Back pressed against the wall, Sorrinn slunk down the second floor hallway toward the staircase. He inched close to the crack of his brother’s bedroom door along the way and had a peek inside. Asammirr was out cold, legs dangling off his bedside as he snored a storm. Good. His parents’ bedroom was on the other side of the staircase, on the far-end of the left hallway, so he could check them out on the way.
His parents… Well, put mildly, Sorrinn didn’t have to press his ear to the door to hear what was going on. Maeve’s impassioned, unbridled moans of Orrillimmirr’s name sounded through the warm orange-illuminated cracks of the door loudly enough. The sounds of the headboard’s banging and the bedframe’s vicious, rhythmic groaning painted a vivid picture for him.
Sorrinn dumbly blinked as he gawked into the dread of oblivion from above. Cheeks dyed a flustered hue, he had an inkling they wouldn’t be interrupting his late night search for reading material. At least they had the decency to throw down the gauntlet while the both of them were asleep. The cottage wasn’t that big, sound traveled, and his mother could holler like an opera singer. Orrillimmirr may have looked young but he knew how to tap into the soil and unearth groundwater, that was for sure.
Sorrinn wondered what his little sibling’s name would be? The more, the merrier, he supposed. A little sister would be nice. Being an overprotective big brother would be cool.
That said, he wasn’t a pervert, nor into cuckoldry, and they didn’t need an audience. He left them to their mastery of the Dibellan arts.
There were only a few lanterns providing illumination through the hallway, none of which’s light encompassed the staircase. His faith in his coordination after seeing his attributes wasn’t substantial enough for him to try walking down the steps gung-ho in the dark. Heck, he’d stumbled a few times walking over even ground on the way there. The last thing he needed was to get bold, trip, somersault down a flight of steps headfirst, and snap his neck, concluding his ascension career and his second life before they even began.
In lieu of walking, he sat on the topmost stair and scooched his way down one step at a time in true toddler fashion.
It was a straight shot from the bottom of the steps, into the first door of the hall on his right. He pushed the cracked door open wide and entered the dimly-lit study. Some of the alchemical ingredients in jars luminesced crazy colors in the dimness. It was a riveting sight.
It was too dark to figure out which tomes pertained to something along the lines of rudimentary magic. All of the titles were in an unknown language, regardless, so it was futile all the same whether day or night.
Then again, the [Serendipitous Mystery Box] he received depicted an English label. All of his menu’s text was in English, in fact. His eyes narrowed in rumination as his arms crossed. “Just what are the parameters of what can be stored in my inventory?” he wondered aloud with eloquence, finally knowing some unanimity between his voice and active thought. Could he, say, store random stuff laying around his house into it—such as, say, the tomes of his intrigue? And if that were the case, would the titles of the tomes be translated into English when he viewed them in his inventory?
There was only one way to find out: Touching the spine of one of the tomes on the lower shelf, he concentrated on storing it. But a minute had passed of him straining, grunting, staring, and blinking, only for nothing so miraculous to occur. If he strained any harder, something was going to fall into his pants.
He was left pinching his chin and tugging at the half-round points of his ears with befuddlement-narrowed eyes. “Hmm…” a shrill voice hummed in thought. He tried tapping the book, holding the book—while struggling to bear its weight—performing a theatrical sweep in front of the book, commanding the book with a stern point of his finger, screaming “Open sesame!” at the book, using the Force on the book, and even jazz-handsing the book into his inventory.
It wasn’t until he opened the Inventory out of frustration that all of the books in his eye view were highlighted by a thin white outline. He jolted at the sight, cheeks adopting a sheepish hue. Then, a simple, hesitant tap on the spine was enough to make the book fade into rising particles before his eyes.
Immediately, an icon of the same tome appeared in the first box of the grid. “Huh…” Slapping his hand over his face and shaking his head beneath the weight of his chagrin, he tapped its icon to peruse its details and confirm his hypothesis:
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{The Essential Guide to Meditation: A Comprehensive Manual for Mindful Practice}
(Book)
(Spirit) - (Arcana) - (Intelligence) - (Wisdom)
(7.0)
----------------------------------------
So his theory was correct; storing title-bearing objects in his inventory did translate the title to his native language. Not only did it translate the title, it also clued him in onto what attributes he could mature through reading it. Convenient.
