Her consciousness faded in and out. At first, she only managed to stay awake for moments at a time, though the length gradually increased. The soothing sensation of being rocked made it difficult to bother trying to stay awake for very long.

Her vision was extremely blurry, and she could only make out differences in light and darkness. Noises were muffled. She was normally rocked when the light was present and found most of her periods of wakefulness were spent in darkness.

The ever-present sound of a heartbeat was her only companion.

It was difficult to control her appendages in her new body. They often moved on their own when she tried to do something else, banging against the elastic barrier that separated her from the outside. The barrier slowly shrank – or more likely, she was growing and filling the limited space.

It wouldn’t be long before she would be too large to remain. It was sad, in a way. Ashlyn knew that leaving this place would mean entering the world anew, which was good. But it was just so peaceful here. It was difficult to motivate herself to want to leave.

Eventually, her desire to remain in the comforting place was overridden, and she felt the increasingly regular pressure informing her it was time to join the rest of humanity once again.

The pressure shifted and light brighter than any she’d seen thus far appeared. Having given birth before, Ashlyn was prepared for a long, drawn out process. Instead, she found herself freed in just moments. It was surprisingly cold, and she cried out in surprise.

She was quickly bundled and handed to her mother. Ashlyn immediately identified her by the sound of her voice and the familiar smell. Well, that and the fact that she looked like she’d just given birth and was smiling brightly at her.

Ashlyn’s vision made it difficult to see details beyond a few inches, but given their positions, that was all she needed to examine her new mother. She seemed nice enough. At least she appeared happy Ashlyn was there.

She expected to feel awkward nursing, but felt nothing but comfort when offered the sustenance. It was hard to stay awake still. Given her knowledge of child development, Ashlyn expected it would be a while before she was able to maintain consciousness for any length of time.

That was okay. She would take her time getting to know her new family. They didn’t speak English, so she would have to pay attention when she was awake to figure out the new language. To her surprise, her grasp of the language came quickly.

Maybe it was from the months her brain absorbing the sounds even when she wasn’t awake, or perhaps it was a gift from whoever spoke with her after she died. Ashlyn really couldn’t say one way or another. Languages had never really been her thing during her first life, so it wasn’t a bleed over ability or anything.

She struggled with her ridiculously uncoordinated infant body daily, trying to force improvement and increase her control. She had expected that though. It would take a while for her brain to develop those connections, along with all the other connections it needed to work out. Babies weren’t born able to move and function like most animals were.

Other things continued to improve as well, like her memory. Every day her memory improved, so she knew it was only a matter of time before she regained all the missing pieces. She just needed to be patient.

At three months old, Ashlyn was taken to a temple for what her parents called a ‘Naming Ceremony’. Apparently, babies were not named until they were given a blessing at the temple after a season had passed. She was given the name Rayne.

She liked it. Though she still thought of herself as Ashlyn, she tried to embrace the name.

Ashlyn had died on a plane with her family. Both her son and husband had already been reborn according to the voice, so there was no reason to be sad aside from missing them. And she did miss them, but it was distant, like a pain from long ago that time had eased.

She was Rayne now.

That didn’t mean she wouldn’t keep an eye out for them both. She might not recognize either of them, but it was possible their souls would recognize each other. She smiled at the thought.

Smiling was easy. Facial expressions in general were a lot easier than things like controlling her appendages.

After giving her a name (provided by her parents of course), the [Priest] sent a jolt of energy through her and a strange screen appeared above the crystal he was holding.

The jolt hadn’t hurt, but it startled her and she couldn’t help but to cry out until the screen distracted her. It looked like a hologram of a basic character screen in a game. She’d played a few before, but her husband was much more into games like that than she was.

Even with only a basic understanding of the language, Ash- no, Rayne could still read and understand the display.

Name:

Rayne

Body:

1

Level:

0

Vitality:

1

Age:

1 season

Agility:

0

Class:

N/A

Mind:

3

Health:

10

Spirit:

2

Mana:

30

Resolve:

2

“It appears your daughter has been blessed,” the [Priest] said with a smile before his expression turned to one of confusion when he looked closely at her parents.

Her parents must have noticed the shift too because they both radiated discomfort.

“Thank you, [Priest],” her father intoned, before stepping back and pulling her away from the now frowning man.

