Fou felt overjoyed as she quietly sang to her son, happy that he was finally starting to feel better.
He had been crying less and less, until just this last week when he finally cried only when he needed food or a change.
She was in their main room painting Dei, when her happiness at having him feel better got the best of her, so she cleaned herself off before going to check on him. When she got to his crib, he quietly looked up at her, making his little noises, ‘so cute!’ and she couldn't stop herself from picking him up to hold him for a bit.
He quickly fell asleep this time too, showing just how much better he was feeling when she didn't have to wait for him to cry himself to sleep.
It had been two seasons since Dei was born, and Fou knew that he was going to be crawling and moving around soon. ‘Maybe it's time to take him to more places, such as the market or around town? Many people knew that there was something wrong with him, but with him feeling better, I can show him to them and put everyone at ease! I also can't wait to get back to going out with Gor and the kids and Dei is getting to the age where it's time to start taking him outside of the village.’
Happy with her decision, she walked around the house more while holding him and waited for her husband to get back from hunting and foraging with their other kids. She had stuck to Dei like south-seeds to shoes the entire time he was sick as his body adjusted to his strong soul, and since she couldn't bring him out places, she was forced to stay home as well almost perpetually, so she was just as excited to get out again as she was to introduce Dei to everyone.
Leven groggily woke up, trying to groan with the effort of just opening his eyes, but only making high pitched baby noises as a result.
He could see some blurry images around him, and felt something soft beneath him. Looking down, he saw some brown fur that was filled with something, forming a sort of cushion.
Now that he had his attention brought to it, it seemed like he was squished between two cushions, making it much harder for him to move
‘I think I'm on the couch. Cool!’ for some reason he was very excited to be on the couch, and he found the idea of his squished baby face hilarious, so he let out a naturally high pitched laughter.
He felt such absolute amusement at his own predicament that it took him off guard.
‘Ohhh shoot! Baby emotions!’ and the thought made him laugh again.
He saw something blurry come from somewhere else in the house, gently stepping over to him and tickling his chest a bit. ‘Mom!’
He moved his hand to grab her fingers, and she let him. He held on tight until she picked him up and started spinning around with him, making him laugh more. It was hard to see things, but Leven could make out a wide grin on her face.
He heard her say something he couldn't understand, until midway through her sentence he heard the word “Dei?”
For some reason, he easily recognized that as his name, and it startled him slightly. He realized that the name “Leven” felt foreign or distant, while “Dei” felt much more natural, much more suited to him.
With how Wrath reacted to him calling himself Leven, it looked like he really was someone else now. Despite the fact that he died, Leven- Dei- had assumed that because he kept his memories, things would simply carry over to his next life, but that didn't appear to be the case, which made sense. Everyone had a different chemical makeup, and his body was interlinked with his soul. By changing bodies, he changed the ‘fingerprint’ of his soul slightly, even if his mind and magic were the same.
Leven felt foreign to him, because he wasn't Leven anymore. When the System spoke the word Leven, it had spanned from his birth until his death. If he had to guess, the word Dei spoken by the System would span from Levens birth, until his death, then past that all up into this very moment.
He wanted to ponder on it more, but his mother began to walk towards the flap of their house that led outward, and immediately he was enraptured with the idea of going somewhere new and seeing the village of this world.
As she pulled back the flap and stepped out with him in her arms, he was filled with awe at the sight before him. It was a massive cave system, pathways going up and down the walls with more flaps that led to different houses. What made the entire thing magical were the glowing gemstones all along the walls, ceiling, and floor. They were tiny, maybe the size of a quarter, but there were thousands of them.
His mother stood still, looking amused at his reaction as his head moved on a swivel to take in all the sights. The cave system split at various intersections, and he could see people moving all around him. Most of them were [Gem Dweller Variant] humans like him and his mother, but Dei estimated that a good thirty percent of everyone he could see had tan skin and dark hair. Not necessarily a dark skin tone, but not the unnatural alabaster tone that he came to associate with [Gem Dwellers].
After a few more seconds of letting him take the sights in, his mother began to move down a winding path. That's when he noticed that they were actually fairly far up on the wall, but she moved nimbly down an incredibly steep slope to make it to the bottom of the cave, where things were flatter.
