Chapter 1.1 / Life and Death
The last shades of life flicker away before me. My opponent’s warblade plunges through my body and the small pond of blood around me grows in mass once again. I don’t even feel the pain that was supposed to come since I was already in much more severe pain from my other wounds. Across my entire body I am riddled with cuts, gashes, holes and overall I am in tatters. I can only sigh at my misfortune for being overconfident in my vessel; I seem to have forgotten how on the vast ocean I might be strong but I am still only one speck that has a bit more power than most. I seem to have gotten cocky after all these years of accomplishment.
Oh, how much I miss those days of peace and joy. How could I forget about those days, with all my best friends and family still alive, I had went and left the country to train in the mountains. My parents urged me to stay home and they even warned me about the looming danger of war. Alas, at the time I was but a young lad with too much motivation. By the time I got back, my hometown was no more. My friends, family, loved ones, everyone… They all died. Died at the hands of the filthy Alwinian soldiers.
After that I traveled the path of a lone swordsman. I think that was around when I started getting overconfident. After that, one situation led to another and I somehow became a captain of a small pirate ship. Following the winds, I was led to an island and discovered the ruins of an ancient kingdom that was submerged in water. After that, items changed hands and I was the captain of a pirate fleet. After many years of conquest, I seemed to have accumulated a bounty of six billion gold over my head. That’s six times more than what I got from those ancient ruins! If that’s not a bit over the top then I don’t know what is!
One bounty hunter and imperial fleet after another and they seemed to have finally figured out they were no match for my incredible naval might. Apparently just for killing a few armies I was labeled as a ‘Demon Lord’ and they even summoned a goddamn hero to kill me! Kind of makes me proud that they needed to summon a hero just to kill me. The guy wasn’t worth jack in terms of swordsmanship, I could probably kill him while chained and sunk to the bottom of a lake, but the guy had weird chantless magic and kept murmuring about skills and stats. Freaking weirdo.
In the end though, I was defeated with brute strength and not a hint of elegance or heroism. Then the dumbass stabs me just because I asked him for an autograph for his ‘thrilling’ performance of masterful swordsmanship and skill. Jerk.
And now we are in the present after my little recap. I look up at him through a veil of my own blood flowing over my eyes and I can barely see him staring down at me in utter contempt and a hint of triumph. Hmph. If I wasn’t chained with adamantium cuffs I would've killed him right here right now, but was it really necessary to use adamantium on handcuffs?
The energy in my body slowly drains of energy and I slowly slump down and even breathing is becoming incredibly difficult. Damn, even slaying dragons is easier than breathing right now. I feel the last bit of life force drain away and my dead body finally falls over onto the ground.
………
My consciousness grows weary and I slowly try to open my eyes. To my surprise I can’t move anything except my legs. After what seemed like countless hours of struggling, I run out of stamina and I slip into a deep slumber.
This scene would repeat for many a day and eventually I just stopped resisting and just waited the days away.
………
Yes! I can finally see the light at the end of the tunnel! I’m free from the prison! Wait a second… This doesn’t look like the ocean! This looks like a crib!
Hey, what’s with these chubby hands and small body? Something’s wrong here. Aha! I must be under a curse of miniaturization. That would make tons of sense. Hey, what’s with those giants up there? Have I been exported as a slave to the land of giants?!
It seems that I am in for some trouble, time to bide my time…
……….
[William POV]
Today my child was born! He started looking around immediately after coming out. What a smart kid, he already has that look of intelligence in his eye. The odd thing is that he didn’t make a sound even after coming out and then he immediately passed out after a few seconds.
Well, it seems life is going to get a bit more interesting now…
………
[Valrus POV]
As I open my eyes once again, I see a tall and well-built young man with wavy brown hair that has a golden tint. The man has rich green eyes and a handsome face. That’s all good and all, but the guy’s a giant! He towers above me in my little cage.
My captors seem to think that I am not very smart since there’s no top on the cage and they even filled it with a pillow and blanket. It seems they are quite incompetent at keeping prisoners in their cells.
Even though I want to get up, I can’t even move my body anymore. Suddenly a wave of sleepiness washes over my body and I shut my eyes for a short sleep.
……….
It has been a few days since then and I have found out a few things. First of all, I’m not a foreign slave. Secondly, I am now a child and my mother’s name is Velicia and she has blonde hair and deep brown eyes. My father’s name is William Fykes. My parents seem to be in their late 20s, in comparison in my last life I was over 100 years old and I was a pirate for over 60 years.
Damn, I already miss the feeling of the salt water crashing against the hull and the sea breeze howling and pushing the sails ahead… *sigh* No use sitting here daydreaming.
After a while of listening to them talking all the time with the occasional visitor or reading books to me, I have slowly started to pick up on what they’re saying. It seems that the Fykes family is a minor noble family in this city of Durren and we are basically the poorest noble clan in the whole city.
