed that uncles 1 and 2 lived with their families elsewhere since their presence was quite sporadic. Things in this house were not as Daniel was used to. There was no electricity, no modern appliances. The clothing, furnishings, and people''s behaviors struck him as distinctly old-timey. Medievalish. Not having the internet really made identifying things a pain. He needed to learn the weird language so he could at least put names to things. On the other hand, everyone was a lot cleaner, healthier, and happier than he would have expected from such a time period. Less busy too, if there was work being done it must be in that morning period since he never saw it. Perhaps the family was rich, and this was a life of luxury. He''d spotted other people coming to the house in the mornings and had gotten the impression that they were taking care of many of the household chores. Now that he could crawl, and with his newly improved senses, Daniel was keen to explore. In fact, he was almost overwhelmed with enthusiasm for the idea. There was a silliness to becoming an amiable little terror that appealed to him, and escaping to do his own thing was the first step. He had to hold back his bubbling excitement while building an image of being friendly and passive in the downstairs daycare. And then with his carers guard down, he gleefully pounced on the first opportunity. His happiness lasted him to the end of the hallway towards the front of the house where he found a dead-end of doors he couldn''t open. He turned to look up the stairs and dismissed climbing them as too scary. Actually, now that he was on his own out here this whole place was kinda scary, and he was starting to worry about people being angry when they caught him. Just as the thought occurred to sneak his way back in, he heard the front door open behind him. Before he could turn back around hands reached down and picked him up. Daniel froze in terror until he was turned around and was relieved to see it was his father. By the time he had recovered from his shock, he was back in with the others and his father was already gone. Daniel keenly felt his father''s absence, and downstairs playtime suddenly seemed less exciting a prospect. He ended up counting the moments until his mother came to collect him. After a couple of months, things got warmer, which Daniel took to mean they were coming out of a winter. Other people appeared less often upstairs in the afternoons, but Daniel was still mostly housebound. The downstairs playroom had a couple of doors open up to the outside revealing an extensive garden with a large lawn area backed by a head height stone wall. When the weather allowed Daniel would end up there instead of indoors. It seemed that his grandmother in particular had a gardening obsession, and was out there pottering about most afternoons. Daniel''s initial urge to explore had been mostly replaced with a desire to stay close to his parents, particularly his mother. He was still on a knife-edge of emotional instability, but sticking with his parents gave him a better chance to reign things in. They were a safe haven of calm in an ocean of immaturity, and he found himself very aware of when too much distance was between them. As the year passed Daniel tried to pick up the language. He was probably butchering it, stopped by his previous knowledge from seeing new concepts. It was slow going with no way to speak to confirm his guesses, and none of the adults seemed interested in teaching him. Nouns in particular were hard to figure out without context. Eventually, Daniel managed to piece together that his second birthday was approaching, and that people were expecting him to start talking at that point. Which implied that whatever was going on at his first birthday was both normal and going to be repeated somehow. Daniel was looking forward to being able to observe things from the outset this time around. Uncle number 2, the mischievous one, was missing along with his wife most of the year but returned with winter. He quickly set about trying to take bets on Daniel''s first word. He was convinced it was going to a specific word, the meaning of which Daniel could not figure out. He also kept saying the same word to Daniel when others wouldn''t notice. Other popular guesses were the standard mummy or daddy. Daniel was still mulling over his options but he at least had enough self-illusion of pride left that it wasn''t going to be one of those two. Chapter 3 The day had come. Daniel counted it as 336 days after the last one, which really pushed the different world angle if that made a year. The morning went as usual, then a couple of hours after lunch a change occurred. They were back in the upstairs living room since it was winter again, and it was a full house today. Daniel was in his mother''s lap, trying not to fall asleep, as she was sitting by the fire chatting softly with aunt number two. She was the least common attendee, and Daniel had been amused to discover he was part of the reason behind the awkwardness she often displayed. He could sympathise since he didn''t know how to act around kids in either of his lives. Speaking of kids, uncle number one had all five of his there, two girls and three boys. Four of them were sat on the floor near one corner, watched over by their mother and grandmother while they played some game that involved throwing different colored beanbag-esque items around the circle. Meanwhile, across the room, Daniel''s father was sitting at one end of the long table reading a book by himself. Opposite him at the other end grandfather was telling a story to the two uncles and the missing eldest child, a boy of maybe thirteen or fourteen. From what Daniel had overheard, the story was about grandfather meeting an annoying man that morning, who was making unreasonable demands or something along those lines. And then halfway through a sentence, grandfather switched to speaking English. "...you believe that? And to him, we should be glad to help!" Daniel twisted around in shock at what he was hearing, staring across the room. "Oh is it time?" his mother asked. The attention of the others turned their way, and uncle number two excitedly crossed the room and squeezed his way into sharing his wife''s chair, earning himself a fondly exasperated smile from her. "Mummy," Daniel''s mother slowly enunciated. "Can you say Mummy?" This gave Daniel the chance to watch her lips as she spoke. The timing and movement matched the English words coming out. Did the other language even exist? What language did they think they were speaking beforehand? Perhaps if he had thought to check at the time, he might have been able to catch some lipsync gaps. Somehow he doubted it. The idea seemed pretty stupid to him, but so did the alternatives. There was some definite malarkey going on here, and it meant he had just wasted a year trying to learn a phantom language. Anyway, time was being wasted. He had run out of patience trying to come up with a word that said something profound about himself. Instead, he planned on using a funny-sounding English word partly so no one would understand it. Luckily that word might now serve a second purpose. "Banana!" He declared. And then straight away had to struggle with the fact that his voice sounded like one of a little girl. He''d not seen a banana since he got here, and the blank looks he got in response made him think people didn''t know what he was saying. Which was interesting. If someone found a banana, would they start using his word, or would his understanding change to the new name they gave it? Would he even be capable of perceiving the difference? "Mummy. Try to say it after me," his mother told him, and then she started to sound out the syllables. "Muh." "Bah," Daniel responded with less confidence than before. "Mee." "Nana!" "She''s an idiot," a child of uncle number one said, only to quickly be scuffed over the head by his mother. "She''s not an idiot," uncle number two disagreed, placating an annoyed look on my mother''s face. "She''s a little goblin. That''s probably a goblin warcry." His wife gave an amused snort at this, which only widened the smirk on his lips. "Rory!" Daniel''s mother said with a warning glance. "What? She must be one!" The uncle formerly known as number two responded, sounding both offended and amused. "I don''t even think I''m even allowed to come up with a different explanation." "Enough!" Grandfather said with a note of finality. "Let it go." Daniel tried to tune out the surrounding conversation and attempts to goad him into speech. Over the past year, he had grown comfortable at these family gatherings. Now for the first time, Daniel could feel pressure to actually participate instead of simply listening. It seemed resisting conversation was one more thing that had been easy in his past life but was now a struggle to cope with. Testing his grip on his clothing, Daniel found that his strength had improved again. Plus his senses were sharper and he could speak now. Thankfully size growth seemed to be spread over the year, and then today his abilities had suddenly caught up. The change wasn''t as stark today but he thought that was just due to how little he had to start with the first time.Support the creativity of authors by visiting Royal Road for this novel and more. With attention in the room turned to other things, Daniel stood up in his mother''s lap. Leaning close to her ear, he whispered "Mummy." "She said it," she announced happily, leaning Daniel back to get a look at him. "She said mummy!" "Are you sure?" Uncle Rory asked doubtfully. "Yes," she insisted. "Can you say it again sweetheart?" Daniel nodded, eager to please. "Banana!" This rewarded him with another round of prodding from the others to speak more that Daniel worked at ignoring. Eventually, his mother took notice of his discomfort and picked him up. Taking him across the room she set him down on his father''s lap. "Here take her. She can speak now but she doesn''t want to. Just like her father. Maybe you can show her what you are reading." Daniel was very interested in that, and he could even catch English words in extremely neat and even handwriting in the book. But then his father wordlessly closed the book and handed it to Daniel''s mother. His father''s arm finished its return journey by curling around Daniel''s shoulders and holding him close. His mother took one look at the book then said "Maybe not," and pulled another chair close. Sitting down, she took Daniel''s father''s hand and held it, seeming to find their mutual silence endearing. The man was often quietly off to one side, particularly when there were more people present. Which meant Daniel was less used to him than his mother. Still, more than once Daniel had found himself glancing across the room and catching a similar glance from his father. Different but matching instincts he supposed. Daniel tried to ignore the close contact by working his mind through the mechanics of language swapping. Everything he came up with was still somewhere between weird and stupid. His best guess would be it was one out of magic, aliens, or god. Which were pretty much interchangeable in Daniel''s book. Basically, it was something beyond his understanding. Getting annoyed at it because it didn''t fit his view of how the world worked was like an animal getting angry with its reflection in a mirror. Eventually, he decided it was time to try talking again. There was something about the quiet companionship between just the three of them that made things easier. And he''d rather avoid the attention that would come from leaving things for too long. His eyes went to the book his mother still held. "Is there something I can read?" "We''ll have to think about it. Maybe later," his mother responded. "The books we have are for adults," his father added. Daniel considered this. Being reliant on parents was certainly easier without speech. The idea of asking for permission for things rankled. His parents hadn''t reacted to a two-year-old forming a sentence, but still, it was probably a pretty stupid thing to do. Daniel had led a secretive life, often pointlessly private over trivial things. He naturally shied away from admitting to being reincarnated or outing himself as such. Acting out a cover story seemed smart, but a lot of effort, and the cat possibly already being out of the bag just gave him an excuse to not bother. Better to keep with his decision to focus on what he wanted rather than worry about if he was acting his age. Which asked the question what did he want? He went back to alien god magic. A god was just a new type of person who felt you owed them something. Aliens weren''t much better. Not something he wanted to have to deal with. Which left one thing that he was interested in. Looking up and catching his father''s attention, he asked "Can I learn magic?" "Not till you are five." Which meant it was possible! Daniel''s mind came awash with images of himself as a fire mage, setting alight innocent villages in the name of peace, love, and justice. He raised his hands, making a burning sound effect in his throat as he imaged fire streaming from his palms. Purge the heretics! Hahahaha! All must burn! "What are you doing?" his mother asked, raising an eyebrow with an amused look on her face. "....friendship magic?" Daniel blushed, having gotten carried away with his imagination. He tried to remind himself that he shouldn''t be acting like this. I''m an adult! I''m an adult! I''m an adult! But then instead he realised that children didn''t need to be embarrassed for doing childish things. I''m a kid! I''m a kid! I''m a kid! No one cares about a kid''s embarrassment! Thankfully he was getting better at thinking this way and it almost helped this time. "Can you do magic?" Daniel asked. In response, his father raised a hand and held it in front of Daniel. A flame appeared there, big enough to fill his whole palm. Daniel was entranced, staring at it in open-mouthed wonder. It was normal at first glance, but there was no smoke coming from it. No heat either. "It doesn''t hurt?" His father shook his head. "Can I touch it?" A nod and a reassuring smile. Daniel reached out hesitantly with a single finger at first, jerking his finger away when he made contact. When no feeling of pain reached him, he returned his hand and held it fully in the flame. There was a feeling to touching it, but one Daniel had never experienced the like of before. Physical senses weren''t supposed to return an abstract concept. The closest he could come to describing it would be a sensation of correctness, but it really needed a whole new word. He realised the flame simply went through his hand, rather than lapping around it. As if it wasn''t even there. "Can''t it burn things?" Daniel asked feeling disappointed. He''d never save any villagers with flames that don''t really exist. "It can if he wants it to," his mother answered. "How do you think we light the fire in here?" Daniel was surprised at that. They''d been cheating all along and he''d never even noticed. He supposed it was fair enough. Grandfather might think he was in charge around here, but Daniel felt he was the real king of the castle. It wasn''t his problem how the little people did things, just that they got done. Queen of the castle. He forcibly rolled his eyes at the correction. "Showing the size of your flame off to the ladies again Marcus?" Rory teased as he approached. "Is that jealousy I hear Rory?" Daniel''s mother replied. "My wife over there can barely keep her hands off me as it is," Rory confided loudly with a grin. "Add something like that and it wouldn''t be safe to be in public together." Daniel withdrew his hand from the fire in front of him. As the novelty wore off, his tiredness returned and he checked out of the conversation. Public speaking could come another day. Leaning his head against his father, he closed his eyes and drifted away. Chapter 4 Listening to the kids his age in the playroom the next day had made it clear he didn''t fit in. They were further along with language than you might expect, but the same couldn''t be said mentally. The difference was clear, but Daniel wasn''t about to complain that others weren''t bringing it up. Instead, he let his guard down further and took up the habit of impulsively asking questions. A lot of questions. Sadly, he hit a barrier early on when it came to learning more details about magic. At age five kids went to church and were taught a bunch of things, including magic. The church had some principles about respecting the natural stages of growth, meaning the weird age-growth milestones, and didn''t like it when people jumped too far ahead on their own. Apparently, plenty of people ignored them and did it anyway. Daniel generally favored deciding for himself over following the rules, particularly religious ones. But Dad said it was important to set an example and requested Daniel leave the subject alone. Daniel was pleasantly surprised to be asked instead of simply bossed around. Also, the rest of the family didn''t say it outright, but Daniel could tell by the assorted bouts of scoffing and eye-rolling, that they thought Dad was being foolish. Which made Daniel want to help out, and he agreed to Dad''s request and tried to keep to it. Much of Daniel''s enthusiasm had been lost when learning the connection to the church anyway. Fantasy world religious lessons sounded awful, and he''d happily avoid the topic for as long as possible. But he was interested in magic presumably being another level to the thing, at age five. For all he knew, at age one hundred people grew face tentacles and went to live on the moon. He had more success learning about his family members, including their names. Names that he had definitely not heard spoken the year before, something that made his eyes roll. The family name was apparently Laston, his grandparents were called James and Helen, and his parents were Laura and Marcus. He had quickly defaulted to using mum and dad. Previously he had avoided those terms since they seemed childish, but strangely once he started speaking mother and father felt pretentious. Mum and dad ended up winning the conflict by virtue of being shorter words. Apparently, grandfather was not just the man of the house, but also the boss of the town. The town of Laston, which Daniel had yet to explore, was clearly a den of villainy that needed to be punished for name stealing. Dad worked as part of the town guard, and since the guard worked for grandfather that meant he was in the family business as well. He even had a sword that Daniel had been able to look at, but foolishly he was not allowed to play with or even touch it. He was pretty sure that was the only thing stopping him from mastering the blade in quick order and then moving on to slaying dragons. Sadly, if all the villages got burnt down by dragons then there would be none left for him to save once he became a fire mage. However, Dad didn''t seem to do much actual guarding. His description of work mainly included endless drills and practice to polish his skills. Daniel was less clear about what the women did for work. They would talk about helping someone out that day rather than having a profession. More questions led to a non-answer along the lines of ''it''s complicated'' It made sense to Daniel that there would be more than one topic people weren''t happy to explain to a toddler. And he didn''t mind having some things to work out on his own. He just hoped his mother wasn''t the same as the elderly women who showed up in the daycare, with ''helping out'' being code for visiting for tea and a natter. Uncle Rory and Aunt Gemma worked together away from the town through most of the year. Rory claimed that unlike the rest of the family, their last name was Landtrust. And, that was also their job, but not really. He seemed to enjoy how the claim was making people uncomfortable, and his teasing manner made Daniel unsure how much of what he said was a joke. Further details were on top of the list of things people didn''t want to talk about.
A few months later, Daniel sat with his mum in the living room. With no internet, no movies, no computer games, and still no books, he had fewer demands on his time than he was used to. Which left him both more interested in new things, and less bothered about wasting time. To be fair the adults did try to keep him occupied, and there were toys that he suspected were hand-me-downs from one of his cousins. But those were medieval, as in wooden, and worse were made for a young girl. Daniel found he had a child''s enthusiasm for a lot of things, but he wasn''t about to start playing with dolls. Daniel''s mum ran a comb through his hair, humming the same tune this activity always brought on. After a moment of hesitation, Daniel joined in. Gaining speech had left Daniel more vulnerable to childish flights of fancy, which he normally wasn''t too happy about. Something about being a mute observer had helped to insulate his seriousness. But there were some upsides, such as finding it less daunting to try out new things. The chances of him joining in with a song as an adult had been near zero. "My mother used to sing this song to me when I was little," she told him. Daniel shrugged at the idea of a maternal grandmother he hadn''t met. "Where is she now?" Daniel knew his grandfather on that side had died before he was born, but not much else.Stolen content warning: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences. "To the south, near the capital," she said with a strange tone of voice. Daniel started to turn to get a better look at her face but with a tutting sound, she grabbed the top of his head to stop him. "Hold still!" With his hair reaching past his shoulders, his mother had made this part of their daily routine. Daniel had spent his entire past life with as short hair as possible, specifically to avoid any amount of daily time investment, however little. But this wasn''t too bad, although he would probably lose the habit without someone else pushing it on him. Or maybe not. He had the time to fill, and habits picked up as a kid could build into a pretty big difference later on. Daniel didn''t want to abandon himself via reincarnation. But that didn''t mean he couldn''t pick up different hobbies this time around. Maybe he should think about what else he could be working on. Her job done, Daniel''s mum came around to his front and knelt down to address him. "Just wait here like a good girl Anne. I''ll be right back and then we''ll see if they are here yet." Daniel crossed his arms and pouted, instantly annoyed. But his mother just smiled fondly and booped his nose with her finger before leaving. This was the final name he learned, and the least welcome, that of Anne. That one really got under his skin, but there was nothing to do about it. It was confronting him with things he didn''t want to think about. Becoming annoyed over something he couldn''t change and wouldn''t explain had felt pretty childish at first. But accepting that and acting his age somehow sidestepped the issue for him. So now he was enthusiastically sulking every time it was brought up. His mother returned, stopping to brush a stray hair from the front of Daniel''s kirtle before picking him up to go down the stairs. A kirtle was a knee-length tunic-type garment they had here. Clothing was another thing to follow along with birthdays, with his swapping after his second one. Thankfully clothing was unisex for children, and at least it was an upgrade on the white smocks the younger kids wore. Having not heard the word kirtle before, he distrusted its origins. He very much disliked the possibility of his thinking being affected by alien god translation magic. There were actual tunics that the adults sometimes wore, and he took some solace in not being instinctively clear on the difference between the two. He really needed a banana to show people so he could catch the auto-translate mid update. For once, they went out the front door on the way to the garden, and Daniel tried to take in the opportunity to look around from a new viewpoint. In front was a small open yard, with a line of trees on the other side partially hiding a couple of small single-story buildings. To the left a stone wall ran fairly close to the house, a large wooden gate in the middle of it stood closed and blocking the view Daniel knew led into the town. They went right, around the corner of the house into the largest open part of the garden. Here he could see Dad and grandfather sitting talking on a wooden bench, and in the distance, grandmother was working away in the apron and gloves she wore for gardening. Lastly, just arriving to visit was Uncle Henry and his family, coming in through the sideways back gate in the wall across the lawn from the house. Henry lived in the town with his wife Carissa and worked under Grandfather. He called himself a scribe, which Daniel took to mean he did administrative work. To Daniel, he had always seemed more of a blue-collar type, but maybe the same lines didn''t apply here. Henry''s eldest was a clear suck-up, being called James after his grandfather. After that, in age order, came Emory, Faye, David, and lastly the youngest at age six, the horrible Hannah. Mum put Daniel down as they approached, and it was Hannah he tried to hide from behind his mum''s legs. Unfortunately, he failed and she ran forwards towards them excitedly. "Anne! Let''s play!" "Urk!" Daniel responded, hiding his panic with great poise. Somehow Hannah had decided she wanted a little sister, or possibly a pet or Daniel-sized doll. Daniel''s lack of consent had not stood in the way of him being awarded the position. The role entailed Hannah glomming onto him whenever she saw him, then leading him around holding his hand and narrating to her parents or any other nearby adult anything he did. Daniel didn''t enjoy the attention much, finding the last part, in particular, to rub him the wrong way. The struggle was getting away from her without being mean to a kid. Making her cry would not help with avoiding excess attention. Lately, he''d been getting by with making a game out of trying to escape. He waited until she went around his mum to his right, and then made a run for it to past her to the left. Or at least he tried to. He was sadly lacking in speed, balance, and form. On the other hand, running was about ten times more fun than it had been for him before. Daniel started to laugh with the sheer joy of it, and soon he heard Hannah joining in from behind him. As he reached the path beside the wall, he tried and failed at turning, his legs going sideways, the ground rushing up to meet the side of his head. Quickly pushing himself to his feet, he turned to see Hannah running back to the others, calling out "Mum! Anne fell down!" "I''m fine!" he called out, forcing his voice to sound it. As he brought his hand down from his head and wiped away the tiny smear of blood on his fingers, he told himself it was true. Just a small bump and a scratch, no big deal. But as he started walking back toward his mother he could feel his eyes watering and his face heating up. He should be fine but he couldn''t convince his eyes to stop doing what they were doing. Slowing, he scrunched up his face to hold back tears, then swallowed, feeling the need to scrunch up his throat too. Finally, he stopped, his hands forming fists at his side, staring down at the ground, stuck. He should be fine but he wasn''t. This is stupid, I''m not a little baby! It was one thing to take comfort from his parent''s closeness or to accept their affection. But to go crying to his mummy over a boo-boo he would not accept. A shadow approached and fell across him. He continued staring at the