The Paladin had failed. The thought dominated them and sapped their strength even further; their resolve was irrevocably shaken. They had lost—not the battle, or not just the battle—and had reached the end of their path. They reeled, both in body and within their mind, shortly before their weapon was wrenched from their grasp. They reacted all too slowly, and a moment later a powerful blow to their back sent them into the ground.
Dazzling pain blurred their consciousness when their head struck the unyielding ground. Grim resolve had them reach for their weapon, in spite of it all. But their precious partner was beyond their reach.
The next blow pierced through their spine. Other savage attacks tore through their form, almost entirely unfelt. The wounds were fatal, and the effects of the mortal damage spread rapidly. Their consciousness dimmed and faded. The sensation reminded them of drowning, as they drifted further and further away from light and life. Yet they were still a Paladin. They fought desperately, deep within their own mind and soul. They screamed and cursed and called plaintively to their patron god, Xaoc.
But even they knew it was all garbled nonsense. The final desperation that was borne of a failing mind and body. Truly there was only one coherent thought: Not like this! Not. Like. This!
Not that the struggle against Black Crow ever truly mattered, not in the end. Their death was an inevitability. Their consciousness dimmed toward nothingness as they sank inexorably into the depths of the final darkness…
[*ding!* Congratulations! You have survived your early years, and the system is now fully unlocked for you!]
[*ding!* Congratulations! You have earned your first class – Child of Pallos – Water]
[Child of Pallos] – A starter class for a girl from Pallos. +2 free stat points per level.
[*ding!* Congratulations! [Child of Pallos] has reached level 2! +2 free stat points from your class, +1 free stat point for being human, +1 Dexterity from your element.]
[*ding!* Congratulations! [Child of Pallos] has reached level 3! +2 free stat points from your class, +1 free stat point for being human, +1 Dexterity from your element.]
[*ding!* Congratulations! [Child of Pallos] has reached level 4! +2 free stat points from your class, +1 free stat point for being human, +1 Dexterity from your element.]
[*ding!* Congratulations! [Child of Pallos] has reached level 5! +2 free stat points from your class, +1 free stat point for being human, +1 Dexterity from your element.]
[*ding!* You have learned [Identify] – level 1!]
[*ding!* [Identify] has reached level 2!]
[*ding!* [Identify] has reached level 3!]
[*ding!* [Identify] has reached level 4!]
[*ding!* [Identify] has reached level 5!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Combat]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Prayer]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Meditate]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Tolerate Hunger]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Walking]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Running]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Knives]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Throwing]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Stealing Snacks]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Jumping]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Drawing]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Gossiping]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Carrying]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Laundry]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Food Preparation & Preservation]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Sweeping]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Scrubbing]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Tidying]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Pain Tolerance]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Sewing]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Anatomy]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Warm Hugs]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Panicking]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Dodging]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Roughhousing]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Defending]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Skilled Fingers]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Manners]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Vigilant]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Calm]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Boosted Reflexes]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Plague Survival]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Fast Learner]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Cute]!]
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Chatting]!]
…What on Pallos?
From her perspective, she suddenly erupted from the depths of darkness—where barely a trickle of her being was left intact—to suddenly being barraged by notifications from the System. Nonsensical notifications, even!
There were voices around her, but it was all too much, and too sudden, to make sense of.
How was she even alive? She had been so certain that she was beyond any [Healer] she knew.
And why in Xaoc’s glorious name was she seeing a child’s System notifications?!
Her body felt strangely weak and slow to respond, but through sheer tenacity she slowly forced her eyes open. The light burned, but stubbornly she refused to close them again. She needed to see. She needed answers!
Her vision was frustratingly slow to clear while she tried to blink away the blurriness. There were four… no, five people in front of her, one was much closer than the others. The surroundings were both familiar and alien to her. It was obviously some sort of temple, but it wasn’t…
She groaned in discomfort. Something was wrong. It was as if something was familiar about her surroundings, but she was unable to recall what she had wanted to compare them to. Which was a weird sensation, one that creeped her out, so she chose not to linger on it.
Instead, she focused on the five people. The nearest, and directly in her line of sight, was a very pretty young lady that would—in another couple of years—be exactly her type. Something about the young lady’s compassionate smile came off as vaguely angelic, which was a blasphemous thought that she silently apologized to her god for. …Yet the other four that flanked her ruined the effect, somewhat. There were three varyingly dour-looking men that were each somewhat older than the young lady that caught her eye, then there was another woman—not unattractive in her own way, though a bit too old for her tastes—that practically radiated danger despite her affable expression.
