Slowly I felt my world come back. Something was around me. I couldn’t figure out what it was. I just couldn’t think that well.
My thoughts cleared in an instant when I realized Mary was no longer in front of me. I attempted to move only for whatever was holding me to stop me. I squirmed just enough to get a clear view of what was happening to me. I was floating over a sea of spirits above me were 10 or so little tube-like devices with metal at each end and an empty core with glass surrounding it. Three of the devices had a spirit in them and the glass casing was closed, all the other ones were opened.
A small drone-like device was carrying me by some kind of glowing tendril that was inserted into me. I could turn, but I couldn’t move away from the drone. Everything else in the room was pitch black, it was only lit by the light coming from all the spirits below me. I stared at the devices I was moving towards only to see one flash and the spirit within it was suddenly gone. The machine began some kind of cooldown procedure as steam poured out of each end of it.
A moment later the device next to it began what could only be a sci-fi like scan of the spirit within. Red light roamed up and down the spirit over and over again. In the third occupied device I saw… I saw Mary! Unless there was another spirit other than the two of us that could move, which thus far has proven to be entirely false.
Mary was struggling within her device trying desperately to smash through the glass. Strangely unlike last time we didn’t move through the matter of these devices, and this drone could seemingly touch me. I might even be able to harm the drone, if only I could move more than turning my field of vision.
The red light began to scan Mary. A moment later the device with the unknown spirit flashed and they were suddenly gone as well. That meant that was going to happen to Mary soon, then I would probably be next.
My mind whirled trying to consider what these devices could be doing to us. A civilization that could wipe everything humans ever touched from the face of the Earth in a matter of minutes didn’t exactly need anything else to my knowledge. I mean that was god-like power. What would gods or maybe god-like aliens need with a bunch of spirits?
Before Mary’s scan was done the drone carrying me got me to an empty device. It placed me inside then the glass began to close. It only released me at the last possible second. I tried to escape but I was far too slow and I bounced into the glass uselessly.
Mary seemed to notice me the moment I moved and she stopped trying to escape. Instead she began to move in very specific motions within her tube. She moved from up to down, then from that point to the right. Then she moved back to the center and stopped for a moment. Then she made a little circle and stopped for a beat. Then moved down diagonally to the right and up diagonally to the right.
Only then did I realize what she was doing. She was moving in letters. L-o-v-e--Y-o-u-. For the briefest moment I felt an emotion for the first time since all this insanity started, love. I began to do the same thing she did. I got to the ‘V’ of love then a bright light and Mary was gone. The love I was feeling disappeared and I was left as a void of emotions again.
The red light of the scan began, but I no longer cared enough to try to do anything about it. It was both useless and I didn’t feel much like fighting anyways. About a minute passed of it scanning me then another minute and a bright white flash.
I was no longer looking at the sea of spirits. Instead there was just nothing. My thoughts began to slow again. I worried I had just been moved to another spirit storage facility for a moment. Then I realized that although my mind was slowed it wasn’t gone entirely.
There I sat for an eternity. At one point while in this void I felt something physical. I pushed against something soft and squishy. I tried to push more, hoping I could escape my prison. But quickly I became tired and fell asleep.
I woke and tried to get out again only to tucker myself out and fall asleep again. This cycle continued endlessly. Sometimes I would push against my prison, but mostly I just fell into a monotonous sleep wake cycle.
I began to understand that I had arms, legs, and a head. At one point I think I had a tail, but that went away. As time passed I would try more and more to escape whatever this was. I would kick and punch, but it was useless. There just wasn’t enough room to get enough of a swing going.
One day something changed. A liquid began to escape whatever space I was in, then a while later the walls around me began to convulse. Everything after that went by quickly, more convulsing, eventually something pushed me, there was a taste I knew, blood, then I was free!
My vision was terrible but the light of day hit me. I squinted and began to cry. I was handed off to a giant and they began to fiddle with something near my belly. Then I was handed off again to another giant, this one allowed me to look at its face. Oddly the face was the only thing even remotely clear. This was a man I think, he had red, nearly fiery, hair and soft gray blue eyes. He had a stupid grin on his face.
