It has been five months since we got home, and as best as I can figure, I am six months old today. I feel like I have accomplished quite a bit now that I have had some time alone to work on my skills and stats. Sensing anything abnormal or even close to mana has been an impossible goal for me to achieve. I still try it, but I have stopped dedicating as much time to it as I’m starting to feel it is a lost cause. I wasn’t born with magic, or I would have something under my magic tab.
I have gained and leveled quite a few skills these last couple of months. I am most proud of learning the Sneak skill. There must be different tiers of skills because instead of giving me the expected ten experience, I received 20 when I discovered the Sneak skill.
[Skills]
Mathematics
10
Acting
3
Meditation
7
Language - Common
5
Sneak
1
Every night before falling asleep, I would do math problems in my head. The more complicated I can do, the faster I seem to level. Whenever I level a what I will call a basic level skill, I would gain ten exp. But the amount appears to be cumulative because on the second rank up, I got 20 experience, and on the third, I got 30 experience. I ended up receiving the Acting skill while we were at my mom’s work. One of her coworkers was trying to play with me, and I had to internally roll my eyes and play as would be expected a baby would do.
I got Meditation by accident. I was trying to sense the mana around me and ended up entering a zen-like state of mind. It feels like that skill has helped me accept my new reality and focus more on my future. If I meditate before I try to learn something new, I tend to have tremendous success. It has earned me quite a few Intelligence and Wisdom points.
Getting older means that I have gained enough muscle coordination to crawl and become more active. My crib is large enough to pull myself up and begin to walk around at night to strengthen my legs. It is tough to walk when your muscles don’t have any muscle memory to keep you upright. My breakthrough in Sneak came when my father put me to bed one night and didn’t pull up the crib wall to keep me inside at night. My parents don’t realize how mobile I am yet. I was able to get out of bed and walk as quietly as possible around the room. I think intent had a lot to do with gaining that skill as well.
Level
4
Experience
(1060/1500)
Health
80/80
Stat Points
15
Strength
6
Constitution
8
Dexterity
5
Intelligence
44
Wisdom
32
[Traits] [Skills] [Magic]
Every time I gained a level, I received five stat points. At first, I was excited because I thought I could just dump those points into my strength and dexterity, but my attempts so far have been foiled. I can’t even click on the stat points word for more information. I will assume it is a safety system to avoid having children allocating their stat points without understanding what they are doing.
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I have gotten to the point where I understand the local language, which according to my skills, is called Common. As best as I can understand it, everybody is color-coded based on what their job is. There are three different “classes” of people. For ease of my understanding, I will call them nobility, ordinary people, and servants.
I have seen very few people I believe to be nobility, but they always wear some type of expensive robe. I want to say that the armored guards also fit into the bottom of this category as well.
For ordinary people, the color you wear is based on your job. My parents are both researchers, so they wear yellow. The people who deliver our food wear purple. The deeper the shade of color you wear, the more critical you are in that bracket. I have not worked out all of the details on which jobs get which colors, but I know for sure nothing like this would ever work in America. There would be riots if one day the president came out and said, “Everyone who does this type of job has to wear only this color.”
Servants are a group of people I have not seen very much of as well. I have mainly seen this group back in the building where I was born. There are no servants out on the streets or anywhere near the research facility where my mother works. I hope in my heart that this is because there are not very many of these types of jobs, but the pessimist in me believes otherwise. I have not been where any nobility lives, but I would not be shocked if they had servants.
I expected that there would be a King or Emperor ruling over us with this type of system, but from what I have heard, we are ruled by a council of nobles known as “The Enlightened Eight.” I have not heard very much about this council except in whispers. It seems they are feared rather than loved by my mom’s coworkers.
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Today is the day! I have decided that today at breakfast, I will hit my parents with my first words. Up until this point, I have given plenty of smiles and giggles but no actual words. I am now six months old, and while it is probably early, I still want to interact with people again. I don’t want to be pegged as a genius child by what I have heard about the society that I am living in. I am going to take it slow and work up to more effective forms of communication.
When my mother comes into the room to wake me for breakfast, I put on the brightest smile I can manage when I see her. She, of course, smiles right back at me. I have learned the more I smile, the more everyone around me smiles too.
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My father brought home a new highchair for me to sit at the table with the adults in the kitchen. They are starting to supplement my meals with mashed vegetables and fruit. I enjoy the fruit, but some vegetables are just disgusting. My mother set me down in my chair and went about starting breakfast for us. As my dad joins us at the table, I make sure to greet him with an excited squeal and a huge smile. They are both putty in my little hands.
I never know which parent will feed me breakfast, so I have decided that the one who feeds me today will get a mama or a dada. Sorry mom, it looks like dad is going to win the first baby word. As my dad picks up my bowl to feed me, I smile and say, “dada.” And the crowd goes wild! I don’t think I have seen a bigger smile on his face. He makes sure to rub it in to mother that he got dada first. Well, I couldn’t have that! I started up a string of baby talk and made sure to mix mama in there, too, just to soften the blow.
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I have gotten too big for the basket-like carrier my mother used to bring me to work in. By my reckoning, I should be having my two-year birthday soon. Now when it is time for work, she just carries me in her arms. There is a playpen near her workspace where the other children are all kept together during the day. I use this time to work on my acting by copying what the children are doing closest to my age.
