For once, Tom was not upset when the room dinged to warn him that his time was nearly up.

What Clare had done, getting these racial traits, plus the blood line improvements as well, was extraordinary. While he had been plagued with uncertainty for the first week and a half of his new life, that was no longer the case.

He could see a pathway to saving humanity, but his stock-taking was not yet complete. There still might be further informational treasures to uncover. He hadn’t even gone into the trial, and, while he had memories of it, they were those of a four-year-old. In other words, they were incomplete. Yes, it had a very nice sunny lake to play in, but given the thought, care, and attention sunken into the isolation rooms, it only took a small leap of logic to conclude that the trial had to be offering a lot more than what his younger self had extracted from it. It was not an idyllic holiday destination – it served a deeper purpose.

The room dinged again, and Tom glanced up, slightly annoyed, and then shrugged. It was time to go, and, as usual he rearranged the room in the chaotic disaster zone that he, as Little Ta, had tended to leave. Tom grinned. Looking at these recent memories from a different perspective reminded him of when his sister was younger. An explosion of mess back then happened without any defining cause or reason.

To duplicate it in two minutes was easy. He just tipped out two of the toy boxes and pushed the resulting pieces around. Then he placed some figurines on the bookshelf and dressed himself before accepting the offered cleaning.

When the doors opened, he left with a smile.

After eleven days, both their trio’s routines and his own automatic acting were well and truly established. At dinner, consistent with his longer-term plans, he was adventurous and ate a slightly spicy sausage. He pretended not to like it and gulped down milk afterwards to remove the pleasant heat in his mouth. Soon he would be able to eat normally, and, given the wide variety of food that others on his table were consuming, that extensive adult palate wouldn’t even be remarkable.

His bed routine was the same as always, and, unfortunately, so was the morning. He practiced his healing throughout the day, hoping to push the ability to evolve.

Late in the afternoon, the three of them entered their own respective isolation rooms. The moment it was safe, he ran the status ritual check.

The screen actually updated, unlike the previous three times.

He almost jumped in surprise and stared at the words in shock:

“Really? You have to be kidding me. This is great.”

Out of all the unlikely options he had checked, it was this specific title which had been retained. He had thought it had no chance.

He could barely believe it.

“Yes! Yes!” He fist pumped in excitement. He had already confirmed he had kept the likely titles and had been going through the unlikely but possible options. He had expected none of them to be kept, but this one had been.

Title: Competition Shaker (I)

Reward: Grants +1 to highest attribute per level before class points are assigned.

Awarded for. Being in the top five humans to generate 1024 ranking points.

Why had this one gotten through the gauntlet? The title had been a possibility, which was why he had checked it before he checked the ones he knew he wasn’t going to receive, such as Vitality Fount. But there was a difference between possible and likely. This had been more of the former than the latter.

It had been earned, at least partially, from soul-related title gains, but it had felt like it should have been classed as a body title. Honestly, in his mind it related primarily to what his body had achieved, with only a sprinkling of soul contributions on top. For an unknown reason, it had been classed otherwise, and he wasn’t about to complain about that stroke of luck. He suspected DEUS must have put her finger on the scales.

Out of all the uncertain titles, this was one of the better ones. An attribute for every level was powerful, especially since he had resigned himself to getting no freebies on the attribute front from his prior life achievements.

At least, not until he used the knowledge from his prior life to re-earn the titles with his new body.

There were still a handful of unlikely titles to cycle through, but he doubted lightning would strike twice, and it was likely he had worked out everything he could about his status sheet.

Attributes – Overall Rank 0

Strength: 10—Rank 0

Vitality: 8—Rank 0

Agility: 7—Rank 0

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Magic: 4 —Rank 0

Fate: 43

Spells

Heal Minor Scratches 4 (Tier 0)

Skills

NA

Traits

DEUSs Chosen (Tier 0)*

Titles

Hunted Reincarnated, Competition Shaker (I), Evolution Master, Complex Conspiracy Discoverer, Sage of Fate (Earth), Unique Skill Creator

*Locked until the earth age of ten and will not accumulate questions before that time

That was the status that defined him. For a moment, he stared at the attributes, processing how low they were. In his memories, which were only two weeks old, they had been forty times higher. He had been able to think much faster and had been capable of moving forty times quicker, and now he was reduced back to this. The benefits of attributes were very real.

He was not yet five, and had known, rationally, what the reincarnation had meant. Despite that prior knowledge and being prepared for the truth, however, it still hurt to see the reduction. He could guess that was his fault, though. After all, he had made the mistake by not preparing for that final fight fully. That had cost him both his life and those previously-earned attributes.

