It was midway through the morning, with the sky showing signs of an approaching rain. Instead of going out as per the usual schedule, they were inside the crèche on the second floor, just above the refectory. Caretaker Evelyn stood beside the sitting Aiden, whose attention was on the slate before him
"Today is the 48th day of the Second Moon," she explained.
"The Second Moon?" Aiden questioned, his eyes squinting in innocent curiosity.
The Caretaker chuckled, "Yes, it has another name you might be more familiar with." Leaning closer, she pointed at the small sigil embroidered on Aiden's tiny uniform at chest level. "It comes with many names: Wöhppr Faith moon, the moon of peace, the blue moon."
Aiden's eyes widened, his small fingers reaching out to touch the emblem. "Blue moon?" he repeated, looking out of the nursery window where the evening sky that happened to be heavily darkening, thus hiding the moon that should have otherwise been hanging up there in the sky, painted in hues of indigo and violet.
"Exactly," Evelyn nodded, applauding his attention. "It is indeed the blue moon in the sky." She then crouched down to his level, "And you know what? There's a whole system to keep track of the different phases of the three moons, when they will appear and when they won’t,” she began before explaining the calendar system of Fiendfell, or more precisely, the Land of Men's calendar system to Aiden.
It has been exactly a week and four days since the night I began my training to level up both my appraisal and my memorial skill, and finally after a week for one and a week and three days for the other, I have finally managed to level up my skill, respectively both my appraisal went up to level 2.
Yes, it was not as grandiose as I hoped it would be, but hey, the hack still works. After all, I was able to level up two skills to level 2 with it in barely with a minimum of effort. Minimum being a little subjective, as after trying for two days straight leveling up anything, and seeing Aiden struggle to wake up early in the morning, and very frankly being a little done with drawing the magic circle after two days, I’ve decided to limit my experiences from two hours a night to only one.
But in spite of that, compared to the conventional skill progression methods, it was without a doubt that mine was much safer and reliable, since the others require one to literally put one's life on the line to level it, something that I, with my current body, couldn't afford. I suppose it could be said that by summoning an unbound familiar, I am actually putting my life on the line, but with Crow available to me, I am nothing but too confident that the balance will tip in my favor. After all, I’m the one controlling the level of the unbound familiar I summon. I won’t summon anything that can't be instantly taken out by Crow. So my method is really safe.
As for its reliability, I guess I don’t really have much to complain about. If anything, it's how slow the leveling is, but even that couldn’t be blamed on my method. The one to be blamed is me and the circumstances I'm currently in. Should I summon something of a higher level than level 1, and stronger than just a wolf familiar, I should be able to level both my skills at a much faster pace. But since I really want to do this subtly, I can’t summon anything that can be instantly taken out by Crow. As of now, I am very confident that Crow would be able to handle anything below what would be the equivalent of a level 15 Verdenkind.
Here again is the problem; I want to be subtle about it. While no doubt Crow would defeat its opponent, this might cause a ruckus, and that’s the last thing I need.
Naturally, I considered taking my training to somewhere safer, far from curious gazes, in other words, beyond the orphanage grounds, but I had my reasons to believe it was a very bad idea. So I decided to stick to my current approach. Sure, I’ll most likely run out of refined manacyte samples before I even manage to level either of my skills to level 4, meaning that I’ll have to contact Dungeon Master 02 for him to resupply me with ample provisions of manacyte and runic sheets. I know he won’t like it, but I have no one else to ask.
Sure, it’ll take more time, since leveling a skill to the next level requires exponentially more effort than the previous one. Meaning that it’ll definitely take me longer than one week and three days to take my appraisal and memorial magic skill to the next level, perhaps triple that time, or four times, or perhaps even five times that amount. Yes, that’s a lot of time just to get to level 3, and even more time for the following levels, which led me to consider a certain something.
With that method, I was, while aware that it might take me some years, confident I’ll eventually get those skills of mine back to what they used to be. But as I remembered that I was not the only one wielding that skill—appraisal, as Aiden had it as well. In fact, he even had Anti-appraisal, which I was never able to unlock. So, as I managed to level my appraisal, I thought it would be nice if he took advantage of my method to level up his skill at the same time. From the look of it, while he and I share a connection, his skills are his, and mine are mine. Me leveling up mine doesn’t level up his, even though we shared the same skill, being appraisal. So, I really considered including him in my training. After all, appraisal, while not exactly a useful skill in battle, was really a skill one could find many situations where you can rely on it. So, it was a skill that was really worth leveling up, the earlier the better. But even if I did consider it, that’s the extent of it. I only considered it. I still haven’t gotten the opportunity to reveal myself.
I was trying, okay. I was really trying, it’s just that I was looking for the right occasion. Considering the bombshell I was about to drop and the way I could possibly explain to a three-year-old why I live in his body like a parasite, I wanted him to be in a good position to handle that. The first being to make sure that he 100 percent had acclimated himself to the life here, and that was something I could say that he did very well, making it that it should be soon time for me to do that. It’s just that it didn’t happen yet.
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"Like this," Aiden asked, showing what he wrote by mimicking what was on the board ahead.
"Yes, just like that," the caretaker praised. "Well done!"
Proud of what he wrote on his slate, Aiden turned on his chair to show his work to Tina, who sat a meter away from him. Having heard the caretaker's praise, Tina, who was already looking his way squinted, most likely out of habit, at Aiden’s writing, then smiled while also lifting her slate to proudly show what she had written.