Oh yeah, once I could finally open my eyes properly, I was looking around when I noticed something at the very top of my vision. There was a small blue box that had text on it saying something like
>> [New Skill [Space Magic] Learned]
>> [New Skill [Water Magic] Learned]
>> [New Skill [Wind Magic] Learned]
>> [New Skill [Demonic Affinity] Learned]
>> [New Title [Blessed One] Acquired]
After that a strong wave of power surged through me and all of my previously dull senses went above and beyond what they were even after all the years of training that I did in my last life.
I don’t really understand what it means with all of those things about ‘skills’ and all, but what I do know is that it was what that darned hero kept murmuring about. The only thing I do understand is the magic part; maybe I’m going to become some magician or something. That would be cool.
……….
It has been a month since the skill window and I can finally move all of my limbs and I can already crawl after one day. Obviously I haven’t shown off my ability to crawl yet. I’ll wait till I can walk until I do that.
……….
I can finally walk after another one week and I think it’s time to showcase my prowess to father. Father seems to always visit my room every day so it’ll be easy to show off today.
After I waited for a few hours the brown oak door slowly opens and I start walking with the most innocent face in my arsenal. As father walks in he looks at me and I can see his jaw drop a bit. Hehe that’s right, I’m the best aren't I.
“W-what the heck, little Val can already walk…” Father says with a look of awe on his face.
Hey, this isn’t that amazing you know… I’m only walking so what’s the big deal.
Father suddenly bolts out of the room and runs down the hall. I can hear a door being slammed open and then there were two people running in my direction.
Mother and father run into the room and I am still trying to reach that book on the table, but the elusive book seems to always be above me no matter how hard I reach. What a stubborn book.
Mother, seeing me reach for the book also reacts like father and then runs to me and catches me in her embrace. Damn this woman! Is she trying to kill me with this monstrous strength?!
Ugh… It seems I bit off more than I can take this time.
………
[Velicia POV]
Today while I was reading my book on wind magic, William burst into the room and dragged me into Val’s room and in there, little Val was reaching for my book on water magic that I left in his room yesterday. He seems to be trying as hard as he can to grab it but he is way too short to reach that book. Seriously though, isn’t this a bit abnormal. Val hasn’t cried even a bit and he has already started to walk. I’m not as surprised now since I already saw it once when I walked by his door, but this is still very rapid growth.
I definitely can’t let those other clans that are suppressing us to find out about Valrus or else they might do something unfavorable. The walking thing is a bit odd, but he already having the mana capacity of an archmage is definitely the oddest part of it all. When I tried to inspect his skill list, it drained all of my mana and I couldn’t even read his name or level! That’s absurd! After that I tried to find out about the problem since I could even scan one of the four great heroes but sadly none of the common magic texts had anything on failed Identification spells when the user is within fifty levels of the target. Frankly the whole situation is completely off.
The story has been illicitly taken; should you find it on Amazon, report the infringement.
I might have to consult my mage friends from the institute if he gets any more abnormal. It’s not that I don’t love him, he is my child, but sometimes he just doesn’t even look remotely like a child. Yesterday I even saw him staring out the window at the harbor and he was muttering something with a longing expression.
I really want to fix this issue so that we can live a peaceful life. At least William seems to not care at all about the oddity that is Valrus.
………
[Valrus POV]
After walking I seem to have full control over my body and only now have I realized that my body has already grown quite large. I should probably look like your average one year old, which I am. My skin seems to have naturally grown very durable for some reason. I figured that out when I fell off the bed by accident once and I landed on the floor. You would expect that I would be somewhat hurt but I didn’t feel a thing and it left no mark even after I fell of shoulder first several times. Eventually my parents came in and told me that I should stop or I might get myself hurt.
Over time I have sort of realized that mother seems to distance herself from me quite a bit but father is always trying to be around me. Father often tells me the importance of training and being good with a sword. I completely agree.
Another thing is that I spoke to my parents and they reacted just like when I walked since I started speaking when I turned one month old.
………
It has been quite a while now and I have turned two. For my birthday I got to leave the room and walk around the house. Our house is a two story house on the fourth ring of the city where minor nobility lives and the house isn’t in the best condition right now. Since I could walk around now, I decided that I would go to the study and when I went there I looked around and all I saw were books and even more books. I can’t comprehend how our family managed to buy this many books if we’re really that poor. Books are usually hand written and are very expensive to buy.
Anyways, in the study I realized something very important that I needed to do before reading. Learn how to read! I came to this library thinking I was going to read but I forgot that I haven’t learned how to read yet. Taking a random thick book, I headed back to my room and tried to read the book, but as expected I didn’t understand a single word.
After a month of trying, I finally cracked the code and I started to comprehend some of the words. The grammatical structure is very similar to my old world except I just need to interchange a few words and replace the alphabet. In the end the book turned out to be an encyclopedia of magical herbs. The book was actually very interesting and talked about a process called alchemy where they put in herbs and other ingredients into a special device after processing them and then the do a special process to turn them into pills and elixirs to enhance their magical training.
