Xavior eventually ended up getting his mom’s attention. She was surprised that the only thing he needed was the dying fern in their window sill. After grabbing the house plant, her curiosity ended up getting the best her and she holded out cooking dinner to see what her strangely talented son had planned. She sat next to him without a word and just stared at her son and the plant. This, of course, made Xavior highly uncomfortable, but he decided not to comment on it.
After finding out how perceptive his mother was, he decided not to hide much else from her. He in no way expected himself to be completely honest with her 100% of the time, a man needed his privacy afterall, but he’d definitely be more honest about things. Just as he was about to begin, his father ended up coming down the stairs for dinner. Before he could say anything, he must’ve noticed the situation. He stood there on the stairs for a couple of moments, before sitting on the couch next to Xavior without a word.
He didn’t know what was going on, but apparently Xavior’s father was much more perceptive than he thought as well. The situation was tense for him, he needed something to happen. The results didn’t even have to be spectacular or even average, but something needed to happen, he couldn’t live in a world where literal infants could kill him by accident for even a second longer. It made him feel to weak and vulnerable. ‘Two words the perfectly describes me right now, but it doesn’t make the situation any less fucked up.’ He’d deal with the questions his parents will no doubt have after this, at a later date.
Finally focusing on the fern, he tried to use his previous weeb experience to help him in this situation. He actively watched anime and read manga, manhwa, and even manhua. Yes they sounded the same, but there were differences. This is not to even mention the hundreds and possibly even thousands of webnovels he’s read. He began touching the plant’s leaves, the dead ones to be exact. He closed his eyes to focus and just tried to feel something, literally anything.
He didn’t know what he was looking for exactly, but as one of god’s chosen, even by coincidence, he knew he had an affinity for these domains. All he needed to do was learn how to access them. After sitting in focus for a while, gently rubbing one of its dead leaves between his fingers, he began to feel something. He clenched his eyes in frustration as what he felt was despair. There was no energy, or chakra, or fucking spiritual pressure he could feel from this fern. From what he could tell, it wasn’t only a plant, but a dying one. Even more useless than an alive one. Despite this wonderful and spectacular information, it was rather useless to him at the time. Especially because that observation could be made with only his eyes.
‘What was I expecting, it’s been like 5 minutes and the only new thing I’ve learned about this plant is that its leaves are rough! Trying to depend on knowledge I acquired from lazing around in a previous life was a dumb idea in the first place!’ he berated himself. There it was again, another failure on his part because of laziness. He felt foolish for daring to think he could just stroll his way into power.
His parents could apparently feel their son’s frustration as two hands landed on Xavior’s shoulders. “You are young my son. No matter how smart you apparently are, we do not expect you to suddenly become a secret Master. It’s okay, seeing Elise must have made you pretty jealous huh? Everything is fine, no one is rushing you, we have time.” his mother said with a calming voice.
Did you know this story is from Royal Road? Read the official version for free and support the author.
With all of his might, Xavior wanted to believe his mother. He wanted to act his age and cry and fall asleep in her arms. The only thing that kept him from doing that exact thing, was knowing his mother was wrong. ‘I don’t have time, I’m not young, and it’s certainly not okay. Believing that other Chosen will leave me alone simply because I don’t want to participate in the gods’ twisted game is naive. As long as I’m alive, I’m a threat. This is especially true for me, my patron god is Odin. A major god from a major religion. This is not even counting that I actually want to participate. I need to make progress, I need to figure this out!’ and with that thought, he got back to work. Breathing in and out, he tried to calm himself. He just needed to think about things outside of the box. Using normal logic he learned from his previous world won’t exactly work here.
He couldn’t feel any energy from inside the plant, and so he needed to look at this from a different point of view. Instead of looking for some type of sign inside the dying fern, he began searching in himself. For a type of energy, for a type of feeling, for something. The moment he thought of doing this, his eyes opened in surprise. He immediately felt something. A tug from within his very being, not really at a specific part of his body, but his body as a whole
“Boy?” his father inquired, but was ignored by Xavior. He felt like he was on the right path and he couldn’t get distracted. Breathing through his nose and out through his mouth slowly, he began getting to work. Again, the response was almost instantaneous. He felt something inside of himself.
Slowly moving his thumb back and forth on the dead leaf, he tried to use it somehow. The energy was cold and numb. While trying to move it through his body and into his arm, it began to to shiver and twitch. It was slow but extremely simple to move if he focused hard enough. His arm began feeling cold and numb, the properties of the exact energy he was trying to control. It was a weird sensation, like he could literally feel his blood moving throughout the body, and with enough will, he could influence its directions from within his veins. Yet this was no blood, it felt so foreign that he wondered how had he not discovered the energy before. It was probably so easy to identify because of the boy not having said energy in his last world before. Currently with it flowing throughout him, how could he not notice it, especially now that he’s actively looking for it.
Even with this development, the excitement in his heart didn’t allow him to stop. He continued on, his arm shaking more but also being ignored. The moment the mysterious energy reached his fingers where the plant was touching, instead of healing like he meant it too, the leaf shriveled and died in an instant. The second the energy got to its destination, the leaf turned pure black and wilted.
Xavior widened his eyes in surprise and immediately cut the power off. His parent’s gasped and shock and jumped back in fear. They looked in fear at the plant and at the same time looked to their son. Xavior was felt kinda hurt at the reaction but just clenched his teeth and ignored them for now. ‘Not yet, I’m not done yet. While this is good, I need to figure out how to distinguish my powers, otherwise I’ll just kill anyone I touch! I need to figure out how to heal!’