As his mother moved towards what looked to be the main road, Dei got a better idea of how many people were living here. While he assumed that they lived in a little village because of the tan hide flaps and complete lack of security systems, there were still a couple hundred or so people just moving about in the streets. It wasn't crowded by any measure, but Dei had always pictured villages, in his previous life at least, as something more like sixty or seventy people. With how many were actively moving out, he would guess that there were probably closer to six or seven hundred people in this ‘village.’ Or perhaps it was more of a town that was just very trusting so they didn't need locks, he wasn't sure which constituted which.
His mother moved through the crowds with purpose, clearly set on a destination. After a time of walking through the gargantuan cave system, the hustle and bustle became more crowded, until they eventually arrived at what appeared to be some sort of square in the town. There were tons of wares all around, from drying plants hanging up in the stalls to meats he didnt recognize, surrounded by some sort of glowing barriers. There were a few people that sold flashy looking rocks, similar to the gemstones in the walls, except that they were far larger and glowed brighter. Some even had pieces of cloth over them to dampen the light.
All around him he heard people talking in the halting language he was getting used to hearing. They moved past the square though, towards an intersection that turned both left and right. Instead of turning though, his mother kept moving towards a specific doorway placed right in the middle of where the road forked.
He was starting to pick some things up about the flaps too. At his house, their doorway was a circular hole, while in the square, he saw tons of rectangular holes, potentially indicating that they were shops. He’d have to wait and see to find out, but he also noticed that some of them had glass that showed the insides of the buildings, and those insides that he could see of the rectangular doorways showed interesting objects that looked like they were for sale.
But no, his mother was moving towards a circular flap that nobody was approaching. It also had some beads next to the door, and he watched as his mother shook them a bit. When she did, he felt a thrum reverberate from within him, and it shocked him that he could make out a sort of message.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
‘Visitor’ he felt the idea enter his mind, stemming from the portion of his soul that dictated his Soul affinity.
Before he could ponder it more, an old woman answered the door. While Dei couldn’t see all that well, he could tell that she had wrinkles galore, and had a slightly higher pitched voice when answering his mother, but she also moved like she had never suffered from joint issues in her life. It might be from some sort of magical effect keeping her healthy though, so he did not doubt his blurry vision just yet.
He heard his mother and this woman mentioning his name several times, so they were clearly talking about him, but he hadn’t the slightest clue as to anything else they were saying.
He was passed over to the woman for a bit as she played with him too, and he found the situation weirdly amusing as she tried messing with him. It was definitely his body sending emotions to his mind, but it seemed his mental maturity helped with a disposition towards joy, because he understood everything that was happening. After all, everything was new and scary to babies, but not necessarily to me.
He still felt happier when his mom took him back and held him on her hip though.
Eventually the two said their goodbyes and parted ways as his mother exited the home. We slowly made our way back to the house, but mom stopped every ten feet to talk to someone else she recognized, with me clearly being the subject of their discussion every time.
‘Wait’ I remembered ‘don’t I have those notifications that I never read?’
Quickly, before he could forget about them again, he pulled them up
[Achievement Gained! Voidwalker
You have traveled the void from one plane of existence to the next, without being cleansed
* Void affinity is 30% easier to learn and advance
* +30% resistance to void attacks
* When striking intangible opponents with a physical attack, 20% of the physical damage is carried over into intangible damage]
An Achievement? That's amazing! He should have suspected that doing impressive things would earn rewards all on their own. There was something weird though, because he definitely did this a while ago, and he was only now getting the notification. This Achievement was earned after his death, but he realized that he was only getting them upon being born, so maybe he needed a body to earn them?
Careful to keep an eye out for the world around him and what his mom was doing, he continued reading.
[Achievement Gained! Soulspeak
You have heard your name spoken by another entity using Soulspeak, giving understanding of who you are. Many spend their entire lives mapping out their souls, and you were given the most detailed of descriptions.
* Soul affinity is 20% easier to learn and advance
* +20% resistance to Soul and Soul derivative attacks
* Gain an absolute understanding of your own soul]
Oh, that's incredibly lucky. Or perhaps intentional? His understanding of his own soul was what helped him frequently so far in understanding what his skills were doing, as well as repairing his broken skills. So yea, it definitely seemed intentional for the System to give this one to him.
[Achievement Gained! Beyond Understanding
You have taught a System something that it did not know. Statement taught to the System: “If I fail, I hope you succeed in finding someone else to bring your lover back!”