It wasn’t quite what he needed, but he figured he’d hold on to it for later when he became serious about developing his Spirit. In the meanwhile, he played a game of raffle sending the tomes to his inventory until he uncovered what he searched for.
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{Gods Among Us: The Ancient Tyrants of the Great Forests}
(Book)
(Intelligence) - (Wisdom)
(6.0)
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Not quite. Interesting, nonetheless. He’d return to read it at a later date.
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{The Great Forests: A Flora Compendium}
(Book)
(Intelligence) - (Wisdom)
(4.9)
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Nope. He could imagine Orrillimmirr intensely salivating over the cover with dilated pupils when he procured that book, though. His father was such a nerd. He loved the guy.
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{Hidden Empires: The Enigmatic World of Fae-blessed Insects}
(Book)
(Intelligence) - (Wisdom)
(3.5)
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He’d definitely return to give that one a read once he learned how. No way he was wasting a precious use of his [Transliterating Glass] on it though.
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{Gateway to the Mystic Arts}
(Book)
(Arcana) - (Intelligence) - (Wisdom)
(4.0)
----------------------------------------
Bingo.
He expelled the other three books from his inventory and neatly returned them to where he found them on the bookshelf. Then, with his two scores stashed away, he crawled back upstairs to his bedroom.
It was still too dark to do any reading, so he tossed himself back into bed. So much had happened that he wasn’t all too tired anymore. He closed his eyes anyway, trying to ward off his excitement about learning real magic come daylight. That effort was unsuccessful, of course, and it piled up to the point he couldn’t help exuding that energy squirming in a jittery burst, humming a pitched sound, giggling effusively, and kicking his feet as his insides became all tickly.
Eventually, the tiredness did creep back in, at which he drifted off to a sound sleep wearing a behold-worthy smile.
***
Sorrinn’s eyes shot wide open the moment a dreg of sunlight infiltrated his bedroom window. Knowing the sun’s light then gleamed over the horizon to welcome him to a bright, blue day, the biggest, most effulgent of smiles stretched across his face. His insides were all giddy and tingly like it was Christmas morning. He couldn’t stop giggling with himself beneath his covers.
Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.
He sprung right up to his feet, stretching his short arms as he hopped forward on one foot and pounced onto the stool beneath his window. He drew his window open inward before shoving the wooden flaps outward. The morning’s chilled breeze sighed into his bedroom, caressing through his chin-length, white blond hair. A big inhale of crisp, cool air rich with the scent of dew filled his nostrils.
The day was wonderful. The Giving Tree was as ethereal and mysterious as always where it hung over the village at its core. Peering at the fluidly flourishing branches, like the hands of angels beckoning him into paradise, he pondered his next move.
The aroma of grilling meat filled the house. Maeve was already awake and preparing breakfast above the general room’s fire pit.
The need for stealth was gone. His books were his and all he needed was to find a quiet place to devour them. The general room wouldn’t do, no, neither his bedroom nor Orrillimmirr’s study. His mother would find him in a heartbeat in all of those places and wonder why her four-year-old, illiterate child was burning a hole into a book on something as complex as the mystic arts. While he didn’t necessarily perceive the whole ‘System’ thing as a secret to be hidden, if he was caught ascending as a toddler, he doubted his parents would idle by while he dove through the fire, small as it may be at the moment.
Call him a surreptitious snake oil salesman because, on the contrary, the reincarnated thing definitely was to be hidden. He didn’t want them making impediments of themselves to his progression or getting creeped out by the fact he still harbored twenty-four years worth of memories, knowledge, and experiences from a past life.
Perhaps when he was older they could discuss all of the implications about his being an Ascender. Until then, he’d do his own thing behind closed doors.
That said, he knew the perfect place: The cottage didn’t have an attic, but it did have a spacious storeroom on the second floor in place of one at the end of the hall on his and Asammirr’s side. The family was fairly minimalistic, so it didn’t have much in it beyond a few dusty crates.
She had given him more freedom once he was older. If she knew he was in the house while she was in the house, she didn’t mind him wandering on his own as much anymore. So he made his way downstairs to the dining table and waited for breakfast to let her know he was in the house with her. That way, she wouldn’t come searching for him later after Orrillimmirr and Asammirr left the house and she started on some chores.