She was about to turn her attention back to the very pretty—if tragically young—woman when realization dawned that she was unable to move. Some sort of gargantuan creature held her firmly within its clutches! She was strangely weak, but the creature must have been frightfully powerful to hold her with such absolute control. She tried to thrash, but the efforts seemed to leech what little strength she had regained almost immediately. Nor had the efforts even done her any good.
“Sweetie? My little Ranthia? Can you hear me?” The giant cooed while it moved a hand up to paw at her prisoner’s face.
“W…what are you…?” She tried to demand of the giant, but her throat struggled to work. Her voice was raspy and hard to understand.
She wasn’t in pain, but something about her body felt as if it had been in the grasp of pain and languished for an age. But that was impossible, her wounds would have killed her within—at the very most—mere minutes, even with her vitality. …Once again, that odd sense of discomfort assailed her.
Was this some sort of purgatory that souls went through before they returned to Samsara?
But why would Xaoc let her languish? Nothing about this felt right.
The giant woman clutched her tightly while it wept joyfully. …But no, that wasn’t right, was it? Slowly she looked between the ‘giant’ and the others in the room and… yeah, they were the same size. But if that was true…
Was… was she somehow tiny?!
[*ding!* You have unlocked the General Skill [Observing the Obvious]!]
[Observing the Obvious]: You seem to struggle to notice things other people realize immediately. Take this skill and fix that. Increased ability to recognize obvious things that you can readily see per level.
…She could do without the System’s sass on top of all of the other distractions! How on Pallos was she supposed to figure out anything with some crazy woman prodding and touching her relentlessly? She needed to focus, she needed to figure out—
“Sweetie? Are you okay?” The woman that was clinging to her asked.
…Right, she had entirely spaced out, hadn’t she?
“W-what’s going on? Where…?” Her throat still tried to refuse to cooperate, but she powered through it with sheer force of will.
“We’re at the temple sweetie, and this nice [Healer] just saved you. I thought I was going to lose you too… I just couldn’t have taken that! I’m so glad you came back to me!” The woman that clutched her leaked warm, sticky tears that dribbled down into her hair.
She forced down her revulsion and looked at the [Healer] in question. [Identify] tagged her just as the woman had said, level 156 based on the pinkish-red hue of the tag. The young woman was smiling warmly—though thoroughly tinged with weariness and a hint of… impatience—at them.
“And… who might you be…?” The child asked her mother.
The tears stopped immediately. The woman stared at her child with wet, glassy eyes before a desperate, fearful look was cast to the [Healer]. A look that was filled with pleading. A need to have things made right.
The beautiful young healer approached and knelt down while the three men looked between one another with various expressions. She smiled reassuringly at the mother and child, before she started to move her hands in a few arcane ways around the girl. She turned the girl’s head a few different ways. She pressed her fingertips gently against the girl’s wrist and neck. She proceeded through several strange things—and the girl enjoyed her attention and touch far more than that of the strange woman that continued to insist on being latched onto her—before the [Healer] finally tried the thing that she should have, probably, started with: she spoke to the girl.
“What’s the last thing you remember?”
The child blinked owlishly at the lovely young woman. That… proved to be a very good question for the being that found themself suddenly a young girl.
She was a [Paladin], sworn to Xaoc. She had been in battle against a foe. …Or was it foes? Gods, how was she unable to remember something so important that she had just experienced moments before? Was she in battle against man or beast? She had lost her trusty… it was some sort of larger weapon; she was almost certain! But was it a great sword? A spear? Her weapon had been important, but she wasn’t sure any longer about why it was important or in what context. …And then she was slain.
Yet when she tried to cast her thoughts back before that final battle, she found nothing. Her demise was both her earliest and latest memory.
…No, no that wasn’t correct. Her awareness traveled straight from her death to her sudden emergence before the [Healer], but impossibly there were other memories sandwiched in between. Memory that was absent of awareness; memories that played back more akin to contextless knowledge than a proper memory. Yet the information was there.
She had stood before Xaoc, her god. The lord of Chaos Himself. And He had firmly rejected her as an angel. Though she had lived her life devoted to him, she had proven too orderly in the end. …No, he had phrased that differently, he had accused her of being allured by order and fallen under its—no, her—sway.
…Her god had measured her worth and found her wanting.