"Sorry, little man, if this was a contest, hers is objectively better. But subjectively, I like yours more."
After getting her glasses, not much had changed except the fact she was more friendly to Aiden. Not that she was ever unfriendly, but still, the fact that she no longer frowned as much as she used to made her look much friendlier. There was, of course, also the fact that she never brought up the matter of her cat ever again. So yes, she’s much more approachable now.
Upon shortening my night training time, I also got the opportunity to read the notebook Dungeon Master 02 left behind, thoroughly going through its easily 200-pages-long content. As I did, I was able to map out what kind of experiment the TTLE program was.
The notebook only included information regarding children of the second generation of the program, so the information available to me regarding those of the first generation was limited to what kind of skills and abilities they were born with, and what was uniquely special about them. However, from that much, I was able to tell that this experiment was a clear attempt for her to see if it were possible to pass a chosen trait to the next generation.
Why was Theta eager to figure that out? Well, knowing what I knew, chronologically, it just made a lot of sense. The timing of the program matched that of the time Theta was coming up with her masterpiece of homunculus engineering: the HMC-0 series. At that juncture, the HMC-01 and HMC-02 were already born, so it became evident that the TTLE program was aimed to refine the subsequent iterations of the HMC-0 series.
The overarching ambition of the Homunculi-series was to craft vessels of unparalleled perfection, endowed with strength and capabilities for us Dungeon Masters to reincarnate into. Implicit in this grand design was Theta's aspiration to selectively imbue her creations with superior traits—a feat akin to sculpting destiny itself.
The TTLE program was clearly a side-project aiming at aiding her in this overbearing pursuit, focusing on finding a unique method that would allow Theta to handpick and graft skills and abilities onto her final masterpiece—the HMC-0 series. The program obviously focused on the very natural path—the one that simply required a male and female participant.
Now, as for the question of why she chose to hide that program instead of just being open about it like she is with all the projects and programs, I have my thoughts on it, ones that I didn’t like, ones that just thinking about it piss me off and yet very much explain why not only did she hide it from me but also kept it away from Dungeon Masters as well.
It was very easy to guess.
Now, had the answer to her program been a positive one—in other words, one in which uniqueness could be passed on from homunculi parents to children, would she go “that” far. For someone who knows her far beyond the superficial level, the answer was yes, she would. As much as I didn’t like it, she simply didn’t have any reason not to. So much so that I couldn’t even find a legitimate reason to be against it that didn’t paint me as just selfish and undedicated.
But still, the fact that she made the active effort to hide what she was up to proves that she wasn’t that insane yet. She was, but not to an extreme extent where she would try an unconfirmed theory on me or any other Dungeon Master. Should I be thankful to her for it? Hmph, I don’t even know anymore, but I find it very ironic that without being part of the TTLE program, I ended up, in my messed-up way, replicating the condition of the program.
Truly ironic.
Anyway, after reading through the content of the notebook, I ended up finding Celestina in it, or Tina as she apparently commonly referred to, or even TTLE-G1-024 as she is referenced in the notebook, and as I did, I found, not surprisingly anymore since I’ve more or less already guessed, another familiar name in it: Damaelle.
It’s no wonder she's getting such special treatment from an ascetic who isn’t really known for displays of “humanity”.
Now, that begs the question of how she ended up assigned the position of director of this establishment, because this clearly looks like some sort of deal. As for what kind of deal and what terms, I didn’t even bother racking my brain for it.
If there was someone who could possibly answer that question, it was either the director or Theta. I didn’t see myself asking for the answer from either, and to be frank, I was fine not knowing. I simply wasn’t interested in knowing. What I did find interesting, however, was the stats the girl was born with, as they were cleanly documented in the notebook.
Grandfathered by the failed homunculi prototype labeled HMC-P162 and a peon, and mothered by TTLE-G0-03 and a level 23 Highbreed paladin, she was born with no skills and two abilities: Acrobat’s grace and Agile Footwork.
These physical enhancement abilities are completely unrelated to the skills and abilities wielded by either HMC-P162 or the ones wielded by TTLE-G0-03, and even less so by her Highbreed Paladin father, but can generally be found exclusively among either the Swashbuckler subclass or Assassin class. She awakened at the age of 11 months an innate skill: heightened physique.
When I stumbled upon that information, I couldn’t help but chuckle. It was really ironic that she was born with those two abilities, but I guess they helped her a lot up until the day she got glasses, which only happened very recently. But now that I think about it, it’s a good thing that on the matter of the missing cat she didn’t bring her suspicions straight to Aiden and instead had it go through her grandma. Because my appraisal was too low level for me to tell, all this time this little girl had a heightened physique at level 1. It might just be level 1, but that was already a level too much for someone who didn’t have the skill. Once I have the opportunity, I’ll warn Aiden about her.
Anyway, at the end of the section of the notebook, there was an observation section written by none other than Theta. It mentioned the kind of training she is to be getting. I don’t know what kind of deal was signed between the director and Theta, but I had the feeling that Tina would be undergoing it as soon as she is physically ready for it. The orphanage already had the tools for it in the warehouse. At this point, it was just a question of time.
Aiden's attention, still fixed on the girl's writing that he realized was better than his own, snapped back to the caretaker when she said, “Since you’re so good, let’s learn just a little more. At the end of this date,” she said, pointing at his slate before writing on another board for him to mimic from, “you can write: [19th year of the Kingless Era]. This is the year we’re in.”