ground, conflicting emotions roiling against each other in his chest. He wanted to look up but resisted. "I''m fine," he said quietly. And then his Dad''s arms were reaching across his vision, dragging him up into a hug. Daniel stubbornly tried to cling to resistance but quickly failed, holding on tightly as tears started to fall. His father rubbed Daniel''s back gently as his chest heaved, managing at least to stifle his sobs. "You''re okay now." Chapter 5 "I''m sorry, Anne, just a few more minutes and then we''ll set off." "All right Mum. I''ll go check on Beatrix while I wait then." This caused Mum to pause her hustle to get ready and turn back to Daniel. Leaning down she hugged Daniel from behind and rubbed their cheeks together, tickling his face and making him laugh. "You''re such a good girl Anne. Go on then." Heading out onto the landing, Daniel crossed into his parent''s bedroom and approached the crib that held his younger sister. Sitting on the nearby chair, he reached out and took her hand, playing with her fingers. At 8 months old, Beatrix was a lump. Admittedly, while quieter than an Earth baby, she could cry a lot, which was more than Daniel had achieved at that age. But that just made her a more annoying, crying-type lump. Honestly, Daniel found his lack of an overreaction to her arrival to be a bit of a letdown. For a while there, things had gotten pretty far out of hand. There''d been some over-indulgent suffering, flirtation with sappiness, and occasional bouts of crying. At three years old, he had even managed to convince himself he had grown out of all that, until a particularly humiliating episode that ended in a temper tantrum. So Daniel had been worried that a new sibling would provoke his latest infantile embarrassment. But it was hard to get too worked up about a lump. For Daniel, those dark days of trying and failing to keep a lid on things were behind him. He was four and three quarters now after all. The three quarters were a pretty big deal. Without emotional fallout to deal with, Daniel had tried to work out if his little sister was suffering a similar fate to his own. Is this lump a reincarnation? Who knows? It''s a lump! Even if it is, who cares? It''s a lump! It was enough to give Daniel some appreciation for the laissez-faire attitude many people here seemed to hold towards child-rearing. Problem? just wait for the next birthday, that''ll fix it! Even his mother, who spend most of her time looking after Beatrix, seemed generally unbothered by her lumpiness. ''Less worrying, more tiring'' was a phrase he had overheard, and at the time he had found it heartwarming that she had been worried for him, and that the silence he had struggled for had made things easier in some way. Of course, it was only natural that he had been far more tender-hearted and naive back then, before the three quarters. Ultimately, Daniel had decided to help care for his little sister. It hadn''t been that long since he had been a lump himself after all. So he would try to check on her in his mothers'' downtime as he was doing now. He couldn''t do much, just a little bit of stimulus to say hello and smooth out a potential rough patch. It was the least he could do, and even with the hobbies he had picked up, he still had the time. He had chosen out three ''hobbies'' to work on, with varying success, although two were fairly connected. His first thought had been running. Running as a child was just fun. No aches and pains, no bad knees, no struggle to build up enough energy to get started. There was a problem though. He liked distance running, not back and forth sprints in the garden. He did what he could but running was mostly on hold until he had more freedom. But that did help with his second idea. He had done a decent amount of running as an adult. But unfortunately, his unathletic adolescence, followed by many years of sitting all day in front of a monitor, had made things difficult. Which had led to wavering enthusiasm and a sporadic interest with many blanks started by minor injuries. He had done some research on stretches and yoga to help with that but quickly lost interest after trying them out. He just hadn''t been invested enough to support extra maintenance busywork that he didn''t enjoy. But here though, he was actively looking for things to do, and as a child, he had the energy. He didn''t know if it was backed by science, but he had the notion that work put in now could help his development and maybe raise his baseline for the rest of his life. It was appealing to him to think he could improve from always being so stiff and uncoordinated. So he started waking up early and doing the stretch routine he could most remember. He even tried to add in the little amount he knew of yoga, which he had quickly abandoned due to the surrounding spiritualism. Which was a shame since he was far more willing to give that stuff a shot in a world where magic existed. Improving coordination was his next target. He didn''t have much past practice to rely on here, but he threw himself into any game or activity that seemed useful. They were far better than playing with dolls, so he probably would have done the same anyway. He''d even taken up juggling using some pebbles he took from the garden. Rory had been intrigued when he caught Daniel at it, having never seen juggling before. Then he tried it himself and was instantly far better than Daniel, leaving with a glib "I guess goblins are bad at this." But Daniel found that he was not dissuaded. He didn''t have endless enthusiasm but he recharged quickly. Given a quick rest and a small distraction it was very easy to forget any effort he had already put in and get back to it. Mum showed up at last to interrupt his thoughts and came close to check on Beatrix. After a moment, she spoke. "Alright, first we''ll go to see the doctor, then we''ll have a look around the shops and the lower town, and on the way back we''ll pop in to visit my friend, Agnes." Finally, Daniel thought Finally I get to explore-wait what? "The doctor!" he cried out. "What''s wrong with you?"Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. "Shh. I didn''t tell anyone yet, but part of our trip today is visiting the doctor to confirm that I''m pregnant again. If all goes well you should have another little brother or sister to take care of." "Another one! Already? Urk!" Daniel made a retching gesture with added sound effects. More lumps for the collection "If my mother caught you doing that she would make you regret it. I could send her a letter telling her, and she would come to put a stop to it, even if she had to walk the whole way," Mum said with an indulgent chuckle to rob the words of their threat. "How many more kids are you gonna have Mum?" Daniel asked. "Six or seven." "Urk!" I''ll have eight lumps with my tea please, vicar. "Enough of that. What I''m really looking forward to is you growing up and giving me grandchildren one day." Daniel resisted retching this time. It helped that the idea of grandchildren made his skin crawl. His mum took his hand and led him out the door. "Are you ready?" she asked. "Let''s go!" Daniel cheered, raising a fist in a salute to show his readiness. His mother smiled and copied the gesture. "Let''s go!" she said. She''s so silly, Daniel thought. It was clearly up to him to keep a mature head on their outing. Four and three quarters after all. They went out the front door, across the yard, and through a people-sized door that opened in the larger gate. Outside was the town of Laston. The domain of the dread lord Daniel, the people who lived there worms crawling beneath his boots. They turned out to be quite charming worms, and Daniel was feeling cheerful enough to return their greetings. Of course, that didn''t mean he wasn''t willing to report them to the guards if they took advantage and tried to start a conversation. Inspecting his domain for the first time, Daniel found it to be disappointingly normal. Nothing stood out to him as historical. No thatch roofing or Tudor style framework of painted wooden beams. Just white houses with red tile roofs. Daniel had been hoping to find a starving street urchin to take home as an indentured servant, but this was not the place to find them. Maybe he would need to let grandfather know people weren''t letting things go like they were supposed to. They turned a corner onto a street that ran down the hill, giving a clear view through the heart of the town. Laston was a walled town on a single hill but one that seemed to be split into two levels. The higher-end they were coming from was mostly townhouses, although their house was the biggest and the only one in its own walled-off compound. The lower portion was almost entirely taken up by three large constructions and their surroundings. Spaced out to the left and right were two similarly giant-sized slate grey squat square blocks. Each one dwarfed several larger than normal buildings around it. "What are those things?" Daniel asked, pointing them out "They''re apartment blocks. It''s a bunch of families all living together, each with their own small house inside the bigger building." "But how did they make them? They''re so big! And what about the ones around them?" "Earth magic. The same way they made the walls. And the smaller ones are all places that help people there live their lives. You see that one there, that''s the food hall where they cook food and everyone from the big block goes to eat." "Why would they do that, can''t they have a kitchen in their house like us?" "It''s easier that way. Did you think we only cook for the family in our house?" Huh. "No of course I didn''t. What''s that then?" Daniel asked, pointing in front of them "That''s the market where we are headed." In the open between the two blocks, straddling the road they were on that led to a gate out of town, was a similarly sized open square. The floor of the whole thing was covered in a vibrant pattern of tessellating red and white shapes. And it wasn''t the clean but duller red and white of many of the houses. The colours sparkled in the sun like some kind of showpiece, even with the people walking back and forth across it. The square was bordered by a thick band of red, and then inside that by a row of shops that faced into the middle. As they reached the square and started to cross it towards a shop in the corner Daniel noticed a smooth black stone obelisk standing in the centre. The obelisk was maybe the same height as a person, but twice as thick, and there was a couple standing by it talking to each other. Both had a hand reached out and held touching the obelisk and both had a piece of paper in their other hand. As Daniel inspected the scene, trying to understand what they were doing, a third person approached. Walking up to the obelisk on the side away from the other couple, he touched it and was suddenly also holding a piece of paper, which he started to read. "Mum, Mum! What is that thing? What are those people doing?" Daniel cried, pointing out the strange going-on. "That''s the status obelisk sweetheart. They''ll tell you about that when you start school. You can''t use it till you are older anyway." Status- Daniel tripped, barely managing to stay upright, distracted by a strange sensation. What was that? "Are you alright?" Mum asked, her tone turning stern when he nodded. "Then pay attention as you walk. You could hurt yourself!" "Yes Mum," Daniel responded dutifully, and then immediately stopped paying attention and let himself be guided by her hand. There was a dip in his mind when he thought the word Status, like running his tongue over the gap of a recently missing tooth. He explored it with a sense he didn''t know he had, similar to touch but clearly something else. It was as if there were a thin slice missing beneath the length of the word whenever he clearly thought it in his mind. There was a jagged edge at the bottom going up and down. He felt his way along that edge, mapping it with a sense of not touch, and when he got to the end, the thought completed, but louder, and a blue tablet appeared in his hands. Status. Not a stone tablet from god on the mountains. An electronic one, with a touchscreen, the same type someone might use to watch a film on a train journey. "What the hell is this?" Daniel cried, just noticing they were in some kind of shop now. His mother turned from talking to an older man dressed in black to address him. "What are you talking about poppet?" "This! This thing here! Shouldn''t this be wigging you out?" His mum gave him an exasperated look. "This shouldn''t take too long. Can you be a good girl and keep quiet for me?" Saying that she went back to her conversation with the shopkeeper. Daniel poked at her with the tablet and watched unsurprised as it passed straight through her. Ah yes alien god magic hello again! Looking at the screen, there was a character screen there, like a status display screen from a role-playing game. His character screen. Daniel let go of the tablet, leaving it floating mid-air in front of him, and started to rub his forehead. Chapter 6 The tablet had a generic RPG blue window white border interface that felt almost nostalgic to Daniel. Along the top was a series of tabs, with Status currently highlighted, followed by a Skills, Domain, Log, and then Notes tabs. In the top right corner were two symbols, an open padlock and then a cross symbol, which Daniel took to be lock window and close window buttons. Below this was a table:
Anne Laston Human(child)
??
Age?? 4
Health?? 150
Strength 33(9)
Agility 74(20)
Dexterity 61(16)
Intelligence 72
Wit 67
Wisdom 52(14)
Once he got over the age section being wrong and missing the three quarters, Daniel''s attention was drawn to the intelligence number. He wasn''t keen on people thinking they were smarter than him due to Alien Magic Jesus giving out scores. Mental capacity was something that should have more than three dimensions. Could he raise his intelligence and change his personality? He was uncomfortable with that possibility. Also, had his intelligence changed with reincarnation? He didn''t feel slower or dumber, just younger and sillier. This made him consider wisdom, the only mental stat listed with a lower number in brackets. Human(child) and 52(14) implied a relation. But he would define wisdom as built-up knowledge. Something like life experience or accumulated learning. Not maturity or emotional stability. Maybe if he increased his wisdom stat it would give him more wisdom about the meaning of the word wisdom. He guessed and hoped that just as this display seemed to be out of an RPG, these statistics were following a game-like logic. Intelligence scaling arcane spells and Wisdom scaling faith magic was a fairly standard way to handle things that he would be happy with. Alien Magic Jesus was great and all, but sadly his wisdom score was too low to pick a build that involved praying to him for help anytime he wanted to do stuff. He wanted to say he didn''t like it. This gave him an inkling of answers to some of his questions but left him with a bunch of new ones. And increasing confidence that the bottom of the answer well was filled with stupid. But the truth was he liked RPGs. RPG systems applied to real-life sounded fun to him, he was interested to see what was possible with them. If whoever set this up could right this moment answer all his questions with ''I dunno, seemed like it would be cool'' then that was something he could truly get on board with. Ok, Alien Magic Jesus, let''s make a deal. I like RPGs. You like RPGs. This whole thing is kinda exciting. So I''m gonna go with it and just enjoy the game-like magic system you set up. And in return, if you have some longwinded nonsensical excuse for it beyond ''sounded cool at the time'', don''t come tell me about it. Add a skip dialogue magic, lots of games have them now so people can avoid listening to dumbass lore. Although, thinking that makes me wonder how the lore would go. Long ago at the start of time, the first ones were born of the stars. Few in number, and the only beings in existence, they quickly grew tired of life. Their king, Mightbeard, called on his greatest mage tooloo''g''tat, to solve the problem. Together with the rest of the starlord council, they filled the universe with life and created many humanoid races to rule over as immortal gods. However, this angered the ancients, who had existed long before the age of the first ones. They granted chosen humanoids the power of dark matter. Those who wielded dark matter were cursed by reality itself and became known as N.O.M.A.D.S. Unfortunately, this had been Mightbeard''s plan all along. He was in love with reality and ordered the humanoids to hunt down the N.O.M.A.D.S. in order to gain her affection. Mightbeard married reality, who he named Charlotte, and she gave birth to his son, BigBang2. Mightbeard was getting old, and he declared BigBang2 to be his heir. Greg, the first son of Mightbeard, was jealous of BigBang2 and betrayed his father. He revealed that he was a spy for the space pirates guild and then teamed up with Shadow, queen of the ancients. They lay siege to Mightbeards starcastle, Neo New York for a thousand star years, blockading it to starve Mightbeard of the source of his power, beard juice. tooloo''g''tat, on the run from space pirate hunter zombies, traveled back in time on his hyperbike to the desert planet htrae. In ancient ruins beneath the surface, he discovered a statis device containing the beautiful human princess, Jane Doe. Jane revealed to tooloo''g''tat that every time a choice was made a new dimension was added to the infinite realms of the multiverse. However, htrae was actually the planet earth and was from the prime dimension. The only way to stop the war was to defeat the evil ruler of the prime dimension, Beardmight. Beardmight was the prime version of Mightbeard and had actually been posing as Mightbeards court jester the entire time. Beardmight''s only weakness was his love of earth computer games, specifically RPGs. In order to defeat Beardmight, they needed to change magic throughout the multiverse to reflect his favorite game- Shut up Alien Magic Jesus! Shut up! Shut up! Shut up! "Anne. Anne! Will you tell me what is happening with you? I thought you were excited to come out today? You certainly begged me enough times to take you." Daniel bristled at the mostly true word begged. Then he realised they were outside again and his usually gentle mum was sounding annoyed. "I got distracted playing at making a stupid backstory for the world." "Well, you were quite rude to Addison Doctor. You didn''t respond at all when he was speaking to you."This story originates from a different website. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there. Daniel itched to explore more of the tablet that he was still holding, but she was right. He had talked his way into coming along, but he thought she had caught some of his enthusiasm for the outing. It wasn''t fair on her to just zone out and turn into an unresponsive passenger for the day. Besides which she''d had a limpet grip on his hand the whole time, presumably to make sure he didn''t get lost. Keeping the tablet with him, while pressing buttons with one hand, while being dragged around by a ticked-off mum, did not seem the way to go. Regretfully he let go of the thing again, and then pressed the x button in the corner, resolving to leave it for later as it disappeared. That will come back, right? Right? He shook his head, trying to put it out of his mind for now. "I''m sorry Mum. I didn''t mean to ruin our outing. I''ll pay more attention from now on." "I forgive you, poppet. Now come on, we''re not done yet, and most of the shops close an hour after lunch," his mum said, her expression softening as she raised an arm in the same salute from before. "Let''s go!" "Let''s go!" Daniel replied as they set out again. "Wait that was the doctors? I thought it was a shop?" "You don''t sell healing sweetheart. What if someone had no money?" "But how does that work? If he doesn''t sell, how does the doctor get paid?" "The town takes care of him. That''s why we have your grandfather." "Hmm." That sounded fine to Daniel but he couldn''t help but be a little skeptical about the objectivity of Mum''s perspective. They visited three more stores in the time they had left, the first being a clothing store where they barely had any clothes. The woman seemed like she was holding back when she corrected Daniel that the place was not called a clothing store but a tailor. He thought she might be going easy because of their connection to grandfather, but then remembered that people generally didn''t start shouting at little girls. A group that he technically might be considered a part of if you were a moron. Next was a book store if you could call it that. Daniel would not since their idea of selling books to children was to tell them they shouldn''t read until after they got done with their education. Which seemed foolish to Daniel as both a teaching strategy and a sales pitch. Like the clothing store, they didn''t seem much for displaying goods or enticing customers. The business model was more based on taking orders, with Mum leaving an order at the tailor and picking one up for Dad at the bookstore. The last shop was a food store. Daniel''s idea of a place selling food here would have been a farmer''s market out in the open air of the square. This was closer to a deli. It was all prepared foods, so snacks he guessed. Mum supported this by buying an apple tart she said was a gift for her friend they were supposed to be visiting. Daniel was starting to think that they had been doing a tour of specialty shops for rich people. Mum had mentioned a food hall where everyone went for their meals, which made Daniel question the need for a shop like this. He would expect fantasy poor people to be half-starved, not buying junk food to eat in between their grandfather-supplied meals. "Do all the shopkeepers work for the town like the doctor?" he asked his mother as they left the square and she started to pull Daniel back up the hill. Daniel let himself be pulled, being tired since he didn''t normally walk around this much. "Everyone works for the town. We all pitch in together to make life nicer for all of us." "So Grandfather is their boss?" "Yes you could say that." "So I''m their boss?" Mum laughed at that. "You could say that, sweetheart. But I''m your boss, so don''t be rude to the townspeople." "Yes boss," Daniel responded dejectedly. Mum laughed again. "Come on Agnes will be waiting for us." When they arrived at the small house in the uptown area, Agnes met them at the door. She was a tall woman with long brown hair and warm hazel eyes. She was also visibly pregnant but not yet in the end stages of waddling. "Hello, Laura I''m glad you came. And this must be Anne. It''s very nice to meet you, Anne. Come on both of you this way." Leading them into the house, she stopped at one door and then opened it and called inside. "Ellory, come and meet my friend''s daughter." A young boy appeared from the room and stood next to his mother. He was maybe a couple of years older than Daniel, was quite a bit taller, and had sticky-out ears. Apart from that, he took after his mother, who rested her hand on top of his head and started playing with his hair. "Anne, this is my son Ellory," she said. "Since you are both the same age you will be going to church together in the spring. I hope you can become good friends like your mother and me." Daniel cautiously met Ellory''s gaze, annoyed that they were the same age. Am I short? He tried to tell himself that it was too early to tell, before noticing a similar height gap between the two mothers. Are we short? Daniel reminded himself he didn''t need height since he had high agility. Perhaps he couldn''t remember the exact value anymore, and perhaps he had no baseline for comparison, but that didn''t mean he needed to let some overgrown slowpoke intimidate him. Agility was a stat, height was not, ergo Daniel was superior according to Alien Magic Jesus. Ellory rudely hadn''t said anything and was returning Daniel''s glare with a guarded expression. Mum sighed, confusing Daniel until he realised that while he was clearly above Ellory, she was still losing out to Agnes. Inspecting both mums, he made a startling discovery. Agnes had her hair hiding her ears! "Aha!" Daniel cried out. How sad! An entire family of jug-eared beanpoles, embarrassed by their low agility scores. Tactfully, Daniel decided to wait until later to let his mother know. "Maybe we should keep going Agnes," Mum spoke up after a moment''s silence. "Alright. Ellory you go on now, go find your father," Agnes told him with a sigh, and then led Daniel and his mum into a different room with a small table and some chairs. They all sat down and Agnes soon had Daniel set up with a slice of the tart Mum had brought and some milk. "Sorry about that Agnes." "Nono, that''s just how Ellory is, and you told me that Anne was shy with other kids so I should have known better." Daniel disagreed with that but it was complicated and he was busy with tart. He felt a hand stroke his hair and looked up to see it was Agnes and she was gazing wistfully at him. "She''s a little Laurakin. I''m so jealous of you with two daughters. All I get is three sons and another on the way." "I''m actually expecting another one as well. Although it''ll be a while till we know the sex, we just went to see Addison today." "Addison? Doesn''t Frederick come to visit you when you call for him?" "He does, but what do you think he did when he found out Beatrix was going to be a girl?" "I don''t know." "He left the room to go tell my father-in-law the news before he told me." "Oh dear lord that man. His brother is the same way. But still, I''m surprised, I mean, another one? already?" Daniel snorted at that, having finished stuffing his face. That''s what he had said. Unfortunately, that only drew their attention his way. "You know Anne, if you wanted to I''m sure my boys would be happy to have you go and play with them," Agnes said cautiously. Daniel made a humming noise as he thought about that. It didn''t really appeal to him much. "That''s only if you want to, you are welcome to stay here with us if you want." "Actually there was something I wanted to do if you don''t mind?" Daniel said, looking between the two women. This might be a good opportunity, assuming this time he could avoid his imagination running wild and distracting him again. "Of course, we won''t mind, darling. Tell us what it is," Agnes nodded encouragingly "Well...can I go sit over in the corner and stare at the wall for a bit without being bothered?" "Err..is she...?" Agnes stuttered "Go on then sweetheart," his mum agreed fondly. Chapter 7 Status. A thought occurred to Daniel as he sat in the corner. It was that stats could be trained. In some way that was what he had been doing already. Trying to increase his flexibility and coordination could be why agility was his highest stat. He would need to keep at it and watch for a while to see if it would go up. He was also spending increasing amounts of time indulging in random flights of fancy. Would that be wisdom training? Maybe more like silliness training? Perhaps his wisdom would go down instead. Reaching out to press the screen on the Skills tab, he intuitively stopped himself. This was a mind tablet correct? His mum couldn''t see it or be touched by it. Turning around he waved across the room with the hand holding the tablet. Agnes waved back smiling. Some sort of mental spell construct. He mentally envisioned the tab being pressed, and the screen switched to a skills display. I''m a genius! That''s why they call me Mr 72 intelligence!
