Birth -

99.9999% compatible host found.

Soul download Initiated.

Error. Mana reserves at critical levels.

Restructuring.

Restructuring.

Restructure failed.

Emergency mana siphon initiated.

Maintenance energy siphoned from system buffer.

System buffer empty.

System unlock reset to final fail-safe window.

System Class set to minimum variable.

Soul download concluded.

A rapid-fire string of notifications filled my mind before I could even open the eyes of my new body. If the spell functioned as I intended, and all signs said yes, then I was a fresh new-born so my eyes were likely still very sensitive to light. That explained the pounding headache.

All other things aside, a few years of delay to system access wasn’t the end of the world. It would stifle my initial skill growth a bit, but it wasn’t something I couldn’t recover from. I wonder how long it will be delayed anyway?

Flexing the mental muscles of a new brain was odd, but eventually, I was able to formulate the system commands. Strangely though, in my original life it had been “Access” to parse information to the system for a request, and after however long I had stayed dead the system only seemed to respond to “Query” now. That took some trial and error to discover, but I figured it out quickly enough.

“Query. Count down to full system control”, was the first command I parsed. When I got my answer, I Immediately gave up on any further commands. No more of that for today.

Full system unlock in:

17 Years

11 Months

3 weeks

8 days

16 hours

32 minutes

47 seconds

The final number slowly ticked downwards as I watched it. The timer, infuriating as it was, did give me a few pieces of information. I was initially hoping to unlock the system by age five in optimal circumstances, and I’d prepared myself to wait until age ten at worst.

The timer hovering behind my eyes explained three things. Firstly, I would have to wait until my eighteenth birthday. Second, I had been born sometime in the past eight hours. Third, I had not been dead long enough for the calendar to change much. Still twelve months in a year, still nine days in a week.

This would have to do, for now, my still-damp baby body couldn’t support high cognition for long, and despite just waking up, I was already exhausted. I hate kids.

Six months -

Judging by the shifts in my system timer, It had been several months since my successful download into this host body. Instances of full consciousness had been few and far between unfortunately. My earlier estimations had proven correct though. The full cognitive load of my mind was nearly impossible for this body to sustain. I’ve been ‘awake’ in truth for only brief bursts, the rest of the time the mind regressed into a more age appropriate child like state.

The brief windows of time I was granted, along with the vague and fuzzy memories allowed me to gather several key pieces of information thankfully. The rest of my measly waking minutes were spent trying to further this body’s development with the knowledge I had. To begin at the beginning though, mustn’t get ahead of myself.

The building that had thus-far comprised the entirety of my second life was in a poorer rural area. From what I’d seen there was no artificial light of any kind, magic or candle, and thus our daily activities relied heavily on the sun, so I concluded we don’t have extravagant means. My new family was poor. The windows, when open, contained no glass panes, thus rural. However, the abundance of food, though simple, suggested my family to be competent at whatever it was they do when they go outside. They had yet to take me with them while I was ‘awake’.

On the subject of family, in the many weeks of my new life, I had met several people. Most of my memories of the occasional visitors were vague and difficult to parse, but the constant presence of two figures, one man and one woman, led me to believe these were my parents. They did not speak a language I recognized, so I had been operating under the assumption that I was reborn rather far from my homeland of Teraq.

The female answered when the male called her “Neia”, I decided hence forth to refer to her as Mother. Mother called the man “Daniel” or “Idiot”, The first was more common, and the tone of the second suggested some kind of insult. I think father’s name was Daniel.

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Mother was as tall as father but her presence made her seem taller than Father was, she was built incredible elegantly. I did not know if this was hormonal influence on emotion, but her presence was calming. Her golden hair and shining green eyes, coupled with a fierce point to her ears betrayed her as an elf. Father was as human as they come though, which suggested I am a Half-Elf in this life. The extra life span would come in handy.

Father was a barrel chested man build wide and thick, his stature told of a lifetime of hard physical exertion and prowess wrought from sweat and effort. His strapping, nearly chiseled physique was a stark contrast to the flowing and soft features of my mother.

