***Warning***

Spoiler :

The next two chapters (including this one) may not be for everyone (that is I don't think most people will like them) They also do not do anything to further the plot along much or anything...(at least probably  from most of yous' point of view ) most people will think it looks like an info dump (from my experience in past chapters)

Despite what I promised NEITHER CONTAIN HATCHING SCENES!

Also: I am getting kind of tired about complaints that seem to lack validity or value. Especially as I take the time to answer the complainers questions and don't get replies back. (If you have a problem with this story, there is a simple solution: " don't read it" See how easy that was?)

To answer the number one complaints:

I do not plan this out much, I write mostly through inspiration. Thus there is no regular schedule as to when I will post chapters. And more importantly I don't decide what I will put into each chapter (It just happens while I write) Thus while I have some ideas as to what and  when things will happen I have no exact dates, so asking me is kinda' useless. And in my opinion, asking things such as: " speed up the story!", "move the plot line along now!", and or "release chapters faster!" Is even more useless...

I am not saying that I mind you sharing your opinions with me, just that I am merely thinking that I am getting sort of tired of the multiple people asking the same things over and over (in what looks to me to be a rude way. )

If however you have a very specific question or opinion that hasn't been used before (or at least much)  I would appreciate it if you would post it.

Although this and (probably most of ) my future fanfics/web-novels  are definitely not reader interactive.

(I am too selfish to let others do what they want or make big contributions in that way, as I am mainly doing this to please myself)

I will usually accept and at least think about using any ideas that you might like me to do.  (though they may not come out exactly as pictured as I will almost definitely put my own spin on it in order to turn it into 'mine'. )

Anyway to continue if I see a comment I don't like I may not answer nicely, as right now I am in a somewhat of a bad mood...

P.S. Basically this and next chapter are about a certain disadvantage the MC discovers about themselves as well as some post hatching preparation

Crucible of Emotional Tempest

(The One Conflicted about their Life Choices Made while in Egg)

 (50 years in total continued)

It started not long after my sister really started to develop her psychic abilities. She and those she passed the information she gathered too started to get more and more curious of the outside world. They started to beg me indirectly (directly in my siblings case) for stories.

If I wasn’t too focused by what I was doing at the time I would comply and give them various tidbits, that I felt infants would find amusing or entertaining without causing any mental harm. With also a few minor ugly and scary things to make sure that they wouldn’t think the outside world was all happiness and joy.

By this time my ‘brother’ that I have known since the beginning, had ranked up. My brother was somewhat similar in looks to my first ranking a bluish green but he was slightly darker then I had been at that time.

My brother had mentioned he was thinking of hatching then, but fear of the outside world as well as his worry about how the others that were unranked would do had he decided to continue to stay. As he had sort of become their leader, the others also decided to stay as well.

Unlike what it had been like before we reached out to them it wasn’t really that bad to be inside an egg. Especially with me and my sister sharing ‘entertainment’ in the form of pictures we had stolen from the outside world.

Also by that time I had used my magic to construct mental roadways that allowed any eggling to communicate with the others no matter how little their mental strength was. So it was easy for everyone to chat and day dream with each other.  

Some eggs even made up little games where one tried to pass along certain mental data and maintain it as much as possible. Such as a certain color they had been shown, or even trying to maintain a certain emotion. Though they did not yet understand things such as hunger or any great sort of pain.

They had learned almost all the emotions including such things as jealousy towards my sister and her great abilities and power to choose what to look at. (Though I had put a sort of mental filter on her to prevent her from seeing anything that wouldn’t be appropriate for children).

They also had to my embarrassment and slight sadness a large mix of strange emotions towards me, including fear and admiration. Even though unlike my brother they were unable to see what my mind truly looked like on the mental plane it seemed that they still sensed my ‘difference’ somehow in some way.

Soon after things calmed down, my brother overcame his fears and was even more tempted to hatch. However despite my protests and assurances my brother still had one major obstacle that was keeping him from hatching. And that was his love and loyalty towards me, as well as his concern to my welfare. You see I had decided to stay in the egg a bit longer.

My brother didn’t want to leave without me, so we were at a bit of a stalemate. Then an event happened that changed not only everyone else's decision to hatch but the course of my entire life as well.

