It was now five years after I had come back to the past. Many things had happened in these past five years, and I was able to say that everything had worked out great.

Currently I was in my room about to undergo the process of getting my Conceal Skill to become active and switch it out for my Detailed Divination Skill which was currently active. Without access to the System the process of switching out active skills took serious concentration and time to do. Fortunately my Mental Operator Power helped me in this regard, making it easier to maintain focused concentration and intent for long periods of time.

Before I began though I did one last divination to see my current progress with the full active help of my Detailed Divination Skill before I switched it out.

[Status] Level: 0 | General Tier: (Peak)Tier 8 | Age: 10

[Ancestry]-(Human; Evolutions: 0) (TechnicMorph; Evolutions: 0)-

[Titles]-(Dimensional Traveler; Legendary) (Time Traveler; Legendary) (Conqueror of Mana; Extraordinary) (Researcher; Common) (Low Profile; Uncommon) (Social Morph; Uncommon) (Artificial Youth; Rare)-

[Stats]-Mana(Nebula: (High)Tier 5; Cells: (Peak)Tier 9)

Mana Regen(Nebula: (Low)Tier 4; Cells: (Peak)Tier 9; Other: (Low)Tier 5)

Magic(Strength: (Low)Tier 3; Dexterity: (High)Tier 3; Endurance: (High)Tier 4; Stamina: (Peak)Tier 4; General: (High)Tier 4)

Constitution(Strength: (Low)Tier 2; Dexterity: (Low)Tier 2; Endurance: (Low)Tier 3; Stamina: (Peak)Tier 3; General: (Mid)Tier 3)

Senses(Strength: (High)Tier 3; Dexterity: (Low)Tier 4; Endurance: (Peak)Tier 3; Stamina: (Mid)Tier 3; General: (Peak)Tier 3)

Mind(Strength: (Peak)Tier 5; Dexterity: (Peak)Tier 5; Endurance: (Peak)Tier 5; Stamina: (Peak)Tier 5; General: (Peak)Tier 5)-

[Unique Talent]-Tier 7 (Not Awakened)-

[Magic Core]-(Color: None) (Characteristic: Mana Cell Enhancement)-

[Metaphysical Organs]-(Core) (Adaptive Mind) (Fractured Space Channel)-

[Metaphysical Physique]-(Body of Artifacts)-

[Traits]-(Ornate Chains of Talent) (Enchanting Talent)-

[Blessings/Curses]-(The Ever Present Archives Level 1 Infinite Pass)-

[Active Skills/Powers 3/3]-(Power: Mental Operator; Evolution:0 Level: 71) (Skill: Mana Maintenance; Level: 60) (Skill: Detailed Divination; Level 19)-

[Inactive Skills/Powers 11]-(Skill: Research; Level: 55) (Skill: Acting; Level: 28) (Skill: Conceal; Level 35) (Skill: Tireless Mana; Level: 17) (Skill: Sense Mana; Level: 46) (Skill: Pain Tolerance; Level: 9) (Skill: Physical Recovery; Level: 22) (Skill: Physical Augmentation; Level: 1) (Skill: Time Sense; Level: 57) (Skill: Space Sense; Level: 39) (Skill: Transformation Resistance; Level: 36)-

Needless to say, I had gained much within the five years since I came back to the past, and I was recently able to separate my other stats into their different categories with the help of my Detailed Divination Skill. Although I wasn’t able to see the exact values of the Stats, I was able to tell roughly where in the Tier the Stats were, Low, Med, High and Peak.

Some of my stats were much higher than what would be expected of someone at my age, and others were below average. That is if someone were just looking at the stats, but stats weren’t to be viewed in a vacuum. For example a Dragon and a Human could have exactly the same constitution stats but the Dragon would still be overwhelmingly more powerful than the Human. This was because Stats were the base off of which other things worked from, things like Traits, Skills, techniques, the physical body and many more factors.

However Stats increased based on feedback loops with the things that increased them. So, for example, the more I used my Mind based abilities the more my Mind stat would grow, this would allow me to grow my Mind based abilities faster which would make my Mind stat grow faster, this relationship created a positive feedback loop making my Mind stat my second highest stat.

Although I thought of myself as a magical focused ‘build’ I was still a bit pained when I saw the General Tier of my Constitution was 3, but there wasn’t much I could do about that besides continue to train. In regards to my Constitution Stat, my Strength and Dexterity were below average for my age, my Endurance was average, and Stamina was above average for my age.

For each Stat Strength was pretty self explanatory in that it determined the power of someone’s external influence. Dexterity referred to finesse or control. Endurance referred to stability, durability, and recovery, whereas Stamina referred to energy and efficiency. There was a lot more nuance and details involved but these were sufficient for a basic understanding.

My Constitution was low in Tier because it was limited in its growth potential by my Ancestry and Metaphysical Physique as well as me somewhat neglecting its training. My Senses were also influenced by my Ancestry and Metaphysical Physique just like my Constitution was, but Senses included things other than physical senses, things like mana sense and other magical senses, thus my Senses were higher tier than my Constitution because of my different Sense Skills.

My Magic Tier was higher than average for only having been practicing for five years, this was because my abundance of mana regeneration allowed me to practice much more than others, as well as my previous understanding of magic giving me a head start. But the real outliers were my Mana, Mana Regen.

Mana and Mana Regen were extremely high Tier because of the Mana Reactor I had from the future, but if that was the only reason then it wouldn’t have been as high. It was also because of my (Characteristic: Mana Cell Enhancement) which was an extremely potent Characteristic that enhanced everything about my mana cells. To put it into context, my mana cells were currently 800% bigger than normal mana cells but required the same amount of mana to split as regular sized mana cells. This combined with the massive initial boost of mana regeneration from the Mana Reactor allowed me to skyrocket my personal mana regeneration to the highest it was able to go at this time.