He began to walk over to another giant, this one a woman I think. She had emerald green eyes and shockingly blue hair. Her face was kind, but she seemed exhausted. The man handed me to the woman. She cradled me beneath her breasts. She said something. “Si nha Veluthe.” The woman said gently.
The man’s smile only grew. “Si nha si nha coln'. Kar va sil kerradun siin lahr lor be Alea?”
The woman returned her gaze to me. “Alea Rothana” She brought me to her breast and on instinct I began to suckle. I must be a baby! The insane thought was interrupted by words in my mind.
*Congratulations! You have been born, for your safety the majority of the system’s functions are curtailed until you are older.*
*Level up. Elven baby level 1. You gain 1 Vitality.*
*You gain the passive main skill Learning Languages, level 1.*
*You gain the passive main skill Elven Heritage, level 1.*
*You gain the active main skill Identify, level 1.*
After those words an image of words and numbers appeared in my vision.
Alea Rothana
Age: 0
Mana: 11/11
Mana Regeneration per day: 11 (-2)
Strength: 1
Agility: 1
Vitality: 2
Animus: 1
Magic: 1
Manipulation: 1
Elven Baby: Level 1
Main Skills:
Learning Language (level 1): -1 mana regen per day
Elven Heritage (level 1): -1 mana regen per day
Identify (level 1)
It was a stats sheet! I was in a game? No, that didn’t seem right. This all felt real, if this was a game it was a perfect recreation of reality. Something this real is fundamentally my real world even if it is some kind of simulation.
Milk began to trickle into my mouth. I hungrily fed on the liquid. All thoughts of stats and reality were blown away by food.
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My world went from being stuck in a womb to being stuck in a baby’s body. It was technically better, but not by much. I could move around a little, but mostly I was just an eat, poop, pee, and sound making potato.
I did however make a rather important discovery. I was a girl now. So that was certainly something. I guess Mary and I’s last conversation was somehow prescient. I had become a girl and through absolutely no work of my own. Being a baby it didn’t really matter at all at the moment, but I didn’t know exactly how I felt about growing up as a girl.
Thoughts of Mary were one of the only things that kept me going. If the devices we were stuffed in were some kind of reincarnation machines, then I just had to hope Mary was out there somewhere, born sometime around when I was. If that was true I might be able to find her.
I couldn’t tell James or Randy apart from the mass of spirits, and they never showed any signs of life after becoming spirits. Plus we had become separated before being sucked up. Thus I had no illusions that I would one day meet them.
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Months passed as I ever so slowly learned how to move again. Plus I had an entirely new language I needed to learn. My skills seemed to be helping with that somewhat, if this strange system thing is to be believed anyway.
Learning Languages
Prerequisite: Sapience; Attempt to learn a new language.
Type: Species, Knowledge
Passive
Skill cost: 1 mana regen per level
You're a baby in serious need of the ability to communicate with the people around you. Learn new languages faster with this skill. You learn languages 1% faster per level.
Not exactly a massive boost, just 1% faster, but hey it's not nothing. Although it's 2% now. Since being born I have gained one level. Not exactly sure what I did to deserve it though.
*Level up. Elven baby level 2. You gain 1 Vitality.*
*Learning Languages has leveled up, level 2.*
Maybe it was the fact that I’m actually starting to understand my parents. They had certainly been surprised when I leveled, they must have identified me sometime after I leveled. I guess leveling up this early was super rare.
Identify
Prerequisite: Sapience
Type: Species
Active
Skill cost: 1 mana/level
Range: 5 feet + 1/10th foot per level
Take a look around and learn more about the world with Identify. When you identify something you gain information about your target. For inanimate targets you receive its name and a basic description. For animate targets, you learn the type of the target’s highest level class. You can also learn the target’s exact level of their classes. Amount of information you gain on the target’s levels increases with level. A target’s animus will resist your attempts to identify them.
My mother, Shalia, was such a kind woman. Maybe I was just biased because she did most of the child rearing. When I identified her I got back [Artisan], but no level. I guess my skill isn’t powerful enough to overcome the resistance of her animus stat. Whatever the hell that was.
