Fou Grrata was worried about her most recent child, Dei. he was born just twenty five cycles ago, and this was a time when the babes were most vulnerable. Her worry came from the fact that Dei cried, a lot. Babies of course cried frequently, so crying itself wasn't a cause for concern, but Dei was almost nonstop! Between feeding times and sleeping, he was always crying. At first it was slightly annoying, but after twenty five cycles, it was really starting to scare her. She also knew that Gor, her husband, was equally as worried.
When, at the darkening of the twenty fifth cycle, she proposed that they take Dei to the village Shaman, Gor was out of bed and fully clothed before she could finish her sentence.
‘He’s scared. I am too, we should have gone sooner’
They were glad that the stone walls were thick, otherwise their neighbors would have come to check on them, and their other children may have become more irritated than they already were.
‘They don't understand the potential danger of losing a babe’
Quickly hurrying down to the center of the village, they shook the beads next to the flap of the Shamans home and waited. No matter how loud Dei was with his crying, they knew that the Shamans would hear the beads and come when they had the chance. The Shamans were always busy with concealing the villages nowadays, so Fou didn't want to interrupt anything.
After waiting impatiently for a time, a fair amount of time that told her the Shaman was in the middle of something, the Shaman finally pulled the flap back to look at them, motioning for them to come in.
Iora, the village Shaman, was an incredibly old woman, which was considered quite impressive with the war going on. Most did not live through fifty winters, yet Iora had supposedly lived through hundreds. All the Shamans had.
“What brings you by after the darkening?” Iora asked in smooth yet wise voice. Her body looked quite wrinkled, but she moved as though she were as young as Fou, and there was no crackle to her voice customary of the regular village elders.
The Shaman never slept, so Fou wasn't worried about interrupting her rest, but it was odd for her to come by later in the cycle.
“It’s Dei, my most recent son. Normally babies cry, yes, but he doesn’t stop crying. At first it was a little irritating, but after twenty five cycles of crying, except between his rest and eating, it has me and Gor worried. Could you check him? Make sure there is nothing wrong? I know there will be something, but make sure it won't kill him?”
Iora wasted no time, gently taking Dei in her arms and walking towards the back of her home. Iora’s home did not have a hide covering the various doorways, so Fou felt like she was welcome to follow her, and Gor did the same.
Fou had seen the new room a few times, Iora’s magic room. There were many alchemical plants, enchanted items, and magical foci, but for now she watched as Iora placed Dei onto a stone table.
Iora grabbed a Shamenic staff, staffs made as a convergence of every kind of magic Humans had access to, and slowly moved it around Dei’s body, while Dei continued to kick and scream. It hurt Fou to watch, rather than comfort him, but she also knew this was for his own good.
When the staff had been held across his entire body, Iora motioned for her to take Dei, and Fou quickly began to cradle him in her arms and console him quietly, to no avail.
After a few seconds with her eyes closed, Iora opened them again and turned to the two of them with a gentle smile.
‘Good news!!’ Fou thought joyfully as she felt a weight fall from her shoulders.
“He is in no danger” Iora said “but you are correct in that there is something unusual about him. I am not well versed in soul magic, my specialty is on the mind, but there are a few diagnosing spells in here” she said, motioning to her staff, “and they tell me that the issue seems to be that Dei’s soul is too strong for his body. It will not be lethal, but his body needs to adjust to it. You would need to ask a Shaman specializing in soul magic to get a more detailed description, but I do know that little Dei will be fine, just in some pain, but that is going away over time.”
Gor smiled widely next to her “Our son! Too strong for his own good!” he said, letting out a boisterous laugh “I knew he’d be special from the moment we saw his eyes!”
Fou felt a bittersweet pride at the mention of Dei’s eyes. She had inherited hers from her mother, and thought that there would never be another Grrata with Amethyst eyes, as none of her siblings nor either of her parents had survived the destruction of her village. She remembered making the trek to the closest village as their Shaman held off the invaders, but her family was against the wall where the invaders broke through, and some of the first casualties.
When Fou saw how Dei not only had both of her parents eyes, but an incredibly vibrant strain of them, she remembered crying at finally seeing her fathers eyes again.
Even now, she felt herself tear up with pride and worry over her son. While the news that he would be strong was incredible, she would have been just as happy if it was revealed he would be okay.
Despite all the terrible news that reached them from the front, for now, Fou was content to know that her son would get the chance to grow up.
Leven tried to groan as a pounding sensation woke him up, but all that came out was a quiet high pitched mumble that sounded too young to be his.
‘Ugh, my head.’ He thought as the loud buzzing in the back of his mind drowned out most of his coherence.
More than that, it felt like he was underwater, like he couldn't think properly. It reminded him of when his soul first was reincarnated into his mothers womb.
He also remembered as the sensation slowly faded away, so he was tempted to wait for it to leave a second time, but there was something nagging at him first. He couldn't remember what, thinking was so difficult, but he pushed everything he had to try.
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While holding his memories together as much as he could, he pulled up his Interface.
Name: Dei Grrata
Race: Human (Gem Dweller Variant)
Class: N/A
Profession: N/A
HP: 16/16
MP: 16/16
SP: 12/16
Stats:
Physical: 8
Mental: 6
Spiritual: 12
Magical: 11
Affinities:
Kindness: Mid-Rare, 27%
Wrath: Low-Uncommon: 77%
Soul: High-Common: 12%
Inner Skills:
Kindness: Pandora’s Box (Contained) (50) (35/2000), Call for Help (9)
Wrath: Pandora’s Box (Unleashed) (2), Growing Pains (17)
Soul: Astral Projection (1)
Outer Skills:
None
He quickly looked over it and spotted something the issue
[Mental: 6]
‘I had my mind reverted when the System refitted my soul shape into that of a baby’
That was worrying in so many ways, but he was also grateful that he could think at all, despite still being in a baby's body.