Only the first four attributes went into the official rank that everything used to compare themselves. Fate, while not considered a useless stat, had an effect that was too random to be factored into the easily-understood combat comparison system. That meant that the fate metric couldn’t drag his rank up. An adult male on Earth would have gotten forty with this measuring system, so he was probably completely unenhanced. If he did have anything extra, it was mild, and at most one or two points gifted by Existentia. If he had been this weak on earth, in the wild by himself with a spear, he might have been able to fight off some of the animals out there. A bear, no, but a lone dog, yes. That was not the case in Existentia. Here, anything and everything could kill him.

Tom shook his head and looked away from the attribute sheet. There was no point considering it any further. His low attributes robbed him of any agency to speak of… for the time being. Against what was out there, he was powerless.

He chuckled to himself. He guessed that was what being a child meant – that, despite what he wished, adults would have to keep him safe. But Existentia also had magic, and, if he couldn’t raise his attributes, his only source of power would be adding spells and skills to his repertoire. Especially skills, as they weren’t dependent on attributes - they could protect him when his physical abilities couldn’t.

That was his aim.

Currently, the only one he had was Heal Minor Scratches, which was a trash spell and had no offensive potential. However, he was determined to change that before he turned five hopefully and six at the latest.

He would master lightning, as at low levels it had the most potential to swing a fight in his favour. Being helpless was not a feeling he appreciated.

Tom’s eyes fell on the traits line. There was only one instead of the four he had possessed when he had first entered Existentia. A single trait, and he doubted there would be any more revealed. He had already confirmed that the other traits purchased from the contribution shop were missing. The ones acquired in Existentia were definitely gone, so there would be no more until the experience shop unlocked, unless there was a way to earn them.

Mentally, he added that to his to-do list, putting it near the top. If it was possible to gain traits as a child by a method other than spell evolution, then it was definitely something he had to find out about.

Tom forced himself to stop sulking about what he had lost. This was a second chance, and, given the conditions in place around his reincarnation, he would have the opportunity to make a difference if humanity was failing - and that was exactly what it was doing. Success in that attempt was unaccompanied by prophecies or any other great omens, but if he was here, then there would be a chance, and that unexpected title would help.

Grinning, he threw himself into his spear forms, imagining as he did that he was fighting off a wolf.

All too soon, his low attributes had his body cramping up. Puffing, he searched the room to decide what to do next. His cataloguing of the available resources was almost complete. He just needed to do a few more of the drawers and check the higher shelves. He looked between the two and snorted.

His arms and legs were trembling. There was no way he could push through the exhaustion to climb up the shelving. His eyes settled on the drawers inbuilt into the wall to the right of the bookshelf. He went over and opened them up.

The inside was like a filing cabinet and there were a series of vanilla-hued folders with labels on them.

Fire Domain

Decay Field

Command Undead.

“Interesting,” he muttered to himself, and then pulled out the package labelled Fire Domain. The thick cardboard folder contained loose-leafed sheets, and he stared at the first page.

It seemed to be a list of low-level fire spells.

“Wait, think,” he told himself as he absently closed it. Trying to see patterns in a list of fire spells was not helpful. “This is not a mistake. Someone did this deliberately. It’s important.”

Tom was well aware of his strengths and weaknesses, and in the forty-year tutorial he had focused on learning aspects of the system in detail rather than acquiring general knowledge. As much as he would like to pretend otherwise, he knew very little about fire, so instead of delving into the fire domain package, he searched the headings for a topic he would know more about.

He flipped through the various labels, and then finally spotted what he was after.

Healing domain

“Jackpot,” he pronounced and opened it to the first page ready to discover why the powers to be had included this particular resource.

Despite him knowing the topic in depth, it took Tom a moment to understand what the lists on the page represented. From what he could see, someone had transposed all the tier zero spells from the experience shop and written them up.

He frowned, then tapped his fingers with his mind racing. Why? Why go to so much effort? It seemed like a lot of work for minimal return. Especially when everyone would be able to find all this out from the experience shop when they turned ten.

It didn’t make any sense to him.

Tom studied the information further. “What are you hiding?” he muttered.

The first pattern he noticed was that the listings were not random. The two best tier-zero spells, Touch Heal, which he had specialised in during both of his previous lives, and Healing Missile, were both at the bottom of the page.

That caused him to reassess exactly what he was seeing. There was an underlying structure to the presented information. The page was broken up into five blocks of spells. There were numbers next to each of the spell names, as well as lines linking each spell to another. It took him a few seconds to parse the mass of data in order to determine why it was here.

His mouth dropped open.

“Oh my lord,” he whispered thinking of Michael as he said those words. His eyebrows were raised in astonishment. “That’s… That’s actually genius.”