Racial: Human(Child)?? Profession General Extra
Aberration Blessing of the Pristine Mind
Immature(4/15)
Individualist
Common Language
"Huh." He flicked through the other tabs with his mind. Domain was an empty screen. Log seemed to list him gaining the entries from the Skills tab. But there was one part right at the start which stood out. > Blessing of the Pristine Mind gained. > Innocence resisted. Aberration gained. > Immature gained. Aberration was the only skill on the same line as another, implying to Daniel that he got it as a consolation prize after resisting Innocence. Moving on, he checked the Notes tab and found a blank screen with a blinking cursor. Just what he needed, a chance to start a diary. Trying it out, he found it fairly intuitive to transcribe his thoughts, and wrote ''Stop reading this it''s private!''. Going back to the Skills tab, he started mentally clicking on the underlined sections, assuming that let him see more. Profession and General both took him to another empty screen. Maybe he needed to find a job so he could get profession skills? Was there no young layabout profession? Idiot dreamer? Disciple of Mightbeard? Alien Magic Jesus sure was stingy. He went back to the Log tab and started checking skills from the list. Clicking on each one brought up a little popup window on the screen with a brief description. > Blessing of the Pristine Mind: Immunity to mental manipulation. Daniel was happy to accept such a blessing. If people had access to mind control magic or something similar then he was very pleased to not have to experience it personally. He had a pretty severe aversion to manipulation in his past life. He felt he was pretty good at spotting when he was dealing with a manipulative type of person also. One of the benefits of his previous upbringing. Was that why he had gotten the blessing or was it just a coincidence? It was first on the log, so if he was reading this correctly he got it before the other skills which were all under Racial. Which implied he got the blessing before he was a human somehow. > Innocence: Protected Status. When killed by a sapient creature, causes them a large amount of experience loss. This was the skill he had ''resisted'' and the first racial skill he had got. Two things came to mind. Maybe Innocence counted as mental manipulation so his blessing let him resist it. Which would make the skill sketchy as hell since it didn''t mention anything like that. Since obviously ''a large amount'' was missing some detail, what else might be left out? The other option was he didn''t get it because he still had memories of his past life. He wouldn''t describe himself as an innocent when he was born here after all. But then he wouldn''t call that ''resisting'' innocence either, it was more like he had run out of the stuff. It made him question the terminology being used. A lot of RPG terms like resist have different very specific and technical meanings for different games. > Aberration: Protected Status. When killed by a creature, grants a large amount of bonus experience. Uh-oh. That was the replacement for Innocence Even more sketchy. Alert! Does not compute! Designation: Aberration! Somebody, please kill this horrible thing! It was interesting that sapient was missing here. Did that exempt animals? He wasn''t sure about the definition maybe it referred to boulders or trees falling on people. The innocent must be protected, except from animals who must be protected from Innocence. How charming, we have a real bunch of animal lovers here. Unfortunately, Daniel had somehow got the wrong skill as a baby and they were offering a reward for getting rid of him. Which was slightly less charming. To Daniel, granting bonus experience on death was really leaning into the whole game-like aspect. He wondered if there were alternative options from games that existed in the magic system here. Perhaps a golden shower of money smacking you on the top of the head when you got done with your daily child-murdering. Or maybe he could explode into a puff of rainbow smoke and a bunch of useful items. What sort of loot would Daniel drop he wondered? A bunch of blood and organs would be the most straightforward answer. Free transplants for everyone how generous of me!If you encounter this narrative on Amazon, note that it''s taken without the author''s consent. Report it. > Immature: Level tied to age. Reduced statistics while developing. This had (4/15) next to it on the skills page, but not in the log. A quick bit of mental math told him that his theory of his stats being at four-fifteenths checked out. And since he was four years old now, there was the implication that he would ''level up'' each year on his birthday until he was fifteen. So his stats were reduced to the number in brackets next to them? But intelligence and wit were unaffected, presumably due to his blessing. That would mark dumber and slower as mental manipulation but low wisdom as not. The problem with this theory was that would mean his wisdom had started at nothing and was working its way back up. He could somewhat picture how that could result in him starting as a wreck and slowly improving as he got older. But what about his increasingly frequent turns as a childlike moron with an overactive imagination? Instead of something to blame on low wisdom, was he simply enjoying being childish? No, it couldn''t be. If that was true he would have to start taking personal responsibility for his actions again. There must be hidden stats that Alien Magic Jesus was using to mess with him. > Individualist: Unique Status interface. Reduced benefits and restrictions from Domains. So individualist had individualised his status interface? Look Mr. Tablet they are talking about you! And then afterward something about stuff he had no context for. The real problem he had with this was the name of the thing, It was back to his problem with an Intelligence score. Is this supposed to be a description of who I am as a person? He had a vague understanding that the term Individualist came with a broader political concept that had its own connotations. Connotations he''d rather avoid being involved with. Oh, you are an Individualist? That means you support genocide and hate puppies. He could see where the term applied to him but if it came with some wider theory or membership in a movement then no thank you. In that case, he''d rather just be left alone and do his own thing. > Common Language: Assistance with common communication. And last but not least is the special reward for the grand achievement of reaching level two. How was that not mental manipulation though? Both mechanically and the fact that you were filtering everyone''s speech through your translation software. Oh, it''s not manipulation when my system does it, because the system is fair and unbiased. Shut up Magic Alien Jesus you are full of it. But what does all this mean? Daniel wondered, trying to step back and take a look at the bigger picture. Switching to the Notes tab, he wrote ''What does all this mean?'' Very useful. He added several more question marks, and then an exclamation point in order to reach peak usefulness. Status. The tablet went away. Status. It came back. He started to write a list of questions. ''What is a Domain?'' ''What racial skills do other people have?'' ''What is the range of human stat values?'' ''How do I get more skills?'' ''Can I train my stats?'' ''What''s the deal with Blessings?'' Dunno, dunno, dunno, dunno, dunno, and dunno. Aberration left him slightly worried about asking questions that implied knowledge he had gotten from his status. He was going to have to wait and see for a lot of this. Watch if his hobbies were doing anything, observe what changed on his fifth birthday, and then hopefully get some answers when school started. "Urk!" "Is she alright?" "Yes, she does that sometimes. It''s best not to notice." That blessing might be a problem. The word ''blessing'' implied it came from someone or somewhere. Might not be too smart to ask about it in a place where schooling was done by ''The Church'' He did not want to get whisked off as a blessed child to a holy mountain where he could spend the rest of his life communing with Alien Magic Jesus. And even that was putting aside the possibility of revealing he had a blessing from Lord Mightbeard while in the church of Dark Lord Beardmight. He''d need to upgrade from slightly to mildly worried. Status. Finished with his musings, Daniel was instantly exasperated that his mother wasn''t done yet. He stomped his way back across the room and sat down between Agnes and his Mum. "Your mum has been telling me that you decided on your own to help look after your sister," Agnes said, pushing a new slice of tart Daniel''s way. He nodded, focusing on the food. "That''s nice of you. I can''t imagine my boys helping with this new one without having to ask them." "Are you looking forward to that one?" Daniel asked between mouthfuls since she had brought it up. "Oh yes of course I am, I may complain but at the end of the day I love my sons," she replied with a smile. "Just don''t get too far from your mother while you are here or I might just snatch you up for myself." "You shouldn''t be. Looking forward I mean," Daniel said, swallowing. "Anne! That''s not a very nice thing to say," Mum chided. Daniel leaned closer to Agnes and confided to her in a whisper. "Babies are lumps. Useless!" Then he went back to eating. With three kids already, Agnes should have known better. But that''s the problem with spending all your stat points on big ears and extra knees. Nothing to spare for agility or smarts. Eventually, it was time to go. As they were on their way out, a probable Agnes husband holding a cloth-wrapped bundle appeared. "Laura," he said "Since you are here would you mind taking this? It''s wine again from my uncle for your father-in-law. With his thanks, he says." "...I don''t know," Mum hesitated, and then turned to glance at Daniel with a worried expression. "Please? You''d be saving me the bother," he wheedled. "There''s no point in me walking there alongside you just to deliver this" "Alright then give it here." As they walked away from the house, Daniel was contemplating the right timing to speak up about Agnes''s ears, when Mum turned around to face him. "I''ll give this to your grandfather later. So could you please not mention it in front of your father?" Daniel froze, both his movement and the blood in his veins. What was this? Even in this wierdoland, would people explain to a four-year-old the context behind asking them to help hide things from their father? They would not. If Daniel had to choose between his parents he would pick his mother. In his whole new life, he had spent the majority of his time with her. They had even been together for a year before he had really been aware of other people. But that didn''t mean he wanted to choose. And this? The look on mum''s face, the tone of her voice. One lie would snowball into many. This was the start of disaster childhood, take two. His impression of the question crystallised into ice down his spine. He was being asked to choose sides. He knew his choice, and he didn''t want to make it. He looked down at his feet, his hands balling into fists at his side, unable to answer. He felt tears welling up, as they held a long moment of silence out there on the street. Then a memory came to him, a day in a garden, and he looked up to meet his mother''s gaze. "I don''t want to betray him." For another long moment, his mother looked at him with wide eyes. Daniel started to feel even worse. He had the scary thought that sometimes, not choosing a side is the same as choosing one. Then she came to herself with a start and whisked around, hurriedly leading him home. Chapter 8 Daniel''s tension only rose as they made it home and went upstairs. His grandparents were there in the living room, with his father off to the side again reading a book. With a deep breath, Mum marched straight to Grandfather and handed him the bundle. "Brian asked me to pass this on to you from his uncle. With his uncle''s thanks." Grandfather raised an eyebrow and then turned toward the sound of a chair scraping backward. "I told you I wouldn''t accept this," Dad said with a quietly menacing tone. He was visibly furious and Daniel could feel himself shrinking back at the sight. "Now Marcus, will you listen this time before you let your temper loose again?" Grandfather answered with a put upon sigh. "And now you''ve involved my family?" "Your family? YOUR FAMILY?" Grandfather shouted, his voice heating up in response to Dad''s anger. Daniel jumped at the sound, and his mother led him over towards the fire out of the way. "What do you think all my work is in aid of, boy? You complain about problems that no one but you is foolish enough to notice. It is past time to grow up and let go of this childishness." "Stop this," Grandmother interrupted, forcing her way between the two men. "If you are going to start shouting, then do it elsewhere." Dad''s eyes rolled wildly at this, his breathing heavy, but he stalked out the door, and Grandfather stomped after him. Grandmother closed the door behind them, then came over to join Daniel and his mother at the fire. Mum was trying to calm Daniel down and stop him from shaking. When had he become such a coward? Was it even possible as a child to stay calm when giant adult men start shouting? The noise had skipped his consciousness and went straight to triggering a panic response. There were a lot of obvious excuses but he could not easily accept them. His mother comforting him was helping, but his reliance on her also made Daniel more frustrated with himself. Shouting started up again, this time muffled since it was coming from somewhere downstairs. Daniel was starting to calm down at least in comparison to before until he noticed his mum''s unease. Her visibly increasing tension was contagious to Daniel, and he moved over to sit on her lap. At this point, he wasn''t sure which one was doing the comforting and which was being comforted. From his perspective, his parents had appeared mature for their ages. His mum was twenty-three years old with two kids and one more on the way. That was a stark contrast with himself at that age. But looking at it from another angle, they also lived with their parents. Or in-laws, in his mum''s case. What sort of consequences might be waiting for her if his grandfather took offense to her actions? It wasn''t as if there were no worst-case scenarios where Daniel''s own life could take a significant turn for the worse. Eventually, the shouting stopped and was followed by a slamming door and then a lone set of footsteps coming back up the stairs. Grandfather appeared shaking his head, his face still flushed. As he approached them, Daniel stiffened up, realising all over again how terrifying angry adults could be. "He''s gone to walk it off. He''ll be back when he calms down." Mum stood up as he approached, turning around and depositing Daniel in the chair she was leaving. "I''m sorry Father. I didn''t want to start trouble" "But you did," Grandfather responded after a pause, his face a mask. "I would not have expected you to bring things out into the open like that. So why did you?" "I...I was not going to at first," Mum started hesitantly "I was going to hide it till later. But when I told Anne to not mention it, she said she didn''t want to betray her father, and I.. it made me think I could do better." With a deep breath, she continued, picking up conviction as she went "I am sorry. I owe you a lot. But I have to support my husband before I worry about upsetting you." "Ha!" Grandfather barked out a single exhalation of pent-up breath. Then his expression softened as he turned to look at Daniel "She didn''t want to betray her father," he mused while shaking his head. "Just like my idiot son at her age." Grandmother laughed at that. "Listen to me, both of you" Grandfather started, surprising Daniel by reaching out one hand to Mum''s shoulder and the other to Daniel''s head. "Family always comes first. My grandfather taught me that. Marcus might argue with me about some things, but that much at least he had always known. I''m glad to know you two are the same. At least I have one side of the family keeping our traditions." "I''d settle for Rory even giving us grandkids, no matter what he would end up teaching them," Grandmother added "Another idiot son. Maybe I should have Anne here take over when I get too old." Daniel perked up at that, almost giddy with relief and rebounding quickly. Aha! You fools! My evil empire starts here! "I''d be great at running a town." He would be too. There was game magic here, and he had played games with town management elements. He could click a box marked ''increase taxes'' that should be good enough to make him an expert. "Oh, you would?" Grandfather responded, sounding amused. "But it''s not just the town, girl. Could you handle a bunch of farmers arguing over land?" "Of course, I could," Daniel said with confidence. He knew the answer to this one. "Kill them all! Burn the farms to the ground!" "Maybe you should stick with Henry for now," Mum said. Traitor! You''ll pay for this!
Dad didn''t return before Daniel went to sleep, but he was back the next day. Grandfather''s eventual calm of last night had been replaced with barely contained frustration, and Dad was stiffly ignoring this reaction. But Daniel heard no signs of it bubbling over into a shouting match again. He wanted to understand more of the details but shied away from bringing it up again. He had always known his family was keeping some things from him. What family wouldn''t keep things from a little kid? He didn''t believe it was being done with malice towards him at least. But in the wake of his visit downtown, he spent the next few weeks trying to reassess some of his assumptions. His status, and especially aberration, had his caution ramping back up. Schooling was going to be a minefield he was sure of it, but that didn''t mean he couldn''t find one to step on early if he wasn''t careful. He needed to avoid actions that might come across as a reaction to his status. This included changing his behavior too much or asking questions prompted by the knowledge he shouldn''t have.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. One of the first things to come under review was his understanding of how their home worked. He didn''t think it was too much of a stretch to explore more, and he was old enough to have that much freedom. He really felt he should have done more of this already. After exploring the house and outside in its entirety, it felt strangely small to him. Larger than the nearby houses, and the only one with a garden, it failed to match up to fictional comparisons. Somehow his mind wanted to categorise it as a minuscule mansion instead of a big townhouse. He found out that the kitchen was bigger and busier than he had thought, and many of the morning people ate lunch and breakfast here. He also discovered that one of the outbuildings on the grounds contained a large communal laundry for washing clothing, and another was some sort of storage where people picked up cleaning supplies in the morning. Apparently, those he had thought were servants coming in during the mornings to clean were more like some sort of roving cleaner squad that did multiple houses. Mum''s comments about the downtown food halls made him think they were trying to do something along the same lines. Something like a kind of community centre, not that Daniel had ever been in one of those. The idea fed into the consequences of skills. Did the cleaning squad contain someone with a level 1000 dust removal skill? What would such a person be capable of? He could certainly see that leading to more specialisation of jobs. Looking back, there were a number of odd comments about activities that might involve a skill that now held a different meaning. That was possible evidence of a gap in the auto-translate, for him to misunderstand things in that way. Worryingly, he saw the chance that it was a gap created by his blessing. That could make for another way for him to give away potentially dangerous information. Another thing he considered was the probable meanings behind the existence of the profession section in the skills tab. Was uncle Henry a scribe or a Scribe? He remembered some people being referred to by their professions in slightly strange ways, and this could be another place he was missing the hidden significance of words. He really wanted to know what the hell kind of profession a Landtrust was? Someone explain without him having to ask! He desperately needed school to include examples of other people''s status. Daniel''s fifth birthday eventually showed up. At the same point in the afternoon as before, he felt a shift, and following up with his status showed his stats having increased by one-fifteenth. Ding! Level up! Someone tell me grats in guild chat, please. More interesting was a new racial skill. He had expected something related to magic, and the one he got could maybe apply to that, but was more general in scope: > Guidance gained. > Guidance: Ability to acquire guidance skills. Daniel added ''What is a guidance skill'' to his list of dunno questions. A few days later he was messing around with his tablet, and he found three new skills in the log which hadn''t been there before. > Eldritch Flexibility learned. > Basic Juggling learned. > Eldritch Running learned. A quick search showed they weren''t on the main Skills tab but were in the separate pages for both general and profession from that tab. And there they all had level 1 next to them in brackets, and could not be interacted with. Again he was missing online definition searches. Online dictionary learned, please? Hello? Alien Magic Jesus are you there? Daniel defined Eldritch as something vaguely to do with scary space tentacle monsters. Adding to that would be weird strange knowledge or beings from outside reality. Did remembering a youtube video about improving your running form count as scary outsider knowledge of running? He guessed it did. He noted that he had flexibility, instead of eldritch stretching or yoga. Although thinking about it, yoga was eldritch stretching. Perhaps it was because he had been trying to train his flexibility and not his stretching. But then the same could be said about coordination and juggling to some extent. His skills not being on the main tab made him think they weren''t selected or turned on. He certainly couldn''t feel a difference from them, but maybe he could level them up? He thought it was significant that he only had skills for the three things he had decided to train. He considered trying to add to the roster but ultimately held off. Schooling wasn''t too far off now, and he was probably good without adding more space tentacle effects. Another few weeks and Beatrix''s birthday came and went. She evolved from a level 0 crying lump into a level 1 crawling doofus. Daniel gave communicating a go just in case and was rewarded with a goofy grin. One distinction from Daniel as a one-year-old was the people she was anchored to. Daniel had been chained to his mother and father at that age. Beatrix was the same but also added Daniel to that list. Unfortunately, he was starting to suspect that she was a reincarnated doggy, and having her try to follow him around like one didn''t help. The day after her birthday came an announcement that Dad would be leading a portion of the guard to the border in the spring. The revelation gave Daniel a sudden interest in local geopolitics. Apparently, the country to the east, Lisirrast, was overrun by monsters just over ninety years ago. Who were these monsters you might ask? Orcs? Dragons? Space Pirates? Very bad people? They were a group of ''don''t tell 5-year-olds about this'' type of monster. Daniel assumed this meant horny tentacle monsters killing everyone and then having sex with their corpses because there was no one to stop him from doing so. So the local god, Lord Kyburad, had let people escape into his sanctuary, which was the country Laston was in and which coincidentally had developed a monster invasion problem on its eastern border. The current population was nearly all descendants of Lisirrast refugees. Daniel took the story with a pinch of salt. A mysterious savior showing up at the last minute to save people from a sudden monster army? That Lord Kyburad sounded an awful lot like an evil mastermind. And if you didn''t like that angle, consider that the royal family of Lisirrast had somehow married into Kyburad''s line. This meant that the current King of Kyburad''s Sanctuary was actually a god-king, and therefore super-duper in charge. All because of our Lord and Saviour God Kyburad, who conveniently never seemed to actually show up in a place called Kyburad''s Sanctuary. It was probably bad to treat the real world like guessing the plot twist in a movie, but Daniel was just an innocent little kid so he didn''t have to know better. As spring and schooling finally came close, Daniel thought it was time to accept some disappointing truths. Apart from his birthday, his stats had not changed in all this time. His ''hobbies'' were not helping. His skills were presumably inactive, and more importantly, were not leveling up. He was reminded of two sayings, the first was ''Hard work pays off'' which clearly did not apply when Magic Alien Jesus got to have a say about it. The second was ''When in Rome, do as the Romans do'' He could remember thinking his family was a bit lazy previously, but now it made more sense. Who wants to exercise in a world where your stats are locked and your skills don''t level? Apparently, Daniel did. The day after deciding he was wasting time, he remembered he had time to waste. If anything it made things more enjoyable, since the pressure was off. Take that Alien Magic Jesus I don''t need your approval! Chapter 9 "I can''t believe it''s already time for Anne to start going to church," Carissa said "I know it seems too soon," Mum agreed. Tomorrow was the first day of school. Inevitably, this had been brought up and even Grandfather seemed to be taking notice. "Anne." he said, "Come here, girl." As Daniel crossed the room, he saw his father glance over, only for Grandfather to wave his attention away with a soothing gesture. When Daniel got close he was grabbed from under the armpits and pulled up into his grandfather''s lap. Other members of the family gathered around them. "Tomorrow, when you start schooling," he started. "I want you to remember that our family runs this town. You should be proud of that. We''ve worked hard to make sure you can be. So I want you to work hard to make sure we can all be proud of you as well. Can you do that for me?" "I will," Daniel replied after a pause. "Good!" Grandfather barked, his face splitting into a wide grin. "And when you''re sure you have managed that, I want you to rub it in those stuffy priests'' faces. Like this!" He ducked his head forwards, scraping his bristly beard back and forth along Daniel''s cheek. Daniel squawked in shock and then struggled to escape. But he was smiling as his grandfather finally relented and let him go. Daniel stood there awkwardly, his hand on his reddened cheek, as the others joined in with Grandfather''s booming laughter. "The same joke again? He did that to all my kids already" Carissa said. "He did that to Marcus," Grandmother responded. "And whatever you do, make sure you forget everything Rory ever told you!" Henry added in his own advice, prompting more laughter. "That''s a waste," Rory disagreed, "I swear Zachery went easy on me every time I said I was a goblin, not a kid." "And look how you turned out thanks to that!" Daniel returned across the room, his mother reaching out an arm around his shoulders from where she was sitting. Rory soon followed after. "It''s true though please don''t bring up Landtrust to the priests," he asked quietly, "I don''t think Zachery would be willing to still accept the same excuse." Daniel looked to his mother, who nodded, so he turned and nodded acceptance to Rory.