* Teaching someone something is +200% easier for you
* People are 200% more likely to listen when you speak
* Gain access to the [How About a Demonstration?] Skill]
Huh? How did that teach it anything? Unless it was in denial… wait, it was in denial! This idiot System didn't even know that it was in love!
This had to be the goofiest Godlike entity Dei had ever met. The only one too, so it was definitely the goofiest.
[Achievement Gained! Rebirth!
Successfully be Rebor-
ERROR! No rebirth Skills detected! ERROR! Improperly reborn soul detected! Achievement rescinded]
Well, that was worrying. There was an Achievement for being reborn, but since he didn't do it “properly” so to speak, he wasn't going to get it. It looked like the consciousness of the System didn't always agree with every part of it, and the part that gave Achievements was confused that he was reborn at all without being manually cleansed.
[Achievement Gained! No Rulers Above All
The Affinity Wrath contested your right to something you considered yours, and was forced to recognize that maybe it was.
* Wrath affinity is 40% easier to learn and advance
* Wrath affinity users and Wrath derivative affinity users feel an innate sense of inadequacy in your presence
* Increases Soul presence]
This one was a bit different because while it increased his ability to advance his Wrath affinity, it didn't actually provide resistance to Wrath attacks. The second ability was cool too, but also a bit awkward if he couldn't turn it off. Would some people just feel bad standing near him? That didn't sound good at all.
He also didn’t know what his soul presence was, but based on the capital S, he would guess it had something to do with his Soul affinity.
That was the last of the Achievements, so he did a quick look around, and noticed that they were still a little bit away from their house, with his mom continuing to talk to someone he didn't know. She wasn't going into shops or anything, but even the people out on the streets were more than enough to keep her preoccupied for a while. He occasionally had to look at someone who was trying to get his attention, or grab a hand that someone was poking at him, but that was easy enough to do while looking at his notifications.
The last thing he wanted to check was the skill he had gotten from the [Beyond Understanding] Achievement, called [How About a Demonstration?]
He opened up his interface to look at any changes that had happened
Name: Dei Grrata
Race: Human (Gem Dweller Variant)
Class: N/A
Profession: N/A
Achievements: Void Walker, Soulspeak, Beyond Understanding, No Rulers Above All
HP: 16/16
MP: 16/16
SP: 16/16
Stats:
Physical: 8
Mental: 8
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:
How About a Demonstration?
The best thing he noticed was that his Mental stat had gone up twice over the course of the day! He did notice that things were getting easier to think about, requiring less and less effort to pool his consciousness back to a task, but it was good to see it measured. He definitely still struggled from an attention deficit as well as random explosions of emotions, so he didn't think that would go away until he was more grown up, but the ability to think could not be undervalued! He quickly noted how an Achievements section had appeared, only after he earned Achievements, and checked the notifications for those Achievements. Perhaps because someone had to do something noteworthy to gain an Achievement at all?
Next, he saw that the new skill fell under Outer Skills, which aligned with what he knew about the System as it was something given to him rather than something he learned, and clicked on it to open it.
[How About a Demonstration?
Sometimes telling someone about the theory behind something isn't enough to have them understand it completely. When this is the case, a demonstration is in order!
Gives the ability to bestow upon a single target one Skill known to you. The Skill does not advance from their usage of it, and they cannot organically learn the Skill until your version is revoked from them.
When your Skill is bestowed upon someone else, it becomes unavailable for use to you, until the Skill is rescinded.
Mana or Stamina from use of Skills bestowed upon someone else are drawn from your body]
Damn! He didn't even plan on becoming a teacher, but he could already imagine all the possibilities that came from this Skill! If he got strong enough, he could send out agents of people to do his bidding, giving them the Skill needed for the job.
It was still definitely a Skill focused on learning other Skills, mostly because of all the drawbacks, but Dei could see some creative uses for it.
His mom also appeared to be done for the day when it came to talking to everyone. He struggled to focus on his Achievements with everything going on around him, so it had to have been an hour or two by the time he was done with all the notifications, but they were now approaching his family’s home, and he was ready to rest a bit.
‘It feels like I just woke up, and I already feel overstimulated from everything that's happening. Ahh well, that's the life of a baby I suppose’ he thought contently as his mother pulled back the flap to their home.