The vague recollection made her tremble. Tears threatened to spill forth—a battle of will that she lost almost as soon as it began—while she reeled from the revelation.
He determined that she needed to be tempered with true chaos anew before she could truly serve His needs. He gave her a second chance! She would be permitted to keep her knowledge of the System and perhaps a few other things. She was given two charges: live differently and add more chaos to the world.
…But the directive to live differently had a stinging consequence: she would never be a [Paladin] again.
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It hurt more than she could express. The path called out to her very soul, yet no matter how she redeemed herself she would never again be permitted to walk that path. She needed time to parse everything!
Yet people waited for her answer.
She forced herself back into her present. She was no longer the [Paladin], she was… apparently a child. But she still loved Xaoc and wished to devote herself to him.
…That story was hers, it wasn’t something she wanted to share with the [Healer]. She cast her mind for other memories, but there were none. There was no recollection at all of the little girl that she seemed to be. There was nothing else about the [Paladin] that she had been beyond those final moments. And that seemed to have exhausted the extent of her recollections of her encounter with Xaoc.
“I… I just unlocked my System, but I don’t remember anything else.” The child half-lied.
She wished that she was permitted to wipe the tears from her face, but the ashen-faced woman that clung to her had her arms pinned.
Through tear-blurred eyes, she watched the [Healer] while the young woman pursed her lips. The [Healer] checked a few things further on the child, before she subvocalized something to herself and looked up to the mother.
“She had been infected with both of the plagues, and both were in an advanced stage. It’s… possible that there was some existing brain damage. She’s been healed, don’t get me wrong! She’s healthy and it’s very possible that her memories will return! …But you should probably talk to Caecilius, he should have more experience with this kind of thing.”
The mother sneered, her earlier gratitude completely forgotten. She muttered something unintelligible, though obviously unkind, before she seized her daughter’s arm—rather roughly—and tried to pull the girl along toward the exit from the room. The woman was in a clear rush to be away.
The girl, on the other hand, had not lost her sense of gratitude… unlike what seemed to be everything else about her. She analyzed her mother’s grasp for a moment before she jerked her arm free using the weak point in the woman’s grasp. The moment she was free she wiped her tears, turned back, and bowed formally to the lovely [Healer].
“My thanks to you, lady [Healer]. I may not remember, but I recognize by your words and actions that you have saved me from the brink of another death. I, for one, am grateful. You are a credit to your class, and I will always carry the memory of what you have done for me… along with the memory of your great beauty.” The child offered in a deeply formal tone of voice, tinged with blatant flirtation there at the end.
…That was… not entirely what she had meant to say. She had definitely said far too much! In her defense, her head was still in a poor place, and she had rushed to say what she could before the wretched woman seized her again.
The woman—her mother, it seemed—snatched her arm again with a strange, haunted look on her face. She fixed a nasty glare at the momentarily speechless [Healer] before she practically dragged the girl out of the room.
The woman hurried down the halls, mumbling nonsense about how she needed to get her real daughter back. How her little girl had never spoken or behaved like this before. How she needed a real professional to fix whatever the stupid girl had done. And other ingrateful, hateful things.
…It seemed that the former [Paladin] had definitely said too much.
The pretty—but most certainly not angelic—[Healer] had been a delight, but she was far less impressed with the man that they met with afterwards.
The man was a [Healer] as well, one specialized in plagues. Admittedly he was nice enough, in his own way. He made a—mildly obnoxious—showing of only requiring a few small iron coins to, effectively, tell the distraught mother exactly the same salient facts that the prior [Healer] had already conveyed.
He was midway through his explanation of how the accumulation of something called black and yellow bile had forced prolonged reduction of her natural phlegm when she finally gave up on paying attention to him. In her opinion, the man had used far more words to convey far less useful information.
Instead, she focused on her situation. Right, so, she was an 8-year-old, freshly unlocked girl. Her old self was lost and Xaoc Himself had commanded her to live a different life either way. Clearly, she had some knowledge; Xaoc had specifically noted that she would keep what she knew about the System. That was as good a place as any to start.
The System was a fact of life on their world—Pallos—and pretty much every major lifeform except small insects and some plants had use of it. Humans were locked out of most functions of the System until they turned eight years of age, likely as a safety measure established by the five great gods.