Morning came, and Daniel excitedly woke up earlier than normal. Dad was in charge of walking him to school, apparently due to some tradition, with Mum tearfully waving goodbye from the front gate. Daniel again wanted to ask about the argument but felt hesitancy holding him back. Like the coward he was turning into, he settled for an oblique reference. "So Grandfather give you the same advice when you were a boy?" Daniel asked. His father kept silent but seemed to be thinking, so Daniel waited. "Your grandfather said to become someone your family could be proud of," he eventually answered, "I just wanted to be proud of myself. To live up to my own principles. I think that''s the difference between us." Daniel in turn took his time to solemnly ponder his response. First days at school sure make people want to try their hand at coming up with profound advice. You guys should calm down, it''s for five-year-olds, it''s only kindergarten -oh shit it''s for five-year-olds, I''ve been expecting answers about magic, and I''m going to learn what sound a cow goes! "You said wanted? Are you proud now?" "So far," Dad answered, then grinned, suddenly resembling Grandfather with the expression. As they reached the road leading downhill, Dad turned and bent down slightly, showing Daniel his back. "Your grandfather loves his traditions. Now come on get on." Daniel failed to see how those two things were related. Besides, there are people here you know this is embarrassing! Hoping to get things over with quickly, Daniel jumped on. His Dad pulled his legs into a piggyback ride and set off at a run down the hill. Daniel was soon both laughing and scared out of his tiny little mind. The hill was steep and Dad was fast. Too fast. Was this a running skill in action? When they reached the bottom and he got down, Daniel found he was more out of breath than his dad was. Looking back up the slope, he could see Ellory and his father, who they must have passed coming down. "Another tradition?" "One he told me to keep going when I had kids of my own." Well, that''s one tradition I won''t be continuing. I''m too short now to be giving piggyback rides. And I wouldn''t be the Dad anyway. Oh, dear lord children and a dad and I don''t want to think about this anymore lalalalalalala! They headed towards the market, Daniel realising on the way he didn''t know where this church was supposed to be. As they approached the red border on the ground, they turned to the side towards a tiny building with a man in white robes waiting next to it. There was children entering, but he wasn''t sure how they fit inside since the building was only as wide as the door and only a few meters long. As they rounded the door, Daniel looked in to see stairs leading down. The church is a subway station? "Hello, Nicholas." "Marcus, it''s a pleasure to see you again. And this is your daughter? She must be new." "Anne. She is." Nicholas laughed at this, although Daniel didn''t know why. Dad smiled in response but didn''t speak. "Fatherhood suits you, I think. Go on inside, Anne, keep going straight and follow the others and there''ll be someone to take care of you at the end." Daniel glanced at his father, who nodded. "I''ll be here to take you home when you are done." Daniel started down the stairs, thinking about the advice he had been given by his family. Be worthy of pride. He remembered something about setting an example when he was younger as well. How did he do that? Stand up straight and look people in the eyes when talking to them? He had naturally been doing that anyway. It was a lot easier to accomplish when you weren''t spending all your time hunched over a screen and never talking to anyone. And who was it that he was supposed to impress exactly? It was hard to impress teachers while also avoiding giving the game away by speaking to them. Impressing the other kids just felt like bullying. From his memory of being one twice, kids judged themselves by comparison with others of their own age group. He''d be handing out complexes left and right, and help them grow up into a bunch of followers, a personality type he was not fond of. But maybe that would be counted as a good thing in terms of Laston prestige. He thought instead that Dad had it right, it was time to impress himself with himself. Job done, I''m already impressed, let''s go home.The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. The stairs turned a corner halfway down, and there was an arch at the bottom which transitioned the building into a familiar red and white material. Daniel connected the dots and guessed they were beneath the market square. Was that whole thing the roof of the church? He followed the other kids until he reached a hall that was a meeting point of several streams from different directions. There were slightly older kids arriving and then leaving via other exits, but the youngsters including Daniel were filtered out by a young priest and sent off to one side out of the way of the traffic. He noticed Ellory standing out from the group due to his height. Checking the others, Daniel found himself to be about average height, not that he''d been worried about it. Next to him was a slightly shorter girl, with straight black hair and a nervous expression, who kept sending glances in his direction. Sighing mentally, Daniel decided to get things over with. "Hello," Daniel started. "Hi." "I''m Anne." "Me too," "...I''m Anne Laston." "Me too." Daniel was dumbfounded. Was that enough effort to preserve the family pride? Because he was tired of socialising with kids already. "Anne," another girl broke in, this one with curly brown hair, and was dumbfounded in turn when Daniel turned to her. "...no not you...I...come here Anne," she said, dragging the other girl away with her while whispering loudly enough for Daniel to hear. "You''re not Anne Laston, Anne, you''re Anne of Laston. That''s the Anne Laston. The baron''s granddaughter." The original girl turned back to stare open-mouthed at Daniel. His socialising obligations firmly over, Daniel faced ahead and failed miserably at ignoring her stare. Eventually, the crowds died off and the priest in charge of filtering did a quick headcount. Satisfied, he led them down a set of stairs and along a corridor to a classroom. Inside was a bunch of mats on the floor, and at the front behind a table stood a new, slightly older priest with bushy black eyebrows and graying hair elsewhere. Daniel sat down in a randomly chosen spot near the middle of the room, sure there was a smart place to sit but already losing interest in putting on an act or in keeping a low profile. After a quick exchange of words, the younger priest closed the door and then sat in a chair in the corner. The older priest cleared his throat and started to address the class. "Hello, children, and welcome. Normally, you will be under the care of my good friend Erasmus over in the corner there. However, on some special occasions like today, you may get to deal with me instead. My name is Zachery, and I am the priest in charge of all education here at the Laston Church of our Lord Kyburad. Today, I am here to talk to you about innocence and guidance, and after that Erasmus will be teaching you all your first magic skill. There''s a good amount to go through, but I want you to stay quiet and focus until the end." Daniel was very much interested in learning about innocence and guidance, although he wondered about kids being able to keep focus. It was fine for him, better than ''cow goes moo'' by far, but this was a class of five-year-olds. He doubted their ability to sit quietly and learn until lunchtime. Honestly, he doubted his own ability to do the same if things got too religious. "When you reach fifteen years old and become an adult, you will be able to learn new skills and gain a profession. Before that point, you will be protected by the racial skill Innocence. Innocence will protect you from physical harm, and will hide your status from those who might use it to exploit your future." Zachery paused, holding up his hand for a moment in a placating gesture. "What I have just said is demonstrable fact. What I am about to say is instead the beliefs of myself and the other priests who work here. For what comes next, we have faith, but not proof. It is up to each of you to decide for yourself whether you wish to share our beliefs or not." "The soul is the essence of a living being. A person''s body may die, but their soul, their core, lives on and is eventually reincarnated in a new body to live again. Those who are reincarnated here, in Kyburad Sanctuary, have been chosen out of all the countless souls in the world, as the ones most worthy of our Lord''s protection. Our Lord Kyburad loves and cherishes each of you specifically, and so he gifted you life in his Sanctuary. Innocence, likewise, is a gift from our Lord God. And even his in His Sanctuary, its protection is necessary." "Let me get to the main reason I have come to speak to you today. Our Lord God wishes for you to be protected, to grow safely, and to have the freedom to choose your future for yourself. If you feel threatened or in danger in any way, come to the church. If you feel pressured in any way, to take up certain skills or jobs, to accept a life picked out for you by another, then come to church. If you need protection, we will fight to the death to provide it, for it is the will of our Lord God Kyburad." "Now, before I move on to guidance, were there any questions, or did anyone have something they didn''t understand?" Daniel looked around, surprised at how quiet and focused everyone was. He was trying not to jump to conclusions too quickly. It seemed the church saw innocence as a divine commandment, something like a tablet brought down from the mountaintop. That made them helpful as long as they thought he had it, but conversely, they would be very bad people to find out about aberration. A question had occurred to him during the speech, and he stuck a hand up in the air, feeling stupid for doing so almost immediately. Good job not sticking out, you lasted a long time! "Yes?" "You said Innocence is a racial skill?" "Yes." "And it comes from Lord Kyburad?" "We believe so, yes." "So all humans get it?" "Yes." "Even the ones outside the Sanctuary?" "Yes. The church praises our Lord as the most merciful of all the Gods. We believe that even far away from the sanctuary, he grants the children his protection." Daniel put his hand down and the priest moved on when there were no other questions. "Good. Now above us in the centre of the market square, is an obelisk that is a status stone. As an adult, the obelisk can be used to view your status. Adults often use this status as a guide to help make decisions such as picking certain skills or a profession. Children however cannot do this, since innocence hides their status for their protection, and they also cannot learn normal skills at all. That is where guidance comes in, as well as guidance stones like this one." He held up a small disk of tessellating red and white shapes, reminiscent in pattern to Daniel of some sort of radiation or hazard sign. "Guidance allows children to learn guidance versions of other skills. These do not normally have much effect, but they allow children to spend their time practicing for the future if they so wish. Guidance stones allow limited access to the status of children relating to guidance skills and are generally used to help with teaching. For example, a guidance stone would let you know you have learned a new skill. This is particularly useful with passive skills. You may rest assured, that children are prevented from being exploited with the use of guidance, both by our beliefs and the skill itself. Now, are there any more questions? Or shall I leave you to the care of Erasmus?" Daniel stuck his hand up again. "Yes?" "You said guidance skills are for practicing?" "Yes, that is a way that can be used." "Can they be improved by practice then?" Zachery paused and turned to share a glance with Erasmus. "They can, but your teacher will cover that with you on another day. Is that all?" Daniel nodded, feeling that he should have stopped several questions earlier. He was probably jumping at shadows, but he didn''t like that glance. He found himself impressed again by the attentiveness of the others. He did not see the material of this lecture as being at a five-year-old level. There had been a normal display of childish fidgeting before class but they had really buckled down. It almost made him feel bad for assuming he could be bullying the others if he seriously competed with them. He was pleased and amused that respecting innocence seemed to require them to put caveats into their religious indoctrination. But was there not a conflict between not interfering in a child''s future and bringing a bunch of them down in your basement to make them learn a skill. And unless he was misunderstanding what was said, that was not the only hole in what was said. If ''innocence is gods will'' equals ''enforce its protection no matter the cost'' then shouldn''t the church be outside the sanctuary somewhere chanting Deus vult. There must be a child workshop in some part of the world for them to declare a crusade against. And he wondered about what child exploitation would look like here. There was an implication that not everyone''s status was created equal if some were to be taken advantage of, although he knew that much already. Chapter 10 With Zachery finished, he left and Erasmus took his place and started to speak. "Hello children, my name is Erasmus, and today I will be teaching the magic skill Flame of Kyburad to those who would like to learn it. So first I would like you to stand up, and I want you to hold your left hand out in front of you- no away from your face. Since this is a guidance version of the skill, you can''t hurt anybody with it. But it is a good idea for you to get used to thinking about the position of your hand before you use the skill, so you don''t have an accident when you become an adult. Alright now watch me first." He held out his hand as he had told the others, and a flame appeared there, similar to the one Dad had shown to Daniel. "This is the magic skill named Flame of Kyburad. Now, this might sound a bit strange, but I want you to clearly think the name of the skill in your-" Flame of Kyburad. "-mind, and when you do you should experience a gap in your mind, underneath the words. I want you to push your senses into that gap, to fill it entirely until you understand its dimensions. You should pay special attention to the bottom of the gap, as that is normally the most complex part." Daniel was already standing with a small flame in his hand, having skipped to the end as soon as he saw where things were going. Was it that easy, did you just need the name? What were some common spell names he could try out? He started to raise his free hand to point toward his teacher but stopped himself halfway. He really was growing up if he could resist fireballing the nearest priest in the face. He inspected the flame in his hand. It was nothing much, the sort of size you would get from a lighter, and it gave off no heat. He found he could move it with his mind, similar to how he had been flicking between screens with his tablet. He could also move it somewhat just by turning his hand back and forth. It would always point straight upwards like a normal flame, and if he flipped his hand upside down the flame would slide around it, moving to the top side. However he moved it, it was always attached to his skin, flowing through his clothes and ignoring their existence. And it had a travel time, even flicking with his mind it would take a second to move from one finger to the other. "Good, Anne," the teacher told him as he passed, apparently checking individually how people were getting on "Very good." There had been more talking that he had mostly missed while distracted. Something about spending time practicing once you could summon the thing. Flame of Kyburad. The flame disappeared from his palm. Flame of Kyburad. It reappeared on the tip of a finger on his left hand where he had been focusing. He held out his right hand. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. It reappeared on a fingertip of his right hand. No movement but that wasn''t noticeably quicker. He mentally dismissed the flame, imagining himself pressing an X button like the one on his tablet but connected to the flame. It disappeared, but if there was a similar shortcut to resummon it he could not think of one. He sat back down. The class seemed to have turned into individual practice while he was distracted. He smirked and summoned his flame on the tip of his nose. Blinking rapidly, Daniel let out a quiet laugh under his breath. The flame there was insanely hard to ignore, but he felt like giving it a try. He tried to consider the proper way to practice this skill. Practice, when they know about improving skills but won''t tell you till another day. He figured that was actually a good thing. He shouldn''t get too comfortable just taking other people''s word for the best way to do something. After all, he did spend a lot of time either despairing over his own idiocy or convinced that other people were stupid. Could that be the point of this hands-off setup? To encourage people to come up with their own approach? Eventually, he settled on working on the summoning portion. Mapping out that weird gap in his mind each time wasn''t slow, but there was room for improvement. And it was a common element in both of the things he could do. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flickering the thing on and off at the end of his nose was impressively even more distracting. Improvement already! The sides to the mind gap were sheer, but he noticed they weren''t completely uniform. There were thin vertical strips there, which gave an impression of shininess. Something that spoke to being metallic, or akin to a conductor. Conductor of what? who knows? The interpretation felt right to him. But at the same time, the impressions were of bizarre sensations, and guesses built on them felt inherently nonsensical. Somehow while wrapping his brain in knots, his speed at summoning the flame had slightly increased. Having enough of the flickering flame making him crosseyed, he stopped with the summon spam. Status. He intended to check his list of skills for Flame of Kyburad, but on the character sheet was something that distracted him.
Anne Laston Human(child)
??
Age?? 5
Health?? 150
Strength 33(11)
Agility 74(25)
Dexterity 61(20)
Intelligence 72
Wit 67
Wisdom 52
This book is hosted on another platform. Read the official version and support the author''s work. He looked around again at the other kids apparently diligently practicing as well. He was the only one sitting down, something he probably should have noticed earlier. Also, he couldn''t remember any fidgeting since they had come into the classroom. For that matter, he didn''t think any of the kids had even spoken apart from him. But the real stand-out problem screaming in his face was his wisdom of 52 with no brackets. Daniel couldn''t remember a sensation he could attribute to the change, but that didn''t really matter. He thought he had a good idea of what was going on here. Come down into the church basement, boys and girls. Don''t worry we promise not to do anything you don''t agree to. Just sit there and let me use my mind magic on you for a bit. To be fair it wasn''t that bad so far. Some sort of mental buff effect to help with learning wasn''t the most immoral thing that could happen. He didn''t feel like being fair. If it wasn''t a problem, then ask before you did it. Why was his blessing not stopping this? Because it was a positive effect? He had no way of telling if he had resisted part of whatever was going on. He might have been raising a huge red flag just by speaking. He closed his eyes, trying to contain his frustration. His leg started vibrating to burn off nervous energy. Are you really just going to sit here and accept this? His eyes snapped open. He got to his feet and walked across the room towards Erasmus who was back at the table. His body felt loose as he walked, boneless with nerves and frustration. His stomach wanted to join in and started making him feel nauseous. Why is my wisdom buff not fixing this? And why is it not stopping me from doing something stupid? Hello, wisdom are you there do you know what a low profile is? "Yes?" "I want to leave now. If my father comes later to pick me up, can you have someone tell him I already went home?" "Leave?" Erasmus asked, shocked "...why would you leave? I can''t just let you go" "Zachery said the church would fight to protect my freedom. And now you want to lock me in a basement and not let me go?" "Zachery? well, he''s right but.." Erasmus devolved into mumbling, clearly unsure what to say or do. "Where is Zachery?" Daniel asked, his anger raging at him for coming to talk instead of just walking out the door. "His office is just in front when you go back up the stairs, but I don''t think-" "I see," Daniel interrupted, already leaving. Outside the room, Daniel went straight for the stairs, resisting the urge to glance around for someone coming to tell him to get back to class. He ignored Zachery''s office, obviously, and picked a direction mostly at random, well aware that he was lost already. Thankfully the main corridors were easy enough to tell apart, and he found a second set of stairs up without running into any dead ends. The exit he left was different from the one he had entered, but the market square was visible, and moving through it let him reorient himself so he started back up the hill. He laughed out loud, basking in both relief and being out in the sunshine. He had been trying to maintain a facade of confidence while walking around inside but had been coming apart with internal jitters. Once out of the class things had started to go steadily downhill. He hadn''t thought to check at the time but assumed that was his wisdom returning to normal. I''m such an idiot. What am I going to do about this? He laughed again. The rest of the day was a looming maw of uncertainty. Was he overreacting? He imagined telling his parents and suddenly feeling very foolish. But the idea he was underreacting held about the same amount of weight. Who knows how many children he had left behind in there. The idea of himself having just stayed in there turned his stomach, he knew that much. He made it home safely, if people were giving him second glances he hadn''t noticed. The front gate and the front door were both unlocked. He doubted they ever were locked apart from possibly at night. He could hear people downstairs as usual at this time of day, but none were in the hallway and he hurried up the stairs. Entering the sitting room, he found it empty and went to sit down. An hour later and he was still waiting for anyone to show up. He suspected Erasmus had stayed with the class without notifying anyone, assuming Daniel was with Zachery. Daniel had gotten bored waiting and had eventually remembered to check his status. His stats had returned to normal as expected, and when he went looking for his new skill instead in the Domain tab he found what looked like space for a list. It had one entry, Dubious Disciple of Kyburad. That wouldn''t have been how Daniel would have described himself, and he interacted with it in the hope of learning more. Instead, a second near-empty list popped out to the side, again with a single entry. > Flame of Kyburad: Channels belief into flame. Daniel sighed at the description. Over the course of his second childhood, his overactive imagination had come up with several ways that fantasy magic might work. Some sort of magical programming language had been his favorite. It was logical, it fit his talents, and he had a prior understanding of programming to gain a leg up on medieval thinkers. Faith-based magic was the worst option. He was a skeptic, not a believer. Even if Kyburad existed, why would you care? And if you really, really had to worship the twat for some reason, why would you ever need to get other people involved? He had strong suspicions that organised religion was a disgusting concept, but the appeal of it was so alien to him that he knew he couldn''t fairly judge it. Daniel sighed again. It had been obvious to him with no good reason that he would excel at magic. This was not magic he could excel at. > Individualist: Unique Status interface. Reduced benefits and restrictions from Domains. He pulled up the description again. Domains, plural. It seemed that there were racial skills, job skills, general skills, and now religious skills? More gods for him not to care about. Would reduced restrictions from domains help him escape the church basement? If he could show it to the priests, perhaps they would take it as a divine message to not restrict him. They would pick up on the reduced benefit part as well. You get halfway out of the basement but you also only get half a crusade on your behalf. Flame of Kyburad. Still the same flame. He played with it, returning to the practice he had been doing at the church. Coming home to do the same work made ditching school feel less like a failure. His mind returned to his escape from the school. He thought leaving was right, but his brain kept rerunning events anyway. As he sat there waiting, occasionally he rolled his eyes, occasionally he shook his head and called himself a moron, and occasionally he laughed. Chapter 11 "Anne? What are you doing here alone? Where is your father?" Mum was home, entering the room with Beatrix on her hip and Grandmother at her side. Daniel was panicking. He should have hidden behind the door before she came in. "I left early," Daniel said with a crooked attempt at a smile, "I told them to let Dad know I had already gone home." "You left early?" Mum stopped and stared. "You can''t just go on your own. They shouldn''t have let you do that." "Urk!" "Now is not the time for that nonsense," she said sternly, "Tell me exactly what happened." Daniel was offered a brief reprieve by the sound of new footsteps coming up the stairs. Henry and Dad entered, and their eyes locked onto Daniel. "I''ll go let father know she''s safe," Henry said. Dad came closer and pulled up a chair to sit next to Daniel. "What happened?" He asked. Daniel tried to explain. He felt a surprising amount of guilt for not giving a completed unvarnished version of events. Surprising since guilt wasn''t something he had experienced much when living completely unattached to others. But while he could be stupid in a lot of different ways, revealing too much here was not one of them. He felt he could probably trust his parents with aberration at his point. But this was not the time for the whole reincarnation thing to come out. Surprise dad, I''m actually an adult man in the body of your little girl. Super creepy right? Even that much consideration made him feel ill. Thoughts in that direction were banned. Instead, he tried to keep it simple. He went to school and learned his skill and then noticed his thinking had changed and gone all weird which he didn''t like so he left. His parents seemed more worried for him than angry, although most of the communication between them was being done in glances that Daniel could not decode. He started to wonder if he needed to be more forthright, to make sure it was clear something wonky was going on over there. "You said it made your mind weird but what did you mean?" Mum asked, "How did it make you feel exactly?" "It made me sick to my stomach," Daniel answered honestly. His mum reached out in worry and started stroking his back. He thought she was taking what he said in a different way than he had meant it, but that was ok by him. "I don''t want to go back there." "Do you feel alright now? Or are you still sick?" she asked. "I''m fine now." Daniel looked at his father, caught between his urge to make the problem clear and his urge to deny he was anything but fine. Flame of Kyburad. He summoned his flame on the tip of his nose. His parents laughed. "What are you doing?" his mother asked. He shrugged, moving the flame to his shoulder. "What happens now?" he asked. "We need to talk to the priests after your grandfather gets back," Dad said. Grandfather loudly stomped his way up the stairs ten minutes later. He walked in with a thunderous expression, but then turned back and leaned into the hallway to check down the stairs. Turning to Daniel''s parents, he had a twinkle in his eye as he spoke. "Zachery is outside with Henry. You''ll need to go down and speak with him. You should use my office." "Are you alright?" Mum questioned, confused by his behavior. "Yes, yes. Go on now. I''ll watch over Anne don''t worry." Mum and Dad left down the stairs, leaving Beatrix with Grandmother, and Daniel to realise he wasn''t supposed to deal with his own problems. A grin was breaking out on Grandfather''s face as he watched them go, and then as they heard the sound of the front door opening, he strode back to the door and shouted down the stairs in an angry voice. "Henry, fetch my sword before you come up!" and then he slammed the door loudly shut. Turning back to Daniel, the grin was now in full force. "Brilliant!" he declared, and then swept across the room, picking Daniel up and raising him high while laughing. "Brilliant!" he said again. "Tell me, girl, you just got up and walked out?" "No, I told them to tell Dad I''d gone home." "Ha!" he barked out. "And they let you go?" "Well, they had just said they would all die to protect my freedom." "Aha! Brilliant!" he laughed again. "That''s it, girl, I''ve decided. You''re my favorite grandchild. Feel free to boss around any of the other ones." "Why are you so happy, Grandfather?" Daniel asked. "I just got back from shouting at priests, that''s why! If Henry had been 5 minutes later, I think I would''ve gotten one of them to start crying." He started laughing again. That didn''t sound like a very nice thing to be doing. But still, mental manipulation basement, and besides, it seemed to make him happy. "Let me tell you about those priests, girl. They love to tell everyone what to do. And people listen!" He started to mimic a cringing voice. "Yes priest, right away priest, whatever you want priest." "Do you know why?"This story has been stolen from Royal Road. If you read it on Amazon, please report it Daniel shook his head. Mind control magic? "Because they are fanatics!" he stated emphatically. "They start going on about fighting to the death for their beliefs, and everyone gets too scared to say no to them. But you, my brilliant granddaughter, you slapped them in the face with their own beliefs. What can they say to that? Nothing! It''s hilarious." He started laughing again, and when he finally stopped the sparkle was stronger in his eye than ever. "You rubbed it in their faces just like I told you to." After a little time passed, Henry came up the stairs and reluctantly handed a sword to Grandfather. "They want you down there Anne," he said, then added "Just Anne," when Grandfather moved to follow. "Just call out if you need my support, girl. I''ll be waiting." Grandfather said. As Daniel started down the stairs, he could hear Henry lecturing Grandfather as he went. "Honestly, father. I understand you want to have your fun, but you need to act smarter about this." Downstairs, Mum was holding the door to Grandfather''s office open and waiting for Daniel. Dad was sitting behind a desk, facing the door. Zachery and another priest Daniel did not know were