Definitely better than my useless father, Respen. He wasn’t really useless, he was just a little flighty at times. He identified as a [Warrior], his level also hidden. Despite their identify tags he was a hunter and my mother was an alchemist.
We all slept together in the same bed. I didn’t think it was because we were poor, since our house was actually really nice. It was two stories, and had a little store front for my mother’s alchemist business. I knew we had spare rooms and one of them had a bed, so I guess sleeping together as a family was cultural. It didn’t particularly bother me except I feared what would happen if father rolled over in his sleep.
It might not be surprising considering the whole system thing, but this world had actual magic. I couldn’t believe it. The first time a patient was rushed to my mother she applied a tincture she made to the massive slash through the man’s arm. I was flabbergasted to watch two to three weeks' worth of healing occur all at once. Apparently the potion she used was relatively rare and expensive though and the man was still paying it off. Most of her healing items just stopped bleeding and cleaned wounds.
I tried to consider exactly what these potions must be doing biologically but I just couldn’t grasp it. It was strange, I knew that I had a ton of medical knowledge in my head, but my baby brain just couldn’t access it. The ideas were just too complicated. Hell I was lucky if I even remembered that things existed when I wasn’t looking at them.
I was approaching the 6 month mark and my mother was experimenting with feeding me mashed vegetables. I did my absolute best to eat without making a mess, but… did not succeed. Fine motor skills were not exactly in my repertoire. She didn’t mind at all, just wiping everything up.
I saw Respen enter, his bow hung around his shoulder and a sword at his hip. I was still getting over the fact that he and really everyone else, myself included, had big long elf ears. Granted mine just went to small points since I was young. My parent’s ears extended like 2 inches past their heads. It was wild.
That wasn’t the only difference about elves and humans. Hair and eye colors came in every color under the rainbow, blues, oranges, purples, greens, you name it. I had red hair like my father and emerald green eyes like my mother. We had a mirror, although it wasn’t exactly the greatest, nonetheless I was as cute as a button if I do say so myself.
Other than that elves were pretty much exactly like humans. Well that and the elven heritage skill.
Elven Heritage
Prerequisite: Have elven blood
Type: Species
Passive
Skill cost: Age + 1 mana regen per level
You are an elf, strong, quick, and never aging. For as long as you can fuel this skill you will never age past the age of 25. You may still choose to age normally as much as you like, however you cannot reverse the effects with this skill. Experience gain is reduced with age. Grants keen nightvision, basic mana sense, and enhanced hearing. Skills that grant nightvision, mana sense, or enhanced hearing are empowered by this skill instead. Nightvision, mana sense, and hearing are improved with level. Amount of experience reduction with age is reduced with level.
I was fucking ageless. Like I might live for thousands of years. I had been 26 when the whole apocalypse thing happened, I could not even begin to imagine what living orders of magnitude longer would be like. It utterly boggled my mind, it also got me thinking about my parents' age. They not surprisingly appeared to be in their mid twenties, but there was no reason they couldn’t be 400.
I returned to an all too common scene between my parents. My father approached my mother from behind putting his hands on her wide hips, then he leaned down and kissed her shoulder. “How was your day?” Dad was… a bit horny, like all the time. I mean I get it, mom was beautiful. I didn’t have a libido in this body and I knew that. She had a very womanly figure, but wasn’t chubby at all. If you told me she had a baby 6 months ago I would have said bullshit, but I also existed so that argument fell flat.
If I took after my mother I’d be hard pressed to keep suitors away. Did I want that? To be as beautiful as my mother? I mean being pretty was definitely not a bad thing. Right? More tomorrow Alea problems. I’ll sort out my feelings in like 10 years.
It was still odd to think of myself as Alea, daughter of Shalia and Respen. The system at least was fairly confident I wasn’t Jacob anymore since it displayed my new name rather than old. Alea was certainly a pretty enough name, and I was confident Jacob wouldn’t fit an elven girl at all. So Alea it was.