It is a little tricky because the next oldest child, Sky, is about two months older than I am. There is also a little girl named Jade that is six months younger than I am. I’ve been basing my actions off of Sky but making sure to wait to copy anything he does for at least a month after he does it. I never thought being a baby was going to be this much of a balancing act! Three other children come to work with their mothers. I have not interacted with them very much because their mothers are still kept in their carrier baskets.
One of the perks of being in the playpen is within view of the large stones that everyone is trying to decipher. I have been having fun trying to solve them as well when the others are sleeping. The stone tablets looked a lot like the hieroglyphs found in ancient Egypt, which is intriguing because I took an entire class on that writing style. I am still looking for some kind of Rosetta Stone where the exact phrase is translated into multiple languages or possibly system help. As soon as I got the first skill point in the Common language, learning the rest got significantly more straightforward.
Just as I was drifting off for my afternoon nap, a trumpet started playing. The other kids in the playpen with me were startled awake and immediately started crying. I found it a ridiculous thing to cry over. Not wanting to stand out, I started crying as well. Our mothers immediately came over to quiet us down, so I got a front-row view in my mother’s arms of the noble that had just shown up.
Everyone bowed as a young man in yellow robes entered the research facility. Following him was an ancient man in dark yellow robes along with several servants. All of the servants were wearing pale yellow shift dresses or vests. The two nobles ignored us entirely and started talking in another language between themselves. They walked up and down the aisles, looking at possible translations for each tablet. Their expressions were getting angrier and angrier as they continued.
After they finished inspecting each tablet, the young noble addressed the room in Common. “You should be ashamed to call yourselves researchers! How long could it possibly take to translate these tablets?!” He looked like he would continue his angry rant, but the older noble placed his hand on him to stop.
The ancient noble was next to address the room. “It appears that babymaking has made you soft and dull. Go home! Starting tomorrow, you will all start your journey to report directly to the site and continue your translation. I don’t mean the near site. I want you in the heart of the ancient ruins. Perhaps being in that ancient ruin will inspire you.” He paused to take a breath. “I will make sure that your husbands are transferred with you to keep you on track. I hope you enjoy living in a tent because you are not allowed to come back until those tablets have been translated!”
One of the newer women who had just delivered a newborn baby spoke up from the back. “But sir, the heart of the ruins is two months travel from here by carriage. How will we feed ourselves and look after our young on our own?”
“GUARD!” the young noble was quick to yell. A duo of guards rushed into the room and bowed to the nobles. “Arrest this woman and see to it her husband is reassigned.” He glared at her for even daring to question orders. “Are there any others who find this journey too difficult and would prefer to scrub floors?” All of the women were silent at this question. After nobody else spoke up, the entire noble party exited the building with the woman crying in tow. One of the guards had picked up her baby and was following behind the group. I wanted to ask my mom what would happen to her, but I felt that question was a little too intuitive for a two-year-old to be asking.
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My mother was in tears when my father got home. It was clear that he had heard about their new assignment as he got home just after noon, which was quite a bit earlier than usual. He immediately went to my mother and engulfed her in a hug. “It will be alright. We are blessed that we get to stay together for this assignment.” He waved me over to him so I could be included in the group hug.
“I spoke with the assignment master before I came home. He said that he has orders to supply wagons and supplies for five families to live in the heart of the ruin.” My father said. He explained how we could expect a resupply wagon once a month and that they were to report progress to the wagon master each month when we got our supplies. We could build housing for ourselves, but the tents would be sent for our initial arrival.
I was put to bed early that night, so my parents could pack their belongings and have some alone time. I could still hear them through the door, but for the most part, they were boring. They kept talking about memories that they had in the house and how much they will miss it. I, too, would miss this house, but the thought of living right next to an ancient ruin was a dream come true for me. I couldn’t wait to explore all of the nooks and crannies the grownups couldn’t fit in.
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I have grown a lot in the last year and a half. I am most proud of my Visualization skill. The best way I can describe it is like having a photographic memory. I just have to look at something for a bit while studying every detail I can, and then later, I can bring that same image back up in my mind. The more I practice, the more information I can remember about something. I’ve been using this skill on the tablets in the research facility and have reached the point where I can near-perfectly remember everything about them.
The other exciting thing I found out about my skills is that my Common language skill maxed out at 10. The system agrees that I fully understand that language now. I have even caught myself thinking in Common sometimes. I am not sure how I feel about that. I know I need to embrace my new life here, but it feels like I am losing something important to my identity to no longer think in English.
When I reached level 5, a new line popped up on my status for skill points. I got one point at levels 5, 10, and 15 for a total of 3 points saved up now. I cannot click on the name to explain what the points are for or how to use them. Yelling in my mind that I am not a child has not changed the system’s mind about locking me out of using those points. I guess it was kind of childish to yell that in the first place.
Level
15
Age
2
Experience
(11040/12000)
Health
140/140
Stat Points
70
Skill Points
3
Strength
10
Constitution
14
Dexterity
11
Intelligence
50
Wisdom
42
[Traits] [Skills] [Magic]
[Basic Skills]
Acting
21
Climbing
15
Language - Common
MAX
Mathematics
20
Meditation
17
Running
5
[Novice Skills]
Sneak
10
Visualization
14
[Traits]
Linguist
The ability to learn written and spoken language quickly.
Limitless
There are no limits on what you can learn.
[Magic]