Mother and father were the only two I seemed to be in constant, or even repetitive contact with. Every other adult person in my fuzzy memory was otherwise impossible to nail down in detail.

My days were spent alone with these two, though father did leave quite frequently to do whatever his job must be. When he returned it was always with fresh food. Not that mother allowed me to eat much solid food yet. When I uploaded my soul into a magical matrix to catapult my consciousness forward in time, I never once imagined that the biggest hurdle to my return would be the mind numbing monotony of baby food.

Any food that was given to me had been boiled, mashed, crushed, or otherwise pre-digested to a point that texture was a non factor and flavor may as well have been an afterthought. Even then I was blessed when my food did not come from mother directly. Yes. Indeed. Andras Grigori, greatest spellmeister of his generation was reduced to a mewling babe and forced to suckle from the ample chest of a common elven housewife.

Don’t get me wrong, I had my fair share of dalliances with the fairer sex, even the occasional elf. However, this woman had given birth to me, and that presented a sizable hurdle for enjoyment of the situation. The cognitive dissonance aside, my body was that of a child even if my mind was not, it was physically impossible to gain the same satisfaction as a man would regardless of how many times she stuffed her frankly disproportionate chest in my mouth.

The entire situation was nothing short of complete and total humiliation. As a result, I had chosen to retreat to the fugue of non-sentience whenever she insisted on skinship. The other day I came out of my fugue with mother bathing me in a tub alongside her, only to immediately flee to the recesses of my mind. Infuriating.

So, I came to the decision that any and all wakeful hours my body could handle must be spent on self improvement. Since I had no way of yet knowing how far into the future I had been born, if at all, I need to be prepared for the eventuality that Vincent was still alive and I would have to face him once again.

The first steps? My first steps. But I had to walk before I could run, or in this case crawl before I could walk. Locomotion had proven difficult with an under developed nervous system, but with no small portion of effort, my endeavors were fruitful. When I finally began to pull myself across the floor, my limbs barely underneath me yet, Mother and Father both rushed into the room in a tizzy of excitement. Shouting and going on and on about something I did not understand. I assumed my clearing of this developmental milestone was earlier than their expectations. They had clearly underestimated me.

With basic movement handled, It was important that I become able to support my own body weight. The muscles in my neck had developed for the most part while I was unconscious, so the weight of my head was mostly offset already. Instead, I had to focus on core strength, and limb strength. First to be able to lift myself upright, and to stay seated without falling over. My pride is injured once more.

The fundamental exercises I knew to increase these muscles were impossible with the level of coordination I currently possessed, but the general movements were not. Repetition is the mother of success, so my only option was to try repeatedly and fail repeatedly. Each time I heaved myself upright only to fall back down was a step on the way to my eventual rise. An infinitesimally small step towards the overall first step, but a fraction of progress was still progress.

In the meantime, since my body tired out quickly, it wouldn’t do to merely devote my focus entirely to physical development. No! I also had to grasp the language of this region if I wanted to gather the information I needed to formulate a plan.

The general sounds of my parents’ languages were not overly familiar, but they don’t seem difficult to form. Given my immersion in the language on a daily basis, I had grasped most of their phonetic rules already.

Time to strike. I needed to let them know of my magical gifts. If my theories were correct, the stress syllables for magic were simple enough. I just needed to get mother’s attention.

“Milk fiend!!, Look over here!” I cried out in my mind, barely managing a wail of non-verbal tones as I tossed a small wooden block as far as I could in her general direction. The toy landed only a few inches from me at best. Curse these tiny arms!

Still, it was enough for Neia to come away from the vegetables she was cleaning in the washbasin and stoop down in front of me. Now was my chance. Strike Andras!

“Maa…” Fuck! Magic damnit. Magic.

“Maa… Maa.” was the best I could muster, my mistake already apparent when Mother’s eyes began to water. Clearly I’d neglected to train jaw muscles to a necessary minimum.

When mother swept me up off the floor and held me tight against her outrageous chest, I resigned myself not to speak carelessly again.

Blast you woman! I was not expressing affection, I need magic!