40.5 - Recap: chapters 1 to 40

One day I found myself existing in total darkness, with only my own conscience to confirm myself that I exist. No memories of 'self' but general memories of a mundane time on Earth. I don't know my own name…

Then a voice talked to me and fed me information. I started to call this voice 'Alexa' because at the time I thought I was going to actually interact with it, but the instances where I heard Alexa were few and far between.

The first time Alexa talked to me, she gave me broken pieces of information about a mission I was to do, and that was a simple mission to find a protagonist in a new magical world, but not much information about how I was supposed to do that or how this world worked was given to me. There were rules imposed upon this mission, and this 'protagonist' was supposed to be found from a single generation of a race called Efalem.

Efalem is the name of a race bioengineered by a Goddess; she took the old and weak Elfs and created entirely new species from them. Stronger, faster, smarter, with more mana capabilities. Overall a 100% improvement, there is not a single thing that an Elf would win over an Efalem. An important piece of information, one that I found out by myself, is the absence of males in the new species.

It's an incredibly beautiful all female race, no male is needed, not even to reproduce. The bioengineered species don't even have genital organs. Yet they do possess a pair of boobs, which I later found out are actually artificial 'mana cores', that are 'installed' during the first year of the newborn's life, underneath the skin where the breasts would be. They grow by absorbing, condensing and storing mana inside. Of course, there is a limit on the storage capacity.

Anyways, Mother, which is how the Efalem refer to the Goddess that created them, has descended on this world in the form of a giant holy tree, and there is an enormous Efalem city built from Mother's roots around it. Mother is also the sole Goddess worshiped by this race.

It's Mother's form of a Tree that sprouts new children once a year in a ritual performed by the subjects. The newborns are brought into this world with the appearance of a 10 years old from a human perspective, and they are given an 'information package' containing the spoken language so they are able to communicate from day 1.

During this 'birth' ritual I was assigned my first host. My job was to witness the everyday life of this child until it's death and judge if I would choose this individual as a 'protagonist' or continue to be assigned a new host, from the same generation as the old one.

During the birth ritual I had my first culture shock. Just a couple hours after birth the adults killed several children, which I later found out was a necessity of Mother, we needed to return some of the 'lifeforce' she used for the birth ritual, but I'm yet to understand why. I did not handle the situation well and Alexa intervened, calmed my soul down and made it so that I would be very stable from then on. I think she just deleted my 'empathy' or something like that, but this is just a theory of mine, I don't know how it works, but it does. Every stressing situation I witnessed after that could be handled with ease.

My first host died in a rare accident just a couple weeks after birth, during the 'installation' of the twin mana cores. Apparently one girl, the one that by pure chance was near my first Host, had a problem and created a mana explosion killing about 40 other children.

Once my host died Alexa asked me a question, "Would you like to continue with the mission or choose a protagonist?" and proceeded to list all the lives I had witnessed, which was only one at the time. That was the day I learned that I could choose any previous host as a protagonist, and finish my random mission at any death time.

I chose to continue and was assigned the new host by proximity, meaning the girl that exploded was my second host. She was alive at the time, unconscious, but alive. I only stayed with her for a couple of hours. Apparently her mana affinity was too strong for her body, for the amount of mana injected on her during the core installation fried her inner mana circuit because she absorbed too much, too fast. She was destroyed beyond repair and on that very same day she was 'recycled'.

Efalem have a clear difference between recycle and death. They define death when one individual is killed outside of Mother's influence, meaning their soul is lost forever. Recycling means that the individual in question no longer had a physical body, but the experiences, memories, energy and soul were all given back to Mother. Mother then would assimilate them and remember that soul for all eternity.

After the second host was recycled and my connection with her cut, Alexa assigned me my third host. A sweet, shy girl with low self-esteem that I stayed with for about a year, she was incredible in every aspect I can think of, but did not recognize it herself. I witnessed all her struggles during the first year training regime, all her care and love for her sisters and mentor. I was with her during the naming ritual that happened at the end of the first year in which she was bestowed the name of Lucyra.

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I was also the one mainly responsible for her recycling during the second year of training.