In his review of his Interface, he noticed something else weird though. [Growing Pains] had gone up a level, and he wasn't sure why, so he pulled up the description again.
[Growing Pains - Level 17 - Wrath Affinity - Passive
Feel the burning of your muscles as you move it to the beat. That's not just you working up a sweat, but also PURE RAGE! Let nothing stand in your way as you reform your body into that of a Greek God! Let the adrenaline flow through you as you tear yourself apart, only to come back stronger for it!
Gives a heightened rate of bodily repair, allows for classless stat growth past Physical: 14 at the cost of Wrath Concentration
Regenerates hp at a rate of (Skill level) HP per hour, at the cost of Wrath Concentration]
It changed! He wasnt sure what happened, but the skill now regenerated health, rather than just helping him form muscles. Unless it always did that?
Looking back, weren’t his muscles being torn and rebuilt constantly a form of regeneration? Was this stemming from the fact that microtears still counted as damage to the body? If so, why didn't it say before?
If he had to guess, it would be from the fact that it was an Inner Skill rather than an Outer Skill, in other words, the System didn't make it. The System did not necessarily know everything about it, just what he used it for.
But why not? It could scan all of his memories, and his entire soul, but not a single skill?
‘Ah, but it's not just mine, is it? It also belongs to Wrath. Is that why? The System holds no claim to it, so its not allowed to invade the skill itself?’
That would make sense. That was why the System thought it was exclusively for working out, because Leven had only ever used it for working out. In his previous life, he had never gotten seriously injured other than during his last moments, and that was too much damage to heal. If he had to guess, the System drew its descriptions of the skills from the memories that Leven himself had of them, without being allowed to look into the nuances and specifics of each skill.
He closed his eyes and drew into himself to look closer at his soul, and while there wasn't much difference, it did look like he was more “solidly” contained within his body. As if before his soul didn't quite connect with his body but now it was a perfect match, which made sense considering it had been refitted.
In the portions of his soul that met with his mind, body, and magic, he noticed a slight cracking any time energy from his soul moved between them.
While it was all interconnected, the efficiency of his soul was disagreeing with the efficiency of everything else, and pushing more energy through him than the rest of his body could keep up with. It wasn't enough to kill him or anything, but it was damaging, and incredibly painful. In certain areas though, the efficiency of his body and mind showed a faint red light glowing over them. Anywhere the red light touched, he noticed that the cracks healed faster and stronger than they were before.
The magic portion of his soul showed no signs of red light though, and the cracks that healed did so at a much slower rate.
He moved closer to one of the cracks in the mind portion of his soul that was being healed by the red light, into yet another familiar memory. He was in either elementary or middle school, he couldn't remember, taking a math quiz. It was ten by ten rows of problems, each problem had two numbers. The first number was divided by the second number, and he had to figure out the answer. It was a speed division test!
Looking at it as the memory played out though, each answer he gave was smudged or foggy. Leven saw himself answering the problems, but the answers were just unclear.
When a red color descended on the room, Leven noticed that each answer started to come back into focus, and he remembered all the answers he had put down for them. ‘Neat’
When the red coloration started to pull back, he followed it and jumped towards the portion in his soul it originated from. Moving around in his soul was odd, but it seemed like if there was any connection between one part and the other, he could draw on that connection between the two to make a sort of shortcut.
When he arrived at the base of the red light, he was predictably back in his family’s garage, surrounded by workout equipment from the time when he first formed the skill [Growing Pains].
He watched as the skill drew from [Pandora’s Box (Contained)], and sent that energy into healing the various portions of his soul that it could.
Moving on to [Pandora’s Box (Contained)], he looked into the box, and saw that the Wrath mana inside was hardly Wrath mana at all. It was almost completely clear, with only a slightly red tint to it, that continued to be drained and funneled into [Growing Pains].
The only thing that bothered him about the entire situation was why his soul was so much stronger than the rest of him, but he felt like an idiot for even wondering that the moment the thought came to him.
Of course an adult man's soul was going to be stronger than the body of a child. He was worried that the damage would persist until he was an adult, but the mind and body portions of his soul were already significantly better maintained than the magic portion of his soul. It wouldn’t be much longer until those two were healed, and then he was sure that his soul's natural regeneration would be able to focus on what damage was left to his magic.
The most fascinating part of all of this, was the fact that none of it showed up on his interface. There was some sort of untraceable damage to him that couldn't be measured, and he was growing stronger in some way from healing after it, but what that did for him he couldn't understand.
Speaking of the System though, he remembered that he still had notifications that he kept forgetting about. Having the attention span of a child again was crazy to him, but he could push through it if he really-
‘Mom!’ The thought popped into his head quickly as he heard a flap open and soft footsteps approach his crib.
The woman he knew was his mother, by how she walked and smelled, gently picked him up and started humming to him as his body instinctually cooed quietly.
He felt incredibly safe as she carried him, and he let himself latch onto her as he heard her whispering words to a tune he didnt recognize.
He still felt pain from how his soul was adjusting to his new body, but it didn't really bother him as much anymore. For the first time in as long as he could remember, Leven began to slip into a deep slumber, where he could be sure that he was absolutely safe.
‘Not Leven’ something said at the back of his mind ‘I’m Dei now. That's what mom calls me’ before he fully closed his eyes and went to sleep.