He always looked forward to eating solid food. PTSD from the great breastmilk crisis, maybe. He’d long been waned off of it. Even if it wasn’t the source of his episodes as he once believed as a year-old, the thought still made his heart race a little.
It looked like she was making some of that fuzzy pink fruit puree he loved. Just the start he needed for his big day. With it, he had two buttered cuts of bread, a bowl of oatmeal with an assortment of Maeve’s garden berries, chopped tree nuts, and spiced honey, and thin strips of a richly savory, smoke-smelling meat that resembled bacon but he was doubtful to claim had hailed from a pig. Couldn’t say he cared where it came from. He saw for himself how the village’s livestock lived in immaculate conditions and were treated kindly. It was thoroughly cooked, and it was delicious. He couldn’t stop eating once he started.
Asammirr and Orrillimmirr joined him at the table. The three of them inhaled every speck of food in their bowls. An on-looker would’ve sworn they’d never eaten a day in their lives. He was thanking the divine that his mother grew herbs she’d processed into spices in her garden too. The only thing he feared more than breastmilk was flavorless food.
Sorrinn sped upstairs to the storeroom the moment he was finished eating. Closing the door behind him, he got the window open to let the daylight and fresh air pour in, found a spot in the empty middle of the room, then summoned the tome from his inventory.
The particles converged as it reformed. The hard-covered book thumped against the floorboards when it fell flat.
Getting onto his knees, he opened it to the first page, then the pages following it. Indecipherable gibberish as he suspected—all of it. Beyond the pages that were demonstrated entirely by illustrations of a humanoid figure and close-ups of hands assuming all manner of positions kindred to a martial art kata, he couldn’t decipher a lick.
His first instinct was to try to locate any symbols that looked similar to the English alphabet to root his base in, but there weren’t any. It was more like a piece of sheet music that was scribed in cursive and flourished to the moon than English in appearance.
As far as he could tell, the range of characters of whatever language the book used were limited. There were all manner of finesseful swoopies, loopies, curves, and meandering tails that appeared daunting at first glance, but in truth, there were only about eight core symbols which repeated. The nuance introduced itself with the accents attached to the symbols, which he didn’t believe were diacritics but differentiators for different letters. Through the adding of dots, minute flourishes, and bridging the tails of some characters to others, the core eight characters expanded into an entire catalog of sounds and letters which formed flowing, aesthetic words.
Its beauty shone through when the penman had good handwriting. He imagined the language would suffer severely if someone had bad handwriting though due to its delicacy.
He summoned the [Transliterating Glass] and perched it to his left eye, shutting the other. In a crossing wave of distortion, the page he looked at was rescribed into English—something he could sink his teeth in. Starved, he licked his lips, the anticipation swirling in his eyes, and dove in.
Sorrinn laid across the storeroom floor for the rest of the day, kicking his feet, shifting in and out of various reading positions as the former grew uncomfortable. He was sure to be in bed by the time Maeve came searching so she didn’t catch on to what he was doing.
Come the next day, he returned to the storeroom, and again come the day after that, and the day after that as well. The words, thoughts, theories, experiments, observations, and conclusions of the author contained within the book were all so fascinating. Once he started, he couldn’t stop. He went to bed come nightfall and remained awake for hours ruminating over, parsing, and dissecting what he’d read during the day. Then he’d fall asleep, assimilating with his gained wisdom even in his dreams.
A summary: The author believed the mystics arts was a true form of art and expression rather than a cold, factual science. According to them, no amount of knowing the laws of how and why would ever make it easier or more accessible. They didn’t believe it to be so much the practitioner’s will and wisdom producing feats of the arcane, but the joint will and harmony born from the practitioner and The Mystic Force’s union. To them, magic was a relationship that needed to be nurtured—a give-and-take between two living entities. It was a conversation; it was a desire—a wish—and the miracles born as a result were The Mystic Force’s answer to the one whom it shone its light upon. The goal of the practitioner wasn’t to be all-knowing of why flame burned or why rain descended—nothing so pretentious; it was to be ever-flowing, ever-shifting, and receptive to all aspects of existence—a creative, malleable receptacle to The Mystic Force’s offerings.