The younger one is the faster one grows, and the easier it is to rank up and gain experiences one your own. This was the reason I had stayed in the egg, and part of the reason I was able to quickly rise from brown to red, and even more quickly jumped from red to orange.

To show you a better example of the magnitude of this event I will say that although this was not the greatest of changes that event caused, the most visible side effect that came with this event was a large jump all the way to silver rank.

***

I realized shortly after I shared this information with you that I had neglected to mention, or more truthfully purposely didn’t mention, because I was influenced by my powerful mixed emotions, the event that had led to me making such a big jump. It was an event taking place around 25 years after my death.

The parents of my past life had died.

I had forced myself to witness it from start to conclusion. I am not sure why, perhaps out of a sense of guilt but the more I watched the worse my feelings became. I started my death side when I realized that my ‘parents’ had started to enter the prematurely frail old age stage in life that I had seen other peasants enter into before including my grandmother the only grandparent I had known.

Seeing my parents in such a weak delicate state tempted me immensely to use my dream skills or even some of my selfishly hoarded karma to at the very less, suppress some of the pain they seemed to be experiencing. But I stuck to my principals to not interfere with those from that life and did nothing.

Thanks to my hard work in getting them that money so that they were able to buy that inn unlike most peasant elderly they didn’t have to work that hard. However hard work were what they were used to so they forced their fragile human bodies past their limits until the very end. The first to go was my father, I think the fact that he was much older than my mother led me to believe that it was most likely that he died because of old age and the stresses he was always forced by his life circumstances to put on his body.

My mother and my younger siblings sat by him at his death bed. I invisibly along with the others heard his creaky frail old voice, speak to his family, and I remembered that distant time in my old life where his voice had been loud and powerful when (though I had been much younger) that voice had made me feel occasional fear as well as guilt as I was ordered to do various things such as work with him in his job in the fields and to as always “Look after your younger siblings son”.

I remember how he almost never had even a kind word to me, and never one of gratitude if I did well I was just doing the duty sons owed their fathers. In the rare times I did wrong I was not doing my utmost to give him the rights and duties that sons owed their fathers.

A case of content theft: this narrative is not rightfully on Amazon; if you spot it, report the violation.

Although he was most cold to me, I had loved him. Actually I hadn’t wanted to admit this as it was hindering my chances to put my past behind me and fully embrace starting a new life but…because I still had my memories…I still loved him even now.

The frail voice of that loved one spoke to all my ‘living’ siblings instructing them in various things for the last time. Some of the things that were talked about I didn’t really understand or know about them. I had been observing my past family merely as a past time, and had not been exactly studying them.

Finally he looked to his wife of many years, my mother and said.

“I go now to prepare the way for our masters.”

My mother replied “You shall do your duty most honorably as you have most faithfully in this life”  

Then after looking at the ceiling for a moment he closed his eyes and breathed his last.

I think I may have mentioned it, in the very beginning when I first starting to tell my story, but my parents were fairly religious. Though now that I have been around so long and seen many things, I think what they believed in could scarcely be considered a cult let alone a religion.

It was basically a form of brainwashing that many nobles had practiced upon their peasants, it was designed that those that succumbed to the indoctrination were supposed to more happily do their work and thus be much more productive then someone who was miserable and merely tolerating their burdens.  

It had started to be less common even back then, this was partly because of implications of heroes choosing peasant companions. But it was mostly because most of the nobles who were the type to do that sort of thing to their serfs were also usually stingy. And when the pope had gained power he had started charging the nobles a fee for the priests to preform that service.

So my parents had been of the slightly minority of adult peasants who had gone through that sort of service. From what I had heard and guessed from those rare times my parents or their “fellows” had mentioned it. It started in childhood the noble would force the peasants to give up all their children around a certain age (when they were most malleable).

They would be taken from their lives of drudgery (most of them having chores by that time) and take them to a nice beautiful clean building where there would still be chores but also plenty of food, as well as times in the day they would rest and listen to a priest lecture them.

I won’t go into much more detail but suffice to say, they would start with scare tactics and then make plenty of what the children can do to avoid experiencing such scary things.

To keep things short, what my father meant by “preparing the way” was part of that set of beliefs was the idea that only “masters” or in other words nobility went to a sort of rewarding afterlife. However a peasant or commoner could obtain great ‘joys’ in this and the next life buy doing their duty as a worker for their “master” and never disobeying.

