Five years old. Today is the fifth anniversary of my birth into the world of Dremu. As I open my eyes to stare at the wooden slats on my ceiling this thought runs through my head. I can only think back to the life I have lived so far and how different it is to my past.
After trying to introduce myself to my parents as an infant, which thankfully only came across as baby babbling, my parents treated me as a genius. I wasn’t a monster in their eyes as I feared or a freak of nature or anything of the sort. They treated me with kindness and love, patience and care, all of which I had forgotten in my past life.
On my third birthday my mother, Almha, baked me a cake and my father,Julian, tried to give me a sword to practice with. Mom lost it when she saw the sword and started to yell at him about gifting a three year old a sword and I laughed. I laughed for the first time since my mother died in my previous life, I laughed so hard I began to cry. I cried long and hard as tears streamed down my face like rivers, my parents dropping the argument to run over and hold me and ask what was wrong. The warmth of their hugs and worry made me cry harder as I realized I had a family again. They were my family, my parents, the people that would love me regardless of if I was a genius or not.
Eventually I calmed down and solidified my resolve to grow stronger. I had been caught up in the novelty of a new world for three years before that and only then did I realize how much time I had wasted. From then on I trained. Not in cultivation because I didn’t have enough information about it, but I trained in everything else available to me. I started sword training with my father and using the martial arts of my past life whenever I was alone, the memories vivid in my head because of my Mind Control skill. I learned blacksmithing and all of the fundamentals for it from my mother and grandfather. By four years old I had mastered the fundamentals of martial arts and swordsmanship with an in depth knowledge on how to smith swords.
On my fourth birthday I dreamt for the first time and realized my Mind Control skill was far more powerful than I had imagined. I could control my dreams as if I was a god in my own world. From then on I used it to train my blacksmithing, swordsmanship, and martial arts. I realized later on that no muscle memory transferred over from my dreams but still continued because of my ability to view myself from any angle during dream training. A month ago I discovered I could split my mind into two separate thoughts simultaneously, an attempt to split my mind further caused me to pass out for a day scaring my parents immensely. I stopped trying after that because I found out that I wasn’t strong enough and I didn’t want to scare my parents like that again. Using the split mind I was able to create an opponent for myself in dreams and begin training with dual wielding.
All of this leads up to today, my fifth birthday, the day in which my future path will start. I get out of bed and pull on my tan cloth pants and grey shirt. There is some leather sewn in around the elbows and knees from my mom because I put too many holes in those areas from my training. She said if I can wear through the leather I’m working hard enough to afford my own clothes so I’ve done my best to keep it newish since then. Pulling on my boots I hear my mom call me from the kitchen letting me know breakfast is ready. Touselling my hair slightly so it is out of my eyes I grab my swords from underneath my bed and run to the kitchen.
During breakfast I noticed the silence of my parents as they constantly shared looks between them while I ate. After I was done eating and putting away the dishes we all walk outside, they still haven’t said anything yet but I figure it might be a ritual of some kind I never heard about and decide to keep quiet too. Our house is within a medium sized village on the outskirts of the capital city, Shard. The kingdom is named Shard too for some reason which I thought was pretty horrible naming sense but I guess it makes it easy to remember. As we walk through the streets I can see that only a few stalls are still open with a lot of people absent making the village feel pretty empty. I’ve seen this happen three times already so I know what is going on, well that and when I really could talk I asked my parents about it the next time it happened.
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Today is known as a Talent test day. Again horrible naming but I find it pretty direct as far as to what happens today. As it is, the Kingdom of Shard is a fairly peaceful kingdom with our only threat coming from mutated beasts or more commonly named, monsters. These beasts are strong and by that I mean if even the weakest of them were to be set free on Earth then it would be a disaster. For this reason the Kingdom is in constant need of people to protect it, I was kind of disappointed that adventure guilds weren’t a thing in this world but that is besides the point. The point is that the Kingdom needs combat ready people but only has a limited amount of resources to make them stronger. Because of this the tradition for Talent test day began. On this day, which has no real set schedule besides whenever someone from the academy shows up once a year, everyone is tested to find out their affinities and talents. This is done with a massive crystal that the academy person lugs around in a cart from town to town like a shady salesman. The crystal isn’t all that rare but big ones are needed for the test and those aren’t that common, thus the reason they aren’t just placed in towns. After the crystal is in place all children that are five years old are taken to the square where the test is publically done, usually not a great ego booster for five year olds, and they place their hand on it. That’s it, affinities come out looking like weird symbols and input some vague idea of what they are into the minds of the children and talents make the crystal change color. Not sure on what all the colors are because rarely is there any difference among the children most of them being blue, which isn’t enough to rouse the kingdom’s or the Academy’s attention.
At this point I can see the crowded town square and the line of children that leads up to an impromptu stage with the massive crystal on it. It really is a massive crystal, as a five year old I’m only about four feet tall but it’s still bigger than me. My parents stop before we walk onto the square and squat down to my level. They are smiling as they look me in the eyes but I can see the dark circles underneath their own and know they are nervous for me. I give them my best reassuring smile and a thumbs up which makes my mom chuckle slightly at the memory and my dad smile. They then nod their heads and get up to join the crowd.
I watch my parents walk away before making my way to the back of the line. I don’t know any of the kids because of my admittedly intense training schedule but I see that all of them are remaining silent as well which I never noticed in the previous years. Most of them look like commoners like myself but I walked by a few at the front with what I imagine is a more noble get-up. I kind of expected there to be some special treatment for the rich but I’m not sure why being first always seems to be a part of it, it’s not like their talent will improve if they are the first one tested, I know because I’ve asked. As I get closer to the end of the line I see one girl that stands out. She appears to be dressed like a commoner but her sword is most certainly not.
Although I didn’t cultivate for five years it didn’t mean I gave up on trying to feel for the mana I knew was there. At first I had to be meditating to feel anything but as I got better at it I figured out I could do it even when not concentrating. It only works when a spell is used or there is a large concentration of mana near me which will then appear on my map in a green color. The girls sword has a very large concentration of mana going by my mini map. There was no way she was a commoner with a sword that powerful but I couldn’t figure out why she would try to hide it.
As I continued to stare at her she looked over and our eyes met. It’s at this point that I realize I was never good with girls. I probably would have stopped walking if my other mind didn’t pick up the slack and keep my feet working. It might be seen as wrong considering she is five but at this point I have already accepted that in this life I’m five years old so it isn’t strange to me anymore. Plus I’m not looking at her sexually but more out of curiosity than anything because I swear when our eyes first met hers shined golden for a split second before returning to blue.
She frowned at me when I didn’t stop staring and that was enough to snap me out of it and return a wry smile before looking away. When I got to the end of the line I couldn’t help but think that this Talent testing day may be a little more interesting than usual.