This meant that she had the potential to shape her own destiny anew. For all intents and purposes, she was a blank canvas. There were more paths than she could count. Even at the broadest level, there were [Warriors], [Mages], [Healers], [Rangers], [Paladins], [Priests], [Artisans], [Laborers], and more. Each path had its own branching specializations as well, even before the elements were considered.
She was a level 5 Water aspected [Child of Pallos] currently, in the fresh unlock class. She knew that at level 8 she would unlock her first class up, but she needed to figure out her path before then. The question was… what was she? Or, rather, what drove her?
She was shaken from her introspection by her apparent mother’s sudden burst of gratitude to the long-winded man. Though she had paid precious little attention to the man’s ramblings, she was certain that he hadn’t provided any useful information beyond what the useful [Healer] had provided. And yet this, somehow, proved to be reassuring to the mother and earned her gratitude where the female [Healer] had only earned her scorn. The woman was visibly relaxed while she thanked him profusely for all that he did (literally nothing!).
At least the woman seemed to finally accept things as they were.
It was, apparently, late evening by the time they emerged from the temple where the [Healers] worked. The civilization that surrounded the temple was bleak. Everything had a gray pallor cast over it. Coughs and misery seemed to seep from every building. The air itself was foul, touched by the stink of festering and ash.
The woman, apparently clueless, sighed happily and breathed deeply as if the air was actually fresh.
“Well, that was all quite a bother. …So, tell me, my little Ranthia, how are you feeling now?” The woman asked with a smile.
The girl stared at the woman for a moment, stunned. She had been awed by just how bleak the situation with the terrible plagues truly was… The incongruity of her mother’s actions, especially compared to the woman’s earlier attitude, was jarring.
“I… I think I’m feeling okay. …Mostly hungry.” The girl finally answered.
“…Of course, back to your normal greedy ways already. I suppose I should be relieved. Now listen here, young lady: I just had to pay that nice man the money I had planned to use for food. All to fix that stupid girl’s mistakes. You were very expensive today, so you should be grateful and not ask for more right now. I know you have some snacks squirreled away in your cot; you can eat those when we get home.” The woman huffed.
The girl felt that her mother’s words were a terrible thing to say to a child. To make a child feel guilty for survival due to the inconvenience or cost it had for their parent?
It wasn’t even true!
The cost was exclusively due to the woman’s own lack of faith. The other healer, whatever his name had been, hadn’t even touched her!
“Fixing the [Healer]’s mistake she says…” The child muttered, not quite as quietly as she had intended.
Her mother cuffed her roughly upside the head.
“Don’t you dare get sassy with me, little Ranthia!” The woman snapped before she angrily strode forward, down a street stained with filth.
The child sighed and followed. A short while later her mother slowed and the two walked side-by-side in silence, until finally the need for answers overrode the girl’s self-preservation instincts.
“…So, my name is Ranthia?” She asked in a quiet voice. With every effort she made, her voice came to her more and more readily.
Her mother stopped and gave her a look.
“…Yes. Your father, may the gods bless his noble soul, didn’t want to name you after himself. He decided to name you after my favorite flower, he was such a romantic! I mean I loved both the flowers he gave me when we were married, but in the end we decided to name you after amaranths.” The woman finally answered, with a broad—and frankly wildly unsuited to her—silly smile.
“…What was the other?” The girl asked hesitantly.
“What?”
“You said there was another flower you considered. I just wanted to know what it was.”
“Crocus, of course.”
…The child shuddered. Crocus was a terrible flower to try to derive a name from. What would you even make? Crocia? Croa? Rocuse? There was nothing even remotely acceptable there! How had that even been under consideration?!
“Your full name is, of course, Amaranthia.” The woman continued, ignorant to her daughter’s mental plight.
Ranthia decided then and there to adopt her shortened name. It was charming and cute. The full name wasn’t… terrible—unlike any possible variation of Crocus—but she didn’t feel any fondness for it either. She was Ranthia.
Suddenly she smiled, just a little. She had finally learned something about herself, something that wasn’t based on conjecture! It was a nice feeling, though it was one that she fretted that she might seldom experience.
And her mother had resumed walking while she was lost in her own thoughts. She cursed—inwardly—and scrambled after the woman. She really needed to stop zoning out so completely—she knew better.
Probably.
“Um, so… what happened to my father?” Ranthia asked after she caught up.
“Why in the name of the good gods and goddesses above are you asking these questions?” Her mother snapped in response.
“I thought maybe if I learned about my life, it would help me remember sooner.” Ranthia lied after a moment.