sitting in front of the desk with their backs to the door. Mum ushered Daniel to an empty seat next to Dad, placing him on her lap since there weren''t enough chairs. "Zachery is insisting that we have your agreement for any solution," Mum said. "Hello, Anne. Your mother is correct, there is no point in making a decision here if you cannot abide by it. Now, as I was just telling your parents, there is a magical effect to aid learning set up in the classrooms. It is quite rare for this to cause a negative reaction similar to the one you experienced. I would ask if you would be willing to try entering the classroom again to make sure this was not an unrelated issue?" "What does the spell do?" Daniel asked. Zachery turned to the other priest. "Field of the Pure Mind," he answered, "it suppresses effects which weaken the mind such as sleep deprivation or anxiety. It is particularly effective at helping children to learn, although we cannot say for certain why that is so." Daniel could guess those reasons. if they were telling the truth. If. He supposed it was hypothetically fine. If the helpful magic helps, then use the magic. Why not? But they should have asked. Why should he trust people who didn''t ask? It made him want to call on Grandfather to come to pick on them. "I''m not willing. Are you willing to turn off the magic?" "No. We will not hold back the entire class for one child. Besides, the magic is part of the building, it can only be destroyed, not disabled," Zachery said. "Instead, I would like to offer to handle your teaching myself, in my office. There are no such effects in place there. I should be able to handle your supervision while attending to my other duties, assuming of course, that you don''t intend to escape as soon as my back is turned." Compromise, urk! Disgusting. "I thought you wanted to protect my freedom?" "We wish to ensure your freedom to decide your own future. But let us not take this to the point of absurdity. You are five. We have a responsibility to your parents while you are under our care." "Zachery did a lot of apologising today," Dad said. Which probably meant he got shouted at a lot by Grandfather. Daniel warily considered the two priests. They hadn''t shown many reactions, instead, they had been blanking watching him most of the time. It left him unsure how much they were reading into his actions. But, well, he needed to do more if a compromise was going to be possible. In for a penny in for a pound. "What did you apologise for?" "For losing you." "I think you should be apologising for using mind-altering magic on children without asking first" "Anne," Mum chided, not liking the obvious condemnation in Daniel''s voice. The gaze of the two men swung to her as she spoke. "Let her speak," Zachery said. "The spell effect is a positive one," the other priest answered, "And some children would not fully comprehend the question unless we used the magic on them first." "Then you should ask their parents for permission," Daniel replied. "Do you not think using mind-altering magic defeats your aim to allow children to make their own choices?" "We do not," Zachery said. "Because we do not think of the magic in that way." Daniel sighed as audibly as possible and looked at his parents. "What do you want me to do?" "You have to go back to school sweetheart," Mum said. "There are skills you need to learn for your future." "Will you promise not to use any magic on me without asking first?" he asked Zachery. "I promise unless your safety is in danger." "And not to let any of the others do so," "I will do my utmost to do so." He looked at his parents again. Could he just let this go? Trust these priests? There was always other options, but they seemed drastic and probably self-destructive. This is the point in the movie where the incredibly stupid character escapes by blind luck, but then foolishly goes back to give the villains a second chance. The priests hadn''t liked Mum interrupting, but didn''t object to her saying he had to go back. He was groping in the dark for the edges of their religious logic. Or was it just convenience? "What do you think?" he asked. "I know Zachery well," Dad said."I believe you can trust him." Mum nodded encouragingly. "Will you come with me tomorrow to check his office?" Daniel asked his Dad. Dad nodded with a smile, but the unnamed priest made a scoffing sound, his patience seemingly exhausted. "I could ask Grandfather to come instead if you would prefer?" Daniel said. "Please don''t," Zachery replied. "I will go back." "Good, I am pleased we could reach an agreement, " Zachery said. "On another matter, Erasmus said that he saw you use the Flame of Kyburad before you left?" Flame of Kyburad. Daniel kept an absolutely straight face, ignoring his new nose highlight. If this doesn''t count as wisdom training, nothing will. It''s even starting to itch, and I know it shouldn''t be able to cause that. "Excellent. You missed it today, but as a rule, we check with a guidance stone that a new skill has been learned before ending a class. It helps to avoid mistakes." The discussion over, the priests got up to leave shortly after. Grandfather was sitting on the stairs, working his sword with a whetstone while he waited. He got up to help show the priests out, walking directly behind the unnamed one while putting his sword back in its scabbard as slowly and noisily as possible. He winked at Daniel as he passed. "Is that really necessary?" Zachery asked. Grandfather did not respond. Mum led Daniel upstairs, and Dad and Grandfather soon returned. "I''m glad that''s over with, but Anne we still have to talk about today." Mom said sternly "You can''t just leave the church and wander through town on your own." "Is that really a problem?" Grandfather asked "Plenty of kids leave those lessons early, especially once they start to teach the more boring skills. And most of them walk there and back unsupervised once they learn the way." Mum frowned. "Older kids," she said. "So she was ahead of the others. You can''t lead from the back." "She is five," Mum said, crossing her arms, clearly annoyed but not wanting to go too far. "Fine. fine," Grandfather said, putting his hands up in surrender and walking away. Daniel was not one to give up control over himself. He''d had jobs, and bosses, but that was something he had opted into. The distinction was stark in his mind. The same went for his parents, he accepted their authority but didn''t respect it. Even that much had a time limit. But he knew that wasn''t very fair to them. So he wanted to say sorry, to reassure his Mum''s authority when Grandfather was undercutting it. He wanted to say sorry but he wasn''t sorry for leaving. He also wanted to say he had come straight home, but that just seemed like an excuse. It left him feeling awkward about how to continue. He glanced toward his father. What had Dad said? Live up to your own principles. He needed to be honest here or he was just undermining Mum even more. And himself. "How long do I need an adult with me to learn the route?" he asked finally. "A few weeks at least," she said. The tone of her voice changed to teasing "You don''t want to walk to school with me?" "I do," he said simply. She smiled and he smiled back but had something to add. "If the priests use magic on me I''ll leave early though." The smile went and she gave him a complicated look, shaking her head. "I''m sorry," he said, meaning it. Not for leaving, but for not being a kid who would simply do as his mother asked when she was worried about him. "I know you are, poppet," she said, moving in for a hug. "I forgive you." Chapter 12 Daniel went back, feeling foolish. Zachery''s office had a kind of waiting room before it that now doubled as a teaching room. Zachery left the inside door to his office open and was in and out as he dealt with his own work. Dad had come to confirm it was safe as Daniel had requested and then left. Daniel half expected the room to be a Bond-movie style trap that activated once his guard was down. The doors would slam shut and a panel would open in the roof to let in poison gas or mutant sharks. But nothing happened. He wanted to berate himself for being a dumb kid and blowing things out of proportion. He also absolutely would not go back into that field no matter how dumb he felt. But nothing happened. It was depressingly fine. Perhaps the sharks had inhaled all the gas and then died. Zachery mostly left him to it. More self-supervised practice. It made him want to go home, but that was even more foolish. He knew from experience he''d just end up bored and alone there, resorting to the same practice to pass the time. Besides, he didn''t want to give the priests an excuse to point out that he needed their ''maturity field'' to sit quietly and learn. He did find himself starting to wonder if the state of his education was okay. Wasn''t part of the point of schooling to develop social skills? Were there social skills? If there was some kind of therapy field at the end to help people adjust, then he wasn''t going near that either. And if he was going to start asking for permission for how his life was going, he might as well start praying to Kyburad. So his second day of schooling passed slowly. He mixed things up by also practicing his control of the movement of the flame. He remembered his mother saying the flame could burn if you wanted it to, but sadly burning the church down seemed to be beyond him for now. His flame skill, like the others, was level 1 and not increasing. Unlike the others, it did not have a descriptor like basic or eldritch. He didn''t know if a domain skill could be a guidance skill. Maybe it was a guidance domain since that name started with dubious. In truth, the priests had Daniel in checkmate to some extent. He didn''t like them much and he didn''t want their stupid answers. He would have been quite happy spending the next few years doing his own thing and ignoring every stupid thing they had to say. Except that''s what they wanted him to do. After agonising about it overnight, he managed to convince himself to ask Zachery for a hint on his third day. There was wanting to be uninfluenced by others, and there was sitting in a room bored. One little hint can''t hurt, right? The other driving factor was exploring the priest''s principles. They didn''t want to just give him the answers. But was that the same as not answering if he asked? "Yes, Anne?" "How do I make my flame stronger?" Zachery considered this for a moment, perhaps weighing his answer against his religion. "Belief," he said simply. Daniel waited for more but did not get it. "Is that it?" "Yes, Anne." Belief. Not the worst of answers. He had worked the possibilities beforehand, not wanting a straight answer to cloud his assumptions too much. Belief in Kyburad would have been worse. For all he knew, Zachery just enjoyed being vague to sound more mystical. But vague was better even if for the wrong reasons since it left room for interpretation. This meant he could go back to his wild imaginings about the workings of magic. Magic as whatever you believed it to be. Believe in the me that believes in you, or something like that. He summoned his flame on his hand, inspecting it. If he wanted to give this a good go, he should try to focus on doing something different from other people. Avoid being sucked into the beliefs of others, so to speak. What were the aspects of fire you would see in magic? Burning, Mum had mentioned. Destruction was obvious. Explosions. There were mixed elements, lava, steam, light maybe. Religious flames. Flames of purification, atonement, retribution. More game-like associations with fire, crit damage, burn damage over time, maybe self-damage. The last one was a no thank you, but it did act as a bridge to another concept. Healing flames. Cauterisation was a concept used in games from time to time. It wasn''t too common, but aiming for something different did not go together with common anyway. And he doubted there were healing flames or even healing magic here. That doctor had not seemed magical. He had never heard a reference toward calling a magic healer or needing a priest to heal with his Kyburad healing fire. He was decided. And with that settled, how did he go about turning an aspect of fire into a belief strong enough to become magic? Brainwashing! It''s not immoral when I do it to myself! Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. He just had to repeat this over and over in his mind for the next few years and he would be set. In terms of an experiment of this possible method at least. He should probably keep an eye on Beatrix over the same period. That way he would have a control group for comparison of someone who hadn''t purposefully driven themselves mental. The stupidity fed into his enthusiasm. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. This can work! Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. Flames heal. He carried on with his practice, now with an extra layer added on top of it. His mum had taken him to church that morning, but his dad picked him up. They seemed to be working on a ''who would be closest at lunchtime'' basis. But this afternoon was special! They were going out of town on a walk. The sanctuary was supposed to be safe in general, but taking kids beyond the walls before five years old was frowned upon. Which meant Beatrix couldn''t come, but Daniel could. Tough luck, kiddo! And apparently, Dad wanted to take the opportunity to do something this afternoon, since he was leaving for the border in a couple of days. So they went back up the hill but instead of going home went to the back of town by the wall. The stone wall was still thick here, but only just above waist height, more of a safety feature to stop people from falling off the edge. Dad lifted Daniel up to sit on it but kept hold of his hand to make sure nothing stupid happened. As if Daniel needed a watcher like he would jump off it without constant vigilance. Daniel took advantage of the handhold to lean back as much as possible, so he could tip his head and look down over the edge. Was there even a point to a wall here defensively when the hill was so high and steep? Daniel didn''t know but the height and weird angle was making him dizzy. Thankfully his Dad pulled him back up while giving him a strange look. The view from the hill toward the other side of the town showed never-ending farmland outside the walls. Here there was a small wooded area hugging the hill below them, then past that there was a band of farms, thinnest here at the back of the town and stretching out to the sides. Past that was forest as far as the eye could see in front of them. Which was quite a distance from this high up.This story has been unlawfully obtained without the author''s consent. Report any appearances on Amazon. A few minutes later Mum showed up with Uncle Rory and Aunt Gemma. Away from the wall a little way, there was a set of stone steps that led down and then turned a corner to a short but narrow alley with the street above crowding its top. There was a metal gate at either end, which Dad swung open, and it led out onto a ledge, with steep stone steps leading away and hugging the curve of the hillside on the way down. Daniel looked around curiously while Dad shut the gate behind them. The ledge carried on for a short way, albeit more natural and less defined, past the gate. They could see more of the wall here, as it extended down the slope past the hilltop. But still, it looked to Daniel as though an adult could just walk the ledge a bit and then climb up over the wall without any help. Or just use the inviting gate put there. Sadly both the wall and the latch on the gates were too high by far for Daniel. But was the wall just there to keep kids and short people inside? or outside? There weren''t even any guards. "What is the wall for?" Daniel asked his parents as they made their way down. He was trying to avoid Rory hearing so he wouldn''t have to listen to the inevitable ''to keep goblins out'' response. His mum laughed. "Ask your Grandfather when we get back," she said. "He enjoys explaining it to people." "Has it got something to do with shouting at priests?" "Pretty much." The path at the bottom of the steps cut through the trees and across the thin part of the farmland. The trees were a strange reddish brown here, not what Daniel would expect, but he remembered that redwoods were a thing on Earth even if he hadn''t been around any. The sunshine was warm out from under the trees, the recent memory of winter making the day feel nicer. The path here ran on a slight embankment, giving them a view over the fields despite being hemmed in by a hedgerow on either side. "How do skills work with jobs?" he asked. A look passed between his parents. Another conversation that was not being spoken out loud. To be fair, that did seem to be his father''s default form of communication. Sadly Daniels auto-translate didn''t work on glances. Oh god, they could all be telepaths and just not telling me! My blessing could work as an explanation by blocking it! "Did they talk to you about affinities yet?" Mum asked. "No." "Then I shouldn''t have said that," she replied, her face taking on a disgusted expression, and Dad laughed. Daniel turned to him. "I don''t mind if you answer, Dad," he said. "That''s right ask your father." Mum encouraged, turning on Dad. But he just smiled, seemingly unfazed and uninterested in answering. Mum threw her hands up and walked ahead to catch up with Rory and Gemma, but Daniel just smiled back at Dad and waited. Dad seemed to find this funny, but eventually, he relented. "Most professions give skills. But you need skills to gain most professions. Most of the tier 0 skills are available without a profession. So most people choose a tier 0 profession that helps them level to a higher tier." "You said most a lot." "With skills, there is an exception to most rules." "What sort of profession helps you level?" "Townsperson lets you pick a bunch of profession skills so you have more choices for the next tier. Apprentice is quicker if you know what direction you want to take," he said. "But those aren''t the only ones." "Hmm." Daniel tried to think of what to ask next. He wanted a way to ask about affinities, without feeling he was being mean to his mother. "Why leave everything to priests? Grandfather doesn''t even like them." "One teacher is better than a hundred," Dad said Daniel shook his head. Was that a saying here? Skills made it more plausible. Would a teaching skill count as mental manipulation? He found it strange for parents to not want to deal with things themselves. Maybe it was a cultural difference thing, or maybe his concept of proper parenting didn''t match real life. If parents weren''t ever willing to dump uncomfortable topics onto teachers, then things like sex education would not have existed on modern Earth. "Guidance stones have strict standards to be able to use them," Dad continued, seeing that Daniel wasn''t satisfied. "It makes it easy to trust the priests to live up to their beliefs." "Do you believe the same thing?" "I believe that if you agree to a rule, you should follow it." "But you told me about professions," Daniel pointed out. "That''s allowed." "Will you tell me what else is allowed? Or is that not allowed?" Dad smiled a non-answer. "What about Mum?" "Your mother thinks we''re silly, me and the priests," Dad said, smiling again but looking sheepish this time, "She''s going along with it to support me." Daniel thought about that. It seemed he wasn''t going to ask about affinities after all. If he didn''t want to get stuck playing the priest''s games, talking to his parents instead was a good option. He just needed to find a way to do that without putting pressure on them to betray their principles. Rory had stopped to wait for them as they reached the forest, letting Mum and Aunt Gemma go ahead. There was a look of humor in his eyes, that helped to connect the dots between his behavior in the past and Grandfather laughing about priests. I guess that''s where he gets it from. "Marcus, Laura was calling for you," he said as they got close. Dad moved forward into the forest to catch up, leaving Daniel at the back with Rory. "Hey Anne, do you know what is north of here?" Rory asked coaxingly, gesturing forwards at the forest. He looked like a man with a joke to tell. Which was fine with Daniel, he liked jokes, he could play along. It wasn''t like something Rory said was going to shock him. "I do," Daniel said, "Forest!" "No, silly, past the forest." "More forest?" "Past that." "The end of the forest?" "Past that." "More forest again?" Daniel asked, laughing. "You are probably right," he agreed. "Now will you please take mercy on your poor uncle?" "Hey, Uncle Rory, what is north of here?" Daniel asked. "Good question, Anne! If you travel far enough north you''ll reach the Land of the Builders." "What''s a builder?" Daniel asked, his eyes going wide. Dwarfs? Gnomes in steampunk mech suits? He was sure he had read some fantasy series where a race was called builders. Probably more than one. "Nobody knows, they''ve never been seen." "Why are they builders then?" "Because the whole country is filled with stuff they built. And every night some of it gets taken apart and made into something new." "But no one sees them do it?" "No one who has come back." Daniel looked sideways at Rory. He was losing enthusiasm for the story, but Rory seemed to be gaining it. "Some people think if you went deep enough into the country you could catch them during the day while they are sleeping." Rory continued. "And that doesn''t work?" Daniel asked, not wanting to ask. "No. It''s a big place. If you want to go far in, you''ll have to stay there at night time. Can you guess what happens then?" Daniel shook his head. "If you stay there at night," Rory told him with relish, "They''ll build with you too." He laughed, and Daniel tried to smile along with him. This guy is an asshole! Daniel sped up, trying to close the gap with his parents. He glanced from side to side as he went. There was too much forest to keep everything in his vision at once. I don''t want to be here anymore. I want to go home! "Aw, Anne, I''m sorry," Rory said as he was left behind, "It was just a funny story, I didn''t mean to scare you." "I''m not scared!" he declared loudly. Thankfully his parents had stopped to wait. He ran up and took his mother''s hand. "Something wrong?" "No, of course not." He needed fireball magic already to burn this place down. Being a child was awful. He was tired of being a coward. Chapter 13 Teasing people was wrong, Daniel had decided. Of course, he was fine with jokes, but gaining enjoyment from someone else''s discomfort was just bullying, plain and simple. That was why Daniel, a poor innocent victim of Rory''s cruel bullying, was having to distract himself by making his aunt Gemma uncomfortable. Some might view this as hypocrisy, but Daniel didn''t so it was fine. Gemma walking out here in the forest had a lithe relaxation to her that was quite a contrast from the slightly strained aunt he had thought he knew. So while teasing Gemma with her awkwardness around kids normally felt like kicking a sad puppy, out here he thought it was okay. Her improved attitude helped Daniel cross the line in his mind from laughing at her to laughing with her. He had gotten quite used to his parents grabbing his hands to stop him from escaping. So when he found himself walking between Gemma and his mum, with the hand on his mum''s side already taken, he quite naturally reached out and grabbed Gemma''s hand with his free one. She reacted with a strange noise, almost a squeak. Daniel thought it was hilarious! "Are you alright Gemma?" his mother asked. "...I''m fine, what did Agnes say next?" So as they walked, and the adults talked, Daniel tried to study this new side of his aunt. It was fun catching her surreptitious glances when he was brazenly inspecting her. It made him start to giggle when their eyes met, which drew a hesitant smile in response. But then when his mum''s story of how she felt about how Agnes felt about something that happened to Agnes'' husband was finally over, Daniel started to pay attention to his surroundings again. He noticed that at some point his dad and Rory had passed them, and Rory was looking back at him and Gemma with a smug smile on his face. And it seemed that Mum was trying and failing to hide a smirk in their direction. The line crossed back to laughing at her. Daniel extricated his hands and moved ahead. "How far are we going?" he asked, turning round to walk backward so he could face his aunt and mother as he spoke to them. "We''re almost there," Gemma answered. Flame of Kyburad. He started flicking his flame from one shoulder to the other, taking a different route across his head each time. The results of his practice. Is this difficult? Is this fast? He tripped and stumbled, walking backward while moving the flame too much to handle at once. "Careful, Anne," his mother cautioned as he righted himself. He turned back to walking normally, his face starting to heat up. It turned out that being childish sometimes wasn''t the worst thing in the world. He was a child after all! Being goofy was fun. But that didn''t make it okay to soften up on everything. Mummy! Mummy! Look at this aren''t I amazing? Praise me, Mummy! He would not be doing that again. He wanted to slap himself in the face. He wanted to think about anything else. "Can you tell me the names of some magic skills?" he asked. "Why would you want to know that?" Mum cautiously answered. "When we learned the flame at church, the priest just told us its name and then it seemed pretty easy. So I thought I could learn something else if I knew the name." "The priest has a guidance skill for it to work that way." "I heard mage skills have requirements to teach as well," Gemma added. "I can learn mage skills? At church?" Freedom! Daniel exulted. Get away from me, priest! I am an archmage I have no time for your religious dribble. He started to mime himself slapping priests to get them out of his way. "You can learn about mage skills at church when you are old enough for them to teach you, sweetheart," Mum said. "Should I not have said that?" Gemma asked Mum. "Hey Anne, come look at this!" Rory interrupted, calling out in a low-pitched voice from in front of them. Daniel was wondering where his dad had gone and was about to call back and tell Rory to get lost. But then Dad emerged from the side of the path a fair distance further on from Rory and beckoned Daniel forwards. Daniel decided that made one trustworthy person calling him, and he ran to catch up to the two of them. Dad led them a short way into the trees, and then crouched down and pointed towards a slope covered in tightly packed bushes. The bushes were green but covered in a vibrant layer of yellow flowers and even more vibrant red thorns. Daniel looked around, trying to see what he was supposed to be looking for when he noticed a gap making a small tunnel into the nest of branches at the bottom of the bushes. Inside the gap was the face of a fox. Daniel''s breath caught, and his heart started to melt. His mind lit up with ways to convince his parents to take the fox home with them. Oh no, do I need wisdom to resist this as well? This is stupid I like cats more than dogs. Don''t foxes stink? A deeply troubling thought occurred to him. What if cat people could be reincarnated as dog people? Heresy! Someone must pay!Support the creativity of authors by visiting the original site for this novel and more. They were far enough away that the fox hadn''t seemed to notice them, and it started to crawl forwards into the open. "That''s a Forest Black Shod Fox," Rory whispered from beside him. Daniel started slightly, having not noticed Rory coming close. That name seemed a bit of a clumsy mouthful to Daniel''s ears. The fox came out as was moving sideways away from them. Daniel noticed something was dragging behind it. It looked like it had a bunch of vines caught in its tail. Or it might be most of one of those bushes since he could spot red thorns peeking out here and there. The foxes head came up and twisted around toward their direction. Its gaze locked with Daniels, and he could feel his cat person instincts being washed away like sand. Okay, since you insist I''ll let you be my friend, Mr. Fox. But then its lips pulled back, revealing sharp teeth, and it started to growl as it moved its body to face their direction. "No!" Daniel cried out, "Bad Mr.Fox! You don''t growl at your friends!" A part of him was wondering why this seemed silly, not scary. But then the fox''s tail bristled. The vines he had thought were stuck to it moved upwards and spread out around its back legs. They formed a half-circle in the air, like a display from a peacock, with each vine ending in a large red thorn crooked over and pointing in Daniel''s direction. Uh oh. That''s not silly Mr.Fox. I need to run away now. Daniel shrunk back reflexively, but his father stood up and moved forwards, shouting and waving his hands. The fox turned and ran in the opposite direction, its weird vine tails moving back down to join with its normal one. "Do they usually act like that?" Dad asked Rory as he turned back to them. "No," Rory said, shrugging, "We probably just scared it." "What about those vine things?" Daniel asked, fascinated, "Are they alive? Are they separate? How do they work?" "Does that interest you Anne?" Rory asked. "It does." "Well luckily, your uncle is an expert. I have a book with me that will tell you all about them." "You have a book with you?" Daniel asked suspiciously. He couldn''t see a book, and it seemed convenient for him to have the right one on hand. Daniel''s father turned to look at Rory, helping to back up Daniel''s doubting glare. "Err...I have a book at home that will tell you all about them." "I''m sure," Daniel said, far less interested in something that might happen later, if Rory could be believed. Which he could not. They returned to the path and after a few more minutes they reached their destination, a clearing with a cottage up a small rise towards the back. A stream could be heard burbling between it. Daniel looked around but could not see any inhabitants. "Whose house is that?" he asked. "Mine and Gemma''s," Rory answered. "It used to be her father''s." "I thought you had a small house in the town and traveled most of the year." "What?" Rory exclaimed, acting shocked. "Who told you that?" "You did!" Gemma let loose a loud, full-throated laugh that caused Daniel to turn to her. She definitely didn''t laugh like that at home. "Don''t be silly, Anne," Rory said, "Now come on inside, I''ll show you this book." Daniel dubiously followed Rory inside along with Gemma, his parents moving away together towards a large rock in the middle of the clearing. Rory led him to a side room and started digging through a chest of drawers in the corner. Daniel curiously inspected the assorted junk that made up the rest of the room. "Is this all from your job?" he asked. There was a sort of outdoorsy theme to the junk. "Yeah most of this is from our work as rangers," Rory answered, turning around with a book in his hands. "Rangers? what about landtrust?" "What''s a landtrust? Some kind of animal?" "I see." Rory took the book to the table in the middle of the room and cleared a space on the surface for it. But instead of putting the book down, he flicked through it, and then pulled a page out of the book and set it down on the table. Daniel looked at him, aghast. The page held a handwritten