Efalem society is extremely organized, they follow a system where the older generation is responsible for teaching and training the new one. During our first year of training the tutors were all 8 years older than us and taught the basics of mana usage. The second year we were assigned tutors 12 years older, and it is focused on improving mana control to fine levels along with physical training. Lucyra's first year's tutor was a genius known as the best most powerful warrior of her generation whose name was Mila.

Mila was assigned a small group of three girls and trained them well. One of her students was Lucyra (my ex-host), the other two were Mayara, which was, by my knowledge, the best of the new generation, and Brianna, which was also a monster in terms of strength and talent with mana control. The trio was amazing and far ahead of the other children, but because Lucyra was the weakest of the three she had no idea how amazing her abilities actually were, and this was the main cause for her incredible low self-esteem.

I, as a matter of fact, knew she was incredible, not as a monster in strength as the other two sisters, but amazing nonetheless. Yet I had to keep this thought to myself, for I could not interfere with reality. I tried everything but nothing I did could do anything to interfere in the real world, I was bound to be an useless observer. That, however, began to change after some time.

Why it changed is also only a theory that I have no way of knowing if it's actually true, but I noticed small changes after the sprout ritual, the one where new Efalem are brought into this world by Mother. This is a giant ritual where an enormous abundance of mana is present.

The first sprout ritual I witnessed was the one I was brought into this world, the second one, after one year in this world, is the one that I believe gave me more power. I started to notice that I could, at some times, 'implant' an idea, or a suggestion into Lucyra, and I used that to 'change' her core personality. I convinced her that she could do whatever she wanted and by doing that I killed her.

One day during training she stepped over her limit and burned over her inner mana system. Because I used my newfound power to convince her that she could go over.

I'll carry this failure with me forever. Lucyra was a spectacular girl that had everything to be any story's protagonist, but because I forcibly changed her core personality she became too impatient and too careless, I caused her to practically commit suicide.

She was recycled and life continued to the others like nothing had happened. I chose to continue to observe a new host.

I was assigned to a sleep-loving girl called Melvin. She was one of the now 7 girls training with a new tutor named Jade. This new group was formed once we graduated year one of training, two groups were merged into this new one.

Melvin is not the smartest, but is extremely competitive and very talented with physical training, yet lacks a bit when it comes to mana control. Despite the difficulties with fine mana control, she could complete every training during the allocated time and was never considered for recycling.

Recently the combat training started, this phase is different from any before. We joined with other five teams and in total we made a bigger class of 37 trainees.

The six teachers all took turns teaching whatever combat technique they specialized on. Up until now we had Support training with the instructor named Leah di Aja. She focused on teaching basically self-healing techniques, and made it clear that anyone that specialized in support would be able to apply basic healing to a third party, but it was nothing that we would be able to do during the mere few weeks of support training.

It was a painful class where the trainees had to keep on hurting themselves and healing using mana. The self mutilation was progressively more intense, every time someone managed to fully heal one wound, a more serious one would be self-inflicted, up to the point of bone damage or fingers being cut off. All to guarantee a minimum level of self-healing skill.

After a few weeks of support training, the defense class began with a teacher named Danna di Cota. During this class it became clear that the order in which the classes were prepared were of utmost importance.

Defense required us to create a kind of mana shield around us to detect and block attacks. The first part of this class was hard and not harmful, yet the final week… was hell.

Every student was constantly beaten up by the teachers. We became punching bags for women that had no compassion for our pain. The self-healing proved to be a curse and a blessing. The trainees were required to use the technique to regenerate the wound caused by the teachers, and then go back and serve as a punching bag again, again and again.

By the end of the weeks of defense training everyone had improved miles on both defense and healing. People do get better fast when their very lives are in the game. I'm sure no teacher there had any qualms about 'recycling' any of us. Melvin had it specially bad because she had an incredible constitution, she could handle a lot of extra time of beating. It also helped her improve in defense... But it came at the cost of too much pain.

No one died during the defense class, but a few got seriously injured and sat out for a day or two. The next set of skills that we should learn is short weapons, the combat training instructor responsible for this class is our own personal teacher, Jade di Liz. She is an excellent teacher, but a complete brute.

This class proved, once again, the importance of the order in which we are being taught. Self-healing and defense were the only thing keeping us alive, well... most of us… not everyone made it to the end of this training.