“…Ugh, fine. Your father was a hero, you know. It was shortly after you fell ill. He announced that he was going to find a way to get past the 3rd and get away. To find help. …Except those 3rd bastards caught him. They murdered him for no reason!” Her mother snarled with raw, emotional fury.
Ranthia knew she’d regret it, but she still asked.
“The 3rd?”
Her mother glared back at her, before she gestured generally into the distance. Which meant she gestured at the wall of whatever building they were next to.
…Wait, when had they turned off the filth-covered street into that stinking alley? Ranthia was really starting to worry about her situational awareness.
“The 3rd Legion. The sons of whores that have barricaded our town and murder everyone that tries to spread word about what they’re doing to us innocents.” The woman answered venomously.
So, in other words, they were a military unit that was tasked with containing the plague. That bit of nuance allowed Ranthia to understand what her father really did, in context. He was trapped in a city beset with plague. Sickness entered his home. And the man immediately decided to abandon his family and seek to save his own skin.
What an absolute bastard.
Ranthia seethed quietly at the non-memory of the man while she followed her mother through increasingly low-quality areas until they, at last, arrived at the pitiful accommodations that were apparently her home.
It was a small, single room domicile. The windowless walls were thin, and gaps existed between the boards. The house seemed vaguely crooked, though Ranthia struggled to quantify which direction it leaned. Inside, there was a small wood fire stove near the only door—which seemed like a great way to die in a fire, with your only exit cut off—with a tattered table in one corner near some cabinets. The back wall of the home was occupied by a small cot on the left—Ranthia’s bed, she supposed—and a larger bed on the right.
Ranthia tried very hard not to think about the implications of the unobstructed view her cot had of her parents’ bed. She didn’t think she was a prude, but the thought filled her with a surprisingly vitriolic level of disgust. It was almost primal.
There was probably something to unpack there, but she had no way to dig out what it was, it seemed.
Her cot stank from the moment she entered the house. Ranthia, warily, approached it and found the rough, threadbare cloth was absolutely coated in stale sweat, blood, and worse. Together it formed a thick crust of filth over the majority of the bedcoverings.
Gods and Goddesses, how long had her body been sick?
“Can we wash this?” Ranthia asked.
“What’s the number one rule of this house, missy?” Her mother haughtily replied.
“I literally have no idea.” Ranthia deadpanned in response.
Ranthia scrambled to dodge the wooden spoon her mother slung at her. She proved to be less than successful and rubbed her sore shoulder while she glared at her mother.
“The number one rule of this house is whoever makes a mess cleans it up! So, stop sassing me! There’s still some water in the barrel in the corner, you can use your bucket.” The older woman huffed indignantly.
Ranthia grumbled unkind words in her head while she prepped what she needed. She wasn’t entirely certain how to clean the bedding, but water in a bucket—even if the bucket had a slightly sour smell—seemed a good first step. A bit of water helped to soften the filth, and she was able to pry some of the larger chunks off with her fingernails.
At some point, her mother delivered some supplies and gave her some advice, before the woman left Ranthia with some threats to remain indoors before she left for some nonspecific errand. Ranthia was fine with that, the repetitive activity provided her with precious time to think.
She needed to figure out her path before her mother tried to force one upon her. What class path spoke to her? She needed to figure out who she was or, rather, who she wanted to become. Ultimately her lack of memory of either life left some dangerous questions unanswered.
In all honesty, Ranthia was still uncertain if she was repeating the same life—if she had always been Ranthia—or if Xaoc had shoved her soul into the body of a dead girl. Those were the only two possibilities that she considered plausible. She outright refused to entertain the notion that Xaoc could have erased the soul of some poor girl and shoved her into the body in the girl’s place. It was too out of character. The other gods might have been so wasteful, but Xaoc was different. After all, anything that was erased or killed could never add chaos into the world.
That was why Ranthia loved Xaoc so deeply. Sacrifices were to be loosed into the world, rather than slain. A handful of coins could be donated to the local temple, but He was just as pleased if someone promised the coins to chaos and flung them into a crowded marketplace. He was a deity that defied the brutal norms that other gods favored.
Ranthia had either always been Ranthia, or the girl had died before she became Ranthia. Those were the only two possibilities.
Realistically, she knew she probably could pray to Xaoc and receive an answer about which option was the truth, but… That wasn’t her, it seemed. Had Xaoc believed that she needed to know, He would have told her. In the end, it was irrelevant, it didn’t matter which possibility was the truth. She needed to live differently, that was the only truth that mattered.