description of the Forest Black Shod Fox, complete with a well-done illustration of one, although without any vine limbs showing. What it did feature was the starkly dark fur around its feet, which he guessed was where it got its name. "Why would you ever tear the page out like that?" Daniel asked although he noticed the page didn''t particularly seem torn. "Eh, it should be fine." "Can I see the rest of the book?" "No sorry I put it away already." Daniel hadn''t seen him move to put the book away. He sighed, letting his frustration show. "Actually, Anne, there was something I was hoping you could do for me" Of course, there was. He stared blankly at Rory waiting for him to elaborate. "I don''t know what your mother has been telling you, but when you try to act like Marcus it''s creepy, not cute," Rory said. "What do you want?" "Well, this stuff is actually part of my job, inspecting the animals in the forest and then writing it all down. But your Uncle Rory can''t deal with all the horrible slimy creepy crawlies around here. I thought my adorable niece might want to help me out since she is practically one of those horrible slimy creepy crawlies herself," Rory chuckled at his own words. "You seemed interested in this stuff. Why don''t take your Aunt Gemma and go find some disgusting creature to inspect." "Why would I do that?" "Because you love your Uncle Rory more than anyone else in the whole world?" Daniel didn''t think that deserved a response. "I''m telling you Anne you should stop doing that." Rory said, his ever-present grin leaving as he leaned in and started to speak in a conspiratorial whisper "The truth is, since your father will be away soon, I wanted to give your parents some time alone as just the two of them. And to do that means finding something to keep you occupied and away from them. Now what do you say, will you help your uncle complete his good deed for the year?" "What are you going to be doing while I''m off with Aunt Gemma?" "I''ll be here and there, don''t you worry," he said, the grin returning "You trust me, right?" "No, not at all." "Great, I''ll go get Gemma," he said and then he was gone. A few moments later Gemma entered the room and stood there looking at Daniel. "Do you know how long he is going to be?" she asked. "He didn''t tell you what we were doing?" "He just asked me to watch you for a moment and then went out the front door," Gemma replied. Chapter 14 Daniel sighed, again. Rory had probably thought it was funnier to not explain. Unfortunately, Daniel was going to reluctantly go along with his plan. He didn''t see his parents as a lovey-dovey couple, but they were stuck with children and grandparents most of the time. He could accept that it would be nice to give them some space. He did feel a jealous twinge at the idea they needed time without him there, but he managed to let it go. It wasn''t easy, but he felt good about resisting a childish impulse for once, especially since it was a negative one. Still, if this plan was some manipulation for another dumb joke, he''d make Rory regret it. He needed to promise himself that much, just to accept the thing. So he explained what Rory had said to Gemma. He felt his interest increasing as he took a second, closer look at the page Rory had left. As well as expected information about habits and physical characteristics, there was a section at the end with speculation on skills the fox species might have. It seemed that not all members of the same animal species had the same skills, similar to humans. There were several other skills mentioned, one of which was the vine tail abomination. Apparently, the vines were attached to the spine and could continue to move for some time after the fox had died. It also stated that different foxes had vines in different configurations. There was no mention of it being some symbiotic plant or something similar, however. Was that too obvious to put down, or were vine and fox the same creature? On a similar line was a mention of some foxes growing a wooden shell to protect their chest and head. Trying to imagine it from the description, Daniel flitted between an image of a fox with a bark like a second skin and one with planks of wood attached to the side like armor plating. Some of the other skills were vaguer or marked as only possibilities. Supposedly they could identify some parts of other creatures'' status via the sense of smell, but it was hard to pin down or prove the mechanics. And there was a suspicion that they had skills to help them communicate and work as a pack, but this seemed to be an assumption due to their close relation to other species with similar skills. Gemma agreed to play along and went to the same chest of drawers Rory had been poking through earlier. She came back with a pouch she set on the table, before turning to look through more of the junk. "What''s in that?" Daniel asked. "Writing tools," she said. Daniel poked inside, finding an assortment of strange implements, including something he assumed were quill pens and a weird horn that he thought might contain ink. "Can I try this out?" Gemma returned with a plain book which she opened to reveal empty pages. She pulled one free and placed it in front of him. Then she moved to the weird horn, fiddling with it to remove a section from the end which she also put down. It seemed to be an ink well. "Do you know how to write?" she asked curiously. Daniel thought the more important question was should he know how to write. He shrugged and decided to try it out. Figuring out the quill and ink wasn''t too bad. Things went better once he decided on as light a touch as possible. The actual writing was trickier, or more accurately, shakier. He should have been doing this to practice his coordination the whole time. But he found that he could manage by resorting to writing in block capitals, it wasn''t pretty but it got the job done. "I guess you do," Gemma commented, picking everything up and stuffing them into a satchel. "But your handwriting is ho-... unique." "That''s a nice thing of you to say. Thank you." "You are very welcome. Well then we seem to be ready do you want to head out?" "Let''s go!" Daniel said, raising his hand in the traditional Laston salute he had invented. If he could do dumb stuff like potentially revealing writing ability he shouldn''t have, then he could also indulge his dumb childishness. "Alright then," Gemma said, heading for the door. "No wait, Aunt Gemma, you have to do it too." "Let''s go? Is that right?" "Yes, that''s good. Just remember to pass the tradition on to your kids someday." "Did Rory tell you to do this?" "No," Daniel denied, feeling insulted. "That''s quite rude you would think that." Gemma led him to the stream, claiming that was a good spot to find the sort of creatures Rory didn''t like to deal with. The stream was noisy, water churning its way past rocks, and small enough for Daniel to jump across at points, so he did until he remembered why they were there. "So this is part of your job?" "Yes, we keep an eye on a stretch of the forest all the way up to the border. Part of that is understanding the wildlife." "Isn''t that dangerous?" Daniel asked. The fox monstrosity was bad enough, he wouldn''t like to see something similar on a larger animal. "No the only scary thing is the wolf packs further north, but they refuse to go near to humans so it''s rare for us to spot one of them." A pack of plant-type wolf monsters? Daniel imagined a large ball of vines, rolling about the forest with wolf mouths sticking out at various points. He shuddered, resolving to never go further north.The author''s tale has been misappropriated; report any instances of this story on Amazon. "You don''t need to worry about that, I grew up in the cottage it''s safe for kids here." Gemma said, "Marcus wouldn''t have let you come today if it wasn''t" Daniel cast around, seeing a few insects here and there, and catching a brief glimpse of some type of rodent that quickly disappeared. He wasn''t too sure what exactly he was supposed to be looking for. Gemma pointed him to a point where the stream turned a corner, and a pool ballooned out of the slow side of the turn. Getting closer, he spotted a small frog creature sitting on a half-submerged branch on the opposite side of the pool. "Now what?" he asked Gemma quietly. "Now we observe," she said, "Do you want me to do the picture?" "Yes please." They sat quietly together on a convenient rock, Daniel watching the frog while Gemma got to work. He wondered if it was a frog or a toad, but didn''t want to disturb Gemma by asking. He got out his status tablet as he watched, figuring he could plan out a description for the frog in the notes section before putting it to paper. Rory and Gemma didn''t seem to have much respect for books or paper, but Daniel didn''t want to use them as standards for good behavior or common sense. The frog was a normal earth size, thankfully, so it wasn''t easy to make out all the details from where they were. Its skin was a green color, with black polka dots. When he noticed that the black spots were protruding, a part of his brain clicked and decided that made it a toad, not a frog. It probably didn''t matter anymore if that was something he just made up or a memory from Earth, but it seemed right that lumpy meant toad. Warts and all. He tentatively put down river black lump toad as a name, figuring that might follow a convention. Daniel was hoping for it to show something more interesting. Maybe spit acid or some type of mind control ribbiting would be cool. Instead, it just seemed content to sunbathe, although it had slowly rotated itself so it was facing more in their direction. Quick as a flash, the toad jumped forwards, not aiming for them but slightly to the side and upwards several feet. As it reached the apex of its jump, its mouth opened and a tongue shot out over towards a tree branch where a tiny bird was sitting. Daniel had sprawled over backward trying to follow the overhead motion, but as quick as the frog was Gemma was faster. Her hand had shot down and picked up a small stone, which she threw, hitting the toad mid-air just before its tongue could reach the bird. "Jesus Christ Bananas!" Daniel cried as the bird flew off in a panic, not caring how nonsensical he probably sounded. Gemma did not seem particularly troubled as she walked over to where the toad now lay unmoving. But she did speak as she bent down to pick it up. "I probably didn''t need to do that. It startled me when it came towards us." "Can everybody do that? With a rock?" Daniel asked. "No they can''t," she answered proudly, "I tend to put a lot of my points into Dexterity." Daniel''s eyes widened at that, considering. He could probably move at the same speed, given the practice to be that smooth in the situation. But the casual accuracy was beyond him. "How high is your dexterity now?" he asked as Gemma came back to him. She looked up, about to answer, but then stopped herself. "Let''s talk about something else," she said, bringing the toad close so Daniel could see "It''s only out cold, this should make it easier for you to get a good look at it." Daniel inspected the toad, unable to find any sign of injury, although he guessed it was covered in lumps by default. He remembered a thunking sound when the stone hit, and touching one of the lumps, he thought he could tell why. They were made of some kind of wood. Toadwood, perhaps. The creature looked slimy, even the lumps, but touching it didn''t bear that out. He would still rinse his hands in the river when he was done though, he''d just need to make certain to keep an eye out for any friends it had. The animals here were crazy. Gaining more confidence, he ran his hand over the skin, and then pulled a leg out and felt the muscles. Lying unconscious in Gemma''s grip, It didn''t seem too different to an Earth toad, toadwood lumps aside. "Was that a jumping skill, do you think?" he asked Gemma. "I do. It wouldn''t have the strength for that otherwise." Animals with skills and stats. It seemed it wasn''t only weird plant parts that made them monsters beyond his expectations of normal animal behavior. "You can put it back now I''ve seen enough," he told Gemma. "You don''t want to eat it?" They''re pretty tasty." "We spent too much time becoming friends with it to do that," Daniel protested. That plus it''s gross. And it''d probably have splinters in it. As Gemma put the toad back on its branch, he added to his notes on the animal. Then on the way back to the cottage, he read them out aloud so Gemma could check what he had so far. She seemed to think it was fine, apart from the name. "It''s forest not river, you can tell that from the lumps," she corrected, "and speaking of those if you have that as a skill it shouldn''t be in the name." "Because not all toads have them right?" he asked as they entered the junk-filled room again. "Right. I''ve seen ones like this without." She laid out the writing tools and the open notebook for Daniel in the cleared spot on the table. On the left page was an extremely detailed drawing of the toad on the branch. It made him think he should have been observing her work instead of the toad. He moved his status tablet so that it was floating in front of the book, ignoring the weird look he was getting from Gemma from his hands interacting with something that she couldn''t see. He carefully copied his notes into the right-hand page, using block capitals and succeeding at avoiding wonky letters or inkblots.
Forest Small Green Toad. Small toad with dark green skin that looks sticky but is surprisingly dry to the touch. The creature did not smell, and its skin was not toxic. Appears to enjoy sunbathing by forest streams. Diet includes small birds. Observed to hunt by ambush, surprising prey with a powerful jump and long extension of tongue. Both the jump and the tongue extension have been seen to reach several feet, probably due to a skill. Some of the toads have a skill granting small black wooden lumps to grow on their skin.
It didn''t seem like a lot, but he probably would need to study more toads to find out more. He had kept things short, strictly sticking to what he had been able to observe, avoiding more evocative impressions to be more in line with the page about foxes. He had also agonised over a new name, but Gemma had given him one she said she picked at random, claiming the name wasn''t important unless it had incorrect information in it. When he was done writing, he noticed Gemma had been replaced with Rory, who was reading what he had written from over his shoulder. "This is really great work, Anne," he said, lavishing on the praise, "I''m impressed. I think I can actually get some use of this. You''d be a great help if you ever want to do more of this. And Gemma was telling me how much she would love to get to spend more time with you." Daniel wondered what angle Rory was playing at now. Who was the joke on this time? He had a suspicion it was on Gemma. Then, going to put away his status tablet with his mind, something else caught his eye. "This would be a great help," he said slowly, thinking things through, "with your job for landtrust?" "No, I told you it''s ranger work. We learn about the animals in case monsters start showing up," he said, "Why would you ask that?" "No reason," Daniel said, looking at his status. > Compendium of Creepy Crawlies gained. Chapter 15 There was more than just one new skill in his log, with one of the messages matching closely to an earlier one about his dubious disciple domain. > Landtrust guild: Creepy Crawly Division achieved. This sent him searching in the Domain tab. Or, well, it should be domains now since there was more than one on the list now. Just looking at the name threatened to short-circuit his brain. It didn''t seem to follow any conventions he thought he had identified. Interacting with this domain again opened a second list, this time with one of the skills he had seen in the log, but with a difference. It had level 3 next to it in brackets. > Compendium of Creepy Crawlies gained. He thought back to what his mother had said about gaining the flame skill. The priest had to have a guidance skill to teach it. He got the skill after completing the task Rory set for him. A teaching moment perhaps? Did that mean Rory had something similar to the priest? Daniel didn''t think so but it was hard to assume anything Rory did wasn''t a purposeful fake. And more importantly, did a toad even count as a creepy-crawly? Daniel wouldn''t have said so. But it could fit the nonsense Rory was coming up with, things he found disgusting. Was Rory a god, with skills and domains defined by his whims? Alien Magic Jesus in disguise playing a joke on Daniel? His personality sadly happened to fit with that theory. > Compendium of Creepy Crawlies: Allows access to Landtrust data for identification purposes. So...Rory and or Gemma had something similar? A type of encyclopedia that people from their guild could access. That would presumably mean they had a Landtrust Domain as well, and could also explain why part of their job was to collect notes on animals. He scratched his head, and then glanced at his surroundings. He had left Rory in the cottage, tired of his teasing, and gone to sit outside, passing an unconcerned Gemma on his way. Then he had moved round to the back just so he wasn''t staring across the clearing at where his parents were sitting. Compendium of Creepy Crawlies. A book appeared in his hands, the same unmarked brown as the one he and Gemma had used. He let it fall open in his lap, revealing empty pages. Spawning a book with a skill felt very reminiscent of his status tablet. He flicked the pages with his mind and was not too surprised when they turned. More empty pages. Leafing through the whole book discovered only one part filled. The description of a toad, complete with illustration, was at the front of the book. Those two did something like this it should be fine. He took hold of a blank page and tore it out from the book. When he let the page go it drifted to the ground and disappeared after a moment, and he could not find a torn section in the book. He opened the book in front of him in the air and let it go. It copied the page, clattering to the ground and then disappearing after a brief pause. Did the way it didn''t want to float in place like his tablet imply it was more real, say to other people? Shrugging, he looked around for an animal and spotted a flying insect flitting around near some wildflowers. A volunteer? How admirable! He focused on the creature as he used his skill. Compendium of Creepy Crawlies. The book appeared in his hand, open to the next empty page after the toad. Interesting. Access to Landtrust data for identification purposes did not seem amazing as far as skills went. But it sounded like should at least offer some information. Unless he was only getting the creepy-crawly division information. Which might make it a skill for checking his own notes on animals. Becoming a fantasy world version of David Attenborough was funny to think about, but less appealing as a goal to pursue. He also had what looked like a couple of new guidance skills to add to the list. No explanation text, no use, level one, just like the others. > Functional Writing gained. > Curious Observation gained. Functional and curious this time. He looked from the words on his tablet to the empty page in his lap. At his mental prompting, four words were slowly written there in Daniel''s crappy block capitals handwriting. Forest Stupid Rory Flybug. The sensation here was different. Writing notes on his mental construct tablet involved envisioning a keyboard for him to imagine typing on. This was good old-fashioned real imaginary writing in his fake book, however, with phantom shakiness in his make-believe hands. He flicked back to the toad page and then used the skill again on the volunteer. Compendium of Creepy Crawlies. The book turned by itself to the page with just Forest Stupid Rory Flybug on it. He amused himself by describing the bug in terms of how it looked, smelt, and acted just like Rory. His book was only his entries for now, but he chuckled at the idea he was still feeding into a larger database. He got no level in the skill for this, but he imagined filling the book more would do so, and his current work wasn''t very serious. He struggled to think of ways that leveling the skill would improve it. It seemed a cop-out if the reward for filling the book to level was having a more full-up book. What was the point in levels if he still had to do his own hard work? Dubious rewards aside, gaining levels appealed to him. Also appealing was collecting domains. Now that he had two, he wanted three. His concept of domains updated from religions to organisations, which improved his impression of them. Finding more guilds seemed easier than finding more religions. And he would be much happier to progress by working than by praying.This tale has been unlawfully obtained from Royal Road. If you discover it on Amazon, kindly report it. He also had the option to start looking for more skills like writing to pick up. It was just a shame that guidance skills weren''t more exciting. Skills so you could train them to have skills later. He could have done that on earth, train every skill possible in case they ended up useful. And he had the impression that church school was going to do something similar. His mother had said something about learning different skills there eventually. He just needed to move on from whatever it was they thought they had him doing at the moment. It could be deep meditation on the nature of Kyburad or simply extended detention. "Anne," Gemma called out from around the side of the cottage, "We are eating Lunch soon." "Alright" Daniel called back, getting up and dismissing his compendium skill. "What were you up to back there?" Gemma asked curiously. "I was looking for bugs to write about." Daniel answered, "Maybe you could help me after lunch?" "Did Rory tell you to ask me?" "No?" Daniel responded, tilting his head. "Oh. I''ll help then." Did she go through life assuming people were in on one of Rory''s dumb jokes? It probably served her right for marrying him. But then Rory had told him that Gemma would like to spend more time with him. Had he somehow played into Rory''s hands without meaning to? "Urk!" Possible manipulation on all sides. It reminded him of why he had spent so much time avoiding people. Lunch was held out on the grass, ignoring the perfectly good cottage wasting its best years unused in front of them. It wasn''t just Gemma who seemed more relaxed out here, Daniels parents were too. Daniel found it nice to see, but the shadow of his dad going to war was lurking in the background of that feeling. It didn''t feel real, and he wished he had a clearer idea of how much he should be worried. Afterward, he returned to the back of the cottage with Gemma. She started to effortlessly capture several small flying bugs to show them to Daniel. He realised he might have underestimated the gap between their abilities, but that didn''t stop him from wanting to try his hand at bug-catching by himself. Or so he thought as he spend several minutes chasing a green butterfly that was mocking him with its lazy evasion. But then Gemma approached with her hands cupped around something. "Hey Anne, look at this Beetle," she started, before abruptly stopping and pulling her hands in closer to her chest. Daniel wondered what was happening until he saw several small green vines start to worm their way out between the gaps in her hands. Gemma grimaced, then threw the writhing green mess in her hands onto a nearby exposed rock, quickly stomping the creature till it stopped moving. "How big was that beetle when you caught it?" Daniel asked, plastering a not at all horrified grin on his face. She held her fingers up maybe an inch apart. "And you are sure it''s safe for me to be here?" "It''s fine," Gemma said, seemingly unbothered by the disgusting creatures living in her backyard. He was starting to feel more sympathy for Rory having creature types he didn''t like. "Can you draw how it looked to start with?" "I''ll try," she said and got to work. Daniel examined the remains once it seemed safe, a tangle of smushed green tendrils with a small smear of insect in the centre. He had been calling them vines since they seemed plant-like but maybe naming them tentacles was more appropriate. Either way, he didn''t want to be holding one of these things when it went off, and he gave the still nearby lazy butterfly a wary glance. Gemma''s picture was again surprisingly good and they used it to find a second similar beetle to observe from a safe distance. Daniel made notes with his status, but this time he switched to the Domain tab and wrote from memory so he could observe any changes. Gemma had brought back the same book from before for him to write in, still empty but for the toad. He leveled twice in his skill while writing, at around a third of the way through the description with the first level and reaching level five just before the end. Gemma called out to him to come and look at her latest catch. Ignoring his leveling high, he left his contemplations behind and got back to work, By the time his mother came to tell him it was time to be going, he had added twice more to his compendium, but without leveling again. "Anne, sweetheart," Mum said, "have you got something to say to your uncle and aunt for inviting you to their house and spending time with you?" He stared up at her, aghast. Four separate gazes focused on him, enjoying his embarrassment. Are you really going to make me say it? "Thank you," Daniel said, writhing internally at the attention on him. He felt corralled. "Gemma when you get sick of Rory you should escape and come live with us." Gemma laughed. "That won''t happen, but thanks for the thought," she said. Rory gave a smug grin. Daniel found them both hard to understand, but he could admit that Gemma seemed happier out here. They traveled home at a leisurely stroll, watching as the sky changed colors overhead as the sun started to lower. Daniel looked curiously at the scenery that they passed. He wondered what other strange differences to his old world were hiding beneath his notice. He went to summon his flame as he walked, as idly playing around with it had become a habit. Flame of Kyburad. That wasn''t right. The gap underneath was missing. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. Flame of Kyburad. He opened up his status. The domain was still there. The skill was still there...or was it? His landtrust domain was highlighted, with only the compendium skill showing. He selected the Kyburad domain, and the skill list swapped to show his flame skill. Flame of Kyburad. Daniel sighed in a mix of relief and annoyance. He glanced back at his parents, walking a short distance behind him. Compendium of Creepy Crawlies. Nothing. He switched his domains, watching his flame as he did so. It danced merrily in his hand, unconcerned. He dismissed it and tried to resummon it. Flame of Kyburad. So he had to have a domain selected in his status to use its spells, but the effect didn''t go straight away if he swapped. That seemed irritatingly inconvenient. Shouldn''t a game-like system have a forum to post complaints about the UI and ask for quality of life changes? Does Alien Magic Jesus even play the game? Compendium of Creepy Crawlies. He opened the book at the front, noticing an index that he didn''t think had been there earlier. There were five items contained in it, and leafing through he found each of the entries. Forest Small Green Toad. Forest Stupid Rory Flybug. Forest Scary Brown Beetle. Forest Wiggly Dirt Worm. Forest Lazy Green Butterfly. Gemma''s plain book had not appeared magical or skill-based to him. But he had leveled when writing in it. He wondered about the timing of when his compendium had been updated. His eyes went back to his status. Compendium of Creepy Crawlies. Level 1. Oh, dear. Where had his level 5 gone? The only guess he could make was that he had reset levels by swapping back and forth. "Urk!" It wasn''t supposed to be like this! I was supposed to be the chosen one! What''s happening to my overpowered domain hoarding? At least he could break the game by being a level 1 bug expert with a full compendium. Surely that would help him slay dragons somehow. Chapter 16 When they finally reached home and went upstairs, Daniel remembered he had a question to ask. "Grandfather, what''s the point of the town walls?" he asked, "The back gate isn''t even guarded." "Good question!" Grandfather grinned, and Henry, who he had been talking with, groaned. "Maybe we should be going," he said to Carissa. "Nonsense, your children need to hear this as well," Grandfather said, leading the way to the corner where Henry''s children were sitting with Grandmother and Beatrix. "Why would you ask that?" Henry asked Daniel. "Quiet, Henry!" Grandfather barked, "Now, gather round, grandchildren, and let me tell you the story of how the walls of Laston are a testament to the cowardice and stupidity of the priesthood." Daniel, tired from all the walking, went to sit with the others. Behind his grandfather, he could see adults shaking their heads and rolling their eyes, but some smiles were going around as well. "My grandfather used to tell me stories of his childhood in Lisirrast," Grandfather started, "There were many things there that you won''t see much of nowadays. There were brave noble houses that had real backbone, there were the wonders of steam power, and there was the Goddess Salidera to watch over everybody. Last and definitely least was the Lisirrast Guild of Engineers. A bunch of builders in love with numbers, my grandfather used to call them. And after numbers they loved walls. They built walls everywhere, even on top of other walls, they loved them that much. They said the walls of Lisirrast would never fall. And then the monsters came, the walls were useless, and the engineers were the first to run for Sanctuary." "Now tell me, boys and girls, what do you think was the first thing they did after running all the way here?" Grandfather asked, looking around eagerly. "They built more walls?" Daniel''s cousin David answered nervously. "Exactly!" Grandfather declared loudly, practically pouncing on the response. "They were scared, so they built more walls. They even came to Laston to build walls. But you don''t need walls in Sanctuary. The walls were useless, and they were starting to be scared that the engineers guild itself was useless. Which it was! So what do you think they did then?" A pause, with no one wanting to venture a guess. "They turned to religion," Grandfather said, shaking his head "They looked down on Salidera, but then they got frightened and rushed to look up at Kyburad. They started to build churches instead of walls. They built churches everywhere, even on top of other churches. And that''s how the priesthood started. Just as our line goes back to the brightest and bravest of Lisirrast''s survivors, the priesthood was founded by the biggest cowards and idiots. And Laston''s pointless walls are a monument to that fact." Grandfather seemed inordinately pleased with his story. Daniel just wondered if the engineers guild being overconfident about the walls protecting them wasn''t the same as people in Sanctuary currently assuming they were safe in a country with monsters on the border. That and the mention of steam power. Mostly he was thinking about steam power. He''d be needing a steam tank, and maybe a zeppelin or some kind of airship.