They carried her away from the temple as another couple took their place for the naming of their own child. Rayne wondered what the exchange had been about. It seemed odd that a religious figure would seem unhappy about a child being considered blessed.

There was so much she had yet to learn about her new community. Or maybe, a new world altogether? What was up with the status screen anyway? It reminded her of one of the games her husband had liked so much.

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She’d played a few, but they’d never really been her thing. Was this some kind of game world?

Mana had been listed on the display, so did that mean magic was real here? If so, why were they living in such a rough setting? Wouldn’t it be easy enough to create a nicer environment using magic?

Then again, most of the games with magic seemed to have some medieval variant in their setting. Was that a requirement for magic to exist? Did it somehow limit technology?

She really wished she’d studied some form of engineering now. It would be amazing to bring new technology into a world, maybe mixing magic with technology to create totally new things! She could only imagine what kind of improvements she could make to the normal, everyday members of society who weren’t part of the upper crust.

She would have to study and see what was already available. Just because she didn’t specifically know how technology worked, she at least understood the types of things that were possible. As her memory improved, it was even possible that she could remember even more about how things work.

She knew you could generate some power with a potato… there was a science experiment about it she saw one time. Would something like that even work here, or would the mana interfere?

The weeks and months following her naming, Rayne spent most of her time listening to her parents and siblings talk to absorb as much information as possible. She’d often daydream about her previous life, going through the memories and trying to extract as much information as possible.

One of the biggest limiters to making plans wasn’t the lack of memories to shift through, but rather the difficulty she had in staying focused. The smallest thing would distract her, causing her to squirrel like the dog in that animated movie – except she wasn’t able to immediately return to her previous train of thought.

She was even distracted by her fingers once, much to her embarrassment. Thankfully, nobody but her realized what had happened, so it was fine.

Her infant attention span was a legitimate issue though, and was not resolved by her steadily increasing mind stat.

It took her a while to figure out how to pull up her status screen, but she eventually figured it out. When she pulled it up herself, more information was displayed than what the [Priest] showed. It even had a section for skills that showed she’d gained a basic understanding of the ‘Common Language’.

Apparently, that’s what they spoke in this new world.

She still was uncertain how she felt about living on a world other than Earth. It looked pretty much the same, other than the lack of modernization, but there were probably still pockets of communities on Earth that lived with little technology.

Maybe.

Actually, Rayne was pretty sure even the Amish people she’d seen had cell phones and cars nowadays.

Regardless, it was a little like growing up in one country then moving to another one and still feeling like your home country was home, even if you never planned to return.

At least everyone seemed to speak the same language. That was helpful. It probably had something to do with the interfaces everyone seemed to have. If she had one as a baby, everyone else had to have them.

When she finally gained control of her body enough to wander around, Rayne experimented with various activities to see what would give her a skill. To her surprise, she gained several seemingly basic skills, things like [walking], [running], [jumping], [dancing], [singing], [throwing], [climbing], and even [learning].

With every increase in skill levels, the activity got a little easier or she became a little better at it. Each skill level also gave her five experience points.

When she reached level one at age three, her parents sat her down and talked to her about how levels worked. They had long since gotten used to her higher comprehension, and often spoke to her like she was a very small adult instead of their youngest child.

She appreciated it since that was how she had been raised during her first life as well. Her parents in her previous life hadn’t believed in babying her as a child either.

They explained that it was unusual for a child to gain a level before starting school at five years old, so her advancement would likely gain attention from those who bothered looking. Though it wasn’t often that adults would use an identification skill on a young child, it happened often enough.

That was actually how they’d learned about her accomplishment, since one of the people in town mentioned it in passing.

Her parents were curious about how she’d managed to gain a level so early, so Rayne informed them that she tried several activities to see if they would award her with a skill after noticing she’d received a skill for learning to walk. She’d then continued experimenting to gain new skills, as well as practicing with her existing skills to slowly improve them.

There was not much she could do as a three-year-old, after all.

Her parents told her about the different attributes and advised her to save her points until she was older since she was still growing. It made perfect sense and aligned with the loose plan she already had, so she saved the three attribute points she earned for each level.

She also saved the skill points she earned since she had no idea what kinds of skills she would be able to learn on her own, and what would need points to learn. That was a thing in some of the games she’d played, so she figured the logic likely applied.

