CHAPTER 28 – HISTORY OF HUMANITY
The days passed. If the school in his first life had been annoying, then being taught to read again, and to be forced, at the mental age of over sixty, to pretend to enjoy picture books, was agonising.
The rest of his life had improved. He wasn’t sure what had happened, but Bir and Pa had, with only a little prompting from him, moved away from playing figurines, spying, or bubbles. Basically, they abandoned everything he had hated and were now throwing themselves into more active pursuits. Yes, they were still kids - they ran, laughed, and had heaps of inane conversations - but usually while doing something physical.
Pa was obsessed with the obstacle course, while Bir was happy for an excuse to test fate in a dangerous environment. She loved the safety it provided. It could save her from herself, and she was taking full advantage of that. She was continuously attempting ridiculous feats of agility, like leaping onto a spinning obstacle and holding on until she slipped, so that she landed on top of another rapidly moving tree trunk arm. That, in turn, would have the effect of propelling her up to the destination she was aiming for. It was absolutely ridiculous. It was the type of challenge attempts that Tom, with the extra strategic planning of his adult mind, would have considered impossible – unless, of course, he supplemented himself with fate as well, and he wasn’t going to spend that precious resource on something so mundane.
He was glad, though, that Bir was using fate for a positive purpose rather than on pranks.
The reasons for the shift in their behaviour didn’t matter. The result made his days far more tolerable, because, excluding lessons, they were better now. He winced as he remembered reading practice from earlier. He had been forced to pretend to be unable to read, the cat sat on a mat while there was a picture of exactly that right next to it. Others had struggled through similar pages, so he had to pretend to do the same.
Dimitri rapped his hand on the desk. Tom jumped slightly and focused on him.
“As I was explaining, we will be starting formal physical activities in cohort from next week. Morning session will go from two hours to three. Now, today we’re going to learn about...” He paused what he was saying to write ‘Key Events’ on the board.
Tom looked blankly at the words along with everyone else and tried to act like he couldn’t read them. Inside, he was secretly jumping up and down in excitement. This was the information he needed, especially as it had the potential to affect his build.
“I’m going to describe all major events of the last fifty years.” Dimitri finished and smiled at the class. “A lot has happened, but these are the important parts.”
He scribbled on the board, even though no one in the class could officially read. There was no hidden information in what he wrote for reincarnators either, so he figured Dimitri must be doing it because of habit. Probably learned it while teaching slightly older kids.
“Event one was the Champion Race Trials. The champion teams of humanity were presented with the opportunity to enter a trial. Four teams adding to thirty-two people in each of the three trials. It was a mixed quest, puzzle, and combat trial with a race through zones to reach the centre. Or, at least, that was official description. Unofficially, they were a trap set by dragons, insects and giants for other four races. Everyone died in one, and less than fifty percent survived in the other two. Overall, two thirds perished. To illustrate that point, if this class went into the trial then all of you to right of here,” he indicated most of the people in the room. “Would have been killed.”
There were gasps from everywhere.
“I suspect, even if given odds of survival before start, all those champions would still have volunteered.”
Dimitri was not wrong. His group had known the likely mortality because of an oracle question and entered anyway. Even if it was certain death, Tom would have gone in, if the reward justified his early removal from the competition. He was pretty sure everyone else would have done the same.
“Yes, death ratio’s was high, but it was worth it. Survivors jumped thirty ranks. That was them getting the benefit equivalent of four-to-eight years of grinding in six months. It was very much worth it. Those with boosted rank saved ten times as many lives as were lost in the trial, a number of humans groups would have been lost completely if those champions hadn’t been there to save them. Despite everything, it was considered a positive for humanity. Am I boring you, Bir?”
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Next to him, Bir jumped in her seat and pretended to be alert. Tom tried not to laugh at her as she was shaking her head vigorously like it would make up for basically falling asleep. Dimitri stared her down until she flushed and lowered her head with red cheeks. Tom spotted the small smile on the volunteer’s lips.