Ranthia set aside the question and considered her options. The skills she had been offered—which she still had a bit more time to accept before the System rescinded them later that night—were the foundation she had to work from. There were options from her General Skills alone. She had solid options for a [Warrior]’s foundational skills: [Combat], [Dodging], [Defending], [Vigilant], and [Boosted Reflexes]. Most of those she assumed to be holdovers from the knowledge she possessed from her previous life, which made getting them offered again once they expired somewhat difficult. For a [Mage] though, [Meditate] was there, which was absolutely essential to get [Mage] class offerings, and the defensive skills would still apply. She also had civilian life options such as a variety of housewife skills—not that she was interested, even if [Laundry] was vaguely tempting at the moment—or…
Well, she always could take [Skilled Fingers] and make a life in that direction. Part of her random knowledge that she retained from her previous life was extremely sexual. She knew that she preferred younger women—which was disturbing given her current body, she immediately decided that she needed to overcome that preference—and she knew exactly how to please them. The knowledge gave her an interest in attractive women—like that [Healer] that promised to be oh-so-tasty in a couple of years—but the attraction was wholly detached from physical desire thanks to her current physical form. She appreciated beauty and potential beauty like someone might appreciate art. It was a perfectly valid life and class path.
…But, no, the idea of eschewing combat capabilities entirely felt like a terrible idea.
Combat was a fact of life. The wilds of Pallos—whatever corner of it she was in—teemed with monsters, dinosaurs, and deadly threats. Cities protected themselves with walls and people lied and convinced themselves that they were safe inside. But sooner or later the illusion of peace was always shattered. When that happened, those who allowed themselves to become helpless died.
Ranthia refused to follow such a path. She might have to live differently, but that only meant that she was prevented from becoming a [Paladin] again; it didn’t require her to become helpless. She needed a path that would allow her to face life’s many dangers. The dead couldn’t add chaos to the world.
Her body was weak, but time and effort were the solution there. She was confident that the body was adequate enough to build strength, stamina, and speed up. She just needed to find opportunities. She doubted—given her mother’s threats if she tried to leave—that she would be allowed to just go out on a walk, and she strongly suspected that exercising in front of the woman was a terrible idea.
And she had eight skill slots to—
Wait, no, seven. Why on Pallos was [Identify] already taken? It was a good skill to have and likely would have made the cut when she was selecting skills, but no skill should have automatically been taken when she unlocked her System. Puzzled, Ranthia finally consulted her System generated sheet.
[Name: Ranthia] [Species: Human] [Age: 8] [Mana: 20/20] [Mana Regen Rate: 192/day] [Stats:] [Free Stats: 15] [Strength: 2] [Dexterity: 10] [Vitality: 3] [Speed: 4] [Mana: 2] [Mana Regeneration: 2] [Magic Power: 2] [Magic Control: 2] [Class 1: [Child of Pallos – Water (5)]] [Class skills not available for initial Classes] [Class 2: Locked] [Class 3: Locked] [General Skills:] [Identify: 5] - - - - - - -
Her stats were even worse than she had feared, but Ranthia scarcely noticed. Instead, strangely nervous, she steeled her resolve and checked the information about her strange, solitary skill.
[Identify]: You have examined the world closely in two lives now. You have gazed at warriors and horrors when most would not dare, and you have even performed the impossible and gazed upon the divine. This skill provides basic class and level information about the people and creatures of the world. Increased range per level. Note: This skill is burned into and bound onto you, removal is not recommended.
…
……
Ranthia had no words. She was consumed with a deep-seated loathing for her prior self.
The Paladin had—somehow—used [Identify] on Xaoc!? The fact that it was entirely impossible was irrelevant. The sheer damned gall of it just made her blood boil. What on Pallos had she—or whatever gender the accursed fool had been—been thinking?! It went beyond sacrilegious, it was irredeemable!
HOW DARE!
Ranthia was so enraged that she failed to even notice that she had scoured a hole through her patchwork bedding. She was almost frenzied with her fury. She wanted, no, needed, to punish herself for her association with the being that had committed such a heinous crime. The fact that she—mercifully—had no recollection of it was irrelevant! Just… damn that Paladin and damn her!
Ranthia really had no good explanation when her mother opened the door and found her daughter flagellating herself with the wooden spoon over the sodden remnants of the even-more-ruined bedding.