As I came to, my eyes were fixed upon another pair of eyes of seemingly limitless depth.

It felt like someone peeked into my soul, if only for a brief moment.

Perhaps I was still feeling a little bit delirious after being reborn again.

The fuzz and blur disrupting my vision was hardly gone since my eyes had not adjusted to the outside world yet.

From the verbal reactions of what seemed to be a couple of midwives shortly after the birth, I deduced that I must have been a healthy baby boy by normal measure perhaps a tad heavy but nothing worrisome.

The days were slow and I kept fading in and out of consciousness.

My thoughts were scattered and intangible, my body unmovable and my senses were acting up.

The only relief besides feeding periods was screaming my heart out.

It was hard to focus my mind on specific tasks.

Despite hitting dangerous levels of curiosity, I could barely keep myself awake.

My eyelids felt like steel gates denying visual access to my surroundings.

What little physical energy I spent trying to keep my eyelids open, ended up draining whatever stamina I had, thus leaving me in a state of physical exhaustion.

Roughly a week elapsed like this.

In and out of consciousness while trying to get a grip of my bearings.

I spent days trying to discipline my body. If I cannot get just a decent amount of control of this body, it might just drive me crazy!

My situation had started to worry house servants tending to my needs.

Usually a baby would be able to stay awake for at least a couple of hours, and become somewhat stable after some time.

Newborns would look around discovering new things, or at least the things they could see within their visual range.

In the end they did nothing about it.

I guess they weren’t that worried about me after all.

Reasoning with myself that it had only been 1 week and I probably had not shown any clear signs of an unhealthy growth rate, I let it slip out of my mind and refocused on my goal; Gaining proper control of this body.

Resolving to gain control of my body, I started making light exercises to the best of my ability.

This was by no means push-ups, jogging or anything of the like. Blinking was one of my favorite exercises since it increased the time I was able to keep my eye lids open.

‘If I could blink effortlessly without my eyelids forcing themselves to close, perhaps I could spend some time focusing on my surroundings properly.’

Such were my thoughts before I decided on blinking as an exercise.

While it may sound easy and I might have approached it in a nonchalant manner, it was by far the most physically exhausting exercise I had ever done.

----------------------------------------

Three months went by in a blur when all I could do was extremely light exercises to train my body.

My mother and the house servants had long past noticed that my constitution seemed weaker than normal, and had upon that discovery brought me to the local doctor.

While he was no expert on medicine, he did weave his hands through the air for a bit as if conducting an orchestra or perhaps writing calligraphy in the air, with a brush in each hand.

Perhaps my eyes had deceived me, but I think he actually drew something in the air, since I was seeing some quite vibrant colors.

My eyesight however was still fuzzy so I couldn’t exactly make out what it was.

My gut feeling told me it was something interesting, but with no means to study it, I made a mental note in the back of my brain.

My body was starting to get stronger.

Or at least that’s what my instincts told me.

In terms of actual physical achievements, I had succeeded in keeping my eyelids open for longer periods of time, giving birth to quite the intense stare.

I had no chance of knowing that my stare was intense, but the epiphany came only moments after a few house servants were gossiping over my bad, after changing my diapers.

New skill acquired!

Intense Stare (passive)

Stolen content alert: this content belongs on Royal Road. Report any occurrences.

Accompanied by an almost indistinguishable bell sound from seemingly within my head, a semi transparent window popped up in front of me.

If my arms had not been weak I would’ve immediately reached out to touch it, as something like this seemed outlandish.

Alas, my arms were too weak so all I could do was stare at this window.

I had not noticed at first but the window was fully readable, and apparently I had acquired a skill called ‘Intense Stare’.

Piecing everything together, this happened while the house servants seemingly whispered about me.

While I couldn’t make out what they said since I couldn’t understand the language yet, it seemed quite obvious they were talking about my eyes.

One of the house servants, a young female of above average height, even pointed at me and then gestured sneakily with her other hand at her own two eyes, showing a grimace of slight discomfort.

One the one hand she could be talking about my eyes.

Given the circumstances it would probably be possible to narrow it down to my stare.

On the other hand she could simply be talking about how she felt uncomfortable watching me.

So, either I had an intense stare or I was ugly or otherwise unseemly to look at.

I put my stakes on my stare being intense, since the floating window had said so.

Another piece of the puzzle that was still missing it’s place was the floating window.

What was it? If it can be trusted then it should be a system comparable to a game system, where a person's progress is recorded and shown visually to the person.

Thinking to further explore what the skill ‘Intense Stare’ meant for me, a new window suddenly popped up in front of me.

Intense Stare (passive)DescriptionEffectsBy continuously blinking you have learned to keep your eyelids open longer than the average person, resulting in an intense stare. By staring at your surroundings, and enriching your sensory perception through mental images and thoughts, your perception presents more insight.Enhance visual perception

Increase presence

‘Interesting!’ Was the first thought that popped into my mind.

These windows had seemingly given me a skill which I had not intended or expected by myself, as one would logically expect it from a system such as this.

That is, if my previous conjecture about the windows being similar to the system used in many role playing games from my old world.

This was subject to be studied further.

And yes, this is the shameful state of my life after 3 months.

I can see my surroundings, no more blurriness or fuzziness.

My sight is clear as glass and sharp as it had never been before, not in this life or the one before.

Apparently I was living in a world where keeping track of my progress was a possibility.

At the very least I knew for sure that I was able record my progress, as made evident by the floating window.

Oh, and I excrete and pee uncontrollably in my cloth diapers.

I should practice control of my bowel movements. But in any case, a quick whiff would determine that my gastrointestinal health was quite alright.

One year later…

----------------------------------------

Thanks for reading this far! Rate and review it, tell me what's good and what's bad - much appreciated!

I think I missed something in the prologue!There should be more about this origin, right?