“The benefit to communities was important, but the greatest success were the survivors from the true trial of champions. The primary trial, so to speak. They chose not to go back to their communities, but undertook a quest. It is said they it got from DEUS.”
Tom wanted to jump up and dispute that. That was his idea, not a quest from DEUS!
“We don’t know what they did. They’ve never provided an account, written or otherwise. We’ve learnt a lot. They revealed how the trial was a trap. They gave details of our competitor species, and said they were on a quest, and from gaps in those earlier letters, they may have tried to communicate more and were stopped.”
“How?”
Dimitri stared at the boy who had asked the question:
“At that point, humans lived in small, isolated villages. We could only send messages through auction house, and it’s since been proven some ideas and concepts can’t be sent through it. We suspect, but can’t confirm, that their plan was one of those forbidden topics. Four years later, every human received a series of notifications that they had earned forty million ranking points along with additions to human racial trait. They are why we’re still in the running for top four. Those racial trait changes have kept us in touch with dragons.”
“What did they do?” the same boy as earlier asked.
Dimitri shrugged. “None of them speak of it. Keikain, a priest of DEUS, is only one who even acknowledges being part of that group and he only says that they were guided by DEUS.” The big man frowned. “That’s what he says, but he’s a priest and they’re all fanatical, so we can’t trust that explanation.”
Tom snorted in laughter and barely turned it into a coughing fit before anyone noticed. Keikain fanatical? Tom wasn’t sure Dimitri could have come up with a worse description. After the choice he made, while he thought he was being guided by DEUS, Keikain was anything but devout. Him becoming a priest was purely a transactional decision. Tom knew that was a fact, because he had been there when their group had made it.
“What did they do to get the trait?” the same boy as earlier repeated.
“Do? Um… At the time we didn’t know, but we now understand what is required to receive a racial trait and it’s…” Dimitri frowned. “Let’s just say it’s not pleasant. They don’t talk about it for a reason, and given what they brought humanity, none of us pry.”
The lecture switched to the next event, and while Tom still listened, he tuned out slightly. Cam, he discovered, had fought a ten-year war against an aggressive tentacled monster that lived in shallow swamps and eventually eradicated them by diverting a river. Without the water flowing into their breeding ground, they had died off.
The lecturer finished, and Tom repeated his routine.
The next day, Dimitri once again took the second educational block. “Once more, we are going to continue with the theme of history. This time, I’m covering the human timelines.”
He only got through the first five years of humans in Existentia, but successfully, in Tom’s opinion, conveyed the struggle of the period: the lack of a home base, the forced nomadic lifestyle, being driven into becoming raiders to get food for those on the edge of civilised land and scavengers for those who weren’t. The next day he took up the timeline from where he had finished previously. In total it was a full week of lectures to cover the fifty years.
The caretaker basically broke it down into distinct periods: desperate survival and exploration that lasted seven years, internal trade routes for another five, then the start of town and tribe consolidation, the assassins, then the creation of an organised adventuring guild that supported trial farming, and then, in the last fifteen years a switch to include environmental engineering to let them have a larger impact on the fabric of Existentia. Of those, Cam had been the most successful, but he was not the only one.
“Are environmental disasters good?” The usual chatty boy asked.
Dimitri thought about it. “Creating them deliberately is an uncomfortable concept for lots of people from earth. However, they have been useful, and there are five or six multi-decade efforts that might have a massive impact.” The big man was grinning and responding enthusiastically. This was clearly a topic close to his hand. “I consulted on one. We’ve built a gigantic dam that we’ll unleash on Adoalac Lands. They’re a terror race. The dam is nestled between mountains. We’ve constructed a wall to block a massive river. The construction is six kilometres long and half a kilometre high. Every earth mage we had was brought into help. It’s hard to imagine how big it is but it was damning a massive river and its going to take thirty years to fill up and then we’re going to destroy them.”
He smiled happily. “It’s these projects that make me think the human position on the ladder is not as bad as the raw numbers imply. That dam, with some coordination with nearby civilisations, should allow us to eradicate the Adoalac.”
Dimitri went back to his planned lecture.