His father''s departure snuck up on Daniel. It was earlier in the morning than he was used to, and he was still half asleep as he stood with his mother just inside the front door. He looked at Beatrix, who was being held on his mother''s hip. That had used to be his position, and he was struck by how odd it was for him to be walking around with those memories in his head. He yawned, wondering if he could go back to sleep afterward. Despite the early hour, the rest of the family had all shown up to say goodbye and were crowded around Dad. In the yard itself, Daniel could see a large wheeled wooden wagon waiting. Even without tentacles, the size difference between Daniel and the horse hitched to the wagon made it intimidating. And he was making sure to stay out of range just in case the tentacles decided to reveal themselves. Maybe it was a town horse and would start growing bricks to chuck at people instead. The gate to the outside was swung open, and there were ten other members of the guard in attendance, with their own friends and family seeing them off. Enough people for them to spill out into the street, and Daniel knew this was less than a third of those going. Each man had identical armor and a long polearm that he judged to be about 3 Daniels in length. Beyond that, he saw other smaller weapons of much greater variety strapped here and there, or being chucked into the back of the wagon. "They''re all young men," Daniel said, noticing that his father, who was in his early twenties, looked amongst the oldest of the bunch. He would have thought there would be at least one grizzled veteran to take charge, but apparently, that was his father''s job. "Every man only goes once," his mother responded. Daniel mulled that over, having mixed feelings over possibly dodging some sort of draft due to his gender. He was getting the impression that he should be more concerned than he was about his sex impacting his prospects. But even as a man he had always seen himself as his own separate category, one which didn''t care about rules for men or women or any other group for that matter. Besides, children didn''t need to worry about their sex or gender, so he didn''t need to think about it. He was going to keep telling himself that until it came true. "What do you actually do for work, Mum?" he asked, "Today for example, what are you going to do today?" "Today?" Mum said, sounding distracted, "Well first I want to check on old Edgar, his wife died last spring and he has no family left here so we keep an eye on him. Then after that, Fern will need a break from the twins and a sympathetic ear. That''s her over there," she pointed at a harried-looking young woman saying a tearful goodbye to one of the guardsmen. She had three children huddled around her, and none looked to be twins, so she probably had at least two more at home. "Then later, well Carissa is helping to organise her cousin''s wedding, and I''m sure they''ll take as much help as they can get with that." "And that is a normal day?" "Normal enough. Sometimes I just fill in when other jobs are short on people. I told you I help out where I''m needed."The narrative has been taken without permission. Report any sightings. That would make her somewhat of a mix of social and temp worker. A respectable enough profession. It sounded god awful to Daniel, especially the social worker part. If that was a feminine role here, it absolutely was not going to apply to him. Daniel watched as Mum tried to put on a brave face when Dad approached. She went through a last-minute checklist, Dad quietly assuring her he hadn''t forgotten anything. Daniel was being hit by the realisation that his father could simply not come back, and what that could mean for them. What happened to war widows and orphans here? Then looking up at his father, he found himself annoyed at the slant of his sympathies. Hey Dad, don''t you know how hard it would be for us if you were horribly murdered? "Take care of them," Dad said at last as the worries tapered off. "I will" Daniel replied, although it clearly wasn''t meant for him. His father responded by kneeling down and meeting Daniel''s gaze. Daniel had meant what he said. He would try, it was the least he could do. After a moment his father nodded once, then rose and turned away, calling in a surprisingly loud voice for the men to set out. Daniel squeezed his mother''s hand as they watched them leave.
After a couple more days of flame practice, Daniel was happy that his schooling finally started to progress. Zachery even apologised to Daniel for leaving him to himself too much while getting things sorted for the new arrangement. As time passed, his education was anchored around learning a new skill every few days. Many of these lessons were fairly straightforward and tended to result in humdrum job-related skills. ''here do some cleaning to learn a cleaner skill''. > Halfhearted Cleaning gained. But the skills soon started to add up. Cleaning, weaving, laundry, gardening, tailoring, leatherworking, carving, meat butchery, and then for some reason chicken butchery as a separate skill, chandlery, carpentry, alchemy, basket weaving, embroidery, wool carder, winemaking, tanning, belt making, shoemaking, tinkering, cooking, the list went on and on. Daniel figured that he would eventually have a skill for every job in town. Some skills encompassed an entire profession, and some were only a small part of one, and sometimes the two overlapped. Other skills seemed less job-focused, to Daniel at least. Mathematics came up and was again described by his status as eldritch, while several of the more mundane job-related skills had descriptors that reflected how dull he found them. Learning the skill was enough, being able to properly perform the task it was named for was less important. But the option to explore a particular skill more was there if Daniel showed enough interest. Writing was taught to him despite Daniel admitting to already having it. Gardening, however, was canceled when he said he had learned it by helping his grandmother. Zachery had been planning to bring in a number of potted plants for him to tend to learn that one. For some skills, Zachery would provide tools or materials, some of them appeared to be designed specifically for teaching. He was seemingly unbothered by any mess or disruption created, or by the risk posed by leaving Daniel alone with sharp implements. Other times Daniel would go to a different part of the church. Cooking, for example, he picked up in a tiny kitchen in a separate area of the church where the priests lived. Zachery said Daniel would be rejoining his class when older for the skills that were easier learned outside like farming. Identify was a skill he learned by trying to judge the differences between items in a box of junk Zachery brought him. Zachery said the skill only helped you better utilize the knowledge you already had, rather than giving you new information. And that the skill was quite weak, but had many stronger specialised versions that could be gained by taking it as a profession skill. Daniel''s mind was drawn into making comparisons to his compendium skill. Between the new skill sessions, there was more practice in the skills of Daniel''s choice. In between that, Zachery sometimes gave him lectures that could mostly fit into one of two topics, the mechanics of skills and the virtues of Lord Kyburad. There was even a lecture on how the two intersected. The priest claimed that people filled out their Kyburad domain skill list by ''worshipping Him and living life in pursuit of His virtues''. The flame skill was associated with the worship part and at the centre of the whole domain. Leveling it unlocked other Kyburad skills which were supposedly each linked in one way or another to his virtues. And you couldn''t hold a skill related to an ideal you weren''t living up to. The lecture seemed to be meant to inspire Daniel into Kyburad''s warm embrace but had the opposite effect in the end. Domains as a wider concept had also been explained, albeit again, in a manner clearly tailored to meet the church''s interests. They were as Daniel had thought, similar to a second job. You picked a profession to get profession skills and joined a domain to get domain skills. Domains were one per person unless your name was Daniel. Individualist gave ''Reduced benefits and restrictions from Domains''. He figured joining more than one might count as ''reduced restrictions''. And ''reduced benefits'' could be leveling annoyances. Possibly it meant getting stuck in a dead-end division for the landtrust guild as well. Zachery insisted that Daniel was absolutely free to choose whatever domain he wanted. But he was also unwilling to give an example of an alternative to Kyburad and mentioned that people not a part of Kyburad''s domain were not trusted. Suspecting Rory had a different domain, Daniel found it hard to disagree with the last part. Luckily Daniel didn''t need to worry about domain choice as much, since he planned to sign up for as many as possible. A list of places to go looking would have been nice though. A different interesting topic covered was leveling and affinities. Guidance skills didn''t level but carried the practice over to normal adult skills. The major caveat was you couldn''t level skills past your own level, even with guidance skill level banking malarky. This meant at best you could have level 14 skills waiting for you when you hit adulthood at age 15. It also explained why his compendium skill had briefly been stuck at level 5. The other half of the equation was affinities. This was your talent with a skill, or potential, or passion, or well, affinity. The explanation got a little wishy-washy, but Zachery claimed that was because it worked differently for different skills. Better affinity meant quicker leveling with a higher peak possible. An idiot with no talent couldn''t mindlessly smack a piece of metal with a hammer for 100 years and turn into a Level 1000 Alien Magic GodSmith. The church''s education seemed to favor work on affinities over levels. It made sense given the differences between the two. Affinities could be improved, but it was difficult and grew more so after childhood. Again different skills worked differently. When Zachery talked about some of the ways to raise your affinity, Daniel knew that was the hope behind his initial self-guided practice sessions. Affinities were also hard to specifically track, not normally showing in someone''s status. But Zachery mentioned a way for guidance stones to reveal them, and a meeting with his parents at age 10 to discuss them. He talked about affinity quality being represented by color, but Daniel thought that the descriptors of his guidance skills had the same purpose. Daniel put the dots together with other comments to come to an understanding of how education progressed here. Ages five to ten you would pick up any skills that were useful to the town and possibly yourself. In-between would be affinity study sessions for whatever skills took your interest, but wouldn''t it be ever so great if that interest was caught by Kyburad. Then at ten years old, there would be a sort of parent-teacher meeting to discuss your affinities report card and pick your focus going forwards. There was mention of people taking something like an apprenticeship in the town, or even leaving for a city that could better cater to your talents. To give Zachery his due, Daniel thought there were principles there that he was following, and could be trusted to continue to do so. But he was sticking to the letter of the law, with no qualms beyond that. He probably thought it was a moral good to push as many children as possible into worship. And Daniel wouldn''t discount that in this world Zachery could be right, he just didn''t think any of it should apply to himself. Chapter 17 Daniel was slowly sucked into the process of learning. Filling his status with skills, working at affinities, and pre-leveling started to fill up his mind and time even outside of the church. He sometimes even dreamt of his status. He was probably getting a little carried away with it all, but he found he didn''t mind. He had liked RPGs and MMOs in his past life after all, so it wasn''t a surprise that the game-like systems were appealing to him. As the year crept its way around, he planned to reach level six in his compendium skill just after his birthday. Unfortunately, his birthday was in winter, and he ended up having to wait for spring. Thankfully, the various bugs and worms he found in his grandmother''s garden were more mundane than the creatures in the forest. He decided to go with names starting with town instead of forest, mildly worried he could break the leveling process if he wasn''t following the correct conventions. It only took him a single afternoon to reach level six, but doing so did nothing, and he put it back to level one in disgust. Level seven brought similar disappointment. At seven years old, in the middle of autumn, Daniel was whiling away an afternoon in the garden. He was idly juggling, while distracted wondering about what skill''s affinity to work on improving the next day. Beatrix, a cheerful three-year-old, enjoyed watching Daniel juggle, and had been repeatedly bugging him to amuse her for the last couple of weeks. And then Daniel was pulled out of his thoughts by a discovery. He had gotten better at juggling. His affinity for the skill was still basic, Zachery had undersold how difficult raising affinities was, and Daniel did not care much about juggling. His skill was still inactive level one of course, and since it was autumn his stats hadn''t changed. But he had improved over the past two weeks. Extra stones added made things pretty obvious. It shouldn''t be a surprise to him that you could improve at things by practice, but it did ask a certain question. "What have I been doing?" he asked no one in particular, letting the stones drop. "Banana, no!" Beatrix complained. Rory had told her that Anne was short for banana, and Daniel preferred her using that as his name, not that he would admit so to Rory. The leveling drive bubble popped in his mind and was gone as if it had never existed. It was similar to his one-time experience with MMOs, slowly becoming obsessed, having it grow to consume every waking moment and thought, and then one day abruptly realising that he was wasting his time on a game had grown bored of already. Pop! The dream is over. Why was I doing that again? Could this be blamed on some sneaky church magic? He wanted to do so but his blessing existed and this felt too similar to his past. There was more to life than levels, and looking at the stones on the ground he had to admit there was more to leveling than levels. "What am I doing with my life?" he asked, slapping his own forehead. He had spent time working on his cleaning affinity. The halfhearted description should have been a clue to go no further. He never wanted to clean again. "You''re ruining it!" Beatrix cried, annoyed that her amusement was being interrupted. "What do you want?" he asked her, a philosophical question. "Juggles!" she said pointedly, but then noticed he wanted more. She thought for a moment, and then a goofy grin appeared on her face. "Tickles," she said. Daniel took a moment to take in her silly smile before obliging. It did his heart good to listen to her giggling. He took a deep breath and looked up at the sky, feeling like he had just come up for air. This was not the new world life he wanted. It was time to refocus on being himself. He wanted to escape. Explore more of the world and magic far away from the church. He needed to keep that in mind and only take in the useful parts of their teaching. Townie professions were stupid, he had known that. He had thought he had known that. He thought crafting in fantasy games was bad enough when it was automated. He wasn''t about to spend the next fifty years fixing people''s socks. Or worse cleaning them. His family was the same. He cared for them more than he had anyone in his past life, as scary as that admission was to make even to himself. He needed to make sure he wasn''t letting them down, but he wouldn''t abandon himself. It felt good to know that he had managed to hold onto that part of himself all this way. He needed his own life. When he reached fifteen, he would have to grow up and probably move on. Living for your family was something he could not understand or accept. There was a level of servility there, in putting others above yourself. How could you respect someone like that? He couldn''t live that way and didn''t want his parents living for his sake. Ideally, his family would be something to think of fondly and then visit in between adventures. But he knew he had been phoning it in for a while, with Beatrix and the rest of his family. He had performed the same lump poking service for his new brother Conrad as he had for Beatrix, but like many other interactions, he had been sleepwalking through it. He had told Dad he would take care of them but had become too distracted with power leveling to nowhere. He looked at Beatrix. The little weirdo was sticking out her tongue and making a bizarre retching gesture. Maybe short visits only since he didn''t want to catch the stupid. "Grandmother will catch you if you do that," he warned her. He stuck his hand out and grabbed hold of her tongue. "wuahyueyue" she protested, her voice muffled. "What? I can''t understand you, Bee, you must have turned back into a baby." "I''m not a Bee," she said, finally freeing her tongue, "or a baby." "Bzz," he said, booping her on the nose, "Come on little Bee let''s go see Mum."Unauthorized reproduction: this story has been taken without approval. Report sightings. "Alright Banana." she agreed, the goofy smile back in force. He led her across the garden to their mother, who was sitting on the step leading inside with Conrad in her lap. She looked up and smiled warmly at them as they approached. He wondered if this was happiness for her, surrounded by her children. She had mentioned wanting seven or eight, so Dad would need to be back soon. "Mum," he said, "I want to spend time after church taking a look around town." Taking care of his mother probably didn''t include randomly going missing. "Alright, just stay in the walls and don''t be out too long." Daniel was ready to point out that he was already walking home alone, but was taken aback that she had agreed so easily. "Just like that?" "The town is safe, sweetheart." "Huh." Hopefully not too safe. A probably stupid plan was forming. First, tomorrow morning he needed to go rub it in the priest''s faces that he was going home early instead of more dullard training. Second, he was going looking for trouble. If he could improve at juggling, and he could train at cleaning, he could work on something that mattered to him. He was tired of being a coward. He just needed to channel his inner idiot enough to get someone scary to shout at him. "I want to come too," Beatrix said. "No bees allowed," he told her. Conrad gave him a longing look that indicated interest as well. The boy was taking heavily after the father he had yet to meet. He probably had a Blessing of Dad''s Meaningful Glances or something similar.