In the library I also found a book called ‘Magi and the Uses of Mana’ after finding the book, I was quite intrigued by the title and I decided to read it. In this world there seems to be a system of magic with four basic elements that magi train in by harnessing elemental essences using mana. The four basic elements are fire, earth, water, and wind. After the four elements there are elements labeled as the higher elements such as light, dark, holy, demonic, spirit and nature. There are also people who can manipulate variant elements like a wind variant might use lightning, a water variant might use ice, etc.
People usually get their affinities tested at the age of eight. The device used to test it is called a spirit stone and many rich noble clans get their children tested at birth or just before eight. Sadly, my family isn’t rich enough to get a spirit stone. A person isn’t just tested for affinity though; they are also tested for spirit strength. Spirit strength determines how much mana someone can hold and how well they can hold it. Although spirit strength does determine how much mana someone can hold it doesn’t limit how much you can train your mana capacity, it just puts a sort of limiter where it makes it way harder to train it with less benefit. Also, if someone doesn’t train enough in their spirit strength, they won't be able to control their mana and they might die from mana dysfunction which is where the mana in your body is ripped apart and explodes, causing the person to die due to all their blood vessels exploding.
Besides the magi there are also people called Warriors who train with ki and use it to enhance their body and they have their own set of skills that are all based off of the use of ki on the body. Although magi are cool and all, the path of the warrior is definitely the way to go. The book didn’t go very in depth on ki and only talked for a short while on how ki might be a downgraded version of mana since it can’t travel that far off of the body. This ‘ki’ doesn’t seem to be very different from the ‘Sword Aura’ that I developed in my last life even when I was told by the people around me that swords are stupid when we can just shoot our cannons and muskets. In my opinion it’s more stupid to be waving around those sticks and shooting out metal balls.
Father seems to be of the Warrior category and mother is actually a junior archmage in an organization called the Magic Institute. While father is just your average town guard captain, mother is a rising star in the institute who might become one of the youngest archmagus in history. I seriously wonder sometimes how father and mother even got married… It’s probably best not to question it.
………
The magic books all say the same thing on how to train mana and spirit force. First you have to have a clear mind, and then you have to try and locate something called your ‘Soul Realm’. I would tell you the next step, but sadly I can’t even do the first step so I am in a bit of a predicament. Every time I try to find my soul realm, all I can see is the vast ocean that my ‘King of the Seas’ ship used to travel. It seems that I can’t really clear my mind yet. I’ll have to work on that later.
After taking a short break and then sitting down on the ground in our courtyard, I attempt to go into a meditative trance again. As I do and I envision my ship, I try even harder and I start feeling a sort of pressure on my brain. After pressing further and further, a wave of cold washes over me accompanied with a clear mind.
I immediately try to delve into my ‘Soul Realm’. Slowly, a luminescent azure sphere with a metallic texture appears as I slowly revolve around a small violet sphere inside of it. The sphere is covered in a thick fog of blue haze and I can faintly see a malicious red glow coming off of the sphere. This must be my mana core, but it’s quite different from what I expected. The book said that people who haven’t absorbed any mana have a small core with no primary core or mental power around it. Sometimes though, a small mist can be seen around it which is when a genius magus appears or someone has been training their minds or mental power for many years. Also, that strange red glow should have been my affinity. Dark red is the ‘Demonic Affinity’ if I’m not mistaken. Demonic affinity is shunned by almost all people due to the darker nature of it. Usually demonic affinity lets someone manipulate a sort of aura of majesty around them and turn it into a physical form such as a sword or spear. People with the demonic attribute usually become Mage Knights since their magic isn’t suited for long range combat.
Besides the red glow, there are two other different colors mixed in after I watch my Soul Realm closer. The other glows are blue and grey, meaning that I have affinities for water and wind. My combo of elements is actually quite rare from what I understand, usually someone is very lucky to just have one affinity since having an affinity for an element makes casting spells many times easier. People without an affinity actually can cast magic without a problem with enough training but the only downfall is that it takes at least 10 times more time to chant the spells since they have to chant the whole spell. People who possess an affinity can actually do the shortened versions of chants where they have to say maybe 4 words unlike other people who might need to say 40-60 words just for a fireball spell. The difference in talent really is a big roadblock on the path of training and cultivation.
As for my ki, the small core inside of the larger sphere should be my dantian. The dantian is basically where the body refines essence into ki for someone to use, it also acts as a sort of battery for ki. My ki core is violet so I talent that is just above average for ki manipulation. Unlike the mana core, dantians directly measure your talent using the color of the dantian. The rankings are like this: red is average talent, violet is above average, blue is someone who is talented, green is very good talent, yellow is extraordinary talent and white is the kind of talent that the four heroes have. In general, violet dantians are quite common and with enough training you might get a spot as a foot soldier. Overall I’m nothing special in terms of ki *sigh*.