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The other outlier was my Mind Stat. Because of my (Power: Mental Operator), and my prior decades of experience with it, I was able to push my mental capabilities to their limits. However if I didn’t have my (Metaphysical Organ: Adaptive Mind) my extreme training I put my mind through would’ve fried a normal brain. I could’ve taken less risks, but I needed to take these risks if I wanted to have any chance of escaping from this prison.

This wasn’t to say that I was uncertain of escaping from prison, no in fact I am very confident in successfully escaping. The reason why I still have to take risks is because I want to stay escaped and not be brought back here. There were some crazy powerful people in this world and I needed to be able to deal with the pursuit of such powerful people should they possibly start to look for me.

I did have a primary plan to deal with those that might try to hunt me down, but I wasn’t 100% certain that things would work out like I hope they will. So I have multiple contingency plans in the case that my primary plan fails to work out.

One of these contingency plans revolves around my enchanting expertise and knowledge I have from my past as well as my (Trait: Enchanting Talent). With both of these, together with ongoing research in The Archives, I should be able to make items that will give massive temporary benefits, hopefully allowing me to get away from dangerous situations. However this contingency plan is dead in the water if I don’t have any materials to work with, which I don’t actually have.

Another of my contingency plans relies on my knowledge of the future and taking advantage of the war that will erupt about 3 years after my planned escape. Although the actual war won’t be official until 3 years later, the conflict between the countries was going on behind the scenes for years before then. So I could potentially seek out the help of the country opposing Tallen which would probably help me for propaganda purposes to weaken the authority of Tallen.

The problem with this contingency plan is that I would be at the mercy of the opposing country Ugrayen(You-gray-ehn). This would also make me a political tool and my identity would be known far and wide as ‘that guy that couldn’t escape on his own’. This contingency plan was absolutely a last resort, after all reputation is important especially when I would definitely become immortal in the future.

I didn’t have many contingency plans, truth be told. However this was more because of the strength of what I was facing than my inability to come up with solutions. To put it into perspective, the people who would be potentially hunting me would be considered gods in the eyes of many of the people back on Earth, but they weren’t gods, because gods actually existed in this world. So, when I was working against people with crazy levels of power, I didn’t have many options for opposing them.

Thankfully these were only just contingency plans in case of the worst case scenario, and if I was offered the same Talent awakenings as I had in my past life then I would have many more options available to me.

After looking over my Status I switched out my Detailed Divination Skill for my Conceal Skill after a while of focus. Inactive Skills could still be used but at a much reduced capacity and slower leveling, so I switched my Conceal Skill to active because I wanted to get this skill to a higher level.

With my Conceal Skill now ready I began to simulate many different scenarios in my head and tried to use the skill within this simulated environment. This wasn’t as efficient as actually using the skill in reality, but it was the best I could do in my limited environment, and it worked well enough that I continued to use this method to train my various skills despite its inefficiency.

While I was training in this way I broke off another stream of consciousness to think about other things, and my thoughts began to wander towards my parents visit with me. I had recently heard from Radix that they would be meeting with me next month which came as a great surprise to me.

In the past my parents had never once visited me in prison. I was not fully certain as to the reason for their current visit, but I had a guess that it was primarily because I was still not being let out of prison despite me reaching the age of ten. This was the same case as in my past, but this time around I had done something different. In this life I had shown great promise with my magical abilities from a young age and without help. My parents were probably more interested in my coming home this time around because I would be considered a prodigy in magic. They probably became suspicious of the real reason why I wasn’t allowed to come back home, and might suspect that the government wants to keep my abilities for their own use.

As far as the prison’s reports to my parents were concerned, I was still mentally unstable(I learned this from Mystdell). My parents received these reports from the prison but they also received reports about me through Mystdell as well, and Mystdell painted a very different picture to the one the prison gave.

According to Mystdell I was perfectly mentally stable and there was no reason for them to be keeping me here. My parents probably thought this was just Mystdell exaggerating like she always did, but after a long time my parents probably started to have some suspicions. With such conflicting information on their minds, my parents had decided that it was about time they come and see my current condition for themselves. Because of their visit I was a bit uncertain about how I should act when my parents visited me, and I was using one of my streams of thought just for this problem.

I hadn’t really interacted much with them before in my past, and it was the first time I was meeting them without me being mind controlled. In the fuzzy memories I had of meeting them when I was mind controlled, my parents seemed to barely interact with me or even acknowledge that I existed. Yet in the much clearer memories I have of them during the first five years of my childhood my parents definitely cared about me and loved me. I couldn’t tell which of these conflicting versions of my parents was real or if both of them were false, so I had to come at this from a different angle and let my interactions with them be clouded by uncertain memories.

With such faulty memories to go off of I could only reference the only other set of experiences I had of interacting with parents, but they were the ones of the parents I had on Earth. Unfortunately my memories of interacting with my Earth parents weren’t the greatest frame of reference either.

My parents on Earth were more like people who lived under the same roof as me, and I barely interacted with them during the times when they weren’t preoccupied with their games or off at work. Needless to say I didn’t have much to go off of when it came to parent-child interactions, so my understanding of how to interact with my parents was extremely insufficient to say the least. Luckily I had my Acting Skill which would help me even if only marginally, and I considered myself a calm and rational person. If I came at this logically everything should work out fine… Right?