Daniel was filled with tense anticipation as he walked down the hill the next morning. He glanced back behind him, spotting Ellory a way back past some other kids, the beanpole standing out as usual. He saw Ellory quite a lot on his travels back and forth from the church, but it might partly be because he barely recognised any of the other kid''s faces. As he entered the church, he started rehearsing what he would say to Zachery. His plan had become slightly less aggressive with the light of morning. He wanted out, but there was a proper line of respectful denial he wanted to hit. Open rudeness to Zachery wouldn''t help, but neither would showing respect for timewasting when he was the one supposedly in charge of how he spent his time. A polite discussion to see if there were any new lessons or lectures planned for today and then he was off to explore the town. Maybe if he got lucky he might find some sort of guild house while he was at it. "Ah. Anne, good you are here," Zachery said as he arrived. "Come on we are heading up into town." Daniel squinted at Zachery before following him. Stupid priests. He wasn''t giving in, Zachery was just walking in front of him as he left. "Where are we going?" "To see Smith Paul," Zachery said. "We have a forge downstairs but it''s in a special classroom so I have arranged an alternative." A forge downstairs seemed risky. What about airflow, and fire safety? They probably had some stupid priest magic to fix it. Perhaps there was a mind-control field to convince people smoke inhalation was good for them. "Shouldn''t it be Paul Smith?" "He''s the head smith for the whole town," Zachery said as if that explained it. Smith Paul was a stocky man with an easy-going nature. He was waiting for them outside his workshop, a flat sprawling building. The sounds and heat of many people working with metal emanated from inside. He greeted Daniel with a smile. "Welcome, Anne. James has told me about you. He boasted to me about making a priest cry with the help of his favorite granddaughter." "If he did I didn''t get to see it," Daniel said. Maybe the tale had grown in the telling. "I am here as well, Paul," Zachery said. "I know man," Paul grinned at him, "That''s half the fun of bringing it up." "Did he really make one cry?" Daniel asked Zachery doubtfully, "was it you?" "It was not," Zachery irritably responded, "If someone cried I did not witness it either." Paul led them through the workshop. The building was even larger on the inside, with several different sections, each of them filled with men busy at work. There were also several boys helping out, that Daniel thought were probably apprentices. He could see why they would need a head smith. They had to wind their way past others a couple of times to get to their destination, a room at the back with a forge and a host of smithing tools. "What do you make of the place Anne?" Paul turned and asked. "There are more people working here than I expected." "That''s a show, I do half the jobs here by myself," he said. "But I mean the workshop, not the people, do you feel inspired to become a smith?" Daniel looked around a second time. It was so hot and loud that working here might be worse than cleaning socks. Besides that, it was a bit too ordinary for his tastes. "I don''t. Can''t you use magic for heating the metal?" Paul laughed. "I can. But we are here for you to learn. Now come on let''s get to it." He handed Daniel a hammer and moved him over to stand by an anvil. The hammer was small but so was Daniel. "Just stand there ready." Then he used tongs to take a small bar of metal out of the forge, with the end glowing hot. He placed the metal flat on the anvil and looked at Daniel. "Right then, I need this metal flattened out. So you take your time and hit the red part. It doesn''t need to be hard." Daniel swung, feeling slightly foolish. Sure, let the seven-year-old girl beat the metal into shape. The hammer hit, making an encouraging sound. "Good. Now hit it again. Shouldn''t take too long." Daniel hit the metal bar several more times, gaining confidence as he went. It felt satisfying, but if he was accomplishing something besides tiring himself out he couldn''t tell. As he stopped to adjust his grip, Zachery reached out with a guidance stone in his hand. Daniel reached out and held a hand above the stone, it would not work unless he voluntarily interacted with the stone. The white sections of it started to glow, a sign that he had learned the skill that the lesson was supposed to teach. "Done I see," Paul said. "What about now Anne? Do you want to be a smith now? You want to do all my work for me?" "I don''t but thank you for teaching me," Daniel said, thinking over the experience in his head. "I didn''t see any female smiths back there." "Most women don''t have the strength or the interest needed for the job," Paul said, "But Zachery loves to make sure." "God-given talents should not be wasted," Zachery said. "He''s got us there Anne, can''t argue with that one. Just be careful not to end up too talented, or you''ll get sent off to the capital. The priests there are even worse than the ones we have here!" Daniel looked curiously between the two men. Paul was enjoying needling Zachery, but he was friendly enough that it was hard to see poor sentiment being behind it. "Do you not like the priests then?" he asked. Paul hummed, rubbing his chin. "You can trust a priest but you don''t have to like them. That''s what my mother taught me." Zachery scowled but remained silent. "Oh come on Zachery, there''s no need for that," Paul said, "We''re all friends here. I don''t dislike anyone in the town, not really." "And the capital? The people I worked with there were very diligent and dedicated to their work." "Well if you don''t agree with me, why did you come to live out here?" Paul asked, raising an eyebrow. "Fine. You might have a point." Zachery admitted, looking disgusted. Paul laughed, slapping Zachery on the back. "And there you have it. Now, are you sure that you don''t want to try more Anne?" "I''m sure." "Good, then we are done. I need to go make sure none of the apprentices have started trying to eat the iron again." Chapter 18 As they left Paul''s workshop, Zachery turned to Daniel. "Back to the church then, Anne." "For more practice?" "Yes?" "I might stay here then. I think I am a little practiced out. I thought looking around the town a bit might give me a better idea of where to focus," Daniel said. He thought he was justifying himself too much, explaining things to Zachery, but couldn''t seem to help it. "Have you told your mother this?" "Yes." "Then that is your choice. I shall see you tomorrow." "Goodbye." Daniel''s relief soared as he watched Zachery leave. Freedom. He wandered around the town, not quite sure what he was expecting to find. The area with Paul''s workshop had several similar buildings and felt to him as though it was all one large industrial yard, like a big building site or dockyard. Not that Daniel had much real-life experience with such places. There were small sheds and outbuildings between the larger workshops, as well as places with materials or boxes stacked out in the open. There were even people just working outdoors, as well as a constant movement back and forth between different buildings. It made it hard to define where the street was, or the dividing lines between the grounds of different workshops. Daniel was getting the uncomfortable feeling that he was in the wrong place, and was getting in the way of people''s work. But he didn''t care, he lied to himself, since he was looking for trouble. It was Earth-style resistance training, frighten a kid enough times and they would probably toughen up. Assuming they could keep a positive attitude and not get traumatised. Magic shouldn''t stop this working, it was just easier to wait for stats and skills to fix things for you. But being a scared kid really undercut his sense of self-worth in a way that being a dumb kid never had. This plan felt like a move in a positive direction. He just needed to act in a way that generated appropriately scary situations. He might even pick up some bravery or fear resistance skill along the way, but he would rather get to the point where he didn''t need them. So when he almost tripped over while dodging out of the way of a workman struggling with a heavy-looking sack, he was happy to hear laughter coming his way from across the street. Whirling, he marched his way over towards three young men. There was a half-full wagon there, next to an open doorway, that from the looks of it the men were in the process of loading or emptying. Approaching them was intimidating, but in some ways, he was assured by his own lack of threat. There would probably be more risk of actual violence occurring trying this as an adult male. "What?" he demanded loudly. This didn''t immediately stop the laughter, but one of the men shushed the others and walked closer to Daniel with a consoling look on his face. "Are you lost, girlie?" he asked, crouching on his heels in front of Daniel to be closer to eye level. "I am where I mean to be. Now stop laughing at people you don''t know it''s mean." One of the men who had hung back started laughing again at that. Now that he was interacting with them, this didn''t feel intimidating any longer. They wouldn''t do anything, they would just laugh down at him, it was annoying more than anything else. He swung in the direction of the laughter, sticking out a finger to point at the man. "Shut up!" he cried. The man crouching next to him snorted at that and was trying to hold back laughter. Daniel turned back to him and used his outstretched finger to push against his forehead. The man tilted back and lost his balance, slipping back onto his behind with his legs splayed out to either side. Daniel''s eyes widened. An opening! He pulled back his leg to take advantage of this opportunity, and then stopped himself, feeling his cheeks starting to redden. "Sorry," he said. He swung on the spot and started to move away down the street, trying to ignore the laughter behind him. Maybe he would get Embarrassment Resistance instead. He had been honestly surprised by his violent impulses. Not something he was used to having at all. A seven-year-old wouldn''t be able to do much damage to a full-grown man, and he might have gotten a Target Weak Spot skill if he had followed through. But the idea of hurting people by taking advantage of them being unwilling to fight back disgusted him. He might need to recalibrate just a tiny little bit. Maybe violence was a way to stand up for yourself, but it wasn''t really what he was looking for. He decided to go back to the market square and check out the shops. But the first thing that caught his eye when he got there was the status stone. There was a couple there as he approached, the man looking at a piece of paper he held while the woman was tapping her foot waiting next to him. He walked up and put his hand on the stone, to no response. He guessed that made some sense, although he had half expected it to summon his tablet for him. "It doesn''t work for children little girl." the woman said. He turned to look at her, trying to think of a reasonable way to start being rude. Being reasonable was probably a mistake, and he turned to focus on the man instead. "Hey!" he called out. "Yeah you," he said when the man looked up. "Give me a look at that." "What? No." the man replied, seeming surprised he would even ask. "Come on," Daniel said, his assertiveness already starting to falter. "Just a little."Taken from Royal Road, this narrative should be reported if found on Amazon. "It''s private and you are too young to see it anyway," the man said with confidence. "Let''s just go Jasper, we are going to be late," the woman said, grabbing at his arm. The man''s response was fair, and it would be rude to go pry further. His nerves and his nature agreed he should drop it. But the relief he felt when it looked like they were leaving felt like he was giving up. "Are you scared of the priests? What are you trying to hide on your status?" he called out. "What is your name girl? Do your parents know where you are?" Jasper said, shrugging off the woman and turning back. The implied threat was cold water down his back. He had been hyped up and over-anxious, but now he was hit by fear. "I''m sorry," he said. Please don''t tell my mum. He folded miserably. Was he going to start crying? It would barely make him feel worse about himself. "I''m leaving, I don''t have time for you to have an argument with a six-year-old in the street," the woman said. Jasper seemed frustrated, but he turned and chased after her. It took time for Daniel to regain an even keel. He had to remind himself that getting used to stressful situations was the whole point. He took some time off from belligerence to try to learn more about the various stores around the edge of the square. The shops didn''t seem particularly busy, and he went into the deli-like shop his mother had taken him to before. It was being attended by a bored middle-aged woman with short brown hair and a kindly smile, whose mothering instincts he seemed to fully trigger. She answered his questions happily, complimenting him several times for his politeness and telling him to come back to visit her again. Little did she know that back out on the streets he was a violent rabble-rouser. He flitted from one store to another. The deli lady was not the only shopkeeper who was bored and happy to answer questions as a distraction. Business did not appear to be booming, and it was hard to see how anyone was turning a profit. Sadly there didn''t seem to be any guilds available for him to join. A shop keepers association domain would probably not be great, but he would take it if offered. The only store he avoided was Addison Doctor''s since there was someone in there talking to him already. Barging into a consultation was going a bit too far. He headed to the bookstore, wondering if the same gormless salesman he could remember would still be working there. It turned out he had been replaced by a thin man with short black hair and a stern expression on his face as Daniel entered. "What do you want? Did someone send you on an errand?" he asked brusquely before Daniel could speak. "No," Daniel said, "But I had some questions to ask you." "We don''t serve children and I have no time for your questions. Leave." Daniel quietly obeyed, trying to shake things off once he got safely outside. Jackpot! This was just the sort of easily ticked off but probably reasonable adult he was looking for. He thought going back in might get him shouted at, but he hesitated, and not just due to apprehension. This just wasn''t him. Starting an argument to discuss why someone didn''t want to talk? Past-life Daniel wanted to throttle him for even thinking of it. He just wasn''t sure he was cut out for being an asshole. Sure people had called him one plenty of times in the past, but that had never counted because he hadn''t agreed with them. In some ways, he thought there was something cool about being one. You could really get stuff done when you were willing to jump to a conclusion and trample over anyone who got in your way with their stupid objections. Daniel had always gotten held back by doing boring things like considering all the possibilities or giving people the benefit of the doubt. It was the same today, being antagonistic was a lot harder when he actually thought he should be apologising instead. If only someone close to him was nice enough to be an ass, then he could practice resisting them while having some sort of conviction to fall back on. Ok, enough of that for now. Being rude to random people could be added to his list of obviously bad plans in hindsight. He went home shortly after, feeling somewhat dejected but not defeated. His stupid affinities practice had at least taught him that finding the right approach would take more than one day. There was still time before lunch when he got back, and rather than sitting alone upstairs, he went into the playroom. "Banana!" Beatrix happily cried when she saw him. Conrad came over with clumsy steps to join them. "Why are you here?" Beatrix asked. "I''m here to play with you," he announced. Daniel looked down at the two of them, smiling. Putting the birthday leveling silliness to one side, it was mystical to him that his family was growing these two tiny people. "Baron Conrad, I have spotted the bee creature. Would you like me to capture it?" Conrad seemed hesitant at first, but he was smiling and he eventually nodded, which was good enough for Daniel. "Very good sir," he said, giving a salute. He turned towards Beatrix with a predatory grin. "Better start running, Bee." "I''m not a bee," she said as she scampered away, but she was already laughing. "She''s a bee she admits it," Daniel cried to Conrad, "Get her!" Daniel was getting several strange looks from the same old group of women in the playroom. He supposed he had spent most of his time in here quietly sitting by himself, unsure of how to deal with other kids. But he ignored them and enjoyed himself spending time with Beatrix and Conrad.
A few weeks later, Daniel sat with his siblings upstairs, with his grandparents as well as Henry also in the room. His mother was uncharacteristically late, so he had collected his brother and sister from the playroom himself. "I''ve got a letter from Marcus," his mother said excitedly when she arrived. This perked everyone up since it had been nearly a year since the last letter, and they usually contained messages for the whole family. Out of the ordinary, however, was the fact that this letter had two separate letters within it. One was specifically for Mum, and the other was addressed to the family and she handed it off to Grandfather who started to read it, with Henry and Grandmother crowding over his two shoulders. Daniel watched his mother read with curiosity, knowing he was near the bottom of the letter reading totem pole. And with it addressed specifically to his mother, perhaps it was private. It could be a love letter, for all he knew it could be filled with smut instead of flowery poetry. He didn''t think his parents were the type, but they were still young after all, and this was part of the culture he didn''t have a good handle on. The thought of his parents as sexual creatures summoned what he thought of as a typically childish response. Why would people get so bothered about something so silly? Even his remembered perspective as an adult came across as ridiculous and ali-- He wrenched his thoughts away with force, shaking his head and trying to dispel them. There were things like puberty existing that he would generally rather not dwell on. And then there were things that he absolutely did not want to even think about thinking about. "A paladin!" Henry announced, helpfully distracting Daniel. Mum stopped reading as well, to look his way. "He''s become a paladin!" Henry continued. "This changes everything," Grandfather said triumphantly. "Divine enchantment?" Grandmother asked herself, her eyes trying to scan through the letter to catch the part Henry was talking about. "It must be," Grandfather said. "Let''s not get too far ahead of ourselves Father," Henry cautioned. "It is Marcus after all." But Grandfather did not seem dissuaded from his excitement. "We''ll need to let the others know. Start writing letters today Henry." "I will," Henry nodded, but then turned awkwardly towards Mum, "Do you want me to..?" "No thank you, Henry," Mum said, looking like she had bitten something rotten, "It''s better if I write the letter to my mother myself." Chapter 19 Daniel''s father was coming home in the spring. That was the most important piece of news to Daniel, but he itched to find out more about paladins. Unfortunately, his mother had gone back to poring over her letter, and asking the others felt like cheating. Grandmother had likewise picked up the family letter and was going through it again. He listened for a while to Grandfather and Henry discuss who to send letters to, but the names were pretty meaningless to him. Dad becoming a paladin seemed to mean that Grandfather could boss around more people, although Henry was advising caution. Eventually, Daniel lost interest and went over to distract himself by distracting Beatrix and Conrad. When his mother finished reading, she folded up her letter and left the room, presumably to put it away somewhere. He guessed it was a love letter after all. He rose up to follow her, but she came back in and met him as he reached the door. She raised an eyebrow, and a look of understanding passed between them. He smiled at the association his brain made between his father and unspoken communication. "It''s good that Dad is coming home," he said. "Ask Zachery about paladins tomorrow," she said, answering the question he hadn''t needed to ask. Daniel glanced over his back at Grandfather and Henry. He didn''t really get what was going on with them, but they seemed to be making a lot of plans. Henry looked over in their direction and nodded, presumably having overheard. "It''s fine it''s not a secret," he called over. Mum then led Daniel over toward Beatrix and Conrad. "Alright girls, listen to me, we need to talk about that weird retching expression you two have been doing," she said. "Urk?" Daniel asked. "Urk!" Beatrix declared. "Urk," Daniel disagreed. "Uuuuuuurrrrrrrrrrrrk!" Beatrix made a profound point, but she was also in dire danger of either hurting herself or accidentally vomiting onto herself. Conrad seemed swayed by Beatrix''s argument, opening his mouth and starting to stick out his tongue. But Mum reached out to close it again, leaning down to look him in the eyes while shaking her head and mouthing the word ''no''. "Yes that''s the one thank you," Mum said, rising to stand up straight again. "I know I''ve teased you about it, but my mother may well come to visit us soon. I don''t want you to think she is an unkind woman, but she cares a lot about our family, and that can make her quite strict. Please, please, don''t ever do that in front of her. I want you two to try and drop the habit now just in case. Can you do that for me?" "Urk," Beatrix said sadly. "Alright, I''ll try." In truth, he had already grown out of the habit, but being told not to do it anymore did make a part of him want to pick it up again.
The next day, Daniel had a reason for once to be eager to go to church but found that Zachery was occupied with other work for most of the early morning. He didn''t mind the wait too much, it made a change since he''d been spending a lot less time recently working at his affinities. Mainly, he was looking ahead to spring, and not just due to Dad coming home. The skills he wanted to be learning, such as mage skills or weapon training with the guard, were supposed to come after eight years old, and he was excited for them. "I''m finished now Anne," Zachery said, coming into the room from his office and sitting down opposite Daniel. "Did you want something earlier?" "Yes, I wanted to ask about paladins," Daniel said. Zachery''s eyebrows rose at the question, but after a moment he softly asked "Marcus?" Daniel nodded, and Zachery''s face crinkled into a happy smile. "Oh, that''s very good news. I''m glad," he said, leaning back in his chair. "Good for Marcus, he deserves it." He seemed to take a moment to take in the news, and then spoke again. "Was there more news? how much do you know about paladins already?" "Just that Dad became a paladin and is coming home in spring," Daniel replied. "Oh, Grandmother mumbled about it possibly being due to divine enchantment. That was about it." "Divine enchantment? No, that''s a misconception," Zachery said. "Paladin is a rare type of profession. Most combat professions don''t make much use of magic. They can''t because the skills required to do so are the core of the mage professions. You need to be a mage to take them as profession skills, do you understand?" "I think so. What do you mean exactly by mage professions? as in more than one?"Stolen from its rightful place, this narrative is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings. "Ah, I feel that we are heading off-topic already," Zachery said, shaking his head, "That''s the problem with impromptu lectures on topics I am interested in." He took a deep breath, his bearing returning to teacher mode. "Let''s focus on one thing at a time. First, your question about mage professions. It''s just a term to mean all the various stages of becoming a mage. Apprentice Mage, Mage, ArchMage. When people reach above that level, the profession names start to become more unique. But it''s more convenient to just call them mages and to talk about mage professions. The same applies to many other professions." "I see." "Let us move on," Zachery said, pausing to think for a moment. "As I was saying, Mages have a Magic Infusion skill. If I was an archer I could shoot an arrow, and I could still do this," he said, summoning a flame in his hand. "But I couldn''t infuse the arrow and use it to shoot the Flame at people." "But what about the virtues? And the fields in the classrooms, are those not from priests?" "A question which may illuminate our main topic. The virtue skills generally give the Flame of Kyburad additional effects. From there you can apply the Flame directly, or a mage could infuse one of their spells with the Flame, and therefore the virtue. The field spells built into the classrooms work in a different manner, from a profession similar to paladins. Paladins do not use a mage skill to infuse their other skills with the magic of their domain. Instead, you become a paladin when your combat profession itself is infused." "What about the fields?" "The churches are created by Kyburad-infused builders." Holy engineers, batman. "But how do you become a paladin then, or infuse any profession?" "A gift from Kyburad. How do you receive any gifts? There is no guarantee, but I would suggest that you first must become someone worthy of such attention. We have spoken about different types of skills. Racial, Profession, General, and Domain. On rare occasions, someone might gain a skill outside of these four, called an extra skill. Becoming a paladin is such an occasion." "And divine enchantment? Is that related?" Zachery took time again to think, to the point that Daniel wasn''t sure he was going to answer. "Each domain works in different ways. Sometimes different domains achieve similar ends through distinct means. Before the fall of Lissirast, the people there worshipped Salidera and even had their own version of a paladin. But rather than an extra skill, theirs was created by a different method called divine enchantment. A method no longer possible since Salidera fell with Lissirast." Daniel thought he understood what Zachery was saying, but it also seemed to him that a good part of it was technical definitions. The extremely important difference between a warrior-priest and a priest-warrior might only matter to religious types offended by the comparison. The discussion had made him more interested in mages, but that was like a squirrel becoming more interested in nuts. "But does being a paladin really matter much?" Daniel asked, "Dad''s coming home and Mum said people only go to the borders once." "I imagine your grandfather was quite excited by the news." Urk! Henry had said it wasn''t a secret, but Daniel found it hard to trust the priests. Suddenly filled with worry that he had given something away, he held his tongue. "That''s not something that will be a surprise to anyone who thinks about it for any length of time," Zachery said, apparently reading the reason behind Daniel''s silence and finding it amusing. "You are correct that the guard here has little need for a paladin. Perhaps your father will travel or move to somewhere where his gifts can be better utilized. Even if he stays here, I believe he will enjoy a different level of trust and esteem than he did previously." Daniel hoped people weren''t getting excited over Dad having to leave for a new job as soon as he came home. But he wouldn''t be totally against them moving as a family of five. People in Laston were fairly disparaging about the capital, or sometimes about a more general area like ''the south'' or ''the cities''. But he figured that just meant they had a different culture there, and different could be interesting. If no one was leaving Laston, then he didn''t think paladins or increased esteem mattered much to him. The version of his father that he liked best was the man trying to live up to his own beliefs. He found it aspirational, like a role model. He also thought children naturally desired and latched onto role models, but he would rather take credit for his thoughts than make complaints about his instincts possibly manipulating him. Either way, he didn''t think becoming a paladin made any difference to that ideal. So if his Dad was happy with becoming a paladin, then that was good enough for him.
Grandfather and Henry stayed riled up for the next few weeks, mainly over the sending and receiving of more letters. This seemed to aggravate Grandmother, and she made them hold their endless discussions downstairs. They even got a three-day visit from a beady-eyed old man who called himself Daniel''s granduncle. The man treated Daniel to a long-winded lecture on how they lined up on the family tree which turned his brain to mush. Daniel figured it was the same as how everyone was related if you went back far enough. The sort of connection only nobles might care about. Rory and Gemma reappeared for winter at this time, but one or both of them did not take to their visitor and they quickly disappeared until he was gone. Time passed and with it came Daniel''s eighth birthday. Over halfway to adulthood, which was defined as fifteen years old here with good honest status-related reasons. But the scary part was still to come. Puberty didn''t start until at least ten years old, he insisted to himself and to Alien Magic Jesus. He thought that at eight he had mostly acclimatised to life in Laston. It was becoming harder to think of things as Earth vs weirdo fantasy land. He didn''t think he would ever really understand the religion, but he supposed that was true on Earth as well. Why were cows sacred? Why were blood transfusions bad? He had never cared to know and he guessed he would never find out now. With trouble-making on hold, he had still explored more of the town. But while there were some differences in how things worked that he enjoyed trying to understand, a lot of the town was less interesting than he had expected. The place was less novel to him now because he didn''t think of himself as a pure tourist anymore. He also suspected he had acclimatised to being a child, and possibly just to his mind living in a different brain. Wisdom changes were a convenient blame target, but not everything improved a set amount each year, with some childlike traits getting worse over time instead. Beatrix''s birthday arrived, and with it came another letter with the worst possible news. An evil witch was stalking them from the shadows, biding her time before hatching her schemes. The source of terrifying tales used to scare naughty kids back onto the straight and narrow. The cruel tyrant who took pleasure in the persecution of poor innocent retching bees. Grandmother was coming to stay with them in the spring.