My parents shared a gentle kiss before mother backed away. “Good, Alea even managed to get some squash down… I think so anyway.” She smiled at her joke at my expense. I tried damnit!
Understanding my parents had come very quickly, I didn’t know if it was the system helping me, my natural intelligence, or the fact I have 26 years of memories and experiences. I suspected it was some combination of the three. I still had to occasionally infer some nouns, for instance the first time I heard the word squash was when my mother was peeling and cooking it. I also continued to think in English. My vocabulary in Ysarese was just not nearly large enough.
My dad let my mother go and rushed over to me. He picked me up quickly, flinging me up causing me to nearly lose what squash I had gotten down. Then he, thankfully, cradled me in his arms. I’m a baby you dolt, settle the hell down!
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Life continued like that as I grew and began to babble back at my parents. All my milestones came quicker than usual and it seemed the system took note of that. When I spoke my first complete word, not just a sound, I leveled again.
*Level up. Elven baby level 3. You gain 1 Agility.*
*Learning Languages has leveled up, level 3.*
My parents were positively ecstatic when I leveled again before I even became 1. Apparently a baby was lucky to get to level 3 before they became 2. Something I didn’t quite understand happened sometime between turning 2 and 3 but I wasn’t completely sure.
I got in the habit of identifying everyone that came by our house. I hoped using a skill made it level. That certainly seemed to be the case with Learning Languages. It helped a lot that mom kept my crib near the counter of her little storefront that was attached to our house. People would come in looking for all sorts of remedies.
I knew from that that medical science was not advanced in this world. Magic seems to have smoothed out the need for such a discipline so it just hasn’t advanced much. There were other aspects of society that showed I was living in a world about as advanced as the 1500’s of Earth. However my mother had some fairly elaborate glassware that appeared to be closer to the Victorian era.
Either way it was when a pregnant woman came to our store seeking help with swollen ankles that identify finally leveled.
*Identify has leveled up, level 2.*
Score! I immediately went to identifying everyone and everything again to see if anything had changed. Nope it was still mostly useless. It also doubled in cost! How was I supposed to get this skill leveled if I could only use it 5 times a day!?
As my emotions heated I began to cry. My mother immediately went to soothe me, which worked all too well. Being a baby sucked…
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My first birthday came and went without much fanfare. It seems that birthdays were more of a ‘good job getting older’ thing than a ‘let’s have a party’ thing. Suited me just fine, I had never been a social butterfly. Neither mom nor dad had a party for their birthdays throughout the year.
I was finally able to speak in broken simple sentences. Which was fast for a baby. I was speaking like a 2 and half year old at the age of 1. Hitting milestones so fast wasn’t necessarily only a good thing medically speaking, but my parents were absolutely ecstatic.
“Mama peas bad.” I said seeing the dreaded green spheres on my plate yet again. I wasn’t a picky eater, but I had always hated exactly two things in my life, peas and tomatoes. For whatever reason my mother enjoyed shoving the vile plants down my mouth as often as possible.
She gave me a look. “Be a good girl and eat the peas and you can have apple later.” Ah using my weakness for fruit against me. Good move mother.
Bribe accepted. “Fine.” I huffed then began to eat the peas. That of all things tipped me over into another level.
*Level up. Elven baby level 4. You gain 1 Strength.*
*Learning Languages has leveled up, level 4.*
I dropped my spoon and flexed my muscles. “Mama! leveled! Now srong!” I said with a happy giggle. Fear my mighty strength of 2!
Mother dropped the dish she was cleaning and gave me a shocked look. “Really?” She identified me, then put her palm to her forehead. “I can’t believe it, my daughter is a genius…” There was an actual look of worry on her face.
“Bad?” I asked, dropping my arms.
My mom looked away for a second before returning to me. “No it's just that… people that level quickly are very… popular.” She walked over and put her hand on my cheek gently. “Not to worry. Everything will be fine.” I wasn’t sure if she was saying that to calm me down or herself, but it seemed to work for both of us. I swear my mom had some kind of soothing magic, a single touch made me happy.
I giggled at her and the subject was dropped, along with most of the peas. I hadn’t done that on purpose at all!