They often analogized it to something akin to a dance requiring two to be performed. Some’s feet flowed like water and the sashays of their hips kindred to the wind when their hand met with The Mystic Force, while others had two left feet and bumbled and stumbled, never to perform a perfect dance.
As such, unlike most other artforms, no amount of effort would make someone capable if they didn’t already harbor the potential to become adept. One either bore affinity with The Mystic Force or didn’t. The Mystic Force either smiled upon someone or it didn’t. There were no shades of gray in the world of magic.
Although, strangely, the author stated at one point an individual’s mystic capacity was set in stone from birth. Sorrinn thought that odd since his attribute menu refuted the contrary. His Arcana PV was eighty-three, while his CV was only twenty-six. The fact the attribute had a PV at all meant it could be developed beyond where it stood in the present—both naturally through bodily maturation and through training.
Maybe it was that, as someone grew older, it became exponentially harder to develop one’s Arcana. Like how he hypothesized, one day in the far future, he wouldn’t be able to increase his Intelligence anymore since his brain would only cement with age. Which was why, behind Arcana, capping his Intelligence was his second priority while he still held the neuroplasticity to develop rapidly. Perhaps the mystic wealth in his body was still in a malleable stage at his age and, at some point, it would cement too, just as his mind would.
From an older person who wasn’t an Ascender’s perspective, perhaps it would appear everyone’s mystic wealth was static. Sorrinn doubted four-year-olds studying the ways of the arts was a common occurrence. The average person probably didn’t have the breadth and depth of mind to even begin to conceptualize what it meant to cast magic until their teenage years.
All the while as he read, he received popup notifications from The System alerting him to the increase of one of his attributes. He dedicated a week to reading the book—a day of reading per item use. Across those seven days, he gained two points of Wisdom and a point of Intelligence. It didn’t seem like much for the effort he poured in and the sheer quantity of words he’d read in single sittings, but he supposed that meant every point would really have to be earned.
The System wasn’t an easy path to power; it was a test; power was the reward for excellence and unrelenting effort. He had to remember that.
----------------------------------------
(Mind)
—Intelligence: 56 / [71] / (0)
—Wisdom: 41 / [90] / (0)
----------------------------------------
{Trials of the Ascendant}
[Ascension Task]: Gain 5 cumulative points in any attribute. 3/5
[Completion Reward]: Level +1
----------------------------------------
The author explored each of the nine aspects of The Mystic Force throughout the book in great detail: Creation, the aspect of materializing, Alteration, the aspect of transforming, Conjuration, the aspect of transference, Clairvoyance, the aspect of fact, Illusion, the aspect of falsehood, Control, the aspect of manipulation, Necromancy, the aspect of death, Restoration, the aspect of life, and Preservation, the aspect of opposition and continuity. Each aspect coincided with an aspect of observable reality. Mystic wealth existed within all things to some capacity, from the air, to the grass, to the mountains, and the very essence of life rushing toward death in an everlasting cycle. To be a practitioner of the mystic arts—an imbibitor—was to connect with those aspects hand-in-hand and use one’s flesh, bone, and blood as the vehicle for their physical expression.
The initial step in that journey was read to first be founding a deep comprehension of one’s own mystic wealth and mystic pathways. It was through the ethereal tributaries which that energy rode as it surged from within that guided The Mystic Force through the steps of the dance that resulted in magic.
The weird illustrations were actually the forms of minor spells of Creation the author thought to impart to any aspiring practitioners. There were two major steps leading to the birth of a spell: the flow of the individual’s mystic wealth through their mystic pathways and the motions and/or stance of the body once the wealth’s flow was actualized at the threshold. How one directed their wealth’s flow and placed their body were the words being exchanged with The Mystic Force in a two-sided conversation. Thus, being eloquent and precise with those words was critical. When those words were molding the fabric of reality to the imbibitor’s whim, precision couldn’t be understated. The author didn’t spare the gruesome details of the repercussions of attempting to cast spells haphazardly. He imagined how he’d feel if someone beckoned him for a chat, only to start barking gibberish in his face like a raving lunatic—not happy.
Sorrinn’s first goal was to manage to cast a spell. Once he managed that, he’d figure out what circumstances led to his Arcana increasing. After that… Profit?