As my father’s master or the lord of the village my family lived in was still alive, he and supposedly the other dead peasants would have to “prepare the way” for him.

If the master had died before the peasant the proper last words would have been “I go to join those who serve the master.”

***

As I had thought then that I “knew the truth” about the afterlife and that the sole afterlife was reincarnation I was most upset to be reminded of my father’s miserable life. My emotions began to boil inside me and I almost attempted to spend my karma to perform a miracle to save my father’s life or perhaps guarantee him a great one in the next world.

But I stopped myself, firstly I reminded myself that I had sworn to practice a policy of noninterference for those I knew personally in this past life. And secondly and more importantly although my father’s life and even death screamed “Injustice”. If I did that for my father how was that fair?

I had a lot of karma but it was still a limited amount, I couldn’t do that for every human living in an unfair situation at this point in time. Choosing who would live or die, and what their afterlife would be…even if the gods didn’t interfere with what I would do, how could I possibly think that I was smart enough, wise enough and understanding enough to know what would be the best thing for well…everyone?

Of course I didn’t know best for them, I scarcely even believed that I even knew what was best for me. So I stopped watching my family surrounding my father’s dead body in order to mute my temptation to engage in some sort of action.

I not only stopped watching my family but everything else as well. I also stopped my training. Basically after cutting my direct communication channels to my siblings as well I just shut myself deep inside my mind and egg and just gave into my emotions.

I soon got annoyed by all the status windows that popped up so I did something with my magic in order to disable them.

I didn’t want to look at them ever again.

I didn’t want to do anything ever again.

I could do something but I didn’t.

Even if I had done something I probably would have messed something up and ruined everything.

I probably couldn’t do anything right at all,

even those things in my past life and now which I had thought that I had done right were probably wrong.

I was lost in a tempest of pain, guilt and a deep dense sense of depression and hopelessness. I slept sometimes but when I slept I prevented myself from using any dream skills and thus had brief periods where my mind was turned ‘off’ and got a small respite from myself.

Never in either of my lives had I experienced such misery before. I had been the type of person to never let things get them down. But now I was down and I was almost out. And I was thinking frightening thoughts like whether or not I could do something that would…end this new life of mine.

I was thinking partly that maybe in the next life if I was lucky I wouldn’t have my memories. But mostly I felt that I didn’t deserve it. That I had no right to have a life with such potential while other people lived in such misery…and I don’t even do nothing to help them.

The small acts of kindness I had occasionally done for others such as those orphans and their new parents I easily dismissed…that was just done out of amusement and didn’t really count for anything. So what? I saved a few kids and made a few others happy…there were many-many more where they came from and even more than that in worse situations whom I did nothing for.

Now and then I would tamp these emotions down but new and even worse ones would take their place. After I regretted not saving my father from this life I started regretting that I hadn’t done more for him in my last life.

Maybe he had been right to say that I was a disappointing son when I had made mistakes.

Maybe he should have even chastised me more often.

Maybe if I had been punished more I could have become the type of person who would have known what the right action was.

Maybe since I was in this next life I had no right to still feel that I was their child.

I then started to go through everyone who had ever criticized or even insulted me in my past life and one by one said to myself maybe they were right maybe I should have agreed with them rather than rejecting what they had told me.

Rather than the occasional sense of distaste I have had for myself in that past, right then I was feeling for the first-time that I hated myself.

Right when it felt like I was at the bottom of all existence and that I could probably go no lower, I was suddenly distracted from my self-inflicted ‘punishment’ by…something.

It was an odd thing that briefly distracted me from my maelstrom of pain and thoughts. I being used to them tried to back to being completely enmeshed with them but ‘it’ wouldn’t stop interfering and distracting me.

So although I didn’t want to look and see what ‘it’ was, I soon wanted it to stop even more so I ‘looked’ up.

It was like I was at the bottom of a very deep well and near the ‘top’ of this well was a small light. I crawled out of my misery a bit more in order to see it better. Once I crawled out, I started to feel better enough that when I tried to go back into the misery once again out of habit, I found I was no longer desensitized to its level and rejected going back.

Now even more free of what had held me hostage I started to move towards the light. Once I had ‘reached’ it I receiving another shock the further pulled me out the cycle of pain and misery I had been caught up in.

The light I had been following was my brother.