After their discussion, both of her parents agreed to teach her any of the skills they had that she was interested in. Rayne quickly found that learning skills from someone else was much easier than gaining it on her own. It was almost like whatever system controlled the interfaces recognized the sharing of knowledge better than it did when she just pulled skills from memory.

She learned several skills from both of her parents, though they were often difficult for her to improve based largely on her diminutive stature.

[Cooking], for example, was easy enough to learn, especially with her existing knowledge – but the physical process of cooking was a bit difficult with how small and weak she was. Her agility, which apparently included fine motor skills, was so low that she had a hard time using a knife effectively.

Further, she often burned herself when trying to cook over a fire since she was too small to reach the pot. Slabs of meat were also too heavy for her to handle easily.

Similarly, while she learned the skill, [sewing], she had a difficult time improving the skill because of her low agility and short arms (the thread would often get knotted as she tried to pull the excess through). There was probably more limiting her, but she didn’t put much thought into it given her struggles.

Thankfully, many of the skills used on their farm were easier to do, though she worked much slower than the others. The only skill she managed to do well in that wasn’t bleed over from her previous life was [trapping]. Even then, her exposure to modern media gave her enough ideas to be much more creative with traps once she got the general feel for how to set them up.

Her traps were so much more effective than those of her oldest brother Devin, that her parents eventually decided that setting and dealing with the traps would be one of her responsibilities. Devin still accompanied her into the forest most of the time since she was unable to carry the larger animals that were killed by her traps and there were several dangers that she would never be able to handle outside of running.

Though he was only eight, she suspected he had invested the points he had gained from his two levels into strength since he seemed to have little trouble carrying the animals and showed no fear of walking in the forest alone.

He also assisted with the heavier or more labor-intensive aspects of managing the traps so he could gain some of the experience. She didn’t mind sharing, especially since he often showed her the little tricks of how to process their kills that he’d picked up from their father.

During one such excursion, the two of them were headed toward one of the more distant traps when he suddenly grabbed her arm and made a motion to be quiet. There were all kinds of dangers in the forest, so Rayne quietly moved to a large tree and crouched down.

“There is someone up ahead,” Devin whispered.

After a moment, she could hear the muted sounds of a conversation. Though she couldn’t make out what they were saying, it was clear there were at least two different men ahead. It sounded like they were close to where their next trap was set.

The two youths crept forward, remaining as silent as possible to avoid giving their location away. When they got a bit closer, the words became clearer and it was obvious the two men were celebrating their luck in finding her trap, along with the deer it had defeated.

She expected the trap to have been successful since both siblings had received an experience notification that was too high to be one of their normal yields. The men should know the person who set the trap would be notified it had been successful, so it wasn’t like they wouldn’t be aware that someone had stolen their kill.

So why draw attention like that?

“I think they are bandits,” Devin whispered after the pair moved away. Neither wanted to risk drawing the attention of the men, so she was glad he hadn’t spoken while they were close by. Besides, who knew what kind of hearing skills the men might have?

She’d convinced her parents to let her spend some time in the library to learn about some of the skills available and was surprised at the variety she learned about. Rayne had no doubt that was only the tip of the iceberg.

After informing their parents of the event, they were forbidden to go as deep into the forest without an adult. Her father mentioned there had been an increase in bandit activity lately, and even rumors of people disappearing from the area.

Since most of those missing were younger women and children, there were rumors that the bandits may be involved in slave trading – a concept that she abhorred.

Research in the library revealed that slavery became a popular method of dealing with serious criminals thousands of years before. Slaves were given a magical tattoo that ensured they were obedient to their master while also clearly marking them for all to recognize.

Eventually, the practice bled over to include those from conquered territories and only expanded from there. The only thing that kept everyone from being at risk for being made a slave arbitrarily was the difficulty in creating and applying the tattoos. So, for the bandits to be involved in the slave trade, that meant they had to have access to the tattoos, as well as a method for applying them.

Unless they simply sold people to those who had the requisite skills.

She shivered at the thought.

It was too bad the library she had access to was so small. She wondered if there was any kind of protection against the slave tattoos. Surely the nobility would have some way to ensure their children were not at risk of becoming slaves if they were to be captured.

Since her options there were abysmal, Rayne decided to focus on the things that she had some hope of effecting – her skills and her attributes.

She’d already learned that attributes would gradually increase as one matured. They also seemed to increase naturally through effort. She would focus on growing stronger and smarter, while acquiring as many useful skills as possible.